Hot Planet
Professors Iain Stewart and Professor Kathy Sykes take a timely look at global warming ahead of the Copenhagen summit, exploring the world's leading climate scientists' vision of the planet's future.
Scientists predict that if global temperatures continue to rise at their current rate, Earth will be one degree warmer within 10 years, two degrees warmer within the next 40 years and three degrees or more warmer before the end of the century.
If the Earth's temperature increases to three degrees warmer than the average pre-industrial temperature, the impact on the planet will be catastrophic. Across the Earth, ways of life could be lost forever as climate change accelerates out of control. This isn't inevitable, however: climate change is not yet irreversible.
Ingenious technology and science is currently being devised, advanced and tested around the world which could offer solutions for a sustainable future. The question that remains is, can the world embrace and implement them on a large enough scale within an effective time-line?
If widespread damage to human societies and ecosystems is to be prevented, global temperature rise must be slowed and eventually reversed. Hot Planet offers an accurate visual prediction of the planet's future, based on the findings of over 4,000 climate scientists.
Humans are functionally extinct.
Yes sir Mr. Preetan Rai...Cudos to you! Any warming we are experiencing has everything to do with the Sun, & absolutely nothing to do with Man. Accept for the greedy Men in positions of power, creating a fear motivator, so they can charge all the idiots a Carbon Tax. What straight forward BS! Thank you Mr. Preetan Rai. My you continue to live a long, prosperous, life further enhanced by your wisdom.
All over 4,000 climate scientists are fools......!
@drsandman2:disqus How about you actually do research. Peter speaks the truth, I can see you are a sheeple by the fact that you say "all the scientists" you must have watch an Inconvenient Truth and ate it up never to look into the subject again. The IPCC is not the leading authorities on climate, they were actually created in 1988 with the goal of examining GLOBAL COOLING LOL. Look into it, in the 70's and 80's the IPCC was absolutely convinced that we were headed for an Ice Age. Then in the late 90's they shifted gears to Global Warming instead so they could keep their funding. Also take a look at this years winter Arctic sea ice levels, they are the HIGHEST IN RECORDED HISTORY. As a final note in regards to this doc, polar bears have been unchanged for 300,000 years and yet they have been through both heat ages and ice ages, why would they die off now when we are actually at a lower global temp than in previous heat ages they survived?
and for he last 16 years the climate have ben getting cooler. carbon dioxide have nothing to do with "global warming" carbon dioxide dont drive global warming, global warming drives carbon dioxide. after some research these type of films is actually realy interesting
Global warming or not, we still need to clean up our act. Typical humans - spending trillions trying to bury the problem instead of trillions to change our ways. The powers that be don't want to clean up their ways - too much profits involved.
They should also mention that ALL planets in the solar system are currently warming up.
Why are they asking us to reduce co2 when the Governments and industry are responsible for it, not us.
I don't want to be a contrarian; indeed, I'm not a contrarian on this subject, but we should keep in mind the history of climate events.
A prescient example is the Toba eruption 75,000 years ago. This volcanic eruption immediately led to a 3-5 C reduction in global mean temperatures. A massive species die off, and the near extinction of Homo sapiens.
Just 75,000 years later (the blink of a geologic eye), and the planet's species diversity has completely recovered; Homo sapiens population has gone from as low as 1,000 after the eruption (we truly barely made it) to 7,000,000,000 today.
Is it possible that the global mean temperature will rise by 6 C over the next century? Yes, if we do nothing, which we haven't. Will this have severe impacts on global species diversity and quality of life for us humans? Yes. Will it herald the worst catastrophe in Earth's history? No.
We have a tremendous capability to minimize the impacts of climate change, and it is our duty, not our childrens, to address the issue. However, to paint our predicament as a choice about the fate of the planet is specious if not outright propaganda.
I understand that many feel a strong message must be iterated to compel the masses toward change, but I refuse to believe that masking hyperbole as fact is righteous. Tell people that the end is nigh unless we change our ways, and skepticism, not action, will manifest.
Many push alternative energy without realizing that it is economic growth that is the fundamental issue. Infinite growth on a finite planet is scientifically impossible. A transition to alternative energy does not change this. For example, the increase in methane output from ruminants (due to increasing wealth, and thus demand, from emerging economies) would nullify any transition to wind or solar. Remember that methane is an ~18 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. Not to mention that the construction of wind mills and solar panels requires rare earth metals, which are extremely costly (in terms of pollution and CO2 emissions) to mine. This issue is more complex than these shows confess.
Our global economy requires economic growth to function, but that growth is the very noose that tightens around our civilization daily.
What I don't like about the documentary is its brief touch on the delicate nature of various ecosystems. The documentary acknowleges alternative methods of power sources such as Solar power or Wind Energy, but does not present the negative effects it has on Nature itself. By using the lands that are uninhabitable by humans to create these solar power plants, we are essentially forcing groups of species to migrate to other regions where the environment is less favourable for the survival of certain species. The topic of climate change is very controversial and delicate. Nevertheless, a great documentary to develop our further understanding of climate changes as Global Citizens.
pp
what they should do is take the CO2 emissions that are being/can be saved and fill some sort of massive tubing and use it to create floating islands like sol in south Korea. That way if the ice caps do flood we can just be safely adrift :)
As soon as I discovered the Goldman Sachs would be the main entity brokering the trading of carbon credits; I knew global warming is and was a scam.
