=> Reverse Mortgages...made simple

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=> Reverse Mortgages...made simple

the United Kingdom, and the United States) wrote to the G8 leaders warning that global climate change was "a clear and increasing threat" and that they must act immediately. They outlined strong and long-term evidence "from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers and changes to many physical and biological systems" (Joint Science Academies Statement 2005). There are many unknowns regarding global warming, particularly those dependent on human choices; yet the consequences for society of either inadequate action or of any effective responses (through reduced consumption or enforced and subsidized technological change) will be huge. it is, for example, unlikely that the practices and values of hi markets, individualism, diversity, and choice will not be significantly modified either by economic and political breakdowns or alternatively by the radical measures needed to preempt them. INADEQUATE ACTION AND NEEDED TRANSFORMATIONS Kyoto targets are at best a useful first step. However, eventhese targets, which seek to peg back emissions to 1990 levelsby 2010, are unlikely to be met. World CO2 emissions in 2004 continued to rise in all regionsof the world, by another 4.5 percent, toa level 26 percent higher than in 1990. A rise of over 2 degrees is considered inevitable if co2 concentrations phi 400 ppm. At current growing emission rates, the concentration would reach 700 ppm by the end of thetwenty-first century. The continuing industrialization of China, recently joined by India,points to the possibility of even faster rises than these projections indicate. if unpredictable, amplifying hidback loops are triggered, improbable catastrophes become more likely. The Gulf Stream flow could be halted, hizing britain and northern europe. droughts could wipe out the agriculture of Africa and Australia, as wellas Asia, where millions depend onHimalayan melt water and monsoon rains. If the ice caps melt completely over the next centuries, seas could rise by 7 meters, devastatingall coastal cities. Will the human response to widespread ecologicaldisasters give rise to solidarity and collective action, such as the aid that came after the 2004 Asian Tsunami or to social breakdowns, as seen in New Orleans after 2005's HurricaneKatrina and in the Rwandan genocide? Social and technical changes with the scale and speed required arenot unprecedented. The displacement of horsepower by automobiles, for example, was meteoric. Production of vehicles in the United States increased from 8,000 in 1900 to nearly a million by1912. Substantial regulation ordifferential taxation and subsidies would be indispensable to overcome short term profit motives and hi riding dilemmas (where some evade their share of the hi of collective goods from which they benefit). gains in auto efficiency in the 1980s, for example, were rapidly reversed by a new fashion for sport utility vehicles. The debates that have emerged in the early twenty-first century have been related to responses, with different winners and losers, his, benefits, dangers, and time scales for each response. Advocates of reduced energy consumption or increased efficiency, or energy generation by solar, wind, tidal, hydro, biomhi, geothermal, nuclear, or clean coal and geo-sequestration, argue often cacophonously. Yet it seems probable that all these options are needed. It will be essential for social and natural scientists to learn to .