Yet another study confirms global warming is human-caused...

[xfire]

Holding business accountable for cleaner practices has the added benefit of preventing disasters like what happened in West, Texas recently.

 

[Mayhem]

I asked a question because I am not trying to pretend that I know. In fact you believe it on the face value of it because you want to believe it. Ideology is playing a part in both of our opinions. Ok so it goes back as far as 800,000 years that leaves about 3 billion years of data that can't be collected.

The difference between us in regard to absorbing this data is that both of us start with a layman's knowledge of the subject. You choose to accept it as set in stone, I choose to not buy into it completely because it is a relatively new science. I have conceded that it could be possible,you however have decided that it is scientific fact and you don't have the expertise to analyze the data no more than I do. I am being the intellectually honest one here.

Where do you get the idea that I take this at face value? I was a skeptic for quite a few years. And I have seen a few dodgy position papers on the subject myself. But you seem to have the impression that I bought into this from the start. That is patently untrue. In fact, I believe that the Earth is currently in an overall warming trend naturally. But I have taken the last many years to keep an open mind, study the information and draw my own conclusions. And I have come to believe that smokestacks, billowing filth into the air 24 hours a day is bad for the planet. I am also willing to go with the premise that the overwhelming majority of climatologists and other related scientists are telling me that this is an issue. In other words, smart people are telling me that this is real. And these are people who also drive to work and power their homes with electricity.

For someone who doesn't want to jump to conclusions about climate change, you seem to be willing to jump to some pretty quick conclusions about me.

 

[Jack Davenport]

Besides.... see above! A whole whopping one degree in a hundred years! LMFAO!!!

This where you lose me sometimes Sam.

Ocean levels have risen. I am going to make you debate a point yet and leave off the LMFAO.

You are now officially my project, my acolyte.

Within a year you will be substantiating your opinions like William F. Buckley.

 

[Will E Worm]

Averaged over all land and ocean surfaces, temperatures have warmed roughly 1.33°F (0.74ºC) over the last century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

https://www2.ucar.edu/climate/faq/how-much-has-global-temperature-risen-last-100-years

:rofl2::rofl2::rofl2::rofl2::rofl2::rofl2:

96% of Scientists DON'T believe in Global Warming Link

 

[Jack Davenport]

Where do you get the idea that I take this at face value? I was a skeptic for quite a few years. And I have seen a few dodgy position papers on the subject myself. But you seem to have the impression that I bought into this from the start. That is patently untrue. In fact, I believe that the Earth is currently in an overall warming trend naturally. But I have taken the last many years to keep an open mind, study the information and draw my own conclusions. And I have come to believe that smokestacks, billowing filth into the air 24 hours a day is bad for the planet. I am also willing to go with the premise that the overwhelming majority of climatologists and other related scientists are telling me that this is an issue. In other words, smart people are telling me that this is real. And these are people who also drive to work and power their homes with electricity.

For someone who doesn't want to jump to conclusions about climate change, you seem to be willing to jump to some pretty quick conclusions about me.

You and I have been getting along better lately without all the name calling.. Rome wasn't built in a day. I feel pretty comfortable in my approach to understanding climate change. You say you have formed your opinions based upon studying the subject extensively then I take you at your word. I wish I had the time to delve into it more.

 

[xfire]

96% of Scientists DON'T believe in Global Warming

Using your post, either global warming is caused by solar cycyles, or it doesn't exist, which one are you trying to say you believe? While you're addressing issues, why don't you address the issue of hoping for Americans to be mass murdered.

 

[lurkingdirk]

No, it's people like Gore, the extremely wealthy (and the extremely poor) worldwide, who DO NOT "do their part" because A: they also don't believe it or, B: Get China, the Middle East, North Korea, Islam, etc., etc to "get on board" and then and only then will I take it seriously.

Until then, I am not giving Gore the satisfaction of walking lockstep with him or his bullshit theories.

I'm not asking you to accept any theory. What grade level reading comprehension do you have? I asked what the down side was to being better to the planet. Did I mention Vice President Gore? No. You did. Do I like how he does things? No. Does that mean his entire message is garbage? No. Again, please read the posts to which you reply. I'll break it down for you:

What is bad about taking care of the planet?
If everyone did it, it would be great.
(The second line says everyone. That includes Vice President Gore. I wish he did a better job of walking the walk. I try hard to do my part, that's what I can control.)

