pig

We already could feed the starving people of the world, save that it's economically infeasable. How's that for fun? Hey Starvin' Marvin, want more than a cup of rice a day? Ooops, sorry had to burn that corn because of that black market affect. I'm reducing a serious problem to a ridiculous example, but still it makes me a little vexed, as SuperBelt might say.

At least the chickas would all have tans until they had that little melanoma problem

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Re SuperBelt : exactly.

Re ObieX : I think that 2 is exactly on. I think 1 is more complicated, sort of like the world starvation issue. Exxon and Sunoco and all the rest of them are buying up patents right and left to corner the market on alternative energies, and they put independent research into it as well. These companies and our government are aware of peak oil as much as anyone else. I just saw data from Savanah River National Labs that acknowledges as much two weeks ago. They just want to control the technology and the transition to maximize $$$ and to corner the market. I think they're interested in doing the right thing...eventually, which makes it the wrong thing because the time lag could be so dangerous. Perhaps this was your point - I'm just saying they don't want to cut out alternative fuel sources, they just want to stifle them for a while and then focus on those that can be controlled.

edit but yes, the level of entanglement between business concerns and our political structures is a serious problem. Putting the wolf in charge of the hen house, and all that stuff.

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0energy0

I've been thinking about global warming lately.

The environment is deteriorating with our pollution. I am not an environmentalist, but I think we should save our energy.

I took a glimpse of global warming in the episode of Captain Planet when Wheeler is sent to the future after he refuses to accept his ring.

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wnker85

My point was that this data is being used to fuel emotional appeal to get their side of the argument talked about.

It is nice to say that global warming is all man's fault, but we have seen large meathane gas eruptions in the sea. Tjhese releases are far larger than what we puit out from our cars. And we all know Meathane is a "green house gas."

So, the world is heating up on its own, and we are not taking time to really look at our data. All these theroies are all based off each other. I do not trust this data that is coming out, because I have seen both sides of the argument and the global warming side has less data that spans a lesser time period.

pig

I'll agree with this part without reservation. It's both sides, and emotional appeal has always been a large part of the view of science in the public eye. It is also emotional appeal to hint that people might be smarter than their contemporaries if they can see through this ridiculous new-age science hippola crap, which is the predominant ad pitch I see the anti-global warming crowd throwing out. I dislike both of them, despite my obvious position on the matter as a whole. As previously stated, not only is their nothing wrong with having an emotional response to your work / your world, but it is prerequisite to be effective / enact change. That doesn't make uninformed emotional appeal conducive to effective change, which is what I think you are saying?

First, I'm not aware that the position that global warming is solely man's fault has been stated, at least not here, yet - but I think that the position has been stated that technological practices of man which contribute to global warming phenomena should be discouraged. Perhaps I am wrong. I am aware of the methane gas eruptions in the sea from watching National Geographic / Discovery, and I aware of the possible effect of cow flatulence. However, I am not clear on the exact frequency of these eruptions, the depth at which they occur, nor the exact solubility of methane in water. Do you have a source for this? I am not trying to be a smart ass, but I would be interested to learn more about it. My intuition is that if this is a semi-rare occurance, then the time integrated effect of these eruptions may be much less than the output from factories / automobiles on a continuous basis (increasing with time too), while a single blast may be much larger than, say, the emissions of the automobiles in North America on an annual basis. I am not stating any of this as fact, only trying to gain some perspective on the information which you have shared.

You may not, and I may not - but I'm guessing that some people are. This is not my specific field, and thus I can not claim expertise. I do know that there are experts in the field, and it seems like an awful lot of them are becoming very adament about the fact that we need to pump our brakes a little bit on our emission levels.

Which theories are you referring to?

I accidentally erased the part considering the time scale of data collection for global warming, but I would say that 1. I am highly skeptical that such a sweeping statement is representative of serious research being conducted in the field, otherwise no one would ever be able to publish because it is highly improbable that you or I are the first people to recognize that post-Industrial Revolution data are on the same time scale as the geological formation of the Earth's environment, and 2. As for man's effect on the global warming front, data prior to about 1850 would be useless.

