Global Warming

[*Jess♥]

I think the main point of that was just to show that you can compare these stupid graphs to absolutely anything.

there was another one that was comparing the price of postage.

I'm going to pass on reading that link.. basically because i know that everyone has an agenda. everyone has something to prove.

and many of these reports have been debunked.

even if the world does get warmer, there is opportunity for migration.

the sahara used to be a lush area. if the climate changes, there may be a chance at repopulating that area along with other areas like the tundra in north canada and in siberia.

I see it as bureaucrats trying to control us. they need to feel that they are in control, when the fact is, they are not in control. if i stop using all electricity and stop using all fuels, it is not going to make any difference to our climate.

they control nothing, all they are going to try and control is people. and that isn't even going to work very well. they certainly aren't going to control the climate.

do you think it may be pretty ironic....

if all the people in the world decide to stop using certain things and try and cut down on the 'carbon footprint' bullshit... and then in a couple of years a volcano goes off.

what impact will we have really made when compared to what that volcano will do to the climate?

especially if it were the super volcano under yellowstone.

this reminds me of the type of people who don't go out of their house because they are afraid of having an accident.

they want to live to a healthy old age. but what they don't realise is that they are not actually living life.

[*YoungGuyver]

Ryuki, you just said several myths that the article covered.

First-Governments have been asking scientists to tone down the evidence. Governments don't want to change because corporations/lobbyists make too much money off the current system

Second-A few areas temporarily get better before they get worse, but can you fit the entire human race into those small regions? Some crops can be moved for a few years, while others will simply die out. Migration is not a realistic solution

And we are not talking about stopping the usage of electricity. We are talking about changing how me get it, and how we use it. We're not talking about abandoning human civilization, but modifying it.

The agenda here is to save lives. Kinda like why cars have seat belts. It's true that data can be manipulated to say anything, the point of that article is to put ALL the data on one comprehensive chunk so you can see the big picture.

For instance, earlier someone posted that human industry can't possibly affect the climate because a single volcano puts out so much more. The article points out that a volcano can put out .3 GT of carbon dioxide, life on Earth puts out around 380, the Earth absorbs around 400, and human industry 25. Volcanoes do not overpower modern industry. Modern industry is tipping the balance. And after oceans reach a certain temperature, they are expected to stop absorbing carbon dioxide.

[*Jess♥]

volcano eruptions come in lots of different sizes though.

my example, the yellowstone super volcano...

would send a cloud of ash halfway round the planet.

I guess what is really getting to me at the moment is this bloody copenhagen thing. these governments talking about trying to MAKE us change our way of living.

I'm all in favour of looking for alternate fuels. I do think that devices can be far more efficient. because it would be cheaper for a start.

we're supposed to be an advanced species, we should not be doing so much work. everything should be so much easier.

lions lie on the grass all day while humans slave away in factories.

it's ridiculous.

[*YoungGuyver]

Lions also eat there cubs when times get tough.

Ants prepare for the winter

But I do agree with you. We are slaves that work for a system that is a joke. Part of the problem is that we are so obsessed with consuming more and more. Do we really need to buy another shirt for the closet? Does everything have to be brand new? I blame the bottle cap for our modern way of thinking.

Before the bottle cap, we would wash our milk bottles, save our corks, repair our shoes, patch our pants.

Then comes along the disposable bottle cap. A cheap piece of metal that you just peel off and toss. It was so simple. It was so widespread. Once it finished its use, it became garbage. We started tossing milk containers too. And even the plates that food from McDonalds was served on (when they first started they used real plates-not cardboard or styrofoam). We have made it easy. I'm all for things being easy, but not in the way that it is wasteful. They say that the western world consumes 2/3 of the Earths resources. How does the eastern world survive with so little? What are they doing different? How can we maintain such a comfortable life without being wasteful?

When we first started developing energy efficient light bulbs they would break down after a few months to a year. Now we've got them lasting just as long or longer than their predecessors. The changes might not be easy at first, but we can figure it out.

[*Jess♥]

yeah i don't disagree with any thing there.

one of the things that is so stupid about these scientists is how they ignore the obvious.

there is snow on the ground outside right now, much of which has turned to solid ice.

it is FREEZING literally. I don't want to go outside because i came from my friends house and my hands were almost numb.

this is not global warming. it was mild last year. this year it is freaking frigid.

the climate is just fluctuating like it always does as far as i'm concerned.

they've been bitching about the ozone layer since as far back as i can remember.

according to what we were told when i was a kid, we should all have skin cancer by now.

[*YoungGuyver]

Perhaps you should actually read that link that I posted Ryuki.

And its a good thing for scientists to bitch NOW while there still is snow, BEFORE there isn't snow and we end up dead. And back in Southern Alberta, we've had a severe lack of snow. When I was a kid, I grew up with at least a foot of snow on the minimum. Now, we're lucky to get two inches. Lucky if it lasts two weeks. The weather patterns will be splotchy, (wind swirls, trees diffuse wind), as regional variables will even things out. But on a global average, this has been the hottest decade in the last 2000 years (as far as we can calculate)-and that includes the heightened solar activity from about a hundred years ago

[*Jess♥]

Perhaps you should actually read that link that I posted Ryuki.

nah, I'm pretty stubborn to be honest.

perhaps i should stop posting in this thread because i feel like i'm not likely to be very open minded about this issue.

you see, I have this strong feeling that it is simple government BS like all those lies they used to go to war in the middle east.

