From the Earth System Science Partnership where they feel licensed to tell the rest of us about the “state of the planet” we have this press release admonishing an “unequivocal warning”. The video seems to indicate that we should blame the British for starting it all.
State of the planet
Scientists describe humanity’s global impact as ‘The Great Acceleration’ and offer ominous outlook: An uncertain future on a much hotter world
Time is running out to minimize the risk of setting in motion irreversible and long-term climate change and other dramatic changes to Earth’s life support system, according to scientists speaking at the Planet Under Pressure conference, which began in London today.
The unequivocal warning is delivered on the first day of the four-day conference opening with the latest readings of Earth’s vital signs.
In subsequent days at the meeting, nearly 3,000 experts spanning the spectrum of interconnected scientific interests, will examine solutions, hurdles and ways to break down the barriers to progress. The conference is the largest gathering of experts in development and global environmental changes in advance of June’s UN “Rio+20” summit in Brazil.
“The last 50 years have without doubt seen one of the most rapid transformations of the human relationship with the natural world,” says speaker Will Steffen, a global change expert from the Australian National University.
“Many human activities reached take-off points sometime in the 20th Century and sharply accelerated towards the end of the century. We saw a ‘Great Acceleration’.”
“It is the scale and speed of the Great Acceleration that is truly remarkable. This has largely happened within one human lifetime.”
Key indicators of the planet’s state, according to the speakers: higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, phosphorus extraction and fertilizer production causing many large dead zones in coastal areas; rising air and ocean temperatures; melting sea ice, polar ice sheets and Arctic permafrost; rising sea levels and ocean acidification; biodiversity loss; land use changes; and growing consumption of freshwater supplies and energy by a growing global population, of which billions of people still lack even the most basic elements of well-being.
At a planetary level, humanity is altering the global carbon cycle, water cycle and nitrogen cycle, says Professor Steffen. Indeed, humans now produce more reactive nitrogen artificially than all natural processes on land.
“Where on Earth are we going?” he asks, underlining several potentially dangerous environmental “tipping points” foreseen, among them the melting of the polar ice sheets and the thawing of perennially frozen northern permafrost soils.
Current research estimates the permafrost alone stores the equivalent of roughly twice the carbon in the atmosphere, he says. Under a “high warming scenario,” projected releases of greenhouse gas emissions from melting Arctic permafrost are the equivalent of 30-63 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide by 2040, 232-380 Gt by 2100, and 549-865 Gt by 2300. By comparison, fossil fuel emissions today are roughly 10 Gt per year.
“The key point is: Either we turn around a lot of these trends – the carbon dioxide trend, deforestation and so on – or we allow them to continue and push beyond critical thresholds.”
“There are signs that some drivers of global change are slowing or changing,” says fellow speaker Professor Diana Liverman, co-Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona and visiting Oxford University academic.
“Population growth is slowing and will level off; the intensity of energy and carbon required for a unit of production is declining; agricultural intensification is slowing and forests are starting to expand in some regions.”
“On the other hand, average resource consumption per person, already high in some regions, is growing steeply in emerging economies even as many poor people cannot meet basic human needs.
“In some countries people are consuming far too much, including carbon, water and other resources embodied in trade. We have a long way to go to turn things around.”
Liverman notes a time lapse animation offering vivid evidence that Earth has entered a new geological epoch hallmarked by the profound ecosystem impacts of one species – humans – so much so that it marks an entirely new geological timespan: the “Anthropocene.”
Online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEMse22h8c8, it illustrates the dramatic growth of carbon dioxide emissions from the start of the industrial revolution — spreading from the UK in 1750 across Europe, North America and to Japan by 1900.
“By the end of the 20th Century we have high emissions in China, India, Europe and eastern North America but relatively little across Latin America and Africa. Here lies the core of the debate about responsibilities for climate change in relation to historical and per capita emissions.”
She also refers a recent UK study showing the highest income earners are responsible for three times the level of emissions compared with lowest income earners.
“In countries with high income inequality, the richest 10% of the population may be responsible for more than 50% of the greenhouse gas emissions – and the growing middle classes of many developing or transitional countries are developing consumption habits that add to the burden on the earth system.”
Says conference co-chair and UNESCO director of the science-policy division, Dr Lidia Brito: “If you like, our presenters today are akin to doctors saying ‘look, you may not feel too sick at the moment but you’ve got high blood pressure, your cholesterol is going up, and your lifestyle is not conducive to good health.'”
“There is time to turn these trends around and promising, more positive messages will be delivered by colleagues in days to come. We look forward to discussions of our most promising options, the barriers to change and to a prescription for the future.”
NOTE TO EDITORS
The research discussed in the press release, the conclusions drawn and the opinions offered are those of individual speakers or research teams at the Planet Under Pressure conference.
More information about Planet under Pressure Conference
The international science conference will be the biggest gathering of global environmental change specialists in advance of the United Nations Rio+20 Summit: 2,500 scientists, policymakers, industry and media representatives will meet to hear the latest research findings on the state of the planet and discuss concepts for planetary stewardship and societal and economic transformation towards global sustainability.
More information on the web: http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net
Follow the conference via RSS: http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net/xml/news.xml
Live web streaming, daily news show and live audio feeds: http://c3379912.workcast.net/planetunderpressure.html
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Sooo, what they’re saying is we need to turn humanity back to the early 20th or late 19th century. I presume that means reducing the population to something around 1.5 to 2 billion, with 70% doing subsistence farming. Right. That’s what they call ‘progress’?
Here’s a scary phrase: “planetary stewardship and societal and economic transformation towards global sustainability”.
More importantly, Tim Tebow joins the Jets. /sarc
My total bill comes to $183.46(US), I hand Will Steffen three fifties, two twenties, and a penny . . .
