0.8 degree increase in 100 years. We've come from the 1915 and WW1 days when cars and planes where futuristic dreams, and not dying from tetanus or basic infections was a major concern. Today 100 years later we are thriving by comparison, in spite of the 0.8 degree increased temperature. IPCC best estimates for 2100 are about 1.5 degree increase, so another hundred years and increase that is about twice as bad. Of course, it's twice as bad as what we saw the last 100 yeas and not only survived, but thrived under. It's a problem to be sure, but it's also no catastrophe either. Switching to electric cars within 20 years will reduce emissions alot and is likely inevitable no matter what. Adopting non-emitting power is possible today if people accept nuclear as France did years ago, and would be a good idea if we could only sell environmentalists on the idea. Barring that we are waiting another 20-40 years for alternatives like solar, wind and hopefully Fusion to undercut the costs of running on coal. That said, without any special moral or government mandate we should be cutting our CO2 emissions radically long before 2100 of our own accord.

Bottom line, don't panic, it's a manageable problem and we got this. In the last 100 years we've come from not having cars or planes or space craft or computers or modern medicine to taking all those things entirely for granted. It's really hard to say that 100 years from now our descendants will be crying for their inability to cope.

I've played airsoft like this for a few years now off an on so feel well enough qualified to comment.

It's largely a matter of range. Most sites allow up to 500fps on snipers (and some american ones go up to 800 or so I believe), but they have a minimum engagement range (usually about 25 meters, presumably more for the silly american ones).

Basically, non automatic sniper rifles are allowed to be significantly more powerful than the 330fps (400 in some countries) other weapons are limited to, but as a result can't be used at short range (that's what pistols and compact SMG's are for!).

If you are close to the minimum range limit and it hits unprotected skin, they sting really badly, enough to draw a little blood sometimes. It's not entirely dissimilar to being whipped by a wet towel, excruciating for about half a second then it tails off to just stinging and swearing.

If it hits your vest, glasses, hat etc. then it wont really hurt at all (but you still felt it you cheating bastards! ), likewise if you are out beyond 50meters or so as the power drops off with range as you'd expect. (My brother can sometimes make shots out to 70-80meters with a VSR but you can barely feel it)

Shoot at point blank and your target can be forgiven for walking over and punching you in the face....right after they stop swearing and get up off the ground. (entirely possible to penetrate exposed skin at that range)

In practice though, trying to storm a building/room vs automatic rifles etc. tends to be far more painful an experience than being sniped. Unless that is someone snipes the inside of your nose sideways on (it hurt as much as you imagine it did).

We also once had a guy knocked clean out by a grenade launcher to the face at point blank . But it was a Co2 powered thing and I believe they aren't allowed inside buildings any more (can't think why).

Re: paintballs, in my much more limited experience, they are waaaaay worse than BB's if they are full power and reasonably close range. Concussions, broken bones and broken skin are all entirely possible (though not likely), but bruises and welts are basically standard issue.

I believe some sites run compressed air guns (rather than Co2) at much lower power levels, so I imagine they are a lot more tolerable.
Paintballers tend to be more on the extreme sports side of things (wheras airsoft tends to be more biased towards military geeks/gamers), and so many sites have a bit of a "pain is weakness leaving the body" attitude to power levels.

In the UK at least the velocity limit for paintballs at competition level is 300fps, for most airsoft sites the limit is 330fps. You only have to look at a BB vs a paintball to see what a discrepancy in energy that equates to!!!

rat soup anyone.

It would only be fair to have a control rat submerged in water for that time. The rat gut and skin are full of bacteria which would aid decompositon.

Any carbonated drink has carbonic acid from the dissolved CO2 as well as the citric acid in drinks such as mountain dew. Funny enough bones/enamel are more susceptible to breakdown (by demineralisation from acid) that some of the soft tissue which leaves just stringy collagen portion of the bone which is also what the tail is made of.

