Report of concerned citizen

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN OPENED TO HOUSE ALL SORTS OF ISSUES ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGES, IT IS OPEN ALSO FOR DISCUSSION TO THE PUBLIC, SO ANYBODY CAN COMMENT ON IT, IF AND WHEN THEY HAVE SOMETHING USEFUL TO SAY.
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Welcome to my blog, Mother Nature Challenge
and this post, Report of concerned citizen
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Report of concerned citizen

I am a concerned citizen and I am thinking that all is not well, because we don’t take global warming seriously when we should; so, I am writing this post to highlight my concerns. Now apart what I can say for myself, I have collected some information from the web, where the expert tell us a few things about this issue, and this information will be pasted here-under.

I believe that we should all be concerned about global warming, because it seems to me that it is being partly forgotten, even these days that there are these huge hurricanes, like Hurricane Sandy which has devastated many states in America, the majority of people don’t really try to talk what can be done to stop global warming, they don’t seem interested enough to do anything much, and if they do it is like a passive interest. What else should happen before we all try harder to understand the situation and do something about it?

For my own part I can describe what I see is happening in these parts of Australia. A few years ago we had a drought then we have had two years with a lot or rain and floods, and now the drought seems to be starting again; the weather here seems to change suddenly from very wet to dry or very dry.

Now, let me talk about my life experience about the weather, I have been living in Brisbane for more than fifty years, and because I have been in a farm when I was young I always look at what is the weather like every day, so I have a pretty good idea what is going on and I am worried; I am worried because this issue of global warming, or perhaps we should call this climatic change are not taken seriously enough. I can see and feel the changes that are taking place weather-wise and I hope that there is something that we can do, so I am looking for sign that steps are being taken from governments. But they don’t seem to care that much, they only seem to mention it every now and then and everything they do is very little compared to what needs to be done.

So, I have decided to write a few hubs or posts to publish on the internet, So that, I can be counted in, as one that is in favor of doing something about this problem of global warming.

Here I need to say, that personally I cannot add much to what has already been written from the experts, so, I am going to copy some reports that I find worth reading in the hope that you my readers read them and let your own government know what you think. Here I have also to say that everyone of us can help a little bit, starting from the way we live our lives, for instance even recycling is one of those things that can help, of course there are also many other things to consider. 

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So let us see what the experts say:   

Learn More

The results are in and the reality of global warming is beyond dispute or debate. It’s not just an environmental issue. It affects our public health and national security. It’s an urgent matter of survival for everyone on the planet — the most urgent threat facing humanity today. It’s going to take action from you and all of us working together.

The first step, Join the Virtual March.

The second step, Keep reading below, and share this with friends.

Global warming isn’t opinion. It’s a scientific reality. And the science tells us that human activity has made enormous impacts to our planet that affect our well-being and even our survival as a species.

The world’s leading science journals report that glaciers are melting ten times faster than previously thought, that atmospheric greenhouse gases have reached levels not seen for millions of years, and that species are vanishing as a result of climate change. They also report of extreme weather events, long-term droughts, and rising sea levels.

Fortunately, the science also tells us how we can begin to make significant repairs to try and reverse those impacts, but only through immediate action. That’s why we urge you to join us. The Stop Global Warming Virtual March is virtual but its purpose is real. By spreading the word and sharing this with others, our collective power will force governments, corporations, and politicians everywhere to pay attention.

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What is Global Warming?

The Earth as an ecosystem is changing, attributable in great part to the effects of globalization and man. More carbon dioxide is now in the atmosphere than has been in the past 650,000 years. This carbon stays in the atmosphere, acts like a warm blanket, and holds in the heat — hence the name ‘global warming.’

The reason we exist on this planet is because the earth naturally traps just enough heat in the atmosphere to keep the temperature within a very narrow range – this creates the conditions that give us breathable air, clean water, and the weather we depend on to survive. Human beings have begun to tip that balance. We’ve overloaded the atmosphere with heat-trapping gasses from our cars and factories and power plants. If we don’t start fixing the problem now, we’re in for devastating changes to our environment. We will experience extreme temperatures, rises in sea levels, and storms of unimaginable destructive fury. Recently, alarming events that are consistent with scientific predictions about the effects of climate change have become more and more commonplace.

