# Will we overcome the problems of Global Warming?



## ljfallavollita

This is a question that I have spent many hours thinking about over the last few years.  Will mankind be successful in overcoming the challenges of Global Warming or will those that come after us face even bigger challenges?

What issues will mankind be facing in 2100?  What about 2200?

I'd like to know your thoughts on this subject.


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## Brian G Turner

We'll adapt to it - eventually - rather than prevent it - unfortunately.


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## littlemissattitude

Not as long as the right in the United States continues to make a political rather than a scientific issue out of it.

In a really interesting development, however, a portion of the US Christian evangelical community has just sent a letter to the Bush administration urging it to take the problem of global warming more seriously, framing it as an issue of taking good care of God's creation.  Now, however you feel about the whole religious thing, I feel that this is a positive development even though they still have to convince the hard right wing of the evangelical movement of their position.  If they can do that, the Bush administration might have to change their position on the issue in order to please their support base.

If I can come up with a link on this story, I'll return and post it.

Here is the BBCs take on this development:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4695320.stm

I had understood that the letter had been sent to the Bush administration - that was the impression I got from a network news report yesterday evening.  However, according to this story the letter was published as a open-letter advertisment in a number of newspapers across the nation.

This article also highlights the split within the evangelical community over the issue.  The hard right wing opposes getting into this issue, they say, because it interferes with their campaign against abortion and "pro-life" issues, while those signing the letter claim that preserving the environment is in itself a "pro-life" issue.  That argument was also highlighted in the report I heard last night.

As I said, I think this is an interesting development even if I don't necessarily share the religious views that lead to this particular approach to environmentalism.  It is a much better point of view, in my opinion, than that of those whose religious views lead them to feel that it doesn't matter how polluted the earth gets.


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## kyektulu

*I agree with you brian, I honestly dont think we could prevent it.
 We as a species have just become too accustomed to our lavish lifestyle.
 I do hope that something can be done, I do believe it would be a good idea to start locally and make recycling and energy saving a cost effective and accesable to everyone.
I also want car owners (I am one myself) to be made accountable for how mush petrol we use and to use cars responsibly, alot of people get lazy with a car and drive just to the corner shop two mins away on foot. 
I heard on Radio 2 today, a enviromentalist guy (cannot remember his name, sorry) suggested there should be a higher tax levy on the owners of 4x4 vechiles.
 I couldnt agree with this more.
 I understand farmers and people who live in unaccesable, unroaded areas need them but it really, really annoys me when people just own them for trips to the shops or to pick up there kids from school.
 They (im most sure) are fully aware the effect these petrol guzzzlers have on the enviroment.
 People need to be made aware that recycling and helping the enviroment is EVERYONES responsibility and one person does make a difference.*


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## YOSSARIAN

Even if the whole evangelical movement were to support a movement to take global warming more seriously, neither the Bush administration nor any similar type administration in the future would do anything that would conflict with power and industry interests.  The evangelical movement wields more influence than one would assume given how small a faction it really is.  The reason that the right-wing panders to them as much as they do is that the fundamentalists are almost guaranteed to vote how they are told to vote by the leaders of the movement.  The issues that these people care about (abortion, intelligent design theory) do not conflict with the lobbies of the real power base of Washington D.C. (unregulated greed).  If the evangelicals ever make the environment as high priority as fetuses and school prayer, we will have seen the end of their political clout.  I'm not holding my breath...


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## littlemissattitude

Well, I choose to be a little more optimistic.  Anyway, fundamentalists and evangelicals are far from the same thing.  I attended a Christian university where I met a number of evangelicals who are far from being fundamentalists, and far from being knee-jerk ideological right-wingers.  I don't have any illusion that the hard-core Christian right - the Robertsons, the Falwells, the Dobsons, and the like - will ever step back from their "culture war" mentality.  However, there is a larger pool of individuals out there who seem to be more and more disassociating themselves from these more dogmatic individuals.

Honestly, I'm not holding my breath either.  But that is mostly because I don't think the Bushies will ever abandon their oil industry/big business cronies.  I don't actually think they are driven by the religious lobby on this issue.  However, more voices for environmental care is better than less voices for it.


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## Balfa

I said:
			
		

> We'll adapt to it - eventually - rather than prevent it - unfortunately.



I agree with you, Brian. Today's life is just too dependant on technology to start giving it up. We will just have to get used to it. It's the course of the evolution, wheter is right or wrong way.


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## YOSSARIAN

I really think that the breakthrough in environmental responsibility will come when our titans of industry find a way to make large sums of money from it.


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## chrispenycate

Overcome the problems of global warming? Yes, without any doubt. (though thw "we" is a little misleading. I' for one, won't be around to see) The risk of runaway greenhouse effect (à la Venus) is minimum with the amount of water on Earth. Anything less and a few species will go extinct, a few million humans die, bits of the planet that at present support large populations become uninhabitable, lots of things which it would be nicer to avoid will happen - but the human species is adaptable, and if nothing but global warming is involved humanity will ride over the problems, particularly if the change occurs at a decently slow pace. (see also my aquatic thread)

Yes, I am convinced that it's too late to prevent climate change, and all the subsiduary changes it involves (Like losing two thirds of the worlds major cities) That doesn't mean we shouldn't do our maximum to slow it; the rehousing of some of the densest populations in the world will go much easier if a few decades rather than a few years are available for the task. Still, I'm convinced that, by the time it had been recognised, it was already too late to reverse the trend, but certainly nothing much ws done to slow it.

However, global warming might not be the only problem faced- and the loss of cities with universities and the general disorganisation of a suddenly migratory population might well complicate efforts to counter the other problems. I have no idea from what these problems might arise, but we're releasing literally thousands of new products into the environment, and into society every year, and some of these are bound to give problems - problems which would certainly be discovered and eliminated in a stable enviroment, but more complicated in total chaos.

It is this that governments could be doing: preparing their lowlying populations, building new centers of learning outside the regions most likely to be affected, making sure that populations can be housed and fed in case of increasingly frequent and increasingly violent weather events, that when an industrial region is overcome it doesn't pollute the entire region. Are they doing it? Not that I can tell. 

Logically (which has very little to do with the argument I admit) insurance companies should be raising their premiums for danger spots, which should, if there ie enough lead time, give the financial stimulus required for direct industrial prufit based affairs ; but governments (who're using your money and don't need to make a profit) are much more difficult to predict.

Yes, I believe the time ahead will hold problems, but, with a measure of preparation, no insurmountable ones.


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## Gwydion

Global Warming is earth's problem, but people blame it for far to much. It affects a very small amount of regular weather patterns. And the events in the film, the day after tommorow, could never be caused by global warming according to scientists. We can overcome it. Future problems will be fossil fuels, space exploration, and terroism still.


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## Rosemary

I found this rather disturbing article in the news -

*  Flooding fears as glaciers melt faster*

*    February 2006*
*Alarming satellite images show seas rising far faster than expected.
*A sharp rise in the volume of water produced by melting ice in Greenland has prompted scientists to warn of faster-than-expected rising sea levels.

 GREENLAND'S glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly the Earth's oceans will rise over the next century.
The new information, from satellite imagery, gives fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data is mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that sea-level rise threatens widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide.
The scientists warned that they did not yet understand the precise mechanism causing glaciers to flow and melt more rapidly, but they said the changes in Greenland were unambiguous - and accelerating. In 1996, the amount of water produced by melting ice in Greenland was about 90 times the amount consumed by Los Angeles in a year. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water that Los Angeles uses annually.
"We are witnessing enormous changes, and it will take some time before we understand how it happened, although it is clearly a result of warming around the glaciers." 

 The Greenland study is the latest of several in recent months that have found evidence that rising temperatures are affecting not only Earth's ice sheets but such things as plant and animal habitats, the health of coral reefs, hurricane severity and droughts, and globe-girdling currents that drive regional climates.
The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are among the largest reservoirs of fresh water on Earth, and their fate is expected to determine how far oceans will rise. Scientists have declined to guess how much the faster melting would raise sea levels but said current estimates of about 50 centimetres over the next century were probably too low.
While that may not sound like much, it could have profound consequences for flood-prone countries such as Bangladesh and trigger severe weather around the world.
"The implications are global, we are talking of the worst storm settings . . . you are upping the probability major storms will take place."


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## Amber

Let's be realistic however. If there is a choice between living lavishly, and having to cope with the problems that life styles brings, or living like an ascetic, I for one would go for the lavish lifestyle. Not because I don't care about the world, but because what is the use in having life if you don't maximise it to the full. We'll probably always find a solution anyway.


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## PERCON

ljfallavollita said:
			
		

> What issues will mankind be facing in 2100? What about 2200?
> 
> I'd like to know your thoughts on this subject.


 
By 2100 and 2200 it is very likely that Earth will no longer be the 'home' of humanity. Mars and asteroids in the asteroid belt will probably be colonised by then. I doubt humanity will have travelled out much further than that by 2100. Imagine piloting an asteroid that's been developed to support a small human colony.  

Those dates are quite a long way in the future but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to be there to find out.

*PERCON*


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## dreamwalker

PERCON said:
			
		

> By 2100 and 2200 it is very likely that Earth will no longer be the 'home' of humanity. Mars and asteroids in the asteroid belt will probably be colonised by then. I doubt humanity will have travelled out much further than that by 2100. Imagine piloting an asteroid that's been developed to support a small human colony.
> 
> Those dates are quite a long way in the future but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to be there to find out.
> 
> *PERCON*


 try the years 3100 or 3200...

And as for leave, I don't think we'll ever leave Earth or lose ties completely, not for many thousands of years.


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## tecmic

Hi,

It's interesting to read the spectrum of opinions here. I'm afraid I polarise at the 'doom and gloom' end, as climate on this planet is a far larger and a more powerful system than mankind has the ability to manage. Because of an innate arrogance and self importance, we delude ourselves into believing that we are in control and will always exist on this planet. Even if this were true, greed and selfishness will prevent any 'real' effort from our governments to minimise the effects of climate change until it smacks them, and us, in the face.

The unsustainable lifestyle we are so reluctant to give up will be our undoing, although, we could claim, in part, that we are victims of government and administrative policies, which force us into patterns of behaviour that conflict with the environment! Out-of-town shopping, for example, almost impossible without a car! Excessive use of fresh water, poor town planning, the cancerous growth of housing development on the countryside, etc. etc.
BUT! the most fundamental cause of the distruption to the planet's ecosystems is the sheer size of the human global population, now. There are just too many of us! I don't care what the so called experts claim, it's not just a question of feeding us all, which we don't, it's the spin off from human occupation. One of the very worst examples is what was done to Manhatten Island. A showpiece of what humanity can do to the natural environment and a centre for the consumption of Earth's resources with no positive contribution in return. Unfortunately, this is true for every such concentration of human residence.

I for one, see a very bleak future for humanity, assuming we survive. It's difficult to imagine our species without the base instincts that, on the one hand, have enabled us to survive our primitive history but on the other, now threaten to drive us to extinction. Too severe? we will see.

Mike.


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## polymath

I kind of agree with tecmic, though I think he's overegged it.
Coastal cities and large river-side cities are going to have a rough time of it, I think that's a given.
But overall? We ought to pull through after a huge overhaul of our habits, though we usually need a major kick up the backside to change our habits. I think that kick up the backside is on its way.


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## PERCON

Global Warming can't really be stopped now, we're actually starting to see the effects of it (Later winters that are colder and also warmer summers). Although it's more of a 'climate change' than a global warming. It happens every so often on this planet. Something we can't control, we've been given warning of this for a good decade or so. Too late now really. There's an equilibrium when it comes to this planet, by putting up the amount of fumes we put into the atmosphere every year the heat will get trapped and the gas ratios in the air will change. We will get strange weather conditions ranging from extremes to normal very easily, very often.

I sometimes feel ashamed to be called human because of the generalised egotistical nature of our species.

_PERCON_


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## Curt Chiarelli

tecmic said:
			
		

> Hi,
> 
> It's interesting to read the spectrum of opinions here. I'm afraid I polarise at the 'doom and gloom' end, as climate on this planet is a far larger and a more powerful system than mankind has the ability to manage. Because of an innate arrogance and self importance, we delude ourselves into believing that we are in control and will always exist on this planet. Even if this were true, greed and selfishness will prevent any 'real' effort from our governments to minimise the effects of climate change until it smacks them, and us, in the face.
> 
> The unsustainable lifestyle we are so reluctant to give up will be our undoing, although, we could claim, in part, that we are victims of government and administrative policies, which force us into patterns of behaviour that conflict with the environment! Out-of-town shopping, for example, almost impossible without a car! Excessive use of fresh water, poor town planning, the cancerous growth of housing development on the countryside, etc. etc.
> BUT! the most fundamental cause of the distruption to the planet's ecosystems is the sheer size of the human global population, now. There are just too many of us! I don't care what the so called experts claim, it's not just a question of feeding us all, which we don't, it's the spin off from human occupation. One of the very worst examples is what was done to Manhatten Island. A showpiece of what humanity can do to the natural environment and a centre for the consumption of Earth's resources with no positive contribution in return. Unfortunately, this is true for every such concentration of human residence.
> 
> I for one, see a very bleak future for humanity, assuming we survive. It's difficult to imagine our species without the base instincts that, on the one hand, have enabled us to survive our primitive history but on the other, now threaten to drive us to extinction. Too severe? we will see.
> 
> Mike.



Hi Mike:

I could not have stated the case better. Bravo!


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## mikeo

Amber said:
			
		

> Let's be realistic however. If there is a choice between living lavishly, and having to cope with the problems that life styles brings, or living like an ascetic, I for one would go for the lavish lifestyle. Not because I don't care about the world, but because what is the use in having life if you don't maximise it to the full. We'll probably always find a solution anyway.


I can only trust that you'll say this to your future children / grandchildren (if you plan to have any) - particularly if they ask you what you did to safeguard their future when the warning signs we're seeing started to appear.

(I'm not really convinced by the implication we'd have to live like monks to have less of an impact on the environment.)


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## jackokent

I agree with Tecmic, it's mostly to do with the fact there are so dam many of us.  

I'm not sure the problem is about arrogance and thinking we can control everything.  I think most people A) genuinely don't know where to start and B) don't actually believe it will make a difference in the whole run of things.

I am not saying people arn't arrogant but I believe this whole inertia is more about the sheer scale and complexity of the issue facing us and the sneaking belief that we are basically stuffed anyway.  

I think people deal with it by believing the worst of the impact won't be felt in thier own lifetimes.

I'm also not convinced we'd have to live like monks, but we would have to do some fairly major U-turns. These aren't easy things to achieve in a democracy.  Think of the problems inherent in trying to get people to accept a new picture on thier coin or to go metric.  What really liklihood is there of being able to introduce really drastic legistlation that impacts on every aspect of our lives?  And that's only England, we'd have to do this across the globe.   

Let's face it, we aren't going to get there.  Our only hope is that nature does a U-turn.  Improbable I know, but less so than the idea that we can do one.


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## Quokka

I disagree that its because theres so damn many of us, there's plenty of resources to provide for the needs of 6 billion people.... it's the result of supplying the created _wants_ of a couple of hundred million that are causing problems, that and the pressure this places on other communities to 'catch up'.

I believe the problems are predominantly cultural rather than technical and seeing as culture is reactive that's not particularly optimistic.

Still I agree with other posters, Humanity will adapt, willingly or not. 


Slightly off-topic but Ive always believed that even if humanity pushes nature too far, whatever _it_ is will force it's way back to a balance and if, in the extreme circumstance that this is at the cost of humanity, that the Earth or the universe will go on as intended. Now here's the bit that may sound strange.... I've always found that idea comforting.


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## PERCON

Since we have the knowledge of the consequences of our actions on the environment around us humanity must now adapt to survive. I don't like the term 'global warming' it's more of a 'climate change' really, possibly leading to another ice age in the distant future that will truly test humanity's ability to adapt and survive anything thrown at it.

Although I am not religious I do believe that every action, no matter how big or small, provides consequences. I have no sympathy for humanity over this topic anymore. The changes to our industry that are required to prevent global warming from escalating further won't happen, so nature will have to intervene and balance out the situation in its own unique way.

After all, everything happens for a reason. 
And every action has an equal and opposite reaction.


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## Green

I saw a programme about global dimming a year or so ago, which I found interesting. Here's a summary of it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml

Global warming could be worse than we thought, but it's effects are being masked by global dimming. Looks like we need to combat both, at the same time, or we're b0rk3d.

Either that, or put on the biggest, riskiest tightrope show this planet has ever seen


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## speedingslug

A topic I like 

I agree we cannot be bothered to stop climate change as it would cause us the lost of some comforts. But I don't trust the goverments and they should finally agree on some course of action.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/5005994.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4467420.stm
I fear it is too late

and yet some people think that the change is a natural occurring event just part of a cycle and mankind is having little effect on the world ?
http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_3899807
http://www.westernroundtable.com/news/article.asp?id=1729

With veiws like this there is truly no hope for us


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## j d worthington

I wouldn't say "no hope" but I think it's rather scarce. Look, folks, if you really take a look at human history, no, we don't always find solutions. We're very bad about wearing blinders until we get ourselves into a corner and huge masses of people suffer/die because of it. And we've scarcely been on the planet 5 million years as hominids, let alone any sort of "civilization". Where that's concerned, we've taken, what? less than 4 millennia to cause global muckups some of which simply cannot be corrected and those which can will take literally thousands to millions of years to set right -- and we aren't likely to be around to see it.

As for colonization -- I'd love to see it. Ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Does anyone here remember the experiment in the Arizona desert where they tried creating a small colony of supposedly compatible scientists? The project was supposed to last for 5 years. In just over 2 it went so sour they had to dismantle it before someone literally ended up committing murder. Put people into the close confinement needed for colonizing in space, enough to avoid the dangers of endogamous breeding, and you're looking at bloodshed, most likely massacre or extinction. Unless, of course, we can actually make a workable cryonic system and sophisticated enough technologies to allow a ship to pilot itself to whatever destination, set up the colony, avoid any unforeseen hazards along the way, and then go "wakey, wakey" to the human cargo. Then, given the above problems, it would be transferred from the trip to the actual colony -- BUT, if we are able to spread them out fast enough via terraforming, and send replacements quickly enough to make up for the losses along the way due to accidents, unforeseen dangers (again), flareups, etc., it MIGHT have a chance of surviving. One colony. One. Out of how many? billion by that point? (And, on the subject of world population, when I was in high school in the mid-70s, the figures stood at just over 3 billion. In 30 years, we've doubled that. We're growing at an exponential rate, people; and the human race ain't gonna stop breeding any time soon. The estimates are that, within 50 years, we're likely to top 12 billion; I'd say 15-20. Anyone think that, with what we're doing to the planet, it's going to be able to support that sort of number?) Not to mention the bottleneck of expense, and people who feel we need to be spending the money on problems here rather than spending huge amounts going "out there" (not realizing, perhaps, that it's part of the same problem in the long run; but quite right that in the meantime people are starving unnecessarily).

Will the human race adapt? Probably. But this isn't the only thing we have to be concerned about. Supervolcanoes, for instance. We know of at least 3; one of them, they expect, is due to go sometime in the next 3-5 centuries. The last time that happened, Europe's population was something like 10,000,000. Once it was over, it was down to around 500,000. That's a pretty serious drop, wouldn't you say? (And they had a lot less people and a lot more natural resources per capita than we -- at least until the ash and nuclear-winter-style climatological changes began to tip the balance.) And the possibility of near-earth objects actually not all being discovered, and one maybe connecting, can't be ruled out, either. And blowing 'em up doesn't help, because then you just end up with lots of little buggers spread out coming down. Anyone around here seen the effects of a shotgun blast? Now magnify that by a few thousand times in the size of the projectiles, not to mention the velocity/impact.

And then there's just plain greed. Even the most enlightened people are reluctant to give up their comforts; say air-conditioning when it hits those 100+ days... We've seen what happened in Europe when things got a little warmer than usual the last few winters. Not to mention the number of elderly folks and babies that expired over here due to the heat.

And so it goes.....

No, it's not hopeless; but it's pretty bleak. And it certainly isn't something that any of us can afford to just sit back and feel smug about. The piper's been toting up that bill for a long time, and I'm afraid he's about ready to start collecting.....


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## Carolyn Hill

Did anyone here see the Al Gore documentary _An Inconvenient Truth_ that opened in the U.S. recently?  I haven't yet seen it, but it's supposed to be persuasive and to suggest ways to reduce global warming without putting a halt to technological advancement or comfortable lifestyles.


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## j d worthington

No, I haven't seen that. I'd like to, just to see what the arguments are. I'm afraid I'm in agreement with Chris; from all the research I've come across (all right, the synposis of the research; when it comes to the actual papers, I'm afraid I don't read the language), there's no way to stop or reverse the problem, the most we can do is slow it down and buy ourselves time. But if they've got solid evidence that disproves that, I'd love to hear it. I'm just sceptical of any politico on this topic -- not-so-hidden agendas, and all that.


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## Ryu Gaia

Has anyone yet considered the possibility that maybe we're looking at much too little data for it to possibly be conclusive? Compare the length of human existance to that of the planet's... and then compare the length of time that we've even been capable of monitoring it to the span of time that it has existed and changed without us. Maybe, we have nothing to do with it, and it's just a natural thing the planet goes through. Who knows? We've only been paying attention for a few hundred years (and that's stretching it!), so we can't be certain. As much as we try to piece it together, we don't know exactly what happenned in our planet's past, so we can't say for certain what its future is going to be.


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## j d worthington

While we may not be "certain" I agree (at least, in the sense of absolute, irrefutable proof no matter the circumstances), we have some pretty darned good indications from various types of soil testing to pretty deep levels, coupled with our learning on geology, electromagnetism (including shifts in the magnetic field, which we're due for again in a few thousand years, it seems -- I pity the birds, who seem to have evolved an actual "compass" that includes a tiny bit of magnetic metals in their brains; this is going to mess them all up!), and far too many types of research to mention. We do know that we've had a terrible impact, especially since the Industrial Revolution, and simply the numbers -- including the near-exponential population growth mentioned earlier -- cannot help but paint a pretty bleak picture.

While I'd very much like to believe otherwise, I'm afraid that the data is much more conclusive than we'd like to think; Chris could fill you in with considerably more hard data on that than I, I'm sure. But, as said, this is no reason not to do all we can to at least slow the process down as much as possible, and at least buy ourselves some time for finding solutions for not only our survival, but for mediating as much suffering as we can. But to do so means taking a good, hard, realistic look at the implications and not falling into the fallacy that things aren't as they truly are.


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## Ryu Gaia

We've only been really using this earth for the last two hundred years or so, and I'm pretty sure that there's no possible way that humans could have affected the planet that drastically in such a short time. It's like saying that in the span of one millisecond (probably less, actually, if we were to go for an accurate analogy) every action that would lead to a person's death could take place. No death takes place within a millisecond. It's just not temporaly possible.


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## j d worthington

Ryu Gaia said:
			
		

> We've only been really using this earth for the last two hundred years or so, and I'm pretty sure that there's no possible way that humans could have affected the planet that drastically in such a short time. It's like saying that in the span of one millisecond (probably less, actually, if we were to go for an accurate analogy) every action that would lead to a person's death could take place. No death takes place within a millisecond. It's just not temporaly possible.


I'm going to have to ask for some clarification here: How do you mean that "we've only been really using this earth for the last two hundred years or so"? If you mean all the artificial pollutants, you may have a case; but as far as our impact on the ecosystem, it goes 'way, 'way back -- as far as human history. As soon as we began to be toolmakers, we began to seriously effect the environment, which gives us about (someone could be more accurate on this, I'm sure) 2.5-3 million years; long before we were true homo sapiens. But it isn't just time -- it's the kind of things we've learned to do, and the things we've done without understanding the consequences, and then, once we knew the consequences, which quite a few scientists have been warning about since at least the latter part of the 19th century, completely ignoring those consequences and going full-tilt-boogie! And, as I've said, the exponential rate at which we've managed to pollute the planet has now become a geometric progression far in advance of our impact simply on a population level. Once we split the atom, all bets were off -- and we human beings are still running nuclear tests here and there around the globe -- and that stuff simply doesn't heal, not for a long, long, long time. Wherever those tests are run, that place is uninhabitable for any healthy, living organism. We've managed to drive to extinction over 200 known species in just over 150 years, and show no signs of stopping (hamburger corporations, last I heard, were still buying up rain forest land and turning it into ranch land for cattle to cut down on the price of beef, for instance -- at the rate of literally thousands of acres each year).

No, the evidence is pretty stark, once you start looking into it seriously. We've made a pretty sorry mess of our nest; it's just that the worst effects aren't quite hit-you-over-the-head obvious yet, like the disappearance of several glaciers (that have existed for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years). Just in the last half-century, we've had such an impact there that mountains that have been covered in snow for as long as human beings can tell, are now losing their snowline (Kilimanjaro being a good example). True, some such things do tend to happen naturally without human culpability, but compared to our impact, it's in the neighborhood of less than 5% -- barring such things as the supervolcanoes or asteroidal impact. And the level of greenhouse gases just keep climbing each year, and we're still diddling about with internal-combustian engines without getting _serious_ about finding some alternative method of transportation with less environmental impact, rather than some slight cosmetic changes on the level of removing a wart on the hand when the patient's riddled with cancer.

You'd be surprised what's temporally possible. It's shocking, and dismaying -- but the evidence is there for anyone willing to look; and it really isn't open to too much question, I'm afraid. I wish it were different, I really do. I have a daughter, and I'll probably have grandchildren some day, and I hate to think of the mess we're going to leave for them to live in. Even in my own life, I've seen so many changes that are detrimental to a healthy growing experience (both physical and emotional/mental) for children; and it's only likely to get worse. I would dearly love to go to my grave knowing that we'd managed to turn all this around, and my descendants will have a place where you can breathe the air more easily (look at the incidence of allergies, and how they've climbed in the last century because of the pollutants we've put into the atmosphere to eat away at our natural defenses -- which is what allergies really are, our natural defenses run amuck -- turning them against us; and that's only one tiny, almost minuscule part of the picture).

I'm sorry. I don't mean to beat this into the ground; but I worry when I see intelligent people who seemingly don't realize just how far down that road we've come, and that we've got to find a way to buy ourselves time until we find ways to survive outside of this planet -- because, unless we truly do adapt evolutionarily, about which I'm not as sanguine as some here, due to the decreasing time factor, this planet isn't likely to support us as a form of life for a whole lot longer; I doubt beyond well into the next century or two -- because, unless we stop debating the question and start actually doing something, I'm afraid our goose is very much cooked.


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## Ryu Gaia

Well, as far as global warming, it can only get so hot. I don't really see the planet being set on fire any time soon, that's not what anyone's told me. So, we lose some continental mass and have to put up more air conditioning systems. Humans learn the error of their ways, and most of them live. The end. Really, no matter what happens, if we're on the freight train of destruction everyone describes, we're doomed no matter what we do, unless we move off the Earth. The moon's looking pretty nice this time of year.


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## j d worthington

Hmmm. Building more air-conditioning. Now, that's a whole 'nother thread....

I suppose (to keep this brief) I'd just like to see us use a little sense and try to minimize the damage as much as possible, and keep the death-toll from being something astronomical in scope. Unlikely to happen, but at least these things _are_ now within our power. If we can just get our heads out of our posteriors long enough to actually do some brainstorming on the issues.


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## jof

hey, i just came across this, and ill post in here what i said on another forum, so apologies if it has already been said.
-----------------------------------------

Firstly, Drawing on my GCSE geography...The world goes through bouts of cooling down and heating up, we are in one of those natural heating up cycles now, pollution has increased this drastically but chances are that the ice caps would melt anyway.

This next sections a bit hazy,on the rivers in London during the 17-1800's (?) there was a celebration called the 'frost fair' this was when the thames (?) froze over completley allowing stalls, dances and whatever else happens in an ye olde englishe fair to be present on top of the ice. Now by i would say it was 1850 latest (again very hazy it may of even been 1900's) the rivers melted and didnt freeze to the extent that they previously did. This made it dangerous to travel on the ice and so the frost fair was disbanded.

As far as i know there wasnt wide spread coal, oil and gas being burnt at this time showing the natural heating up period. Theoretically the Earth will got through a natural cooling cycle (the ice age was one of these i think) after it has gone up to its hottest. Pollution of course would drastically increase the chance of the Earth being, if you will 'destroyed' by us. I do however think that this is a minor possibility as renewable/flow resouces are used more and more often making the use of these fund resources such as coal and oil and gas (lots of and's) redundant.

there are however (without going into renewable resources) limits that wind power can be used i believe its 25% but again very hazy, after the exam i proceded to forget everything possible and focus on more important things such as lord of the rings and forums.

Sorry if the data is incorrect or not accurate.


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## Dave

ljfallavollita said:
			
		

> Will mankind be successful in overcoming the challenges of Global Warming or will those that come after us face even bigger challenges?


To return to the orignal question, I think we love our modern world and it's technology too much to give it up. Unless we find some cleaner way to make the energy we need to run it, I can't see us giving up Fossil Fuels and so we will continue to produce Carbon Dioxide exponentially. Politically the decisions are too difficult to make. And vast areas of the world do not have, but want the same standards of living that are normal in the West.

So, Global Warming is set to escalate. We are very adaptable organisms and we will adapt to the higher tempertures and higher sea levels and more energetic weather, but we will also use technology to solve some of the problems.

Why not build 'Larry Niven- Ringworld' shadowsquares in orbit to collect energy via light cells and prevent it reaching the Earth?

As we begin to better model climate and weather, would it not be possible for us to control it via shadowsquares or other such mega-structures?

At some point Fossil Fuels will run out, and then we are going to have to find some other way to generate energy anyway.


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## Briareus Delta

"Never doubt that a group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."


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## jackokent

Briareus Delta said:
			
		

> "Never doubt that a group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."


 
That's why we're in this mess


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## Briareus Delta

lol


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## Whitestar

After seeing Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", I was quite appalled at how we're treating our planet. However, according to Gore, he stated that we have ten years to clean up our act before we reach the point of no return, plus, he provides several tips on how to do that. Despite being a self-proclaim eternal optimist, even I have to admit that its too late, too late by far. I'm sure even Gore knows this to be true, even though he would never admit it in public because it would lower moral, hence, it would undermine everything he's trying to accomplish. I think the best course of measure is to do what we can to clean up our environemt as much as possible and also create a backup plan and prepare for the worse when the time comes. That way, we'll buy ourselves a little more time until the time is right to get off this used up planet.

Whitestar


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## Saltheart

Well, supposing global warming is true, it will rectify itself. Once are the coasts are flodded and the heatwaves are deadly enough to kill, many humans will die. When the population has severely declined, it will take quite some time for humans to populate the Earth, thus stopping humans from polluting so much and reducing their affect on global warming.

Either that, or people should start making the individual effort now, because one person _can_ make a difference.


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## Moebius Tripper

The Mayan prophecy for the "POLE SHIFT," is December 2012...They are basing this on thier records of sun spots going back thousands of years, if not longer which can not be proved....So forget about global warming and the melting ice....But you will still have to live above sea level if you want to survive the "Shift."  The best place would be Colorado, Idaho, or Montana.
The Pole Shift will produce a tidal wave of over a mile high and winds of over 500 mph...When the Holy Bible says the sun stood still for three days, it was referring to a previous pole shift due to the fact that the earth will stop rotating for three days because of the shift...It would take three days to regain the momentum the earth would need to begin to rotate again....There is a great book about the coming pole shift called: "Pole Shift," by John White.


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## Urien

Stop. You're scaring me.


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## Spartan27

I don't think we can stop the warming trend that we all are currently in. 
There will have to be mass migration of people, which will probably cause some other problems. But in the end we will have to adapt to the changing planet. This doesn't address the reason why this happened, only end-result. However there is no garrantee's that even if we do adapt that things we be "normal". Normal in the sense that of what we know as a stable weather pattern. The most scary things will be if mega storms happen that cover the entire continent. If that happens, nobody will be safe.

Hope I'm wrong.....


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## Urien

The truth is we don't know what effect the slow and slight temperature increase will have. The earth has been much warmer in the past; for much of the time there have been NO icecaps. 

Were there mega storms then? Perhaps. Not all adaptations need be negative.

The estimates of sea level rise from ten years ago have been steadily downgraded. It's snowing more in Antarctica, the ice is getting thicker. 

Equally the predictions of desert expansion could be wrong. Global warming could easily mean more, not less rain. Hence the savannah and jungles expand their belts.

Vast chunks of the earth's land mass are currently of little use. Northern Canada and northern Russia could be brought on line for food production.

The main negative response to a rapid warming would be dislocation. 

Not all the conceivable weather outcomes are negative. We do not know the actual weather patterns that will arise from this. Our models are insufficient to map a dynamic, chaotic and multi-dependent system.

What is the right temperature for Earth. Is it right today? Was it right in the middle ages, or Roman times. Was it right when Britain was sub-tropical?

Honestly peoples desire to try and scare the pants of themselves is astonishing.


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## mosaix

Moebius Tripper said:


> The Pole Shift will produce a tidal wave of over a mile high and winds of over 500 mph...



No it won't.



> When the Holy Bible says the sun stood still for three days, it was referring to a previous pole shift


No it wasn't, because the sun didn't stand still for three days. It's just a fairy story. 




> due to the fact that the earth will stop rotating for three days because of the shift...


No it won't


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## Dave

*Re: The Earth Pole Shift*

Re: The Earth Pole Shift

Is this the shifts that occur periodically in the Earths Magnetic Field, when North and South Poles reverse?

Geologically time-wise speaking, one of these is well overdue. It doesn't have anything to do with the rotation of the Earth though. It would cause some problems for our modern technology - compasses and magnetic problems, electrical systems, maybe computers. It would depend on the strength of the Magnetic Fields produced. As we haven't seen this happen before who knows what it would be like. I would think that it is originally caused by a change in the Sun's own magnetic field, rather than someting internal to the Earth, so that itself may be a symptom of much more striking changes in the Sun that we might experience. I don't believe there is any geological correlation between these magnetic field shifts and mass extinctions, so no 'end of the world' scenarios here. 

As for the Earth stopping spinning for three days - how can that happen? Ever heard of Inertia? Even just a small slowing down would take huge amounts of energy and would consequently cause huge changes.


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## j d worthington

Dave, I don't think the two are more than tenuously connected. What he's referring to is more along these lines:

Polar Shift by 2012?

Try looking up anything on the subject of the Mayan predictions of such, and you'll see plenty of different interpretations; none have the least scientific basis, despite claims to the contrary.

Andrew: True, our models are far from complete. However -- and especially in light of the recent report -- the evidence supporting the, shall we say, "less than desirable"?  effects of global warming, and the consensus of opinion that the probability that the major cause of the changes is well over 90% likely to be us... is quite enough to make changes; and that is not addressing the other problems of our actions -- pollutants causing increasing health probems (especially respiratory), etc.

Again, I'd say the time for debating this is long past, and the time for action is swiftly coming to an end. I am extremely dubious that we can make a significant impact even with major changes now... but not doing anything is like handing baby a loaded pistol and playing cops-and-robbers with him....


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## Dave

j. d. worthington said:


> Dave, I don't think the two are more than tenuously connected. What he's referring to is more along these lines:
> 
> Polar Shift by 2012?
> 
> Try looking up anything on the subject of the Mayan predictions of such, and you'll see plenty of different interpretations; none have the least scientific basis, despite claims to the contrary....


Thanks! I have never heard of this before. That site does talk about Magnetic Pole Reversals but it then goes on about the break up of the Earth's crust and other irrelevances. People are obviously confusing the Earth's Magnetic Pole with the Axis of Rotation - completely different things.

With people spouting this pseudo-science it is not surprising many others still don't take Global Warming seriously.


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## j d worthington

Yes, it does talk about pole reversals, but -- from my understanding of it -- the reasons behind such are seriously outdated.....


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## chrispenycate

What exactly happens when the Earth's magnetic poles do their exchange deal is of great practical interest, particularly how long it takes. If it takes a few years to happen, then, for that period, we've got no Van Allen radiation belts, and the UV leakage due to the ozone loss pales into insignificance compared to unregulated solar wind pouring down towards the surface (about like a few years of continuous Chernobyl) Now, since it's happened before, and doesn't appear to be linked to extinction events, we know it's species-survivable; but that doesn't indicate it'll be enjoyable.
Has anyone seen any theories as to how it might happen? Since magnetic fields are generally caused by electrical currents, and this one appears to originate in the Earth's core (perhaps the mantle, but the liquid core seems more probable), what does it take (and just how much energy is involved) to persuade all those little electrons to turn round in their tracks and start running the other way?


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## j d worthington

Good questions, Chris. I've not read up on the latest ideas on this for a while, but... wasn't the strongest contender that it was linked to a major shift in the sun's magnetic field... not the usual cycle, but extreme turbulence that caused some pretty severe solar storms and such? And that the earth's shift was a secondary result of the bombardment of magnetic turbulence from that? Or am I completely misremembering?


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## Dr. Atomic

It's hard to take that site too seriously... I read the rest of it and it's full of stuff about the Illuminati Banking Conspiracy and its role the 9/11 attacks, the New World Order, and a handy little reprint of a speech describing why Jewish people are responsible for WWI & WWII, as well as why they pretty much got what they deserved from Germany in the Thirties and Forties. 

Not much to inspire confidence in its authoritativeness...

Just sayin'.


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## j d worthington

My point precisely. That was the "Polar Shift" theory referred to above. The genuine shift in the magnetic poles (as recorded by scientific evidence) is another thing _entirely_!


