Global Warming - something or nothing?

[revol68]

I don't know what it says about the make up of these boards that the poll is split pretty much 50:50.

The amount of nonsense are spouting is remarkable, all this irrelevant crap about how the earths tempature has always been in flux, yes and in the grand scheme of the earth's history humanitys existance is insignificant, species come and go. None of that changes one iota that human produced green house gases by far the biggest cause of global warming and that's even if we take the highest figure of 25% ( figure rejected as much much too high by the vast majority of scientists and research) of it being from solar activity, that means of a 4 degree temperature rise our activity in the space of a century is responsible for 3 degrees. 3 degrees might not seem like a big deal, afterall the planet has seen worse over it's 4 billion years, but it's a big deal in terms of human history and time, billions will be directly effected by it.

The problem is that many suppoused environmentalists put the case across as if it's about 'the planet' or some such balls, it's not it's fundamentally about humans, about the effects we will experiance, floods, more extreme weather systems and all the turmoil and instability. Climate change deniers deliberately play on the issue of the planet and correctly albeit disingenously point out that the the temperature rises are a drop in the ocean in earths history, insignificant compared to changes that have happened before over millions and millions of years but that says nothing about the effects such temperature rises will have on human society.

So yeah for the 'planet' global warming is not a problem, the planet isn't a living being, it has no intent, no hopes, no fears, no bonds or kin, for humans on the other hand it's a massive issue and as some as we get away from thinking in terms of environmental issues being about 'saving the planet' or some other vague crap the better, the environment is our human environment, it's our homes and our lives as such all the denialist disinformation and inertia creation (which is what they aim to do, create inertia by sowing doubt, after all they don't have anything else to offer) about the earths temperature fluxing throughout it's existence is meaningless.

[mediaboy]

The point about whether or not it is natural causes or the fluxation of the earths temperature due to slight variations in the earths orbit and the other various variables isn't that it means that we're not responsible.

It just means that whatever we do... it's pointless.

Which is far more accurate than, say, being charged so much tax on petrol and cars that it's financially impossible for a new driver to do anything like...drive. (As insurance costs are extremely high, road taxes are going up, and the petrol prices seem to be getting higher every time I look.)

You say that 25% of Global warming is caused by solar winds.

Add on another 10-20% due to volcanos.... who can, if one decides to errupt in a big bang, produce the last 10 years Greenhouse gases production in a matter of hours or days. However, Volcanos don't have much annual effect, but yet again - there's historicla precedent for volcanos warming up the earth. I mean.. I can't see any glaciers sweeping through England. Can you?

Lets say, maybe another 5-10% due to things like that release of swamp gas in Russia, where cast quantities of frozen gas starts to melt due to global temperatures changing slightly, by a few points of a degree.

And I'm probably being conservative in my estimates.


However, facing the facts, with the lowest percentage possible in all those things, natural causes (or at least, the ones listed) would only amount to about 25%... or about 50-60% at highest. So let's say that humans are accelerating the process. However, that does not mean that the process isn't natural. It's somewhat analogous to having some giant perpetual motion machine sitting somewhere, then along comes the various "civilized" races and start turning the handle to make it go faster.

It'll get there eventually. We're just speeding it up.

Of course, with the highest percentages we're saying that global warming isn't our fault, so they can stop taxing us. The government don't want to stop charging "green" taxes, so they don't let any studies say that Global Warming or climate change, or whatever else you want to call it, is happening. Could you imagine the state of the budget then?

[NovaSphere]

Perhaps quote the people you think are being ignorant and put your point forward, as opposed to sitting on a high horse and telling people that they are wrong without backing it up?

I was talking in general, as I've already stated my point of view a few posts before.

Read tabloids much?

I hardly do, I do on the other hand read a lot of articles and watch documentary's, aswell as I'm fairly interested in nature, the atmosphere and anything arround it, hence that's what my study is pointed at.

[Skii]

utter guff designed to extort taxes from the poorest members of society. Nothing more.

Now pass me the suncream.

[CaseyV9]

*dig, dig*



Indeed Sir.

On the natural disasters front, lets look at some.

The Permian-Triassic extinction event, for instance. Thats a good one. 96% of ikkle swimmin things and 70% of wikkle crawlin things went right up the wall. Nowt to do with good old homo sapiens though, was it? Perhaps the Conodonts weren't recycling enough of their glass bottles.

And what about these 'killer' floods in the UK, huh? Surely a sign of the end time. Surely not long now until Jawsus returns for the final battle between good and Man Utd. These floods are like nothing that has been seen before... apart from the 1887 Yellow River flood in China, which killed between 900,000 and 2,000,000 people. And this flood is not even the most deadly flood for that particular river. It flooded again in 1937, killing even more. 2 million people Vs a couple of dish washers. And what did you call them? Natural disasters? Not even worthy of the name, sunshine.

