We, meaning people, but yes, I did really mean America, the most prolific space fairing nation in the past. The Chinese may go there again soon, but not yet. I'll reserve my opinion about their ability until I see their manned rocket land there and return.

Florida is thousands of times the size of Kiribati and probably tens of thousands of times the population...and is FAR from the only place in jeopardy. I was not ignoring Kiribati, or the dozens of other island nations, or Venice, or Alaska, or, well, any place with a coast line, I was giving one example. It's a little funny that you decided to say 'Florida?!? It's far worse over in Kiribati' while you're trying also to say 'Don't panic, it's not bad'. WHAT?!? I think the people of Kiribati would disagree that it's not time to panic! ;-)

That's not the data I've seen. What I've read (from numerous sources) said the rate of rise is accelerating, not a steady rate over the last 100+ years, and it is expected to continue accelerating. When you say they can "cope" with it, what do you mean, because even the little amount of rise we've seen so far has already displaced tens of thousands of people, and very few have just adapted to the new situation? What evidence have you that there's a solution to the loss of useable land?
Oh, from your volcano example, I see that by "cope" you mean "die". That's not how I intend to "cope", thanks. ;-)
Kiribati has seen tsunamis, and survived them. Being in open ocean, most are barely perceptible. There's no continental shelf to make them 'grow'. That said, 1 foot of sea rise puts a large portion of the island underwater and makes the rest FAR more susceptible to damage from even a small tsunami.

Really? That's not what I've been reading for decades. California alone, which produces over 1/4 of America's food, is in the worst drought ever recorded due to climate change, and production is falling like a stone there. They are not alone by any means. Africa, Australia, etc have the same issues. It's not mainly an issue of violence world wide, it's an issue of lack of water. The violence is often CAUSED by the lack of food, making the 'men with guns' have a reason to steal and control food sources. If food were plentiful, it would be impossible for them to do so. Africa did have the means to grow their own food, before they stopped getting enough water. That's the biggest road block, the seed can be donated and fertilizer only increases yields, it's not needed in most cases to sustain crops.
Because some war torn countries have issues with roving gangs of gun toting thugs does not make gun toting thugs the reason Africa is food poor. The thugs SELL that food, so it doesn't just disappear, it still gets eaten, and there's still a huge famine, so.....

Yes, adopting new tech, even quick adoption, absolutely CAN be an economic boon, just not for the oil companies in this instance. Just consider the adoption of the automobile, it was fast, and great for the economy in numerous ways.

EDIT:And I have said clearly that I don't think anything done today will effect 2100. The greenhouse gasses stay in the atmosphere that long or longer, so today's change in emissions will only equate to a change in the climate after 2115, so we can't avoid 1 foot of sea level rise. We can, however, stop increasing the rate of change (the system reacts to greenhouse gas addition right away, but takes 100+ years to react to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, so we can make it worse, but not better than that prediction...and that's the road we're on, making it worse daily).

Yes, changing the resolution changed the measurements ON THAT ONE OUTLYING GLACIER ONLY. It explained why it alone wasn't following the models, which was because a large portion of it was incredibly high up, making it colder, but on average it was below the 'melt line', skewing the data.
78% less glacier (your figures) still mean more than 78% less runoff, so >78% less water....in areas that are already completely dependent on glacial water to support humans and already have water supply issues today. Even the low 65% number is disastrous.
The glaciers do not need to be gone in order to be useless as sources of fresh water. I did not say all glaciers would be 'gone' I said they would no longer supply the demand, and there's no known tech in the pipeline that can.
So, in short, please stop twisting and exaggerating what I write to create strawman arguments to shoot down. It gets old fast.

I'm guess from you're tone your American, or at least only figure Americans are going to be reading? You note that 'we' can't get to the moon, while Chinese rovers navigate it's surface. You note with alarm what coastal Florida will face from sea level rise, and not an entire nation like Kiribati. When we look at a global problem we can't ignore technology just because it's Chinese, or focus so hard on Florida's coast we ignore an entire nation in peril.