“The video seems to indicate that we should blame the British for starting it all.”
It’s right there in Tragedy and Hope by Professor Carroll Quigley…
Hmmm, this sounds suspiciously like another taxpayer-funded knees-up for the sandal-wearing, holier-than-thou, hairy-armpit brigade – getting the old juices flowing, ready for the full enchilada in Rio.
It must be fun to be one of these teat-suckers, living high on the hog at everyone else’s expense, and rubbing shoulders with all the other party-goers every few weeks.
I bet their excitement can hardly be contained, while they’re holding forth with their ever-more dire predictions of a dystopian nightmare of doom.
Nothing like a good old rent-seeking, nest-feathering session to raise the spirits, eh?!
}:o(
I love the way they always put “scientists” right behind the expected numbers of attendees:
“The international science conference will be the biggest gathering of global environmental change specialists in advance of the United Nations Rio+20 Summit: 2,500 scientists, policymakers, industry and media representatives”
Instead of…”2500 media representatives, industry representatives, policymakers and scientists” which is probably a more accurate version.
At a glance, this paper should be filed under Earth Sciences-Geochemistry and not Global Warming, on its way to the circular filing bin.
For example, if we mine phosphate deposits, we should also ask how they were originally emplaced; and whether that was good or bad for the planet; and whether the phosphate cycle is a repetitive, ever-present process.
There seems to be confusion about redistribution of global materials, confusion with irreversible consumption or production – when we often do not even know the long term norm, or even if there is one (pH of the oceans?). We are simply told that change is evil and people must starve and die to combat it.
I wish I could make a substantive comment or rebutal to this but the material is frankly just too disgusting. Perhaps a short video reviewing the highlights of previous Fascist/Communist/Solcialist/Progressive accomplishments would be informative.
Time is running out to minimize the risk……..
======================
You guys have been saying this for decades….and centuries
Can we please get a date and time?
The only acceleration I see,is the number of snouts in the trough.And their funding.
Will Steffen is perhaps Australia’s leading AGW alarmist, easily up there with Hansen et al. He still has the ear of government.
As an Australian taxpayer, I apologise for his ravings and only ask that you be patient with us, please.
Wow. . . .time is immediately running out!!
The only solution is for people who would waste vital resources attending crap conferences like this to
1) Immediately transfer all their assets to me, and
2) dispose of yourself in the most carbon dioxide friendly way possible
Otherwise Mother Gaia just might throw a hissy fit or something. . . . . . .
It in no way represents the consensus or the prevailing thoughts of the skeptics. And now, back to your regularly scheduled programme…
“In subsequent days at the meeting, nearly 3,000 experts spanning the spectrum of interconnected scientific interests, will examine solutions, hurdles and ways to break down the barriers to progress.”
Ah, yes, the ‘B’ ark… 🙂
‘Planet under Pressure’ aka ‘If it’s not, then who will pay our salaries?’
Aliter, ‘If the naysayers are right then who will pay our salaries?’
‘Listen you dumb, fossil-funded, tobacco-fuelled, anti-climate, anti-post-normal scientific and anti-global governancing planet haters get your way then that means we’ve just spent more than two decades of juvenile bed-wetting episodes, billions of wasted dollars and the setting up of countless reputations and agencies that all ended up as diddly squat.
Would you mind explaining who’s going to pay our salaries in the future? Hope you can explain why Daddy (Moma) now has to make a living by asking ‘Do you want fries with that’
Clearly you guys have no compassion!
This is the two millionth warning – your all gonna die – Snarc off
I think that Australia is coming out of their delima. Not today’s
election results..This guy will not have the government’s ear soo.
But why do owe never see the results of the benificial results
of added CO2? Why earlier warmer periods were always
better for Homo sapiens?
Errata:
I omitted the word ‘if’ and the \sarc tag. Forgive my inexactitudes but, in my defence, I received no funding from my efforts. As always. Sigh….
Will Steffen is perhaps Australia’s leading AGW alarmist who will be out of a job next year, perhaps sooner of the ALP starts to collapse under a gillardton, LOL. Hee, Hee. Hee – Pleeeease!!!
“The last 50 years have without doubt seen one of the most rapid transformations of the human relationship with the natural world,”
Does this sentence actually mean anything? Please define “human relationship with the natural world”. A relationship sort of implies two distinct parties. Have humans not always been part of the natural world? What have humans transformed from or to? Super-natural? Extra-terrestrial? Unnatural? I have been alive for the last 50 years and I have clearly missed this transformation.
I’m confused
So… The first to the wall would be all the “deniers” followed by all the rich. Oh, and don’t forget fat people because they use “more resources” than thin folk. Oldies will go, too, of course, as will criminals, presumably. Then civilization.
By the way, I don’t think they want to knock us back into the Stone Age. It might be worse than that. My neighbour collects wood from his own land and sells it. He has been harassed by Greenies who tell him they will stop him. They don’t like people burning wood either.
At least cavemen could enjoy a good fire. Looks like we won’t be able to do even that.
Not that it will bother me, of course. If they get their way, I’ll be first to the wall, along with all you good folk.
Geoff, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that Will Steffen is a Ph.D. chemist.
His publication list, at least since 2001, is short on science, longer on modeling, and longest on we’re-in-big-trouble overview pieces.
His paper in PNAS modeling global water vapor, includes estimates of neither error nor uncertainty; exhibiting the promiscuous neglect typical of AGW science.
Wonder what he did for his Ph.D.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling!!!
“The last 50 years have without doubt seen one of the most rapid transformations of the human relationship with the natural world”
Based on survivability rates, the relationship has never been better!