And what, pray, caused these Chinese floods? Perhaps Mrs Wang was in the habit of keeping her TV on stand-by? Nope, it was silt on the riverbed and heavy rain.

I also have a feeling the Black Death probably had little to do with a lack of cardboard recycling facilities, and yet it still wiped out 30-60% of the peeps in Europe. Even the French, with their famously high standards of hygiene were mown down like garlic plants in a hurricane.

So don't give me the whole 'the worlds gone mad, run for the hills, but don't even run for the hills, because the hills are mad as well - THE WORLD AND THE HILLS ARE IN CAHOOTS, THEY MEAN TO KILL US ALL!'

In perspective, those floods that happened the other year in the UK were pretty piss-ant disasters. Don't you agree?

See, the Earth, from when it came into being (about 6.4 billion years ago if you are sane, about 6000 years ago if you are American) has always been getting hotter, then colder, then hot, hot, hot , then cold, so cold

Its what the Earth does. Are you pinning the cause of the Medieval Warm Period on us lot? Perhaps Henry II was a bit over the top with his hair spray usage? They didn't know about CFCs in those days, you see.

So do I think its a con? No. I think our species are contributing to the general, long-term warming of the Earth because of our massive use of oil, coal and scratch cards, BUT the Earth was getting warmer, cooler, and all sorts of other things ending in 'er' long before the creatures we evolved from, evolved. Actually, before the things they evolved from evolved. And probably even before that.

On average, for the last 6 years, the Earth has been getting colder. 2006 was colder than 2005, which was colder than 2004.

It's now June and I'm looking out the window at the drizzle. Not the palm trees - the drizzle.

So, although we might be dirty bitching the place up, don't take every little thing that goes wrong as a sign that our time, and indeed the time of this ball of rock we live on, is up.

We aren't ready to go the way of the Transformers (or indeed the piss-ants) just yet...

As I read this I have not read any further in this thread.
But, the claim the human race is not messing up the planet in general is a stupid thing to say.
As I said later in that thread the effects of pollution are everywhere.

Sit in your car in the garage with a hose pipe attached at one end to your exhaust and the other securely through your car window - Make it air tight as possible. And while you are there, bring a few house plants in the car with you. Now, turn on the engine and wait and see the what happens to the plants. As the population rises so will the amount of cars on the road.

Nothing to do with us, No sir. Not at all.

EDIT: Hey, thinking about it, maybe you'll evolve. Yeah. We'll all evolve. We'll loose the need for our lungs and grow gills.
Nice. We'll adapt to it. Embrace the pollution and it's lurverly glow. Oh. So glad about that, Everything is okay.
Global warming is a con.

[j1979]

utter guff designed to extort taxes from the poorest members of society. Nothing more.

Now pass me the suncream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeo0_...eature=related

[Skii]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeo0_...eature=related

[revol68]

The point about whether or not it is natural causes or the fluxation of the earths temperature due to slight variations in the earths orbit and the other various variables isn't that it means that we're not responsible.

It just means that whatever we do... it's pointless.

Which is far more accurate than, say, being charged so much tax on petrol and cars that it's financially impossible for a new driver to do anything like...drive. (As insurance costs are extremely high, road taxes are going up, and the petrol prices seem to be getting higher every time I look.)

You say that 25% of Global warming is caused by solar winds.

Add on another 10-20% due to volcanos.... who can, if one decides to errupt in a big bang, produce the last 10 years Greenhouse gases production in a matter of hours or days. However, Volcanos don't have much annual effect, but yet again - there's historicla precedent for volcanos warming up the earth. I mean.. I can't see any glaciers sweeping through England. Can you?

Lets say, maybe another 5-10% due to things like that release of swamp gas in Russia, where cast quantities of frozen gas starts to melt due to global temperatures changing slightly, by a few points of a degree.

And I'm probably being conservative in my estimates.


However, facing the facts, with the lowest percentage possible in all those things, natural causes (or at least, the ones listed) would only amount to about 25%... or about 50-60% at highest. So let's say that humans are accelerating the process. However, that does not mean that the process isn't natural. It's somewhat analogous to having some giant perpetual motion machine sitting somewhere, then along comes the various "civilized" races and start turning the handle to make it go faster.

It'll get there eventually. We're just speeding it up.

Of course, with the highest percentages we're saying that global warming isn't our fault, so they can stop taxing us. The government don't want to stop charging "green" taxes, so they don't let any studies say that Global Warming or climate change, or whatever else you want to call it, is happening. Could you imagine the state of the budget then?

