Global warming has become perhaps the most complicated issue facing world leaders. Warnings from the scientific community are becoming louder, as an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases — produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide jumped by the largest amount on record in 2010, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery. Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists. The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.

However, the technological, economic and political issues that have to be resolved before a concerted worldwide effort to reduce emissions can begin have gotten no simpler, particularly in the face of a global economic slowdown.

For almost two decades, the United Nations has sponsored annual global talks, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty signed by 194 countries to cooperatively discuss global climate change and its impact. The conferences operate on the principle of consensus, meaning that any of the participating nations can hold up an agreement.

The conflicts and controversies discussed are monotonously familiar: the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests and the need to rapidly develop and deploy clean energy technology.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html

Gus: All this issue needs is simply a leader. A US leader. And in Romney we'll get zero. Actually we'll get minus. In Obama we might be able to swing it... Should the US DO NOTHING IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS about global warming, the USA will become irrelevent. It will become the laughing stock of the world. It will become the "former" super power... It will sink very quickly into a quagmire of illusions and little wars it cannot win — and there are strong odds, it will be swamped with stronger storms and other climatic calamities...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed President Obama on Thursday, citing climate change as the primary factor and Hurricane Sandy as the event that impelled him to make a choice. 

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of next Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” the political independent wrote in an op-ed on Bloomberg View, part of his media empire. “Our climate is changing. … We need leadership from the White House.” Obama, he said, “has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption.” 

Many experts say that the increasing likelihood of extreme weather due to climate change and the prospect of future sea level rise means a rising risk of floods for much of the country. 

Bloomberg turned down an offer from Obama to visit New York City this week, saying he didn’t mean to “diss” the president but was simply too busy dealing with storm fallout. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/11/01/michael-bloomberg-endorses-obama/?hpid=z1

As I wrote above: All this issue needs is simply a leader. A US leader. And in Romney we'll get zero. Actually we'll get minus. In Obama we might be able to swing it... Should the US DO NOTHING IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS about global warming, the USA will become irrelevent. It will become the laughing stock of the world. It will become the "former" super power... It will sink very quickly into a quagmire of illusions and little wars it cannot win — and there are strong odds, it will be swamped with stronger storms and other climatic calamities...

... We'll need to be. Thanks to a combination of factors--more people and property in vulnerable coastal areas as well as climate change--we're likely to experience disasters on the scale of Sandy more often in the future. That's a future we're not ready to handle, and judging from the near total absence of debate about global warming on the presidential campaign trail, it's a future we're not even thinking about. The good news is that there's still time to prepare--if we heed the lessons of the storm.

Make sure you can see ahead.

When the infamous Long Island Express hurricane hit the Northeast in 1938, there was little warning and less preparation. As many as 800 people died, making it one of the deadlier storms in U.S. history. We'd never be so unprepared today, thanks to the more than two dozen U.S. weather and environmental satellites that peer down on the planet and help predict its weather.

But in September, NASA's GOES-East satellite--one of a pair of orbiting spacecraft that provide the backbone for advanced weather forecasting--suddenly winked out. Fortunately NASA had a backup GOES satellite already parked in orbit, and forecasting capabilities were unaffected in the month leading up to Sandy's formation. But that near miss was a scary reminder that the U.S. satellite fleet is in peril, threatened by budget cuts and government short-sightedness. "Gaps are opening in both our operational and research satellites," says J. Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric-sciences program at the University of Georgia and president-elect of the American Meteorological Society. For every $1 spent on space infrastructure, about $5 in disaster-damage costs are saved--proof that it makes economic sense to keep our eyes in the skies operating.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2128304,00.html#ixzz2B4zOlxDk

As I wrote above: All this issue needs is simply a leader. A US leader. And in Romney we'll get zero. Actually we'll get minus. In Obama we might be able to swing it... Should the US DO NOTHING IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS about global warming, the USA will become irrelevent. It will become the laughing stock of the world. It will become the "former" super power... It will sink very quickly into a quagmire of illusions and little wars it cannot win — and there are strong odds, it will be swamped with stronger storms and other climatic calamities...

POINT PLEASANT BEACH, N.J. — John Schaad, 53 a longtime Jersey Shore resident, was staring out to the sea and looking shellshocked on the Boardwalk just across from what is known as the Sinatra House, where the sounds of big-band music waft into the air all summer long as an endless parade of people sashay by.

