Global Warming - We could be in big trouble...

[G4Z]

ahhh man you totally blew me out ther... actually no and when I get back from Barcelona I will take you on point by point but from the looks of your "shakey trying to justify SUV" maths it shouldnt be a problem.

[ytrewq]

Global Warming is happening, what we don't know is when its going to start to become a major problem for the world.

Its all fine and well being green using less fuel and such, but its small fry compared to the big producers of harmful gasses , USA, China and now India. Even if the whole of the UK stopped making any harmful gasses (impossible I know but work with me here ) It would not dent the gasses produced by the other country, and its not highly likely that the big 3 will stop producing those gasses anytime soon.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few decades though

[harry1]

yup, thats why i for one couldnt care less, because i cannot change it, i dont care what any blue peter presenter says our country has no impact on the grand scale.

as long as im dead before anythoing happens lol

[G4Z]

oh man, what a load of crap, if everbody thought like that then we would have a real proble.. hold on a sec, we DO have a real problem. Maybe we should all cut down our carbon footprint, and fair enough the UK isnt the worst but we are certainly not as environmentally friendly as we could be, to say that "oh well I may as well not bother because the US and China are worse" is some kind of straw man dodgy justification for being a selfish git.

[badass]

oh man, what a load of crap, if everbody thought like that then we would have a real proble.. hold on a sec, we DO have a real problem.

What problem is that?
There is still not enough evidence that mad made emissions are the cause of Global Warming, nor is there rock solid evidence that it is actually happening!

[harry1]

oh man, what a load of crap, if everbody thought like that then we would have a real proble.. hold on a sec, we DO have a real problem. Maybe we should all cut down our carbon footprint, and fair enough the UK isnt the worst but we are certainly not as environmentally friendly as we could be, to say that "oh well I may as well not bother because the US and China are worse" is some kind of straw man dodgy justification for being a selfish git.

quite right its not the attitude but luckily everyone doesnt think that way so im ok am i not. mate you only get one life i for one am not gong to go around living it half cocked or wasting time on things that wont affect me, im not interested whether its the right way to think because i know its not, but as i said not many people share that view so that means i can do as i please and will.

[iranu]

What problem is that?
There is still not enough evidence that mad made emissions are the cause of Global Warming,

true

nor is there rock solid evidence that it is actually happening!

false.

Global warming has been happening for approximately the last 10,000 years since something called the ice age ended.

And this is why it is difficult to asses the impact that man made emissions are actually having.

There is no control sample in the experiment, we are simply living it. No-one knows if global warming is a good or a bad thing and in any case if it all goes belly up I'm sure that something more intelligent than man will crawl out of the sea in a million years time in order to repeat the experiment.

[dkmech]

So someone that buys a nice diesel Volkswagen Golf and mows down 35 people on the way to school because they are drunk is a reasonable person.
How stupid a statement to make.

What? How? Eh? Argh! I normally can't be bothered to spend too much time joining heated debates... But I couldn't ignore this. How does this have anything to do with a conversation. I really can't find the words to describe what I think about this quote... Well done for moving the argument to a new level of irrelevant comments I suppose. Have a star or something...

[badass]

What? How? Eh? Argh! I normally can't be bothered to spend too much time joining heated debates... But I couldn't ignore this. How does this have anything to do with a conversation. I really can't find the words to describe what I think about this quote... Well done for moving the argument to a new level of irrelevant comments I suppose. Have a star or something...

G4z's entire criteria for a reasonable person have been stated based on whether someone uses a 4x4 to drop the kids off at school. I presented a riduculous scenario that shows how ridiculous his statement was to make.

[dkmech]

You failed. You show how ridiculous what you said was though...

[badass]

You failed. You show how ridiculous what you said was though...

[G4Z]

DK is right, when I get home tomorrow il give you a full reply.

[ponders]

i just ate a whole big bag spicy flavoured doritoes...and....well... the gaseus results..arent comfertable INSIDE...so i rekon mother Earth is gonna be pissed at me in a bit.
seiously though, i rekon its a bit too late, you know what i mean after we've set our heels in our relience for technology and electricity, it seems that lesser developed countries have always in some ways paid for say, i dunno, fashion labels and GM testing, trying medicines out on 3rd worlds, it wouldn't suprise me at all if global warming was seen first in say, mount Kilimonjaro where ice actually begins to melt !!

[Byatt]

true

Not enough evidence? What do you define as not enough? As you say yourself it is incredibly hard to be anything like certain, but the evidence we do have suggests fairly strongly that man-made emissions are in no small part to blame (according to the IPCC, anyway, from the little I have read).

Equally, say we assign a probability that the acceleration in global warming is due to manmade emissions. How low does that probability have to be to justify a laissez faire attitude towards cutting down carbon usage?

The truthfull answer is you dont know. None of us do. Not even scientists that pretend or even believe they do.

You can hardly say we are in deep doodoo when you dont know.

Talk about missing the entire point of the scientific method. The vast majority of climate scientists (who I am prepared to cede to, you may believe otherwise, in which case I hope you live within a metre of sea level to show off the strength of your self-belief) are agreed that:

a) global warming exists
b) it's accelerating
c) the effects on humanity's current way of life given our current knowledge of climate, even in sympathetic models, is going to be pretty damn serious.

Now, we can either:
Do nothing, and hope that all the models are wrong/the effects will be less costly than the effort to avoid them (there, I've mentioned the counter-argument for you, as I don't want to make you look any more ridiculous, and it's actually where the pragmatic side of this debate occurs, in my decreasingly humble opinion)

or

act on the information we do have.

[ponders]

Global warmings real, crap, a couple of months ago Bush stated a study where he said evidence from satellite measurements and sensor boueys told us the planet was actually cooling, what he didnt say was that the measurments for the baseline were taken in the evening, for the rest of the 5years (or so) measurments were taken earlier in the day- when EVERYwhere its always cooler earlier in the day, than later!!!

[badass]

Now, we can either:
Do nothing, and hope that all the models are wrong/the effects will be less costly than the effort to avoid them (there, I've mentioned the counter-argument for you, as I don't want to make you look any more ridiculous, and it's actually where the pragmatic side of this debate occurs, in my decreasingly humble opinion)

or

act on the information we do have.

I never said anything about doing nothing, and personally believe we should attempt to reduce wastage personally.
However I'm not going to ram that down anyones throat, nor am I going to campaign on something that has negligable effect on manmade emmissions.
The point that is being missed by most is that the best way to solve any problem that is widespread is to attack the things that have the biggest effect per pound spent first, and work their way down.
4x4's have a negligable effect and people excersize their right to buy what they want.
If you follow the anto 4x4 argument through, everyone will be forces to drive small cars with sod all power that they hate.
All anti 4x4 arguments follow for large saloons, sports cars etc
In fact all luxuries will be banned since they are a waste.
Whilst the body thats only justification for its existence (The IPCC) is Global Warming may bang on about it, I chose to see the data for myself and have concluded that the strongest evidence for it (the results from monitoring stations all over the globe) is shaky at best and much of the data suggests that it is nowhere near as bad as made out, and that the link to mans activity is pretty much non existent.