Environmentalism

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The beauty though; awareness creates demand, demand creates profitability and preference. That has a lot of impact in terms of firing up the research engines. Solar is moving along quite well these days and, I'm starting to thing carbon sequestering technology might be on time. Solutions of that sort help bypass the kinds of Faustian trade-offs we've often been haggling about between economy and security vs. pending climate disaster.

Yah, that was the suggestion from Superfreakonomics, but I think that's really far fetched. I think really the only solution is to consume less and stop being so greedy. I disagree with that, because it suggests a hypothetical that's yet to materialize, when there are solutions already at hand that are well demonstrated to work. Its just a way of saying "I want things to change, but I want to keep the same exact habits I have now, so I;m gonna opt out for a solution that science hasn't even come up with (or may never come up with).

CO2 isn't the only problem either in terms of the environment crisis. I actually read that global topsoil depletion may be a bigger threat to civilization.

That's why I'm studying permaculture and sustainable housing. Really a lot of the fuel we use is unnecessary. In terms of heating and cooling, houses are very inefficient. We compensate for bad building design by wasting massive amounts of energy and money when we could simply just be more strategic in where windows are placed and use better insulation.

Yah, I know what background radiation is. Its what I heard from a friends brother, who was monitoring snow in the north east with a geiger counter. Its also what I've been reading from independent people who monitor it. I don't trust Associated press or the mainstream media when it comes to the radiation. I think its far worst than what's being reported. In the Ukraine, one, much smaller reactor when down and there were infants being born with deformities. In Japan, 3, much larger reactors went down, one powered with MOX, fuel (plutonium), and were hearing nothing about people dying of radiation sickness. I don't buy it, and I think were being lied to. I'll ask my friend to contact his brother sometime so I can post his data on here. I think he works for one of the Universities up there or is a grad student or something. I'll get the info so I have something more tangible than simply what I just heard, word of mouth. Its possible the Pacific ocean could die off from all the radiation leaking into it. That's how bad he was saying it was anyway. I've heard that one pound of plutonium, if equally distributed globally, could kill every person. If that's the case, were screwed. I've seen evidence that its far less severe than this, like in the range of several million, but still really bad. It isn't just pounds of this stuff but tons contaminating the environment and going into the ocean.

People don't want to acknowledge painful truths.

There is such a thing as global warming. There is such a thing as overpopulation. There is such a thing as people are starving for no good reason.

They are all basic facts that people don't want to face. That is what it all comes down to in the end.

Personally, I don't think human beings are powerful enough to create the end of world. I think it is narcissistic to think we are. The end of the world will probably be a natural even like a huge asteroid hitting the earth. The other possibility is nuclear war. These nuclear weapons are dumb and stupid. We are just damaging ourself.

As far as global warming "destroying Earth", I don't know, I think it will come after the end of the world, meaning it won't matter at all. I am a pessimist. I am sorry. But a single individual showering for 5 minutes rather than 10 is not going to make a damn bit of difference in the long run. A few people driving hybrids rather than gas cars is not going to make a damn bit of a difference when there are factories polluting endlessly. It is just so ridiculous and it is out of control.

Human beings create destruction. I wish I were a cat or an elephant or a dolphin, lol. Life would be so much simpler. Alright, I don't know what I am taling about seriously people need to get a grip.

A number of reasons

I know that this has been a bad year for global warming greens. In many ways it has been good news presented to the rest of us. New research came out showing the Himalayan mountains are not warming, additionally that Co2 levels are expected to drop unexpectedly from predicted forecasts. But probably the worst hit for greens imagine has been Peter Gleick and his using of fake documents. Gaining the publics trust back in global warming after that will be an uphill battle.

"The ‘Al Gore Hardest Hit’ Story of the Day: Himalayan Glaciers Not Melting"

http://dougpowers.com/2012/02/09/al-gore-hardest-hit/

&

"Global Warming Engine Unexpectedly Slows"

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/ ... dly-slows/

&

"Green Movement Jumps the Shark"

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/ ... the-shark/

excerpt:

What's funny is that you probably don't even understand what that last quote is about.

A climate scientist tricked the Heartland Institute, a backer of global warming denialists, into sending him some of their private information. He has since admitted it was inappropriate to do that and apologized. But the information is out there, showing they were paying global warming denialists a great deal of money to continue their public rhetoric and that they had concocted a plan to attack any teaching of gloabl warming in schools.

This is idential to what creationists get up to. Not doing original research but looking to attack the teaching of evolution in school. But it's been obvious for many years that global warming denialists use the same tactics as creationists.

Most of them are the same people :/ don't forget they often reference the same research they criticize in cherry picked attempts to validate their assertions

And as with creationists denialists are often so confused and angry that they can be led into making inconsistent arguments. You'll have a guy say the ice isnt melting, then admit that it's warming but claim that it's not caused by man. So why would adding heat not melt the ice?

The ice is melting globally. Here and there you have pockets where it's slower or faster and a few rare places where you have some growth due to local conditions. But a net loss is happening.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/featur ... 20208.html

During the eruption of the Siberian and Deccan Trap, the ice melted completely. And that was before there were humans. So the question is this: Is human activity solely the cause of the current melting of glacial ice or are there other natural causes?

ruveyn

Obviously tremendous natural events can alter the climate in short order. But there is nothing of that kind happening. The most noteworthy variable in the modern climate is anthropogenic impact.

The main regulators of temperature are the clouds. Cloud formation is heavily impacted by secondary and tertiary cosmic rays. The earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays and at times the bombardment is heavier than at other times. The people pushing AGW have not properly weighted the effect of cosmic rays.

See The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change by Henrik Svensmark

ruveyn

All very well for you to get all skeptical. You'll be dead long before climate change has serious effects. It's my generation, and those following that will be living with it. And I can sure tell you that I don't want to take the risk of doing nothing and being wrong. Anyway, even if climate change isn't anthropogenic (which the vast majority of scientists--greater than 90%--say it is) it would still be bad, and reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere could help to reduce some of the impacts.

Also, it seems like your objection to anthropogenic climate change come from more ideological grounds than factual ones, considering you are capable of shifting between completely different explanations for it. If volcanoes aren't the cause of climate change then it must be cosmic rays. Whatever it is, it can't be humans doing it.

Clouds, cosmic rays, and volcanoes have all been accounted for. The primary driver of global warming during the current shift is anthropogenic CO2; this has been shown beyond reasonable doubt in the scientific community. As Gleick's psycho-hack papers demonstrate, the primary drivers of anti-warming hypotheses are fossil fuel industries and others who do not want to admit that civilization might require individual constraints.

Welcome to the climate change debate of the century! In this corner, we have Henrik Svensmark, a few think tanks funded by the oil industry, and a handful of conspiracy theorists for good measure.

The other corner is crowded with the 144,000 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Meteorological Organization, the European Science Foundation, the Royal Meteorological Society, the American Meteorological Society, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the US National Academy of Science, the International Union for Quaternary Research, the Network of African Science Academies, the US National Research Council, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the Joint National Academies (a joint venture of science academies from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Ghana, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, India, Japan, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, New Zealand, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Sweden, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). All bets are off!