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## Dr. Atomic

Ah. That thing the kids call "irony." Sometimes I'm not paying attention...

I'm going back to sleep...


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## Moebius Tripper

Hey, Mosaix, I'm sorry if you can't take the truth, but I'm getting my facts from scientists....Read the book, "POLE SHIFT," by John White, who is only the editor of that book...He has 20 chapters by 20 different scholars on this subject....And there's the book, "5/5/2000 by Richard Noone that goes into the effects of a pole shift like no other book I've come across.


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## tecmic

As someone has already pointed out, although interesting, the time for debate has long since passed.  I suspect any 'action' we could have mustered would  have been minimal and had zero effect, except of course, back at the start of the 20th century realising what the consequences would be of burning fossil fuels on a global scale.  Hind sight wisdom, I know but I find the most interesting aspect of all this to be the strange acceptance we all display by our lack of collective action on the subject.

My guess is that this attitude will change as the consequences of global warming start directly impacting on our individual lives.  No doubt this will range from scarcity of food and fresh water to fatalities.

As our understanding of planet Earth increases we realise that our existence here comes with no guarantees yet we still behave as if humanity is infallible.


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## j d worthington

tecmic said:


> As our understanding of planet Earth increases we realise that our existence here comes with no guarantees yet we still behave as if humanity is infallible.


 
Yes, well... that's an entirely different can of worms that no one really wants to get me started on... not unless they've got a fair amount of Thorazine handy.....


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## tecmic

I suggest human behaviour, although it manifests in many different ways, is a single issue.  Until, if ever, we learn to moderate what we do in relation to what Earth systems can sustain, we risk consequences we might not survive!

These 'cans of worms' as you put it, all role up into a threat to our species continued existence.


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## j d worthington

tecmic said:


> I suggest human behaviour, although it manifests in many different ways, is a single issue. Until, if ever, we learn to moderate what we do in relation to what Earth systems can sustain, we risk consequences we might not survive!
> 
> These 'cans of worms' as you put it, all role up into a threat to our species continued existence.


 
Oh, I'm in agreement with you on that. However, my meaning is that it isn't the scientific or technological aspect of things, which may have solutions. It's behavioral, and that's much, much more difficult to alter. Historically speaking, the only time you see any major alterations in such is when humanity is pushed to the wall... and then as soon as the crisis is over, we tend to lapse back into old behaviors (with some very minor modifications at times, but nothing major). That may be because it is in part genetic -- there's evidence to support that possibility. We just may not be capable of surviving because of our genetic heritage and our inability to alter our behaviors. This really is one of those questions that the final answer will come with our survival or lack of same... in which latter case, there won't be anyone left to give a damn. And I'm afraid I've been pushed farther and farther into the camp of believing we're not capable over the decades... and been dragged there kicking and screaming, to boot. I'm still hoping to be proven wrong, but I'm none too sanguine on that point.

It is, however, one time when I'd eat crow with relish, believe me!


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## Urien

... Don't worry, give a whistle....

aaaaaand "Always look on the bright side of life..."


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## tecmic

J.D. that's the very aspect I was eluding to!  What is it in our pyschological make-up that causes us to ignore such a threat until it actually starts to kill us?  Lemmings are apparently well ahead of us in as much that they commit mass suicide if their population becomes too large!!

Many say that the situation is understood by the majority so why aren't we, en masse, screaming at our governments?

Others claim we would have to live like monks.  I hardly think so but we certainly need to make some drastic changes to the way we live.  I'm with you J.D. the challenge is to change our behaviour (lifestyles)

On a specific point, back a few posts somebody mentioned 4x4's being gas guzzlers.  This is a media hobby horse!!  Gas guzzlers can take many forms, I have a 4x4 that does 42 miles per gallon but there are still many saloon car models that produce only 10 - 12 mpg.  In fact you often see government ministers riding in them!!  Most frustrating and ridiculous is how governments (especially here in the UK) still allow the production and importation of automobiles with large or high performance engines of high consumption and then penalise the owners with taxes etc for owning them!!!!  Could this have something to do with preserving government income from taxes?

As you say J.D. it's a behavioural challenge!


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## Joel007

I think you mean "alluding". 
Until we find a way to control the sun, this planet's climate is not under our control. We could definately try to avoid making it worse, but there is such a thing as overdoing it. Despite what some self-proclaimed "experts" would like you to believe, CO2 is _not_ a pollutant. Any real study of the levels of carbon dioxide will show that it _follows_ temperature, by several hundred years.


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## j d worthington

Agreed, Joel, we can't completely control the climate, no. But we do have a major impact on it, with all the things we've pumped into the environment; that we can (theoretically) change. It's that "theoretically" that's the devil in the details here.

Tecmic, I've been talking this particular point out with several people lately, and I think it's tied into a lot of other behaviors we might not associate with each other ... even some we think of as being beneficial -- and that may be beneficial, under some circumstances. And I'm beginning to see some research that may indicate we've a genetic predisposition toward these things, and that our basic emotional makeup is such that, en masse, we simply aren't capable of making such an enormous paradigmatic shift. It would be too psychically damaging.

Now, I'm not saying that this is the case, and I'm quite seriously hoping it's not... but I'm seeing enough things that click together to make me seriously wonder if this isn't what's going on; and the fact that I'm seeing enough trained minds seeing something of the same thing to actually take researching it in large groups, with masses of data already having been accumulated that are now being correlating and finding to fit... well, that really gives me pause. It's not a position I like because, if it is true, it may well mean we're coming up on our "extinction event" without benefit of a "cosmic zap" as Bob Bakker put it.

This does not mean I'm going to cease arguing for us to change... I'm going to continue to do so, and to work toward it. But I've been pushed very much into the camp that the ones who are actually capable of such are extremely rare individuals; perhaps this portion of genetic information is "lacking" or a recessive with them? Again, this is all very tenuous, but the pattern has been growing enough to smack me in the face, and I don't like what I see... but truth never was made to our liking; it simply is. This may well be such a case. The final arbiter of whether I'm right or not may, as I say, be whether or not we survive, which is a hell of a way to get an answer....


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## Urien

"it may well mean we're coming up on our "extinction event"" JD

We're always predicting our own demise. I think we have a predisposition for that. People almost seem to relish pronouncing our own doom.

How many of you doom sayers are building mountain bunkers? That's a good measure of belief I would have thought.

Even if it does get warmer, the planet has been a lot warmer in the past and life thrived. 

We're collectively a very smart species. I believe our ingenuity outweighs our stupidity. 

So many roll over so easily and show their belly to despair.


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## j d worthington

No, Andrew... I think you're off-beam there. There's a difference between seeing a very dangerous trend, being very concerned about where it is likely to lead unless altered, and giving in to despair. I'll admit that, after nearly 40 years of looking at this sort of question, and seeing the trends I've seen added to historical trends, and adding in our growing capacity to do ourselves in -- something that, for all the lip-service paid it, most people really don't seem to have accepted as a possibility; there's still this feeling that "somehow we'll muddle through" without doing anything constructive to increase that possibility; well, put that all together, and I'm a damned sight less sanguine than I used to be. I still have some hope -- otherwise I wouldn't bother to post such things; what would be the point?

So I wouldn't be too quick to accuse people of giving in to despair -- these are real issues that have potentially dire consequences; and human beings don't have any guarantees of survival. Compared to numerous other species, ours is an extremely tenuous sinecure, and we are still the "new kid on the block". I'd just like to see us increase our chances but not behaving so bloody stupidly!


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## Urien

Humans "bloody stupid" surely you're thinking of some other species.

I know they're real issues; but I read a lot of despair on here. I think that's a pretty objective observation. 

I do think that humans have a prediliction for doomsaying. There is something inherently fascinating and magnetic about the end of days. Our history has us always predicting doom; this time we're right?


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## j d worthington

andrew.v.spencer said:


> Humans "bloody stupid" surely you're thinking of some other species.
> 
> I know they're real issues; but I read a lot of despair on here. I think that's a pretty objective observation.
> 
> I do think that humans have a prediliction for doomsaying. There is something inherently fascinating and magnetic about the end of days. Our history has us always predicting doom; this time we're right?


 
Yes, bloody stupid. We do have a capacity for enormously nitwit things, and history is littered with such: Genocide, "better dead than red", nuclear proliferation, biological weaponry, racial hatred, religious bigotry, putting school sports before science or other academic subjects, the persistence of all manner of obviously fallacious superstitions long after any sort of ground for belief in such has been debunked..... the list is well-nigh endless.

As for your final point... I'll agree with you that doomsaying has its own fascination; but again I'll draw a distinction between that which is simply "doom and gloom" and someone in a burning building yelling out "Hey, people! We've got a problem here. Don't stand around talking about it -- give me some help with these bloody hoses!!!" 

Either way -- the doom-and-gloom without action approach, or the all-too-common "we'll muddle through" approach -- both abdicate our responsibility to take action to solve the problem. Either way leaves it up to somebody else, and that eventually begins to smack very much of "going to the well once too often".

People tend to forget that the problem with Cassandra isn't what she said... it's that no one listened. If they had, _then_ she'd have been proven wrong.

Oh, and just for clarification: I'm not saying that global warming is the extinction event... there may not be a single extinction event, as such. But we keep skating on ever-thinner ice, and eventually it's likely to give way. The extinction event, as such, is our refusal to take constructive action, to actually use our heads to prevent, leaving us to hope that there's a cure for the mess.... eventually, we're likely to come up against one (or several conjoined) where there won't be. So our refusal (or inability) to change may be our "extinction event". _That_ is what I was saying.


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## tecmic

Joel 
Yes, I did mean 'alluding', thank you.  Most substances can become a pollutant or a poison in inappropiate or excessive quantities.  As I understand it, it is the additional and excessive amounts of CO2 humanity is creating that is the basic cause of the major climate changes now in progress.

JD
I take your point, I believe it is true to say that historically, mass shifts in cultural attitudes have been instigated and led by a figurehead of some description (King, Dictator, religious or political figure)  These events were generally confined to a region or nation.  It is the global nature of the problem we debate that will defeat us as we are incapable of acting in unision as a species.

Andrew
The evidence is growing as are the various changes to our planets eco system.  I'm not sure about 'showing my belly to despair' but I do take the increasing warnings from scientists seriously.


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## Spartan27

Global warming and pole shifts are not necessarily.

The GHG effect has happened because of the un-checked emission of CO2, and Methane into our atmosphere for the past 100 years (of which there has been an exponential increase in emission the last 35 years, and coupled with that fact that CFC's were also dumped into the atmosphere which erroded away our ozone layer, this exasberated (sp?) the heating of the planet in the past 20 years). With the increase of CO2 and Methane (which is effect via cummulative thats why we are now just seeing the affects-kind of like cancer), coupled with holes in our ozone, this creates a greenhouse effect in the lower atmosphere which then conversely creates ground level ozone (which is that brownish haze you see). This is the GHG effect in a nutshell. The main problem with GHG, will be the:

1. Almost immediate in planet terms (immediate in this term is 20 years), sea levels increasing to a height (from what we know as the current sea level) to 20-30 feet on a NORMAL DAY.

2. High tides can be up to twice that based on where the moon is in it's orbit.

3. Come hurricane season, sea levels will be (I guess you know where I am going).

As for polar shifts, polar shift can happen if the moon moves off of it's current orbit around the earth (more than the 1/2 to 1 inch a year recession). The poles can also shift based on what is happening on the sun. Someone mentioned that if the poles shift we would not have our magentic field, this is correct and is temporary, without our magnetic field in place (very strange things will happen and some may be extreme in nature). If there is a gradual pole shift, the earth will see areas that may be covered in ice, and others hot as hell. But, I can't see how the oceans WOULD NOT be affected. To test the theory, fill a glass half way up with water and slowly rotate the water in the glass till you have the water "spinning", maintain the plane of rotation of the glass, and then gradually tilt the glass one way or the other (see what happens). Then do the same thing and have an abrupt tilt. The water will practically come out of the glass. So with that, if we have a abrupt shift, the best I can estimate is a wave somewhere 2 to 3 miles high (thats approximately 10-16 thousand feet!!!), once the wave hits the water will attempt to seek it's level (there is no way around that, that means backsplash event). scary stuff indeed.


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## Urien

"It is the global nature of the problem we debate that will defeat us as we are incapable of acting in unision as a species." Tecmic

I guess that's the despair I'm speaking of.

That we have a problem with overusing our planet is clear, that we are inventive, creative and capable of great things is also clear. 

It's the dual nature of the species. I side with hope and ingenuity.


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## mosaix

As Dave has already said the 'Shift' relates to the magnetic poles not the the Axis of Rotation.


----------



## mosaix

Moebius Tripper said:


> Hey, Mosaix, I'm sorry if you can't take the truth, but I'm getting my facts from scientists....Read the book, "POLE SHIFT," by John White, who is only the editor of that book...He has 20 chapters by 20 different scholars on this subject....And there's the book, "5/5/2000 by Richard Noone that goes into the effects of a pole shift like no other book I've come across.



Do any of these scholars say that the earth will stop rotating for three days?

Let's discuss this again in 2013. I'm sure we'll be able to.


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## j d worthington

andrew.v.spencer said:


> It's the dual nature of the species. I side with hope and ingenuity.


 
I suppose that's where the difference lies. I'm against splitting it into such a simple dichotomy, and more in favor of a mixture of the two so that we heed the dangers of such situations early on (preferably by keeping an eye out as we get into such situations rather than waiting until our backs are against the wall), and taking assertive, constructive action... neither despair nor superoptimism, but a more realistic view of things. The problem is, this is going to require a genuine commitment to understanding the sciences, especially physics, by the majority; and that's not something that's likely to happen without some genuinely creative push by those who do, to make the subjects interesting, help them to understand how these aren't just dry facts but impact their lives on a daily basis, and help people to understand the power such knowledge may give them over their own lives and in the world around us. If we can genuinely do that... oh, what a lot of grief we'd save ourselves!


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## tecmic

Andrew, I would be more than happy to admit I'm misguided and full of despair if you would provide an example of where all the major nations are working together, let's forget global action for a minute and have agreed on at least one major significant action to reduce carbon emissions now!  Those that exist are all in the future and small percentages.  The USA are still not convinced.  China is building new fossil fuel burning power stations at the rate of one a week!!  The UK is failing to meet even the small reduction we agreed to and these are just the tip of the iceberg.


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## jackokent

I agree, call it despair if you want to, but what ever it is I believe it.  We don't agree as a nation and we won't agree as a planet.  We can't even agree about minor issues let alone big ones.

I don't understand the science at all but if the issue of addressing global warming means we have to work together, which I stongly believe it does, then we're all doomed.


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## mosaix

For those who think common sense will prevail, read this....

BBC NEWS | UK | Green anger at 'ghost flights'

If we can't sort out stupidity like this then we haven't got a chance.


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## Urien

That's just arguing from the specific to the general. Whatver is the hot topic of the day sends journalists, the concerned, on a scurry around for related incidents. This is one. How many airlines are there, how many flights a day? Answer, lots. If one can't find a partciular incident that appears to support a general case when perusing a large population database, one is simply not trying hard enough. 

When the NHS is in the news and the Cons or Lab want to make a negative point, it's not hard to find one. "Eighty year old woman left on trolley in corridor for four hours", that sort of thing. The NHS has thousands of hospitals, hundreds of thousands of staff and millions of patients. NHS patient interactions must be in the order of millions a day, if one can't find a few screw ups in that population then you aren't trying hard enough.


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## j d worthington

mosaix said:


> For those who think common sense will prevail, read this....
> 
> BBC NEWS | UK | Green anger at 'ghost flights'
> 
> If we can't sort out stupidity like this then we haven't got a chance.


 
Excuse me; I need to go be ill now... and then maybe "visit" some _very_ stupid people..... Gak! To quote from Goldman's The Lion in Winter: "I wish you plague! May all your children breech and die!" 

Except, Andrew, it is yet another indicator of how we deliberately set up systems that screw us up! If we put contingency plans in place (and what airline doesn't periodically have a situation like the one that brought this about -- what business doesn't?) to take care of such situations without causing avoidable damage, this sort of thing wouldn't end up happening, because there'd be no need for them to take this sort of stupid measure to "preserve their place in line", as it were. Again, it's the simple fact that we go for the easiest fix, the quick-fix, not the long-term or lasting fix. We apply bandaids to a single problem, rather than looking at the interactions on things, and try to find solutions that may take more time and trouble, but have longer-lasting (and less damaging) results!


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## Urien

I think we shall have to agree to differ. 

I don't think we deliberately put in systems that screw us up. I think our systems occasionally screw up. The law of large numbers alone accounts for that. 

I look out of my window at Manhattan; if we didn't plan ahead it would be a few huts, if we didn't plan ahead we couldn't be having this debate, if we didn't plan ahead we wouldn't have a sewerage system.

Sometimes our actions have unforseen consequences, we then have to fix those consequences, but they aren't brought about by malice or deliberate planning. What I see is a species that constantly tries to better itself. We make mistakes, we have slip ups, but the rise of human civilization over the last couple of thousand years shows a general improvement in the lot of the population.

Now we're realizing our sheer numbers, and success are having consequences, we'll deal with it measure by measure as the confirmation or disconfirmation comes in.

In Sci-fi terms JD I think I'm Star Trek and you're Babylon 5. Babylon 5 was more fun.


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## tecmic

Andrew, an example please!


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## Urien

Nations co-operating to solve a common problem:

Bird flu.
Aids
Kosovo
Bosnia Herzgovina
The Marshall Plan
Most of the activities of the UN.
South Africa. Under apartheid.
The Gulf War (first one).
Most universities internationally interact with other more than ever before. The new information nets are vast. 
Numerous earthquakes.
The Asian Tsunami
International space station
The Fusion project.
The Antarctic treatry
World Trade Organization
EU
IMF
World Bank
African Union
ASEAN

More controversially The two World Wars, the cold war.


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## Spartan27

mosaix said:


> As Dave has already said the 'Shift' relates to the magnetic poles not the the Axis of Rotation.


 
Mosaix, you are 50% correct.

The sun can affect our magnet field, and change the magnetic north and south poles, this is true (in fact this has occurred a couple of times in the earths history), however, the moon controls our axial rotation around the sun and our spin rate and tilt on our axis. If the moon was to move away from it's current orbit (for whatever reason i.e. impact of gravity pull from earth is being defeated by other gravity pulls of larger magnitude), the earth would indeed shift perhaps as much as 90 degrees, but once in wobble state, there it would remain (days. nights, years, minutes seconds, seasons...all gone for some new order of things).

If that happens we are to get real wet, real fast there just no way around that...as for the earth stopping (from rotating) for three days....can't see that happening, unless something impacts the earth of sufficient mass to absord the enertia and momentum and use it's gravity....the only thing powerful enough to do that is a blackhole.


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## Spartan27

andrew.v.spencer said:


> I think we shall have to agree to differ.
> 
> I don't think we deliberately put in systems that screw us up. I think our systems occasionally screw up. The law of large numbers alone accounts for that.
> 
> I look out of my window at Manhattan; if we didn't plan ahead it would be a few huts, if we didn't plan ahead we couldn't be having this debate, if we didn't plan ahead we wouldn't have a sewerage system.
> 
> Sometimes our actions have unforseen consequences, we then have to fix those consequences, but they aren't brought about by malice or deliberate planning. What I see is a species that constantly tries to better itself. We make mistakes, we have slip ups, but the rise of human civilization over the last couple of thousand years shows a general improvement in the lot of the population.
> 
> Now we're realizing our sheer numbers, and success are having consequences, we'll deal with it measure by measure as the confirmation or disconfirmation comes in.
> 
> In Sci-fi terms JD I think I'm Star Trek and you're Babylon 5. Babylon 5 was more fun.


 
Andrew, the warning signs of GHG (or global warming) have been discussed for at least 40 years now. In fact, there are some really good papers, that were written about earth changes in specific temp. by non-other than Carl Sagan, and the other famous scientist (the one who did 2001 space oddessy), who spoke that CO2 is a real problem (because it was classified as an inert gas) and that was the very problem (there have been numerous people who spoke at the U.N. 25 or more years ago about this very thing). Nobody cared. Everyone was looking at the HC, NOx, NO2 gassess for years now. Please realize that the earth has two main "CO2 sinks"

1. The oceans
2. The forests

Our oceans are at the limit for CO2 absorbtion, while we continue to cut and clear forests. So the earth is stressed, here is a solution:

1. Stop clearing forest land and replenish the specific tree species.
2. Implement NOW carbon sequestring (sp?) technology to absorb the CO2 and neutralize it (this technology exists today).
3. Stop coal buring powerplants and convert to super clean- and super safe nuclear.


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## Urien

Spartan,

Don't disagree, practical solutions for a practical problem. 

I believe that reforestation has been going on apace in Europe and North America for some time now. I think New England is the largest reforested area on Earth. 

Though this is remembered not that recent reading. I'd need to source to confirm.

Forty years ago as many scientists were talking about a new ice age as global warming, more in fact. As you know it takes a good while to achieve consensus.


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## Dave

Spartan27 said:


> If the moon was to move away from it's current orbit (for whatever reason i.e. impact of gravity pull from earth is being defeated by other gravity pulls of larger magnitude)


But the Moon is moving - incredibly slowly, and the spin of the Earth is slowing down - enough for atomic clocks to need to be reset. To actually separate the Earth and Moon system would take a huge amount of energy. 





Spartan27 said:


> ...as for the earth stopping (from rotating) for three days....can't see that happening, unless something impacts the earth of sufficient mass to absord the enertia and momentum and use it's gravity....the only thing powerful enough to do that is a blackhole.


If there was a blackhole that close to us, I wouldn't be worrying about Global Warming. Pole Shifts, or even the Earth not spinning.


----------



## mosaix

Spartan27 said:


> Mosaix, you are 50% correct.
> 
> The sun can affect our magnet field, and change the magnetic north and south poles, this is true (in fact this has occurred a couple of times in the earths history), however, the moon controls our axial rotation around the sun and our spin rate and tilt on our axis. If the moon was to move away from it's current orbit (for whatever reason i.e. impact of gravity pull from earth is being defeated by other gravity pulls of larger magnitude), the earth would indeed shift perhaps as much as 90 degrees, but once in wobble state, there it would remain (days. nights, years, minutes seconds, seasons...all gone for some new order of things).
> 
> If that happens we are to get real wet, real fast there just no way around that...as for the earth stopping (from rotating) for three days....can't see that happening, unless something impacts the earth of sufficient mass to absord the enertia and momentum and use it's gravity....the only thing powerful enough to do that is a blackhole.



Hi Spartan. The magentic poles have switched many times in the earth's history. Lava flowing from where plates divide under the Pacific 'records' the earth's polarity as it sets. This polarity can be seen in striped banding across the ocean floor.

Not seen you around for a while. Welcome back.


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## tecmic

Andrew, unfortunately your example is a hotch potch of unrelated events, organisations and nations, most of which have nothing to do with reducing CO2 emissions regarding climate change.

You're right, we must agree to differ!


----------



## Urien

I thought the point was to show nations working together to solve problems. Your point if I remember rightly was that nations were too self interested to work together. Clearly they are not.

I think you should look at the agendas of supra-national organizations and meetings. Global warming pretty much comes up on all of them. 

If you really believe we are doomed, and persist with the idea that nothing can be done, and no nations are doing anything about it, then how do you go on?


----------



## tecmic

Now there's real hope!  I think not.

The UK government have just announced a new plan to cut carbon emissions, 60% by 2050.  What's the problem? there's no urgency, is there?  
The irony is that Nature will have most probably done it for us before that date.

Andrew, the point was to show the major nations working together to alleviate the climate change problem (Due to a lack of cooperative action todate it's now too late to prevent it)  With regard to 'nothing can be done', much to the contrary, that's exactly my point!  Much can be done but, like many others, I don't see any government 'biting the bullet' and introducing the serious measures that would actually produce results.


----------



## Spartan27

mosaix said:


> Hi Spartan. The magentic poles have switched many times in the earth's history. Lava flowing from where plates divide under the Pacific 'records' the earth's polarity as it sets. This polarity can be seen in striped banding across the ocean floor.
> 
> Not seen you around for a while. Welcome back.


 
Hello Mosaix, thanks...been doing alot of travel for business, so I think I have my feet planted for a while. 

Kind of miss this place, some very interesting discussions take place here, and must admit probably the best discussions on the web. 

Yes your correct, the poles have shifted many times. As for the GHG effect, we do still have time to slow it down a bit.


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## Spartan27

tecmic said:


> Now there's real hope! I think not.
> 
> The UK government have just announced a new plan to cut carbon emissions, 60% by 2050. What's the problem? there's no urgency, is there?
> 
> The irony is that Nature will have most probably done it for us before that date.


 
Tecmic....I would tend to agree with you that it's not happening fast enough for us. To clean the atmosphere for us to have a viable, liveable planet will take a whole new thought process. Perhaps this is the kick in the pants humanity will need to "evolve" into something more than what and who we are today...(still a violent bunch bent on destruction).

I know I am on my soap box now, the biggest bang for the buck is switching from coal burning power plante to nuclear energy. This can be done within 5-10 years, and we (all nations) can do this. Currently China is the number 1 producer of coal burning power plants, this is not a good sign. This is because their economy is growing at a huge rate.

If you ask me, the nuclear power plant can help slow down the effect on a massive scale, the side effect of this is all the spent rods. Keep the faith, as a famous New York Yankee basebal player once said "it's not over until the fat lady sings".


----------



## mosaix

Moebius Tripper said:


> The Mayan prophecy for the "POLE SHIFT," is December 2012...They are basing this on thier records of sun spots going back thousands of years, if not longer which can not be proved....So forget about global warming and the melting ice....But you will still have to live above sea level if you want to survive the "Shift."  The best place would be Colorado, Idaho, or Montana.
> The Pole Shift will produce a tidal wave of over a mile high and winds of over 500 mph...When the Holy Bible says the sun stood still for three days, it was referring to a previous pole shift due to the fact that the earth will stop rotating for three days because of the shift...It would take three days to regain the momentum the earth would need to begin to rotate again....There is a great book about the coming pole shift called: "Pole Shift," by John White.





mosaix said:


> No it won't.





Moebius Tripper said:


> Hey, Mosaix, I'm sorry if you can't take the truth, but I'm getting my facts from scientists....Read the book, "POLE SHIFT," by John White, who is only the editor of that book...He has 20 chapters by 20 different scholars on this subject....And there's the book, "5/5/2000 by Richard Noone that goes into the effects of a pole shift like no other book I've come across.





mosaix said:


> Let's discuss this again in 2013. I'm sure we'll be able to.



I'm nothing if not patient. 

The above exchange took place earlier in this thread in the first part of 2007. I'm about to email Moebius Tripper to ask him to return to the thread and take part in the discussion again. 

I'd love to find out if he moved to Colorado, Idaho, or Montana and what he thinks of the book, its author, and its 'scientists' now. 

I just love moments like this.


----------



## Vertigo

Oooo Mosaix.............

Of course that is what is called getting your science jumbled around. We do indeed currently have all the signs of moving towards _another_ pole shift (at least I'm guessing what they mean is magnetic North and South switching. Only problem is that I think even the most pessimistic estimates still put the timescale in the centuries range. And when it does the biggest problem is likely to be having to wear sunscreen for a generation of two rather than getting to high ground. I can't think how a pole switch over like this would have any bearing whatsoever on global warming.


----------



## Boneman

Revenge is a dish best served cold... 

I once read a book (because it was free) written by someone that insisted the whole planet would be moved across the galaxy in (I think) 1998. She backed it up with an amazing amount of 'evidence' that this had happened before (ancient papers talking about the position of the stars, etc, etc) and I wish I'd kept it. Maybe I could do a book search? 

If you want to make a fortune, write a book entitled 'Are there aliens visiting this planet?' Big blurb under it: 'Based entirely on the author's personal experiences, you'll be amazed at the answer.'

People buy the book and are amazed when page one says this: "Based on my own personal experiences: no." Well, you haven't lied, have you? You'd allow pre-orders and wait until you've made a pile before releasing the ebook. You'd be a legend in no time. A bit like John White...


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## mosaix

mosaix said:


> I'm about to email Moebius Tripper to ask him to return to the thread and take part in the discussion again.



Very disappointing. 

I emailed MT on the 2nd as promised and, so far, no response.


----------



## Joseph Gutierrez

many congressmen in US are global warming deniers

yeah, will be very difficult to solve it


----------



## Montero

Joseph Gutierrez said:


> many congressmen in US are global warming deniers
> 
> yeah, will be very difficult to solve it



Good for them.  .  And yes I know, that is an inflammatory statement.  I am however tired of politicians and press who are caught up in the hysteria of global warming without even beginning to understand the science.  

My basic position is this:

1.  As a scientist, I object to the word "denial" - this is science, not religion.  Denial is a religiously charged word.
2.  Of course the climate is changing.  Long before man there were tropical type forests in Yorkshire and ice sheets down as far as London (at different times).
3.  The current data on global warming has been called into question, repeatedly.  The models are not doing a very good job of predicting the details of what is going on.  What is needed is for the scientists to get on with the job without global slanging matches.  This is extremely difficult when press and politicians (who control the funding) are looking for dramatic sound bites.
4.  Mankind is over populating the planet and over consuming the resources.  No politician has stood up and said that.  We are supposed to be made happy by a few renewable energy installations while people continue to fly around the world for their holidays, fruit is imported by plane, people remodel their houses due to change in fashion not things wearing out, etc, etc.

I am green.  I am concerned for the planet.  I think we all need to understand the limits of consumption far better and live more sustainable lives.  I am unconvinced by the data presented so far that - a) that the planet is definitely warming and that b) this is caused by CO2 emissions from industry of the last 200 years.

The whole picture needs to be considered, so that people understand that a bit of recycling does not "entitle" them to a second holiday abroad to get over all that effort.  (That was a real life response I saw online regarding a questionaire on renewables given by I think the University of Exeter.)

More joined up thinking is needed.

So I agree that solution to the world's problem will be very, very difficult - however I think the problem is lack of understanding of how our actions affect the world as a whole and massive over-consumption in particular.


----------



## mosaix

I'm a little confused by your post, Montero. 

In point 3 you seem to say that it is the scientists who are employed in the slanging matches and that they should just get on with the research. I don't see how they are going to ensure continued funding for their research without refuting the 'deniers' (sorry) in politics and big business. That's bound to involve them in arguments - and why not? 

If you really do think the problems are caused by 'lack of understanding' then surely it is the responsibility of scientists to explain what they think the problems are, and on occasions refute others, so that we do understand. You seem think that's a 'slanging match', I think it's unavoidable, whatever you call it. 

Then, other hand, we have some politicians listening to big business lobbying who aren't doing any 'explaining' at all, just 'denying' (sorry again).

In my view, the current situation is just as it should be with both sides putting forward their arguments and counter-arguments for discussion. But I think it's important to ensure adequate funding for the research and, because that involves public money, that's going to be contentious.


----------



## Montero

Some scientists are involved in slanging matches, though most of the  shouting is coming from non-scientists. The point I am trying to make is  that the debate that is in the public forum is conducted emotively with  phrases like "denier" being slung around, rather than numerically.    Yes, it should be debated and not used as a slanging match.  But with  the amount of scaremongering that has gone on as the most extreme  outcomes are reported in the press (as in maximum sea level rise rather  than the possible range) the public are not being well informed.

It  has got a little better recently - in that parts the press does report  scientists who say that they consider the evidence for global warming is  not conclusive, or that there are errors in the construction for the  argument.  (Though the BBC is rather lagging behind in that.)  There is  however a nasty tendency for the more extreme end of the green spectrum,  plus organisations who stand to make money from renewable energy  developments, to turn around and say that anyone who criticises the  global warming campaign in any shape or form is a "denier".  Once the  person or organisation is labelled a "denier" then everything they say  is dismissed as suspect, because they are deniers, aren't they.

One  case in point as part of the global warming debate is that for several  years or more there have been scientists saying that CO2 levels are  trailing rises in global temperature not preceding it - which suggests  that global temperature changes could be due to a cause other than  higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and the higher CO2 seen in the  atmosphere is caused by the rise in temperature - not the other way  around.  Note I say "suggests".

Regarding big business lobbying -  Renewable UK, Friend of the Earth and other such organisations are also  big business - and they lobby too.


I am interested to see that you say how will scientists get funding for research into global warming if people deny it is happening.  Mm.  Is it happening?  If the scientists come up with data that shows it is not happening, will the funding continue?

Remember Star Wars - Ronald Reagan's Star Wars and all the hype and funding boom then bust?

Science should be looking at the data, not pre-judging the conclusions.   If the data is inconclusive - then tough, that is how it is.  But  politicians don't like that as it looks bad that they gave money and  didn't get answers.

What seems to be happening in the public forum is sound byte slinging rather than scientific discussion.

Oh - and very few politicians (I can't think of any but would be very happy to be corrected) seem to have any scientific or engineering training.  I am reminded of a documentary I saw on RR Star Wars a few years back, when one of the scientists said he'd been at a presentation to members of Congress, where they were told that the laser energy output was currently at 10 to the power of 3 (can't work out how to do superscript here) and for Star Wars to work, they needed to develop lasers to 10 to the power of 6.  
OMG said a congressman, we're half way there!


----------



## Darth Angelus

Montero said:


> 1.  As a scientist, I object to the word "denial" - this is science, not religion.  Denial is a religiously charged word.


When the debate of what is, at its core, scientific issue comes out into the public, there is bound to be this clash between how scientists discuss it and ordinary people. This is nothing strange. However, since the decision makers are elected by ordinary people (mostly), I do not see how it is possible to prevent this. Furthermore, I believe it is sometimes necessary to simplify it a bit in order for to make any sort of clear message.
Besides, in order to make the public debate scientific, I think a bit more than omitting certain words would be needed. I mean, the scientific models for the climate are not exactly the first year of university mathematics, I imagine. There are always going to be few who are really qualified to assess it.



Montero said:


> 2.  Of course the climate is changing.  Long before man there were tropical type forests in Yorkshire and ice sheets down as far as London (at different times).


Yeah, well, of course. I believe it is the current rate that has been found to be abnormally high, in nature.



Montero said:


> 3.  The current data on global warming has been called into question, repeatedly.  The models are not doing a very good job of predicting the details of what is going on.  What is needed is for the scientists to get on with the job without global slanging matches.  This is extremely difficult when press and politicians (who control the funding) are looking for dramatic sound bites.


The question is whether the questioning is based on legitimate understanding of the science.



Montero said:


> 4.  Mankind is over populating the planet and over consuming the resources.  No politician has stood up and said that.  We are supposed to be made happy by a few renewable energy installations while people continue to fly around the world for their holidays, fruit is imported by plane, people remodel their houses due to change in fashion not things wearing out, etc, etc.


I can only agree to this. The resources are not endless, and we will not be able burn fossil fuels forever, whether it causes global warming or not.
However, if policies changed to address these problems you mention, it would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, in any case.



Montero said:


> I am green.  I am concerned for the planet.  I think we all need to understand the limits of consumption far better and live more sustainable lives.  I am unconvinced by the data presented so far that - a) that the planet is definitely warming and that b) this is caused by CO2 emissions from industry of the last 200 years.


I think it is fairly well known, scientifically, what properties CO2 has, as a greenhouse gas, and the deduction that more greenhouse gasin the atmosphere means stronger greenhouse effect is rather intuitive.



Montero said:


> The whole picture needs to be considered, so that people understand that a bit of recycling does not "entitle" them to a second holiday abroad to get over all that effort.  (That was a real life response I saw online regarding a questionaire on renewables given by I think the University of Exeter.)
> 
> More joined up thinking is needed.


I couldn't agree more here. The concern for the environment can become a superficial thing, to the public. Recycling is a relatively small contribution to the environment, and while it does raise public consciousness, it doesn't entitle us to do more harm to the environment elsewhere.


----------



## K. Riehl

The questioning of the models is based on observed temperature records. It's not opinion when the satellite and observed ground temperature records are show a flatline for the last 16 years.

The use of deniers is a loaded word as anyone who questions the science is linked to holocaust deniers. It's a cynical and abhorrent practice.

The 4 main IPCC models overestimate warming over the last 20 years by 2 to 8 times more than observed. I think it is right to question this as billions are being spent.


----------



## Darth Angelus

K. Riehl said:


> The questioning of the models is based on observed temperature records. It's not opinion when the satellite and observed ground temperature records are show a flatline for the last 16 years.


No, it is either lies or ignorance.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergl...fool-people-using-cherry-picked-climate-data/
But really, what he says in that article is rather self-evident, to anyone with skills to analyse statistical data. Besides, if one has even a slight mathematical background, it doesn't usually take a long time to see if someone drawing conclusion from series of data know how to interpret stuff. So far, most of what I have seen from climate sceptics's arguments has been unimpressive. Most show the understanding of statistics that one might expect from a fairly average 15-year old student (this may not be polite, but this isn't intended as flaming). There are exceptions, but this is not one of them.
Others (who are far more schooled than myself) have pointed out these severe analytical flaws in sceptics's arguments, too. Really, how can one expect to be taken seriously as a scientific person if one shows no grasp of the basics?



K. Riehl said:


> The use of deniers is a loaded word as anyone who questions the science is linked to holocaust deniers. It's a cynical and abhorrent practice.


