Global Warming

Originally Posted by Greybeard

Personally, I am deeply concerned about the missing planet between Mars and Jupiter. What became of it? How can we replace it?

Maybe intergalactic super glue can bring it back ...

[Uma]

Originally Posted by Greybeard

It is true this is the most rapid climate change known, or appears to be heading that way, but there have been very rapid changes in the past too. There are also minor fluctuations recorded, like the Little Ice Age in medieval Europe. The climate change that marked the end of the reign of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was rapid.

Mankind can adapt to a changing climate. Before modern times man inhabited the edges of glacial ice sheets (probably contributing to our evolution as modern man), parched deserts, tropical rain forests, high altitude plains....one of the traits that make us human and a very survivable species is our adaptability.

No wonder Jonathan Swift was almost burned at the stake for writing "A Modest Proposal"; it seems people cannot appreciate the satirical, the metaphorical, the tongue in cheek. Oh well. The world was created 6433 years ago in six days by a supernatural being named Ywh.

Greybeard, the little ice age was just a blip compared to what's happened since the year 2000. This is the hockey stick I mentioned: LINK

Originally Posted by Greybeard

I wonder why the Canadians are so interested in the US defense budget. Don't the Canadians have a budget?

Clue: Poverty has been around for a long time, and the problem has not been solved. Climate change is a new phenomenon. Hmmm.

IT doesnt matter. What matters is that the US would rather spend trillions of dollars on defence that they need becasue of their own actions, instead of public heath and long term health of the ecosystem.

Doesnt matter, because with out proper climate and ecosystems, were all going to be in poverty....

Well, here we go into political ideologies....

To be blunt, you have opinions but no power. If you had power, you would misuse it just as those who actually do hold power are wont to do.

You have no power, and therefore no control over climate change, economic systems, television programming, or the scheduling of a professional hockey game. I will give you a hint. The world is not going to change for the better just because you disapprove of its present course. Perhaps you might consider devoting your energies to more fruitful enterprises.

Although the US is certainly the leading force at this moment in history, it was not always so, nor will it continue to be so. That should delight you. Fifty years from now you can blame the world's ills on China, or Somalia -- or whoever happens to be the dominant world power at the time.

Human nature is such that those who have want more, and will do anything to hold and improve their position. The condition of the world and its ecosystems and life are of no importance to them provided there is no profit involved. That is a fact of life and no amount of protesting on your part is going to change that.

Power and the will to use it ruthlessly are what makes the world go round.

The ice in the Arctic Ocean has already melted to such an extent that the Russians are using it as a sea lane to Asia and the Norwegians are hell-bent-for-leather exploiting the fisheries there. All of the nations, including your own, with frontiers on that ocean are jockeying for power over the oil there, and will exploit that resource with no mind for the health of the Earth or its inhabitants. What do you propose to do about that?

Here is what I suggest you do. Gather 12 loyal followers around you (you can call them Apostles, or Companions, or Field Marshals) and conquer Canada. Crown yourself Sultan of the North and impose your will on the naughty Americans, Russians, Norwegians, Danes and Eskimos who want to rape the Arctic for their own selfish ends. Naturally, you could just execute the oil magnates holding Canadian citizenship; that would be no problem.

After you have dispatched the Arctic criminals, you can turn your attention to the Australians. Like the Mormons, who don't drink even tea -- let alone alcoholic beverages, but do not hesitate to sell these things to others -- the Aussies produce and export large quantities of nuclear resources to the world while refusing to use them on their own soil. Oh, and by the way, while you are Sultan of Canada, perhaps you will stop the frantic exploitation of the Albertan oil sands that are playing their part in poisoning our world and degrading the natural health of Canada.

Then you can invade and conquer Brazil and save the Amazon. The Brazilians are naughty people too. While your navy is en route to Brazil, you can blow the European tuna fishermen out of the water -- they will have exterminated, for all practical purposes, the Atlantic Bluefin within just a few years, as the Canadian fishermen did to the cod of the Grand Banks in the 90s. Of course, to stop the bluefin trade you will have to subjugate Japan.

Oh. The Arms Trade. In order to become Sultan of the North, you will need some weapons. Without weapons, the people now in power will retain power, and you will remain powerless...a voice crying in the wilderness. I can hook you up with some really good arms dealers...take your pick of Americans, Russians, French, English, Czech, Bulgarian, North Korean, Pakistani.... As long as you've got a few bucks to spend, they'll help you set up shop. The arms dealers are men who believe deeply in Peace In Our Time, and are always willing to help keep a balance of power.

