

Facing the consequences of climate change - rahooligan
http://www.economist.com/node/17572735

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dannyb
Here's the problem that I see that few people discuss. Why should China and
India care? The vast majority of their combined population, about 30% of the
world's total, live under miserable circumstances by western standards. Move
100 million people off the coastline? No big deal. More typhoons? Oh well,
we'll just rebuild the shacks.

China has a far greater problem in balancing the needs and wants of the haves
and have-nots and they are going to address those issues first. They have
everything to gain by continuing to industrialize and I think that anyone who
believes that they will actually cut their emissions is kidding themselves.

I think we could take a huge step towards energy independence by building
nuclear plants and driving hydrogen cars. Instead of dozens of smaller
problems to solve, we could focus on just one: what to do with nuclear waste.

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marknutter
Can't we just reprocess that nuclear waste like the French do?

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dannyb
Yes, we could make reactors much more efficient than they were in the past,
but there still will be waste to deal with.

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arethuza
I know you can't extrapolate from local isolated weather conditions, but it
does strike me as slightly ironic that I'm reading this article about Global
Warming after a day spent outside in the record early snowfalls and cold
conditions here in Scotland.

Which after last years epic amounts of snow and cold is beginning to looks
like a pattern.... (I hope).

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celoyd
The overall warming trend means there’s more energy in the system, which means
some patterns will change, and some patterns (like the Gulf Stream) are local
warmings.

So, in some cases, consistently colder weather is evidence _for_ anthropogenic
climate change.

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arethuza
I know I shouldn't, but the prospect of consistently colder and snowier
winters makes me very happy.

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btilly
There is a real possibility that you'll get too much of a good thing.

One of the open questions about global warming is whether the Gulf Stream will
get shut off, causing your climate to look at lot like Alaska's. See
<http://www.gulfstreamshutdown.com/> for links to lots of articles and
research on this.

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hugh3
It seems that by 2100, if the stated effects (which are certainly at the high
end of what's realistic), it ought to be relatively easy to do some large-
scale engineering to mitigate them. Either dig some new seas to soak up the
water (Australia could use its own Mediterranean) or put mirrors in orbit to
cool the planet.

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MichaelSalib
Yes, large scale terraforming is both simple to understand, easy to do, and
poses no political difficulties at all! I can't imagine what could possibly go
wrong.

I mean, you realize that even if we could put giant space mirrors in orbit, it
wouldn't solve all the biggest climate change problems, right? Reducing the
amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface does nothing to reduce the
amount of CO2 in the oceans, which means we might still devastate the ability
of a few billion people to get sufficient protein to survive.