Sea levels aren't going to be fine in 2099 and then rise a foot on the eve of 2100. They will continue to rise about 3mm annually, as they have already for the last 100 years.(on a more granular level slightly less than 3mm nearer 1900 and slightly more nearer 2100 but the point stands). Coastal land owners aren't merely going to see this coming. They've watched it happening for nearly 100 years already and managed to cope thus far. Cope is of course a bad word for building housing near the coast and at less than a foot above sea level. It's like how occupants at the base of active volcanoes 'cope' with the occasional eruption. All that is to say, the problem for homes built in such locations has always been a matter of when not if disaster will strike. The entire island nation of Kiribati is barely above sea level. It is one tsunami away from annihilation. Climate change though is, let me be brutally honest, a small part of the problem. A tsunami in 1914 would've annihilated Kiribati, as a tsunami today in 2014 would, as a tsunami in 2114 would. And we are talking annihilate in a way the 2004 tsunami never touched. I mean an island that's all uninhabited, cleared to the ground and brand new, albeit a bit smaller for the wear. That scenario is going to happen sooner or later, even if the planet were cooling for the next 100 years so let's be cautious about preaching it's salvation through prevention of climate change.

Your points on food production are, sorry, wrong. You are correct enough that local food growth is a big part of the problem. You are dead wrong that most, or even any appreciable amount is to blame on climate change now or in the future. All the African nations starving for want of local food production lack it for the same reason, violence and instability. From this point forward referenced as 'men with guns'. The people in Africa have, or at least had, the means to grow their own food. Despite your insistence that men with guns couldn't stop them from eating then, they still did and continue to. A farmer has to control his land for a whole year to plant, raise and harvest his crop or his livestock. Trouble is men with guns come by at harvest time and take everything. In places like the DRC or Somalia they rape the farmer's wife and daughters too. This has been going on for decades and decades, and it obviously doesn't take many years for the farmer to decide it's time to move their family, if they are lucky enough to still be alive. That is the population make up of all the refugee camps of starving people wanting for food. It's not a climate change problem, it's a people are horrible to each other problem. A different climate, better or worse growing conditions, is a tiny and hardly worth noting dent in the real problem.
CO@ emission restrictions do not equate to global economic downturn, they could just as easily mean global economic upturn as new tech is adopted and implemented.
I stated meaningful CO2 emission changes. That means changes that will sway us to less than 1 foot of sea level change by 2100 and corresponding temperatures. Those are massive and rapid reductions, and I'm sorry but that can not be an economic boon too. I'm completely confident that electric cars and alternative or fusion power will have almost entirely supplanted fossil fuel usage before 2100, and because they are good business. Pushing today though for massive emission reductions can only be accomplish be reducing global consumption. People don't like that, and they jump all over any excuse to go to war if it means lifting those reductions. That's just the terrible nature of our species.

As for glaciers, I did read the article. You'll notice it observed that increasing the spatial resolution of models changed the picture entirely? The IPCC noted this and updated their findings accordingly as well(page 242). The best guess by 2100 is better than 50% of the glaciers through the entire range remaining. The uncertainty range even includes a potential, though less likely GAIN of mass:
. Results for the Himalaya range between 2% gain and 29% loss to 2035; to 2100, the range of losses is 15 to 78% under RCP4.5. The modelmean loss to 2100 is 45% under RCP4.5 and 68% under RCP8.5 (medium confidence). It is virtually certain that these projections are more reliable than in earlier erroneous assessment (Cruz et al., 2007) of complete disappearance by 2035.

If you still want to insist Nepal will be without glaciers in 2100 please provide a source of your own or stop insisting on contradicting the science to make things scarier.

I didn't say any such thing.
A large percentage of farm land is going to be lost by displaced people and lack of water.
A large percentage of people, those who live less than 1 foot above sea level will be displaced.
Just wow, you think we can build dykes around Florida? New Orleans is not the only low lying city in the world, you know.
We would have to start from scratch. The tech is abandoned, there's not a concord to get on no matter how much you pay, nor is there a rocket that can make it to the moon, no matter how much funding you throw at NASA, just plain old gone. We would have to start from scratch again. We're trying to use 40+ year old Russian rockets just to go to the space station, we can't even get there on our own, how do you assume we can just go back to the moon?