OMG!!! Drinking liquid nitrogen?!?! *WTF people!?! *EIA

My brother's 16th birthday party was really close to that. He heated the pool to over 100 deg and put 50lbs of dry ice in it. Lucky for him, the fog wasn't as thick as in this video and no one had to be rescued, but the entire back yard was about 2 ft thick in CO2 fog and covered with drunken teenagers rocking out to Thriller (which had just come out at the time).

Kudos, I'd just like to really highlight two of the good points you make.

First, Tesla motors is huge. When I said electric cars, I didn't mention them by name but was thinking specifically of them. They have proven that electric cars are the future and are coming quickly.

The second is as Tyson pointed out, the most important metric is energy coming into the planet compared to energy going out. Temperatures fluctuate to many other variables. Particularly if the oceans are absorbing or releasing energy, temperatures as we experience them will shift on that and muddy the perception of what's actually happening to the overall planet's energy balance and long term change. In the late 80's we started measuring the energy in and out of the atmosphere with satellites. There was an observed increase between late 80's and late 90's in the energy imbalance. That means not only was more energy coming in than going out over that time, but the excess staying in was getting higher. With increasing CO2 emissions, that is exactly what we expect. An increased overall greenhouse effect should see the energy imbalance growing quite steadily as the effect gets stronger and stronger. Now, the IPCC's fifth assessment report has the the longer term data from those same and new satellites. The data shows that since 2001 there is strong agreement that the data shows NO TREND. That doesn't mean the energy in the planet hasn't been increasing. It means the rate of extra energy coming in hasn't gone up or down statistically since 2001. It means the overall greenhouse effect has been entirely stagnant for a little more than the last decade. Things are warming, but no faster than they were ten years ago.

I hope that's not to technical, but it paints a non-catastrophic picture. It also gives a superb metric to measure climate models against going forward. The models universally are projected on a steadily accelerating greenhouse effect as CO2 emissions rise. If the measured results of the last decade continue to not reflect that much longer, we have more reassessing to do. As noted in the IPCC, the effect of water vapor and clouds to increasing temperature is poorly modelled right now. If we are lucky the uncertainty of the sign on it as feedback is resolved to find it is a negative feedback. Meaning, as things warm, more clouds appear and reflect more energy back out. As things cool, less clouds appear and more energy comes in. And yeah, that's my own hope, and it is not the majority opinion within the scientific community as represented by the IPCC. They do acknowledge it as a possibility, but a less likely one. That said, the models they base that opinion on do not match the satellite energy measurements, and that one uncertainty would explain it rather well. My fingers are still crossed. More reasons for my optimism is the IPCC projections through 2100. If you look close, the actual temperature plotted against the projections has the actual following the very coolest of projections so far. Again, that lends hope that something like water vapor is either working for us, or not as badly against us as is currently modelled.

I used to be a pretty strong "doubter", if not a denier. I made a gradual shift away from that, but one strong instance of shift was when Neil Degrasse Tyson presented it as a (relatively) simple physics problem in his new Cosmos series. Before we started burning fossil fuels, x% of the sun's energy was reflected back into space. Now, with a higher concentration of CO2, x is a smaller number. That energy has to go somewhere, and at least some of that is going to be heat energy.

Still, I don't think that anything on the level of "average individual citizen/household of an industrial country" is really where anything needs to happen. Yes, collectively, normal people in their daily lives contribute to Climate Change. But the vast majority of us, even as a collective single unit, contribute less than industrial / government / infrastructure sources.

Fossil fuels have been a great source of energy that has massively contributed to global advances in the past century. BUT, although we didn't know it in the beginning, they have this associated cost/downside. Fossil fuels also have a weakness in that they are not by any means inexhaustible, and costs rise as that becomes more and more obvious. In turn, that tends to favor the status quo in terms of the hierarchy of industrial nations versus developing or 3rd world countries -- we've already got the money and infrastructure in place to use fossil fuels, developing countries can't afford the costs.