Well, I am fairly sure "denier" just means someone who denies something (whatever preceeds the word, really). The link to holocaust deniers in purely unintentional. I don't know any other word for someone who denies something that is not holocaust, so...
Still, it may or may not be a bit over the top. With sceptics coming up with really absurdly simplistic interpretations of data when arguing against man made global warming, I can understand where someone might get the idea it is denial.
Anyway, it is not like "fanatic" and "zealot" has never been used to describe those who believe in man made global warming by sceptics, so the sceptic side isn't exactly clean, either.



K. Riehl said:


> The 4 main IPCC models overestimate warming over the last 20 years by 2 to 8 times more than observed. I think it is right to question this as billions are being spent.


Just wondering, is that assessment made by someone (honest) with a decent amount of statistical analysis skill?
And billions is really a rather minor amount, if there is even a fairly decent chance that the future of our species could be at stake.


----------



## Gordian Knot

What is happening with the global warming debate is what always happens when a scientific theory becomes political. Science goes out the window. The scientific method goes out the window. We are left with political bickering by those who have a vested interest in the outcome short term rather than a concern for the world in the long term.

The average citizen is left with competing ideologies, and no way to determine what is real and what is not.


----------



## K. Riehl

Quoting Peter Gleick? really?. The man who was dismissed from his position for posing as a member of the board of the Heartland institute to falsely obtain documents involving their donors. He then created a fake document and tried to use it as the "smoking gun" to discredit them. The same Gleick who uses derogatory terms for people who disagree with him. Terms such as idiots, apes, morons, scum, criminals... and you think denier wasn't chosen for the holocaust connotation? 

Here is a link that compiles most of the temperature information from NOAA, GISS HADCRU, and other other governmental services. Look at all of the data for yourself. This is a collection of all of the available up to date measurements.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/...at-earths-temperature-extreme-weather-update/ 

Why is the carbon trading market crashed? Why have multiple governments (Canada, Russia, France, and Japan)withdrawn from the Kyoto agreement? I'm a skeptic. I see the models as failures that are not reflective of reality. I think the various governments are coming to the same conclusion.  

Tell me that billions are a minor amount when they could be feeding people, or improving infrastructure, education. 

I believe that the Earth has been warming since the last ice age and that man may have contributed to some small increase in surface temps over land. But I don't believe that it is catastrophic. I don't believe that every weather event is an indicator of global warming. I don't believe that CO2 has the forcing properties that have been ascribed to it. CO2 has gone up 20-30% without a corresponding rise in temp. I'm sorry they haven't proved anything to me.


----------



## Darth Angelus

K. Riehl said:


> Quoting Peter Gleick? really?. The man who was dismissed from his position for posing as a member of the board of the Heartland institute to falsely obtain documents involving their donors. He then created a fake document and tried to use it as the "smoking gun" to discredit them. The same Gleick who uses derogatory terms for people who disagree with him. Terms such as idiots, apes, morons, scum, criminals... and you think denier wasn't chosen for the holocaust connotation?


Lol. Really, how does that even matter, what else he has done, even if he has had a scandal? His reasoning in that article is perfectly valid. Do you think "2 + 2 = 4" would somehow magically be made incorrect, too, if he said it?
It is really desperate if you attack the person and not the case. Do I even need to link to the fallacy in question?



K. Riehl said:


> Here is a link that compiles most of the temperature information from NOAA, GISS HADCRU, and other other governmental services. Look at all of the data for yourself. This is a collection of all of the available up to date measurements.
> 
> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/...at-earths-temperature-extreme-weather-update/


Sorry, but that graph is still showing an upward trend. However, I don't think it is a statistically significant sample.



K. Riehl said:


> Why is the carbon trading market crashed? Why have multiple governments (Canada, Russia, France, and Japan)withdrawn from the Kyoto agreement? I'm a skeptic. I see the models as failures that are not reflective of reality. I think the various governments are coming to the same conclusion.


Or maybe, they are bogged down with short term concerns.



K. Riehl said:


> Tell me that billions are a minor amount when they could be feeding people, or improving infrastructure, education.


Yes, it is, in the whole perspective. You are just appealing to emotion, mentioning other needs like that, and billions just sounds so high. Well, if the climate is screwed up, costs will be orders of magnitude more than that. Heck, a small percentage drop in harvests, globally, will cost more than that.
Drop the small perspective!



K. Riehl said:


> I believe that the Earth has been warming since the last ice age and that man may have contributed to some small increase in surface temps over land. But I don't believe that it is catastrophic. I don't believe that every weather event is an indicator of global warming. I don't believe that CO2 has the forcing properties that have been ascribed to it. CO2 has gone up 20-30% without a corresponding rise in temp. I'm sorry they haven't proved anything to me.


There are explanations to these things, if you bothered to read (and actually absorb) the science.
But yes, you are probably right in that they have not proven anything to YOU. In reality, science can't prove things to every person, because without proper eduction and skills, it becomes impossible to follow it. The average joe can't follow an advanced mathematical proof. You must pass university courses (that are VERY hard, for most people), to do that. And yes, even Einstein's theories lack proof that everyone can understand.
That is the typical pattern of the sceptics, imagining themselves as something akin to peer reviewers to the climate scientists and their models. The arrogance in that belief is astounding, really. Yes, you should be critical to information presented to you, but you should be critical when it comes to yourself and your own abilities and assessments, too.


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## K. Riehl

My abilities and assessments are just fine, thanks. I'm going along with these folks and their assessment of this subject.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/...emprical-evidence-rather-than-climate-models/

I have earned a BS in Physics and  Masters in Computer Science. I can assess perfectly well the inadequacies of the models. When you believe the models over the empirical evidence then I can't really change you mind. I guess we will both see over the next 10-15 years won't we?


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## Darth Angelus

K. Riehl said:


> My abilities and assessments are just fine, thanks. I'm going along with these folks and their assessment of this subject.
> 
> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/...emprical-evidence-rather-than-climate-models/
> 
> I have earned a BS in Physics and  Masters in Computer Science. I can assess perfectly well the inadequacies of the models. When you believe the models over the empirical evidence then I can't really change you mind. I guess we will both see over the next 10-15 years won't we?


Well, ok, but you still did seem to pull ad hominem on Peter Gleick, attacking the person and not the arguments. Neither did your argument about the cost of billions look like it came from someone with the mathematical maturity (and that is not the same as your normal, personal, maturity, but I guess you know that) to put it into the perspective of the value of even a slight global drop in harvests. Those are the things that caused the doubt.

The empirical evidence (temperature measurements) can be interpreted differently, that is the problem.

But yes, I suppose we will have to agree to disagree, and yes, we will probably see in a couple of decades, and for the sake of the Earth, I do hope you are right.


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## jasminevincent

It is really a concerning issue though I think that there are things that we can do to cut greenhouse gases and help stop global warming. We can recycle newspapers, glass jars, tin cans, re-use plastic shopping bags, buy products that don't use much packaging, and use the washing machine at 40 degrees as it helps in conserving power. However, these are small things, but can make a difference if every person does them!


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## Huttman

I found this article interesting, and living in Phoenix Arizona, I have to side with the artificial heat spike side. Although, I'm sure there are proponents on both sides that could argue the facts. Everyone, it seems, loves to argue.

http://news.yahoo.com/recent-heat-spike-unlike-anything-11-000-years-191131579.html


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## Mirannan

One point is that the reality of AGW is far from settled, at least so far; most of the models I've seen make assumptions about future growth in CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, there are a fairly large number of potential positive feedback loops in the system, which might operate for long enough to cause trouble; examples include methane bound in Arctic permafrost and methane clathrates at the bottom of some fairly shallow seas.

Assuming that AGW is a reality, it is certainly true that nothing like enough is being done. I have a rather extreme attitude to some aspects of this situation, namely wind and ground solar power. Both are extremely unreliable and have high installation and maintenance costs relative to the energy gained, simply because the power density is appalling.

I therefore think that neither wind nor ground solar are ever going to make a significant difference, at least until the development of advanced nanotech makes the entire point moot.

It is also my opinion (and that of quite a few others) that tokamak fusion is an impractical and undesirable solution to our energy problems. Why? Several reasons. First of all, to use the old phrase it's fifty years away and had been since forever. Secondly, it is increasingly obvious that if it ever works at all it will only be viable in immense and extremely expensive installations that require large amounts of exotic materials. Most people think power is too concentrated already. And thirdly, the radioactive waste problem is actually worse than for fission, for the reactions that can be used in tokamaks. Largely because of the inevitable flood of high-energy neutrons that fusion produces.

So what do we do? Well, there are energy sources that have barely been touched, including the power of tides and ocean waves - not the same thing, and not requiring the same equipment. The temperature difference between deep and surface waters in the tropics and nearby has been shown (in 1932!) to be exploitable for power production. Incidentally, this also has other benefits; OTEC brings nutrient-rich bottom water to the surface, thus increasing phytoplankton growth - which at one and the same time increases the productivity of fishing grounds and removes CO2 from surface waters and hence the air. Oh, and BTW the lower surface water temperatures caused by extensive use of OTEC would reduce the frequency and severity of hurricanes.

Others? Well, various forms of biomass (not including corn ethanol, for various reasons) and two routes to fusion not much discussed; Polywell and focus fusion. This last is also, as a side benefit, possible to do in an aneutronic manner involving the proton/B11 reaction. Another advantage of this is that all the reaction products (with the exception of a low-energy gamma ray photon) are charged so getting the energy out in a usable form is much easier.

And finally, the great grandaddy of them all that ought to be attractive to members of an SF forum - SPS. Which has all manner of other benefits, but I'll gloss over that because this is a forum post not a book.

Finally, quite apart from alternative energy (and building more fission reactors, preferably using thorium) there are fairly easy ways of altering Earth's energy budget. One is a rather odd-sounding one involving simply spraying seawater into the air from hoses held up by balloons. Another is dropping a few tons of fine iron filings into certain sea areas; this works because iron is often the nutrient in shortest supply, and hence the extra iron encourages phytoplankton growth - see OTEC above.

Why aren't we doing all this? Money. There is quite a lot of evidence that various OPEC nations - notably Saudi Arabia - are funding those who don't like alternative energy; and of course the last thing that the fossil-fuel industry wants is competition.


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## Gordian Knot

This is one of those issues that I find puzzling. Because there seems to be a fairly easy answer to the question if it is artificially induced by humans or otherwise.

Surely it wouldn't be that hard to analyze and put a figure about how much carbon dioxide and other major green house gasses humans have produced since the industrial revolution. Yes it would be an estimation, but science could probably come pretty close.

We know how the atmosphere works. What would that surplus of gasses do to the biosphere? If the percentage is significant enough to cause unusually high concentrations of green house gasses, then we have done it. If the amount is not enough of a percentage in the atmosphere to make a significant change, it is from natural causes.

Or to put it in reverse, if one subtracted out all the greenhouse gasses humans have pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, how would that affect climate change.


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## Mirannan

Gordian Knot - The problem is that there are many ways in which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and even a fairly large number of ways in which it's removed from surface ocean water. Why does either matter? Simply because the total (large!) amount pumped into the atmosphere by humans since maybe 1780 isn't the issue; what is at issue is the excess of CO2 pumped into the air and not removed by various natural processes - all of which remove more when there is more to remove.


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## allmywires

There's a process called carbon sequestration which is being trialled in the North Sea at the moment, involving sequestering (funny that...) CO2 into old oil and gas wells and effectively removing it from the system that way. It doesn't come without its own problems, of course, namely seepage, collapse of wells due to weakness/submarine landslides/faults, but it seems a good direction to be going. AFAIK historically (and this is geologically historically) CO2 is removed from the atmosphere by being taken into deep anoxic waters. People act like global warming is some kind of disaster when our planet has seen MUCH worse in its long and chequered history. A disaster for humanity? Quite possibly. 

Also, we are still in a warming period from the last ice age so there's that to take into account. Obviously it would be foolish to deny humans haven't caused some kind of climatic effect, but volcanic eruptions and gas hydrate releases, ie natural processes, have done it all and much worse through history. It's not the planet people are trying to save - it's us, modern civilisation. The planet's always done just fine with or without us.


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## K. Riehl

More scientists are coming to the conclusion the the models are overstated and are not robust enough to form policy.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/...tical-as-climate-predictions-fail/#more-82284


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## Brian G Turner

I found the animation at the bottom of this BBC article disturbing:
April breaks global temperature record - BBC News

Not least that the 20th Century average isn't crossed until well into the 20th century - and then, of course, the 12 warmest years ever recorded being in the past 20.


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## Stephen Palmer

K. Riehl said:


> More scientists are coming to the conclusion the the models are overstated and are not robust enough to form policy.
> 
> Newsbytes: Climate Scientists Turn Skeptical As Climate Predictions Fail



James Lovelock has been saying this for years, if not decades. Models are useful, but nothing beats getting out there to acquire data.


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## Stephen Palmer

Gordian Knot said:


> This is one of those issues that I find puzzling. Because there seems to be a fairly easy answer to the question if it is artificially induced by humans or otherwise.
> 
> Surely it wouldn't be that hard to analyze and put a figure about how much carbon dioxide and other major green house gasses humans have produced since the industrial revolution. Yes it would be an estimation, but science could probably come pretty close.
> 
> We know how the atmosphere works. What would that surplus of gasses do to the biosphere? If the percentage is significant enough to cause unusually high concentrations of green house gasses, then we have done it. If the amount is not enough of a percentage in the atmosphere to make a significant change, it is from natural causes.
> 
> Or to put it in reverse, if one subtracted out all the greenhouse gasses humans have pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, how would that affect climate change.



The problem is all the processes that we don't currently know about that may be triggered by a small rise in temperature. For instance, the huge amount of carbon in permafrost conditions where the permafrost is currently beginning to melt. Also, in some conditions, forests can be a carbon source not a carbon sink. Because of these reasons alone, predicting future CO2 levels is educated guesswork.


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## Vertigo

Stephen Palmer said:


> The problem is all the processes that we don't currently know about that may be triggered by a small rise in temperature. For instance, the huge amount of carbon in permafrost conditions where the permafrost is currently beginning to melt. Also, in some conditions, forests can be a carbon source not a carbon sink. Because of these reasons alone, predicting future CO2 levels is educated guesswork.



True, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore them. Just because our smoke alarm goes off when we burn the toast doesn't mean we should throw it away or ignore it when it next goes off. The models and data that we currently have are the best we have available today and knowing that they are not perfect does not mean we should ignore them. Should we spend billions based on them? That's a hard question to answer but if they ultimately prove correct or even approximately correct (just wrong in detail or timescale) then to what might we be condemning the generations to come just because we decide it's too expensive to act based upon those admittedly flawed models?

As far as I can see the globe is warming and, whilst I strongly advocate reduction of pollution, I thing worrying too much about whether it's due to human activity or natural processes is almost irrelevant. It is happening and trying to change that fact is like changing the course of a huge tanker it's going to take a long time, a very long time. I think, whether human or natural caused, by the time we were able to detect it it was already too late to change it. Instead we should be focused on how we're going to survive it.


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## Stephen Palmer

I wasn't really advocating that we ignore models, rather that we should treat them as the aides they are. But current science thinks computer models are the way forward; not actual science in actual environments. James Lovelock - quite rightly - is scathing about this approach. And it's all very well saying we shouldn't worry about whether global warming is due to human activity or not, but what about the hundreds of thousands of other species on our shared planet who have no say in what humans do?


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## Vertigo

There are lots of other reasons why we should stop polluting our planet and I'm certainly not advocating we stop that. I'm just saying that with the inertia that things like climate have by the time we can detect it it's probably too late for us to have much affect on the change by changing our behaviour irrespective of whether or not we our the cause. At least any affect on it in the next 100 years or so. Personally I think that it's probably a bit of both; us and nature. So yes we must do our best to minimise damage to the planet and the rest of our cohabitees but as far as global warming goes I suspect that particular horse has already bolted and it's more important for us to figure how to ensure we and as much of our planet's ecosystem as possible survive it whilst at the same time trying to reduce (eliminate) all the damage we are doing. None of which is likely to prove easy.


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## Cathbad

Lest we forget, scientists have been warning us about what we're doing to the atmosphere since the 70's.


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## tinkerdan

This thread was opened in 2006 and at that time the 'experts' said we have ten years to turn things around or it's too late.
So, How did we do on that.

Is it time to say:

'So Long and Thanks for all the Fish'


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## Cathbad

For a while, from the late 70s until the early 90s, we were doing well.  Changes in the laws all but beat out the smog hovering in and above our cities.  hen, somehow, people were convinced I was no longer a problem.

But as far as it being too late?  The earth is an amazingly hearty system.  Take a look how quickly she recovered from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


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## Lew Rockwell Fan

Cathbad said:


> Lest we forget, scientists have been warning us about what we're doing to the atmosphere since the 70's.


A good deal longer than that. See Asimov's "No More Ice Ages?" from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1959 issue, later reprinted in "Fact and Fancy", the first volume of the collected F & SF essays. I think at some point that was also printed under some rather pedestrian title some idiot editor put on it - "Marvels of Science" maybe.

I confess that reading through 10 years of posts in this thread daunted me, so some of the following may have already been said.

The claim that this idea got started much more recently than it in fact did, is part of what is probably the most egregious lie promulgated by much of the anti-green right which goes rather like this:
===========================================
For longer than any of us have been alive, any scientists who took an interest in the subject of global scale climate change, said pretty much the same thing:

The next big change will be the beginning of the next ice age. If we don't do anything about it soon enough, it will be really, really bad, rendering Alaska, most of Canada, a good piece of US border states, and a chunk of northern Eurasia uninhabitable. The loss of immobile material assets, of mines, timber, and farmlands; the mass migrations of refugees from the ice covered areas; and the shifting of agricultural zones and rainfall patterns will constitute the worst disaster ever faced by our species. The last time it happened there weren't so many of us, we hadn't spread so far into the vulnerable areas, and our material assets were mostly portable. Furthermore, it could happen any decade now. "The sky is falling. We're all going to freeze. Give us lots of money so we can study it and figure out what to do before it is too late."

Then, not long after the Clintons took office, scientists made the most important discovery in the history of climate science:
There were more grants to be had and bigger grants, if you discovered new evidence to show that the previous orthodoxy was all wrong, that those pot smoking hippies of the late 60s and early 70s had stumbled on to a great truth - that the world was getting hotter and industry was the culprit. Shortly, the scientists did a 180 and almost all agreed that "The sky is falling. We're all going to fry. Give us lots of money so we can study it and figure out what to do before it is too late."

You know these scientists keep changing their minds like women change dresses. Maybe someday they'll decide people didn't come from monkeys after all.
===========================================
Like most effective lies, it is 99 and 44/100ths % true. But the remainder consists of the Devil's details. There WAS a remarkably quick reversal of consensus much like that. But it mainly happened in the early 60s (The Good Doctor was among the first "lay people" to catch on), although there were still plenty of well credentialed contrarian dissenters through the 70s, and it happened mainly as a result of data about climate history gathered as part of the IGY project. Both the preceding and the new consensus were the result of simple inductive reasoning and the change was brought about mainly by more extensive and more certain data with better temporal resolution, so the reasoning went from:

"For tens of millions of years the earth has alternated between long ice ages and short warm periods. We are now overdue for another ice age. So we better get ready."

to

"For tens of millions of years the earth has alternated between long ice ages and short warm periods. But we are now ANOMALOUSLY overdue for another ice age, way overdue. The pattern has been broken. Something has changed. Maybe that darned Swede chemist and the telephone guy were right and it's the CO2."

It took a while for the new consensus to filter out beyond the community most actively engaged in that kind of research and you did indeed see older scientists adhering to older ideas quoted in popular media into the 80s. Hence the famous lurid cover art on Popular Mechanics (?) showing one of the northern US cities being destroyed by glaciation, which appeared, I think, in the 70s.

The idea that is the core of the present consensus goes back to the 19th century, but it remained the province of contrarians (perhaps our species' most under-valued resource) until after IGY.

Lest anyone get the idea I'm a mindless rally-round-the-green-banner to save Mother Earth type, I'll close, for now at least, by saying that crowd has shoveled quite as much egesta of bovine males into the popular discussion of climate change as the bible thumping right has. In the long run, I actually consider the leaders of that bunch to be a greater threat to biodiversity than any of the people they vilify. But that's another topic.


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## Cathbad

Scientists believed that after the bombing of Hiroshima, it would take (up to) a century for the land to recover.

A photo (originally published I know not where, but I saw a reprint of it in _Time_ years later) showed a blossoming flower near the center of Ground Zero.  The photo was taken one year after the bombing.

My point is, Mother Nature will survive our terrorizing of her.

The only question is, "_Will we_?"


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## Stephen Palmer

People talk about fragile ecosystems, and often that's true, but they forget to add that the living system of the planet as a whole is extraordinarily tough. If it can survive the Late Permian extinction event, it can easily survive human beings.


----------



## Lew Rockwell Fan

ljfallavollita said:


> Will mankind be successful in overcoming the challenges of Global Warming


No, yes, and heck yes:

In the medium term:

-no, because:
... 1. I don't think the Chinese are going to radically curb their fossil fuel usage usage any time soon. Can't really blame them. And there are a lot of Chinese.
... 2. Human population is growing and isn't likely to stop growing any time soon. No matter how much you lower the footprint/person this is going to be the most overwhelmingly important factor in the next 20 years of so.

-but yes, because:
I don't think (not that it is what I would call a SAFE bet) global warming is going to be anywhere near the disaster the alarmists claim it will. Models suggest the probability is that winter temps will be more affected than summer temps and that night temps more so than day temps. Some places will be hard hit, but realistically there are a LOT more hectares that will be improved by being warmer than there are that will be damaged. Temperatures presently being projected do not exceed those that prevailed about 8000 years ago. So there are very few if any species alive today that haven't already lived through warmer periods than what is projected. And although we may get more than we want, it seems pretty clear that at least a little greenhouse effect is a GOOD THING. Unless, that is, you WANT the overdue glaciers to catch up with us.

I emphasize that this is what I think most PROBABLE, but that doesn't mean it is safe to assume it. One of the downsides of the polarization of the debate between dueling camps of propagandists is that there is a lot less constituency for honest science than there should be. So many people from both camps are afraid to find out the truth lest they be wrong.

In the long run:
-heck, yes, because:
There are so many alternatives to fossil fuels that unless overpopulation and bad public policy impoverish us so badly that coal is all we can afford*, it should be a slam dunk. Relevant techs: biofuels, hydrogen, nuclear, SPS, geothermal . . .

* But that is a real threat, so my optimism is very tempered.


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## Cathbad

Lew Rockwell Fan said:


> There are so many alternatives to fossil fuels that unless overpopulation and bad public policy impoverish us so badly that coal is all we can afford*, it should be a slam dunk. Relevant techs: biofuels, hydrogen, nuclear, SPS, geothermal . . .



Careful!    The Oil Companies are watching!!


----------



## Lew Rockwell Fan

Now that I've excoriated one side of the issue,





Lew Rockwell Fan said:


> . . . probably the most egregious lie promulgated by much of the anti-green right which goes rather like this: . . .


in fairness I should remark on the sins of the green-left. I happen to believe that in all probability Earth's climate HAS been affected by anthropogenic warming, and that CO2 has played a major part, but exaggeration of both the degree of certainty and of the severity of the probable consequences do great disservice to the causes of truth and sound policy.

I'll probably be attacked for saying this, but the supreme irony here is that so many of the most strident greens who contemptuously dismiss anyone who expresses the least doubt about the "Revelations of Saint Al" as anti-science bumpkins, are themselves the sort who do really well on the "entertainment" category of Trivial Pursuit but flunk all the green "science" questions. While there are a fair number of greens in "green pie" category, so are a disproportionate number of the skeptics. The most dramatic example of this in my own experience was a woman who owned, I kid you not, a witchcraft and occult supply shop. Of course there are plenty of counterexamples, and a fair number of flat-earth-fundie type anti-greens, but ask yourself honestly, among the people you know, doesn't this match your experience? It does mine.

The subject of greenhouse gas induced global warming used to be something only SF reading geeks were interested in, and it broke out to become a matter that mass media paid attention to only when global mean annual temperature set records 2 years in a row. It continued to do so for a decade or so (a bit more I think, but I can't seem to find a tabulation of GMAT records anywhere), during which time GMAT was front page news every time a new figure was published and the green types focused on it, and quite rightly so, while the anti-green Pollyannas countered with anecdotal evidence about extreme cold here and there, now and then, to which the greens quite rightfully responded "Weather is not climate".

The first year the GMAT disappointed them, the media and the greens dismissed its failure to rise, as the result of a volcanic eruption and confidently predicted that the next year's number would show a double whammy. At the time, I totally believed it. But it didn't happen that way and the second year the number was disappointing, the GMAT disappeared from the discussion. No record setting values meant it no longer served the purposes of either the greens or the media. I'm not accusing mass media of green bias - they just want drama - record setting low GMATs would have served their purposes even better and would have made headlines. But for a substantial period the GMAT curve was boringly flat. So the annual determination of GMAT moved off the front pages of newspapers to back pages and then disappeared altogether. Now I can't easily find it even on the internet.

And now both sides were in the weather anecdote mode. What was even more hypocritical, because you can't excuse it as ignorance, was all the tortuously derived stats that began to appear. Suddenly GMATs began to be compared to running averages with the period averaged chosen to support the desired conclusion. Curiously limited stats began to appear in the news. One fairly typical example that appeared in a respected magazine struck me as particularly ludicrous. Doing it from memory, but I think this is more or less right:

Some particular October (why that month rather than July or August? Why ANY particular month rather than the whole year?) was the hottest October on record for land area (why exclude the Great Lakes or nearby oceans?) in the contiguous US. Why just the US? Why just the CONTIGUOUS US?

Once you get away from the GMAT there are gazillions of weather stats to pick from and slant the story any way you want. This is also why the phrase "global warming" disappeared from green rhetoric to be replaced with "climate change" which is much harder to refute. There is never a week when SOMEWHERE hasn't had the hottest or coldest or windiest, or wettest or driest day or week or month or SOMETHING in recorded history, even if you have to find some place where record keeping began 5 years ago. And when you throw in creatively derived stats I doubt there has been a single moment in Earth's existence when you couldn't argue that climate was CHANGING. An hypothesis that has no predictive value, that can claim almost ANY development as support, that is almost impossible to falsify, is intellectually dishonest.

We see an awful lot of graphs presented by the greens that stop at the year 2000. Why? Round number? Happenstance? Or because that avoids showing where the rising trend flattens out since then? Temps may be beginning to rise again. If that very recent trend holds, I predict we'll start to see graphs being kept up to date again. At the other end, the people that promote "hockey stick" graphs never want to draw them very far BACK in time either. They just show the region that serves their purpose. How about a little context?:

For a really broad context, these 2 cover about a half billion years and the scale is such that the couple of centuries usually discussed wouldn't even show:
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/images/1-3-temp-CO2.gif

This one is on a log scale for time:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/All_palaeotemps.png

You might argue this is the most important one, at least for the purpose of evaluating the honesty of the greens' usual presentations. It covers  the last 12,000 years:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
Note that the period usually shown was immediately preceded by a period when temperatures FELL by a similar magnitude to the recent rise, a period excluded from the graphs usually shown. On this scale, the period normally taken as a baseline appears to have been unusually cool. Go back even a thou and todays temps don't seem unusual. The entire 5000
year period from ~8000 BP to ~3000 BP appears to have been warmer. Just eyeballing it, of the last 10000 years, a little more than half seem to have been warmer than it is now.

These quotations I found on a single website
Global Warming:A Chilling Perspective
and I haven't verified them. But if they are accurate and reasonably in context, they seem to show that the the decontextualization of the data presented in the usual "hockey stick" type graphs is quite intentionally dishonest:

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory)
(in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)

"Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are..."

former Vice President Al Gore
(now, chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management--
a London-based business that sells carbon credits)
(in interview with Grist Magazine May 9, 2006, concerning his book, An Inconvenient Truth)

"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits.... Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."

  Christine Stewart, former Minister of the Environment of Canada
  quote from the Calgary Herald, 1999

For shame.

And here is one more from the same source, one I totally agree with, and which summarizes the point I've been trying to make in these 3 posts:

"In the long run, the replacement of the precise and disciplined language of science by the misleading language of litigation and advocacy may be one of the more important sources of damage to society incurred in the current debate over global warming."

Dr. Richard S. Lindzen
(leading climate and atmospheric science expert- MIT)


----------



## MWagner

Cathbad said:


> Careful!    The Oil Companies are watching!!



The oil industry isn't suppressing these miracle energy sources. The fact is solar, wind, etc aren't anywhere close to providing more than a fraction of our current energy needs. The energy out to energy in ratio of fossil fuels is vastly greater than any alternative (except nuclear, of course). And when we do eventually come up with practical and cost-effective alternatives on a scale to displace fossil fuels, who do you think will own and distribute them? Large multinational corporations, and likely many of the same energy companies that produce and sell oil. In forty years we'll be talking about Big Solar and Big Wind.


----------



## Cathbad

You should rethink how soon we'd be able to switch.  An entire town out west works on wind power.  Solar energy is being used extensively.  This is one industry where the technology exists, but is not being used to its full potential.

Not unlike corn being used to create fuel.  It isn't as new as some would like you to believe.  The government and big oil _have_ suppressed the research into alternate fuel sources.

The only good thing is, I've seen a great increase in oil industry research into developing other sources of energy.  It might signal that they have realized the time is coming. whether they like it or not.


----------



## Vertigo

Cathbad said:


> You should rethink how soon we'd be able to switch.  An entire town out west works on wind power.  Solar energy is being used extensively.  This is one industry where the technology exists, but is not being used to its full potential.
> 
> Not unlike corn being used to create fuel.  It isn't as new as some would like you to believe.  The government and big oil _have_ suppressed the research into alternate fuel sources.
> 
> The only good thing is, I've seen a great increase in oil industry research into developing other sources of energy.  It might signal that they have realized the time is coming. whether they like it or not.


Could you be a little more specific. A town out west of where? What's the town name? Are we talking just domestic energy or does it include industrial energy (typically around the same use) and does it include transport energy (typically around the same again)? What does the town use when the wind isn't blowing (it would take an awful lot of batteries to run an entire town)?

Sorry to pick on one point but as @Lew Rockwell Fan says the climate argument is filled with so many truths that turn out to be only half truths. My understanding is that the reality is we cannot replace all our current fossil fuel usage with alternative energy. Just consider air transport as one example. I'm not saying it couldn't be done eventually (although there are plenty of people who claim it could never be done with today's technology), just that I don't believe we could do it today. You also need to consider the carbon cost of the windmills themselves which is actually extraordinarily high. The ratio of energy required for the construction, transport, erection and maintenance of the windmills against the energy they produce in their lifetimes is, I believe, very poor.

It's a bit like Germany who now proudly proclaim that they do not produce any nuclear energy.... Instead they are buying a huge proportion of their energy in from other countries much of whose energy is, guess what, produced from nuclear.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

It's typical of men (because it is mostly men) in the modern technological age that they think there's a technological fix for all this. In fact, what's needed is a social fix - an ethical fix. But selfish, lazy, stupid political leaders don't know, or even care; and scientists are too canny to become politicians.


----------



## MWagner

Stephen Palmer said:


> It's typical of men (because it is mostly men) in the modern technological age that they think there's a technological fix for all this. In fact, what's needed is a social fix - an ethical fix. But selfish, lazy, stupid political leaders don't know, or even care; and scientists are too canny to become politicians.



We can't hang our enormous consumption on politicians. What chances of election would a politician have if he doubled gasoline tax, put large tariffs on all imported goods, and put a 50% surcharge in all air flights? Anyone who wants to take a moral stand on the issue of carbon emissions should probably start with a modest personal step and never get in an airplane again, and then move on to steps like eating only locally grown food.

And even beyond personal consumption, there's the harsh reality that our agricultural system is enormously reliant on oil and oil products. Without modern fertilizers, we'd face chronic food shortages and extremely high prices for everything we eat.


----------



## mosaix

Portugal runs for four consecutive days on renewable energy....

Portugal runs for four days straight on renewable energy alone


----------



## Lew Rockwell Fan

Vertigo said:


> My understanding is that the reality is we cannot replace all our current fossil fuel usage with alternative energy. Just consider air transport as one example. I'm not saying it couldn't be done eventually (although there are plenty of people who claim it could never be done with today's technology), just that I don't believe we could do it today.


Right. None of this will happen overnight. Jets don't strike me as a remarkably difficult prob though, since hydrogen fueled jets have been made (have to keep it cold enough to be liquid of course, for practical energy density) and biofuel JP shouldn't be insurmountable.



Vertigo said:


> You also need to consider the carbon cost of the windmills themselves which is actually extraordinarily high. The ratio of energy required for the construction, transport, erection and maintenance of the windmills against the energy they produce in their lifetimes is, I believe, very poor.


An important point. I thought of mentioning this in relation to ethanol as fuel but my posts may have been too rambling as they were. It is one of the more sordid tales of US politics. Bottom line is that ethanol production, when you figure ALL the inputs, uses more oil than it replaces when used as automotive fuel. US greens pushed the laws to subsidize this, then after it was a done deal, for once woke up and realized they'd been had. This of course, is exactly the sort of thing a market is good at figuring out, but that is against their religion for most of them.


----------



## Mirannan

Vertigo said:


> Could you be a little more specific. A town out west of where? What's the town name? Are we talking just domestic energy or does it include industrial energy (typically around the same use) and does it include transport energy (typically around the same again)? What does the town use when the wind isn't blowing (it would take an awful lot of batteries to run an entire town)?
> 
> Sorry to pick on one point but as @Lew Rockwell Fan says the climate argument is filled with so many truths that turn out to be only half truths. My understanding is that the reality is we cannot replace all our current fossil fuel usage with alternative energy. Just consider air transport as one example. I'm not saying it couldn't be done eventually (although there are plenty of people who claim it could never be done with today's technology), just that I don't believe we could do it today. You also need to consider the carbon cost of the windmills themselves which is actually extraordinarily high. The ratio of energy required for the construction, transport, erection and maintenance of the windmills against the energy they produce in their lifetimes is, I believe, very poor.
> 
> It's a bit like Germany who now proudly proclaim that they do not produce any nuclear energy.... Instead they are buying a huge proportion of their energy in from other countries much of whose energy is, guess what, produced from nuclear.



Incidentally (or maybe not!) the windmills also cause horrific environmental damage - they kill thousands of birds and bats per year, some of them being of endangered species.


----------



## Vertigo

Mirannan said:


> Incidentally (or maybe not!) the windmills also cause horrific environmental damage - they kill thousands of birds and bats per year, some of them being of endangered species.


I believe that more significant than that is the environmental damage of the concrete plinths. This is probably mostly a UK issue in that most of the land based wind farms in the UK are sited in mountain terrains which generally have very sensitive acidic peaty soils and the leaching of the alkaline lime out of the concrete does, I believe, affect surprisingly large are around each tower. However I don't want to drift into just knocking wind farms other than to say that in the UK, at least, we should be doing far more to capitalise on being surrounded by tidal water; unlike wind and waves, the tides are always running!


----------



## Vertigo

mosaix said:


> Portugal runs for four consecutive days on renewable energy....
> 
> Portugal runs for four days straight on renewable energy alone


When they tell me they can do it for 365 days then I'll be impressed. Sorry but 4 days is, well, just 4 days.


----------



## Cathbad

Vertigo said:


> When they tell me they can do it for 365 days then I'll be impressed. Sorry but 4 days is, well, just 4 days.



I might be misunderstanding but are you saying renewable energy is an impossible goal?


----------



## Vertigo

Cathbad said:


> I might be misunderstanding but are you saying renewable energy is an impossible goal?


No but I'm saying four days is a long long way from replacing fossil fuels, especially considering how long we've been working on it. In the longer term I don't have enough knowledge to make a judgement. And therein lies my biggest problem with this whole sorry affair.

There was a BBC science documentary a few years back that looked at this and a number of scientist they spoke to all said variations on "if you covered all the land on the planet with wind and solar farms it would still only supply a tiny percentage of our current energy demands." And the program concluded that without nuclear fusion we were stuffed. Again I don't know how accurate that is, and they didn't speak to any scientists presenting a contrary view, but what I do know is that we are constantly being fed dubious facts or downright lies presented as truths by both sides of the argument and unless we happen to be climate scientists ourselves it's almost impossible for us to determine who to believe. Which means in the end, for the majority of us, it comes down to faith; we either believe one set of scientists or the other, because most of us don't have the knowledge to examine what is presented to us a scientific fact.

I'm afraid I get really rather depressed about the whole thing


----------



## mosaix

Vertigo said:


> When they tell me they can do it for 365 days then I'll be impressed. Sorry but 4 days is, well, just 4 days.



One step at a time...


----------



## Lew Rockwell Fan

Vertigo said:


> . . . a number of scientist they spoke to all said variations on "if you covered all the land on the planet with wind and solar farms it would still only supply a tiny percentage of our current energy demands."


