Amy! Oh goodness no! I'm accepting that he did his job. He found sufficient information to make a judgement, and made it.
That is a very different thing from saying that the whole truth about a complex technical matter has been discovered and understood. The 'trial' was not about reaching a consensus on a technical matter, but about scoring sufficient points to say one side or the other has won. "Justice" prevailed, but that does not mean that the process made any useful contribution to the Climate Change debate. If you recall the classical depiction of Lady Justice; She wears a blindfold. In the matter before us we cannot afford to travel blind.
I've already pointed you in a few directions to seek useful reviews of Gore's movie. Try these as well:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=299
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... /#more-392
But please dont get hung up on this judgement. Its just one tiny ripple in the great flood of change that is upon us.
Some samples of the present status of our world:-
*Dangerous human-made interference with climate: a GISS modelE study* Hansen et al 7 May 2007
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/7/2287/2 ... 7-2007.pdf
Our conclusion that global temperature is nearing the level of dangerous climate effects implies that little time remains to achieve the international cooperation needed to avoid widespread undesirable consequences. CO2 emissions are the critical issue, because a substantial fraction of these emissions remain in the atmosphere “forever”, for practical purposes (Fig. 9a). The principal implication is that avoidance of dangerous climate change requires the bulk of coal and unconventional fossil fuel resources to be exploited only under condition that CO2 emissions are captured and sequestered.
A second inference is that remaining gas and oil resources must be husbanded, so that their role in critical functions such as mobile fuels can be stretched until acceptable alternatives are available, thus avoiding a need to squeeze such fuels from unconventional and environmentally damaging sources. The task is to achieve a transition to clean carbon-free energy sources, which are essential on the long run, without pushing the climate system beyond a level where disastrous irreversible effects become inevitable.
—
Saying in part:
…little time remains to … avoid widespread undesirable consequences.
And
…requires …the bulk of …CO2 emissions are captured and sequestered.
*Climate change and trace gases* Hansen et al 18 May 2007
http://www.planetwork.net/climate/Hansen2007.pdf
…Our concern that BAU GHG [Business as Usual Green House Gas] scenarios would cause large sea-level rise this century (Hansen 2005) differs from estimates of IPCC (2001, 2007), which foresees little or no contribution to twenty-first century sea-level rise from Greenland and Antarctica. However, the IPCC analyses and projections do not well account for the nonlinear physics of wet ice sheet disintegration, ice streams and eroding ice shelves, nor are they consistent with the palaeoclimate evidence we have presented for the absence of discernable lag between ice sheet forcing and sea-level rise.
The best chance for averting ice sheet disintegration seems to be intense simultaneous efforts to reduce both CO2 emissions and non-CO2 climate forcings. As mentioned above, there are multiple benefits from such actions. However, even with such actions, it is probable that the dangerous level of atmospheric GHGs will be passed, at least temporarily. We have presented evidence (Hansen et al. 2006b) that the dangerous level of CO2 can be no more than approximately 450 ppm. Our present discussion, including the conclusion that slow feedbacks (ice, vegetation and GHG) can come into play on century time-scales or sooner, makes it probable that the dangerous level is even lower.
Present knowledge does not permit accurate specification of the dangerous level of human-made GHGs. However, it is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades. We conclude that a feasible strategy for planetary rescue almost surely requires a means of extracting GHGs from the air. Development of CO2 capture at power plants, with below-ground CO2 sequestration, may be a critical element. Injection of the CO2 well beneath the ocean floor assures its stability (House et al. 2006) …
—
Saying in part:
If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades
And
The best chance for averting ice sheet disintegration seems to be intense simultaneous efforts to reduce both CO2 emissions and non-CO2 climate forcings.
And
…planetary rescue almost surely requires a means of extracting GHGs from the air…
and then we have new information on how bad a year Greenland has had:-
Professor Robert Correll has advised that parts of the Greenland ice sheet are exuding like toothpaste towards the sea at 15 kilometres per year.
http://environment.independent.co.uk/cl ... 941866.ece
and
A new NASA-supported study reports that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire Greenland ice sheet and, remarkably, melting in high-altitude areas was greater than ever at 150 percent more than average.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/enviro ... dhigh.html
and
*Remarkable Drop in Arctic Sea Ice Raises Questions*
Melting Arctic sea ice has shrunk to a 29-year low, significantly below the minimum set in 2005, according to preliminary figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder. NASA scientists, who have been observing the declining Arctic sea ice cover since the earliest measurements in 1979, are working to understand this sudden speed-up of sea ice decline and what it means for the future of Earth’s northern polar region.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/enviro ... nimum.html
These following links also report the status of the artic ice areas this season, and compare this with historic information. The pictures are as remarkable as they are disturbing.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere ... t.anom.jpg
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaice ... index.html
And at the other end of the world we find..