“You know,” he said on Thursday, “used to be no one wanted to say they were from Jersey. Now everyone knows the Jersey Shore. There’s no place like it, there’s nothing like being on the Boardwalk in the summer.”

“We’ll rebuild it,” said Mr. Schaad, who owns a landscaping business, “and it will still be a fabulous place. It won’t be the same, but we’ll be back.”

It is not entirely clear when the 127 miles of coast from Sandy Hook to Cape May went from funky seaside phantasmagoria to a sliver of American myth. But for the hordes of the curious, the awe-struck and the traumatized who swarmed Jenkinson’s Boardwalk here on Thursday, and for hundreds of thousands of visitors for whom memories of the Shore are a part of their emotional wiring, Gov. Chris Christie got it right this week when he said: “The level of devastation at the Jersey Shore is unthinkable.”

In Point Pleasant Beach, a blue-collar, family-oriented resort community, where the Boardwalk constitutes the front yard for dozens of modest brick houses facing the ocean and where other cottages are crammed in a few feet apart, the shock was palpable.

People stopped and stared in shock at what was left of Martell’s Tiki Bar, where perhaps 70 feet of pier was ripped off and tossed into the sea. Most of the houses on the Boardwalk are boarded up but intact. Cascades of floodwaters inundated houses blocks from the sea and the Boardwalk had the air of a carnival turned house of horrors. The Fun House and the rest are now dark, dirty and forlorn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/nyregion/at-the-jersey-shore-a-shared-...       

I will be your bookie for next year :

The odds are:

• even for another devastating storm in the Caribbean
• 5 to one for another devastating hurricane on New Orleans
• 10 to one for another Sandy
• 12 to one for one hundred tornadoes in the mid west
• 20 to one for massive floods in Britain
• 25 to one for record breaking heat in Siberia
• 2 to one Australia's east coast is going to suffer a massive heat wave.
• Sure thing that 2012 and 2013 are going to be the warmest years yet

• 2 to one for a devastating storm in Florida next year
• other record storms and hurricanes of various (large) sizes, around the world

"For those who think that an average increase of 2 degrees C would be "beneficial", let me say this: such an increase is likely to raise the sea level by around 70 cm worldwide... This "modest" rise would only be an average and would affect high tides. It would flood low laying lands regularly. The Thames barrier for example would have to be raised. Piers and jetties in Sydney would have to be raised. Low lying island in the pacific and Indian Ocean would become totally unliveable. Places like the Ganges delta may loose up to 20 per cent of its area. Cities like New York would get flooded basements on a regular basis. Not only that, an increase of 2 degrees C will lead to an increase in the number and the strength of extreme climatic events. For example a low pressure system and king tide combined could lead to the sea rising more than 5 metres above present level in affected areas. In hurricane-prone zones, this could lead to a rise of 12 metres above present sea level at the centre. This would (will) lead to the destructive flooding of cities like New Orleans and Venice like we've never seen before. Some places like Hobart, Tasmania may enjoy warmer climes..."

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8985

t’s so obvious we forget it: an extreme-weather event becomes a disaster only if it hits where people and their possessions are. Of the 19 tropical storms that were tracked during this summer’s Atlantic hurricane season, 10 veered off harmlessly into the Atlantic Ocean, never making landfall. But when a storm like Sandy tracks over the most heavily populated stretch of land in the western hemisphere, the damage to people and property can be immense. Sandy wasn’t the strongest storm — it was just barely a Category 1 hurricane when it made landfall at the end of last month — but both its death toll and its economic damage were high simply because so many people were in its path. Storm plus people equals natural disaster. The hurricane is the spark, but population is the tinder.

That’s why, as the Northeast begins the long process of rebuilding, we need to think about what we can do to minimize the number of people and the value of the property that might be in the way of the next storm. So far, most of that discussion has settled around the possibility of building multibillion-dollar seawalls and barriers that might be able to shield Manhattan and other vulnerable places from the kind of storm surges that caused so much destruction during Sandy. Seawalls do have their place — the Connecticut town of Stamford escaped major damage thanks in part to its own barrier — especially as the climate warms and seas rise. But if people didn’t live in so many high-risk places, we wouldn’t have to put any protective infrastructure there at all.

Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/11/20/after-sandy-why-we-cant-keep-rebuilding-on-the-waters-edge/#ixzz2CqLNMVQe

see pic at top...

Congress passes $50.5B Superstorm Sandy aid bill, sends to Obama for his signature