I rather suspected something of the sort, if not for "all the land", then at least for "as much land as practical", but not having seen anything on it, I didn't want to claim it. That's why when I mentioned alternatives I left those 2 out.  Of those I mentioned, only nuclear and SPS are likely to be suitable for the heavy lifting. H2 is a storage tech obviously, not a primary source. Still, H2 and/or biofuels may be real convenient for local stores of energy in applications where petrochemicals are used now. If anybody comes up with a really cheap drilling process, and I know of no theoretical reason precluding the possibility, then  geothermal could be great, but for now, it is rather like windmills in most places, only more so.  The calculation for solar power shouldn't be all that difficult. Calculating the available energy from wind strikes me as very, very hairy though, because massive deployment of windmills would lower the amount of wind available in their lee, etc., etc. It could get real complicated. I'd also be willing to bet that before we got anywhere near enough windmills, they'd have effects on climate and weather the greens would object to.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

MWagner said:


> We can't hang our enormous consumption on politicians. What chances of election would a politician have if he doubled gasoline tax, put large tariffs on all imported goods, and put a 50% surcharge in all air flights? Anyone who wants to take a moral stand on the issue of carbon emissions should probably start with a modest personal step and never get in an airplane again, and then move on to steps like eating only locally grown food.
> 
> And even beyond personal consumption, there's the harsh reality that our agricultural system is enormously reliant on oil and oil products. Without modern fertilizers, we'd face chronic food shortages and extremely high prices for everything we eat.



You've never heard of permaculture then.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Vertigo said:


> No but I'm saying four days is a long long way from replacing fossil fuels, especially considering how long we've been working on it. In the longer term I don't have enough knowledge to make a judgement. And therein lies my biggest problem with this whole sorry affair.
> 
> There was a BBC science documentary a few years back that looked at this and a number of scientist they spoke to all said variations on "if you covered all the land on the planet with wind and solar farms it would still only supply a tiny percentage of our current energy demands." And the program concluded that without nuclear fusion we were stuffed. Again I don't know how accurate that is, and they didn't speak to any scientists presenting a contrary view, but what I do know is that we are constantly being fed dubious facts or downright lies presented as truths by both sides of the argument and unless we happen to be climate scientists ourselves it's almost impossible for us to determine who to believe. Which means in the end, for the majority of us, it comes down to faith; we either believe one set of scientists or the other, because most of us don't have the knowledge to examine what is presented to us a scientific fact.
> 
> I'm afraid I get really rather depressed about the whole thing



The ethical questions that need to be asked are ones like, do you actually have to take three foreign holidays a year? Do you really need two cars? Have you thought about walking to the shops, not driving? (my neighbour regularly drives the two minute walk to the local Co-op.) Do you realise how much damage eating meat every day is doing to the planet? Any many, many more… In short - are you going to make an effort?


----------



## Lew Rockwell Fan

The most ascetic parent of 3, will in the long run, have done more damage to the planet than the most hedonistic non-parent, all other things being equal.


----------



## BAYLOR

It may well be a too little too late.


----------



## Vertigo

BAYLOR said:


> It may well be a too little too late.


That's why I think we need to look much more seriously at dealing with the result rather than prevention. Though as I've said that doesn't mean we should continue making things _worse._


----------



## BAYLOR

Vertigo said:


> That's why I think we need to look much more seriously at dealing with the result rather than prevention. Though as I've said that doesn't mean we should continue making things _worse._



I keep thinking  of that scene in film *Eric the Viking  *in which Atlantis is sinking and Eric,  offers to save the inhabitants who don't want to be rescued because even  though the water is coming up all around and over their heads their heads , They refuse to see the problem and the end result, they all drown.  A lot of people either don't see the problem or refuse to see the problem.


----------



## MWagner

Lew Rockwell Fan said:


> The most ascetic parent of 3, will in the long run, have done more damage to the planet than the most hedonistic non-parent, all other things being equal.



Ah, but what about the effect on our public services, which are essentially a pyramid scheme paid for by the next generation? I find it interesting how people who are keenly interested in the global climate and environmental sustainability in the next 100-200 years have little or no interest in public finances and the sustainability of public services in the next 30-50 years (and vice-versa). Personally, I figure public finances in the West - under intense pressure from aging demographics and relentlessly rising health care costs - are likely to collapse far before dramatic effects of climate change are felt by most people. And given Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I'm not optimistic that citizens who lack pensions, education, and health care will be willing to make serious personal sacrifices to stave off an abstract threat like global climate change.


----------



## BAYLOR

MWagner said:


> Ah, but what about the effect on our public services, which are essentially a pyramid scheme paid for by the next generation? I find it interesting how people who are keenly interested in the global climate and environmental sustainability in the next 100-200 years have little or no interest in public finances and the sustainability of public services in the next 30-50 years, (and vice-versa). Personally, I figure public finances in the West - under intense pressure from aging demographics and relentlessly rising health care costs - are likely to collapse far before dramatic effects of climate change are felt by most people. And given Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I'm not optimistic that citizens who lack pensions, education, and health care will be willing to make serious personal sacrifices to stave off an abstract threat like global climate change.



Many don't want to pay the price for salvation.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Stephen Palmer said:


> The ethical questions that need to be asked are ones like, do you actually have to take three foreign holidays a year? Do you really need two cars? Have you thought about walking to the shops, not driving? (my neighbour regularly drives the two minute walk to the local Co-op.) Do you realise how much damage eating meat every day is doing to the planet? Any many, many more… In short - are you going to make an effort?



I suspect it's not possible to be 100% ethical unless living the existence of a nomadic forager, who uses only things made with their own hands from the earth and nothing manufactured. 

Even then, someone might criticise them for not doing enough to educate other people.


----------



## BAYLOR

Brian Turner said:


> I suspect it's not possible to be 100% ethical unless living the existence of a nomadic forager, who uses only things made with their own hands from the earth and nothing manufactured.
> 
> Even then, someone might criticise them for not doing enough to educate other people.



I wonder what future alien explorers archeologist will make of our failure to act ?


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Brian Turner said:


> I suspect it's not possible to be 100% ethical unless living the existence of a nomadic forager, who uses only things made with their own hands from the earth and nothing manufactured.



Agreed, but there is a distinct difference between sustainable manufacturing and unsustainable manufacturing. The latter is what we have at the moment. You can get sustainable manufacturing the moment you factor in the planet - which capitalism specifically doesn't - into economic equations.


----------



## BAYLOR

Stephen Palmer said:


> Agreed, but there is a distinct difference between sustainable manufacturing and unsustainable manufacturing. The latter is what we have at the moment. You can get sustainable manufacturing the moment you factor in the planet - which capitalism specifically doesn't - into economic equations.




Sustainable manufacturing will mean less profits and less money to the company shareholders.


----------



## MWagner

BAYLOR said:


> Sustainable manufacturing will mean less profits and less money to the company shareholders.



It probably also means much lower production. Which is okay when it comes to running shoes and TVs. But problematic when we're dealing with agriculture. We forget that only a few decades ago the prospect of famine still haunted much of the planet. It was modern GMOs, pesticides, fertilizers, and distribution that enabled the astonishing increase in agricultural production in the last 50 years.


----------



## BAYLOR

MWagner said:


> It probably also means much lower production. Which is okay when it comes to running shoes and TVs. But problematic when we're dealing with agriculture. We forget that only a few decades ago the prospect of famine still haunted much of the planet. It was modern GMOs, pesticides, fertilizers, and distribution that enabled the astonishing increase in agricultural production in the last 50 years.



7 Billion people may not be sustainable that will be over the long run and at an eventual projected 10 to 15 billion by the end  of this century , that's going to make things a whole lot more dicey.


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> 7 Billion people may not be sustainable that will be over the long run and at an eventual projected 10 to 15 billion by the end  of this century , that's going to make things a whole lot more dicey.



I recently read an article that said scientists believe the planet can provide for and sustain up to 50 billion people.

That presupposed that we would take advantage of _all_ her resources, though.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> I recently read an article that said scientists believe the planet can provide for and sustain up to 50 billion people.
> 
> That presupposed that we would take advantage of _all_ her resources, though.



50 billion ? Sounds like Soylant Green


----------



## Cathbad

We do not take advantage of much of the earth.  It made a convincing argument.  But we would have to learn to treat the old lady wel..

And that's just it.  I don't believe that it's the quantity or qualitynof our manufacturing, but how we go about it.


----------



## Lew Rockwell Fan

MWagner said:


> Ah, but what about the effect on our public services, which are essentially a pyramid scheme paid for by the next generation? I find it interesting how people who are keenly interested in the global climate and environmental sustainability in the next 100-200 years have little or no interest in public finances and the sustainability of public services in the next 30-50 years (and vice-versa).


Correct, sir.  Most of each group have their heads buried deeply in the sand with respect to the issues that concern the other. Econ catastrophe would of course destroy everything the greens want, and radical environmental catastrophe would lead to econ catastrophe as well, and it's a small minority of either group that has a clue or cares. If this goes on . . .


----------



## galanx

MWagner said:


> Ah, but what about the effect on our public services, which are essentially a pyramid scheme paid for by the next generation? I find it interesting how people who are keenly interested in the global climate and environmental sustainability in the next 100-200 years have little or no interest in public finances and the sustainability of public services in the next 30-50 years (and vice-versa). Personally, I figure public finances in the West - under intense pressure from aging demographics and relentlessly rising health care costs - are likely to collapse far before dramatic effects of climate change are felt by most people. And given Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I'm not optimistic that citizens who lack pensions, education, and health care will be willing to make serious personal sacrifices to stave off an abstract threat like global climate change.



Except that the idea that public services are based on a pyramid scheme is  simply not true, unless you're imagining a Children of Men scenario, in which case , yes, we'll run out of new entrants- but we'll be having   alot bigger problems.

The case I'm most familiar with is the US; Social Security needs a slight rise (say, lifting the caps on the wealthy or raising the contribution level slightly) to take care of the Boomers, but after that it's smooth sailing as far as we can see i.e. about 70 years. As long as the economy grows at 1% or above,  the coming generations that have to finance us old farts will be wealthier than we were even after they've paid an increased share of payroll taxes.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

MWagner said:


> It probably also means much lower production. Which is okay when it comes to running shoes and TVs. But problematic when we're dealing with agriculture. We forget that only a few decades ago the prospect of famine still haunted much of the planet. It was modern GMOs, pesticides, fertilizers, and distribution that enabled the astonishing increase in agricultural production in the last 50 years.



This is a complete myth. Large-scale agricultural systems only work when you use massive machines, have massive fields, and use tons of pesticides/fertiliser. This is completely against the natural way of things, and is powered in the main by our obsession with technology, Capitalism, and the hugely ramped-up scale of human living at the moment. As permaculture has comprehensively shown, the issue is not the amount of people or food, the issue is the _scale_ of food manufacture. Large-scale food manufacture - rooted in a large-scale society where local community is trampled down - can only work at the expense of the planet, an expense that is not factored into economic/agricultural calculations. This system cannot work forever. It's just a matter of time.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Cathbad said:


> I recently read an article that said scientists believe the planet can provide for and sustain up to 50 billion people.



It depends on the level of consumption. If we all lived like Americans, calculations estimate the Earth could support a billion or so people. If we all lived like Rwandans, the planet could support 20 billion. In each case, enough land has to be left for natural Gaian systems to work (_eg_ the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle). If they don't...


----------



## Stephen Palmer

BAYLOR said:


> Sustainable manufacturing will mean less profits and less money to the company shareholders.



Excellent! That's win-win.


----------



## Vertigo

Stephen Palmer said:


> This is a complete myth. Large-scale agricultural systems only work when you use massive machines, have massive fields, and use tons of pesticides/fertiliser. This is completely against the natural way of things, and is powered in the main by our obsession with technology, Capitalism, and the hugely ramped-up scale of human living at the moment. As permaculture has comprehensively shown, the issue is not the amount of people or food, the issue is the _scale_ of food manufacture. Large-scale food manufacture - rooted in a large-scale society where local community is trampled down - can only work at the expense of the planet, an expense that is not factored into economic/agricultural calculations. This system cannot work forever. It's just a matter of time.


Plus the damage this kind of farming is doing to the planet's topsoil. It simply isn't sustainable. But that one seems to keep being swept under the carpet.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Some people might think my frequent mentioning of permaculture is part of a hippy fad, the wearing of rose-tinted spectacles, or is otherwise unrealistic and irrelevant. Here's some links to let you make up your own mind.

The Permaculture Association.
Permaculture Magazine.
The American view.
The great Bill Mollison.
A critical perspective.

Enjoy!


----------



## Vertigo

Stephen Palmer said:


> Some people might think my frequent mentioning of permaculture is part of a hippy fad, the wearing of rose-tinted spectacles, or is otherwise unrealistic and irrelevant. Here's some links to let you make up your own mind.
> 
> The Permaculture Association.
> Permaculture Magazine.
> The American view.
> The great Bill Mollison.
> A critical perspective.
> 
> Enjoy!



Some interesting stuff there. I thought that last article gave a particularly balanced view.


----------



## MWagner

I guess I'm not as pessimistic about the state of the world as many people in this thread. I compare today to the world of 50 or 100 years ago and I see progress everywhere. Billions lifted out of dire poverty. Common diseases like smallpox and measles virtually wiped out. The threat of famine lifted from all but a few small pockets of the world. Autocracy and tyranny in retreat, democracy and human freedom expanding. Dire ignorance and illiteracy falling away as the ranks of the educated grow across the globe.

And yet there is no ideological constituency for progress today. Conservatives, by their nature, bemoan the fallen times we live in. The left, though progressive in name, are constitutionally unable to recognize progress else lose the goad of crisis with which they prod people into action, nor can they recognize that any good can come of a patriarchal, Western, capitalist, imperial, etc. society.

“In every age everybody knows that up to his time progressive improvement has been taking place. Nobody seems to reckon on any improvement in the next generation. We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who say society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason.”

- Lord Macauley 1830


----------



## Mirannan

Vertigo said:


> Plus the damage this kind of farming is doing to the planet's topsoil. It simply isn't sustainable. But that one seems to keep being swept under the carpet.



Yup. And it's happening quite fast, too. I found a photo a while back (can't find it again, dammit) of a church in the middle of Kansas fields. The land is as flat as a billiard table for miles in all directions, but the church and its churchyard are about ten feet above their level.

The reason is simple. The church plot has not been farmed. Large-scale industrial farming is removing topsoil, to the tune of millions of tons per year. Farming of this sort is at least partially a mining operation.


----------



## BAYLOR

Stephen Palmer said:


> Excellent! That's win-win.



Not for the shareholders.


----------



## mosaix

MWagner said:


> I guess I'm not as pessimistic about the state of the world as many people in this thread. I compare today to the world of 50 or 100 years ago and I see progress everywhere. Billions lifted out of dire poverty. Common diseases like smallpox and measles virtually wiped out. The threat of famine lifted from all but a few small pockets of the world. Autocracy and tyranny in retreat, democracy and human freedom expanding. Dire ignorance and illiteracy falling away as the ranks of the educated grow across the globe.



I fear that is a 'developed nation' view of the 'world', MW.

Across Africa, the worst food crisis since 1985 looms for 50 million


----------



## Vertigo

Mirannan said:


> Yup. And it's happening quite fast, too. I found a photo a while back (can't find it again, dammit) of a church in the middle of Kansas fields. The land is as flat as a billiard table for miles in all directions, but the church and its churchyard are about ten feet above their level.
> 
> The reason is simple. The church plot has not been farmed. Large-scale industrial farming is removing topsoil, to the tune of millions of tons per year. Farming of this sort is at least partially a mining operation.


It's not just the erosion but also the very life of the topsoil. Topsoil is teeming with microbes that do all sorts of wonderful things that provide nutrition for plants. But as I understand it they are being poisoned by herbicides and pesticides and being starved by the intensive farming taking out more than is put back in (primarily the carbon I think). Result: sterile soil which is no good for growing.


----------



## Cathbad

Vertigo said:


> Result: sterile soil which is no good for growing.



We call ourselves "developed".  Even the "primitive" tribes of the Amazon jungles practice field/crop rotation.


----------



## BAYLOR

Vertigo said:


> It's not just the erosion but also the very life of the topsoil. Topsoil is teeming with microbes that do all sorts of wonderful things that provide nutrition for plants. But as I understand it they are being poisoned by herbicides and pesticides and being starved by the intensive farming taking out more than is put back in (primarily the carbon I think). Result: sterile soil which is no good for growing.




Which will lead to famine, starvation , disease  and massive population die off.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> We call ourselves "developed".  Even the "primitive" tribes of the Amazon jungles practice field/crop rotation.



The Idiots running , managing and farming and deforesting   Brazil know all this but don't care, their attitude is it's a  problem for tomorrow. 

In Equador the government will only give forested land to famers if they creel cut it.


----------



## MWagner

mosaix said:


> I fear that is a 'developed nation' view of the 'world', MW.
> 
> Across Africa, the worst food crisis since 1985 looms for 50 million



Famines still happen. Just not as frequently and not as severely as before. India and China used to be wracked with famine regularly. The green revolution - one of the most overlooked technological revolutions in history - changed all that. A far smaller percentage of the world's population lives in fear of starvation today than 100 years ago.

Famines since 1850 - Global View


----------



## Lew Rockwell Fan

The green rev is like getting a bigger bilge pump instead of patching the growing hole in the hull.


----------



## MWagner

A timely article in the Globe & Mail on the hysteria around GMO crops and how it's hurting agriculture in Africa. 

More than ever, the world needs genetically modified crops

The tie-in with global warming is a new generation of GMO crops that can be productive in droughts and hotter climates.


----------



## Montero

I would just like to highlight organisations like Population Matters - http://www.populationmatters.org/.  The planet is finite, for the future of both the human race and everything else living on the planet we need to find an ethical and sustainable way to live - which includes limiting the human population and how much it consumers per capita. I know it is very, very difficult and there have been and still are abuses of population control - but we, the human race, need to find ethical ways to live sustainably. Just because it is very, very difficult shouldn't be a reason not to try - I see it as a reason to get started now and try as hard as possible. 
Whether or not climate change includes man made factors, mankind is causing a lot of damage to the planet that I would like to see stopped.


----------



## psikeyhackr

mosaix said:


> Portugal runs for four consecutive days on renewable energy....
> 
> Portugal runs for four days straight on renewable energy alone



How many cars a manufactured in Portugal every year?

In 2010 we reached One Billion cars world wide.

psik


----------



## psikeyhackr

What does "overcome"mean in relation to this problem?

I expect the human race to survive Global Warming but I would not be surprised if the population is down to 3 billion or less by 2100.

How much CO2 is the result of Planned Obsolescence and what have the so called "scientists" said about that?

psik


----------



## Ray McCarthy

last year, allegedly, the CO2 output didn't rise!


----------



## mosaix

Experiment 'turns waste CO2 to stone' - BBC News

_Scientists think they have found a smart way to constrain carbon dioxide emissions - just turn them to stone.

The researchers report an experiment in Iceland where they have pumped CO2 and water underground into volcanic rock.

Reactions with the minerals in the deep basalts convert the carbon dioxide to a stable, immobile chalky solid.

Even more encouraging, the team writes in Science magazine, is the speed at which this process occurs: on the order of months. 

"Of our 220 tonnes of injected CO2, 95% was converted to limestone in less than two years," said lead author Juerg Matter from Southampton University, UK._


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Yes, I saw that report too. Seems a long way off yet, and faces the problem (alluded to in an upcoming short story of mine) of humanity having no idea how much CO2 to draw down. As James Lovelock said, we cannot be the planet's managers. It must be allowed to manage itself.


----------



## psikeyhackr

Ray McCarthy said:


> last year, allegedly, the CO2 output didn't rise!



But it takes about 10 years for the current level to stabilize its effects.  Not raising the output means almost nothing.  The CO2 stays in the atmosphere for decades.

psik


----------



## Caliban

Shattered records show climate change is an emergency today, scientists warn

I don't know about anyone else but last winter worried me in regards to global warming. It was virtually non existent here in England I didn't wear a coat all the way through it was positively mild.


----------



## BAYLOR

Caliban said:


> Shattered records show climate change is an emergency today, scientists warn
> 
> I don't know about anyone else but last winter worried me in regards to global warming. It was virtually non existent here in England I didn't wear a coat all the way through it was positively mild.



We may have moved past the toping point.


----------



## Cathbad

lucky dogs, those that own property a state or two inland!

And woe to those on the beaches.  

We will survive this, and without a billion deaths, but the financial hardship will be great.


----------



## psikeyhackr

Cathbad said:


> We will survive this, and without a billion deaths, but the financial hardship will be great.



Maybe

*The Conflict Between Turkey, Syria and Iraq, over the rivers Tiger and Euphrates*
The Conflict Between Turkey, Syria and Iraq, over the rivers Tiger and Euphrates

We have not hit 2 degrees yet.  What may happen at 5 degrees?

psik


----------



## Cathbad

psikeyhackr said:


> Maybe
> 
> *The Conflict Between Turkey, Syria and Iraq, over the rivers Tiger and Euphrates*
> The Conflict Between Turkey, Syria and Iraq, over the rivers Tiger and Euphrates
> 
> We have not hit 2 degrees yet.  What may happen at 5 degrees?
> 
> psik



The water truly begins to rise.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> lucky dogs, those that own property a state or two inland!
> 
> And woe to those on the beaches.
> 
> We will survive this, and without a billion deaths, but the financial hardship will be great.



Im not looking forward to Water world.


----------



## Caliban

Arctic sea ice shrinks to second lowest level ever recorded

Just to cheer you all up.


----------



## BAYLOR

Caliban said:


> Arctic sea ice shrinks to second lowest level ever recorded
> 
> Just to cheer you all up.



Somehow, I  just don't find this bit of news to be the least bit cheerful.


----------



## Vertigo

The Polar Ocean Challenge (Home - The Polar Ocean Challenge) has almost finished now. As I understand it they are the first sailing expedition to sail both the Northwest and Northeast passages completing a full circumpolar voyage in a single season. In the past I believe all previous expeditions have had to take two to three years as ice blocks their route. One of the aims of the expedition is to draw attention to the reduction in Northern sea ice.


----------



## Montero

In the last couple of pages on this thread, there have been a lot of instances of people giving examples of climate change problems. 

I said:



Montero said:


> I would just like to highlight organisations like Population Matters - http://www.populationmatters.org/.  The planet is finite, for the future of both the human race and everything else living on the planet we need to find an ethical and sustainable way to live - which includes limiting the human population and how much it consumers per capita. I know it is very, very difficult and there have been and still are abuses of population control - but we, the human race, need to find ethical ways to live sustainably. Just because it is very, very difficult shouldn't be a reason not to try - I see it as a reason to get started now and try as hard as possible.
> Whether or not climate change includes man made factors, mankind is causing a lot of damage to the planet that I would like to see stopped.



And had one like and no responses. Now, there is of course no obligation on anyone to respond   - however as a person who goes round talking about the impact of overpopulation on the planet - there often seems to be little response to mentioning that problem. So here I am on a nice friendly forum where we all know each other, so I'd like to ask - why? As in why did no-one respond? 
To me it is a big concern and it seems to be very, very hard to get people talking about it, let alone taking action. So I am seeking feedback.


----------



## Cathbad

Montero said:


> To me it is a big concern and it seems to be very, very hard to get people talking about it, let alone taking action. So I am seeking feedback.



How do you plan on limiting population?  Sterilize people?  Kill the first-born?  Perhaps you haven't got feedback, because there is no plausible/acceptable answer?

I heard a scientist once say that the earth can actually sustain 50 billion people.  I guess that would mean a lot of changes, though.  Rather than trying to find ways to limit reproduction, we can work to providing for larger populations, like finally funding programs to advance the science of things like undersea abodes?  Hydroponic gardening?  Solutions for providing for larger populations seems to make far more sense than killing babies, as at least one nation has tried?


----------



## Stephen Palmer

I agree with Montero's stance, but the practicalities are difficult. Much of the planet is still in B.C. mode when it comes to family planning and the situation of women.


----------



## Vertigo

Montero said:


> In the last couple of pages on this thread, there have been a lot of instances of people giving examples of climate change problems.
> 
> I said:
> 
> 
> 
> And had one like and no responses. Now, there is of course no obligation on anyone to respond   - however as a person who goes round talking about the impact of overpopulation on the planet - there often seems to be little response to mentioning that problem. So here I am on a nice friendly forum where we all know each other, so I'd like to ask - why? As in why did no-one respond?
> To me it is a big concern and it seems to be very, very hard to get people talking about it, let alone taking action. So I am seeking feedback.


My apologies @Montero I must have missed that post (my presence here has been a little erratic of late) as I would normally have commented. I have long believed virtually all our problems on this planet come down to population, both due to destruction of environment and possible impact on global warming and competition for resources. But I am typically shouted down by people who believe otherwise. I'm afraid I simply have no faith in some of the extreme population sizes that people claim are possible. We are already poisoning and killing our topsoil across the planet at a incredibly scary rate and almost no effort is being made to correct that situation. I believe Phosphorous is becoming ever more scarce and is a finite, vital component of fertilisers that is being mined in ever larger quantities. I an convinced that the high population advocates are simply saying we've got x hectares of land planet and we need y hectares per head of population therefore we can support z humans. I don't think they have appreciated how little of the planet's land mass is available for feeding humans even if we continue displacing the planet's wild fauna in order to get more.

I agree that the problem is a massively difficult one to solve and I do not have answers but, unless we find some soon, population is a problem that I believe will hit a catastrophic tipping point before long (if it hasn't already). I think anyone who claims we can support 50 billion people on this planet is living in cloud cuckoo land. I doubt we could even achieve it sustainably by eliminating all larger animals on the planet (to remove their need for land). I know the UN seems to think that the population growth is slowing and will stabilise before long. But to be honest in order for the human race to survive I think the current population needs to be significantly reduced.


----------



## Cathbad

Vertigo said:


> We are already poisoning and killing our topsoil across the planet at a incredibly scary rate and almost no effort is being made to correct that situation.



Even what we are not destroying by chemicals, we are making impotent by not burying our dead in biodegradable materials.  Think about it:  300+ million animals will not return to the soil in this nation, because we bury our dead in sealed caskets, or burn them to ash.  That's not what nature intended, and our soil is suffering for it.



Vertigo said:


> I don't think they have appreciated how little of the planet's land mass is available for feeding humans even if we continue displacing the planet's wild fauna in order to get more.



I agree, which is why we need to find solutions.  Yes, birth rates need to come down, but they won't anytime soon.  We need to work on both angles.




Vertigo said:


> I think anyone who claims we can support 50 billion people on this planet is living in cloud cuckoo land.



Not really.  Two-thirds of the planet is not being utilized as it could be.  And the seas are deep.  There's a lot of technology to be developed, but there is a lot already in existence to work with.

Population manipulation, utilization of the seas, and colonization of the moon/mars should all be worked toward.  If they're not; if we only strive in a single direction, we'll surely fail as a species.


----------



## Vertigo

I agree with much of what you say @Cathbad but expanding the environments that we exploit for resources (growing food etc) can only be done at the expense of our fellow occupants of this planet, whether it's on land or at sea. Any additional land or sea we exploit will displace existing resident fauna and flora. We must decide if this is the price we are prepared to pay.

Unfortunately, and I've said this before, colonisation can never be a solution to over population. The numbers just don't add up. Consider how long it would take to move even 100 million humans off Earth to say Mars. Let's say we decide to move them in a decade (that's a century to move a billion) that's over 27 _thousand_ people have to be lifted off the planet _every_ day for ten years. That's 65 full jumbo jets going into _orbit_ every day. Even with the most optimistic views of future science and technology that's unrealistic and Lord knows what the process of lifting them off the planet (even with an elevator) would do to the environment. And then you've got to get them to Mars - how many spaceships would it take to shift that many people _every day_? And 100 million is really only a drop in the ocean. I'm not saying colonisation of other planets is not an important goal to strive for in its own right (if only to get some of our eggs out of the one basket), I'm just saying it's never going to make a significant impact on world population.


----------



## Cathbad

Vertigo said:


> We must decide if this is the price we are prepared to pay.



Agreed.  Frankly, I don't think we're worth it.



Vertigo said:


> Let's say we decide to move them in a decade (that's a century to move a billion) that's over 27 _thousand_ people have to be lifted off the planet _every_ day for ten years. That's 65 full jumbo jets going into _orbit_ every day.



Well, _that's_ not good!  (Dang, I hate facts! )

Then again, I'm speaking for the survival of the race.  Not _all_ humans.


----------



## Vertigo

Cathbad said:


> Agreed.  Frankly, I don't think we're worth it.
> 
> 
> 
> Well, _that's_ not good!  (Dang, I hate facts! )
> 
> Then again, I'm speaking for the survival of the race.  Not _all_ humans.


Agreed on both points . That's why I say colonisation is important so we don't keep all our eggs in this one basket.


----------



## Montero

Cathbad said:


> How do you plan on limiting population?  Sterilize people?  Kill the first-born?  Perhaps you haven't got feedback, because there is no plausible/acceptable answer?



Responses like this are one of the reasons it is difficult to discuss the topic constructively. In my original post I did mention both the words "ethical" and also post a link to Population Matters and their discussion of some ways to tackle this problem. I hoped people would pick up on the words "ethical" and also look at the link, so they do see that I am not proposing what you have put in your speech that I have quoted.

What Population Matters has to say on the topic is "Population - Population Matters. Here are a couple of quotes from their page:



> "The lack of open discussion about this topic means most people are not aware that our high numbers today are such a recent phenomenon. As recently as 1930, in our parents’ or grandparents’ youth, world population was some two billion compared with the seven billion living on the planet now."
> 
> and further down
> 
> "In the developed world, better reproductive health, contraception and women’s rights can also play an important role in reducing population growth.
> 
> Population growth rates worldwide are declining, but absolute numbers are still rising at one and a half million every week. Growth is also variable; populations are declining in some countries while continuing to grow rapidly in others."
> 
> and on birth rates
> 
> "Universal access to reproductive health services is one of the main factors that help to reduce birth rates and hence population growth.
> 
> Improvements made to infrastructure, wide availability of modern contraceptives and the empowerment of women all greatly contribute to significantly lower and therefore much more sustainable rates of birth.
> 
> Economic development also helps to lift women out of the high birth rate poverty trap."




It is a complex and emotive problem, but however many technical solutions we come up with for increasing food production, one day we will run out if the number of mouths keeps on growing. We may even be technically advanced enough as a species that the point at which we run out of food, is after the point at which we have eradicated all other species from the planet, as one by one they were judged to be taking up too much of the room needed for our food production and to me that would be even more of a disaster.

So what I am proposing at present is supporting what Population Matters and other such charities are doing - making people aware of the problem and working on reducing birth rates in an ethical way. (And also everyone looking at ways of living sustainably.)  Now, in parts of the western world, the birth rates have dropped massively - broadly speaking (and I am no expert on fine detail and dates) this followed improvements in medical care that lead to most children growing up to be adults and adults living longer plus access to contraception. Many people now choose to have a small family or no family.

This article in the Guardian is interesting on contraceptive use worldwide:
Contraception and family planning around the world – interactive

Regarding perpetuating the human race through colonisation - we need to go a lot further than Mars - one day the sun will go Nova and wipe out the solar system. - but Mars is a first step.  
Edited to add: I do support continued work on the space programme - but it is a very long term solution for the continuation of the human race and I think we must tackle sustainable living as a higher priority. (And doubtless some of the technological advances that will help in terms of very efficient appliances for example, will start with developments at NASA finding wider applications.   )


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Vertigo said:


> Unfortunately, and I've said this before, colonisation can never be a solution to over population.



Not least because human beings face an ethical problem, and if we go elsewhere we just take that problem with us. We need humanity first.


----------



## Vertigo

Stephen Palmer said:


> Not least because human beings face an ethical problem, and if we go elsewhere we just take that problem with us. We need humanity first.


So very true...


----------



## BAYLOR

Stephen Palmer said:


> Not least because human beings face an ethical problem, and if we go elsewhere we just take that problem with us. We need humanity first.



Even if we find an earth like planet which could potentially sustain us. We may not be able to go there. The bacteria  and viruses there would kill us and those that we carry would have dire consequences to the environment of the planet.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

BAYLOR said:


> Even if we find an earth like planet which could potentially sustain us. We may not be able to go there. The bacteria  and viruses there would kill us and those that we carry would have dire consequences to the environment of the planet.



Yes, although I'm not sure alien life forms necessarily could do damage, since they wouldn't be using our unique version of RNA and DNA. It was quite a shock to me recently to learn that there are Earth bacteria on Mars, transported there by rovers etc.


----------



## Vertigo

BAYLOR said:


> Even if we find an earth like planet which could potentially sustain us. We may not be able to go there. The bacteria  and viruses there would kill us and those that we carry would have dire consequences to the environment of the planet.


I agree with @Stephen Palmer that I don't think that's a big issue. Consider how relatively rare it is for bacteria and viruses to jump across species here on Earth where we all share DNA that is, to a very large degree, identical and therefore how hard it would be for Terran microbes to jump the gap to effect aliens life forms and vice versa. I believe it is even considered possible or even likely that humans might not be able to eat alien flora or fauna as the proteins and stuff might not be compatible. That's not to say it would be poisonous either - I would think it's most likely to just pass through more or less untouched.


----------



## Mirannan

Whether alien microbes could hurt us probably depends on whether they could make use of our amino acids, or at least some of them. It's fairly likely that alien life would use some variant of DNA, although the bases they use could well be different as could the amino acids in use. There are dozens to hundreds of amino acids, purines and pyrimidines that Earthly life doesn't use, and the reason could be largely accident; the ones Earth life uses belong to the life system that won.

It's also quite possible that some of the alien amino acids would be poisonous to us and/or vice versa, ditto DNA bases; I'm not enough of an expert in the field to say, but poisons often work by jamming up life's machinery because they bind to enzymes and the like, but it doesn't go any further.

Actually, on looking into this a little more I found an Earthly example. Botulinum toxin is a protein. So is the toxin involved in tetanus. And, of course, both of those use the same amino acids as humans do.


----------



## LordOfWizards

Mirannan said:


> It's also quite possible that some of the alien amino acids would be poisonous to us and/or vice versa, ditto DNA bases; I'm not enough of an expert in the field to say, but poisons often work by jamming up life's machinery because they bind to enzymes and the like, but it doesn't go any further.
> 
> Actually, on looking into this a little more I found an Earthly example. Botulinum toxin is a protein. So is the toxin involved in tetanus. And, of course, both of those use the same amino acids as humans do.



I'm not a biologist either, but I read a book that introduced me to a lot of concepts in biology "Life Ascending - The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution" - Nick Lane

In this book he explores the very exact known possible beginnings of life on Earth, and discusses the evolution of Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes, the third of which are membraned walled celled life to which we (humans) belong. He also discusses many of the ways that pathogens interfere with our systems, often by mimicking some cell or amino acid or other basic block of our structure at the microscopic level, and thereby "gumming up the works". He also explains that the very nature of evolution is being affected by the ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen in the atmosphere in current times due to climate change. The most dramatic of these effects are being seen in the upper layers of the oceans where a lot of the carbon dioxide is being absorbed.

The other thing you folks reminded me of is how large portions of the native populations of South America were obliterated by common pathogens (for which they had no anti-bodies) when the Spanish settlers arrived there in the late 1400's/early1500s. More Native Americans were rumored to have died from this phenomenon than from any sort of deliberate violence. So it is a very real concern for space exploration, and I believe NASA is well aware and does actively prepare for these issues when considering colonizing even the closest planets like Mars.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

LordOfWizards said:


> I'm not a biologist either, but I read a book that introduced me to a lot of concepts in biology "Life Ascending - The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution" - Nick Lane



A brilliant book by a brilliant man.


----------



## Montero

Vertigo said:


> I agree with @Stephen Palmer I believe it is even considered possible or even likely that humans might not be able to eat alien flora or fauna as the proteins and stuff might not be compatible. That's not to say it would be poisonous either - I would think it's most likely to just pass through more or less untouched.


Its my understanding that is how artificial sweeteners work - taste sweet, can't be digested (but I've not been to look it up to make sure). Enzymes interact with other organic molecules both on a chemical level (functional groups) and a physical - the functional groups have to be in the right geometry. So isomers are chemically identical, but physically a different shape, and enzymes can interact with one isomer but not the other. It gets complicated.
Depending on your DNA, lactose may or may not be digestible. Some laxatives are based on lactulose which are manufactured from lactose.


----------



## ErikB

ljfallavollita said:


> This is a question that I have spent many hours thinking about over the last few years.  Will mankind be successful in overcoming the challenges of Global Warming or will those that come after us face even bigger challenges?
> 
> What issues will mankind be facing in 2100?  What about 2200?
> 
> I'd like to know your thoughts on this subject.



I don't believe we have that much time left. By 2050 our oceans will be fished out unless radical changes take place. We are depleting fish stocks and destroying our oceans. 

The oceans of our planet provide us with 70% of our annual oxygen and control through CO2 absorption over 80% of carbon dioxide. 

We are swiftly killing this resource and CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. This was the subject of my first book and years of research. 

When the oceans die we die because oceans control our atmosphere and climate and weather. The planets surface is 72% water. 

Of land mass 18% is set aside as parks, preserves, and natural sanctuaries. But less than 1% of marine ecosystems are preserved. Fisheries are fishing down. Depleting species after species for big commercial gain and with VERY poor regulation. 

Fish stocks are plummeting. Sharks are killed to the tune is 104 million a year with 78 million killed only for their fins. Tuna and billfish populations are plummeting. 

These are the apex predators of the ocean that regulate other species and fish stocks. Fish have few areas where fishing pressures are not extreme. 

Our oceans have giant gyres where trash and plastics float around clogging up the water and killing marine life. The Great Pacific Gyre is the size of Alaska. Its sick.

We will be lucky to get past 2050 without triggering the PONR (Point of no return) where the planet and natural forces simply cannot sustain us or replenish natural resources.


----------



## Vertigo

I broadly agree with you there (and there are many other issues like destruction of topsoil to consider) however I am also optimistic that we will survive it but almost certainly not without considerable pain.

