Tim Blair

Measures to fight global warming will have to be at least four times stronger than the Kyoto Protocol if they are to avoid the melting of the polar ice caps, inundating central London and many of the world's biggest cities, concludes a new official report.

Odd. They say thay like it's a bad thing.

Iowa's revenge: no longer flyover country, but the "Swim To" state!

Can't we get some sort of Kyoto Treaty to ban at least 15% of all the hot air coming from these people? That must be contributing to the melting ice-caps.

I'm looking at the list of flooded metropoli and I'm not seeing much of a downside.

Yeesh... "that", not "thay".

CHECKLIST OF THINGS TO PACK FOR URBAN ALT-WEEKLY HIPSTER REFUGEES SEEKING HIGHER GROUND IN BUSH COUNTRY FLYOVER WASTELAND

Brioche

Salon product

espresso cups

Guide to Tulsa Experimental Performance Art Spaces

A six pack of "PBR", the hip new designer beer they serve at Williamsburg gallery openings

Ironic trucker hat (they have trucker hats in Nebraska, but they are frequently not ironic)

Extra AA batteries for iPod; enough CF memory to hold Radiohead's latest 87-minute electrodirge

$40,000 cash (estimated annual rent for converted studio loft in abandoned Dubuque warehouse)

Where do all these quotes about the number of people killed by anything come from? Does anyone just plain die any more?

Not too unhappy about the other cities, but can we please do something about Tokyo ? I need my annual Izakaya Eat-n-Drink Binge...

I am willing to participate in a sandbag brigade. I figure a 30-ft pile just around the Yamanote Line should do the trick.

Are they idiots? Greenland once supported a thriving colony of Vikings who grew their own food and raised livestock, something that is not possible now (and this was going on for 500+ years). Was London submerged when this was going on?
On the other hand, London could try to turn itself into the Venice of England. . .
Or, we can move these people to Greenland, Yukon, Siberia, etc. When global warming takes over, I'm moving to Yellow Knife.

Can somebody please explain what makes the report "official"? Who's the officiating body on reports on global warming?

Read on, and you'll find the usual IFs, BUTs and MAYBEs:

The report, written by eight leading German professors,
says that "dangerous climatic changes" will become "highly probable"
if
the world's average temperature is allowed to increase to more than 2 degrees centigrade above what it was before the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Where are the 150,000 dead? Did someone find a mass grave? Maybe if we just invaded the country behind it all?

German scientists contributed to the deaths of millions over 39 short years (1914-1946). Why don't newspapers give links to the actual reports? Most of these are published on the web and if they are not, they should be as they are nearly always funded by the tax dollar (or by Big Tobacco or the new menace Pharmaceuticals).

Odd that environmentalists are whining over the destruction of major cities! I'd think this would we their...um...wet dream.

ha ha! GLOBAL WARMING -- what a pissa! Who gives a rats arse about future generations, so long as we can keep out the reffo's and line our own nests with $100 bills! Lets pick over the minutae while we send the world to buggery! Giggle!

Time to get ahead of the power curve and start investing in dike building companies. For the children, of course.

Is Byron Bay likely to be flooded ? If so, I will personally fly over to Antarctica and stand there holding a couple of hair dryers just to hurry things along

Where'd you get the electricity to send that comment, Shaun? Planet hater.

Why don't they sheet home the blame to where it really belongs: New Zealand's 6 million farting sheep are creating the hot air which is melting the polar ice.

Not just 150,000 dead Allan but 150,000 per annum! We could be talking over one million dead!

I couldn't open my front door this morning for the pile of bodies outside.

yeah! flood byron bay! then my house in the mullum hills becomes the new watego's beach! think of the capital gain!?!

shaun, I couldn't have said it better:

"Who gives a rats arse about future generations"

Not me, that's for sure.

Or are you a little Green fellow trying to be sarcastic? Sure hope not because it's a noble sentiment.

Let me get this global warming thing straight. Greenland, with an average temperature of 40 below zero, suddenly gets a 10 degree temperature rise making the average temperature of 30 below zero. Exactly how are the glaciers going to melt again?

Compare the article with this quote:

The [global] cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations ... If it continues, and no strong measures are taken to deal with it, the cooling will cause world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000.

Lowell Ponte, The Cooling, 1976

Dodgy predictions aside, the closer Canberra gets to the coast, the better.

Only central London? What, the waves are going to bypass Surbiton?

Yes...Margo Leadbetter will be directing the traffic along the A3 in a smashing Le Clerc one-piece.

(The Good Life has infested my brain...)

cheshirecat

Talking about dodgy predictions, what about that book which predicted world famine by 1970.

Come to that, what about George Orwell's 1984 ?

I lived through both years and survived.

Glug Glug Glug!

Rob (no 1),

Did you also "party like it's 1999?"

If so, you've survived three predicted disasters...

Besides a whole lot of new water front property, another up side to global warming is longer growing seasons, more land available for agriculture and more CO2 in the air providing food for all the plants, which will encourage food crops to grow better reducing the need for all those polluting chemical fertilizers.

Didn't these people ever watch Mr. Wizard? I seem to remember an experiment where a glass of water, was topped off with ice. The ice was poking up over the top of the glass. It was let to sit until it all melted, and BY GOD! the water did not overflow! Somehow the ice managed to not raise the water level above the glass. Mr. Wizard must have rigged that experiment!

amy, you're quite right. melting icecaps will not raise sealevel.

However, a rise in ocean temperature would cause the water to expand, and that's what would cause a rise in sea level.

I don't know what "German body" wrote the report, but it obviously didn't include any oceanographers.

Just to play devil's advocate, while melting the Northern ice cap will not raise sea level substantially because the ice is floating in the ocean, melting the Antarctic ice cap would, because that ice is sitting on a continent.

However, since the overall temperature over Antarctica is dropping, that point is moot.