Climate Change and Global WarmingFollow

I can see a lot of you people don't believe in climate change, global warming, or anything along that line. Thats fine, everyone's opinion is valid, but suppose for one second that this whole thing is true? That we are changing the earth in such a way that would lead to catastrophic world events, the collapse of agriculture, forestry, fisheries in areas sensitive to climate change. This for one is not good for any economy, and in third world countries could lead to massive loss of life. 100,000 people in Bangladesh along live within 3 feet of the ocean. I for one am not the kind of people to play call my bluff with mother nature, what happens when you lose? I don't want my children and grandchildren to inherit an earth in this hypothetical situation.

So what can we do? Change does not mean shutting down the American economy as you all seem to think. Research and development in alternate sources of energy would create thousands of new jobs, as well as providing clean energy. It would cut the demand in fossil fuels as well as improve quility of life. It doesn't mean riding a horse everywhere you want to go, subtle changes in lifestyle alone can have a dramatic impact on our ecosystem. Carpool, ride the bus, use less electricity etc.

Yes, but to you and others, not signing the Kyoto agreement is a most damning indictment against the Bush administration. Yet when critically examined, wholesale acceptance of a flawed accord yields more problems than it solves-- especially when measured against the standard of pollution and environmentalism. This why I always stand amazed when I hear the howls of outrage from Greenies when it is brought up.

Couple that with hyperbole like Smash's where he says not signing the accord means we can "pollute with impunity." Now really, does he actually believe that corporations can dump DDT and dioxin into rivers and drinking water with no consequences, even if they were disposed to do so?

Posts like that and yours at the beginning of this thread undercut the very foundation of argument you are attempting to build. Wildeyed accusations, outrageous statements with no basis in fact or reason, and doomsday scenarios just make environmentalism a fringe political activity. Couple that with Greenies driving ancient cars like VW busses which throw out more pollutants than a new car and it begins to smack of Blame America First-ism and Ludditism.

You'd be better served by a sober analysis, incremental change, and an alliance with conservative political thinking to effect the socio-political seachange you so desire. Continued association with animal rights groups, anarchists against the World Trade Organization, and leftist radical extremist groups can only continue to ruin any chance of achieving your goals.

Totem

You're a gay Frenchman, aren't you? Yeah, I thought so. Take that little pizzaboy beret off your head, shove it up that Parisian Wehrmacht victory boulevard that ends in what you call your A$$ d'Triumph and sing "Marseilles," you numbnutted 2 post wonder.

Ooops, I forgot. This is the Sandbox. I apologise for calling you French-- that was an insult to gay men like you everywhere.

Totem



Edited, Thu Sep 16 09:35:59 2004 by Totem

I don't think gbaji has denied either of those things. He is saying that it is premature to claim that there is a definitive link between the two. It's possible that the changes in global climate are part of a natural cycle, and that any effects we are having on it are negligible.

There is another issue at play here too, TStephens-- one where it fits into the conspiracy prone world view of fringe groups to automatically assume that some larger, more nefarious evil scheme is being hatched by the greedy military industrial complex, wherein pollution is a necessary part of their plan to despoil the planet.

It is inconceivable to them that our standards are considerably more environmentally friendly than say, some former East Bloc nation pumping coal waste products into the air or the Italians in Rome, whose vehicle emissions are so high as to make Los Angeles' air quality seem downright healthy by comparison.

It is typical of the Left to put their blinders on and ignore the selfish wrongs they commit in their ongoing efforts to force their views on others. Take San Francisco for example. The legislature has forced various air quality mandates on the Central Valley, but ignores the fact that the Delta breeze pushes all the exhaust from the Bay into the valley. But whose emissions are tightly regulated? No, not the "environmentally conscious" Greenies out there in Marin County, but the Central Valley who breathes the unregulated crap that flows from the so-called Green city all the whackos love to reside in.

Totem

Edited, Thu Sep 16 10:00:14 2004 by Totem

no dumb a$$ homophobic bastid im american, 2nd im not post wondering. just because i havnt sat aroun postin 9k diff threads and reply's about bull sh** like you did dosnt mean im post wondering. besides how do u think people find threads they wonder you dumb bastid. gay gay gay gay yeh w/e your the one that uses the word with a passion

Global warming is one thing, blaming America for it is another. Especially if you're from here...I mean damn....move to france if you hate this country so much!



Hmm is that true? I'd like to know how you know that..I mean did you do some kind of survey or experiment...or do you just think that you

HAVE

to be right?

I think it's funny that every decade thinks that they are in the end of times...as a species we just like to have drama I guess.

And for those that are hardcore liberal "Save a tree, kill a newborn baby" "Gay marriages are OK, take that cross out of the court" followers...take a moment to think...really think(not bash every religious, conservative person alive) and see where you find yourself. There's a reason why most of the country backs Bush, and are going to vote for him before, and after they vote for him.

People just please think for yourselves, and don't let others do it for you.

Bah. I wrote something up last night. Must have gotten an error when submitting or something. Whatever.

Yeah. I'm not denying that those individual scientific processes exist. My issue is with assuming that one is causative to the other, or that we understand them completely.


I can describe completely the process of ballistics and the motion of a bullet traveling from a gun into a target. I could then describe the damage that bullet would do to a human target. I could even then show statistics saying that more guns are being fired today then there were yesterday. I could also show that the death rate today was higher then it was yesterday. However, none of that information *proves* that the increase in deaths was caused by the increase in guns being fired.

They could have all died from eating bad Big Macs for all we know.


