We're melting, we're meltingFollow

Actually, I believe that it was ACTAULLy more like 30 something per cent of the current difference in CO2 parts per million is suspected to the caused by human activity.

ANd how am I full of ****? I'm just telling you what I heard, so unless you are a scientist who has been actually studiying this scientifically, you are just as full of **** as I am.

The claims are that the temperature rise is due to all greenhouse gasses, not just CO2. You are trolling and nitpicking.

That link that I posted has a damn webcast of the most current legitamate debate. I am not saying that it is concrete or that it is 100% truth. That IS what it IS. Your agruing about this is utterly pointless. Argue with some real scientists if you want to get your rocks off. Don't try to argue with us about some random **** that you found and then try to act all superior because we can't explain it. Are we fUcking scientists? No.

But we wish we were. Madam Curie was hawt.

The radium makes it tingly...

Really? So, if your hypothesis is true, then we'd expect to see better emissions controls in nations like China and the former Soviet Union, right? Hah. Funny that the exact opposite ends up actually being true.

You're presenting a "false dilemna". The fact is that capitalism does not directly have much to do with the problem. The same lack of incentive to prevent ecological damage exists in all economic forms. What actually matters is the degree to which the government form being used will actually take steps to correct for environmental issues.

And in that area, a democratic capitalism ends up being a very good system. Since your industries are separate from your government it's actually *easier* for government to regulate the industries. The more government control/ownership of industry in your system, the less inclined the government will be to do anything about it since the "cost" comes from them. In a democratic capitalism the majority of voters are *not* going to be stockholders in every industry, thus it's much easier to get them to apply pressure to industry and government alike to correct for environmental issues.


In short. The trend actually ends up being exactly the opposite of what you stated.

I'd also like to take the time to point out that perhaps a bigger issue then raw industry and CO2 emissions is the ratio of forests to industry within a geographical area. I think I touched on this before, but I think it's a huge deal. As I (and some others) have pointed out, there was a study done to attempt to measure the impact that the US (actually North America as a whole) was causing in terms of greenhouse gasses (specifically CO2 levels). The conducted a really simple experiement. They measured the air off the West cost and off the East coast. The presumption is that since the prevailing winds travel west to east, that the increase in value would be an accurate measurement of how much CO2 was *actually* entering our atmosphere (not just being emitted at ground level).

The results startled them, since they discovered that there was actually *less* CO2 in the atmosphere off the East coast, meaning that the North American continent was acting as a CO2 sink (absorbing more CO2 then it generated). We can quibble about how much industry we have and how much CO2 we're generating and for how long this sink will continue before its saturated or something (although I think that's absurd since I'd assume it would simply increase plant growth, causing an automatic "green" correction system). In any case, unless there's something completely flawed with their data, this does suggest two things:

1. Whatever environmental impact in terms of "global warming" has already occured as a result of CO2 emissions, the US was not causing it (since whatever saturation point there may be can't have been reached yet since industry has presumably been growing faster then forests over the last 100 years or so). Thus, we're "off the hook" in terms of blame for that degree or so of increase (again assuming *that's* accurate).

2. It would seem that the correct "solution" is twofold. Ideally, a combination of emission control regulation *and* reforestation (or other planttype that is large and leafy and ideally suited for CO2 scrubbing) should be used. It's not enough just to reduce emissions, we should *also* be increasing the volume of plants on the globe that will scrub the CO2 for us. This should occur naturally as a result of increased CO2 anyway (plants should grow faster with more CO2 available). It's likely that deforestation is a more significant impact event to global warming then industrialization. We're both increasing CO2 *and* preventing forest growth that would balance that out automatically.


Just something to think about that I think a lot of people miss. We tend to over focus on changing industry, when it might just be more efficient for more nations to do what the US did about a century ago (setting aside huge areas for national forests). It could very well be that Teddy Roosevelt did more to prevent global warming then anything that's been done since...

I'm not good at quoting; but Gbaji is correct in that I miscategorized "capitalists" and that developing nations, whether democratic capitalist (India) or totalitarian socialist/capitalist hybrid (China) are by far the worst contributors to all types of environmental pollution. My only excuse is that I was attempting to characterize Monoxdot's "all government regulation is anti-capitalist totalitarian evil" stance. As I said, capitalist and capitalism are loaded words that can be used to describe a wide variety of different social compacts. I would argue that the Europeans and Japanese, in general, have done a better job of dealing with pollution and emissions controls than the US. To what extent this relates to their "more socialist" political structure, who can tell?