I'm pretty convinced they have some alternate agenda.

I was watching a program last night on channel 4. It was talking about teh little ice age.

i found it very interesting when they said on the program that scientists don't understand what caused the little ice age.

so this is just confirming my own opinion that these scientists really don't know what they are talking about when it comes to climate.

if they can't figure out what caused the mini ice age then what right do they have to tell me that the climate is changing for teh worse now and that it won't turn around unless we take action.

they have been shown to be unqualified to make these judgements.

as a result i don't trust any information posted by some scientists trying to argue one way or the other. I only interested in people opinions.

I guess i could have a read of it and see what it says.

I'm heavily sceptical though.

edit:

that website is stupid, it is asking me to pay in order to read some articles.

so i guess i'm not reading any of it anyway.

[*YoungGuyver]

Most of the war in the middle east looks like it was done for oil and profit (other industries can move in now under the western regime).

To combat global warming, the oil based industries would take a hit. Most governments have been asking scientists to tone down their results. How is this governments using global warming for an agenda? If anything, it would fit better if their were an agenda -against- global warming theories.

And to say that scientists do not understand why an ice age was caused is not completely true. Scientists look for evidence. If evidence has been destroyed, or rather, if enough evidence has been destroyed, they may be able to determine that it happened, but not enough to pick apart a cause. They may be able to tell that it happened in the past (which is prety good), now they are trying to make sense of how different pieces of evidence can be worked together to explain why. And some of them have an answer (the milankovich cycles for instance).

The causes of ice ages remain controversial for both the large-scale ice age periods and the smaller ebb and flow of glacial–interglacial periods within an ice age. The consensus is that several factors are important: atmospheric composition (the concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane); changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun known as Milankovitch cycles (and possibly the Sun's orbit around the galaxy); the motion of tectonic plates resulting in changes in the relative location and amount of continental and oceanic crust on the Earth's surface, which affect wind and ocean currents; variations in solar output; the orbital dynamics of the Earth-Moon system; and the impact of relatively large meteorites, and volcanism including eruptions of supervolcanoes.

Some of these factors influence each other. For example, changes in Earth's atmospheric composition (especially the concentrations of greenhouse gases) may alter the climate, while climate change itself can change the atmospheric composition (for example by changing the rate at which weathering removes CO2).

Maureen Raymo, William Ruddiman and others propose that the Tibetan and Colorado Plateaus are immense CO2 "scrubbers" with a capacity to remove enough CO2 from the global atmosphere to be a significant causal factor of the 40 million year Cenozoic Cooling trend. They further claim that approximately half of their uplift (and CO2 "scrubbing" capacity) occurred in the past 10 million years.[34][35]

You are going to read opinion, instead of reading results of research? Interesting method.

Sorry about the link not work. Newscientist does this from time to time, trying to get more subscriptions to pay their staff. Oh well, I guess going out and finding a bunch of links is time consuming enough to be worth getting paid for it

[*Jess♥]

You are going to read opinion, instead of reading results of research? Interesting method.

well it's not like i'm going to arrive at any answers, I'm not looking to solve global warming or anything.

I think that the most important thing is how society is going to work from now towards the future.

I'm also very concerned about politics and the state of liberty.

liberty is a big issue for me and probably for most people in the uk.

do you realise that the UK has the highest concentration of CCTV in the world?

we are the most watched nation and our government is increasingly moving towards the 'nanny state' .

so this is what concerns me.. when government starts to say " how are we going to fix global warming" and their answer involves trying to control the public even more...

I understand that the world can get colder before it gets warmer. it is going like the arctic in the uk at the moment. I am not so ignorant that i would think this is not a sign of climate instability.

I can agree that the climate will fluctuate. do i think we are a direct cause? i'm not so sure.

do i think that any kinds of system that messes up my life will help? no. absolutely not.

we are but a fraction of the world population. the vast majority of the worlds population is in china and india. and given the state of politics right now.. and economics... I really don't see why i should make my life more difficult when the effect it is gonna have is like a fly trying to break the ice on a pond that people are skating on.

what i think the real solution is, is not doing any cutbacks or anything. I think technology is the answer. they need to invent something that will help to stabilise teh climate.

[*YoungGuyver]

That's what the cutbacks are for.

The current plans being proposed are to penalize companies that don't make changes, or at least companies that continue to put out excessive amounts of carbon dioxide. Since third world countries have huge populations, and are trying to develop their industry, it would be disastrous if they followed in our foot steps. The idea is that the money garnered from carbon tax will be used in new tech for developing countries so they don't push us over the edge.

People that have money have already started on new infrastructure over here. We've already got wind farms scattered all over the prairies. It's kind of a legal hurdle now to get some of this tech passed. Canada doesn't allow electric cars on the road, for instance. Which is weird, my new province produces them, but ships them all to California. My old city is incredibly windy, but banned wind mills within city limits-legislated dependency upon the power companies. Getting the government to change the laws is kind of a big issue.

[*Jess♥]

that's all good progress, i'm happy to hear stuff like that.

i'd like it if the big money company's had no way to block progress.

but it is problematic with all the corruption in governments.

i'd like to replace my roof tiles with solar panels.

that would make much more sense than any windmills.

we can save money and power, we have the technology.

[*YoungGuyver]

There are some people here that sell energy back to the energy companies because they generate more than they use, and are still tied into the grid for back up