I said 25% as a ridiculously high figure, it's a figure not actually backed by scientists, but the figure threw up by climate denialists . You are pulling figures about Volcanoes out of your arse mate and showing that you don't actually know anything beyond some daft conspiracy theory that the whole issue is just an excuse to up taxation and prices (capitalism does externalise it's costs onto us in such a manner but there has to be something there for them to externalise, otherwise why bother?). Maybe you've forgotten the decades of global warming denial, that it took many years before states woke up to the fact that there was something going on. Interestingly you claim it's about tax and making money yet overlook the fact the denialist camp is over run with oil company money and other industries with very real interest in denying global warming. Your point about the Siberian swamps is good one except our contribution of green house gases actually speeds up the release of there gas thus producing a vicious cycle.

Human green house produced gases are responsible for atleast 75% of global warming, now even if that figures 50% (it isn't btw) how does that change the fact we really need to be not raising the temperature if we don't want to see millions of people under water, made into refugees and facing increasingly severe weather systems? Are you the type of person who see's someone getting assaulted by a twelve year old in the street and jumps into to add a further 75% of kicks to the persons face, because hey the twelve year old was already hitting him?

The whole thing about it being natural or unnatural is just idiocy, it's got nothing to do with such silly childish ideas, left overs from theism, it's about real human consequences.

[NovaSphere]

Add to that, the gasses many factories, cars or any kind of product produces that enlarge the 'global warming' process, are besides warming up the earth, not very good for your health either, if it isn't the rising sea level, the destruction of wildlife and miles of rainforests being chopped down, leaving a vast wasteland of mud and stones.
What about those gasses gathering more and more in our atmosphere? None in their sane minds (speaking for everyone now I presume) would hang his head at the end of his car to inhale some precious car gasses now would he? But letting that all go up in our atmosphere, which none seems to bother since you don't 'directly' notice it. What if the global warming in the end isn't such a big threat, than this would never stop, but what if the green house gasses, the smog and everything would reach a toxic level? Making it unable the breath normal air? You can scrap out the word 'fresh air' from the dictionary by than lol
Sincerly this last thing is a bit 'overdone' I think, but theoretically it would be possible, I guess?

PS: Very good topic imo lol

[mmh]

I'm gonna keep it short and sweet...

we ARE in an ICE AGE: thats right we are IN an ice age, and guess what! its the tail end of it, so yes, its going to get warmer, its not global warming, its climate change, natural as can be....

we may be speeding it up, but y'know what, its inevitable... the sooner we turn our attention to preventing the inevitable and concentrate on preparing for the sh*tstorm thats heading our way the better...

[NovaSphere]

I'm gonna keep it short and sweet...

we ARE in an ICE AGE: thats right we are IN an ice age, and guess what! its the tail end of it, so yes, its going to get warmer, its not global warming, its climate change, natural as can be....

we may be speeding it up, but y'know what, its inevitable... the sooner we turn our attention to preventing the inevitable and concentrate on preparing for the sh*tstorm thats heading our way the better...

It has been discussed plenty of times and I think I'm clear to say that (almost) everyone agree's that the earth is in a climate cycle, every thousands of years the temperature and the earth's atmosphere change.
Most people do think global warming speeds up this process, but this is not the main concern.
Global warming not only speeds it up, it also makes the changes dramatically worse, rendering a not so bright future for any of us, or future generations to come.

As I've already expressed my opinion and the way I see it in one of my previous post(s);

I voted something - we must act now.

The main argument against the threat that's called 'global warming' is the scientific proof that the earth's atmosphere, together with all the life within it, is in a cycle, every now and than that cycle breaks it's boundaries causing everything on earth to change it's way of life. This is a natural cycle.

This, on the other hand, does not mean global warming is fiction! This cycle can't be stopped, but global warming is making it worse, it's speeding up the process as we speak. Nature will take it's cause.

I agree with that the human race is a very resilient race, this though, does not mean it will survive this vicious cycle, in a way, the human race faces extinction almost everyday. But the consequences of global warming can not be overseen, whenever this cycle faces it's toll, even if the human race is so resilient, even if the human race would survive such a thing, makes you think; how many lives would have to be lost either way?
It is not particularly based on the survival of the human race, what about the survival of each and single individual?