Just one point to watch is the 'Great Pacific Gyre' which you describe as 'trash and plastics float around clogging up the water and killing marine life.' Whilst this is broadly correct it is also slightly misleading and in danger of extending an internet myth. If you sail through the Pacific Gyre or garbage vortex, or whatever you want to call it, there's a good chance you would see no rubbish at all or at least very little. Although it now appears that the amount of larger items of rubbish has probably been underestimated, the vast majority of the rubbish is 'micro plastics' that, I believe, are pieces less than 5mm in size and are typically almost invisible to the naked eye but of course they are the perfect size for the smaller marine organisms to mistake for food and the plastics then lodge in them undigested and of course then pass on up the food chain.

I'm not knocking the seriousness of it or the other similar patches (the Pacific one is just the most famous), quite the reverse, but I'm just wary of the melodramatic internet photos of islands of floating trash which are actually generally taken in some of our most polluted harbours and then labelled as oceanic garbage patches. The thing about these 'patches' is that they are huge - the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is around three times the size of the US never mind Alaska - so even though the concentration of rubbish is not that high (in terms of being visible) the resulting total is staggering.


----------



## psikeyhackr

ErikB said:


> I don't believe we have that much time left. By 2050 our oceans will be fished out unless radical changes take place. We are depleting fish stocks and destroying our oceans.
> 
> The oceans of our planet provide us with 70% of our annual oxygen and control through CO2 absorption over 80% of carbon dioxide.
> 
> We are swiftly killing this resource and CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. This was the subject of my first book and years of research.
> 
> When the oceans die we die because oceans control our atmosphere and climate and weather. The planets surface is 72% water..



Exactly, idiots have wasted too much time talking bullsh**.  We have wasted too much time in the last 50 years not getting children to UNDERSTAND science.

psik


----------



## Brian G Turner

Here's a consequence of Global Warming affecting Russia - buildings in areas of tundra are slowly collapsing as the permafrost thaws:
Slow-motion wrecks: how thawing permafrost is destroying Arctic cities


----------



## Cathbad

psikeyhackr said:


> We have wasted too much time in the last 50 years not getting children to UNDERSTAND science.



Worse, many of our Political and Religious Leaders have been actively denigrating science.

Sad.


----------



## BAYLOR

I so look forward to having a tropic climate here. Id love to have plan trees in my back yard.


----------



## psikeyhackr

BAYLOR said:


> I so look forward to having a tropic climate here. Id love to have *plan trees* in my back yard.



Plan trees?

psik


----------



## Cathbad

psikeyhackr said:


> Plan trees?



As a noted Bayloreze translator, I can tell you he meant _palm_ tree.


----------



## Alex The G and T

I'm planning to have more trees.


----------



## BAYLOR

psikeyhackr said:


> Plan trees?
> 
> psik




It's  Palm trees . The spell checker/corrector  is deliberately trying to embarrass me.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Good news on the spread of renewable energies: Renewable energy capacity overtakes coal - BBC News

Bad news on CO2 levels: Global warming milestone as scientists warn Earth has passed carbon tipping point | Daily Mail Online


----------



## Brian G Turner

I *really* like these new solar-power tiles from Tesla:
Tesla shows off solar roof tiles - BBC News

If I haven't said it before, then rather than spend £20 billion on a new nuclear reactor (plus the billions in processing and clea-up costs that follow) it would likely be more cost-effective to put solar panels on almost every private home in Britain.


----------



## Montero

There are various problems with renewables - including predictability and continuity of supply - there is/was a hope that by developing storage options you could overcome the intermittent nature of renewables and also the lack of 100% accuracy in weather forecast by storage of energy. 
Bit of a problem there
Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineers

The current nuclear power stations are not perfect, but I for one am glad we have them. 
Now, not many people know that there are alternatives to uranium based fission - thorium.
The reason that uranium based power plants were developed, rather than thorium, is for making nuclear weapons. You can't make nuclear weapons from thorium. Finally, that news is getting out and thorium reactors are under development - but not in the UK. Here is a website with a load of info I just found via Google
News

and articles from New Scientist
Thorium reactors could rescue nuclear power
and
Nuclear alchemy: Thorium promises power from waste

Then of course there is nuclear fusion - still a ways off - but work is going ahead on that. DIY solar power 

So when I campaign on energy sources, I campaign for thorium reactors and fusion.  Above all, as I said earlier in I think it was this thread, I campaign for Population Matters - the basic problem is there are too many consumers. Population Matters – for a Sustainable Future


----------



## mosaix

Thorium reactors are far safer as well. The fact that we continue to ignore them is a mystery.  

I'm aware of the 'nuclear weapon' reason, but surely we've got enough (whatever that means) nuclear weapons now.


----------



## Cathbad

mosaix said:


> surely we've got enough (whatever that means) nuclear weapons now.



NO!  We can only destroy the entire surface of the world 7 times over!  Obviously we need more!!


----------



## Montero

mosaix said:


> Thorium reactors are far safer as well. The fact that we continue to ignore them is a mystery.
> .



Write to Theresa May and your MP. Shout about it. One voice at a time, maybe they'll notice.


----------



## mosaix

Montero said:


> Write to Theresa May and your MP. Shout about it. One voice at a time, maybe they'll notice.


A few years ago we attended a nuclear power exhibition. No mention of providing material for nuclear weapons at all. I asked about it - embarrassed 'Well... err...' was the response.


----------



## Venusian Broon

Montero said:


> Write to Theresa May and your MP. Shout about it. One voice at a time, maybe they'll notice.



Err...can't see what good that will do . Successive UK governments since the 60s have dismantled the UK nuclear industry - you'll notice that we have brought in Chinese and French expertise to build a new nuclear reactor. There is no way TM or this government will sink money (and it will require loads of investment before Thorium gets up to speed) into a new nuclear industry here.

(in fact: [from Wikipedia] 





> in 2010, the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) concluded that for the short to medium term, "...the thorium fuel cycle does not currently have a role to play," in that it is "technically immature, and would require a significant financial investment and risk without clear benefits," and concluded that the benefits have been "overstated."


)

So for Thorium - you'd be much better off trying to support the Indian government, who has huge deposits of the stuff on its land and is actively pursuing a program to get loads of reactors up to speed using it.

Then we in the Britain could get expert Indian engineers/companies to build a few of their reactors when they do it. (at great cost no doubt, and we fall back again in another area of science )


----------



## Foxbat

This is what we get for privatising the nuclear industry. British Energy was just too small to make the big investments required and that was why EDF took it over (which is ironic because EDF is still 85% owned by the French government so we basically privatised our nuclear generation industry and then let another foreign power take it over).


----------



## mosaix

Venusian Broon said:


> Err...can't see what good that will do . Successive UK governments since the 60s have dismantled the UK nuclear industry - you'll notice that we have brought in Chinese and French expertise to build a new nuclear reactor. There is no way TM or this government will sink money (and it will require loads of investment before Thorium gets up to speed) into a new nuclear industry here.
> 
> (in fact: [from Wikipedia] )
> 
> So for Thorium - you'd be much better off trying to support the Indian government, who has huge deposits of the stuff on its land and is actively pursuing a program to get loads of reactors up to speed using it.
> 
> Then we in the Britain could get expert Indian engineers/companies to build a few of their reactors when they do it. (at great cost no doubt, and we fall back again in another area of science )



So let's wait for another conventional reactor accident (there probably will be one and who knows where that might be?) and then think about it again.


----------



## Venusian Broon

mosaix said:


> So let's wait for another conventional reactor accident (there probably will be one and who knows where that might be?) and then think about it again.


As we don't have a proper working _commercial _Thorium reactor up and running and therefore we're still in the dark if this really is a short to medium term energy goal with regards to costs, there is unfortunately a gap that needs to be filled, I suppose. So it's conventional nuclear, or more conventional gas (and therefore more incentive for fracking here, one presumes.) 

I believe the Indian government are estimating that they might be exploiting their Thorium reserves properly by 2050 so perhaps a proper answer by then. (I am still cynical that fusion will appear anytime soon, in any of its forms. My dad promised it was going to happen when I was 6 and I'm still waiting )


----------



## Foxbat

The latest thinking in Nuclear is many small modular reactors (Pressurised Water seems to be the favourite) rather than a few big set-ups.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) | Department of Energy


----------



## psikeyhackr

mosaix said:


> Thorium reactors are far safer as well. The fact that we continue to ignore them is a mystery.
> 
> I'm aware of the 'nuclear weapon' reason, but surely we've got enough (whatever that means) nuclear weapons now.



It is all Richard Nixon's fault.

Nixon’s Awful Legacy, Part Two – The History Geek

Politicians should be required to take science tests.

psik


----------



## Montero

Not had time to go read the links - look very interesting - lots more info out there.

I am not saying we should develop Thorium from scratch, just that it should be very strongly considered as the next step, wherever we buy it from - and whatever politicians say is a done deal, if enough electors tell them otherwise, they very often change their stance.

Fusion - yes that is long term and may not be in our lifetime. What I meant was that we need to nag our government to contribute to the ongoing development of this. If there is a bit of ongoing funding, that carries on whatever party is in power, then one day this might be solved.

In general there needs to be a lot more projects that all parties commit to - so whoever gets in at an election, the project continues beyond the short term.


----------



## Brian G Turner

I hadn't realised, but Elon Musk actually unveiled 4 different types of solar roof tile, so that it's easier to integrate them seamlessly into a range of different house styles: Tesla Solar

Tesla have also launched a more powerful storage battery, too, which is claimed to provide 14KW hours - ie, enough to power a 4 bedroom home through the night.

I have to admit to being a little excited about all this - I already have a dream of building my own home on a nice plot one day - but even better, make it entirely self-powered (which would be especially useful during a zombie apocalypse  ).


----------



## BAYLOR

Brian G Turner said:


> I hadn't realised, but Elon Musk actually unveiled 4 different types of solar roof tile, so that it's easier to integrate them seamlessly into a range of different house styles: Tesla Solar
> 
> Tesla have also launched a more powerful storage battery, too, which is claimed to provide 14KW hours - ie, enough to power a 4 bedroom home through the night.
> 
> I have to admit to being a little excited about all this - I already have a dream of building my own home on a nice plot one day - but even better, make it entirely self-powered (which would be especially useful during a zombie apocalypse  ).



The question is will will these innovations continue or will special interests try to stop  them? My take is that since the technology  exists and there is real profit  potential  , they will continue  improve upon them. More so as the climate deniers diminish in influence and numbers and as oil and other fossil fuels diminish.


----------



## Cathbad

It is the epitome of greed, when these oil companies are willing to sacrifice even the world, for their bottom line.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> It is the epitome of greed, when these oil companies are willing to sacrifice even the world, for their bottom line.



And just  what do you expect from them ? Altruism ? They're not going to do anything which will cost them their profit and livelihood.


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> And just  what do you expect from them ? Altruism ? They're not going to do anything which will cost them their profit and livelihood.



Are you supporting them, or merely explaining them?  Profit is a really poor excuse for ending the human race.  You can't just acknowledge that?


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> Are you supporting them, or merely explaining them?  Profit is a really poor excuse for ending the human race.  You can't just acknowledge that?



Im explaining them ,  because their not going to change their minds until the ocean rises up to their eyeballs or until they are forced  to which at this point of the game , doesn't seem very likely given how much money they have buy people off. It may be they do believe in Global Warming and have concluded rather cynically that sacrificing their way  of life might make no difference anyway, so it best live it up until the very end.   It  may already be too late to do anything about the problem of  Global warming .


----------



## Brian G Turner

Some of the oil companies have invested in renewable energy - BP certainly has a solar energy division,


----------



## Cathbad

Brian G Turner said:


> Some of the oil companies have invested in renewable energy - BP certainly has a solar energy division,



BP seems to be earnestly investing in renewable energy.  Other oil companies, like ExxonMobile, I remain skeptical about what little advertising they've done on the subject.


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> It may already be too late to do anything about the problem of Global warming .



So, just give up?  Let them do as they please, because "that's the way they are" and it _may be_ too late?


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> So, just give up?  Let them do as they please, because "that's the way they are" and it _may be_ too late?



No Cathbad, there is no point giving up . Better to try and hope for a positive outcome then not to try at all. But we have to be realistic and  keep in mind the possibility that it may already be late.


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> No Cathbad, there is no point giving up . Better to try and hope for a positive outcome then not to try at all. But we have to be realistic and  keep in mind the possibility that it may already be late.



"Realistic?" 

Never mind.


----------



## Dave

Now that the Paris Agreement has been signed, why have the stocks and shares in the Oil companies not fallen? Their company value is in part based upon the oil fields that are currently in production and the reserves that they have identified. Could it be because, despite the " the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal," nothing has really changed at all?


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> "Realistic?"
> 
> Never mind.



Yes realistic.

I realistically got you to reply to my comment


----------



## BAYLOR

Here's hoping they further increase fuel efficiency in cars.


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> Here's hoping they further increase fuel efficiency in cars.



Or better still, doing away with the family car.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> Or better still, doing away with the family car.



Maybe we can drive the same kind of car that Gilligan drove on Gilligan's Island. 

Yes, behold the power of the pedal. And it's eco friendly too.


----------



## Cathbad

Clean buses.  Lots of 'em.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> Clean buses.  Lots of 'em.



The one Drawback , Bus divers will be required to have stronger legs.

This approach however will not work with subways.


----------



## Dave




----------



## Brian G Turner

BAYLOR said:


> Here's hoping they further increase fuel efficiency in cars.



Electric cars are the future. That's why it's great to see Tesla really pushing on them. The only alternative I'm currently aware of is the Nissan Leaf.


----------



## WaylanderToo

Brian G Turner said:


> I hadn't realised, but Elon Musk actually unveiled 4 different types of solar roof tile, so that it's easier to integrate them seamlessly into a range of different house styles: Tesla Solar
> 
> Tesla have also launched a more powerful storage battery, too, which is claimed to provide 14KW hours - ie, enough to power a 4 bedroom home through the night.
> 
> I have to admit to being a little excited about all this - I already have a dream of building my own home on a nice plot one day - but even better, make it entirely self-powered (which would be especially useful during a zombie apocalypse  ).



I do like the idea of solar panels, the fact that they could be indistinguishable from 'normal' tiles is just a brucie bonus! The issue is however that with our climate they're just not effective enough (tbh across swathes of the developing world however they would, cost issues aside, be excellent due to not needing to develop/install infrastructure for power)




Brian G Turner said:


> Some of the oil companies have invested in renewable energy - BP certainly has a solar energy division,



And yet the ecomentalists STILL aren't happy (look at the recent fuss at the British Museum )




Cathbad said:


> Or better still, doing away with the family car.



What exactly do you plan to put in its place? A proportion of the population would be unable to  do without one - let alone the other freedoms that it offers




Brian G Turner said:


> Electric cars are the future. That's why it's great to see Tesla really pushing on them. The only alternative I'm currently aware of is the Nissan Leaf.



The thing Tesla has done exceedingly well (and the Karma Fisker) is show that electric cars needn't be the 4 wheeled equivalent of hair-shirts. One thing they are not however is as green as people think. When an electric car is charged it'll use power from the national grid and so is still polluting - and have you seen the mess the mines for the batteries make? That being said however it is on old technology paradoxically in its infancy so one would imagine thing c/should get better?


----------



## Dave

WaylanderToo said:


> And yet the ecomentalists STILL aren't happy (look at the recent fuss at the British Museum )
> 
> What exactly do you plan to put in its place? A proportion of the population would be unable to  do without one - let alone the other freedoms that it offers.


We might actually agree here for once. When Greenpeace stop paying for aeroplane flights to interviews with them, then I might listen to what they say. Until then it is do as I say, rather than do as I do. On the other hand, the Green Party politicians always take the train, and are always late.

However, no one commented on what I said yesterday:





Dave said:


> Now that the Paris Agreement has been signed, why have the stocks and shares in the Oil companies not fallen? Their company value is in part based upon the oil fields that are currently in production and the reserves that they have identified. Could it be because, despite the " the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal," nothing has really changed at all?


If we plan to burn all the existing reserves of fossil fuels remaining then nothing has been changed at all. We are still heading for a global temperature increase of 4C or more.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Dave said:


> However, no one commented on what I said yesterday:



Oil is still such a huge chunk of the world' energy economy. Coal has seen big declines - at least in Europe - so arguably the move to renewables is to replace the shortfall for that, while trying to cover growth in energy consumption - rather than (at this stage) replace oil and nuclear.

As for solar panels not being effectively in northern Europe - I dunno, I know a few people with them, including a couple of neighbours here in the highlands, and they all seem chuffed with them. One of them even has one of Tesla's power-pack batteries to store excess solar-generated electricity through the day for use at night. 

I haven't heard anyone with solar panels complain about their usefulness. I'd love to see a couple of examples of where people may have blogged figures from their own use, to see how different systems compare.


----------



## MWagner

Cathbad said:


> It is the epitome of greed, when these oil companies are willing to sacrifice even the world, for their bottom line.



Can someone explain to my why the companies that extract and sell oil are the bad buys in this? Global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The consumption of them. In cars and boats and planes that move people and goods. In the heating of homes and the powering of our electrical grid. Crucially, in the creation of fertilizers and the operation of farming equipment. In pretty much everything we do. We - all of us - have an enormous demand for energy to support a modern lifestyle.

So why is there this narrative out there that we'd all stop using carbon energy, or switch to solar or wind, if it wasn't for the evil oil companies? Why don't we see public demonstrations against auto and plane manufacturers? After all, it's _using_ cars and planes that puts the bad stuff into the atmosphere. Or would that hit too close to home - force people to recognize it's their own behaviour driving cars and flying in planes that's the root of the problem? It seems to me that vilifying the oil industry for global warming is like vilifying farmers for obesity.

I live and work in a part of the world where the oil and gas industry is a main employer. So maybe I have a different take on things. But can someone point me to the evidence that oil companies are suppressing the development of alternative technologies? That's wishful thinking. The real barrier to the uptake of alternative sources of energy isn't political. It's economic and technological. The fact is, there is no energy source that comes anywhere close to carbon fuels in terms of energy efficiency and portability. Wind and solar are both only a fraction as effective as oil in term of the ratio of energy in to energy out. And both have the severe drawback of intermittent effectiveness and lack of energy storage. Not to mention enormous up-front costs in energy (and in the case of solar panels, highly toxic chemical byproducts) in their construction.

Maybe the vilification of the oil industry is really about anti-corporate sentiment. However, it's worth considering that whatever replaces oil and gas will also be created and sold by massive international corporations motivated by the bottom line. Maybe even by the same companies - they are energy companies, after all.


----------



## Cathbad

MWagner said:


> So why is there this narrative out there that we'd all stop using carbon energy, or switch to solar or wind, if it wasn't for the evil oil companies?



Any new technology requires a heap-load of money to develop.  With the exception of a few who are lucky enough to find billionaire supporters, the laboratories look for government funding.

For decades, the big oil companies bought their congressmen to prevent supporting their research.  An example is the use of corn as a fuel alternative.  You think this is new?  It was developed in the 1970's, and was on its way to regular use - until the government "inexplicably" cut off funding.

They have also lobbied against emission/environmental laws targeting their industry (which, thank goodness, was a battle they mostly lost).


----------



## WaylanderToo

Cathbad said:


> An example is the use of corn as a fuel alternative.




now y'see I've got issues with this. If it's food by-products being used as fuel then fair enough - if it's growing food  crops (or indeed growing crops that replace food crops - as has happened in Indonesia (?)) for fuel then I find that morally repugnant (TBF though I'm open to persuasion)


----------



## MWagner

Cathbad said:


> For decades, the big oil companies bought their congressmen to prevent supporting their research.  An example is the use of corn as a fuel alternative.  You think this is new?  It was developed in the 1970's, and was on its way to regular use - until the government "inexplicably" cut off funding.



Biofuels are largely just a subsidy to farmers. And those subsidies are increasing, not decreasing. In the U.S. alone cumulative ethanol subsidies between 2005 and 2009 were US$17 billion.

The negative impacts include deforestation, increased use of fertilizers, water shortages, and higher food prices. And there's serious doubts that it will ever be economically viable on a large scale.

The Case Against Biofuels: Probing Ethanol’s Hidden Costs  by C. Ford Runge: Yale Environment 360


----------



## BAYLOR

What about Fusion?


----------



## WaylanderToo

BAYLOR said:


> What about Fusion?



Ford Nucleon FTW baby!!


----------



## LordOfWizards

Brian G Turner said:


> I *really* like these new solar-power tiles from Tesla:
> Tesla shows off solar roof tiles - BBC News
> 
> If I haven't said it before, then rather than spend £20 billion on a new nuclear reactor (plus the billions in processing and clea-up costs that follow) it would likely be more cost-effective to put solar panels on almost every private home in Britain.



Your Logic is irrefutable, but then since when do governments operate on logic???
I already have solar on my house, I'm just waiting for my Tesla 3 now, so I'll have no significant contribution to Climate change, but also _never pay another pence/cent for gasoline.  _

By the way, when is the zombie apocalypse? I need to add it to my calendar.


----------



## LordOfWizards

Good question @BAYLOR! Here: ITER: the world's largest Tokamak


----------



## Vertigo

Brian G Turner said:


> Electric cars are the future. That's why it's great to see Tesla really pushing on them. The only alternative I'm currently aware of is the Nissan Leaf.


There's also the BMW i3. All three, the BMW, Tesla and the Nissan, did the North Coast 500 a few months back (largely to demonstrate just how far they can travel between charges now). They stopped off in a number of villages along the way, including Garve where I live, to give a talk (very interesting) and do demo drives (very impressive especially the admittedly very expensive Tesla).


----------



## Brian G Turner

Vertigo said:


> BMW i3



Cool - I didn't know that. I thought the BMW's were hybrids. I've noticed manufacturers pushing on hydrids, but IMO that's simply to pay for the R&D cycle and that consumers are ready for all-electric now. Or maybe consumers in general really do need easing into trusting all-electric cars, and I'm just an optimist.


----------



## BAYLOR

WaylanderToo said:


> Ford Nucleon FTW baby!!




That was never destained  to get on the road for alot reasons.


----------



## LordOfWizards

MWagner said:


> Can someone explain to my why the companies that extract and sell oil are the bad buys in this? Global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The consumption of them. In cars and boats and planes that move people and goods. In the heating of homes and the powering of our electrical grid. Crucially, in the creation of fertilizers and the operation of farming equipment. In pretty much everything we do. We - all of us - have an enormous demand for energy to support a modern lifestyle.
> 
> So why is there this narrative out there that we'd all stop using carbon energy, or switch to solar or wind, if it wasn't for the evil oil companies? Why don't we see public demonstrations against auto and plane manufacturers? After all, it's _using_ cars and planes that puts the bad stuff into the atmosphere. Or would that hit too close to home - force people to recognize it's their own behaviour driving cars and flying in planes that's the root of the problem? It seems to me that vilifying the oil industry for global warming is like vilifying farmers for obesity.
> 
> I live and work in a part of the world where the oil and gas industry is a main employer. So maybe I have a different take on things. But can someone point me to the evidence that oil companies are suppressing the development of alternative technologies? That's wishful thinking. The real barrier to the uptake of alternative sources of energy isn't political. It's economic and technological. The fact is, there is no energy source that comes anywhere close to carbon fuels in terms of energy efficiency and portability. Wind and solar are both only a fraction as effective as oil in term of the ratio of energy in to energy out. And both have the severe drawback of intermittent effectiveness and lack of energy storage. Not to mention enormous up-front costs in energy (and in the case of solar panels, highly toxic chemical byproducts) in their construction.
> 
> Maybe the vilification of the oil industry is really about anti-corporate sentiment. However, it's worth considering that whatever replaces oil and gas will also be created and sold by massive international corporations motivated by the bottom line. Maybe even by the same companies - they are energy companies, after all.



This post has a lot of topics built in, albeit many centered around conventional versus alternative energy. I'll try to address as much of this as I can in 1 post.

1) Vilification of oil companies: The Exxon Valdez, and Deep Water Horizon are two examples of environmental disaster that can come of using oil as an energy source. The other problem is that oil companies are depending on existing infrastructure, so the investments that were required to get the technology going occurred a while ago. They continue to run these old refineries to the Nth degree because of money. It isn't so much that executives are greedy as it is the shareholders they are responsible to. This is a problem in general with the monetary system. It is the enemy of innovation because _all _new technologies are expensive. The only way to _maximize_ the _bottom line_ is to run existing systems threadbare to get the _last drop of cash_ out of them.

2. The reason that Wind and Solar don't contribute more to world power at the moment is that they are new, and have yet to be streamlined enough to be cost competitive with oil. Again, money is the whole motivating factor in the equation.

3. Electric vehicles were invented before Oil was discovered and were suppressed because the Oil barrens wanted to make money. Here are two articles to consider: The History of the Electric Car
and Episode 310 – How Big Oil Conquered The World  : The Corbett Report
(This is not some conspiracy theory, as I can cite plenty of other sources - it is historic fact)

4. Oil is a limited resource. The output from Oil wells in the world peaked in the early 2000's. Peak oil - Wikipedia
Again, this is not conspiracy theory either. It is science fact. (and mathematics - statistical).

Now, I see the occasional commercial (I don't own a television) about Oil companies investing in this or that research toward alternative energy. My suspicion is that they are probably working very hard (or maybe not) behind the scenes to prepare for the transition and invest in newer technologies so that we can transition away from oil. If not, they sure should be because we will run out by around 2050: Worldometers - real time world statistics

You may have to scroll down the 'Energy' subheading to see the oil info. (End of Oil = ~37 Years) Assumption:If consumed at current rates


----------



## LordOfWizards

Also, just so it is clear, every gallon of gasoline/petrol produces about 17 pounds of Carbon Dioxide. You should say what??? A gallon of gas only weighs 6.3 lbs. 

But the chemical reaction that takes place in a combustion engine looks like this: 2(C8H18 + 25 O2) → 16 CO2 + 18 H2O. In english, that means that 16 carbons and 32 hydrogens combine with 50 double oxygens to create 16 carbon dioxides and 18 waters. so the C8H18 is gasoline. The 02 is oxygen from the air. When the reaction happens it is taking oxygen out of our atmosphere and trapping it in carbon-dioxide.

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/contentIncludes/co2_inc.htm


----------



## MWagner

I'm not disputing the impact of oil. I'm just wondering why we point an accusing finger at the producers and the not consumers, when it's consumption of the stuff that is causing problems. It's like blaming farmers for the health maladies caused by obesity.

Though I suppose it's always tempting to pin a problem on a small number of villains rather than hundreds of millions of common people, including our friends, our families, and ourselves.


----------



## LordOfWizards

MWagner said:


> It's like blaming farmers for the health maladies caused by obesity.



On this part, I disagree. Here's why: A farmer does not make a lot of money from his work. Some of the big ones do, but then we are talking about corporations not individuals. Also, Obesity is a _mis-use_ of resources. The average driver is not hoarding gas/petrol. I understand the point you might be trying to make, I just disagree with this particular analogy to make it.



MWagner said:


> Though I suppose it's always tempting to pin a problem on a small number of villains rather than hundreds of millions of common people, including our friends, our families, and ourselves.



Money is like a way of voting for resources and technologies. The oil corporations have roughly a billion times more votes than your friends, your families, and yourself.


----------



## Boneman

LordOfWizards said:


> Also, just so it is clear, every gallon of gasoline/petrol produces about 17 pounds of Carbon Dioxide. You should say what??? A gallon of gas only weighs 6.3 lbs.
> 
> But the chemical reaction that takes place in a combustion engine looks like this: 2(C8H18 + 25 O2) → 16 CO2 + 18 H2O. In english, that means that 16 carbons and 32 hydrogens combine with 50 double oxygens to create 16 carbon dioxides and 18 waters. so the C8H18 is gasoline. The 02 is oxygen from the air. When the reaction happens it is taking oxygen out of our atmosphere and trapping it in carbon-dioxide.
> 
> https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/contentIncludes/co2_inc.htm



But then trees need CO2, no? Photosynthesis...    6Co2+6H20 in the presence of sunlight and chlorophyl = C6H12O6  + 6O2). The short-term answer, while the big companies figure out a way to give us clean energy cheaply (yeah, right)  is to plant more trees, no? Have you seen the trees lining the M11 motorway? Sensational at  this time of year and obviously thriving on the pounds of CO2 provided by passing cars...


----------



## MWagner

LordOfWizards said:


> Money is like a way of voting for resources and technologies. The oil corporations have roughly a billion times more votes than your friends, your families, and yourself.



No they don't. Because we vote with every dollar we spend. And we vote for fossil fuel consumption every time we get on a plane, buy a TV made in Korea, or drink a bottle of wine imported from Chile.


----------



## Brian G Turner

It is my sincere belief that - just as people in our times condemn those in the past for not challenging racism, or the acceptance of slavery - so those in the future will condemn us with even greater vitriol for the harm we have done to this planet.

We can blame society, circumstance, industry - but, ultimately, we have individual responsibility, and it is for those actions we shall be judged.


----------



## BAYLOR

MWagner said:


> No they don't. Because we vote with every dollar we spend. And we vote for fossil fuel consumption every time we get on a plane, buy a TV made in Korea, or drink a bottle of wine imported from Chile.



We consume resources, generate waste and most don't give it much thought.


----------



## Dave

You already answered you own question @MWagner 


MWagner said:


> Why don't we see public demonstrations against auto and plane manufacturers? After all, it's _using_ cars and planes that puts the bad stuff into the atmosphere. Or would that hit too close to home - force people to recognize it's their own behaviour driving cars and flying in planes that's the root of the problem?


That is exactly why. And farmers are not blamed for obesity, but restaurants and supermarkets are. No one forces anyone to eat Donuts and Crisps. It is much easier to blame other people or corporations.


----------



## Cathbad

Although for most things, we can blame the consumer, but I don't believe the use of fossil fuel-guzzling machines can.

What's the alternative?  When I had a family, a vehicle was a necessity, not an option.  (When I was single, I didn't own a car - I hates them).  If we (consumers) were given viable options, _then_ one could be blamed for opting for the environmentally-unfriendly ones.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> Although for most things, we can blame the consumer, but I don't believe the use of fossil fuel-guzzling machines can.
> 
> What's the alternative?  When I had a family, a vehicle was a necessity, not an option.  (When I was single, I didn't own a car - I hates them).  If we (consumers) were given viable options, _then_ one could be blamed for opting for the environmentally-unfriendly ones.



Most  like to burn the candle at both ends. Some like to burn the candle in the middle at the same time too.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Dave said:


> You already answered you own question @MWagner
> That is exactly why. And farmers are not blamed for obesity, but restaurants and supermarkets are. No one forces anyone to eat Donuts and Crisps. It is much easier to blame other people or corporations.



That's completely untrue in my opinion. Advertising uses sophisticated psychological techniques to get people addicted to their products, 99% of which are either dangerous, pointless or unnecessary. Modern advertising is a form of abuse - mass abuse, which nevertheless hooks individuals. It's an abuse designed solely to perpetuate an economic system made to benefit the few - those already with wealth - at the expense of the many.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

MWagner said:


> Maybe the vilification of the oil industry is really about anti-corporate sentiment.



I think there's an element of truth to this, but, alas, the other side of the coin is that people too often are lazy, when they are not blinded by lies and hype. One of the easiest things you can do to make a positive difference is go vegetarian - but this is regularly mocked as being the ploy of hippies and animal-loving nerds on the fringes of society. Oh, yes - and _everyone_ loves bacon sandwiches, don't they? You couldn't become a vegetarian because of the problem of bacon sandwiches...


----------



## Cathbad

I LOVE bacon sandwiches!!  (yeah, I'm fat, so?)


----------



## WaylanderToo

Stephen Palmer said:


> I think there's an element of truth to this, but, alas, the other side of the coin is that people too often are lazy, when they are not blinded by lies and hype. One of the easiest things you can do to make a positive difference is go vegetarian - but this is regularly mocked as being the ploy of hippies and animal-loving nerds on the fringes of society. Oh, yes - and _everyone_ loves bacon sandwiches, don't they? You couldn't become a vegetarian because of the problem of bacon sandwiches...



Taking your example  here the reason I see a lot of people mocking vegans and vegetarians is because a lot of them seek to be the culinary equivalent of Jehova's Witnesses - that is to say within a very short period of time you KNOW that they are what they are because they just won't shut up about it.


----------



## WaylanderToo

Cathbad said:


> Although for most things, we can blame the consumer, but I don't believe the use of fossil fuel-guzzling machines can.
> 
> What's the alternative?  When I had a family, a vehicle was a necessity, not an option.  (When I was single, I didn't own a car - I hates them).  If we (consumers) were given viable options, _then_ one could be blamed for opting for the environmentally-unfriendly ones.



Opposite ends of the scale here dude - I'm a confirmed petroholic  ; ) it really would cause me a degree of emotional distress were I not allowed/able to drive (and derive enjoyment from doing so)


----------



## Stephen Palmer

WaylanderToo said:


> Taking your example  here the reason I see a lot of people mocking vegans and vegetarians is because a lot of them seek to be the culinary equivalent of Jehova's Witnesses - that is to say within a very short period of time you KNOW that they are what they are because they just won't shut up about it.



Yeah, I know a few of them!   Alas they have tainted the brand...


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Cathbad said:


> I LOVE bacon sandwiches!!



My feeling about the whole bacon sandwiches thing is that it has somehow become a cultural shorthand for "I'm really not going to give up meat even for the sake of the planet." I just find it rather difficult to believe quite so many people feel so strongly about one simple sandwich.


----------



## MWagner

It doesn't take advertising to make people crave sugar, fat, and salt. And the prospect of meat on the table delighted people in pre-industrial societies long before we had advertising or fast food chains.


----------



## LordOfWizards

LordOfWizards said:


> Money is like a way of voting for resources and technologies. The oil corporations have roughly a billion times more votes than your friends, your families, and yourself.





MWagner said:


> No they don't. Because we vote with every dollar we spend. And we vote for fossil fuel consumption every time we get on a plane, buy a TV made in Korea, or drink a bottle of wine imported from Chile.


 Sorry, I got busy and couldn't reply right away.

Yes, Almost instantly I realized there was a foible in my statement.

Just as the corporations have billions of votes, there are billions of us. Although this is true, we are not as nimble as a small group of shareholders or executives and our power is not concentrated in the hands of a few. So the corporation can concentrate billions of votes in one go, whereas all the varied masses of the world would need some unifying capability to concentrate our decisions, such as a specific law we could vote on. (Carbon tax for example) but since the corporations for the most part control what is accessible, what laws are available to vote on (they have governments in their pockets) this is the limiting factor for the rest of us.


That said, I stated earlier in this thread that I get roughly 100% of my power from our solar roof installation (I say roughly 100% because we are “grid-tied” which means that if we require a little more than our solar system is producing, we get it from the grid, and if we produce more than we use it goes out into the grid.) I currently drive a Toyota Prius, (they are very reliable and used ones are quite cheap now, about $5000 US/$4500 Euro ) And I have just now put my deposit down on a Tesla 3 which is in the affordable range for the middle class American. So, I am voting against climate change with my money, but not everyone can afford to do that. I'm open to suggestions as to how to make this affordable for all, and not just us lucky ones.

I will say that you do have a point in some sense because I installed my system in 2013, and not a single one of the neighbors on my street have followed suit. I'm sure they've noticed my system, but I don't think I could convince them even if I went door to door and explained that there are government incentives that make the technology affordable to them. Either they are caught up in things they believe are more important, or they just don't care. I don't know.

You can finance the solar system for about the same cost per month you are now paying for your monthly utilities, so the barrier is not financial in their case.


----------



## LordOfWizards

Boneman said:


> But then trees need CO2, no? Photosynthesis...    6Co2+6H20 in the presence of sunlight and chlorophyl = C6H12O6  + 6O2). The short-term answer, while the big companies figure out a way to give us clean energy cheaply (yeah, right)  is to plant more trees, no? Have you seen the trees lining the M11 motorway? Sensational at  this time of year and obviously thriving on the pounds of CO2 provided by passing cars...



Yes, @Boneman Absolutely! (And thanks for the chemical analysis ) The trees do help, as does everything that grows using photosynthesis. This is probably why they call it the green revolution. The issue is, that the systems that convert and process the CO2 cannot keep up with the current release of new CO2. The other system that absorbs CO2 is the Oceans, and the problem there is 1) it takes a long time for CO2 to settle on the oceans' surface, and, 2) it is having the affect of acidifying the oceans as well which is another serious consequence of climate change. If these systems could absorb the extra CO2, we would not be having this discussion. We just surpassed the average content of 400 parts per million which some scientist say is the "tripping point". I can provide links to articles if you like.


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## LordOfWizards

Stephen Palmer said:


> I think there's an element of truth to this, but, alas, the other side of the coin is that people too often are lazy, when they are not blinded by lies and hype. One of the easiest things you can do to make a positive difference is go vegetarian - but this is regularly mocked as being the ploy of hippies and animal-loving nerds on the fringes of society. Oh, yes - and _everyone_ loves bacon sandwiches, don't they? You couldn't become a vegetarian because of the problem of bacon sandwiches...



The reason why Stephen's contribution is important here is because of the mass amount of resources it takes to feed cows mostly (chickens have less impact). It takes 30 gallons of water and 100 pounds of plant material per day to feed a cow, and they are rounded up at 14-16 months for slaughter. (30 X 456 days = ~14000 gallons of water per cow, and 100 X 456 = 45,600 pounds of grain, corn, grass per cow).


