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Why Antarctica will soon be the *only* place to live - literally

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Lori Price CLG Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:10 AM
Original message
Why Antarctica will soon be the *only* place to live - literally
Why Antarctica will soon be the *only* place to live - literally

Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.

He said the Earth was entering the "first hot period" for 60 million years, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life". The warning - one of the starkest delivered by a top scientist - comes as ministers decide next week whether to weaken measures to cut the pollution that causes climate change, even though Tony Blair last week described the situation as "very, very critical indeed".

<snip>
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Junkdrawer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:16 AM
Response to Original message
1. How the hell would you get food crops to grow in a 6 months sun...
6 months darkness environment?
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Junkdrawer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:33 AM
Response to Reply #1
8. Most people forget that this will be one of the first devastations of...
climate change. No food, no life.
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Ediacara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:05 PM
Response to Reply #8
11. So all those creatures that lived through historic greenhouse periods
Didn't eat? No wonder the dinosaurs went extinct, they sat around for 180 million years without eating and just starved to death!
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Junkdrawer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:15 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. Gradual change and plants adapt. Abrupt change and mass extinctions...
And since we've over extended the carrying capacity of the planet with oil-based chemical fertilizers, trying to re-adapt all the world's growing regions will probably be more than we can handle.

BTW: Some early climate models showed that only a little global warming was enough to disrupt growing seasons - 6 weeks of summer followed by 6 weeks of winter for much of the year. Something about massive disruptions to the jet stream. I guess we've decided to test the experiment out on ourselves and our progeny. Hope the SUVs are worth the risk.
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Ediacara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:18 PM
Response to Reply #12
15. so...
Edited on Sun May-02-04 12:21 PM by DinoBoy
Lattitudinal shifts in crop growing areas can't exist in your world?

ON EDIT: I should add that EXTREMELY ABRUPT changes in climate have been happening over the last 100,000 years, and what humans are doing is merely amplifying a natural temperature upswing.
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Junkdrawer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:24 PM
Response to Reply #15
16. "trying to re-adapt all the world's growing regions will probably be more
than we can handle". That means that moving growing regions around (to oh, say, where there are forests now or where there are semi-arctic deserts now) may be a but harded than "Lattitudinal shifts in crop growing" makes it sound.
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Ediacara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:28 PM
Response to Reply #16
18. WTF?
So instead of oh.... trying to grow wheat in northern Alberta, and tropical fruit on the Gulf Coast, you're claiming that it simply CAN'T be done, and that a change in temperature of just 4 or 5 degrees will destroy all crop plants that have ever existed?

You realize that wheat is grown from southern Alberta to Texas, which is quite an extreme climate range...

This doom and gloom nonsense non-science is what destroys environmentalism...
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Junkdrawer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:38 PM
Response to Reply #18
22. It's you that keep exaggerating my statements. Show me where...
I said "will destroy all crop plants that have ever existed?".

Again, I said: "trying to re-adapt all the world's growing regions will probably be more than we can handle". We're face the twin crises of Peak Oil and Population Growth. Readjusting growing regions is the last thing we need.

Think of it like this: You have 3 kids and you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. Then your wife says she's pregnant with twins while your boss announces he's cutting your salary in half.


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Ediacara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:42 PM
Response to Reply #22
23. I never implied the problem wouldn't be hard
But you should read your posts because you absolutely implied that no food could be grown anywhere on Earth because of really rather minor changes in climate.

In any case, growing regions are readjusted on an annual basis based on weather, market, and farmers' discretion, so no, it's not much of a big deal.
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Chicago Democrat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:18 PM
Response to Reply #1
14. You cover them up for 12 hours per day
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Junkdrawer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:26 PM
Response to Reply #14
17. Have you ever seen the size of the farms that supply our food? n/t
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fearnobush Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:16 AM
Response to Original message
2. Water World?
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newyorican Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:16 AM
Response to Original message
3. I think he forgot about...
the hole in the ozone layer.
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qazplm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:20 AM
Response to Reply #3
4. I believe we are harming our environment
but I think his warnings are a little over the top, and it doesnt help things because when most people read that they are less likely to take environmentalist warnings seriously.
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reprobate Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:32 AM
Response to Reply #4
7. This is known as the "Ostrich Syndrome".

And you know how smart ostriches are. Why they might just take over the world. They might as well, cause there'll be none of us left here.
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Chicago Democrat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:29 PM
Response to Reply #4
19. I thought so too, but he's Britain's 'top government scientist'
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Ediacara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:31 PM
Response to Reply #19
21. There are a lot of "top government scientists"
Somehow I doubt that this one is atop the other tops...
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indigobusiness Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:25 AM
Response to Reply #3
6. yep...you'll need to wear your lead hat.
How do those penguins manage?



http://sludgereport.blogspot.com/
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opihimoimoi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:21 AM
Response to Original message
5. Greed and Expediency before Wisdom and Longevity
That is the Fantasy Way

Which is exemplified by the Pub Party

Can hardly wait for Sanity and Reason return

home to stay.
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peacetalksforall Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 11:46 AM
Response to Original message
9. Well, don't you just know....
the world's going to end soon and trees and clean water and edible fish and grasshopper eating crops and heat spreading diseases 'don't make all that matter'. And if any people survive until the second coming, Christ can come to Antartica just as well as he can come to 'Murrca and Israel.
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Ediacara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:02 PM
Response to Original message
10. LOL!!!!
So a continent that has been consistantly glaciated for the last 40 million years will become warm and hospitable in the next 96!?

I guess all those animals that lived during greenhouse periods (late Neoproterozoic, early Paleozoic, Mesozoic etc) all lived at the poles.

Oh wait, no they didn't.....

Not that I'm saying that global warming isn't important.... just that this type of COMPLETELY ABSURD prediction completely destroys the legitimacy of real global warming science.
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amazona Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:16 PM
Response to Original message
13. british sense of humor
Brits sometimes seem to have a dark sense of humor and they are not above exaggerating a story to call attention to a problem. I'm confident King stated his case this way knowing it would grab some headlines.

That said, I did have a professor from Texas (in the 70s!) who wore a sweater even on 90 degree days because he was a firm believer in the catastrophe theory that the new Ice Age could start at any moment. He said that Ice Ages started when, one spring, the snow just didn't melt -- in other words, they were sudden, not gradual, events. Be that as it may, our various emissions seem to have put off the dangers of a new Ice Age arriving any time soon.
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Zynx Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-04 12:30 PM
Response to Original message
20. I doubt it very much.
Most scientists have been overly alarmist about this stuff.
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