Food production where it's needed is the issue. The men with guns are also an issue, but even without them there's simply not enough food where people are starving. I'm not talking about instances where dictators starved their people intentionally, I'm talking about the billions of people who are lacking food because of either economic or climate pressures, or often both. If people in Africa could grow their own food, the men with guns could not stop them from eating, but no water, no fertilizer, and no seed make that impossible. We do NOT have 'more than enough food', we may have near exactly enough food if it were perfectly distributed throughout the world (accounting for spoilage, probably not though). Perfect distribution is impossible, so there's not enough food. Period.
Another reason Africa has massive crop failures is lack of water. It's a much larger reason than displacement, not smaller.

CO2 emission restrictions do not equate to global economic downturn, they could just as easily mean global economic upturn as new tech is adopted and implemented. If you implement enough new tech to reduce emissions, the new industry will be more productive, create more jobs, and be better for the economy than 'staying the course' and giving it all to Texaco.
My point. No matter what we do, we are likely going to see the same climate changes through the next 100 years, it takes at least that long for the gasses to be absorbed.

Dude, did you read the link you posted? It said one glacier is stable, the rest are melting FAST. One glacier will not keep India, Tibet, Bhutan, Pakistan, etc wet, nor will it supply any other area that survives on glacier water. They showed that only one odd, incredibly high glacier was stable(they mentioned it's on K2, the highest mountain in the world, so don't even try to say there are lots more stable glaciers around the world, from what they said it's only this ONE mountain range, in the tippy top of the Himalayas, that's high enough and in the right weather pattern to be stable.)

Then slow down with theories of our impending demise, the IPCC doesn't support it. You want to talk about not denying the science, then you don't get to preach gloom and doom. Don't claim a large percentage of farmland is going to be lost to sea level rise by 2100. Don't claim coastlines are going to be pushed back 10 miles by a worst case 1 foot rise of sea level by 2100.

We are talking about advancements solving problems like a maximum sea level rise of a foot in the next 100 years, with best guesses being lower than that. I think it's modest to suggest our children's children will have figured out how to raise the dikes around places like New Orleans by a foot in the next 100 years.
The concord and moon trips are no longer happening because they are expensive. We can do them if we needed to, and more easily than the first time around. Finding out people aren't willing to pay the premium to shave an hour off their flight doesn't mean the technology no longer exists. Just because America no longer needs to prove they can lift massive quantities of nuclear warheads into orbit doesn't mean we couldn't still go to the moon again if it was needed. There's just no reason to do it, the tech exists still none the less.
Yes, there are social problems that confound the use of new technology. You fail to notice that is also the problem with feeding everybody. Food production isn't the problem, but rather the men with guns that control distribution. Stalin's mass starvation of millions was a social problem, not climate change or technology. Mao's was the same. North Koreas the same. All over Africa is the same. We have more than enough food, and plenty of charities work hard to send food over to places like Africa. Once the food gets there though the men with guns take most of it and people still starve. The reason Africa has so many crop failures is the violent displacement of the farmers. Exactly the same problem that saw millions starve in Russia, China and North Korea.
You are right that a changing climate could compound Africa's ag industry a bit, but it's a small hit compared to the violent displacement problem. Also, don't neglect to consider to impact of meaningful CO2 emission restrictions around the globe. A large scale global economic downturn probably means a lot more war, bloodshed, and starvation. If you do not reduce emissions enough to trigger that downturn and instead just 'marginally', you get stuck with both because Africa is still going to see virtually the same climate changes through the next hundred years.

And if you are worried about losing the glaciers in the Himalayas by 2100 there is very good reason to believe that's gonna be alright:
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S41/39/84Q12/index.xml?section=topstories

Africa? I thought I heard them speaking Portuguese which could possibly place this in Brasil. also, your tags are dumb

Let's send all these faith healers to West Africa, where they can demonstrate just how effective they can be.,

S. Africa seems like the kind of place where you shouldn't leave your gate open, even while you load the car.

Jews have the old testament.
Christians have the old testament and new testament.
Muslims have the old testament, new testament, and yet a newer testament.