/ps. I felt compelled to point out a couple of typos given your sig. I hope you take it in the right way - not trying to be a dick. Just thought it was funny

edit: //ps - if the Earth is heating itself up, wouldn't that make the drive to reduce our contribution to it even stronger, or else go ahead and legalize herb and heroin and so forth. I mean, if we're getting ready to go ahead and get all paleozoic up in here, why fuck around? Drop the rest of this crap, and let's make operation Get My Ass on Mars a lot more important

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Rudel73

what i dont understand is how all this climate change happened before man was around? Like the ice age etc...there was no man around to mess anything up so why did the climate change? is it not normal for the climate to change on its own??

Aladdin Sane

I agree with samcol, 100 percent.

I think the whole thing has been cooked up by statist, totalitarian busybodies who want to limit individualism. They want to tell the rest of us to lower our expectations in life, to want less, to have less, to be happy with less, and most of all to trust them to tell us how to live. The folks who dreamed this stuff up are no different than all the other phony do-gooders and fake moralists of the past. What they want, they want "for the good of us all," but in the end they have always been exposed as sadistic thugs who'll do anything to get power.

Human-induced global warming is a fraud.

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ObieX

Well thats where part of the problem is. Technically we've entered a time when the temperatures are supposed to be heading DOWN. Heading toward another ice-age type time. So technically even if the temperatures were to stay the same it would be global warming, since according to the natural cycle temperatures would be higher than they're supposed to be. The real problem now is that instead of temperatures going down as they should be at this point in history, or even staying the same, they're going up. Imagine how bad it would be if we werent heading into a time when temperatures were going down? There would be no doubt that there is global warming because it would be much more noticable.

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skier

Anyone read scientific american? Their article a few issues back about how humans began affecting the world climate some 4000 years ago was really interesting.

Come on people- we're a population 6 billion strong, consuming and wasting enormous amounts of resources. We're using up the trillions of gallons of oil that have been slowing building up for billions of years, that have been locked in our soil, in little over a century- and Millions of tonnes of that oil we're throwing into the atmosphere as CO2, CO, and who knows what else. Coal, gas, oil, wood- they are all being consumed and a lot of it is released as smoke. In the miniscule time that man has been "civilized", we've had an impact on our world no less than a global disaster has. We've triggered massive dieoffs, endangered and outright exterminated countless other species, altered immeasurably the land around us- changed forest into plain, desert into oasis, swamp into suburbia.

The moment we became creative and intelligent, we began changing our environment to suit us instead of altering ourselves to suit the environment. And by doing so we prospered in our artifice. But alteration did damage. With 6+ billion all altering, changing, destroying (and creating), we've changed the world significantly enough that some very respected scientists are saying we have arrived at a cusp. One that will seriously change the face of our world as we know it. Deserts will be flooded. Plains and forests will become deserts. The sea level will rise and shoreline cities will sink into the ocean. Global warming will have very serious consequences. I have no doubt in my mind though that humanity will survive, although i think it'll be very uncomfortable for a while.

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Superbelt

This is probrably going to stretch the page, but...

Milankovich Cycles.
The eccentricity is the especially important part for you to understand, but all three parts, eccentricity, tilt and precession combine to dictate our interglaciation. The cycle that is relatively circular around the sun gives even heating throught the year. The axis tilt is also pretty minor which keeps the sun angles at the poles steep throughout the year. (Ice build up)
The odd heating eccentricity has the earth very close to the sun for half the year, and direct sunlight that is heating the earth moves substantially north and south of the equator. This is a heating cycle.

We are in the circular part of the cycle right now. We should be getting colder.

Here, read up on the Milankovich Cycle

Ace_O_Spades

I know this might be sarcasm, but it also might not.... And if it isn't, then this kind of thinking really scares me.

And just makes me give a face like this:



To humanity.

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Feh.