Environmental Destruction

The massive ice sheets in the Arctic are melting at alarming rates. This is causing the oceans to rise. That’s how big these ice sheets are! Most of the world’s population lives on or near the coasts. Rising ocean levels, an estimated six feet over the next 100 years or sooner, will cause massive devastation and economic catastrophe to population centres worldwide.

The United States, with only four percent of the world’s population, is responsible for 22% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. A rapid transition to energy efficiency and renewable energy sources will combat global warming, protect human health, create new jobs, protect habitat and wildlife, and ensure a secure, affordable energy future.

Health Risks

Malaria. Dengue Fever. Encephalitis. These names are not usually heard in emergency rooms and doctors’ offices in the United States. But if we don’t act to curb global warming, they will be. As temperatures rise, disease-carrying mosquitoes and rodents spread, infecting people in their wake. Doctors at the Harvard Medical School have linked recent U.S. outbreaks of dengue fever, malaria, hantavirus and other diseases directly to climate change.

Catastrophic Weather

Super powerful hurricanes, fueled by warmer ocean temperatures are the “smoking gun” of global warming. Since 1970, the number of category 4 and 5 events has jumped sharply. Human activities are adding an alarming amount of pollution to the earth’s atmosphere causing catastrophic shifts in weather patterns. These shifts are causing severe heat, floods and worse.

Five Things We Can All Do

·         Join StopGlobalWarming.org. Together our voices will be heard!

·         Spread the word, share the learning. Send this link to family, friends, and colleagues. Share why this is so important.

·         Change begins at home. (See our Action Items list)

·         Put the heat on your elected officials to support legislation to stop global warming.

·         The power of the pocketbook; buy green products and donate to environmental organizations.

(End of report)

I hope you see what I mean and start thinking what you can do to help?

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Some politicians know that we need to do something about global warming soon, see what President Barack Obama has said: I hope that he would be able to do something about it.

President Barack Obama

We now know without a doubt that global warming is threatening us with higher temperatures, more drought, more wildfire, more flooding, and more erosion of our coastal communities. People who don’t believe this can yell about it as loudly as they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that the overwhelming scientific evidence has proven this over and over again. We must act now with the rest of the world to curb emissions so that we can leave our children a safer, healthier planet.

See all Featured Marchers

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Anyhow, during these last few days, we have all heard about Hurricane Sandy and the destruction it has caused in America and nearby.   

This is one of the reports I found on the web.

 Hurricane Sandy: Costs to Come

By Ryan Avent (The Economist) - November 1, 2012

THE economic approach to global warming is relatively straightforward. The emission of greenhouse gases generates a negative spillover—global warming—that harms others. Someone driving a car emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which contributes to climate change, but because most of the cost of the car’s contribution to warming will be felt by people other than the driver, he has an incentive to drive too much. Aggregate that decision to emit too much across all of the world’s population, and you get a serious economic problem.

Luckily, there is a solution. By taxing the emission of greenhouse gases, one can align private and public costs. The cost of the driver’s emissions will be “internalised”, he’ll drive less, emissions will fall, and warming will slow. All that remains is to tot up an estimate of the “social cost of carbon” and convert that into an optimal tax rate. And in fact, many models reckon the tax need not be too high, as it makes sense to accommodate quite a lot of warming. The costs of climate change will mount over time, but so too will global income, the thinking goes. Economic actors are resilient and will be able to adapt. All in all, we shouldn’t expect global warming to dent expected GDP growth so much that a stifling tax rate is necessary.

There is some wisdom in this analysis. Remarkably, Americans have adopted what is effectively an even more sanguine view of the harm from warming, by refusing to tax carbon and investing quite conservatively in green technology and research. But as the devastation from Hurricane Sandy makes clear, the economic approach is a bit too anti-septic and simplistic a way of understanding and responding too an incredibly complex and potentially catastrophic climate phenomenon. The American approach is out-and-out reckless.

