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.”
Maybe something like this:
“After squinting through binoculars into a nation frozen in time, US President Barack Obama reeled off a contempt-laden and startlingly frank indictment of North Korea. The Stalinist remnant of the Cold War was, in Obama’s eyes, nothing but a nation which cannot make “anything of any use”, “doesn’t work”, and even its vaunted weapons exports were hardly state of the art. ‘It is like you are in a time warp,’ Obama said Sunday, after he toured a rocky border post in the demilitarised buffer zone that has split the Korean peninsular for longer than he has been alive. ‘It is like you are looking across 50 years into a country that has missed 40 years or 50 years of progress,’ Obama marvelled later, after taking a helicopter back to teeming, prosperous Seoul, just 25 miles (40 kilometres) away.”
His “contempt-laden and startlingly frank indictment” has been misinterpreted; rather, it was “commendation and rank excitement.”
Apologies to all for Steffen – he is a national embarrassment. But, the tide is turning – the pro-Green Queensland Labor government has been obliterated, and today we heard that the Victorian (conservative) government has scrapped the ridiculous 20% renewable energy by 2020 target introduced by its Labor predecessors. The scam is slowly unravelling in the Great Southern Land.
One thing I don’t understand is why not a single ambitious journalist at these extravagant love-fests has the guts to get up and ask the obvious question about the disparity between the climate junketeers’ own lifestyles and the condemnation they pour on the working stiffs back home who are paying for it all. I don’t credit journalists with much in the way of ethics these days – but surely there is a story there? Are they all tested for adhering to the party line before being allowed to attend? Or do they just want to stay on the gravy train as well?
Oh, and does anyone have a breakdown of how many working ‘scientists’ there are at this glorious jamboree, as opposed to hangers-on and media?
“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.”
This is very bad news for the growing middle classes of developing countries because they had their sights set on either joining the richest 10% or working in their factories. Once they hear that GreenPeace and other benevolent NGOs are going to put a stop to this development for the good of people not yet born, they are going to be displeased, very displeased. If only someone had the means to inform these third world citizens about the goals and work of GreenPeace and other NGOs, then the NGOs might receive a somewhat different greeting as they go about their daily work of feeding the hungry and bringing world peace. I wonder if GreenPeace consults the third world factory workers about GreenPeace’s plans?
“In subsequent days at the meeting, nearly 3,000 experts spanning the spectrum of interconnected scientific interests” Would that interconnected interest be “How can I get more of the money?”
That CO2 animation could be relabeled “The Spread of Modern Civilization.”
…largest gathering of experts…
WTF?
I stopped reading.
Ïnstead of :
“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”
It should read instead…”: 2500 media representatives, industry representatives, policymakers and a scientist”. This is probably a more accurate interpretation of what is going on at this parasitical quasi-religious self-indulgence..
log onto australians sceptic site http://www.galileomovement.com.au and read about Will Steffen , csiro , gillard and all the gooses that are pedaling the fraud
To be fair, some of what they say has merit.
The deforestation/reafforestation position is sensible.
The world could do with managing its water supplies better. That will start by saying that farmers growing food have higher priority than vain middle class suburbanites watering their grass. It’s not banning lawns, it’s saying they are less important than humans being properly fed.
Unfortunately, their rubbish about temperature is scientific fraud and lies. They should be asked to put their genitals up as collateral for their assertions. Their assertions would drop to a murmer overnight, something which cannot come quickly enough. They know and I know that temperatures are levelling off and bear no correlation to carbon dioxide. Their reputations are dead if they ever admit it, however. Hence the need to focus their minds with the ultimate scare tactic.
The day people realise that you must treat this bunch like little Hitlers and appeasement gets you nowhere is the day the world will return to sanity, balance and data-driven scientific enquiry.
The Planet Under Pressure conference? I think they’ve been sold a PUP.
If you look at the graph showing carbon isotope changes in the 2010 Watts Up post “Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 3)” you will see that the British have been telling lies for over three hundred years. Notice how the amount of 12C being produced from our secret underground factories from 1700AD onwards shows up immediately. The above video shows industrialisation from 1750AD, but by that time our merciful lizard overlords, whose presence we welcome, had already built the vast industrial caverns that still lie under much of this green and pleasant land.
Or, of course, the isotope changes are caused by warming, are a result of the world coming out of the LIA, and prove nothing about the provenance of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The increase in 12C is obvious, but those who blame industrialisation for the CO2 increase only see the later change. Why is that?
Lizards? Here’s proof. Have you ever seen Lord Mandelson blink?
JF
Seriously, though, Ironbridge is a must see for anyone interested in the history of technology. There’s a lovely spat on one of (Lord) Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time radio programmes between Lord B and one of his guests, a woman who is most offended by the idea that industrialisation started because of a few great men. Silly moo. Go and stand on the Iron Bridge itself and marvel at the work a few great men did there, men who changed the world. And made my Rayburn central heating stove 250 years later.