You've also got to remember that the whole greenhouse effect is just *one* theory about global warming. It's a popular one, but I have a suspicion that that's largely because we *like* theories that allow us to blame the ills of the world on industry and government. One that looks at natural causes and dismisses the effects we humans have as too minor to make a difference are ignored because they don't seem nearly as dramatic on the evening news.


A while ago, I was watching the Discovery Channel, and some scientist was talking about a theory for long term global climate change. I don't remember all the details, so this may not be 100% (the terms and specific chemical processes I've long since forgotten), but it should be close.

Basically, the theory went that the changes from cool to warm actually happen much faster and dramatically then previously expected. The evidence was the carbonites in glacier ice, and layers of more carbonites in the deep oceans. The theory is that as the world naturally warms up, glacier ice will sheet off the icecaps. Much of it will float as icebergs, but large chunks will sink rapidly through the layers in the ocean, kicking up CO2 gas. This gas collects in the atmosphere, causing the greenhouse effect mentioned above, which in turn accelerates the process of glacier sheeting. In a very short amount of time, the climate changes from cool and dry to warm and wet.

The theory went on to presume that over time in the warm/wet phase (thousands of years at least), other chemical process that are as yet not understood (because we haven't been around to see it), will gradually reverse this trend. IR blocking processes in the air will occur which will cause a cooling. This will cause precipitation in the form of snow and ice in the polar regions, creating glaciers that will move across the land. During an equally short period, we'll move from warm/wet, to cool/wet, to cool dry as the glaciers form, expand, then gradually contract again. Eventually, the process will repeat leaving us once again with carbonite glaciers and carbonite layers in the water, prepatory to another shift back to warm/wet.


If that theory is true, then the CO2 increase in the air isn't caused solely by man's activities but is the result of glacier sheeting. It's sell perpetuating though, and there's not really anything we can do to stop it. In fact, we may cause irrevocable harm to the cycle of the earth if we try to stop it.


Is this theory valid? I have no idea. My point is that we don't know. There are nearly as many theories as there are scientists in the field, and while there's a lot of overlap and accepted processes, no one really agrees on what it all means to the big picture.

Taking drastic action because we think that maybe it'll have a positive effect is a bad idea. Taking moderate effects to reduce the overall effect man is having while still generating as much productivity as possible is a good idea though. But as I and Totem have both pointed out, the Kyoto accords made absolutely no guidelines based on pollution relative to productivity. It was purely about the total emissions of a particular set of chemicals that may or may not matter at all. That's why it was a really poor accord. All it did was punish nations like the US who already have pretty strict pollution laws, but exceed the limits in the accord purely because our industrial output is so high, while giving a total buy to nations with huge pollution rates while producing very little.



Heh. Which brings up one subject I always get annoyed about. There is this assumption by the "greenies" that anything agrarian is "better" then anything industrial. Yet industrialized nations can feed more people using less natural resources, and less land space. They ignore the "natural" chemical emissions from livestock and plants, while focusing in on the "unatural" emissions of factories. Progressing from an assumption that one is just inherently better then the other is totall flawed, but that's sadly exactly how many of the environmental activists work. And due to that, it's also often how many of our laws get passed. But I guess that's just another issue.

And honestly, after reading through these posts, and thinking about some of the alternate theories proposed, I've decided to stop posting here. It seems like no one here has a faint sense of how basic chemistry, biology, or geology works, so there is no point in discussing anything involving the preceeding here. It was worth a shot, but the 95% of the replies were nothing but "you're wrong but I don't know how, here is my theory that does not make and rational sense." There were a few intresting posts, but the majority of what was written here was garbage. Although in reality, that is what I expected based on the genre of people posting on a site such as this. Stick to your videogames kiddies, you'll do us all a favour. Rate me down if you want, I quit FFXI to take up a research project at UBC, and want to spend time with my new girlfriend.

Cheers,
~Nick

Hmm, so what you're saying is that you didn't find a rigorous scientific debate on an internet gaming forum. Odd, that's where most Nobel prize winners get their material.

So you swapped FFXI for a research project and a girlfriend; I have this strange idea that you were probably better at FFXI.

Stick to what you know.

I'd say that it was pretty stupid of you to have brought it up if you weren't prepared to explain it better, then, wouldn't you?

humans have added a significantly higher quantity of poisons into the atmosphere in a very very very short time. 100 years is not even measurable on a geological time table.

the rate we have added gasses to our atmosphere with each 10 year period is exponential to boot.

i have listened to both sides of the argument on global warming. both have valid points. but what the Bush party DOES NOT take into account is the addition of the human factor into their senario.

their stand is global warming would happen anyway, human or no humans.

on this, i agree.

but they conviently END their testing right there. what will happen to this planet with the naturally occuring global warming effects when added to the poisons we pump into the atmosphere?

and how do you measure it?

i am of the mind we should try our best not to destroy that which supports our very existance.

the Bush addministraition is of the mind we should not interfere with the profits of big bussiness based on something we do not fully understand, and cannot prevent in the end anyway.

most of the word stands behind the kyoto treaty. most of the word feels erroring on the side of caution is the only way to proceed based on the importance of our enviroment.

Bush, some hard core republicans, most big bussinesses, and a host of small third world developing countries are aginst it based on how it affects them FINANCIALLY.

im a bottom line kind of guy. bottom line is i can probably survive without money. man kind is, and was doing it for most of the time we have existed. bottom line is all the money in the world cant help me if i cant breath, or drink a glass of water.

it is in the end fiscally smart to develop industry that is enviroment freindly, even if we have to forse the issue by slaping the pee pee,s of some greedy bussiness owners because they are crying they want their money RIGHT NOW.

it is one world, and one people. take care of both as if your life depended on it. cause it does......