Is that clear enough? Again, you're not entering a discussion, you're pushing a discussion off the rails. You're not interested in debating things, you're interested in coming into threads and pushing your point. You're trying to do what you're saying Vice President Gore is doing, and you loath him for it. You're doing exactly the same thing.

 

[Sam Fisher]

You are now officially my project, my acolyte.

Within a year you will be substantiating your opinions like William F. Buckley.

SWEET!

:banana:

 

[Sam Fisher]

I'm not asking you to accept any theory. What grade level reading comprehension do you have? I asked what the down side was to being better to the planet. Did I mention Vice President Gore? No. You did. Do I like how he does things? No. Does that mean his entire message is garbage? No. Again, please read the posts to which you reply. I'll break it down for you:

What is bad about taking care of the planet?
If everyone did it, it would be great.
(The second line says everyone. That includes Vice President Gore. I wish he did a better job of walking the walk. I try hard to do my part, that's what I can control.)

Is that clear enough? Again, you're not entering a discussion, you're pushing a discussion off the rails. You're not interested in debating things, you're interested in coming into threads and pushing your point. You're trying to do what you're saying Vice President Gore is doing, and you loath him for it. You're doing exactly the same thing.

After all this time, you still don't understand that you and I are on the total opposite ends of the moral, scientific, religious, and political spectrum?

You and I will NEVER, EVER see eye to eye. I'm okay with that. Yet it's you who keeps banging your head against the wall, thinking that I am going to someday grasp your ways of thinking.

It ain't gonna happen!

 

[lurkingdirk]

After all this time, you still don't understand that you and I are on the total opposite ends of the moral, scientific, religious, and political spectrum?

You and I will NEVER, EVER see eye to eye. I'm okay with that. Yet it's you who keeps banging your head against the wall, thinking that I am going to someday grasp your ways of thinking.

It ain't gonna happen!

I'm not asking you to see eye to eye. Read the post again. I'm asking what the bad part of caring for the....


You know what? forget it. You're not even trying. Why should I?

 

[Will E Worm]

After all this time, you still don't understand that you and I are on the total opposite ends of the moral, scientific, religious, and political spectrum?

You and I will NEVER, EVER see eye to eye. I'm okay with that. Yet it's you who keeps banging your head against the wall, thinking that I am going to someday grasp your ways of thinking.

It ain't gonna happen!

The liberals don't care. They can't agree to disagree and let things go. But, they expect everyone else to do that.

They also want us to live with subpar items and with less to save the planet, some thing that we can't do.
How arrogant and elitist . Mostly just stupid.

 

[HappyHapyJoyJoy]

I'm not asking you to see eye to eye. Read the post again. I'm asking what the bad part of caring for the....

Oh please, you CAN'T ask him to respect the environment! He's a staunch Republican and it's always the slippery slope argument with The Right (gun control, drugs, gay marriage, anything really). So sure, you ask him to respect the environment, but where will that end? Next you'll expect him to show some basic, simple respect for women, then other races, then other religions (even Muslims!), then the gays... next thing you know there's be peace and love and understanding and we'll all be hippies and he won't feel the need to own guns anymore, and that's what this is really all about isn't it...? You're trying to use good will and harmony take his guns away like your typical scheming liberal. Figures.

 

[lurkingdirk]

The liberals don't care. They can't agree to disagree and let things go. But, they expect everyone else to do that.

They also want us to live with subpar items and with less to save the planet, some thing that we can't do.
How arrogant and elitist . Mostly just stupid.

First, I'm not a liberal, though you are incapable of comprehending that.

Second, I have no desire for anyone to live with sub par anything. Technology has made vast leaps, you should check out something new once in your life.

Third, you call others arrogant and elitist, yet you say you hope for mass murders of Americans in order to prove a point you believe in. You are a tiny, pathetic man.

 

[Rattrap]

Earth is a place bigger and older than us. Anyone that believes that anyone has figured it out is living in La-La-Land. Us, with all of our knowledge about it, don't know a smidgen of shit about where it came from or where it is going. Ancient civilizations all thought that they were the only ones here and ruled it. Then the deserts, waters and mountains were crossed. How long ago did we figure out that it wasn't flat?

The Earth has warmed and cooled many times as far as science can measure. People have been here only a short time. Industrialization has a part in making things dirty but we have been working on solutions to this. To say that people are the cause of global warming is just absurd. It happened before we even discovered fire.

Fine. How far? 100 years? 150 years? This Earth is billions of years old. 150 years is a Heineken fart in the Earth's history. How many asteroids plowed through the Earth's atmosphere during that time? We don't know. A catastrophic hit did far more damage than a thousand years of greenhouse gases could cause yet the Earth recovered.