All of this makes me think that 2 things need to happen:
A) Governments need to encourage the development of energy sources etc. that move us away from using fossil fuels. Tax breaks to Tesla Motors, tax incentives to buyers of solar cells for their homes, etc. etc.
B) If scientists/pundits/whoever really want people to stop using fossil fuels (or just cut down), they need to develop realistic alternatives. I'll bring up Tesla Motors again for deserving huge kudos in this area. Americans (and in general citizens of developed countries) have certain expectations about how a car should perform. Electric cars have traditionally been greatly inferior to a car burning fossil fuels in terms of living up to those expectations, but Tesla threw all that out the window and made a car that car people actually like to drive. It isn't just "vaguely functional if you really want to brag about how green you are", it is actually competitive with or superior to a gas-engine car for most users/consumers (some caveats for people who need to drive long distances in a single day).

We need to get more companies / inventors / whoever developing superior, functional alternatives to fossil fuel technologies. We need governments to encourage and enable those developments, NOT to cave to lobbyist pressure from big oil etc. and do the opposite. Prices will start high (like Tesla), but if you really are making a superior product, economy of scale will eventually kick in and normalize that out.

Outside of the consumer level, the same thing goes for actual power production. Even if we did nothing (which I would certainly not advocate), eventually scarcity and increased difficulty in obtaining fossil fuels (kinda sad that the past 2 decades of pointless wars 95% driven by oil haven't taught us this lesson yet, but there it is) will make the more "green" alternatives (solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, whatever) more economically practical. That tipping point will be when we see the real change begin.

Amateur videos on you tube by guys who clearly haven't read or understood the scientific journal articles on the subject are part of the problem and confusion.

The point of recycling is to reduce energy use and transportation in manufacturing materials... So yeah, it's part of the solution and not to be thrown away.

Yes, the plant is warming, and scientists are agreed on that.
Yes, humans are adding significant CO2 to the atmosphere which contributes to warming.
What is the severity of the warming over the next 100 years, and what difference do our actions today make, and what cost do those actions have?

See the first 2 points are agreed and help understand some of the problem. The trick though is that the severity is still known with less certainty, read the details in the latest IPCC AR5 report if you doubt me. The error bars within the scenarios(different carbon emissions we reduce or increase to) span multiple degrees of temperature. The error bars are only as accurate as the current days models, which still are uncertain of the sign to attribute to water vapor as a feedback. The water vapor that contributes more to the greenhouse effect than all other GHG's combined. How great is the economic cost of reducing our emissions to meet each scenario? That's no in the IPCC report. What is the alternative cost of adapting to the temperature ranges if we just continue emitting? Again not there.

The trouble is there DOES still exist uncertainty on a great many aspects of the problem. Random amateurs proclaiming otherwise on youtube doesn't change that. Until we've got a good grasp on the cost/benefit differences between reducing emissions and adapting to changes, we can't make any claims on action X is obvious because of climate change.

Now, I'm not advocating we do nothing. Electric cars are a huge opportunity, and the technology is finally hitting the threshold of being cheaper than gas. Adopting that technology makes economic sense. A fringe benefit is that it reduces emissions from transportation drastically too.

There are solutions other than redistribution of wealth through naive/blind carbon taxes.

Yes. Tried one over a year ago and liked it, but the co2 refills cost more than buying 2L seltzer from the grocery store. Just looked up the local refill prices. They have dropped to less than $15 for the "60L" (two friends tested and averages about 40L per bottle). It was 15% more expensive(ignoring water cost and "saving the environment"). Now it's 25% cheaper. Will have to pick one up.

