greymule Loc: Colorado

What explanation will be offered to our grandchildren and great-grand children?

Well, we were stupid, greedy and had no foresight. Sorry about that. But on a happier note, we didn't worry about future generations. We were too busy lolling about in all the stuff we could buy, all the power we could grab and all the money we could steal.
Does that sound about right to y'all?

Here is the report on the scientific findings-

At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a “safe operating space” for human beings. That is the conclusion of a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science by 18 researchers trying to gauge the breaking points in the natural world.

The paper contends that we have already crossed four “planetary boundaries.” They are the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.

“What the science has shown is that human activities — economic growth, technology, consumption — are destabilizing the global environment,” said Will Steffen, who holds appointments at the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center and is the lead author of the paper.




Forest cover and land system change: Farming, mining and infrastructure projects are consuming the Amazon rainforest. According to data from Brazil’s space agency, deforestation increased by more than a third in 2013, wiping out an area more than twice the size of Los Angeles. (Nacho Doce/Reuters)
These are not future problems, but rather urgent matters, according to Steffen, who said that the economic boom since 1950 and the globalized economy have accelerated the transgression of the boundaries. No one knows exactly when push will come to shove, but he said the possible destabilization of the “Earth System” as a whole could occur in a time frame of “decades out to a century.”

The researchers focused on nine separate planetary boundaries first identified by scientists in a 2009 paper. These boundaries set theoretical limits on changes to the environment, and include ozone depletion, freshwater use, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol pollution and the introduction of exotic chemicals and modified organisms.

Beyond each planetary boundary is a “zone of uncertainty.” This zone is meant to acknowledge the inherent uncertainties in the calculations, and to offer decision-makers a bit of a buffer, so that they can potentially take action before it’s too late to make a difference. Beyond that zone of uncertainty is the unknown — planetary conditions unfamiliar to us.

“The boundary is not like the edge of the cliff,” said Ray Pierrehumbert, an expert on Earth systems at the University of Chicago. “They’re a little bit more like danger warnings, like high-temperature gauges on your car.”

An overview of planetary boundaries(1:01)
Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Center, discusses "planetary boundaries" and the global challenges they present. (Stockholm Resilience Centre TV via YouTube)
Pierrehumbert, who was not involved in the paper published in Science, added that a planetary boundary “is like an avalanche warning tape on a ski slope.”

The scientists say there is no certainty that catastrophe will follow the transgression of these boundaries. Rather, the scientists cite the precautionary principle: We know that human civilization has risen and flourished in the past 10,000 years — an epoch known as the Holocene — under relatively stable environmental conditions.

No one knows what will happen to civilization if planetary conditions continue to change. But the authors of the Science paper write that the planet “is likely to be much less hospitable to the development of human societies.”


The authors make clear that their goal is not to offer solutions, but simply to provide information. This is a kind of report card, exploiting new data from the past five years.




Atmosphere aerosol loading: Emissions spew from smokestacks at a Kansas coal-fired power plant. (Charlie Riedel/AP)
It’s not just a list of F’s. The ozone boundary is the best example of world leaders responding swiftly to a looming environmental disaster. After the discovery of an expanding ozone hole caused by man-made chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons, the nations of the world banned CFCs in the 1980s.

This young field of research draws from such disciplines as ecology, geology, chemistry, atmospheric science, marine biology and economics. It’s known generally as Earth Systems Science. The researchers acknowledge the uncertainties inherent in what they’re doing. Some planetary boundaries, such as “introduction of novel entities” — CFCs would be an example of such things — remain enigmatic and not easily quantified.

Better understood is the role of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. The safe-operating-zone boundary for CO2 had previously been estimated at levels up to 350 parts per million. That’s the boundary — and we’re already past that, with the current levels close to 400 ppm, according to the paper. That puts the planet in the CO2 zone of uncertainty that the authors say extends from 350 to 450 ppm.

At the rate CO2 is rising — about 2 ppm per year — we will surpass 450 ppm in just a couple of decades, said Katherine Richardson, a professor of biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and a co-author of the new paper.


Biogeochemical flows: Rows of corn wait to be harvested in Minooka, Ill. Fertilizer makes its ways to the ocean via surface runoff or seeping into the ground and groundwater. (Jim Young/Reuters)
Humanity may have run into trouble with planetary boundaries even in prehistoric times, said Richard Alley, a Penn State geoscientist who was not part of this latest research. The invention of agriculture may have been a response to food scarcity as hunting and gathering cultures spread around, and filled up, the planet, he said. “It’s pretty clear we were lowering the carrying capacity for hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago,” Alley said.

There are today more than 7 billion people, using an increasing quantity of resources, turning forest into farmland, boosting the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and driving other species to extinction. The relatively sudden efflorescence of humanity has led many researchers to declare that this is a new geological era, the human age, often referred to as the Anthropocene.