Evolution is a process that takes thousands of years, you can not just wait for it to happen and accept evolution will save us all.
Humans are weak, the only thing that makes us superior to other organism’s is our brain capacity and ability to imagine. When nature takes it's cause, it will not be our brain capacity that saves the day but the survival of the fittest. In that, humans are far inferior to many other organism’s. (think small)


This is a cycle, but as stated above in my post; This cycle can't be stopped, but global warming is making it worse, it's speeding up the process as we speak.
The earth has had in every thousands of years changes of climate and atmosphere, changing the earth's landscapes into dry and barren wastelands or ice plateau's on a massive scale, there was not just one ice age in earth's history.
Howmany organism's went into extinction after the limit's of this cycle were crossed? The greatest example of the last ice age is probably the Mammoth.

Beside that, I live in the Netherlands, Rotterdam to be exact, 34 feet below sea level, the water here rises every year.

In the end, the only ones to blame for the fall of the human race would be humans themselves, as I've read in this topic before, as it is one of my favorite lines... Life always finds a way...

[revol68]

And people think that all tech nerds are misanthropic right wing muppets, this poll will show them, it's only half of them that are like that.

[mmh]

i have to disagree that we are making it that much worse... ofcourse we MAY be, but we have never been in the tail end of an ice age before, atleast we dont have any records of it, so we have absolutely NO idea what is supposed to happen, and no idea what is going to happen. All we have is best guess, and the best guesses so far have been government funded, and generally worked better for the government... coincidence? i gotta think not.

theres no precident as to what to expect... so grab life by the horns and live it, whatever is going to happen, is going to happen, whatever we do to help cutdown on non friendly environmental gasses china well and truely makes up for...

our industrial revolution might have happened, but theres is still on the up.

just relax, ignore the media and take life as it comes.

[Skii]

i have to disagree that we are making it that much worse... ofcourse we MAY be, but we have never been in the tail end of an ice age before, atleast we dont have any records of it, so we have absolutely NO idea what is supposed to happen, and no idea what is going to happen. All we have is best guess, and the best guesses so far have been government funded, and generally worked better for the government... coincidence? i gotta think not.

theres no precident as to what to expect... so grab life by the horns and live it, whatever is going to happen, is going to happen, whatever we do to help cutdown on non friendly environmental gasses china well and truely makes up for...

our industrial revolution might have happened, but theres is still on the up.

just relax, ignore the media and take life as it comes.

Well said. Good man

[NovaSphere]

i have to disagree that we are making it that much worse... ofcourse we MAY be, but we have never been in the tail end of an ice age before, atleast we dont have any records of it, so we have absolutely NO idea what is supposed to happen, and no idea what is going to happen. All we have is best guess, and the best guesses so far have been government funded, and generally worked better for the government... coincidence? i gotta think not.

theres no precident as to what to expect... so grab life by the horns and live it, whatever is going to happen, is going to happen, whatever we do to help cutdown on non friendly environmental gasses china well and truely makes up for...

our industrial revolution might have happened, but theres is still on the up.

just relax, ignore the media and take life as it comes.

That might be a true thing, but id personally hate to see every wildlife found on this planet to be destroyed by the hands of man. Humans have already destroyed so much, while there is so little left to destroy, they still continue at a rapid speed.

On the other hand, I do NOT agree completly with the government theory, some things might have packed out well for the government, but one major and probably most known research is the 'search for new fuel', oil is not infinite, and there have been many replacements found for it, yet they still continue to run everything on oil, since simply the entire world industry runs on it.
You might think this is good for the government, so they don't have to fund all the changes to new fuel solutions, all the changes to cars and fuel pomps, but over time this won't be balanced anymore, the price of fuel is rapidly increasing, will it not be smarter to put all that money in different fuel ways, than to pay enormous amounts of money for a small amount of fuel today?

PS: My point of view is not controlled by the media, or what so ever dramatic events they predict within it ^^

[revol68]

i have to disagree that we are making it that much worse... ofcourse we MAY be, but we have never been in the tail end of an ice age before, atleast we dont have any records of it, so we have absolutely NO idea what is supposed to happen, and no idea what is going to happen. All we have is best guess, and the best guesses so far have been government funded, and generally worked better for the government... coincidence? i gotta think not.

theres no precident as to what to expect... so grab life by the horns and live it, whatever is going to happen, is going to happen, whatever we do to help cutdown on non friendly environmental gasses china well and truely makes up for...

our industrial revolution might have happened, but theres is still on the up.

just relax, ignore the media and take life as it comes.

yes it's a government conspiracy, despite the fact the worlds last remaining superpower is refusing to act on it, despite the fact it took decades for even European states to accept it and despite the fact that the climate denial camp is funded up the ying yang by massive fossil fuel concerns?

And actually the science is in and has been for years, greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for over 75% of the temperature rise, regardless if we are at the end of an ice age.

All i;ve seen on this thread from the deniers is conspiracy and poor conjecture mixed with a laissez fair attitude that doesn't think anything is an issue until it's directly facing them.