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## Stephen Palmer

MWagner said:


> It doesn't take advertising to make people crave sugar, fat, and salt. And the prospect of meat on the table delighted people in pre-industrial societies long before we had advertising or fast food chains.



In pre-industrial times they ate because they had to, not because they were told to.


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## LordOfWizards

WaylanderToo said:


> Opposite ends of the scale here dude - I'm a confirmed petroholic  ; ) it really would cause me a degree of emotional distress were I not allowed/able to drive (and derive enjoyment from doing so)



What about your offspring(?)


----------



## WaylanderToo

LordOfWizards said:


> What about your offspring(?)



well let's see - are we going to ban computers, TVs, imported goods, holiday travel, air-con in hot climes, heating in colder climes all of which people enjoy and are arguably not needed either. There are countless things that mankind does that isn't necessary and that aren't beneficial to the planet. There are arguments that the world is vastly overpopulated, how many is too many children? Two? Three? So you could equally ask how many children do you have/holidays away from home? Do you use AC/heating? Do you grow all your own food? And so on and on


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## MWagner

Stephen Palmer said:


> In pre-industrial times they ate because they had to, not because they were told to.



But given the choice between meat and other options, meat was the food of choice. Can't beat animal protein and fat for boosting the brain and sustaining you through hard times. Pre-industrial people also went to extraordinary lengths to get their hands on sugar and salt. We naturally crave those things. And as animals, we have tremendous difficulty mastering the distinction between needs and wants, especially when it comes to our base appetites. Which is why asceticism has been largely confined to religious movements.

Advertisers exploits our natural appetites. They didn't invent those appetites, nor do they compel anyone to succumb to them.

I guess I have a different take on this stuff than a lot of others here. I don't believe the world is run by bad people. I don't believe the average person is a sheep sheered by the mighty. In fact, I don't believe the world is really run by anyone at all. Our society is the sum of the appetites and behaviours of hundreds of millions of clever but myopic primates. Even the most influential individuals don't see enough of the picture or have enough power to really control the rest of us. The flaws of our society are the flaws baked into the DNA of every one of us writ large.  _Out of the crooked timber of humanity_... etc.

I also don't believe we live in fallen times. We've been struggling to drag ourselves out of the muck for centuries, leveraging reason and collective knowledge to improve our lot. And despite the follies and misfortunes along the way, I believe for the great majority of people on the planet this is the best time to ever be alive.


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## LordOfWizards

WaylanderToo said:


> well let's see - are we going to ban computers, TVs, imported goods, holiday travel, air-con in hot climes, heating in colder climes all of which people enjoy and are arguably not needed either. There are countless things that mankind does that isn't necessary and that aren't beneficial to the planet. There are arguments that the world is vastly overpopulated, how many is too many children? Two? Three? So you could equally ask how many children do you have/holidays away from home? Do you use AC/heating? Do you grow all your own food? And so on and on



Okay, I guess the question wasn't very specific. Sorry about that. Others in the thread may be asking to ban all those things, but I'm certainly not. I'm only suggesting using alternative forms of energy. You can have as many children as you like, but they are a handful, trust me. (You may already know that). And they are expensive too, that is if you want to educate them, and feed them, etc, and so on.

I've been pleasantly surprised by a "growing" trend here in the US. Even the big chain supermarket/grocery stores are now using mostly local farmers for their produce, and there is a "growing" awareness that this is expedient in financial terms. Less gasoline used by big trucks, ships, planes, etc to move things around equals less gas/petrol money spent doing so. I am not pessimistic about this at all really, but then I live inland away from the shoreline where things are going to get soggy by the end of the century.

That's partly what I meant by the question. Are your children petrolholics too? Will they have to move to get 100 or 200 feet (Edit: 30 to 60 meters) above sea level? Will their children have to? That's all I'm saying. (asking).

If you haven't tried a ride in a Tesla, you should. They are freaking awesome. Zero to sixty in 4 seconds, dude. They beat a Ferrari in a race in Italy. Talk about a muscle car. The model S is the "bomb" as the expression goes. and they have insanely high safety ratings too.


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## Boneman

LordOfWizards said:


> If you haven't tried a ride in a Tesla, you should. They are freaking awesome. Zero to sixty in 4 seconds, dude. They beat a Ferrari in a race in Italy. Talk about a muscle car. The model S is the "bomb" as the expression goes. and they have insanely high safety ratings too.



But doesn't it get its electricity from burning carbon? Coal-fired plants producing electricity for the tesla can be just as bad as burning petrol, no? Renewable energy has to be the way forward. And manufacturing an electric car generates more carbon emissions than manufacturing a conventional car. Tesla’s Electric Cars Aren’t as Green as You Might Think

There is only one answer: start to reduce the world population voluntarily, before Nature does it for you in a destructive way. Lower the demand, before the demand kills you.


----------



## Vertigo

Boneman said:


> But doesn't it get its electricity from burning carbon? Coal-fired plants producing electricity for the tesla can be just as bad as burning petrol, no? Renewable energy has to be the way forward. And manufacturing an electric car generates more carbon emissions than manufacturing a conventional car. Tesla’s Electric Cars Aren’t as Green as You Might Think
> 
> There is only one answer: start to reduce the world population voluntarily, before Nature does it for you in a destructive way. Lower the demand, before the demand kills you.


I agree with your last statement absolutely but sadly, despite optimistic UN forecasts, I just don't see it happening. I have to make a conscious effort to keep my mouth shut when I meet people who have more than two children particularly if they are proud of that fact.


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## logan_run

if we make major changes


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## BAYLOR

Vertigo said:


> I agree with your last statement absolutely but sadly, despite optimistic UN forecasts, I just don't see it happening. I have to make a conscious effort to keep my mouth shut when I meet people who have more than two children particularly if they are proud of that fact.



Unchecked population growth has to crash sooner or later .  Mother nature may ultimately force that issue.


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## BAYLOR

logan_run said:


> if we make major changes



Circumstances will force those changes.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

MWagner said:


> But given the choice between meat and other options, meat was the food of choice. Can't beat animal protein and fat for boosting the brain and sustaining you through hard times. Pre-industrial people also went to extraordinary lengths to get their hands on sugar and salt. We naturally crave those things. And as animals, we have tremendous difficulty mastering the distinction between needs and wants, especially when it comes to our base appetites. Which is why asceticism has been largely confined to religious movements.
> 
> Advertisers exploits our natural appetites. They didn't invent those appetites, nor do they compel anyone to succumb to them.
> 
> I guess I have a different take on this stuff than a lot of others here. I don't believe the world is run by bad people. I don't believe the average person is a sheep sheered by the mighty. In fact, I don't believe the world is really run by anyone at all. Our society is the sum of the appetites and behaviours of hundreds of millions of clever but myopic primates. Even the most influential individuals don't see enough of the picture or have enough power to really control the rest of us. The flaws of our society are the flaws baked into the DNA of every one of us writ large.  _Out of the crooked timber of humanity_... etc.
> 
> I also don't believe we live in fallen times. We've been struggling to drag ourselves out of the muck for centuries, leveraging reason and collective knowledge to improve our lot. And despite the follies and misfortunes along the way, I believe for the great majority of people on the planet this is the best time to ever be alive.



Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. I think the "we're basically animals with big brains" hypothesis is one of the great myths perpetuated by those who benefit from such hypotheses - mostly men, it has to be said, who enjoy the feel of power without responsibility. In a nutshell, its purpose is to divest individuals of those responsibilities - which come from living in societies, whether those be family size or community size - that come with life, so that said individuals can do what they want. 

I do agree with you that the world isn't run entirely by bad people though. It's run mostly by selfish people. We're still comparatively primitive as a species when it comes to ethics. I also agree with you that it's a good time to be alive compared with earlier times, but we have a very long way yet to go...


----------



## Brian G Turner

Boneman said:


> Coal-fired plants producing electricity for the tesla can be just as bad as burning petrol, no?



I think Tesla's aim is for Tesla cars to be integrated into a solar home generating energy from solar panels and storage. 

While there's an argument that there's still an environmental cost in manufacturing the technology involved, that's kind of simply underlining the point that all manufacturing has an environmental cost. 

The difference here is one of reducing long-term impact so that any damage can be limited. Even better, make any such technology as close to self-sustaining as possible through recycling.

IMO certainly much better than continuing as before, with the huge amount of air pollution that traffic produces on a global scale. 

Personally I can't wait to fill my car up @ just £2.50 of grid electricity, or free from a solar-tiled garage roof. It's unfortunate that it requires a lot of money to buy into such technologies at present.


----------



## WaylanderToo

LordOfWizards said:


> Okay, I guess the question wasn't very specific. Sorry about that. Others in the thread may be asking to ban all those things, but I'm certainly not. I'm only suggesting using alternative forms of energy. You can have as many children as you like, but they are a handful, trust me. (You may already know that). And they are expensive too, that is if you want to educate them, and feed them, etc, and so on.
> 
> I've been pleasantly surprised by a "growing" trend here in the US. Even the big chain supermarket/grocery stores are now using mostly local farmers for their produce, and there is a "growing" awareness that this is expedient in financial terms. Less gasoline used by big trucks, ships, planes, etc to move things around equals less gas/petrol money spent doing so. I am not pessimistic about this at all really, but then I live inland away from the shoreline where things are going to get soggy by the end of the century.
> 
> That's partly what I meant by the question. Are your children petrolholics too? Will they have to move to get 100 or 200 feet (Edit: 30 to 60 meters) above sea level? Will their children have to? That's all I'm saying. (asking).
> 
> If you haven't tried a ride in a Tesla, you should. They are freaking awesome. Zero to sixty in 4 seconds, dude. They beat a Ferrari in a race in Italy. Talk about a muscle car. The model S is the "bomb" as the expression goes. and they have insanely high safety ratings too.




WRT to the kids luckily (sadly?) he looks at a car as just another appliance (like a mobile or washing machine) he's happy (does it go/stop, is it economical & reliable if so then great). She has stated she'd like an old Beetle but that's as far as it goes - plus it'll be the romantic ideal rather than the real world living with one!). The advantage I see is that there is no need or desire to be 'hooked' on a type of vehicle - it is just a tool and used when needed.

TBH in some respects I'd have a Tesla P90 in a heartbeat, they look great, great performance, acceptable range, good interior space.... however they are silent which is a big issue for me (not to mention for people with impaired vision!) which is the other fun bit of driving (love me a V8 - piped noise, at the moment, just doesn't compare).

WRT food - that is more of a problem. AIUI currently the UK is not self sufficient in food (and IMO this is something we should be looking into very hard) so although we buy local produce if possible it isn't always.


----------



## BAYLOR

Stephen Palmer said:


> Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. I think the "we're basically animals with big brains" hypothesis is one of the great myths perpetuated by those who benefit from such hypotheses - mostly men, it has to be said, who enjoy the feel of power without responsibility. In a nutshell, its purpose is to divest individuals of those responsibilities - which come from living in societies, whether those be family size or community size - that come with life, so that said individuals can do what they want.
> 
> I do agree with you that the world isn't run entirely by bad people though. It's run mostly by selfish people. We're still comparatively primitive as a species when it comes to ethics. I also agree with you that it's a good time to be alive compared with earlier times, but we have a very long way yet to go...



The problem is that we have to grow up now , not later. Later means the end us as a species because we cannot keep on burning the candle at there ends.

I remember a  many years ago watching a cartoon on  *The International Animation film Festival* which was hosted by Jean Marsh.   The cartoon was titled *More* and It showed how foolish , selfish  and thoughtless people are when it comes to Planet Earth.  People throughout the film  would keep asking for more food , more homes, more of everything . Everyone kept crying more , more,  more until the earth having  no more to give , crumpled up like a piece of paper. Then a large hand presumably Gods, took the crumpled Earth and threw It into a gigantic  barrel, with the epitaph *No More .*  Ive never been able to completely forget this cartoon and  its particular moral.


----------



## WaylanderToo

Brian G Turner said:


> I think Tesla's aim is for Tesla cars to be integrated into a solar home generating energy from solar panels and storage.
> 
> While there's an argument that there's still an environmental cost in manufacturing the technology involved, that's kind of simply underlining the point that all manufacturing has an environmental cost.
> 
> The difference here is one of reducing long-term impact so that any damage can be limited. Even better, make any such technology as close to self-sustaining as possible through recycling.
> 
> IMO certainly much better than continuing as before, with the huge amount of air pollution that traffic produces on a global scale.
> 
> Personally I can't wait to fill my car up @ just £2.50 of grid electricity, or free from a solar-tiled garage roof. It's unfortunate that it requires a lot of money to buy into such technologies at present.




IIRC the environmental costs of battery production are insane (and this is still a finite resource). WRT pollution I seem to recall reading somewhere that private traffic (whilst certainly a polluter) is not the biggest one but it is among the leaders in trying to cut its impact (VW excepted  ) so there are bigger and quick gains to be made elsewhere.

As regards your wanting to 'fill-up' for £2.50 - not going to happen, do you honestly thing that the gubbermint will allow all that lovely petrol revenue to be lost? You'll end up being charged for road usage with an amount equivalent (if we're lucky!!) to what the price of petrol was per mile (that being said I'm quite ok with road charging as long as other taxes are wiped out - problem being then everything else ends up costing more too)


----------



## Vertigo

Brian G Turner said:


> I think Tesla's aim is for Tesla cars to be integrated into a solar home generating energy from solar panels and storage.
> 
> While there's an argument that there's still an environmental cost in manufacturing the technology involved, that's kind of simply underlining the point that all manufacturing has an environmental cost.
> 
> The difference here is one of reducing long-term impact so that any damage can be limited. Even better, make any such technology as close to self-sustaining as possible through recycling.
> 
> IMO certainly much better than continuing as before, with the huge amount of air pollution that traffic produces on a global scale.
> 
> Personally I can't wait to fill my car up @ just £2.50 of grid electricity, or free from a solar-tiled garage roof. It's unfortunate that it requires a lot of money to buy into such technologies at present.


Apart from one somewhere in the Moray area all the public recharging points (at least in the Highlands) are currently FREE. According to the talk we received they are encouraging hotels to set up recharging points and they are required to provide the electricity for free for, I think, the first year at least. But, apparently so far, after that year they have all continued to offer it for free as they generally make significantly more money from the customers having food and drinks whilst they are waiting. So bizarrely it is currently cheaper (free) to charge your electric car away from home than at home!


----------



## Stephen Palmer

BAYLOR said:


> The problem is that we have to grow up now , not later. Later means the end us as a species because we cannot keep on burning the candle at there ends.
> 
> I remember many  ears a go a show *The International Animation film Festival* . hosted by Jean Marsh.   The  cartoon was titled *More* and It showed how foolish , selfish  and thoughtless people are when it come to Planet Earth.  People throughout the film  would keep asking for more food , more Homes, more of everything . Everyone kept crying more , more,  more until the earth having  no more to give crumpled up like a piece of paper. Then a large hand presumably Gods, took the crumpled Earth and threw it in a barrel. With the Epitaph *No More .*  Ive never been able to completely forget this cartoon its particular moral.



This is indeed very much the problem we face as a species. We're currently exploiting the Earth at a rate equivalent to 2 - 3 planets. That will end soon, as various resources - most likely water in the first instance - become scarce. Unfortunately we have given ourselves tools and technology too powerful for our ethical sophistication. It's not looking great.


----------



## Vertigo

WaylanderToo said:


> WRT to the kids luckily (sadly?) he looks at a car as just another appliance (like a mobile or washing machine) he's happy (does it go/stop, is it economical & reliable if so then great). She has stated she'd like an old Beetle but that's as far as it goes - plus it'll be the romantic ideal rather than the real world living with one!). The advantage I see is that there is no need or desire to be 'hooked' on a type of vehicle - it is just a tool and used when needed.
> 
> TBH in some respects I'd have a Tesla P90 in a heartbeat, they look great, great performance, acceptable range, good interior space.... however they are silent which is a big issue for me (not to mention for people with impaired vision!) which is the other fun bit of driving (love me a V8 - piped noise, at the moment, just doesn't compare).
> 
> WRT food - that is more of a problem. AIUI currently the UK is not self sufficient in food (and IMO this is something we should be looking into very hard) so although we buy local produce if possible it isn't always.


In many European countries the electric cars are required to 'generate' a noise at least when in urban driving (I think it's something like whenever they are below about 40mph). Consequently all the electric cars have, I think, the option to generate a noise but it's just not enforced in countries where it's not required. If I had one I'd certainly turn it on. Seems to me to be the responsible thing to do.


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## Cathbad

Vertigo said:


> Seems to me to be the responsible thing to do.



And safer!


----------



## Vertigo

That said it was really weird driving in one when you could actually hear stuff like birds outside the car if going slow enough not be drowned out by the noise of the tyres on the road!

For those that like performance cars one of the most unsettling thing about the electric cars is that you have full torque at all times; there is no power curve at all. From 0 to 100 the power is exactly the same. Makes it really easy to spin the wheels!


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## MWagner

Population growth on the planet is slowing, with global population lower than the doomsday predictions of 30-40 years ago. People underestimated how few children families choose to have once women are educated and birth control becomes culturally acceptable. The issue is that while the birth rate is well below replacement level in the West and in the secular parts of Asia (China, Korea, Japan), and barely above replacement level in Latin America, it's still high in some of the poorest and least-educated regions of the globe. The challenge is to help spread secularism and prosperity, and reduce the influence of the patriarchal and religious mindset in those parts of the earth that still have high birth rates (the Muslim world, sub-Saharan Africa). The issue isn't a third child in a Western country, which doesn't come close to making up for the growing ranks of the childless in those countries. The issue is the 4th and 5th and 6th child in Chad, Afghanistan, or Yemen.


----------



## LordOfWizards

Boneman said:


> But doesn't it get its electricity from burning carbon? Coal-fired plants producing electricity for the tesla can be just as bad as burning petrol, no? Renewable energy has to be the way forward. And manufacturing an electric car generates more carbon emissions than manufacturing a conventional car. Tesla’s Electric Cars Aren’t as Green as You Might Think
> 
> There is only one answer: start to reduce the world population voluntarily, before Nature does it for you in a destructive way. Lower the demand, before the demand kills you.


 The short answer - Yes and No. 

Yes in most places currently. No, not at my house. I have 100% solar power. Besides, What is worse - Using Coal to create electricity then using that 100% cleanly, or Using Coal to create electricity, and then Using Gasoline/Petrol to add _more_ carbon to the atmosphere? And Yes, even solar panel manufacturing produces pollution of various kinds. It's like all engineering solutions: an iterative process that gets better with practice. 

Speaking of Solar Panels, Tesla is currently working with Solar city and the US department of Energy to install solar powered recharging stations across the United States. So, _we are doing something about it_.  For those of you who hate this expression, I apologize in advance: "Be part of the solution, not part of the problem."


----------



## LordOfWizards

MWagner said:


> Population growth on the planet is slowing, with global population lower than the doomsday predictions of 30-40 years ago. People underestimated how few children families choose to have once women are educated and birth control becomes culturally acceptable. The issue is that while the birth rate is well below replacement level in the West and in the secular parts of Asia (China, Korea, Japan), and barely above replacement level in Latin America, it's still high in some of the poorest and least-educated regions of the globe. The challenge is to help spread secularism and prosperity, and reduce the influence of the patriarchal and religious mindset in those parts of the earth that still have high birth rates (the Muslim world, sub-Saharan Africa). The issue isn't a third child in a Western country, which doesn't come close to making up for the growing ranks of the childless in those countries. The issue is the 4th and 5th and 6th child in Chad, Afghanistan, or Yemen.



I have said this many times on other forums, and I will not get tired of saying it: The answer to overpopulation is education. Not just education of people in "emerging" countries, but even in what we call the "first world", where we can do a lot better with ages 12 through 18 by replacing the lame "sex education" we have with education on child rearing. Teach them what raising children is really like (diapers, sleepless nights due to crying, etc.) and there's a good chance they will think twice about having unprotected sex.


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## Hex

Presumably, if we're already over-populated, the issue isn't just the third child in Western societies (and I don't see how it isn't a third child in the west just as much as a fifth child in Uganda, if we're just concerned with numbers -- especially since children in the West aren't a social security system), it's the second child or even the first. Replacing yourself is contributing to the existing problem of over-population.

And it's education and security that allow a falling birth-rate. Unfortunately, there are a lot of forces that don't want people to be educated or secure, and too many of them (though by no means all, of course) are Western.


----------



## WaylanderToo

LordOfWizards said:


> Teach them what raising children is really like (diapers, sleepless nights due to crying, etc.) and there's a good chance they will think twice about having unprotected sex.



you obviously have a lot more faith than I do in the ability of teens to "keep in tucked away". Hormones call, willing partner and rational thought flies out of the window


----------



## MWagner

LordOfWizards said:


> I have said this many times on other forums, and I will not get tired of saying it: The answer to overpopulation is education. Not just education of people in "emerging" countries, but even in what we call the "first world", where we can do a lot better with ages 12 through 18 by replacing the lame "sex education" we have with education on child rearing. Teach them what raising children is really like (diapers, sleepless nights due to crying, etc.) and there's a good chance they will think twice about having unprotected sex.



In Canada anyway, teen pregnancy is very low. There are now more women over the age of 40 having babies than there are teen moms. Still, poor women do have children younger, and tend to have more of them, than older and educated women. But it isn't a matter of lack of birth control, it's a matter of choice. As to why many poor young women decide to have a baby at the age of 22 - it's complicated.



Hex said:


> Presumably, if we're already over-populated, the issue isn't just the third child in Western societies (and I don't see how it isn't a third child in the west just as much as a fifth child in Uganda, if we're just concerned with numbers -- especially since children in the West aren't a social security system), it's the second child or even the first. Replacing yourself is contributing to the existing problem of over-population.



Children in the West _are_ a social security system. Our whole public welfare system was set up on the premise of a large number of young, taxpaying citizens spreading out the costs of a smaller number of older, retired, and unhealthy citizens. It's a kind of ponzi scheme. That worked great in the 50s to 80s when the Boomers were young and there were relatively few older people taking a pension and requiring a lot of health care. With an ageing population, that whole system is now coming under tremendous strain.

To give just one example, in 1960 there were 9 working teachers for every retired teacher in Canada. In 1980, that ratio was down to 5 to 1. By 2000, it was 3 to 1, and now we're at 1.5 to 1. Soon there will be one retired teacher for every working teacher, and a teacher who starts the job today is expected to have a life expectancy of 90. This has greatly alarmed the actuaries who run pensions plans. New teachers are already having to pay more into their pensions to receive less, and will have to retire years later than their older colleagues. This is symptomatic of the effects of ageing on the economy and public services in general.

To address this issue the Canadian government plans to dramatically increase immigration (already the highest in the developed world). If Canadians don't have babies, we'll bring in more people and make them Canadians. The problem is those immigrants are typically among the most educated and most ambitious of their countrymen - just the kind of people who can make a difference in educating and modernising their own people and help bring down the birth rate. Personally, I think it would be better if Canadians had children at a replacement rate, and more of those immigrants helped developed and modernise their countries of origin. It's nice that Canada gets the benefit of a young nurse moving here from South Africa. It's not really a great thing for South Africa, though.

But really, if even replacing yourself is part of the problem, you're saying nobody should have children. And if nobody has children, our species will die off within a century and global warming won't matter anyway. The reason a lot of people care about the future at all is because they have kids.



Hex said:


> And it's education and security that allow a falling birth-rate. Unfortunately, there are a lot of forces that don't want people to be educated or secure, and too many of them (though by no means all, of course) are Western.



I don't believe that. We devote tremendous resources to education, and gains in the emancipation of women in the last century have been remarkable.  In the space of less than a century, we've gone from a society where birth control was considered sinful by many, and was unreliable even for those who wanted it, to a society where the vast majority of women practice regular birth control and have control over family size that their great-grandmothers could only dream of.

The fact a lot of people care about global warming and the state of the planet 100 or 150 years in the future is a testament to our growing awareness and empathy. I can't imagine our great-grandparents giving much thought to such distant abstractions, any more than most people in poor and undeveloped parts of the world today have the energy or the scope of empathy to concern themselves with such things. Maslo's hierarchy of needs means few people will concern themselves with distant and abstract problems when their more immediate needs aren't being met.


----------



## Dave

LordOfWizards said:


> Teach them what raising children is really like (diapers, sleepless nights due to crying, etc.) and there's a good chance they will think twice about having unprotected sex.


Don't they do this already? My daughter's school (and this is more than 10 years ago now) had one of those robot babies that couldn't be put down and left, and had to be rocked and fed, or else it cried all night.


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## WaylanderToo

MWagner said:


> The fact a lot of people care about global warming and the state of the planet 100 or 150 years in the future is a testament to our growing awareness and empathy. I can't imagine our great-grandparents giving much thought to such distant abstractions, any more than most people in poor and undeveloped parts of the world today have the energy or the scope of empathy to concern themselves with such things. Maslo's hierarchy of needs means few people will concern themselves with distant and abstract problems when their more immediate needs aren't being met.




to be fair our grandparents and earlier were just looking to stay alive - anything else could wait


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## Hex

I have to dash (my reasons for caring about the future need help with their homework), but I agree with pretty much everything in your post. My point was really addressing an underlying issue, that I don't think you intended -- there's a lot of unpleasant criticism just now in the UK of people in, e.g. Africa (or the Middle East) who have children and then find it difficult to look after them (because of famine or the bombing of their city, for example). There's a lot of shouting about how we already pour money into charity and people still have the temerity to have children and need aid, and instead of trying to help, we should let people die because the world is over-populated.
My point was really that if all people are equal then that third baby in the West has an equivalence with that fifth baby in Afghanistan -- there is nothing that makes one worth more than another.


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## LordOfWizards

Dave said:


> Don't they do this already? My daughter's school (and this is more than 10 years ago now) had one of those robot babies that couldn't be put down and left, and had to be rocked and fed, or else it cried all night.


 Is that a toy you're talking about? Was there a program that went with it? I haven't seen anything like this in the US. I'd love to be told I've missed it. Then it would seem it's not such a crazy notion after all. But seriously, the boys need to be involved. It takes two to Tango. (Horizontal Mambo).


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## Dave

Yes, it was a life-sized doll. I'm not sure if it had a trade name or who manufactured it, but some of the girls (it was a girls school) took turns at taking it home. It did hit home to those that thought having a child might be an easy and fun thing, and it probably helped more than a hundred lessons would have. You're right though, I doubt it would have the same impact on boys.

Edit:
here you go, though the newspapers say they don't work, I think it is important to consider the backgrounds of girls they are given to. If it is delaying them from getting pregnant by a few years until they finish their education then I would call that a success.
RealCare Baby Infant Simulator | Realityworks Childcare Training and Teen Pregnancy Prevention Products
Lifelike baby dolls designed to deter teenage pregnancies actually have opposite effect, scientists find
Shock study reveals 'virtual babies' used in sex education actually DOUBLE chances of teens getting pregnant


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## LordOfWizards

Shock study reveals 'virtual babies' used in sex education actually DOUBLE chances of teens getting pregnant

Humans!! I can't figure them out. 

My idea was based on a notion that my wife and I learned early on and seemed to have great success. The notion was one of consequences for actions. We got the idea from an actual class, not just some book. If the child was aware ahead of time of the exact consequences of behavior that was undesired (by the parent), then it gave the parents "leverage". Our kids were less likely to break rules as they would lose the use of toys, or other privileges like video games, TV, etc. when they got older. (That is a really simplified explanation)

I suspect it would be more effective to A) start earlier in the child's life. B) Give them the entire picture (all parenting activities). not just some fake doll. 

Raising children is an incredible amount of work, and in the modern age a lot (if not most) of women will expect the father to help out. It was suggested to me when I was eighteen or so that I should enjoy my youth and not tie myself down with tons of responsibility, and I took that advice. I'm really glad I did. I don't think I would have had the type of maturity required to be a parent in my twenties. But, hey - That's just me. What do I know?


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## MWagner

LordOfWizards said:


> Shock study reveals 'virtual babies' used in sex education actually DOUBLE chances of teens getting pregnant
> 
> Humans!! I can't figure them out.



First off, I'd be skeptical about the conclusions drawn from that study. Without more information about the study, we don't know why there was a correlation between teens given the virtual babies and higher rates of pregnancy. It could very well be that the virtual babies were used in communities and schools that already had higher rates of teen pregnancy.

As for why young women choose to have babies when they're not yet equipped to provide for them, I've heard the following explanations:

Being a mom brings status. A young woman with little status might look around and see that her peers who have babies are taken a lot more seriously. They're given attention by the older adults in her life, and are considered more mature and responsible. Having a baby is a quick route to full-on adulthood and status that goes with it.

Having a baby will make her boyfriend stay with her. Commit to her and the child. Instant family and security. 

Social norms work both ways. If you come from a socio-economic background where women don't have babies until they're in their 30s, you'll likely be unwilling to defy social norms and have a child when you're 25. On the other hand, if most of the women you know have babies in their early 20s - from your mom to your sister to your friends - you'll think it's perfectly normal to do the same.

To look at it the other way around, why defer having babies until your 30s? This is a new trend, and one largely restricted to educated and well-off women in the secular West in the last 40 years or so. It's in the self-interest of a young woman who is pursuing post-secondary education and then a career to defer the interruption of pregnancy and child-birth until those milestones are reached. She'll probably want to wait until she owns a home as well. But if you have no expectation of attending post-secondary education, of having a career (as opposed to a job), or of owing a home, then those incentives to delay parenthood disappear.


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## Cathbad

MWagner said:


> As for why young women choose to have babies when they're not yet equipped to provide for them, I've heard the following explanations:



I think it's because they had unprotected sex...


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## LordOfWizards

WaylanderToo said:


> you obviously have a lot more faith than I do in the ability of teens to "keep in tucked away". Hormones call, willing partner and rational thought flies out of the window



I wouldn't say I have "faith" that teens won't have sex, I have knowledge and experience that tells me _I_ would not do unprotected sex. But yes, I did say _I _(me, a name I call myself). I grew up during a time when there was a lot of talk about various unpleasant maladies you could get from doing the unprotected thing, including something called AIDS. So I learned to be careful out of fear. I generally prefer teaching things in a positive way, and I was hoping that sharing life's realities might be a little better than frightening teenagers, but I suppose I could be wrong. When I was a teenager, I was a rebel. I rarely did anything because a grown-up told me to. (Unless they were "cool", and those people were very rare )

In general, I didn't care for the school system I grew up in, and College was only slightly better at preparing me for what happens 'out here'. Mark Twain was quoted as saying, “Don’t let school interfere with your education.” I sometimes wonder if we've advanced much in that regard.

Back toward the topic (a little), a friend of mine who does farming and landscaping once told me "It takes about 5 acres to feed a human." Anyone care to do the research on that one?


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## Vertigo

LordOfWizards said:


> Back toward the topic (a little), a friend of mine who does farming and landscaping once told me "It takes about 5 acres to feed a human." Anyone care to do the research on that one?


There's actually been a lot of research done on that based on the gha (global hectare) Global hectare - Wikipedia which is used to construct an 'ecological footprint' this can then be looked at per country which is where it gets quite shocking. This page - List of countries by ecological footprint - Wikipedia - gives a table of countries by ecological footprint showing that for example, as I understand it, in America each person on average needs/uses 8 hectares whereas in Puerto Rico each person needs/uses 0.04!


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## Stephen Palmer

James Lovelock pointed out that if we lived according to Rwandan national use, the Earth could sustain a population of 18 billion, whereas if it was according to American use it was about half a billion. Rough calculations, sure, but makes the point.


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## Stephen Palmer

LordOfWizards said:


> Back toward the topic (a little), a friend of mine who does farming and landscaping once told me "It takes about 5 acres to feed a human." Anyone care to do the research on that one?



If you use permaculture, it could be far less.


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## Mirannan

Stephen Palmer said:


> If you use permaculture, it could be far less.



I've mentioned this before, but the food supply issue is also connected to the energy supply issue. It's not often mentioned that the energy budget for agribusiness-style agriculture is actually negative if one doesn't include the free energy from the sun in the numbers. The energy value of the crops is less than the energy value of the fossil fuels used to grow them. (Including fertiliser and pesticide production, ploughing, harvesting, drying, transport of finished products...)

If something isn't done beforehand, then when the oil starts running out people will start starving.

It's also notable that agriculture in much of the USA (probably other places as well, but this is the one I know about) is dependent on at least two resources that are being used up hundreds of times faster than they are being replaced in the growing areas. The two resources being soil and water.


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## psikeyhackr

Ever heard about the reindeer population of St. Matthew Is?

THE INTRODUCTION, INCREASE, AND CRASH OF REINDEER ON ST. MATTHEW ISLAND

I suspect the human population will be below 3 billion by 2100.

Shocking but not extinction.

psik


----------



## Jeffbert

Dave said:


> *Re: The Earth Pole Shift*
> 
> Re: The Earth Pole Shift
> ...
> As for the Earth stopping spinning for three days - how can that happen? Ever heard of Inertia? Even just a small slowing down would take huge amounts of energy and would consequently cause huge changes.


I must confess, that I have read only the 1st 4 pages of this topic, and am certain that my post has already been covered by someone else. 

But, as far as the Earth's rotation ceasing goes, I think it was HG Wells (Welles?) who wrote a story called *the man who could make miracles*, or words to that effect.  Anyway, I saw the film version about a year ago, & the title character, after becoming frustrated by the results of using this power, decided to make the Earth stand still. If he had not previously made himself indestructible, he, too would have died, along with every other living thing, as objects upon the Earth were flung into violent motion, by their own inertia. 

Anyway, I have other comments about global warming; but to avoid making an ass of myself, I will ask a question, based upon those 'facts', if so they are.


It has been said that scientists are in peril of having their funding cut; thus they are finding this doomsday scenario of global warming, to justify continued funds.
The sun has its cycles that are much too long for humans to even notice. The idea that it was warmer during the time of the  pre-industrial Roman Empire certainly suggests this.
As was noted earlier in this topic, CO2 [how do you make subscripts?] is not a pollutant. In fact, without it, no green plant life.
Is it true that before global warming, global cooling was the bogyman?
While I somewhat empathize with those whose ship was frozen in antarctic ice during the S. hemisphere's summer, while they had gone down there to find evidence of global warming; I also think it is ironic & funny. It seems even their rescuers' ship was likewise frozen. 
Finally, though I am certain there are more things, is it true that computer modeling, rather than actual temperature measurements taken at the same sites, year round, show that the entire Earth is warmer at the same time?
Now, the question, assuming these things are true, is it indeed likely that we humans are indeed causing the Earth to warm, such that a climate catastrophe is coming?  I do realize that asphalt, concrete, and steel make it warmer than woods and fields, but I am talking about air and chemicals in it.


----------



## Venusian Broon

Jeffbert said:


> Anyway, I have other comments about global warming; but to avoid making an ass of myself, I will ask a question, based upon those 'facts', if so they are.
> 
> 
> It has been said that scientists are in peril of having their funding cut; thus they are finding this doomsday scenario of global warming, to justify continued funds.
> The sun has its cycles that are much too long for humans to even notice. The idea that it was warmer during the time of the  pre-industrial Roman Empire certainly suggests this.
> As was noted earlier in this topic, CO2 [how do you make subscripts?] is not a pollutant. In fact, without it, no green plant life.
> Is it true that before global warming, global cooling was the bogyman?
> While I somewhat empathize with those whose ship was frozen in antarctic ice during the S. hemisphere's summer, while they had gone down there to find evidence of global warming; I also think it is ironic & funny. It seems even their rescuers' ship was likewise frozen.
> Finally, though I am certain there are more things, is it true that computer modeling, rather than actual temperature measurements taken at the same sites, year round, show that the entire Earth is warmer at the same time?
> Now, the question, assuming these things are true, is it indeed likely that we humans are indeed causing the Earth to warm, such that a climate catastrophe is coming?  I do realize that asphalt, concrete, and steel make it warmer than woods and fields, but I am talking about air and chemicals in it.



What do you mean? Do you believe the 6 statements above to be 'facts' or are they things that you believe? Or are they things that you've heard and are curious? You're position is not very clear. 

I mean a lot of these things were posed by serious climate change critics decades ago and then to my understanding most accepted that they're criticisms were wrong. 

So I can't accept your 'facts' as true or the positions you posit in these statements to be be true, hence your question is a bit of a strawman. 

Please clarify.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Jeffbert said:


> It has been said that scientists are in peril of having their funding cut; thus they are finding this doomsday scenario of global warming, to justify continued funds.



I've never seen this come up in the scientific press. Man-made climate change has been reported since the 1970's, but it wasn't until it was confirmed for a UN report in the mid 1990's that resistance began to develop. 

There is no scientific argument against global warming being made, simply hobbyists who think they know better than the world's meteorologists. Resistance to change comes to mind. 



Jeffbert said:


> The sun has its cycles that are much too long for humans to even notice. The idea that it was warmer during the time of the pre-industrial Roman Empire certainly suggests this.




Quite true - but we know this through paeloarchaeology. The difference is, the current warming trend cannot be accounted for by natural phenomenon that we are aware of.






Jeffbert said:


> As was noted earlier in this topic, CO2 [how do you make subscripts?] is not a pollutant. In fact, without it, no green plant life.




A pollutant is an unwanted waste product. In this instance, industrialisation has create huge volumes of pollutants that can only logically change the balance of gases in the atmosphere.

Interestingly enough, even oxygen is highly toxic to humans at high concentrations.






