Global Warming - something or nothing?

[koocha]

Just interested in your views

I, personally, think it's nothing.

[Agent]

A thread with a few links in it here.

[koocha]

A thread with a few links in it here.

Thanks, some good reads in there.

BTW, the "Piracy" link in your sig made my eyes bleed.

[Stewart]

I said summat about global warming in a thread t'other week, I'll dig it out.

[Stewart]

*dig, dig*

This whole thing with global warming, a Con?
What? Are you mad? look at the natural disasters happening. The flooding in the UK.

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...

[Zhaoman]

Now hold on a minute, how can you think that global warming is nothing? Have you not seen any of the multitude of evidence? Does the fact that most of the world's scientists and intellectual elite agree and have been trying to educate the public mean anything to you?

Even if the Earth is naturally going through another cycle, does ocean acidification not bother you at all? And we are talking about our own survival here, if we let this continue (whatever the reason: natural or man-made) we will be facing extinction very soon. The Earth is heating up and we've got to do something about it if we want to survive. Does it matter if it's made up government propaganda or not?

[Funkstar]

I voted "Something - we must act now", but not really because of global warming, as with others i'm still not convinced. There is a whole lot of 'bad' science going about at the moment, so much so it taints the 'good' science that may well be proving it is right.

The reason I voted the way I did wasn't because of 'global warming' or 'climate change', but for general polution, usage of limited resources and the increase in living expenses because of the crude oil price rises.

[mediaboy]

I couldn't vote.

The earth is doomed.. but we're not responsible. Natural causes and whatnot. Of course.. if we stopped cultivating cows we might be slightly better off..

[Agent]

....we will be facing extinction very soon.

We have humans that live in the Arctic. We have humans that live in the desert.
Our ability to adapt is nothing short of amazing. I simply do not believe we will be facing extinction any time soon regardless of what happens.

Humans are amazingly resilient.

[Funkstar]

And we are talking about our own survival here, if we let this continue (whatever the reason: natural or man-made) we will be facing extinction very soon.

Hmmm, no.

We might be talking about the survival of our current way of life, but no, i don' think the human race is going to be wiped of the face of the planet.

[Stewart]

We have humans that live in the Arctic. We have humans that live in the desert.

We have humans that live in Leeds.

Life always finds a way.

[Zhaoman]

We have humans that live in the Arctic. We have humans that live in the desert.
Our ability to adapt is nothing short of amazing. I simply do not believe we will be facing extinction any time soon regardless of what happens.

Humans are amazingly resilient.

I completely agree with you, I was being overdramatic for effect. But from the sheer amount of evidence we have there is going to be hard times for everyone very soon. We can't just sit back and say it's going to be fine. (Which, from what I can gather, is what this thread starter was suggesting)

[koocha]

Now hold on a minute, how can you think that global warming is nothing? Have you not seen any of the multitude of evidence?

The "multitude of evidence" works both ways - for and against.

Does the fact that most of the world's scientists and intellectual elite agree and have been trying to educate the public mean anything to you?

"Most of the world's scientists and intellectual elite"? Have you got evidence for this?

Even if the Earth is naturally going through another cycle, does ocean acidification not bother you at all?

No. Because it's happening at a slow rate and things adapt. It's called evolution.

And we are talking about our own survival here, if we let this continue (whatever the reason: natural or man-made) we will be facing extinction very soon.

Define "very soon" please

The Earth is heating up and we've got to do something about it if we want to survive.

The Earth may be heating up, but it will coll down again. That's what the Earth does.

Does it matter if it's made up government propaganda or not?

It does to me, because they're lying to us.

[Funkstar]

It's probably not possible, but i would be really interested if there were figures shoing the amount of polution in the western world today and the same counrties during the industrial revolution. You know, when you had all these factories spewing out coal smoke with gay abandon. Anything and everything being dumped in the seas and forrest dissapearing so quickly that the government had to put a stop to ship building before the country ran out of wood completely.

Oh, something else thats just popped into my head: Organic food has a higher environmental impact than the regular cheap stuff. It's not any better for you either, in fact, in many cases it is far more likely to kill you.

[mediaboy]

And Organic Meat is extremely bad for animal welfare.... for anone that buys that.

[j1979]

Hmmm, no.

We might be talking about the survival of our current way of life, but no, i don' think the human race is going to be wiped of the face of the planet.

i too think that total extinction is unlikley (but is a real threat), but it will be survial or the fittest to the extream. small pockets of humanity will most probably survive.

it would'nt be the first time, as we are all believed to be descended from a very small group thought to be no bigger than 300 indivduals.