All 3 share the old testament.
The 'violence promoting' scriptures are found in the old testament - which all 3 have in common.

Reza is right.
If people want peace, the religious of them simply ignore the violent edicts of their religions.
If they want to be violent, the religious of them legitimize it with excuses from their religions.

He's also right about the national hypocrisy. Al-Qaeda at the time of 9/11 was a pet organization of members of the Saudi royal family.
But instead of going after the Saudis (who also today finance ISIS), we go after 2 countries that are unrelated to the attack.

Look at today's irony. Assad in Syria (who we wanted deposed because he was friendlier to Russia than the U.S., and allowed Russian bases on Syrian soil [in the middle east]) is now fighting ISIS, while we ally with the Saudis who are supporting ISIS.

We also didn't mind supporting the Mujahedin (Jihadi fighters) in Afghanistan when they were fighting our enemy. We had no problem throwing Afghanistan into the dark ages when it suited us.

Ultimately, extremist Islam is a foil, meant to rouse western people's emotions. As national policy, we don't _actually_ do anything to stop it, we just use it as an excuse to do whatever else is of national interest.
Who would be the boogey man if extremist Islam was gone? We need a boogey man if we want to keep excusing and paying for a large military. People simply don't have the foresight and patience to maintain a strong military without someone scaring them into support. Particularly now, when we don't have the manufacturing capacity to quickly build a large military.

However, Reza is ignoring Turkey's and the Pacific islander's Muslim problems. Indonesia and the Philippines have extremist Muslim organizations doing attacks home (Philippines also has Christian terrorists). Turkey is a large source of Muslim fighters pouring into Syria.



The various related religions also have historical developmental differences.

Jews were for a long time in such minorities that they did not have the political capability of waging any campaign of violence. They were either too small, or too busy being occupied by European powers (Rome, etc).

Christians did have a long period of majority, starting around 400ad when Rome decided that a good way to control/pacify any dissent within the empire was to make the empire 1 religion and make Rome the head of that religion. They elected Christianity as the state religion, forced everyone in the Roman empire to convert, and you had a continent's worth of Christians.
This included north Africa and Middle East - and is when Jews (by now called Palestinians) were forced to convert from Judaism to Christianity (**and few hundred years later forced to convert from Christianity to Islam).

Although, Christians had the benefit of the Inquisition(s) to temper their enthusiasm for Christianity. A large part of the population was killed for consorting with the devil. Once it got so bad that everyone knew someone who had been convicted and killed - and everyone was sure that those killed were innocent, it cast a large doubt on Christianity as whole. People questioned if the devil even exists, or if it's all a sham. The distrust and resentment paved the way for the eventual birth of Deism and Empiricism. A time when the scientific method and physical observation started to take over.

Islam is still a young religion. They still have to experience their religion becoming all powerful, and the inquisitions that inevitably come from absolute power. The one good thing about Islamic extremism is that it makes the people living under those conditions more likely to suffer. Once the suffering becomes so pervasive that everyone is suffering, the people will start to dislike/distrust their religion, and the extremism will resolve itself from the inside out - like it did with Christianity.

The bigger problem would be if things are 'too tolerable', and the religion grows more extreme (no one is inclined to say 'no'). The biggest problem would be if the religious leaders 'solve' the balance issue, and manage to stabilize the oppression at a level that is as extreme as it can be while still being permanently sustainable. Then the religious leaders can live the life of power without the threat of deposition.

-scheherazade

It is not a white problem, it is a human race problem. Every ethnicity has racism towards others. I refuse to allow people, whose only real knowledge of racism is what they've been taught by professors who make a living off 'white guilt', to label my race as inherently the only racist one based off of what happened almost 150 years ago.

Are there white racists? Hell yes! There are also Hispanic racists, Asian racists, and Black racists. Every culture fears and has stereotypes about other cultures that are not logical, but are ingrained into their sub-conscious from the moment they learn how to listen. If you have ever been to Japan, you learn very quick that there is a undercurrent of racism that is extremely strong. Same in the Middle East, same in many parts of Africa.