I'm there with you partially, but if we must wait 50-100 years for the tech to START solving this problem, humanity as we know it has no chance.
I say that because 1. We're still rising the rate at which we add CO2, not lowering it 2. Even if it dropped to 0 tomorrow, we still see 3-5 degree temperature rise in the 100 years before even the extra CO2 already in the atmosphere is absorbed (and that's if the natural processes that absorb CO2 don't completely fail before then, the ocean system is, forests are disappearing, I'm not sure what's left to do the job nature has done for all history) 3. Assuming we do see even just that minimal rise, and not a catastrophic cycle that releases methane causing it to be more like 10 degrees minimum, the disruption of commerce, production (food and other), the loss of natural food sources, useable water, etc. could easily make solving the problem exponentially more difficult to solve in the even near future, and impossible 50 years farther down this road, and 4.Unexpected side effects of solving this problem could easily make things worse...for instance, if we just shut down all coal plants and combustion engines tomorrow, we could easily see a rapid 3+ degree C rise in temperature globally because we would stop adding the particulates that cause 'global dimming' (which is assumed to be causing approximately 3 degrees of cooling today).

(wow, that might be the longest run on sentence I've ever written!)

My hope is that this will take the form of progressive revolutions. When the food and energy start to become scarce people might start to recognise that the ONLY people who can get us out of this mess are engineers, inventors and scientists.

Maybe we will even be smart enough to put them in charge and ditch the whole idea of politics for the sake of politics all together.

A man can hope anyway. The alternative seems to be extreme left and right wing movements fighting over metaphorical ash and bones.

Co2, methane and other undesirables in the atmosphere could probably be shifted if there was a concerted global effort, doubly so if we factor in 50-100 years of technological advancement. I'm sure the task would be herculean but it would probably also be the greatest thing we ever achieved as a species! ("screw your ancient wonders, we built an air scrubber the size of Missouri!")

I had a thought about global warming the other day. At what point does the survival of the human species become more important than the democratic process? When is it ok to just say ....fuck it ..your voice doesn`t count in that matter?

Perhaps someday countries will go to war over the amount of co2 each other blasts into the atmosphere..

Imagine emerging economies being told not to burn fossil fuels for the sake of everyone.. little unfair but still necessary..right?

WHAT?!? She's a daily mail columnist/journalist. What she isn't is a reporter or investigator. She is exactly the kind of 'journalist' the right wing has put forth for decades now.

I must admit some confusion that you now seem to support the idea of AGW and seem to imply the scientists are right and industry is not.

I really wish someone would pipe pure CO2 into the board meeting of Exxon, because they call it life it should make them healthier, right?

EDIT: Oh, there's a surprise. Trancie downvoted my comment. Odd, that's NEVER happened before.

Your video, NASA | A Year in the Life of Earth's CO2, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Actually you said it's no where near time to panic. You also said the people of Kiribati are going to be washed away by a tsunami (but it never happened before in all the times they've been hit by tsunami) and not overwhelmed by sea rise (which IS what's happened to them).


You are just wrong about Texas producing more than California, we're number two in cattle production and ....
Food Facts
California has been the number one food and agricultural producer in the United States for more than 50 consecutive years.
More than half the nation's fruit, nuts, and vegetables come from here.
California is the nation's number one dairy state.
California's leading commodity is milk and cream. Grapes are second.
California's leading export crop is almonds.
Nationally, products exclusively grown (99% or more) in California include almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins, clovers, and walnuts.
From 70 to 80% of all ripe olives are grown in California.
California is the nation's leading producer of strawberries, averaging 1.4 billion pounds of strawberries or 83% of the country's total fresh and frozen strawberry production. Approximately 12% of the crop is exported to Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Japan primarily. The value of the California strawberry crop is approximately $700 million with related employment of more than 48,000 people.
California produces 25% of the nation's onions and 43% of the nation's green onions.
and if that's not enough to convince you ...
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/2182/what-percent-of-food-comes-from-california

It is never 1 to 1 guns VS farmers in the situations you are talking about. The food gets stolen, sold, and eaten. It is not stolen and allowed to rot. If production were simple, ie not requiring extra water and fertilizer, everyone who's hungry would farm, and there would be 'bush taca' (wild food) to gather and eat. You can't make a living stealing from subsistence farmers, you go hungry between farms that way.