My basic point was that in a free market economy with little or no government regulation, there are few incentives for a given industry to examine the long-term effects of its practices on the environment. Overfishing, overhunting and exhaustive farming practices are the clearest examples of this, since they have occurred in societies going back farther than recorded history.

If you believe that humans have begun to have a catastrophic effect on Global tempreture, then what do you do about it. Ask any climate scientist and they'll repeat things to you that you've heard before.

Because it actually is fairly straightforward to make a huge difference to the amount of energy you use, and the amount of carbon you put into the air.

Taken all at once it's a bit daunting, but if you just start easing into it, it's all easy.

Replace your lights with energy efficient globes. Flick off lights when you leave the room. Turn off lights/music/computers before you leave the house. Turn things off, instead of leaving them on Standby.

Sign up to a power company that gets it's energy from Wind, Solar, Tidal or Geothermal power plants. There are plenty to choose from these days.

Shut curtains/blinds over the windows at nighttime. Get insulation in the roof. When renting, buying or building a new house, choose a house whose main windows all face towards the equator. You want smaller windows to the East and West, and almost no windows on the side of the house that faces the Pole.

Get a "solar-powered" hot water system.

Cut down on the plastic bags and packaging where possible. Own some cloth shopping bags. Aim to use things for a longer time before you have to replace them. Buy half the fashionable clothes that you would normally buy each season, and wear them twice as much, so that they are really well worn before you throw them out, and before they become unfashionable.

Pay a little extra for something that has been made closer to you than something that has had to be shipped from very far away.

Even if it's one day a week, replace a car journey by walking, riding or taking public transport.

So all these things you've heard before? And they sound so obvious, yes, but I'm just one one person. If I do those things, THAT'S not going to save the world, THAT's not going to make a huge difference.

Well, when scientists do the statistics, Someone who does all those things lowers their greenhouse contributions so drastically that they start being a negative contributer if they just go stand under a couple of trees.

Doing just half those things will make you carbon-neutral, if you don't count any air-plane travel, or the carbon dioxide your workplace puts out.

One individual won't change the world, but if every single person took one less car-rip a week, the cumulative change is massive. If you want to really punch above your weight, switch to ethanol mixed fuel, or totally ethanol fuel, or buy a hybrid car, or an electric one.

And if you want to get all serious about it, there are now companies that will grow and keep trees on your behalf, and provide you with a calculator to figure out how many trees you need to pay for to offset your air-plane flights overseas, and the running of big events, or an office workplace, or whatever.


Someone near the start wrote:


Yes the Earth has survived. But when the climate has changed the most drastically, that's coincided with the major extinction events where 95% of the plant and animal species on the Earth at the time have died utterly.

The last times there were massive amounts of carbon-dioxide in the air, not only the equator, but the temporate zones were desert containing almost no plant life at all. The only place where plants were thriving was at THE POLES. There were no ice-feilds, and no glaciers. There was no spring melt-water from the winter snows. Just Rainforest in the places that occupied the space where Antarctica and the Arctic now are, and desert everywhere else. Think about that.

How would we cope if we had to tap groundwater to irrigate everything, because the only lush and thriving areas on Earth were in Antarctica, Alaska, Canada, Russia, Siberia and the Nordic countries?

It's not like scientists are predicting this worst-case scenario, unless all the developed countries keep doing exactly the same things they were doing in the nineties, and all the developing countries "caught up" and joined them, and IF a substantial number of the Earths feedback systems overloaded and broke down. (The North Atlantic current, the Amazon Rainforest, sea plankton, Siberian grasslands, etc etc)

But most of the life-style changes I mentioned are really easy to incorporate. You dont' have to totally stop using energy and putting out carbon-dioxide all together, in order to be responsible and a contributer to the solution. All you have to do is to reduce your energy use and carbon-dioxide output to a point where it balances out with the general Eco-system taking carbon-dioxide in.

If you do the things on the list, you really can have your luxury goods without being a contributer to the problem.





Edited, Feb 15th 2007 1:03pm by Aripyanfar