My bet is that you drive a car, have at least 100 pounds of plastic objects in your home, use electricity, eat foods that are produced by dumping tons of fertilizers and toxic chemicals on the Earth, and many other things that place tremendous demands on the Earth and its resources. You consider these luxuries to be your birthright, and would be hard-pressed to live without them and unwilling to give them up.

Originally Posted by Greybeard

Well, here we go into political ideologies....

To be blunt, you have opinions but no power. If you had power, you would misuse it just as those who actually do hold power are wont to do.

You have no power, and therefore no control over climate change, economic systems, television programming, or the scheduling of a professional hockey game. I will give you a hint. The world is not going to change for the better just because you disapprove of its present course. Perhaps you might consider devoting your energies to more fruitful enterprises.

Although the US is certainly the leading force at this moment in history, it was not always so, nor will it continue to be so. That should delight you. Fifty years from now you can blame the world's ills on China, or Somalia -- or whoever happens to be the dominant world power at the time.

Human nature is such that those who have want more, and will do anything to hold and improve their position. The condition of the world and its ecosystems and life are of no importance to them provided there is no profit involved. That is a fact of life and no amount of protesting on your part is going to change that.

Power and the will to use it ruthlessly are what makes the world go round.

The ice in the Arctic Ocean has already melted to such an extent that the Russians are using it as a sea lane to Asia and the Norwegians are hell-bent-for-leather exploiting the fisheries there. All of the nations, including your own, with frontiers on that ocean are jockeying for power over the oil there, and will exploit that resource with no mind for the health of the Earth or its inhabitants. What do you propose to do about that?

Here is what I suggest you do. Gather 12 loyal followers around you (you can call them Apostles, or Companions, or Field Marshals) and conquer Canada. Crown yourself Sultan of the North and impose your will on the naughty Americans, Russians, Norwegians, Danes and Eskimos who want to rape the Arctic for their own selfish ends. Naturally, you could just execute the oil magnates holding Canadian citizenship; that would be no problem.

After you have dispatched the Arctic criminals, you can turn your attention to the Australians. Like the Mormons, who don't drink even tea -- let alone alcoholic beverages, but do not hesitate to sell these things to others -- the Aussies produce and export large quantities of nuclear resources to the world while refusing to use them on their own soil. Oh, and by the way, while you are Sultan of Canada, perhaps you will stop the frantic exploitation of the Albertan oil sands that are playing their part in poisoning our world and degrading the natural health of Canada.

Then you can invade and conquer Brazil and save the Amazon. The Brazilians are naughty people too. While your navy is en route to Brazil, you can blow the European tuna fishermen out of the water -- they will have exterminated, for all practical purposes, the Atlantic Bluefin within just a few years, as the Canadian fishermen did to the cod of the Grand Banks in the 90s. Of course, to stop the bluefin trade you will have to subjugate Japan.

Oh. The Arms Trade. In order to become Sultan of the North, you will need some weapons. Without weapons, the people now in power will retain power, and you will remain powerless...a voice crying in the wilderness. I can hook you up with some really good arms dealers...take your pick of Americans, Russians, French, English, Czech, Bulgarian, North Korean, Pakistani.... As long as you've got a few bucks to spend, they'll help you set up shop. The arms dealers are men who believe deeply in Peace In Our Time, and are always willing to help keep a balance of power.

My bet is that you drive a car, have at least 100 pounds of plastic objects in your home, use electricity, eat foods that are produced by dumping tons of fertilizers and toxic chemicals on the Earth, and many other things that place tremendous demands on the Earth and its resources. You consider these luxuries to be your birthright, and would be hard-pressed to live without them and unwilling to give them up.

First things first. Each induvitual has as much power over the environment then you think. That has become human nature to some extent - to create our own "perfect" environment, at the expense of the ecosystem, that makes our own, "false" environment possible. How productive is it to bite the hand that feeds you?

The very fact that we have the choice to wipe out entire forests at a whim, or create new things to use, and burning fossil fuels shows we can control, or at least "hold its hand". We will never be the gods we wish we are, but we definitely have control over the climate. Everything we do influences it, you add them all up, its more then enough to unfluence the climate (heat island effect, deforestation, hurning fossil fuels, agriculture, building cities etc ALL effect the climate). I can choose to use the least amount of plastics and wasted/wasteful products, and that is ding my part to help things. The more people who do it the better of course.

