Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

UN’s ‘State of the Planet’ Report

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The UN has released it’s ‘Global Environment Outlook’ or ‘GEO4’ report.

It can be downloaded via the BBC News website. It’s 22MB so you may have a bit of a wait.

Also on the BBC website is the ‘State of the planet, in graphics:’

Globally human populations are growing, trade is increasing, and living standards are rising for many. But, according to the UN’s latest Global Environment Outlook report, long-term problems including climate change, pollution, access to clean water, and the threat of mass extinctions are being met with “a remarkable lack of urgency”.

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Comments

  1. John says

    I suppose this other UN arm will be like the IPCC and (a) ignore the fact that lower tropospheric temperatures aren’t show much warming and (b) not report a single positive effect of an increase in temperatures.

    Threat of mass extinctions? How about they actually prove it with evidence and not some computer software? It’s not as if we’ve not had mass extinctions in the past!

    Access to clean water is about the only big issue I’d agree with them on. Even pollution has been largely cleaned up in the west.

  2. Luke says

    Hang on – what’s this – it’s not warming on one hand – but whinging that they’re not listing benefits of the warming?? WTF ? Yep no contradiction here.

    Strange that the troposphere is indeed warming but the stratosphere is cooling. How strange.

    http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html

    Comfort “It’s not as if we’ve not had mass extinctions in the past” – PHEW – that’s a relief.

    “Access to clean water is about the only big issue I’d agree with them on” – VOLUME of freshwater is probably the major issues affecting all nations (and quality).

  3. Louis Hissink says

    Mass Extinctions – as we really do not understand how past extinctions occurred, then it is impossible to predict future ones.

    Yet one of the more inane ideas is that global warming wil produce increased species extinctions.

    Consider the Antarctic and the tropical rainforests of the Amazon. Count the number of species in each climate zone.

    Conclusion is taht warmer climate means more species, while colder less species.

    But it’s in the computer models that the extinctions seem to be occurring, but as we have no idea what caused past ones, then species extinction cannot be modelled.

    It can be if the models are restricted to mathematical abstractions drifting aimlessly over a sea of imaginatinal preconceptions.

    Perhaps there are more Baron Munchausens, than most of us realise, posting here.