With the superstorm now dissipating, estimates of its economic impact are beginning to emerge. Kate Mackenzie comments on some of them here. Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius notes that damage estimates of $10 billion to $20 billion look small and may well be revised up (Hurricane Katrina was responsible for roughly $113 billion in damage). Yet the observed impact of the storm on economic numbers could be even smaller. October data will probably take a hit, but much of the shortfall may be made up in November and December such that fourth-quarter GDP will hardly register the event. Pimco’s Mohamed El-Erian reckons that the storm will show up in the fourth-quarter data, but mostly because state and federal governments are less fiscally willing and able to provide support. Still, the fact that such an epic storm might not even knock the GDP statistics off track lends credence to those who argue, for instance, that things like a massively expensive sea wall to protect New York City or an Apollo programme for green energy would represent useless waste.

But there are two problems with this mode of thinking. One is that the economic resiliency that allows us to shift economic activity across time and geography, holding down the cost of such storms, has its limits. People cluster together in New York City, despite the high cost of living, because of the extraordinary advantages of being there, surrounded by other skilled professionals. There are “returns to scale” that hold New York together—productivity per person rises with population and density. Given limited disruption, the city will quickly bounce back, but a larger disaster could disperse enough of the city’s people and businesses to undermine the scale that acts as New York’s gravity. That could generate very large economic losses. New York can’t easily be replaced, and even if it were logistically possible to create another megacity there’s no guarantee that resources would re-congeal there. They might stick, instead, to lots of smaller cities: a much less productive distribution.

The more serious issue, however, is simply that GDP is not capturing everything we care about. GDP is a flow of income, for one thing. A storm that destroys existing wealth could actually raise the flow of production in the short term as people rebuild, such that higher GDP growth might nonetheless mean less wealth overall. Moreover, GDP is a very imperfect measure of human welfare. Even if GDP and wealth were relatively unharmed by the storm, we might nonetheless want to prevent a great deal of human suffering. The damage to America’s northeast pales in comparison with the destruction wrought in Haiti, but because Haitians are so poor the economic cost of the damage there is almost imperceptible. The fact that the average Haitian emits about a hundredth as much carbon dioxide each year as the typical American suggests that unaccounted-for economic injustice may be at least as big a concern with global warming as underestimated human costs.

And so it would be entirely appropriate if the damage done by Sandy shakes Americans out of complacency on the issue of global warming, despite the relatively tolerable price tag of the storm. The storm is costlier than the estimated bill reflects. And future storms will be costlier still.

Many scientists and journalists are cautious in listing climate change as a causal factor behind a storm like Sandy. Understandably so: weather emerges as part of a complex system, and it would be impossible to say whether a storm would or would not have materialised without global warming. But scientists are becoming ever less shy in drawing a line between a higher frequency of “extreme” weather events and a warming climate. Climate shifts the probability distribution of such events, and so global warming may not have “caused” Sandy, but it makes Sandy-like storms more probable. As the ever-less-funny joke goes, 500-year weather events seem to pop up every one or two years these days. Frequency and intensity of storms aside, future hurricanes that hit the east coast will do so atop rising sea levels. Contemplate the images of seawater rushing over Manhattan streets and into subway and highway tunnels. Then consider that sea levels are rising. And then reflect on the fact that New York is very much like a typical megacity in being located on the water; tracing a finger around America’s coastlines leads one past most of the country’s largest and richest cities.

Americans may absorb all of this and decide that the smart choice continues to be a course of inaction. They may continue to believe that the storms—and droughts and heat waves and blizzards and floods—to come will be manageable because they’ll be richer and well-equipped to adapt. Hopefully, there will at least be a better sense of what that is likely to mean and the trade-offs it will involve. Adaptation will be an ongoing, costly slog, with a side order of substantial human suffering. It will be one American icon after another threatened. Adaptation is not going to be easy. Hopefully Americans will ask themselves whether it’s so much worse than the alternatives—high carbon taxes or large public investments or both—after all.

End of report

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As I have said I am posting this, in the hope that some people read this and become aware of things that need to be done.

May God bless us and help us all?