Of course, I could literally wipe out the entire forest here, changing the climate here drastically, therefore changing it further down the road (butterfly effect). Im not saying we can destroy the entire planet, but we can definitely influence the weather, and we already HAVE.

I am trying to devote my time appropriately. I dont drive, i dont fly ever where, i walk or bike. In the winter I use public transit. Im growing some of my own food, not using chemicals, but sustainably. I barely use paper. And the wood I use is reused, or again, used sustainable materials.

So let me TLR your rant:

"I have no control, who cares, destroy everything *chugs down a gallon of crude oil"

Also, if you dont have control over climate, how can you have control over poverty? Lets not look at the greed factor for a sec. Poverty, is prevalent in nature. Most species dont eat as much or as well as we do. Poverty, is simply an area where an animal population lives, that has no resources to help suopprt those animals.

Poverty is also a sign of overpopulation in general, and also in a general area. It is also a symptom that the alocation of wealth in all our societies is extremely unbalanced (like the rest of the systems we mess up). The west eats, while the east starves.

So il ask this question again:

How is climate change not as importiant/fixable as poverty, when without dealing with our part of it, will inevitably cause everyone to starve, greedy or not?

This is what im talking about...

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20120119/

Here is the graph



Lets use some logic...

The years of 1800s - 1910, is a relative ebb and flow of a natural system that is generally in balance and is healthy. Of course, the temp and climate goes back n fourt, but that is stillg enerally in "regular" intervals. Look what happens between the 1920s and 1960s. The graph ebbs, but doesnt "flow". You hit the 70s, and it slowly makes a donward dip. This is when the US oil crisi happened, when gas usage and production went down.

The time of the 1800s and 1920s was when the green revolution happened. Thsi is when oil was processed into fertilizer and other agricultural chemicals. This made it easier to grow food. This lead to a higher population (you can see a population graph, and correlate oil usage, and climate change in an errily similar graph)

The higher population means more inivations, which lad to the industrial revolution, which took real hold int he eearly 1900s - the 30s, and went even faster after.

So you get to the 80s, after the graph seems to take a dip, and it goes, up, and up, and up. More and more countries are using oil and gas. Burning fossil fuels, or releasing them into the atmosphere, natrually or not causes temperatures to change. This has happened quite a few times, but this time an animal species is doing it.

As the population goes crazy around the 70s and 80s, oil usage, from agriculture and industry goes up as well.

Really, a 5 year old can correlate this...

Uhh.....The graph stands at -.28 in 1880, at +.51 in 2011.....The 5-year Mean Temperature has increased by 1.23 degrees in 130 years. Hello? Anyone home?

If you have done so much study of graphs for this period, then you will agree with me that the sustainable population of Earth rests between 1 and 2 billion people, certainly no more. Over-population is the fundamental problem.

You seem rather obsessed with global overheating. None of Earth's other very serious problems seem to attract your attention.

You are certainly welcome to your very fixed opinions. Enjoy what little snow we get this winter. You may never see it again. I'm taking my dogs out for a run in the desert so they can roll in the snow.

Originally Posted by Greybeard

Uhh.....The graph stands at -.28 in 1880, at +.51 in 2011.....The 5-year Mean Temperature has increased by 1.23 degrees in 130 years. Hello? Anyone home?

If you have done so much study of graphs for this period, then you will agree with me that the sustainable population of Earth rests between 1 and 2 billion people, certainly no more. Over-population is the fundamental problem.

You seem rather obsessed with global overheating. None of Earth's other very serious problems seem to attract your attention.

You are certainly welcome to your very fixed opinions. Enjoy what little snow we get this winter. You may never see it again. I'm taking my dogs out for a run in the desert so they can roll in the snow.

I never disagreed how bad it was

In regards to the population leve, in quite on the fance actually. IF you mean at the level and the exact way we live now? I would say less then a billion. IF you were to say, a more sustanable society, where things arent wasted, and there are large stretch of untouched forests so we can get air and clean water, then It could support our population, even with our level of technology. I do agree though, over population with the type of society we have, is the main problem right now

Im "focusing on heating" because that is what the conversation was about, and the big debate is whether its warming (at least in the media). If you would like, we can discuss how that it isnt warming in all areas, some times of the year are cooler then average. Or maybe, we can discuss the lack of hienrich events in this last interglacial period? How about the fine aspects of how homo sapien has been here before, and how they out competed the better adapted neanderthol? How about how civilization was well on its way during the last ice age?

I am entiltled to my "fixed opinions", just as much as you are your mass assumptions:P