[GlendaleViper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MD1032 /img/forum/go_quote.gif For right now, though, the Earth is doing all right. Global climate change right now is very minuscule, and we've got ****-tons of resources left. New oil fields are being discovered faster than we can use them, and hell, we're sitting on the Saudi Arabia of coal here in the USA.

I have to ask... are you serious? Two of the alleged biggest contributors to the carbon crisis... just... just wow. You know, we don't HAVE to use everything we've got. Alternative fuels aren't something to proliferate only when other means are gone. And as legitimate as the other topics you bring up are, are you doing anything about it? Are you fighting genocide and DDT use abroad? The fact is, this fight against the destruction of the global environment is something we can very easily combat as individuals, little by little. I don't understand this mentality at all, I'm sorry.

 

[fraseyboy]

Global Warming reminds of my Final Fantasy 7.

 

[SonicDawg]

I can understand the frustration of people's apathy. Yeah, sure it is not the most pressing issue at the moment, but it WILL become the biggest issue if left untouched.

 

[marvin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nor_spoon /img/forum/go_quote.gif This is just one reason that we must do something about it now, and not wait until its too late. But unfortunately, I guess that's human nature...

Doing something about it now may be a bigger problem than not doing anything at all. If the cost/benefit ratio of going green isn't carefully analyzed, it's very possible that we would do a hell of a lot more harm to humans than we would if we did nothing at all.

For example, take Kyoto. It'd put carbon (read: energy) caps on the world's most productive per unit of greenhouse gas economies, while letting the countries with the least efficient economies off the hook. That's completely insane in the modern multinational corporate controlled world and only creates more incentives to ship greenhouse gas intensive processes to less efficient countries. We could easily end off worse than before. Really no way to short circuit that other than to put caps on third world countries too.

But that also has a cost. A lot of the huge strides in quality of life came with the increased use of greenhouse gas producing energy sources. Would unchecked global warming or crippling economic restrictions lessen their quality of life more? The new Nano car sums this up neatly. The introduction of millions of inexpensive cars will increase transportation related greenhouse gas production in India, but if you're an Indian man with a family, that's far outweighed by the safety differential between cars and motorcycles in a low speed accident.

There's also economic cost benefit issues to work out. Currently, non-AGW contributing (save for nukes, which come with their own set of political issues) sources of energy cost significantly more than AGW contributing sources of energy. Same thing for low-AGW load products vs high-AGW load products. Is it better to throw money at the low-AGW energy/products, or is it better to carbon tax high-AGW load products and dump that money into green research and engineering? Or both? Or neither?

Not to mention the host of unintended consequences. CAFE laws were made to decrease gasoline usage, but also lead to the rise of monstrous SUVs. Laws restricting the use of DDT due to environmental concerns crippled efforts to fight mosquito borne pathogens. "Clean" energy sources in many areas ended up being environmental disasters. CFL disposal is problematic due to heavy metal contamination issues.

Course, it might end up that all of this is just an artifact of forcing imperfect computer models to approximate the real world's historical data. Still, reducing fossil fuel usage, energy consumption, and reformatting society along the lines of a sustainable living model are all good goals. In either circumstance, the world's not collapsing tomorrow. Personal choices and efforts to reduce energy consumption and resource usage should be encouraged. But for larger scale efforts, taking measured steps after the effects have been determined is a far better course of action than impulsive and ill planned measures. Not that anything like that could be possible given the overheated nature of the global warming debate.

 

[skullguise]

And who says doing something about Global Warming (GW) and doing something about other issues are mutually exclusive? EDIT: And BTW, are you folks saying there are other priorities right now DOING anything specific about it? If not, why not? And if you have that time since you AREN'T doing anything else, why not do something that can help reduce the future risk of GW.

Who says you can't buy flourescent or LED lights, recycle more, shut off your PC at night, AND write your congressman about Iraq/The Middle East/Health Care, whatever?

We as people can do a LOT, if we each do a little but MANY of us do that little bit. I think you can find you don't inconvenience yourself too much at all by doing some small things. And seeing that it doesn't take much, you may even find yourself doing MORE things to help.

I agree, the self-centered and small-minded comments in some of these posts scares the heck out of me.....

 

[Rav]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvin /img/forum/go_quote.gif Course, it might end up that all of this is just an artifact of forcing imperfect computer models to approximate the real world's historical data. Still, reducing fossil fuel usage, energy consumption, and reformatting society along the lines of a sustainable living model are all good goals. In either circumstance, the world's not collapsing tomorrow. Personal choices and efforts to reduce energy consumption and resource usage should be encouraged. But for larger scale efforts, taking measured steps after the effects have been determined is a far better course of action than impulsive and ill planned measures. Not that anything like that could be possible given the overheated nature of the global warming debate.

Ding, perfectly sums up my feelings.

 

[aaron-xp]

This is just Pascal's wager reworded for global warming.

Consequence of action VS. Consequence of inaction for risk assessment.

Interesting.

EDIT: (oh my gosh, that's exactly what the end of the video mentioned).

 

[acidbasement]

I wonder how much it will cost to erect permanent dykes around every coastal and low-lying city in the world, relative to the cost of relocating everyone who lives therein as sea levels rise. We clearly cannot afford not to force our grandchildren to have this debate.

 

[mark_h]

difficult to write this without thinking I am pontificating but, I am a final year Architecture student - I specialise in enviromental design solutions. Every month the evidence that we are up the creek grows, it is impossible to ignore, it is very real and it is very, very immediate - to say it will not happen in our lifetime is wrong. to say we cannot change or make a difference is wrong! - man this is heavy.