Is it fair to only label white people as racists when most of the people living today do not come from a family that owned slaves, or in some cases were close to slaves themselves? Half of my family came over to this country from Germany and immediately went to work in the coal mines, paying a huge chunk of their wages to the company store to subsist. The other half came from Italy and were also relegated to the poor jobs that no one wanted. I am 100% certain that they were scared and racist towards other races, because everyone is scared of the unknown. You grow out of it over time and the mixing of cultures.

Put a samurai sword on a table. I will know that it's ASSOCIATED with Japan before I assume it's associated to Africa. THIS IS CALLED INTELLIGENCE, not racism.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'ebola, virus, colbert, africa, urine' to 'ebola, virus, colbert, africa, urine, August 7, 2014' - edited by eric3579

Just to be devils advocate... I didn't enjoy that at all.

Boring, middle of the road, trendy, and saccharine.
For christ's sake, it's the "Our Father" translated into Swahili, purely for the sake of having some kind of "magical africa" nonsense that belongs in the Lion King.

Sorry, but it's just awful.

Drunk Animals of Africa - the longer version has been added as a related post - related requested by chicchorea on that post.

Ebola is very destructive to health care systems. It is silly to compare it to other viruses that do not create the panic, fear and lethality of Ebola. Ebola has the potential to get out of control because it takes a very serious toll on health care systems. Once panic is in place, it becomes very difficult to screen patients and process intake. Once a region has just a handful of cases, everyone with a simple fevers thinks they have Ebola and overwhelm the intake system - and ironically, the best place to get Ebola will probably be the waiting room. This virus can very quickly sap the resources of hospital staff, and once a few staff and patients in the waiting room get infected, panic just gets worse. Ebola is very unforgiving to mistakes by health care providers.

The media is quick to make out everyone in Africa as naive and child like. This is a mistake. Many in Africa know all about viruses and how they spread. They suffer greatly by a an absolutely dismal and bankrupt health care system, but I think it would be naive to think of our system as so superior that we would not have the same panic.

Ebola is very serious. It needs to be taken seriously. Anyone that belittles the problem is making the situation much worse.

Just as an FYI, health care workers who are exposed to HIV-infected blood at work have a 0.3% risk of becoming infected. In other words, 3 of every 1,000 such injuries, if untreated, will result in infection. : Source CDC.

Yeah, try that with Ebola.

Wow... So many great points here.
And lots missed by others.

@ChaosEngine I like you too. But the next posts after yours explains my point better. @Eukelek got the point correctly.
(The fact you don't eat it, or your local farm doesn't grow GM is telling and hypocritical)

There is a massive difference between selection using natural processes and GENETIC ENGINEERING.
One will only produce offspring that are genetically compatible.
The other is a crap shoot producing mixes of different taxonomy.
For fucks sake when could A FARMER BREED A MOUSE WITH A JELLYFISH, or mix SPIDER GENES WITH GOATS.
That shit is fucked up and only the tip of the iceberg.

You really want MONSANTO creating NEW SPECIES OF PLANT THAT ARE STRONGER THAN THEIR NATURAL COUNTERPARTS AND LACED WITH TOXINS AND PESTICIDES ????
It was Monsanto that developed AGENT ORANGE, and PCB's which THEY ALSO DENIED WAS HARMFUL EVEN THOUGH IT IS MASSIVELY CANCER CAUSING. They buried every study showing it was carcinogenic.


@nock . Yes I'm sure the medical profession has even crazier biology going on. But I would only use that shit IF I WAS GOING TO DIE.
NOBODY NEEDS GMO.
Now the medi-corps are using super viruses as vectors for 'custom' dna treatments.
Considering that the U.S. CDC was just admonished for improper practices contains viruses. How long before there is an incident that is completely synthetic (man-made) and completely irreversible.

@RedSky Sure Africa should grow whatever it needs to survive. But don't expect an export market for gmo.