Jeffbert said:


> While I somewhat empathize with those whose ship was frozen in antarctic ice during the S. hemisphere's summer, while they had gone down there to find evidence of global warming; I also think it is ironic & funny. It seems even their rescuers' ship was likewise frozen.




Antarctica has average temperatures that remain below freezing at the coast, so the formation of ice is normal and continues. The problem is that the formation of ice is now occurring at a far slower rate than it is melting, resulting in an inevitable increase to sea levels. 



Jeffbert said:


> Finally, though I am certain there are more things, is it true that computer modeling, rather than actual temperature measurements taken at the same sites, year round, show that the entire Earth is warmer at the same time?



No, there are loads of samples being taken - there are multiple satellites that exist solely to measure temperatures all over the world. 

Computer models use this information to try and project how things will develop. This is where uncertainty comes in, because we don't know for certain whether warming will continue at the current rate or increase.

Hope that helps.


----------



## BAYLOR

Venusian Broon said:


> What do you mean? Do you believe the 6 statements above to be 'facts' or are they things that you believe? Or are they things that you've heard and are curious? You're position is not very clear.
> 
> I mean a lot of these things were posed by serious climate change critics decades ago and then to my understanding most accepted that they're criticisms were wrong.
> 
> So I can't accept your 'facts' as true or the positions you posit in these statements to be be true, hence your question is a bit of a strawman.
> 
> Please clarify.



Early 1970's 

I could be wrong ,  but I  think the 1973 science fiction film  *Soylent Green* was the first cinema mention of the term The Green House  effect.


----------



## Allegra

The year 2016 set to be hottest on record  - France 24

*The year 2016 will "very likely" be the hottest on record, the UN said Monday, warning of calamitous consequences if the march of global warming cannot be halted.*
_Average temperatures for the year were set to hit about 1.2 Celsius (2.16 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels – meaning that 16 of the 17 hottest years on record were this century, said the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The new record means the world is already more than halfway to the upper limit of 2 C of warming overall, 1.5 C if possible, which UN nations had agreed upon to stave off worst-case-scenario climate change._


----------



## Venusian Broon

BAYLOR said:


> Early 1970's
> 
> I could be wrong ,  but I  think the 1973 science fiction film  *Soylent Green* was the first cinema mention of the term The Green House  effect.



Just off the top of my head - hence I apolgise in advance if I am proved wrong  - but scientific advisors to President Eisenhower in the 50s gave advice to that man-made global warming was likely. 

A quick look at wikipedia (always dangerous, but it seems reasonable seeing as the mechanics of the effect were discovered about 80 years before...) states that the first use of the term 'greenhouse effect' was in 1901 and that Alexander Graham Bell wrote in 1917:  "[The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect", and "The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house." Bell went on to also advocate the use of alternate energy sources, such as solar energy.


----------



## BAYLOR

Venusian Broon said:


> Just off the top of my head - hence I apolgise in advance if I am proved wrong  - but scientific advisors to President Eisenhower in the 50s gave advice to that man-made global warming was likely.
> 
> A quick look at wikipedia (always dangerous, but it seems reasonable seeing as the mechanics of the effect were discovered about 80 years before...) states that the first use of the term 'greenhouse effect' was in 1901 and that Alexander Graham Bell wrote in 1917:  "[The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect", and "The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house." Bell went on to also advocate the use of alternate energy sources, such as solar energy.



Thanks , Didn't know any of that.  I find it very interesting that Alexander Graham Bell was a advocate for Solar power .


----------



## Cathbad

Venusian Broon said:


> A quick look at wikipedia (always dangerous, but it seems reasonable seeing as the mechanics of the effect were discovered about 80 years before...) states that the first use of the term 'greenhouse effect' was in 1901 and that Alexander Graham Bell wrote in 1917: "[The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect", and "The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house." Bell went on to also advocate the use of alternate energy sources, such as solar energy.



So, for a full century, man has refused to get out in front of this problem.  ~smh~

Sad.


----------



## Jeffbert

Venusian Broon said:


> What do you mean? Do you believe the 6 statements above to be 'facts' or are they things that you believe? Or are they things that you've heard and are curious? You're position is not very clear.
> 
> I mean a lot of these things were posed by serious climate change critics decades ago and then to my understanding most accepted that they're criticisms were wrong.
> 
> So I can't accept your 'facts' as true or the positions you posit in these statements to be be true, hence your question is a bit of a strawman.
> 
> Please clarify.


I do not know if these are true, but have heard or read them. 

One of my critiques (not that I originated it) is that the solution usually involves the govt. growing, taking more of our liberties, etc.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Jeffbert said:


> One of my critiques (not that I originated it) is that the solution usually involves the govt. growing, taking more of our liberties, etc.



Ah, the secret's out! The only way to combat Global Warming is to take away people's guns and use them as fuel!


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## Jeffbert

Not guns, but liberty. In the USA, the federal govt. was intended to be of limited scope, dealing with those areas that the individual States could not. but, back to the topic, & I know I have no hope of changing anyone's mind, but I will proceed anyway. 

The graph or curve that Gore himself had used to show the effects of CO2 was scrutinized by one of the big three TV networks' new program. They actually drew a vertical line on it, revealing that the increase in CO2 *followed* the increase in temperature not the other way around. Now, it could be that the curves had been drawn incorrectly, but that would indicate Gore being fooled by whoever drew them. 

Time for lunch.


----------



## Dave

Jeffbert said:


> The graph or curve that Gore himself had used to show the effects of CO2 was scrutinized by one of the big three TV networks' new program. They actually drew a vertical line on it, revealing that the increase in CO2 *followed* the increase in temperature not the other way around. Now, it could be that the curves had been drawn incorrectly, but that would indicate Gore being fooled by whoever drew them.


I've no idea which program you have watched but there is a solid body of scientific evidence of atmospheric CO2 levels and temperatures going back to pre-recorded history. Global temperatures have to be calculated because local temperatures obviously vary wherever you are on Earth, and because measurements are not actual but are estimates taken from a variety of sources (tree ring sizes, coral growth, sedimentation rates) that do not relate solely or exactly to temperature. We also know temperatures fell during the little ice age period of the middle ages, so there are other factors involved that we don't fully understand. It is quite clear, however, that CO2 has risen steadily since Roman times and then began an exponential growth during the industrial revolution (the hockey stick graph that people argue about.) It is also clear that global temperatures have risen at least 1.5C on average during this time. We also have very accurate temperatures for the last 100 years and atmospheric CO2 measurements for the last 50 years. 99% of scientists are agreed that temperatures are increasing due to man's production of CO2 and we cannot wait to act until we completely understand every nuance of the graphs that show this.

This thread was about whether there was *still* time to do something about it. Quite frankly, if there are still climate change deniers around (and one is in the White House) then my answer must be a resounding no.


----------



## Jeffbert

Sadly, I cannot recall which network showed the thing, much less which program. But it seems the end of the world is so distant, (50 or so years away) that if, it does not occur, few if anyone from this time will be alive to realize it. Back in 1987, some joker made a pamphlet warning that JC  was coming in 1988. 1988 came and JC did not. Instead of hanging his head in shame, the guy wrote another pamphlet  claiming that JC was coming in 1989! Again, no JC. We did not have to wait 50 years to tell that that guy was full of it. 

But, about *global* versus *regional* warming, lets us assume 100 weather measuring sites evenly distributed around the earth & for simplicity's sake 10 time zones, each having 10 weather measuring sites, etc. so, for global anything weather related, it must occur not just in sites 5-10, 45, 63, 67, & 70-80, etc, but all over. It must be warmer in the winter, & in the other seasons, all over, all at the time. Or, so, I anyway think it should. As the concept of *global* rather than *regional* this or that implies. As I recall, last summer here in PA, anyway, was rather mild. A few years ago, it was very hot! It snowed Oct. 2015 or was it 2014, here in S. PA! I Cannot recall snow even in November before that time!

I give up! I do not have the time to google all day long, find and cite sources, etc. Besides that, nobody here is likely to believe me anyway.


----------



## Cathbad

Jeffbert said:


> I give up! I do not have the time to google all day long, find and cite sources, etc. Besides that, nobody here is likely to believe me anyway.



It's not that you're not believed, but you're trying to make a point about a very local trend to denying a global trend.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Jeffbert said:


> A few years ago, it was very hot! It snowed Oct. 2015 or was it 2014, here in S. PA! I Cannot recall snow even in November before that time!



It's not so much that Global Warming means everywhere ends up basking in heat like California - at present we're looking at a global rise in temperatures of around 1.2-1.5 degrees Celsius. Which doesn't sound a lot - it means that summer day is just over 25 degrees Celsius instead of 24, and that cold winter morning is -8 degrees Celsius instead of nearly -10.

The problem is that the rise is big enough to affect the rate of melting for glacial ice sheets across the world, not least in Antarctica, meaning that more water is now melting than freezing. And that as this rate continues, sea levels will rise accordingly (the fresh water ice melting into the sea also expands as it absorbs salt to become sea water). 

However, as you point out, the change in temperature also affects the world's finely balanced weather systems, so that more extreme events become more likely and less unusual. As above, this doesn't mean that all weather events bring heat - here in Scotland, the jet stream that typically passed north of us during the summer increasingly appears south, resulting in cooler and wetter summers. 

Regionally, it means Scotland is colder than expected - but that also means the summer warmth drawing up from the Mediterranean gets pulled further north, causing higher than average temperatures in the Arctic. So while Scotland is a bit cooler, the Arctic ends up a lot warmer than average.

Hope that helps.


----------



## WaylanderToo

I think to be fair a lot of cynicism is due to the Cassandra principle. I remember being at school and being taught that the Earth was going to be slipping into an ice-age and that we'd be running out of oil round about now. Then things changed and it was 'Global warming'... then things changed again and it was man-made global warming... then it changed again and it was climate change. In the middle of all this a lot of the hippies and flaky people started jumping up and down about this (for UK residents an example of this would be people like the Greenham Common lot or Swampy) and then the governments found a new way to tax people without too much fuss all because 'it is good for the environment' (for governments it is a twofer in as much as it's guilting people into not complaining about giving them more money and there's the issue of being able to exert more *control* over the populace).

The issue can also be viewed quite cynically when you get various conferences all over the world where the governmental delegates (and entourages) are ensconced in luxury trying to tell the proles: don't drive - it's evil; don't go on holiday - it's evil (flying there doubly so); don't do xyz etc etc. People like di caprio/bono/sting and a multitude of slebs telling us we're being selfish for flying to places and we should consume less whilst themselves consuming many times what an average person does.

Then you have the arrogance of scientists who proclaim the the 'science is done' there is no question about global climate change - I thought that science was _*always*_ open to question, to debate and to block any dissent was actually the antithesis of what science and learning is about (at this point I could go on about Kepler, Galileo etc etc). Science is never done.

Now with all of the above it should be noted that, perversely, I do believe in/agree with the idea of environmentalism. It is lunacy to use up/ruin all of our resources (oil, iron, WATER) or constantly pollute our biosphere. It is unforgivable to wipe/endanger entire species because of our greed. What happens when we can't extract any more XYZ from the earth, what happens when water becomes too polluted to drink, what happens when the very land we use for agriculture is too poisonous to use...


----------



## MWagner

I agree with WaylanderToo that we shouldn't assume all skepticism about the subject is climate change denial. No issue this important and this complex should become a black and white ideological crusade. People tend to turn off their brains when they're engaged in a crusade. They just want to find villains to blame it all on. Of course, human nature being what it is, those villains will never be themselves - their levels of consumption, their blithe entitlement to all the wonders cheap energy affords us. No, it's really all the fault of the oil companies. If it wasn't for them we would all be happily going about our lives heating our homes, buying TVs shipped halfway around the world, and flying for vacation in Europe with solar power.  

And the sanctimonious hypocrisy of celebrity crusaders is risible whatever the cause. It takes a monstrous narcissism to jet around the world condemning oil producers while you're in the top 0.0001 per cent of humans in carbon fuel consumption.


----------



## Jeffbert

I wish I had more clearly stated my position earlier.  I am not against reasonable environmentalism, just the extremest version. Both *MWagner* & *WaylanderToo* have made points with which I agree. I should say here that I once lived in a rural area, surrounded by woods & fields. Last time I checked, only some woods remained, as the suburbs encroached on that once quiet rural area. They made a landfill about a mile and a half from my old home. They assured us that the water table would remain clean, because of a liner on the landfill. Because it was a rural area, there were not enough residents there to effectively oppose the landfill.  Within 5 years of opening it, 8 at most, the liner leaked and ruined our water; though it had not reached our well at the stated distance, when I last lived there. They brought in city water, chlorine, fluoride, and all (much to General Ripper's dismay!).

It was noticeably cooler out there in the wooded area, but, they simply never kept the trees from growing around the power lines. We had far too many power outages! Just let the wind blow, or lightning strike! Moving to a treeless area would have solved that problem, but it would have been hotter, without those woods immediately south of our house.

I am all for unleaded gasoline, but, as I understand it, most of the reduction in emissions from cars since then, has come at an increasingly high cost. Something about the *law of diminishing returns*; though, I suppose every little bit helps, or hurts. I do not know, but it seems to me that  stating newer goals for fuel economy independently of goals for decreasing air pollution means they can never be satisfied. It was long ago, when I was taking a class in algebra, but they always used two different things in the word problems. They might have plotted curves for fuel consumption & emissions on the same graph! as I recall, the point where the two curves intersected was the optimal solution, period. The area beneath the intersection was called the *feasible set*, I forgot just about everything else, though.

I watched the recent COSMOS series, which ended with NDGT giving his views supporting man-caused global warming. But I also heard a guy on the radio, whose name I have forgotten, who was a grade higher than a meteorologist, he was a *climatologist*, & he reamed out man-caused global warming, as well, if not better than NGDT supported it. As was stated by one, or both of the two preceding posts, science is never settled, & it is the rule that there is disagreement among scientists. 
Edit: with a very brief search, I found this:
*CO2 is not a Greenhouse Gas that Raises Global temperature. Period!*, written by a climatologist, whose exposes the political, rather than scientific foundation of the belief.


----------



## Dave

Dave said:


> 99% of scientists are agreed that temperatures are increasing due to man's production of CO2 and we cannot wait to act until we completely understand every nuance of the graphs that show this.





Jeffbert said:


> As was stated by one, or both of the two preceding posts, science is never settled, & it is the rule that there is disagreement among scientists.
> Edit: with a very brief search, I found this:
> *CO2 is not a Greenhouse Gas that Raises Global temperature. Period!*, written by a climatologist, whose exposes the political, rather than scientific foundation of the belief.



You can either accept what 99% think or you can believe one guy you find, who didn't give his name, and you don't remember, but who, rather than producing peer reviewed papers in scientific journals, writes a web-page or Blog. It isn't a case of balancing a disagreement of half and half, it is a case of balancing science with people who think it is a Chinese conspiracy against American businesses. If he has some real new research that changes current opinion then let him publish it and have it peer reviewed.

Meanwhile, if CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas, you had better tell the Venusians. Also, you do realise that the name comes from... er, well, Greenhouses where plants are kept warm by glass and an increased concentration of CO2. So, you'd better tell gardeners too!


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Wow. Some people just don't understand what science is.


----------



## Cathbad

Politics tops science - again.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> Politics tops science - again.



If we can't overcome our own rancor, how the hell can we possibly overcome more serious problems like Global warming?


----------



## Hex

We're not going to overcome the problems. There are too many people who don't believe in it or don't care enough.


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## Cathbad

Hex said:


> We're not going to overcome the problems. There are too many people who don't believe in it or don't care enough.



I strongly believe it's the latter.  People use the former to excuse themselves from not caring - they don't want their lives disrupted by inconveniences.


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## WaylanderToo

let's try this a different way then...

who wants to wipe out 4 billion people - that'd solve the man-made global warming issue. 

who wants to go back to subsistence farming? No?

what about no computers/TV's/cars? Let's go back to only the rich being able/allowed to travel anywhere...

No?

let's say that you can only travel places on horse-back (certainly green!)

no imports from the other side of the world. We could invent 'Rekall' for real and obviate the need for travel to exotic locations...


What is the answer? Now there are many out there who'll lay the 'blame' squarely on transport - yet that is 'only' responsible for 25% of greenhouse emissions, where is the other 75% coming from, and more's to the point can great savings be made there? 


The problem is mankind is basically selfish and lazy (not to mention deeply cynical!). I think that the only way we're going to be able to 'beat' climate change is to realise that we can't really 'beat' it - it'll happen regardless of what we do. What we can do is ameliorate our impact and learn to live with ever changing weather/climate until such time as we can find a workable technological solution.


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## Stephen Palmer

WaylanderToo said:


> who wants to go back to subsistence farming? No?



Can I respectfully point out that this entirely inaccurate and wrong-headed comment - most famously used by Thatcher - doesn't help. Google "permaculture" for further details.


----------



## WaylanderToo

Stephen Palmer said:


> Can I respectfully point out that this entirely inaccurate and wrong-headed comment - most famously used by Thatcher - doesn't help. Google "permaculture" for further details.




I would question that if PC were the answer (and I'm not saying that it isn't by the way) why it's not fully embraced by authorities, scientists and farmers everywhere?


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## Stephen Palmer

In a nutshell - it's quite new. Ironically, it's based on the traditional knowledge of thousands of years, but since the holders of that knowledge have not until recently been considered even human by some, it's been ignored. Not for much longer, I hope.


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## Jeffbert

So, did any of you believers even read this page,
Edit: with a very brief search, I found this:
*CO2 is not a Greenhouse Gas that Raises Global temperature. Period!*, 
before simply responding as you have? I could find more than a few other scientists who have the same view as this guy, but, why bother, if nobody even reads this page? BTW, this page states that water vapor, not CO2 is a greenhouse gas.


----------



## Vertigo

Jeffbert said:


> So, did any of you believers even read this page,
> Edit: with a very brief search, I found this:
> *CO2 is not a Greenhouse Gas that Raises Global temperature. Period!*,
> before simply responding as you have? I could find more than a few other scientists who have the same view as this guy, but, why bother, if nobody even reads this page? BTW, this page states that water vapor, not CO2 is a greenhouse gas.


Yes I did. And after a very little bit of research I have determined that Dr Timothy Ball is reckoned to be funded by the oil industry. He is _*not*_ a climatologist despite his claims but is a geographer and when he was confronted with that fact he took a lawsuit against his detractor which he later withdrew when the other party didn't get intimidated and didn't back down.

Look him up on Wiki. I know Wiki is not the font of all guaranteed knowledge but I also know that Ball can dispute anything said there if he can show it to be false.

Sorry but he doesn't strike me as someone I want or should listen to.

And by the way water vapour and CO2 are *both* greenhouse gases.


----------



## Mirannan

Don't know whether I've already chimed in with my comments, but...

The argument seems to be three-sided, and between those who want to reduce CO2 emissions by draconian regulation which inevitably means all manner of shortages, because like it or not neither wind or ground solar are suited to the task because grossly unreliable, those who would rather pretend that there is no such thing as anthropogenic greenhouse warming, and those who admit that there is but prefer a technological solution to the problem that preserves Western-style high-energy civilisation. There are many other issues mixed in with this.

There are also arguments, even if one believes new technologies will sort out the problem, about precisely which ones to use. My answer to that is simple. All of them! Which, unfortunately, means more people needed to develop the tech. However, at the moment, education in the West is heavily biased away from STEM subjects. Which needs to be reversed. The world needs engineers and hard-science experts a damn sight more than it needs gender studies "experts". And even more so, it needs investment in such areas a damn sight more than it needs to "invest" in keeping City and Wall Street gamblers in luxury.


----------



## Dave

There are other technological solutions that could be sought to solve the problems, but there needs to be more investment in them. Did you know that yesterday Denmark announced figures showing that it now generates 105% of the electricity that it needs from renewable sources. It has a surplus of renewable energy.

As for being a "Climatologist", I'm not sure what makes you one, or what makes you an "expert" in the eyes of the media. If that guy really studied Geography then he must have studied some Climatology, though saying CO2 is not a greenhouse gas makes you wonder if he was sleeping in lectures. I could call myself a Climatologist if i wanted. I am educated to Masters level. I have studied Paleoclimatology and Micro-climatology. If you want me to have a Phd then I guess I could always buy one from the Trump University. Would you believe me any more then? No, because your mind is already made up and you want to find something that will support the view you already hold. That is *not* how science works I'm afraid.

As for it being political; only in the USA, I'm afraid too. There is a consensus of agreement among all the shades of political parties in the UK and throughout Europe. Try telling the Seychelles Islanders that the sea level rise is all just a political figment of their imaginations. Or maybe the NASA pictures showing the shrinking Ice Caps and Glacial retreats are photo-shopped because they have some agenda against US business.


----------



## WaylanderToo

Dave said:


> As for being a "Climatologist", I'm not sure what makes you one, or what makes you an "expert" in the eyes of the media. If that guy really studied Geography then he must have studied some Climatology, though saying CO2 is not a greenhouse gas makes you wonder if he was sleeping in lectures. I could call myself a Climatologist if i wanted. I am educated to Masters level. I have studied Paleoclimatology and Micro-climatology. If you want me to have a Phd then I guess I could always buy one from the Trump University. Would you believe me any more then? No, because your mind is already made up and you want to find something that will support the view you already hold. That is *not* how science works I'm afraid.



of course the cynic might argue that if you didn't believe in AGW you'd fail any climatology course - thereby meaning all climatologists have a common vision....


----------



## Dave

Then don't believe, just follow the science. The real science that is!
Do you know that it isn't that hard to read scientific journals? 
It can be expensive to access them if you aren't an academic and you don't want to subscribe to them. These probably aren't the most riveting reading materials either. I think that is half the problem though. Scientists, in general, are not very good at making their work accessible, and journalists are, in general, scientifically illiterate. That combination makes a bad cocktail as it leads to very poor dissemination of scientific research to the general public. That leads to an elitism, and then to the distrust of academics and dispensing of "experts" that we experience today.


----------



## Mirannan

WaylanderToo said:


> of course the cynic might argue that if you didn't believe in AGW you'd fail any climatology course - thereby meaning all climatologists have a common vision....



Yep. Rather like the situation in sociology, a subject which you won't pass a degree in unless you're a committed Marxist.


----------



## Cathbad

Really?  My professor must not have known that rule...


----------



## BAYLOR

Stephen Palmer said:


> In a nutshell - it's quite new. Ironically, it's based on the traditional knowledge of thousands of years, but since the holders of that knowledge have not until recently been considered even human by some, it's been ignored. Not for much longer, I hope.



Unless the current tend changes, we don't have any future to speak of.  Even if we solve the problems of climate and emerging diseases , resources on the planet are finite, ultimately we'll burn through all of them.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

You're thinking of unsustainable resources - fossil fuels, certain types of metals, etc.
Sustainable resources include solar energy, which is the source of 99.9999% of stuff happening on the planet.


----------



## Dave

Stephen Palmer said:


> You're thinking of unsustainable resources - fossil fuels, certain types of metals, etc.
> Sustainable resources include solar energy, which is the source of 99.9999% of stuff happening on the planet.


Just to add to that, we need waste reduction, more reuse and more recycling. We will soon start to dig up old landfill sites for those "certain types of metals" we once threw away (ironically, mostly into old quarries.) In the Netherlands, they are so good at recycling now that they already dig up old landfill sites for stuff to burn in their combined heat and power incineration plants. As I mentioned early, Denmark already produces more energy from sustainable sources than it can use itself.

There are environmental technological solutions to most of our problems, one doesn't need to return to the stone age, as someone said a few pages back. We can still have our modern society, we just need to use things more efficiently and to stop waste. We probably need to travel less, but improved communications, the internet and immersive technology will solve that. There are ways we can start to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration too, but they mostly require natural solutions, and if we can't even agree on limiting an increase we aren't ready for that.

One problem that we probably cannot solve with technology though - the loss of biodiversity. World wildlife populations have halved in the last 40-years and once species are gone they are gone. Although, DNA sequencing and full genome mapping may allow us to clone extinct species in the future.

There are some things that may always remain science fiction though, however much money is put into research. I have read magazines from the 1950's that had us controlling the weather and driving atomic cars. Fusion power is probably a pipe dream.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Dave said:


> There are environmental technological solutions to most of our problems, one doesn't need to return to the stone age, as someone said a few pages back.



Me!

I agree there are technological/scientific solutions to a lot of the problems we face, but most people thinking about such issues (not you Dave) assume tech/science is the solution to _all _the problems. I don't think that's correct at all. Basically, humanity needs to grow up as well.


----------



## mosaix

Cathbad said:


> Really?  My professor must not have known that rule...


Nor my daughter..


----------



## Jeffbert

I am neither believer, nor cynic; I am a skeptic. After 20 or so years seeking the ever elusive miracle cure, I abandoned the Pentecostal church, & continuing to ponder, abandoned Christianity & religion. Those were the most difficult decisions I ever made.  I know I am about a 'c' grade skeptic, 'b-' at best, or so, I think, for reasons unsaid. 

So, it is nothing more than a lie, that some 100 hacked emails from certain scientists showed collusion between them in falsifying the temperature data from past centuries as cooler while doing the opposite to recent 20th & current centuries as warmer. That, among *other things*. I just read both a web page that was skeptical of global warming, specifically centered on the emails, and another one skeptical of the skeptics. The former actually showed excerpts of the computer code, complete with the programmer's comments, clearly indicating fraud. The latter made no attempt to explain the code or the comments.

 I just do not know! While it is playing it safe to assume the worst, & prepare to stop its occurring, if the cost is the destruction of-- at the very least, the U.S.A.'s manufacturing segment, perhaps bankrupting the govt., & putting all the USA's environmental programs at risk of destruction, making the current one moot, etc., perhaps they ought to consider other methods. I just do not know! I seriously do not know, though it is obvious that I lean toward the one side rather than the other.


----------



## Dave

Are you asking for an answer or are you telling us? It certainly sounds like you have made up your mind already. My advice, already given, would be to stop reading those websites and to read some journals from actual scientists. I also explained about the difficulty of calculating temperatures in past centuries without a time machine, and how local measurements in one single place might not be representative of the global temperature. Obviously, there is great disagreement over how much weight to apply to data from weird sources. Are some scientists not white-as-white? Of course, name a profession that is? Even Pentecostal ministers can lie. However, if you actually read what I have said earlier, I also answered that, that the nuances of the rise are insignificant compared to the rise itself. 

As for the last paragraph, there is plenty of money to be made in bringing on new technologies that would not destroy the USA's manufacturing or bankrupt the government. However, you would need to get on board and take a piece of it. For example, a manufacturer could diversify into manufacturing electric and hybrid cars and become a market leader. Alternatively, they could do nothing, continue to produce gas-guzzling and inefficient heavy-built cars until consumers don't want them anymore and they no longer can sell them. Or, a company could invest in renewable energy to supply their business, which would be an upfront capital cost in the present, but in the future would provide them with energy almost for free. These things make perfect business sense. There are real money savings in being 'green.' If the rest of the world is also doing the same, the USA is not at any disadvantage. If you think that China is spreading this lie to make you uneconomical, take a holiday there, try to breath the air during a temperature inversion or to even be able to see through air you can almost cut. Even they are signed up to this now.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Jeffbert said:


> I am neither believer, nor cynic; I am a skeptic. After 20 or so years seeking the ever elusive miracle cure, I abandoned the Pentecostal church, & continuing to ponder, abandoned Christianity & religion. Those were the most difficult decisions I ever made.  I know I am about a 'c' grade skeptic, 'b-' at best, or so, I think, for reasons unsaid.



Skeptics use evidence. Anyone who is skeptical on the basis of no evidence, hearsay, pages on the internet etc, is still a man of faith.


----------



## BAYLOR

Stephen Palmer said:


> You're thinking of unsustainable resources - fossil fuels, certain types of metals, etc.
> Sustainable resources include solar energy, which is the source of 99.9999% of stuff happening on the planet.



He's whats likly  going to happen to us . We'll waste all of our  resources , gut the planet of all materials , wreck the environment  beyond repair   which will cause the collapse of our industrial base, the eventual loss of all technology which will lead to the collapse and disintegration of our whole civilization and  nd spiraling crash of our whole population because of emerging diseases and old disease that we can no longer curable  because resistance to what drugs ther are left.  If we haven't  rendered the environment completely nonviable  we might linger for a few thousand years as remanent   populations living at a low level of civilization if at all.  We're never colonizing any other planets , never finding life beyond this solar system , we won't even get a manned mission to the to outer  planets because  we won't be around to do so.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

I think your crystal ball has gone black.


----------



## BAYLOR

Stephen Palmer said:


> I think your crystal ball has gone black.



There are too many problems that we've set into motion . Maybe too many to solve or even  contain.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Have you tried switching your crystal ball off and on again?


----------



## BAYLOR

Stephen Palmer said:


> Have you tried switching your crystal ball off and on again?



  Look what's going on? Coral reefs are bleaching out, icecaps are melting ,sea levels are rising  because increased  carbon emissions , Rain forests are disappearing, bad water ,chemical contamination , emerging diseases, old disease coming back in a newer  and deadlier  form.  We waste and spoil everything we touch .  Ever hear the yearlong  Zager and Evan  In the Year  2525 and the line about mankind's folly?  " He's  taken everything this old earth can give and he ain't  put back nothing"


----------



## HanaBi

The general consensus in some elevated circles appears to be "SEP!" (Someone Else's Problem!)

And that for every one person that tries to be environmentally friendly, there could well be another 50 that live in denial and rely on SEP again.


----------



## MWagner

Dave said:


> As for the last paragraph, there is plenty of money to be made in bringing on new technologies that would not destroy the USA's manufacturing or bankrupt the government. However, you would need to get on board and take a piece of it. For example, a manufacturer could diversify into manufacturing electric and hybrid cars and become a market leader. Alternatively, they could do nothing, continue to produce gas-guzzling and inefficient heavy-built cars until consumers don't want them anymore and they no longer can sell them. Or, a company could invest in renewable energy to supply their business, which would be an upfront capital cost in the present, but in the future would provide them with energy almost for free. These things make perfect business sense.



They only make perfect business sense for a privately-owned company with a huge treasure chest of capital and a very long-term strategy. For a publicly-traded company, any measures that will reduce short-term profitability on the hopes of gaining greater market share at some indeterminate time in the future will make investors unhappy. Institutional investors will pull out of a company at the drop of a hat, leaving their share prices depressed and the company vulnerable to a takeover. 

There are investors willing to take on a risky or long-term project in the hopes of a big return in the future. But the kinds of massive, large-scale initiatives you're talking about go far beyond the scope of venture capital. In other words, if it made sense for Ford to switch 70 per cent of its manufacturing to hybrid cars, it would have done so already. 

And the technological challenges should not be underestimated. Oil is an incredibly efficient and powerful source of energy. The alternatives do not come anywhere close in terms of ease of generation, portability, reliability, and energy output. Even if the U.S. had a completely state-controlled economy, and transitioning to renewable energy sources was the government's most important policy, it would take decades, and cause dramatic dislocation to transportation, shipping, and agriculture.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

BAYLOR said:


> Look what's going on? Coral reefs are bleaching out, icecaps are melting ,sea levels are rising  because increased  carbon emissions , Rain forests are disappearing, bad water ,chemical contamination , emerging diseases, old disease coming back in a newer  and deadlier  form.  We waste and spoil everything we touch .  Ever hear the yearlong  Zager and Evan  In the Year  2525 and the line about mankind's folly?  " He's  taken everything this old earth can give and he ain't  put back nothing"



On the main point, can I direct you to my SF Encyclopedia entry.

My comments were about the folly of prediction, as I suspect you know...


----------



## psikeyhackr

I just encountered the phrase *"The Great Acceleration"*

Planetary dashboard shows “Great Acceleration” in human activity since 1950    - IGBP

After WWII the people in charge in the US were afraid the Depression would come back so the consumer binge was started.  These guys don't seem to mention that.

psik


----------



## Brian G Turner

A city in Denmark is about to become powered by sewerage: 
World’s first city to power its water needs with sewage energy

Maybe we need a separate "good news" environmental thread?


----------



## Jeffbert

Stephen Palmer said:


> Skeptics use evidence. Anyone who is skeptical on the basis of no evidence, hearsay, pages on the internet etc, is still a man of faith.


I have cited evidence, but you guys have declared it null & void because the source is not to your liking. O.k., suppose I, without bothering to check, accept that T. Ball is working for the oil industry. How does that invalidate what he writes? If he is not as you say, a climatologist, but some other type of scientist, How does that invalidate what he writes? Again, I am not bothering to verify his credentials, or lack of them. As I stated earlier, I could take the time to find other sources of climate change skeptics, but why even bother? You guys do not even address the things I wrote. Nobody but I made reference to the "excerpts of the computer code, complete with the programmer's comments, clearly indicating fraud." Nobody.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Jeffbert said:


> I have cited evidence, but you guys have declared it null & void because the source is not to your liking. O.k., suppose I, without bothering to check, accept that T. Ball is working for the oil industry. How does that invalidate what he writes? If he is not as you say, a climatologist, but some other type of scientist, How does that invalidate what he writes? Again, I am not bothering to verify his credentials, or lack of them. As I stated earlier, I could take the time to find other sources of climate change skeptics, but why even bother? You guys do not even address the things I wrote. Nobody but I made reference to the "excerpts of the computer code, complete with the programmer's comments, clearly indicating fraud." Nobody.



You haven't cited any evidence - you've referenced someone with no expert knowledge of a field who thinks he can speak fpr it. Your source are no better than my mate Dave, down the pub, who also thinks he's a world-leading expert on any topic you can put to him. I'm not going to uncritically accept his opinion. But if you want to, that's up to you.


----------



## Jeffbert

Dave said:


> ... As for the last paragraph, there is plenty of money to be made in bringing on new technologies that would not destroy the USA's manufacturing or bankrupt the government. However, you would need to get on board and take a piece of it. For example, a manufacturer could diversify into manufacturing electric and hybrid cars and become a market leader. Alternatively, they could do nothing, continue to produce gas-guzzling and inefficient heavy-built cars until consumers don't want them anymore and they no longer can sell them. Or, a company could invest in renewable energy to supply their business, which would be an upfront capital cost in the present, but in the future would provide them with energy almost for free. These things make perfect business sense. There are real money savings in being 'green.' If the rest of the world is also doing the same, the USA is not at any disadvantage. If you think that China is spreading this lie to make you uneconomical, take a holiday there, try to breath the air during a temperature inversion or to even be able to see through air you can almost cut. Even they are signed up to this now.


Clearly, there are indeed some green technologies that are sensible, but when green requires govt. subsidies to remain out of the red, there is a problem. Anyone recall *Solyndra? *

Electric cars are very energy inefficient! Energy losses all over the place! 110AC via transformer to lower voltage: losses through heat. Rectify AC to DC, more losses. Charge the batteries, more losses; discharge, still, more losses. I may be just a humble electronic technician, but that much, I can indeed verify. Not that there are no good points to electric cars, I suppose there are some. 

I believe even Tesla is subsidized by the fed. govt. ; perhaps they should wait for the technology to become economically viable on its own, rather than the govt. forcing it on us with regulations made by politicians who apparently know little or nothing about the things they regulate.  Air pollution is bad, I admit it; but trying to force green on us all when the technology itself is immature yields *Solyndra! *Was it $500 million or over $600 million the govt. lost on that?

I have heard, though I have not researched it, that the areas where the minerals used to make the batteries for the electric cars are extracted from the earth are not very pristine anymore. 



> If the rest of the world is also doing the same, the USA is not at any disadvantage.


 Then, why is the USA hobbling itself with this burden when the rest of the world is not yet required to do so? Again, I could cite sources, but you likely would find reason to mark them void. Why must we hobble our economy before others do? Granted Carrier's reasons for exporting jobs to Mexico are not likely all based on environmental regulations, but they do likely contribute. I just heard that DT had persuaded Carrier to keep 1000 jobs here; though others will be exported.  Apparently the deal saves Carrier about $750 per employee. 

Not entirely environmental, but I have heard that over 1/2 a trillion dollars every year is consumed by businesses' adherence to Federal regulations. I am sure I could easily find sources.


----------



## Hex

Re the code, that looked like a non-story for a couple of reasons. (a) it's a sad truth that programmers reuse code, and all it actually says in the comments is 'don't use this for years after 1970' because it doesn't work for them, (b) I noticed a couple of people asking where this code was, since they had bothered to download the package that was supposed to contain it, and it wasn't there. Could this be another of these stories based on a lie that no-one bothers to check?

A lot of European countries, and Canada, also have environmental policies -- it's not a case of the US going it alone.

Just out of interest: from where did you hear DT has kept those jobs in the us? 
Edit I just saw it. Good that the US is transparent about the money it pays businesses not to move.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Jeffbert said:


> but when green requires govt. subsidies to remain out of the red, there is a problem.



Over here in the UK the nuclear power industry receives massive subsidies. Just to keep running.

Whereas government subsidies for green technologies are intended to help accelerate development of the markets, production, and technologies involved. These are already being withdrawn in the UK with regards to solar power.



Jeffbert said:


> Then, why is the USA hobbling itself with this burden when the rest of the world is not yet required to do so?



The USA is one of the last countries to sign up to international treaties on reducing Greenhouse emissions. Most others signed when George W Bush was in office. The USA is actually in danger of playing catch-up.


----------



## Venusian Broon

With a very brief search I found an article with some references about whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas or not. 

Why Carbon Dioxide Is a Greenhouse Gas

Just food for thought.


----------



## Dave

Brian G Turner said:


> ...you've referenced someone with no expert knowledge of a field who thinks he can speak for it.