These, I have to say, are cop-out positions - they're formed from a kind of logic that seeks a feel-good answer, but as Mayhem has pointed out, simply aren't supported by evidence. That is to say, what they're inferring: yes of course, there have been warming and cooling periods. Study after study, article after article, though, has shown that nothing in the

Are you kidding me with this? Ice cores can provide data for as far back as 800,000 years.

looks like today. As usual, the debate misses a critical piece: it's not the temperature change itself, which we have evidence that the planet has reached before, but the speed at which it has climbed. The ecosystem can't handle it.

To say that the planet is too big for mankind to affect simply isn't true anymore, in the sense that the biosphere is concerned. Yeah, sure, the big ball of space rock with its geography of volcanoes, oceans, etc. will be here no matter what we do. That doesn't mean life on it will be very nice.

As for the point about asteroids...it's factually true, but entirely irrelevant. Saying that is the same as saying there's no point in leading a healthy lifestyle because there's a small chance of being suddenly killed in an accident, some day.

But, I agree with dirk here:

Bob, regardless of where I (or anyone else)stands on this issue, this is a key point for me. Okay, you don't believe in global warming/climate change. Whatever. But what is the negative side to using less fuel, recycling more, polluting less? What is the bad part of doing what we can to make the creation remain beautiful, especially as we exponentially increase in numbers as humans on this little planet? You find it inconvenient to take the three extra steps to the recycle bin? You want a car that will suck gas because you have too much money and you want to spend it? You like the smell of smog and pollution? You like seeing garbage everywhere? Someone explain to me what the bad part of taking care of this planet as best we can can possibly be.

About Bob's efforts:

Look, I'll do my part to make less waste. Use a bag twice and separate my garbage. Fill a soda bottle with KoolAid and take it to work.

As it's already been touched on, here's the bottom line: let's take climate change out of the equation entirely. Pretend it's not even there. We know, still, that our pollution is a detriment to ourselves - we know that exhaust from automobiles, factories, etc., is harmful to our health. Look at China currently. We know all the shit we dump into rivers, groundwater, etc., is harmful to our health (like the mercury in fish, for example). We can intuitively reason that the earth being a finite place, there is finite space to put our seemingly infinite amount of waste. These alone for me are reason enough to do more about using less - especially because people use so much that they don't need. Look at it from a purely selfish point of view, even: do you want your kids living in a world of trash-bag tumbleweeds and the horizon littered with mountains of garbage, in cities where one can't see more than half a mile because of pollution? We're not far off.

Here's the problem: will people use less on their own? On the whole, not really. There's really only two things that have proven track-records of lowering consumption: higher prices and legislation. Frankly, I'd go for the former - if things cost what they actually cost without all the subsidies and whatnot, nothing could be as cheaply wasted. I've read, on the topic of energy at least, that no advancement in technology, no amount of improved efficiency has ever lowered human consumption of energy - when a car is built that's twice as fuel efficient, people simply drive twice as far. The only thing that has is price spikes.

That, and volcanoes*. Apparently after the Iceland volcano business a few years back, London was the most pleasant its ever been for the weeks following without air traffic.

Nothing that we can ever do will ever compensate for the actions of the Sun.

*I've read that volcanic eruptions act as a natural shield blocking much of the sun's energy, effecting even the global temperature from one large eruption (and that this has been measured). In Super Freakonomics it's proposed that this effect could be manufactured by us by effectively spitting ash into the atmosphere at the poles, and that we could in theory completely reverse the global warming trend for something like half a billion dollars a year. Of course, nobody knows what other effects spitting a lot of ash into the atmosphere would have, but we can at least be assured that volcanoes do it all the time and we're still here...

 

[Rattrap]

These, I have to say, are cop-out positions - they're formed from a kind of logic that seeks a feel-good answer, but as Mayhem has pointed out, simply aren't supported by evidence. That is to say, what they're inferring: yes of course, there have been warming and cooling periods.

I just want to clarify as my language might seem less than respectful, that I in fact quite respect bob and BC, which is why I can get forceful trying to explain that these arguments simply don't hold up anymore.

 

[vodkazvictim]

The fact that some people I regard as mildly intelligent should spend so long debating this issue makes me laugh. Then cry a little.