Good film - how come that most solar stocks went down with 70 to 80% here in 2011, are there someone trying to sabotage the transition towards a more sustinable furture? Can we put the blame on Wall Street cynical profit oriented personalities working there?
Please, is MrIceland seriously pointing people to that well documented piece of baseless propaganda 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'? And telling us about about a single coldest night at his place (in the last 10 years, which have been in the 11 hottest since instrumental recording began in the 1880s)? Why indeed do we have The Great Global Warming Swindle on the site - I understand need for balance on such sites (and perhaps some historic perspective on the tactics of biased sceptics), but this unfounded propaganda has been well debunked by many and more learned individuals and groups. The Royal Society calls the polemic itself a ‘swindle’, of course it was lambasted by the IPCC, together with the British Antarctic Survey and many respected scientists (including some scientists misrepresented in the 'documentary'), and even Ofcom ruled, admittedly not going far enough, that the film committed multiple breaches of the broadcasting code. But I suppose these learned people are all mindlessly defending their pet conspiracy?
What a great documentary to make people realize how important our environment is.
Im seriously moving to any of those cities
this guy's accent doing my head. where is guy coming from, there is anybody there to speak little proper? I was ok for first 5 min but got tired of his RRRR eeerrrraaeeeerrrr kind of accent. I dont know, maybe its me upset tonight a little.
Big problems and big opportunities:
Big problem: methane burp is coming. The estimates of hitting the 3C by the end of the century are entirely over optimistic for so many reasons; but mostly related to positive feedback loops. It is very likely that methane burps from tunda and boreal sources, as well as from forests growing in warmer than normal climate will trigger the big jump to 10C to even 18C probably by the end of the 21st Century. There are a number of positive feeback looks that would contribute to this apparently more cynical but much more factually likely projection. Arctic Sea Ice is probably gone in less than 10 years from now. The full melting of the majority of Greenland continental ice mass is likely within 25 years, not within 150 years or whatever the current least conservative estimate is. Disinformation or missinformation is not just the perview of military, corporate, covert information sources and everything is infected by it.
Big opportunities well described hear and there by this documentary, are the diversity of solutions possible. Time to release the creativity of more than just 1% of the citizens of the planet that have any hope of even the beginning access to education of the higher sort. We need the creativity and stewarding activities of the majority of the current 7B humans. Overall, I give this documentary a B-. Some good little known ideas discussed, but too much credit paid to status quos that are destroying the planet. Nuclear is a good example. This video was perhaps made pre-Fukushima, I suspect.
Cheers
i love the way all these ppl fly all around the world discussing global warming...
We dont have to change nature it has got it all sorted .Has had a few million years to get it right .Rather than queastioning it why dont we imbrace the fact that nature knows what it is doing ?
After watching the documentary, and reading the blogs below, I am more convinced then ever that there is no solution that will work. Trapping co2 emmissions in sandstone??? To begin with, co2 emisssions are not the cause of global warming. The poles on Mars are presently melting as well, and I am certain humans are not to blame for it. Since the sun is obviously heating up, any solution we can conjure up is meaningless. This is not to say that we aren't poisoning the biosphere, only that a lot of nonsense is being spewed by the so called 'experts'.
The two gentlemen below can''t even be civil with one another, and they both apparently care about the planet, so what is the problem? Simply put, the cancer of humanity only prides itself on wealth, and since those in control will go to any length to continue the status quo of greed, my advice is quit fighting with each other, and direct your attention towards those who have been robbing you blind since the inception of society. My advice is quit worrying about the planet, and start looking out for each other, and the problems will take care of themselves. Since we are incapable of saving each other, how could anyone truly believe we are going to save the planet.
The awful truth is a billion years from now, the Earth will be baking as the sun expands in size due to it's elderly age. Your time would be better spent watching George Carlin on youtube speaking about ' saving the planet'. It was recorded 30 years ago, and has more truth then the nonsense I just watched. Besides, we are not talking about saving the planet, we are talking about saving ourselves. If all this is too depressing for everyone, then get off your butts and do something about it, otherwise, relax, have fun, get yourself fixxed, and quit bringing anymore innocent children into this nightmare until such time when we truly act appropriately.
Thanks Vlatko. My apologies To you. Feel free to wipe the posts. Really Was not expecting that nonsense.
OK guys, I think it's enough.
Pardon I said Brazil not Amazon. My mother passed away long ago. And as for the Derps that is your thing as evidenced on a number of comment sections here on top docs. You have destroyed nothing in your interaction with me here as you have simply degraded to childish name calling and cursing. I am more than happy with an end to your responses. I am sure I will see you crop up with your insightfull imput on many more docs here in your usual form of insult slinging gibberish. Im sure there are three billygoats trip tropping your bridge you need to go harrangue now so take care.