A team of NASA and university scientists has found clear evidence that extensive areas of snow melted in west Antarctica in January 2005 in response to warm temperatures.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookin ... 70515.html
Finally, it is worth keeping an eye on the Murray Darling Basin Commission’s reports relating to the drought in Australia.
From a recent report:
MEDIA RELEASE
Friday 28 September, 2007
The failure of winter and spring rainfall has forced the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) to further lower the Euston Weir Pool and its associated Lakes.
Chief Executive Dr Wendy Craik AM said today that the hoped for improvement in inflows to the River Murray had failed to eventuate...
http://www.mdbc.gov.au/subs/river-info/ ... ent_wr.pdf
So with the already-thawing Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheets alone holding enough water for 15m rise in sea levels, all these have to do is melt 10% and every one from Bangladesh and all the great river delta communities of the world will be lining up at the South Auckland unemployment office looking for a handout from those who said it wouldn’t happen. And these will be at the back of the queue for in front of them we will find the thirsty and starving population of the Murray Darling Basin, Adelaide and Melbourne.
Numbered among those in this forlorn line will be the poor New Zealand farmers who have been suckered in to buying Australian dairy farms because both the land and stock are comparatively cheap. They bought their farms with full water allocations, and this year they will be lucky to get any water allocation at all. The banks will still want their money. So sad.
From my perspective the threat is real and imminent. It is vital that we confront the local consequences of this global disaster directly and efficiently. This does not involve wasting resources on reducing emissions; our contribution will be negligible, either way. There just isn’t time.
The other factor seldom mentioned is that whatever the sea level rise we get next year, or even by the year 2100, the sea’s rise is going to continue unabated until all the ice is gone and we have close to 80 metres of sea level rise, and the world has become a new place.
Complete melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets could lead to a sea-level rise of about 80 meters, while melting of all other glaciers could lead to a sea-level rise of only half a meter.
http://cegis.usgs.gov/sea_level_rise.html
and
Over a third of the people of the world live below the future 80 metre high tide mark.
http://cegis.usgs.gov/sea_level_rise.html
and
Of the world's 23 mega-cities (those with over 2.5 million inhabitants), 16 are in the coastal belt and are growing at a rate of about one million people per day.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0102/earthpulse/
The consequences of these changes in our world will be beyond our comprehension.
Even if we start attending to this problem today, there will be challenges, of course, because the very resources we need to gird our loins to survive this are subject to the same effects as ‘peak oil’. For example the rising global price of copper and other common building materials is due to an increasing demand exceeding a falling supply.
A Metal Scare to Rival the Oil Scare May 25, 2007, 10:17 am
…Some of the technological solutions to tackle our energy security and climate change problems would therefore be hard to implement…
http://3eintelligence.wordpress.com/200 ... ry-afraid/
and..
Managing Metal:
…Researchers studying supplies of copper, zinc and other metals have determined that these finite resources, even if recycled, may not meet the needs of the global population forever…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 122555.htm
And almost 10% of global energy use is in the production of cement. But this will be solved, of course, by the energy-supply spin-down arising from peak oil and sea level rise. No oil, no cement. We will then be back to Wattle and Daub.
These realities will be compounded by the loss of coastal infrastructure for transporting and manufacturing the very materials we need to keep ourselves and our children safe from harm.
Then there is the challenge of securing our borders from those individuals who find us as an attractive migration destination, or worse from governments in desperate straights who find our country a better proposition than their own.
What is to be done?
So what is to be done? We-the-people of New Zealand expect our government to protect us from adverse events, and if the adverse events cannot be prevented (and the expected climate change is now practically unstoppable) we expect the government will make the best possible provision for our survival under what ever conditions will prevail.
The list of things to be done starts with acceptance of the fact that it needs to be done. This is the first imperative. Until there is national acceptance of the need, any efforts and progress to a safer position will be wasted.
We must start developing a comprehensive national plan of action. This should include esoteric matters such as alternative rules of property ownership to help address the loss of individual equity arising from the collapse of the land and mortgage markets as coastal land is taken by the ocean. We must figure out how to feed four million people ‘off the land’ where in the past the maximum self-sustaining population was a scant fraction of that, and quality protein was in such short supply that long pig was frequently on the menu. We have to work out where our energy supplies will come from once our wharves and coastal oil installations are under water. We will have to relocate Te Papa, and rebuild coastal roading links above the 80m line.
While we wait for the consensus to be reached each family, every person in New Zealand, must start making their own list of what they can do, and what their communities must do to prepare for the coming world changes that are now inevitably enveloping us here in our Gods Own Country.
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