 

[bobjustbob]

As brought up by a previos poster, yes, there are more people using the resorces and thus not returning them to the Earth as quickly as we remove them. We have become aware of this and developing steps to correct this. We learned that those huge smokestack emissions from the industrial revolution had to be corrected. Using less chemicals in our soil will allow us to grow healthier food for a longer time. A car that can be plugged in for 100 miles is cleaner and cheaper to run. The point is that we are problem solvers. We can all do our little part once we learn what to do. By the same token people will not kill the Earth. All we can do is make it a nicer place to live till the end. The end will not come at our hands. We can't change the temperature of the Earth at our will to kill it or save it. Science has measured activity before man was here and those drastic changes without our interuptions has somehow left us with life here. I just can't buy into the thinking that the human race will either extend or shorten the life of the Earth.

 

[Mayhem]

As brought up by a previos poster, yes, there are more people using the resorces and thus not returning them to the Earth as quickly as we remove them. We have become aware of this and developing steps to correct this. We learned that those huge smokestack emissions from the industrial revolution had to be corrected. Using less chemicals in our soil will allow us to grow healthier food for a longer time. A car that can be plugged in for 100 miles is cleaner and cheaper to run. The point is that we are problem solvers. We can all do our little part once we learn what to do. By the same token people will not kill the Earth. All we can do is make it a nicer place to live till the end. The end will not come at our hands. We can't change the temperature of the Earth at our will to kill it or save it. Science has measured activity before man was here and those drastic changes without our interuptions has somehow left us with life here. I just can't buy into the thinking that the human race will either extend or shorten the life of the Earth.

I don't recall anyone saying that we can extend the life of the Earth. But we can shorten and/or have detrimental effect on the habitability of it. When there are air quality bulletins on the news, that's an effect. When whatever warming or cooling trends that the Earth is going through naturally are altered by CO2 and carbon emissions, that's an effect. When coal and oil fired power plants are causing mercury levels to rise in the oceans to the point that it's dangerous to eat the fish, that's an effect.

The air that we breathe is not the air that was breathed 100 years ago. The water that we drink is not the water that was drunk 100 years ago. The food we eat is not the food that was eaten 100 years ago. The glaciers are not the same, the icecaps are not the same and neither are the rainforests, swamplands or oceans. And 100 years is way too short a time for any of this to have happened naturally.

 

[vodkazvictim]

As brought up by a previos poster, yes, there are more people using the resorces and thus not returning them to the Earth as quickly as we remove them. We have become aware of this and developing steps to correct this. We learned that those huge smokestack emissions from the industrial revolution had to be corrected. Using less chemicals in our soil will allow us to grow healthier food for a longer time. A car that can be plugged in for 100 miles is cleaner and cheaper to run. The point is that we are problem solvers. We can all do our little part once we learn what to do. By the same token people will not kill the Earth. All we can do is make it a nicer place to live till the end. The end will not come at our hands. We can't change the temperature of the Earth at our will to kill it or save it. Science has measured activity before man was here and those drastic changes without our interuptions has somehow left us with life here. I just can't buy into the thinking that the human race will either extend or shorten the life of the Earth.

We won't, just the lifespan of ourselves and other, concurrent species upon it.
I take it your scepticism regarding returning carbon to the earth relates to Europe's choice of wood as biomass of choice?

I don't recall anyone saying that we can extend the life of the Earth. But we can shorten and/or have detrimental effect on the habitability of it. When there are air quality bulletins on the news, that's an effect. When whatever warming or cooling trends that the Earth is going through naturally are altered by CO2 and carbon emissions, that's an effect. When coal and oil fired power plants are causing mercury levels to rise in the oceans to the point that it's dangerous to eat the fish, that's an effect.

The air that we breathe is not the air that was breathed 100 years ago. The water that we drink is not the water that was drunk 100 years ago. The food we eat is not the food that was eaten 100 years ago. The glaciers are not the same, the icecaps are not the same and neither are the rainforests, swamplands or oceans. And 100 years is way too short a time for any of this to have happened naturally.

You may want to research the concept of fossil water.

 

[bobjustbob]

Mayhem I am agreeing all right. We are on the same page on this. Your point of our air and food and water and land usage goes back goes back hundreds of years. There are more people here consuming more resources. But when we go back to the title of this post we see the threat of extreme. Here is where I take back to the original notion that when us humans see something fucking up we will correct it. That's my faith in the Human Kind vs the thought that humans are the direct threat to the Earth becoming a vast wasteland unable to sustain life.

Europe's choice of wood as biomass of choice? I'm going to look that up.