Focus: Strategies for Adapting to Climate Change, and Human Survival

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Whatever we do, and whatever is causing or worsening the situation, climate change will continue - so we need to focus on working together to deal with the crisis:

"Even maximal deployment of the best technology cannot stop climate change," says the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA), Frances Cairncross, ..."policies to help societies adapt to a warmer future are badly needed."

The effects of climate change are broad - ranging from spreading infectious diseases, to making hurricanes stronger, to flooding island nations. Followed of course by the inevitable "cooling" - and an ice age.

Climate change is inevitable, and policies to help societies adapt to a warmer future are badly needed.

That is the message from the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA), Frances Cairncross, at the BA annual festival.

She will tell delegates that even maximal deployment of the best technology cannot stop climate change.

Focus on climate adaptation urged

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Climate change is exacerbating the spread of infectious diseases, according to new research.

Warming temperatures are causing organisms to migrate, Professor Paul Hunter told a conference in the UK.

Disease 'migrates' as world warms

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Rising ocean temperatures linked by some studies to tropical storms are very likely a result of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, according to new research. ...The lead author of the new study, Benjamin D. Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of the Energy Department, said the findings suggested that further warming would probably make hurricanes stronger in coming decades. ...The study was published online yesterday by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Earlier studies concluded that greenhouse gases from human activities were warming the oceans, but this analysis was the first to examine thoroughly trends in particular tropical regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that serve as nurseries for the destructive storms. ...Several climate experts said that while debate persisted about the role of warming in pumping up hurricanes, there was little doubt about the long-term trend should warming continue as projected.

“Even under modest scenarios for emissions, we’re talking about sea surface temperature changes in these regions of a couple of degrees,” Dr. Santer said. “That’s much larger than anything we’ve already experienced, and that is worrying.”

Study Links Tropical Ocean Warming to Greenhouse Gases

Under the circumstances, legalistic debate about the primary cause of global warming looks like a red herring.

IMO - Cairncross is dead on - it's time to strategize our survival as a species.


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[edit on 13-9-2006 by soficrow]

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A new study confirms that increases in solar activity are not causing "the global warming that's indisputably happening." Scientists from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies contributed to the study and offer comments.

The global warming now underway is not caused by changes in the sun’s brightness, say researchers who have reviewed the science on the matter and conducted some climate modeling. ...This new study, ...reviews many robust studies that look indirectly for evidence of solar variations over the last millennium, as well as directly at luminosity changes recorded by radiometers and spacecraft since 1978. What they show is an insignificant increase in solar brightness - certainly not enough to cause the global warming that's indisputably happening.

Ice researchers can go back even further by looking for radioisotopes in ice of different ages. The radioisotopes are created by interstellar cosmic rays slamming into Earth’s atmosphere. Far fewer cosmic rays reach Earth when the sun is active with sunspots and faculae because that’s also when the sun is blasting out a stronger wind of magnetized particles, enveloping Earth and shielding us from the cosmic rays. ...The ice records from the last 1,000 years show no evidence that solar changes are connected to climate changes.

..."It remains a fascinating field," said Schmidt about solar science and climate. "However, most of the public attention was drawn to it as a potentially serious player in explaining the ongoing global warming. This was always rather tenuous and now has become untenable."

Brighter Sun Not Enough to Cause Warming

Again, the recommended focus is on strategies to ensure adaptation and survival...