What a trifecta of alarmists sucking on the taxpayer funded teat. Two complete nutters in Bob Brown, de facto Prime Minister, and Commissioner for Climate Change Professor Tim Flannery who confirm the fact of their stupidity every time they open their mouths. Professor Will Steffen has been racing all over the world as often as he can spreading warmist disaster scenarios in his efforts to have this period in history known as the Anthropocene, a term I’m sure he thinks he originated and wanting what he egotistically feels is due recognition.
In her lust to retain power and having wasted so much money on her crazy ‘green’ schemes’, the lying Julia Gillard is more than happy to use them, the countless other taxpayer funded CAGW believers or any other means to help justify the carbon dioxide tax and the funds she desperately needs to try and buy her way into retaining power in the next election
For the majority of Australians, that election cannot come quickly enough and I don’t think any amount of electoral bribery will save her skin nor that of most of her incompetent Labor Government members!
.
conversefive says:
March 26, 2012 at 10:15 pm
…His “contempt-laden and startlingly frank indictment” has been misinterpreted; rather, it was “commendation and rank excitement.”
____________________________________
Unfortunately you are correct if his whispering caught on an open mic is any indication. http://freedomslighthouse.net/2012/03/26/obama-caught-on-open-mic-telling-russians-after-my-election-i-have-more-flexibility-on-missile-defense-video-32612/
johanna says:
March 26, 2012 at 10:18 pm
…One thing I don’t understand is why not a single ambitious journalist at these extravagant love-fests has the guts to get up and ask the obvious question about the disparity between the climate junketeers’ own lifestyles and the condemnation they pour on the working stiffs back home who are paying for it all. I don’t credit journalists with much in the way of ethics these days – but surely there is a story there?…
__________________________________
It is “Freedom of the Press” and he who OWNS the press has the freedom to kill what ever stories they want. Just google “journalists fired”
And then look at Congressional Record: JP Morgan 1917 purchase all the important newspapers: http://www.examiner.com/la-county-nonpartisan-in-los-angeles/congressional-record-jp-morgan-co-purchased-all-major-media-for-propaganda-1917-and-now
and 201o: JP Morgan: Our next big media player? http://newsandtech.com/dougs_page/article_f3a45be0-4717-11df-aace-001cc4c03286.html
Alarm, alarm!
Not!
Pat Frank says: March 26, 2012 at 7:27 pm ‘Geoff, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that Will Steffen is a Ph.D. chemist’.
No, Pat, we’re saved. It says Chemical Engineering, University of Missouri in 1970.
Ball is back in your court.
Steffen & David Karoly are on some sort of “Ask Here First” list, with the implication that they are experts in climate change. For reasons unknown to me, I’ve not heard either one asked a hard question by the media. Yet they are high up in IPCC, based on ??? work.
Latitude says:
March 26, 2012 at 6:35 pm
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?
We have had a definitive prediction that it was one hundred months as reported by Andrew Simms The Guardian, Friday 1 August 2008 and at the time was widely publicised. Of course this prediction was based on CO2 rising as a defined rate. It has actually risen much faster so we are already past the levels they were predicted to be at the 100 months.
If you take the model CO2 levels used rather than the dates we are already seeing irreversible temperature rises beyond anything we have ever seen.
This prediction is getting harder and harder to find on search engines almost as though there is a concerted effort to see it disappear.
Reference Germany being second to endlessly apologise…Hmm……….Being typically German you certainly made the production of CO2 far more efficient……
Just look at BMW’s and Audi’s……..
BMW’s…mmmmmmmmmmmm
If sea level rise dosn’t accelerate soon they are all toast.
First question of the first press conference was asked by Richard Black. What a coincidence.
A new business has come to maturity which requires Global Clinate Change Specialists. They have a fantastic capability in that they are a huge burden on the productive parts of the economy.
I stumbled on this UN club for business schools that’s sure to get new managers singing the internationale along with the “Climate Scientists” and Media cheerleaders. http://www.unprme.org/
Please excuse me while I puke.
Born with no defence system, claws or teeth that are useful for defence or attack, no body armour and not even a fur coat to protect us from the sun or the bitter cold. Humans are very vulnerable to an unforgiving and brutal world.
We were given a brain and some instructions “Go forth and subdue the world” This taken in context means to make the world user friendly for us.
Given enough development and education the entire world can be made a garden of Eden with enough food and wealth for all. These doomsayers are no different from days old that declared that the end is nigh, the only difference is we are paying these buggers.
Three decades of these so called educated village idiots and not one prophecy has even come close to reality, they are not even close in their approach to being scientists, the new world of instant communication and information is making a mockery of their inanities.
Enough of these fools who will not debate the science for all suffer allo doxophobia.
[The fear of different opinion]
Crazy Ralph says it all:
Crazy Ralph: You’re all doomed!