Species extinction: 14-week-old twin polar bear cubs play in Munich. Polar bears, the largest predator on Earth, are struggling to survive due to melting ice and depletion of its food source — seal blubber. (Alexandra Beier/Getty Images)

A baby mountain gorilla in the Sabyinyo Mountains of Rwanda: Mountain gorillas are an endangered species found only in the border areas of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Ivan Lieman/AFP/Getty Images)

A kaleidoscope of Monarch butterflies clings to tree branches in the Piedra Herrada, near Valle de Bravo, Mexico. Unusually cold temperatures and the threat to its food supply — milkweed — worry scientists. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
The Earth has faced shocks before, and the biosphere has always recovered. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the planet apparently froze over — becoming “Snowball Earth.” About 66 million years ago, it was jolted by a mountain-sized rock from space that killed half the species on the planet, including the non-avian dinosaurs. Life on Earth always bounced back. “The planet is going to take care of itself. It’s going to be here,” Richardson said.

“There’s a lot of emotion involved in this. If you think about it, the American ethic is, ‘The sky’s the limit.’ And here you have people coming on and saying, no it isn’t, the Earth’s the limit,” she said.

Technology can potentially provide solutions, but innovations often come with unforeseen consequences. “The trends are toward layering on more and more technology so that we are more and more dependent on our technological systems to live outside these boundaries,” Pierrehumbert said. “. . . It becomes more and more like living on a spaceship than living on a planet.”

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

What crap! My god the Gruberites have no shame for spreading myths.

wilpharm Loc: Oklahoma

really!!..out of one side of his mouth he is grumbling about the monarch butterflies suffering the cold weather & out the other side of his mouth its global warming!!! go figure…what will it be tomorrow???

Batman Loc: South-Central Texas

When considering a new proposal of which I am unsure, I try to look at the new idea from several viewpoints to help me in making my decision as to the validity/ usefulness of the hypothesis. One of these considerations is, "Just WHO is taking which side in the controversy?" On the subject of
"Man-made Global Warming", I have found some of the following people to have consistently given strong support to the view that the "Global Warming" (or whatever evasive term they currently use for the subject.), is mostly caused by man's activities relating to:
That Disappearing Hole In The Ozone Layer
Greenhouse Gasses
Pollution of our Oceans/Lakes
Ambient Temperatures on our Planet
etc...
The names of some of these people, I have listed here.
You are free to make up your own mind as to the validity
of most of these allegations of man-made catastrophe, using the backgrounds of the supporters as just one of the points to consider:
Al Gore
Barbara Boxer
Barbara Streisand
Hillary Clinton
Sheila Jackson Lee
Rev. Jessie Jackson
Whoopi Goldberg
Rosie O' Donnell
Barack Hussein Obama
Joe Biden
Michelle Obama
Harry Reid



Use your own mind!

:thumbup:

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Are you claiming that before we cut back on chlorofluorocarbons there was no hole in the ozone layer?

Keenan Loc: Central Coast California

As usual, you right wing idiots don't make decisions about what is the truth based on science or objective information. Instead, you simply list some names of people you hate, and if they accept the science of global warming, then that is enough for you to simply deny science. How typical. Your opinion is worthless.

wilpharm Loc: Oklahoma

back to your garbage truck..pineapple troll-boy

Dakota Boreas

Chicken Little lives! I don't believe I have ever seen a time when experts haven't warned that The End Was Near! I guess we don't stand a chance. Sometime in the next few hundred years one of them may be right.

Keenan Loc: Central Coast California

Is this your "logic". Again, nothing to do with objective information or scientific validity. Only ad hominems and hand waving rejection. Just another uneducated and useless opinion. Next...

Dakota Boreas

Observation is a tool of science. Those who refuse to learn from experience are fools.

Keenan Loc: Central Coast California

And yet you haven't demonstrated even the most basic understanding or acceptance of science.

Dakota Boreas

Through history "science" has simply been the most reasonable conclusion based on the facts as they are understood at the time. This conclusion generally stands until the facts are proven wrong. In the case of end of the world theories, they have always proven false. There is no reason to believe that this pattern will not be repeated.

RichieC Loc: Adirondacks

Pollution is an issue i can support.

Polarbears are not the largest predator, Sperm whales are. There is no shortage of seals, their numbers are exploding! Polarbears will adjust. Some insecticide GM plants may be killing insects too well . Monarchs may be succumbing as well as bees. Bees are very important and this indeed needs to be addressed.

Now we arrive at climate change. Climate change is an absolute. We are in an interglacial period… the last ice age is not over, we are in it! Modern humans have not seen it, so we think it is as it should always be! The ice will come again no matter what we do!. This will involve radical climate change, Al Gore will blame it on Bush… But in reality, they don't know why, any more then they know if it will rain on next tuesday.

Soooo, If we on the right are suspicious, it is the because of the obvious hypocrites, like AL Gore, who are making a extremely good living on this subject, but do absolutely nothing to demonstrate their intent on doing anything different themselves. It has become a religion, and the climate warming priests have their hands out for money that they will use to put jet fuel into their planes… all at our expense. All the while, wringing their hands and cooking the books, pointing to a climate that naturally changes anyway!

Now propose a plan that will include India and China and we'll talk. Until then, stay out of my pocket because you won't use, nor do you ever intend to use, nor do you even want the money for climate change…. get it?

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

I think the treaty with China is a start. Obviously it is only token but you have to start somewhere.

Racmanaz Loc: Sunny Tucson!

This will debunk your fairy tale theory about man caused global warming, you believe in a lot of propaganda garbage that is not supported by real science data.

scientists undermine hottest year claim by feds (Global warming Hoax)

http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/scientists-undermine-hottest-year-claim-by-feds/