I call BS, the tech to replace oil and coal and gas exist today. You mentioned one. They are universally agreed on (by energy companies) who have made solar farms, nuclear, wind, etc.

Ahhhh. So now you see why it's time to panic...adaptation of the tech takes time, time that we don't have to waste. If it takes 50 years to stop adding greenhouse gasses, we need to see where that leaves your children's children. Adaptation of new tech is going to happen while we are restricting consumption...it's been that way for decades (see 'car mileage requirements') so it HAS happened in the past, and is happening today...without wars.

If no one panics and no one acts, that's where we'll be if we're lucky. Those figures you linked assume we will stop rising the level of CO2 we add daily and/or keep it below a certain level...an assumption I think is wrong and ignores reality.

Um, well, yeah, 78% less glacier doesn't mean 78% less runoff, it means far more than 78% less, because of glacial dams, evaporation, and upstream use it means probably NO runoff downstream. 22% of the already scarce water won't feed India. Period.
I think those numbers are small, and it's likely that there will be less than 22% of glaciers left in 100 years, but even those numbers leave billions without water or food. That's far worse than any group ever starved by 'men with guns'.

@newtboy
I think the people of Kiribati would disagree that it's not time to panic!
If you'd read my post I didn't claim the people of Kiribati weren't in a position to panic. I actually went further in agreeing with you, to the point that they should have been panicked a hundred years ago in 1914 already. The distinction being that what ever the climate does wasn't going to save them. 200 hundred years of cooling and sea level decline from 1914 would still have them on an island a few feet on average above sea level and still a disaster waiting to happen.

California alone, which produces over 1/4 of America's food,
Here we do have a difference of fact. I don't know what measure you've imagined up, but the cattle in texas alone are more than double the food produced in California. The corn and other crops in any number of prairie states to the same. You can't just invent numbers. Yields across crops have been increasing steadily year on year in North America for decades.

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.
I'm sorry, read more history, you are just wrong on this. 10 guys with guns against 10 farmers with food and the farmers lose every time. The guys with guns eat for the year. The farmers maybe even are able to beg or slave for scraps that year. The next year maybe only 5 farmers bother to grow anything, and next harvest there are 15 guys with guns. Look at the Russian revolution and that's exactly the road that led to Stalin's mass starvations and lack of food. It's actually why I am a Canadian as my grandfather's family left their farm in Russia with the clothes on his back after the his neighbours farm was razed to the ground enough times.

The thugs SELL that food, so it doesn't just disappear
Food doesn't create itself as noted above. The cycle is less and less food as the thugs destroy all incentive to bother trying to grow something.

adopting new tech, even quick adoption, absolutely CAN be an economic boon
I agree. I hadn't realized that adoption of new tech was that simple. I was under the impression one also had to take the time to, you know, invent it. The existing technology for replacing oil and coal cost effectively doesn't exist yet. Electric cars and nuclear power are the closest thing. The market will adopt electric cars without us doing a thing. Switching from coal to nuclear though, even if universally agreed and adopted yesterday, would still take decades for a conversion. Those decades are enough that even if we got to zero emissions by then(~2050), the sea level and temperature at 2100 aren't going to look much if any different(by IPCC best estimates).
So I repeat, if you want meaningful emission reductions, you have no other option but restricting consumption across the globe. That hasn't been accomplished in the past without setting of wars, so I keep my vote as cure is worse than disease.

The 78% glacial mass loss was worst case if CO2 emissions are still accelerating in 2100. The mountains with the glaciers will still be bulking each winter and running off each summer, just to a 78% smaller size in the depth of summer. As in, absolutely not 78% less run off. And they are not 'my' numbers as you wish to refer, but the IPCC's numbers. Your effort to somehow leave question to their veracity is the very campaign of 'doubt' in the science the video is talking about.