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Originally Posted by tecoyah
I was tempted to point out a similar observation raveneye, but as of late find this whole debate rather pointless. Regardless of Data, there will be those who decide the climate change issue is not important, and those who do. I have given up trying to "Convince" anyone unwilling to see what the scientific community has given them....they are irrelevant to the problem.
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Well I don't think they're
politically irrelevant -- as we all know, they sometimes get elected two-term POTUS.... But I don't mind showing how intellectually bankrupt they are, not to teach any pigs to sing, but rather for anybody in the audience who is interested and who votes.
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Originally Posted by ASU2003
1. How has the planet corrected the hot temperature in the past?
2. How do we clean up the environment and atmosphere to make humans impact on the temperature less of a debate?
3. What are we going to do if the temperature goes up at an accelerated rate due to something like the ocean currents slowing down due to fresh water consentrations, the white polar ice cap not reflecting sunlight throughout the summer, the natural CO2 scrubbers can't keep up with our increased emmissions?
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1. Mainly sun cycles and volcanic eruption cycles, not much help to us now.
2. It's about 99.9% politics -- there are no technological obstacles anymore, and the U.S. is in the driver's seat.
3. We've probably already passed the tipping point for the arctic polar ice (this year, in fact). It will most likely be gone during the summers by 10 years or so, maybe as early as 4 years according to some models, along with all the specialized species (the most charismatic being the polar bears and walruses). The 2000 election was probably the last chance we had to save it. The next U.S. election will be critical for the Greenland ice and the Antarctic, but we might even be too late for them as well. It's easy to predict in general what physically will happen to the earth if we don't act in the next 5-10 years. How people will respond is harder to know. At least we can expect millions of very pissed off folks by 2050, and given human nature, they'll all be looking for a scapegoat.
EDIT: I didn't notice the new GW thread. Followups should probably go there.