 

[slwiser]

Evidence is not rhetoric but rhetoric is what passes for evidence today. The louder the rhetoric the more the rhetoric is assumed to be fact. Sun activity has everything to do with the earth's climate much more than anything mankind can do about it. In 10-15 years we will see the results of a declining Sun activity on our climate and again be in fear of a new small Ice Age. We have just passed over a period of very high Sun activity, the highest we have had in decades. But fear sells and it works so the fearing mongering will continue since we have such short memories of what went on in our past. Each generation has it's own memories and forgets what their parent's generation concerns were.

 

[zotjen]

I think the big problem is that we have no way of knowing exactly how much of our actions are contributing to global warming. My own personal opinion is that although we may be accelerating it (by how much is another question), global warming is not something we are personally responsible for. The Earth has been around a lot longer than we have and I believe that climate changes are merely cyclical.

When I was in the 3rd grade, almost 35 years ago, my teacher told our class that one day New York would be as warm as Florida. I also seem to recall many scientists predicting that there would be another ice age someday. When that ice age does come again, what will we be blaming it on then, provided man is still around?

 

[acidbasement]

Quote:

Originally Posted by slwiser /img/forum/go_quote.gif Evidence is not rhetoric but rhetoric is what passes for evidence today. The louder the rhetoric the more the rhetoric is assumed to be fact. Sun activity has everything to do with the earth's climate much more than anything mankind can do about it. In 10-15 years we will see the results of a declining Sun activity on our climate and again be in fear of a new small Ice Age. We have just passed over a period of very high Sun activity, the highest we have had in decades. But fear sells and it works so the fearing mongering will continue since we have such short memories of what went on in our past. Each generation has it's own memories and forgets what their parent's generation concerns were.

And this is why we should listen to the popular press instead of reading scientific journals when trying to understand complex phenomena (I'm being sarcastic for those who cannot see my eyes rolling). I'll go out on a limb and believe those who are at the cutting edge of research in this area, none of whom share this sun-activity opinion.

 

[nibiyabi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by slwiser /img/forum/go_quote.gif Evidence is not rhetoric but rhetoric is what passes for evidence today. The louder the rhetoric the more the rhetoric is assumed to be fact. Sun activity has everything to do with the earth's climate much more than anything mankind can do about it. In 10-15 years we will see the results of a declining Sun activity on our climate and again be in fear of a new small Ice Age. We have just passed over a period of very high Sun activity, the highest we have had in decades. But fear sells and it works so the fearing mongering will continue since we have such short memories of what went on in our past. Each generation has it's own memories and forgets what their parent's generation concerns were.

Yup. According to the New York Times archives, in the 1920s-1930s we endured catastrophic global cooling, then the 1940s-1960s was catastrophic global warming, then 1950s-1990s was catastrophic manmade global cooling (yes, with overlap), and then the 1970s to the present has been catastrophic manmade global warming (a lot of overlap). When the journalists who wrote about the catastrophic manmade global cooling twenty or thirty years ago are questioned about it today, they either deny writing those pieces or they say that they were "misinformed" at the time. And alarmists use the coldest year on record (1962 I believe) to chart the current warming trend. But if they used 1998 (the hottest year on record) or 1932 (not as hot as 1998 but hotter than the last few years), we are in a ten-year cooling trend (or a seventy-six-year cooling trend). Or even the Medieval Warm Period (during the Renaissance), estimated to be hotter than even 1998, putting us in a centuries-long cooling trend. Or we can look at the Little Ice Age (during the Dark Ages), putting us in a warming trend that spans more than a millennium.

You can choose whichever reference point best suits your argument and magically everybody is right.

 

[nibiyabi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by acidbasement /img/forum/go_quote.gif And this is why we should listen to the popular press instead of reading scientific journals when trying to understand complex phenomena (I'm being sarcastic for those who cannot see my eyes rolling). I'll go out on a limb and believe those who are at the cutting edge of research in this area, none of whom share this sun-activity opinion.

By the way, the hypocrisy of this is hilarious. The climatologists (of which there are only about eighty in the US) are the ones putting forth this kind of research that gets ignored by the media. The media are the ones blowing the alarmist horn, bringing in waves of people who are not suited to discuss climate change (e.g., biologists and zoologists) and claiming that they are climatologists because they can give accurate descriptions of what would happen were the Earth to get twenty degrees hotter or whatever.

 

[slwiser]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nibiyabi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yup. According to the New York Times archives, in the 1920s-1930s we endured catastrophic global cooling, then the 1940s-1960s was catastrophic global warming, then 1950s-1990s was catastrophic manmade global cooling (yes, with overlap), and then the 1970s to the present has been catastrophic manmade global warming (a lot of overlap). When the journalists who wrote about the catastrophic manmade global cooling twenty or thirty years ago are questioned about it today, they either deny writing those pieces or they say that they were "misinformed" at the time. And alarmists use the coldest year on record (1962 I believe) to chart the current warming trend. But if they used 1998 (the hottest year on record) or 1932 (not as hot as 1998 but hotter than the last few years), we are in a ten-year cooling trend (or a seventy-six-year cooling trend). Or even the Medieval Warm Period (during the Renaissance), estimated to be hotter than even 1998, putting us in a centuries-long cooling trend. Or we can look at the Little Ice Age (during the Dark Ages), putting us in a warming trend that spans more than a millennium. You can choose whichever reference point best suits your argument and magically everybody is right.

Great summary....