Union of Concerned Scientists Releases Report

Well… it’s been a little while since I’ve written… and even though I technically live below the Mason Dixon Line right now (emphasis on right now, and not forever) I do want to share the following with other folks concerned about climate change and the Northeast.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report yesterday, July 11, that highlighted the results of a two year comprehensive study concerning global warming and the Northeastern United States. Their findings are, as you might guess, quite alarming!

UCS provides useful factsheets which highlight local consequences of global warming in each state they included in the Northeast. They cover two scenarios: one in which our emissions continue to increase at the rate they currently are, and a less dramatic, lower emissions forecast. In Pennsylvania, they warned of a dramatic increase within this century, of days per year that are over 100 degrees. As well as serious impacts to human health regarding air quality.

Here are the links:
Their site, climate choices
The PDF report
State by state factsheets (including: PA, MA, RI, NJ, NY, CT, NH, VT, ME)

Dick Mathews Says:

July 28, 2007 at 12:20 am

History should help us predict the present as well as the future of global warming and cooling, for that matter.

Assuming the earth is around 4.5 billion years old; it has been through many, many climate changes. There is evidence of numerous configurations of land masses, which contributed to climate change. And, finally, our closest star, the sun, has not remained stable throughout its life. Evidence has shown the sun has had cooling and warming cycles contributing to climate change. We know there have been minor and major ice ages in recent past and far beyond recent. These ice ages were reversed by warming periods. We, as the human race, were not around during a vast majority of these warming and cooling periods.

The movements of land masses, which continue today and will many, many years into the future, have produced not only earthquakes, but also volcanic activity. The latter spews massive amounts of gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride and many other not so friendly gases. Also ash is injected into the stratosphere to heights of 10-20 miles above the Earth’s surface. This ash can and does remain in the stratosphere for many months blocking sunlight from reaching us. These eruptions contribute to climate change. One volcano eruption contributes many times the amount of these gases than the entire history of mankind.

Based on this information, which I believe to be true, I am positive the human species has little or no effect on the climate of this earth. Our goal is not to try to compete with even the smallest volcanic eruption, but it is also not our goal to destroy our way of life as we know it.

Question: How do we know today’s temperature is the optimum and if it is not, what is?

We also have no effect on the warming of Mars.

Please tell me where I am wrong.

Dick Mathews
Riverside, CA

John Ferguson Says:

August 4, 2007 at 4:04 pm

I state in my website that there is a size-of-population aspect to global warming. It shows that present efforts to slow global warming, or stop it, are doomed to fail: because the population growth will outstrip our attempts to stop it. We have to get control of our population growth. We must begin to tax population population growth in order to curb it. A way to do so is outlined there.

j. kitchener Says:

October 24, 2007 at 4:36 pm

Global warming may or may not be a human inspired phenomena. Overpopulation has a far more readily measurable cause and effect signature. Politicians and scientists alike have an aversion to dealing with it generally, because efforts to slow human growth down must at some point incur a moral conundrum. The detestable pseudo science of eugenics was one such an attempt to rationalize such a barbaric cull, and it has left a bad taste in the intellectual psyche ever since. There seems to be very little modern discussion about the mechanisms by which population growth can be humanely and democratically achieved. Science and industry feed that growth and are in turn financed by it.Its all very well to blame the machines, but it’s human demand that dictates pollution levels, deforestation, desertification and quite possibly, global warming. Many of the political and social upheavals of this century can be directly linked to population growth. Bad taste or not, any environmental policies that ignore it are about as intelligent as pissing into the wind.

John Bach Says:

November 19, 2007 at 1:28 pm

The comments above reflect the state of denial that most of the US population is in about global warming. The scientific facts regarding global warming are so overwhelming, that those who today still argue whether global warming exists, or who question that it is caused by human activity must be likened to those who still argued, centuries ago, that the earth is flat, eventhough a vast amount of scientific data proved that the earth was, of course, not flat. The IPCC’s work on global warming represents the largest confluence of scientists and scientific thought ever. I chose to believe the work that scientists are doing, rather than the right wing, big business scam that is trying to discredit the amazing work that these great scientists are doing. Here is what we do KNOW about global warming: 1) it IS caused by human activity 2) it is happening MUCH faster than was origanally thought, even as little as 5 years ago (for example, scientists were alarmed to see that ice melt last summer in the artic was the equivalent to an area 3 times the size of California. They had not expected to see that much ice loss until 2050!). 3) We have a very quickly shrinking window of opoprtunity to cut or carbon emissions and reverse the effects of global warming.
Global warming is the greatest threat that has EVER faced the human race. We must act quickly! Also, the argument about poulation is a little lame, considering that about 10% of the world’s population causes 90% of greenhouse gas emissions.