One of the big problems I see is that "Dave down the pub sources" are given equal status with credible "expert" sources. The internet is great that it gives everyone a voice, but you need to be critical of those voices. Who are they, who are they referencing, is it peer reviewed? I did a history course last year and there are all kinds of local history websites with unreferenced information that may or may not be true. I'd be happy to believe the _University of Leicester_, but would you be as happy to believe _Daves histry page? _Who is this Dave? Where is his information sourced from? Can he back it up with evidence? Why can't he spell or use apostrophes? 

The TV news is just as bad though. Why should completely wacky Dave be given as much airtime as "expert" Fred, simply because they hold counter views. Not when one presents a well thought out argument and the other is clearly unhinged.

When you get more political then I'm even less convinced. My old Professor Nigel Bell is an "expert" on SO2 pollution and produced papers during the 1980's on the effects of acid rain that was acidifying Scandinavian lakes at the time. The claim was that UK coal fired power stations were to blame. The "establishment" of the CEGB, NCB, and the Forestry Commission all denied any problem and produced counter research. They said that since the 1950's Clean Air Act Britain had no air pollution problem (despite medical research showing thousands of deaths per year.) Eventually, they did a complete about turn and added SO2 scrubbers. Now we are getting rid of those coal fired power stations. The pollution control measures are too expensive. Nigel Bell was frequently a scientific advisor to the UK government, but the "establishment" even tried to discredit him. You can listen to him tell his whole life story if you want here: Bell, Nigel (1 of 12).  An Oral History of British Science - Oral history of British science - Oral history | British Library - Sounds But it does go on for about 24 hours!

However, we don't want to listen to "experts" anymore. We'd rather listen to people who reinforced the views that we already hold.


----------



## BAYLOR

I keep thinking about the Permian extinction event 250  million years ago.. Im wondering , could the world of now be on the verge another such event ?


----------



## Dave

BAYLOR said:


> I keep thinking about the Permian extinction event 250  million years ago.. Im wondering , could the world of now be on the verge another such event ?


We aren't in the "verge" of a mass extinction. We are well into it now. Man has wiped out enough species already. We are devastating. I obviously like my own species but not what it has done.

I'm not sure climate change will make as many species extinct as it will cause species to move further north. In regards extinctions, I'd be more worried about ocean acidification, forest and soil losses, and all the other effects of having so many people on this planet.


----------



## Venusian Broon

Dave said:


> We aren't in the "verge" of a mass extinction. We are well into it now. Man has wiped out enough species already. We are devastating. I obviously like my own species but not what it has done.
> 
> I'm not sure climate change will make as many species extinct as it will cause species to move further north. In regards extinctions, I'd be more worried about ocean acidification, forest and soil losses, and all the other effects of having so many people on this planet.



It's the time scale that's scary - we have altered biosystems throughout the globe (I believe 37% of Earth's land area is now set aside for our own agricultural purposes) in a matter of a mere couple of thousand years. The burning of fossil fuels and the resultant rise in Carbon dioxide (and other pollutants and greenhouse gases) has been an even shorter couple of centuries. 

Will species have time to adapt? Some might, but actually I think it's too fast for most. And there are significant blocks to movement - mostly involving human areas, but also natural areas - are the animals and plants of subcontinental India, for example, to jump across the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau to get to cooler lands to the north? Probably not. 

The Permian mass extinction - 70% of all land animals and 96% of all marine species disappearing - took perhaps 60,000 +-48,000 years. I think we could be a lot faster in our mass extinction if we are not careful.


----------



## BAYLOR

Venusian Broon said:


> It's the time scale that's scary - we have altered biosystems throughout the globe (I believe 37% of Earth's land area is now set aside for our own agricultural purposes) in a matter of a mere couple of thousand years. The burning of fossil fuels and the resultant rise in Carbon dioxide (and other pollutants and greenhouse gases) has been an even shorter couple of centuries.
> 
> Will species have time to adapt? Some might, but actually I think it's too fast for most. And there are significant blocks to movement - mostly involving human areas, but also natural areas - are the animals and plants of subcontinental India, for example, to jump across the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau to get to cooler lands to the north? Probably not.
> 
> The Permian mass extinction - 70% of all land animals and 96% of all marine species disappearing - took perhaps 60,000 +-48,000 years. I think we could be a lot faster in our mass extinction if we are not careful.




That last bit is what really worries me. .


----------



## BAYLOR

Dave said:


> We aren't in the "verge" of a mass extinction. We are well into it now. Man has wiped out enough species already. We are devastating. I obviously like my own species but not what it has done.
> 
> I'm not sure climate change will make as many species extinct as it will cause species to move further north. In regards extinctions, I'd be more worried about ocean acidification, forest and soil losses, and all the other effects of having so many people on this planet.



7 billion people uses a lot of reassures, generates alot of waste. That's got to be having in effect  on the ecosystem.


----------



## Cathbad

@BAYLOR !  Your Republican!!  You're not supposed to believe things like that!!


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> @BAYLOR !  Your Republican!!  You're not supposed to believe things like that!!



Im a pragmatist who's not dizzied by Ideology.


----------



## psikeyhackr

Scientists say it could already be "game over" for climate change

Have we already blown it?

Scientists Say It Could Already Be "Game Over" for Climate Change

Messing with a system that you do not understand is really dumb.  How do you code what you do not comprehend?

psik


----------



## BAYLOR

psikeyhackr said:


> Scientists say it could already be "game over" for climate change
> 
> Have we already blown it?
> 
> Scientists Say It Could Already Be "Game Over" for Climate Change
> 
> Messing with a system that you do not understand is really dumb.  How do you code what you do not comprehend?
> 
> psik




Very very worrying.


----------



## Montero

The work done with measurement of dissolved CO2 in the ice caps has been going on for decades and is an interesting study. Not quite sure why it is being trumpeted as new.... other than that, yes, worrying.

Here is an article on the impact of population on the planet - and how, depending on the standard of living of every individual, it is three times what is sustainable.

Current Population is Three Times the Sustainable Level


----------



## BAYLOR

Montero said:


> The work done with measurement of dissolved CO2 in the ice caps has been going on for decades and is an interesting study. Not quite sure why it is being trumpeted as new.... other than that, yes, worrying.
> 
> Here is an article on the impact of population on the planet - and how, depending on the standard of living of every individual, it is three times what is sustainable.
> 
> Current Population is Three Times the Sustainable Level



Very, very very very worrying !


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> Very, very very very worrying !



No worries!

Sooner or later, Mother Nature will take care of that pesky overpopulation problem!


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> No worries!
> 
> Sooner or later, Mother Nature will take care of that pesky overpopulation problem!



Mother nature has already took care of that when she invented reality television .


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Montero said:


> The work done with measurement of dissolved CO2 in the ice caps has been going on for decades and is an interesting study. Not quite sure why it is being trumpeted as new.... other than that, yes, worrying.
> 
> Here is an article on the impact of population on the planet - and how, depending on the standard of living of every individual, it is three times what is sustainable.
> 
> Current Population is Three Times the Sustainable Level



Just to be pedantic for a moment, "sustainable level" in the title does depend on consuming level. If American levels - maybe half a billion population. If Rwandan - maybe fifteen billion. A small point, I know, but it does point to the actual problem, which is consumers at current levels.


----------



## Montero

Stephen Palmer said:


> Just to be pedantic for a moment, "sustainable level" in the title does depend on consuming level. If American levels - maybe half a billion population. If Rwandan - maybe fifteen billion. A small point, I know, but it does point to the actual problem, which is consumers at current levels.



Stephen - the article talks about different sustainable levels depending on consumption. The first paragraph says " If all 7+ billion of us were to enjoy a European standard of living - which is about half the consumption of the average American - the Earth could sustainably support only about 2 billion people" and then goes on to discuss the impact of over consumption on water aquifers, fossil fuels, metals....
and the conclusions include
"All of us want a viable, _sustainable_ global home. If we allow overpopulation *and overconsumption* to continue, the evidence is mounting that billions will suffer and that we will leave future generations a much harder, bleaker life.  "

(The bold is mine)

It is not a small point, and the "actual problem" is not "consumers at current levels" - there are many problems, of which two big ones are over consumption at the current level AND over population.
Too much is being consumed by too many people. And yes, the consumption is not equal across the globe, and western lifestyles are the big consumers and need to reduce - but reducing is uncomfortable and it is very hard to persuade people to do something that makes their lives less comfortable, less enjoyable. However, having fewer children can actually make your life more comfortable, as you have more spare cash - and with availability of birth control there has been a reduction in family sizes in the west. In the developing world, if you approach that through improved medical services - so children and adults are healthier, the adults can have more faith that there will be children who survive to the adults old age to help support, then that is a viable approach. Not 100% coverage, nothing is, but it is already working in India and Pakistan, up take of birth control methods is growing.

On consumption - a small rant.  I am on the lower end of western consumption, but I know I still do things that are not sustainable - I buy oranges, bananas and apples that are flown in from all over the world. If they came in by sailing ship, then there would be a much lower impact. Would that work? I don't know.
On the plus side I don't buy cut flowers - they are also flown in from all over the world. People like having fresh flowers in their house all year round, it is a popular gift, hotels, restaurants and corporate reception areas all have floral displays. It is unremarked and expected. It is also bonkers. (And if we all stopped buying cut flowers a lot of people in poorer parts of the world would be out of a job - there are impacts everywhere.)

To my mind one of the underlying problems that is driving some of the overconsumption is keeping up appearances. There seems to be a need to display, to be strong in some humans. Have the best car, the prettiest house, the nicest clothes, the latest fashion and so on. I have no idea if it is nature or nurture - but it has been going on for a very long time as archaeological remains show. People who are shabby are regarded with concern by a chunk of the population (not all of it). With manufacturing, and prices down a long way on what items would cost if they were made by hand, people can afford to regularly replace old with new - whether or not the old is worn out. I am on Freecycle/Freegle which aims to recycle through reuse - you give away your old rather than taking it down the tip. I've had a lot of useful things from it, and I have given useful things to people. Being on there I see regular "OFFER"s - along the lines of "we have decided to replace our sofa, the old one is on offer, there is nothing wrong with it". Its good that it is being given to someone else to use, but the whole churn on regularly updating your home is really not helping in the overconsumption problem.

Anyone know how much of
a) Display
b) Fitting in with your neighbours
Is nature, or nurture?

And what happened to praise of frugality? Of being a canny shopper? Of praising someone for making a penny do the work of two? In mainstream UK culture that seems to have disappeared quite a while back.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

It was the title I was referring to, but I regretted it as soon as I posted my comment! 

_Totally_ agree with you. And, as an acolyte of James Lovelock, I know he does too.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Montero said:


> On consumption - a small rant.  I am on the lower end of western consumption, but I know I still do things that are not sustainable - I buy oranges, bananas and apples that are flown in from all over the world. If they came in by sailing ship, then there would be a much lower impact. Would that work? I don't know.
> On the plus side I don't buy cut flowers - they are also flown in from all over the world. People like having fresh flowers in their house all year round, it is a popular gift, hotels, restaurants and corporate reception areas all have floral displays. It is unremarked and expected. It is also bonkers. (And if we all stopped buying cut flowers a lot of people in poorer parts of the world would be out of a job - there are impacts everywhere.)



This was addressed by Monty Don recently in a widely publicised comment on self-sufficiency.
He pointed out that 80% self-sufficiency was about as good as he thought it could get.
Of course, if all communities were 80% self-sufficient it would make an absolutely massive difference to the planet.
Monty pointed out we'd still need some imports - Vitamin C in oranges, etc.


----------



## BAYLOR

Stephen Palmer said:


> This was addressed by Monty Don recently in a widely publicised comment on self-sufficiency.
> He pointed out that 80% self-sufficiency was about as good as he thought it could get.
> Of course, if all communities were 80% self-sufficient it would make an absolutely massive difference to the planet.
> Monty pointed out we'd still need some imports - Vitamin C in oranges, etc.



80 percent ? That would would require a huge rethink of our entire economic system and how it runs.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

It certainly would.
The knowledge & the wisdom is all out there though.
But people are too mesmerised by our current appalling system to see what's happening.


----------



## Montero

@ Stephen - no worries (BTW you can edit comments for up to a few minutes after posting, in case you'd not noticed the edit button - but goes away quickly)

I've found articles referencing Monty's comments but not the original - and do agree. Gardening is very hard work. I grew up on home grown vegetables (and boy do I dislike purple sprouting broccoli especially when it is at the tired end of winter) and grow some of my own, but what I grow is tomatoes, cucumbers, a few strawberries and a fun veg called achocha (see Achocha and Luffa Vegetable Seeds to buy in the UK from The Real Seed Catalogue) - so I get really good salad veg and summer fruit, better than the shops, and it doesn't consume my life. Nothing like 80% self-sufficient.

To me one of the more complex issues is joined up thinking/intelligent consumption. We do above all need to reduce population and consumption, but how we do it is important. A few examples on intelligent consumption:

1. Electricity consumption - electricity is very, very useful for running computers, complex machinery, less complex machinery (like washing machines) and doing things that only electricity can do. The amount used on lighting is dropping off (thanks to LEDs) but it is using electricity for heating that can be daft. I can't instantly find a useful google page for the data, but a while back I saw a page comparing using electricity and using gas/coal for heating - it was comparing how much heat you got if you burnt the gas/coal directly in your house, or it was burnt in a power station generating electricity which was then transmitted to your house. Adding up the losses in converting from heat to steam to motion to electricity, plus transmission losses in the grid, it was something like you got only 30% of the heat from the coal/gas if you used electricity to heat.  Now there are problems in that not all areas of the UK have mains gas, but one area to tackle is how electricity is used - but it isn't.  (And renewable energy isn't a total answer there either - you still have to have all the machinery to collect the renewable energy, which costs energy to build, has a limited life, there is no reliable storage etc, etc)

2. Designs of houses - it really ticks me off how modern housing estates are built - all fake winding roads and cozy closes and no thought at all on putting the living rooms on the warm south side with bigger windows and the other rooms (and maybe even yay a larder) with small windows on the north side. This isn't even asking for every house to be a PassivHaus - just a bit of common sense. Having been to council planning meetings, our council at least is thoroughly intimidated by big companies and in the debates I've heard, concerned about costing the council money in legal fees defending planning decisions that the big businesses doesn't like. So the council doesn't look at the plans and say "nope, you must make all the living rooms south facing" and chuck it back at the developer.

3. Agriculture - have any of your heard of Agroforestry aka Forest Gardening? See The Agroforestry Research Trust.  The idea is to get away from forever digging and ploughing to put new crops in the ground, with the associated energy cost and soil erosion and move to cropping from trees, bushes, shrubs and perennial crops. What you set up is like a forest edge, starting with a windbreak (if you need one), then fruit trees, then fruit bushes, then perennial fruit and veg crops such as "walking onions" and the like. It promptly runs into the problem of harvesting - much harder (or impossible) to do by machine. But I think it is well worth a look and have done a small bit in my own garden.


----------



## psikeyhackr

Cathbad said:


> No worries!
> 
> Sooner or later, Mother Nature will take care of that pesky overpopulation problem!



We get to imitate the reindeer.







THE INTRODUCTION, INCREASE, AND CRASH OF REINDEER ON ST. MATTHEW ISLAND

Of course the reindeer did not have jet planes, nuclear weapons and poison gas.  We can have so much more fun reducing our populations.

psik


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Montero said:


> 3. Agriculture - have any of your heard of Agroforestry aka Forest Gardening? See The Agroforestry Research Trust.  The idea is to get away from forever digging and ploughing to put new crops in the ground, with the associated energy cost and soil erosion and move to cropping from trees, bushes, shrubs and perennial crops. What you set up is like a forest edge, starting with a windbreak (if you need one), then fruit trees, then fruit bushes, then perennial fruit and veg crops such as "walking onions" and the like. It promptly runs into the problem of harvesting - much harder (or impossible) to do by machine. But I think it is well worth a look and have done a small bit in my own garden.



I certainly have heard of Forest Gardening... Its main man was Robert Hart - a Shropshire lad!

It is in principle similar to Permaculture.


----------



## Montero

Yes. 
I don't know a lot about permaculture, but I understand that forest gardening is one way of implementing the the design principles of permaculture Permaculture Association | - but that permaculture is a broader "thing" as in way of living.


----------



## Vertigo

So with Trump's latest appointment it seems like America is about to abandon any involvement in overcoming the problems of Global Warming.


----------



## BAYLOR

Vertigo said:


> So with Trump's latest appointment it seems like America is about to abandon any involvement in overcoming the problems of Global Warming.



Eventually,  even people such him will come their senses and see that there really is global warming .


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> Eventually,  even people such him will come their senses and see that there really is global warming .



Yes - but not before Atlanta becomes ocean-side property, methinks.


----------



## Hex

I don't think it's a matter of senses so much as interests. He's not interested in what's real as long as he can generate enough doubt to allow himself to avoid the overwhelmingly likely truth. By the time he comes to his senses, even if he does, it's likely to be too late.


----------



## Vertigo

BAYLOR said:


> Eventually,  even people such him will come their senses and see that there really is global warming .


And not so long as he is being fed by the oil companies methinks.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> Yes - but not before Atlanta becomes ocean-side property, methinks.



That should push up property values there.


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> That should push up property values there.



And guess who owns property there?


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> And guess who owns property there?



You do?


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> You do?



pffft

Your President Elect.


----------



## psikeyhackr

Cathbad said:


> Yes - but not before Atlanta becomes ocean-side property, methinks.



We will probably be reduced to cannibalism before then.  I expect food production to be a serious problem before we get a 6 foot rise in sea level.  Pictures of New York under 20 feet of water just look cool.

psik


----------



## BAYLOR

psikeyhackr said:


> We will probably be reduced to cannibalism before then.  I expect food production to be a serious problem before we get a 6 foot rise in sea level.  Pictures of New York under 20 feet of water just look cool.
> 
> psik



New York City under water could adversely affect property values.

Cannibalism is unlikely, they will find some easy to talor food production to the shifting climate.


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> Cannibalism is unlikely, they will find some easy to talor food production to the shifting climate.



Yeah, because the new administration is sooo interested in this cause!

What will putting us 8 more years behind schedule do to us here in the US?


----------



## Dave

BAYLOR said:


> Cannibalism is unlikely, they will find some easy to talor food production to the shifting climate.


Rice? Seaweed? 

_NB. This was meant as dark humour and not as any serious suggestion about future agricultural policy._


----------



## HanaBi

Dave said:


> Rice? Seaweed?
> 
> _NB. This was meant as dark humour and not as any serious suggestion about future* agricultural policy*._



Is there such a thing? I always thought the powers-that-be created a policy purely to ignore it.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> Yeah, because the new administration is sooo interested in this cause!
> 
> What will putting us 8 more years behind schedule do to us here in the US?



AWe're not the only ones with an excessive green house gas emissions problem.  Us doing it alone won't really make a dent in it.


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> AWe're not the only ones with an excessive green house gas emissions problem.  Us doing it alone won't really make a dent in it.



Yeah, we really could.  We're #1 in that department.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> Yeah, we really could.  We're #1 in that department.



With China India, Indonesia and Brazil not far behind.


----------



## Cathbad

BAYLOR said:


> With China India, Indonesia and Brazil not far behind.



I didn't realize India was up there.


----------



## BAYLOR

Cathbad said:


> I didn't realize India was up there.



Im not sure what India's emissions are but given the fact that they got 1.5 billion people and given that they like China are rapidly industrializing , I wouldn't be surprised if they they near the US emission levels.


----------



## Dave

So, freely give them the renewable energy technology that we've already developed and allow them to industrialise without the intermediate stage that the industrialised world got so badly wrong. 

...but, 

the USA won't have that technology to give because you don't believe in it, and so wouldn't have developed it.
if you did, it would give them an unfair commercial advantage because you would now be so far behind yourselves.
it suits some people to keep the imbalances present in the world exactly as they are now.

it is all a conspiracy anyway, to make America poor. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist folks!
...so, continue consuming fossil fuel energy with conspicuous wastefulness and blame everyone else for the problems. It has worked so far, and seems in vogue again.

If the USA is an elite country, the leader of the free world, a country that other countries should aspire to be like, then should it not set an example for them to follow. Or, should it continue with the same mantra...


BAYLOR said:


> We're not the only ones with an excessive green house gas emissions problem.  Us doing it alone won't really make a dent in it.


----------



## Vertigo

BAYLOR said:


> AWe're not the only ones with an excessive green house gas emissions problem.  Us doing it alone won't really make a dent in it.


If everyone said that, no one would ever do anything about climate change. Excusing inaction on the basis that "we're not the only ones and us changing alone would make no difference" is never a valid excuse. Europe is a smaller green house gas producer than the states but we're still at least _trying_ to do something.


----------



## Venusian Broon

BAYLOR said:


> Im not sure what India's emissions are but given the fact that they got 1.5 billion people and given that they like China are rapidly industrializing , I wouldn't be surprised if they they near the US emission levels.



There you go Eeyore  

India plans nearly 60% of electricity capacity from non-fossil fuels by 2027

They are doing something about it.

Now I don't know if they will succeed, nor if their attempt to commercialise thorium as a nuclear reactor fuel will work, but it's at least in the right direction.


----------



## Harpo

Slate’s Use of Your Data


----------



## Venusian Broon

Harpo said:


> Slate’s Use of Your Data



That's a particularly negative view of the future. On some level I agree with her words - in a manner - but I don't know if her illness has 'bleed through' and she has just lost hope because of that. 

I think it likely that Humanity, in fifty years say, could really find that global warming has altered things so much that disastrous things will happen. Perhaps billions will die due to changing climatic conditions that wipe out vast crop areas, and that will cause the 'fall of civilisation' or wars or, well, whatever...but I think humans, of all the creatures on the planet, are probably best able to adapt and survive. I'd guess there will be some of us still around, even after the worst that we or the nature can throw at us.

Yes, technically there will be a last generation, either we do go extinct, or we change to something else, but I'd guess we've still got a long time left on the planet.


----------



## AlexH

Harpo said:


> Slate’s Use of Your Data


I largely agree with the article, but it doesn't suggest any fixes. We need to slow consumption down and that needs to come from the top, to stop rampant consumerism and convenience over care. To get rid of the outdated model that economies need to constantly grow (it goes back to WWII or I, when it made temporary sense I guess, as we were manufacturing as fast as we could for war).

In answer to the opening post, maybe I would have said "yes" in 2006. But now I don't think we'll overcome the problems of global warming. I think that even the recent projections were based on a carbon capture technology that isn't even an industry yet. Carbon capture is an excuse for us to pollute more.

I'm realistic, not doom and gloom, as I still believe we can all help. We'll be on this planet for a long while yet.



Venusian Broon said:


> ...but I think humans, of all the creatures on the planet, are probably best able to adapt and survive.


Cockroaches, pigeons and rats!


----------



## Venusian Broon

AlexH said:


> Cockroaches, pigeons and rats!



Excellent, as we could probably survive eating them....


----------



## -K2-

Venusian Broon said:


> Excellent, as we could probably survive eating them....



*IF* they survive... the near future story I have been working on, sets up a scenario where they don't.  Although, partly because they all get eaten, Dodo roaches if you will 

K2


----------



## Cathbad

Venusian Broon said:


> Excellent, as we could probably survive eating them....


I'm not eating a pigeon!!


----------



## TheEndIsNigh

Controvercial stuff but...

If the global warming is wo/man made:-

Then the answer is no. Wo/man is too selfish, greedy and uncaring. The

"Its not my problem, its all those other people that's causing the problem"

attitude will prevail.

Most of the population wil die and the planet will revert back to more peaceful time. Always assuming no one starts throwing nuclear weapons about toward the end to try to get an advantage of resources.

If global warming isn't wo/man made:-

Then it's down to God, the sun, the universe and we just have to sit it out and hope. Afterall if the big G is involved who would gainsay him/her by trying to thwart his/her will. Of course they will try. Human sacrifice, especially first born, has a big influence apparently, but if S/he has decided our time is up, then that's it.

If the sun, then good luck with that.

"Hey, Sunny, do wou mind not flinging out all this heat. Its causing us some real problems down here on Earth."

No response.

The same response will be heard from the Universe.

Plus, there's the old problem of worrying about one thing when the actual problem is being ignored.

As an example, the person making extensive efforts to lose weight to extend his life, who actually dies by his short sighted missing of the bus.

So while we're (you're) all running round like headless chickens squalking "global warming, global warming,"out there in space, a meteorite the size of Lake Superior is making it's silent way toward us, with a big smile on it's face.

Of course all this is irrelavent IMO. What's the point of worrying about a bit of warming in the short time we all have left.


----------



## Happy Joe

Personally I think that there is too much confusion between natural climate change (the last ice age has been melting for a very long time) and the probable acceleration in warming due to humans.

Especially in the ignorant that do not (cannot?) understand that belief does not necessarily have any relationship to fact.

Another pointless point is that "over consumption" like beauty and "ugly" is in the eye of the beholder ...(typically with an agenda).

All that I can do is to limit my carbon foot print & reduce my bean consumption...

(Edit, miscalculated;  here are the more correct figures)
My monthly gasoline consumption is typically less than 8 (US) gallons/30 liters per month; how do you compare?
If less; Kudos to you!
If more: what can you personally do to reduce?  Do you want to?

30 liters/month ~1 litere per day which approximates the usage in Ireland
Gasoline consumption per capita around the world  | GlobalPetrolPrices.com
When an electric vehicle becomes economically feasible I will get one...

IMO; its all about personal comfort; I could and have lived in the third world but there is no reason to not be comfortable, IMO.
... therein lies the rub; you are not going to convince people to live in what they believe to be uncomfortable/unsafe conditions; or to expend unusual (to them) effort if they have a choice; because personal comfort & laziness will inevitably out weigh the (especially long term) alternatives.

...Just a few meaningless opinions...


----------



## Cathbad

Happy Joe said:


> ...Just a few meaningless opinions...


Not meaningless, but sad.


----------



## Montero

I think that not all people default to inertia and physical comfort (I've changed words slightly on purpose). There are people who have concern for what you might call ethical comfort - as in it is important for them to go for the ethical option and they will be uncomfortable if they don't and where this conflicts with their physical comfort, ethical could win out. Examples being people who put themselves at risk campaigning - to the extent of physical harm when in a demonstration or handing out brochures.
I haven't been back over the thread, but I am sure that somewhere I mentioned moving towards a culture of voluntary size limitations on families and reducing population - and that in many ways being an easier sell to some people than reducing consumption per capita because of the financial benefits accrued from a smaller family can help improve the standard of living.
I am currently very impressed by CHASE Africa - a programme that is offering contraception in several African countries, allied with a tree planting programme - which is helping generate income for the locals as well as being natural carbon capture. CHASE Africa - Family Planning, Health and Environment (PHE) - and read Josephine's story CHASE Africa News - CHASE Africa. With contraception they are talking implants with effective spans from 1 to 5 years - the patient chooses.
CHASE Africa works closely with local government workers. The thing about all of this is, that many of the children born (anywhere) go on to have their own kids - but if the family is smaller now, that could be fewer kids in the next generation too. So if you are minded to take more action regarding concerns for the future of the planet, CHASE Africa seems worthy to me. (And I've put my money where my mouth is.) You can also support via Smile.amazon as you purchase stuff.  On the Donate page for CHASE Africa it lays out what things cost -

    £15 pays for 2 women to get access to family planning.
    £25 pays for a nurse’s salary for a day.
    £50 pays for 23 trees in a fenced school woodlot.
    £100 pays for 14 women to get access to family planning.

If not CHASE Africa, there are many other charities taking action.


----------



## Montero

In case you haven't heard of it - flagging Earth Overshoot day
Earth Overshoot Day – #MoveTheDate of Overshoot!
"Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when we (all of humanity) have used more from nature than our planet can renew in the entire year. In 2018, it fell on August 1."

Scroll down the page and there is a resource for you to calculate your personal Earth Overshoot day. Suspect it is a bit simplistic, but an interesting indicator. I have what is probably best described as a frugal western lifestyle - I fall into mid-December on their calculator so am still using more than the planet can renew, but not as much as some. I suspect a lot of it is in not flying on foreign holidays and working from home. I live in an ordinary modern house, eat some imported food, have electricity and central heating, TV, use the internet (obviously) so I'm living comfortably. Just highlighting this as I do think reducing consumption is also essential (just a hard sell to some people) and commenting on my own lifestyle to say that reducing consumption may not be as uncomfortable as you fear.


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## TheEndIsNigh

@Montero

The problem is the classic I'm doing my bit, it's the other guy that's the problem.

I suspect my overshoot day is Jan 1st in which case for 365 days I'm stuffing it to the planet while you and 364 others like you are wasting their time in relation to me. (and failing in their efforts anyway)

(The above is an example, obviously for effect)

Probably the biggest human global warming catastrophe for the rest of us was when China stopped the one child policy - Something that will probably have one of the largest impacts on the Earths resources for decades to come.

Having said that India's always been doing it's bit in the population growth stakes.

Even though the rate of growth for both of these is falling at the moment (quick look on the web) they appear to be over 1% per annum - That's a lot of extra mouths to feed, crap to dispose of (methane) and food to grow. You'd think 1% was pretty good until you point out 1% of 2.5 Billion is a rather large number.

All this can be set against longer lives and the increase in technology.

I've asked before, but if to save the planet it was proved that all mobile technology had to end, would everyone give up their mobiles. I think not.

Apocalypse here we come.


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## Montero

Yes, there is a lot to solve, but just shrugging and saying it's hopeless - if all the human race did that we wouldn't have seen all the changes that have happened - including slurping resources in the way we do - we'd still be in a cave napping flints. Or maybe we would have decided to stay in trees as a wiser move. (Planet would be better off for that .....) But people who are "haves" have done things to their own detriment - voluntary freeing of slaves for example without compensation. No, everyone didn't do it and it took a government to enforce it nationally and all the tax payers paid for it - but I bet there were people who stood around shrugging saying "oh people will never give up their slaves, what is the point in talking about this."

Funnily enough - while China did stop the 1 child policy, moving to allowing 2, a lot of the population are sticking at 1 - so that is actually a success story in terms of impact on a way a society behaves as well as in terms of numbers reduction. You see successes in one place, you can use them to persuade people elsewhere that what was done works and is to their advantage.
Yeah there is increase in technology - but there is a shift in type and a massive increase in efficiency - fridges for an example use far less electricity than previously especially if you are buying an A+.
Mobile technology - well I can take it or leave it, I barely use it. I have a mobile but use it maybe twice a month - it's mostly there for car emergencies. And anyway, ironically in terms of the touch screen, the world resources of the element needed to make the screens is rapidly running out and the touch screen may be gone soon, which seems to be the biggest use of the mobile.
Are we running out of touchscreens? | TechRadar
So all the new inventions of apps and having stores where you shop using a payment app - maybe not.

What I do think is needed is more accurate information on the cost to the planet of each "thing" - so having a really accurate website where you can look up the energy and materials consumption of mining, manufacture, transport and usage of whatever it is you fancy. Maybe voluntarily, maybe a per capita limit - but you then have to make your choices within a limit. Do you buy the mobile phone or a new pair of shoes? (No idea whether the costs would be equivalent just picking an example at random.)
If a global rationing system of resource consumption were introduced, doubtless there would then be some trading of resource rations - but if the total used globally stays within sustainable limits, that leaves a level of choice to the individual while still protecting the planet.


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## AlexH

Montero said:


> If a global rationing system of resource consumption were introduced, doubtless there would then be some trading of resource rations - but if the total used globally stays within sustainable limits, that leaves a level of choice to the individual while still protecting the planet.


There is carbon trading already: Carbon emission trading - Wikipedia

It's all a big scam.


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## psikeyhackr

Happy Joe said:


> Personally I think that there is too much confusion between natural climate change (the last ice age has been melting for a very long time) and the probable acceleration in warming due to humans.
> 
> Especially in the ignorant that do not (cannot?) understand that belief does not necessarily have any relationship to fact.
> 
> Another pointless point is that "over consumption" like beauty and "ugly" is in the eye of the beholder ...(typically with an agenda).
> 
> ...Just a few meaningless opinions...



Ignorance is a problem alright.

Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide | NOAA Climate.gov

Over-consumption!?!  There were 200,000,000 cars in the US in 1994.  There were 8,000 in 1900.

The world population did not reach 2 billion until 1927.  We are now approaching 8 billion.  What does over-consumption mean with 4 times as many people?


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## Dave

Happy Joe said:


> IMO; its all about personal comfort; I could and have lived in the third world but there is no reason to not be comfortable, IMO.
> ... therein lies the rub; you are not going to convince people to live in what they believe to be uncomfortable/unsafe conditions; or to expend unusual (to them) effort if they have a choice; because personal comfort & laziness will inevitably out weigh the (especially long term) alternatives.



Some people do think about the kind of "uncomfortable world" that their grandchildren will inherit, and they actually have changed their behaviour appropriately. 40 years ago, such people were seen as weird freaks, but today, especially among the younger population (who have more at stake in this) that is much more of the norm - vegetarian diets, using public transport, wearing second hand clothes, growing your own food. 

Yes, you will have great difficulty convincing people who only put themselves first, which is why governments do it by coercion in the way of laws and taxes. This is seen (most especially in the USA but not exclusively) as Socialism (mainly because it is socialism). There are still people who believe that Climate Change is merely some Chinese fake news to bring socialism by the back door, and to make America less great. There is no answer to people who genuinely believe that, and they are the people who are currently in charge and making the laws and setting the taxes.

Therein lies the rub. There has been lots of talk, but very little action. We have come a long way, but not taken the kind of sea change that is required yet. I'm part of the problem too, I like driving a car, jetting off on holiday, and eating meat most days in the week. I would feel aggrieved if I was deprived of that, especially if I felt my government was forcing me to do that, while someone in another country had no such restrictions. Of course I will, I'm only human. However, I am also concerned about what my future great grandchildren will think of me for that view. Will they ask why I didn't do more when I still had the chance? 

As for your point about the economics of green technology, the start up costs of any new technology are great. However, we cannot wait for the prices to come down as it will take too long. That is why governments apply subsidies and giver tax breaks. If they applied similar subsidies to those that are given for fossil fuel exploration then the playing field might be a little more even. However, there are still concerns about much of this technology - the rechargeable car batteries are incredibly polluting themselves and currently have a short shelf life (even if they get reused in some other way after the car) - nuclear fission power is not a renewable energy source (there is a finite amount of Uranium, and products made from it).  We don't yet have all the solutions but we should be putting all of our effort into these areas to find those solutions.

You know those science fiction stories where the Earth is going to be hit by an asteroid in two years time, and the world joins together to put all its scientific endeavours into rocket and space vehicle research. Contrast that with the present day, where we have joined together to stick our collective heads in the sand.


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## Montero

AlexH said:


> There is carbon trading already: Carbon emission trading - Wikipedia
> 
> It's all a big scam.



Yeah, I know - I've seen it in action - companies looking for green credits and tax breaks driving round in overpowered SUVs handing out economy light bulbs for free and the things are so cheap they die in a few months.

What I am talking about is at an individual level and basically a rationing system - but not just energy - ALL resources - there is only so much of everything and if you use up all the tantalum - then it's gone. I am also talking about all pollutants generated - that should be accounted for too.  We now have computers big enough to calculate it and maybe to even do so responsively, what is needed is the data, the programming and the will to do it.

My parents talked about WW2 rationing. You had a book of coupons and each week that gave you an allowance of meat, butter, etc and you went to the shop and chose your meat (if you were lucky and there was any - whale meat came into the diet in the UK during the war). Theoretically you had a choice - you only had I think it was 4 ounces, but in theory you could decide whether that 4oz was beef, pork, mutton or chicken. Petrol was rationed (in fact it was so rationed, a lot of people couldn't have any.) So I am talking the same thing writ large with all the resources people use - but still keeping choice in it to a more limited extent. You could choose to walk to work every day and so use none of your "transport ration" - and then use it on the weekend to catch a train and visit friends, or go for a walk in the countryside if that is what you like. What I am looking for is a website where you can find out the equivalents easily - and voluntarily start doing this. I have no idea whether say

We all read SFF - consider earth as a very large space station - and think of all the SF on space stations where as a minimum there is charges for air, water anything you need - because the supply is limited. Earth is a very big spacestation - but there are limits. What I am looking for is an identification of the limits and ways to stay within them that still allow a degree of choice and comfort.


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## TheEndIsNigh

Nuclear - even bigger legacy (ooo story idea) for our children's children.

Wind. Requires a guaranteed back up for when the wind don't blow. Lest we forget, the subsidy often is the important part here. Many the turbine that is kept deliberately not generating because the price for generation is higher at other times. (they have a limited service life - you need to maximise your profits).

Tidal. HMG have just prevented a Severn Barrage solution  (the Severn tidal system could provide 10% of UK energy if fully exploited at a fraction of the cost of the new Chinese Nuclear  project). It would also provide a new link from Wales to the South west. But hey that would show them up re China and some birds would be put out (the birds will die anyway with climate change).

Solar - Not marvellous for the UK but shows some promise. I wonder why HMG stopped the subsidies though. There will be a problem when all those houses with roofs supporting the panels need repair. They have a lifetime of 25 years. Most tiles on roofs are expected to last 100 years+

New so far undiscovered solution.

At the turn of the 1900, speculation was abound that if something wasn't done about the horses in New York, then the streets would be ten feet deep in horse sh*t. Then along came the petrol engine.

Apparently all these generating methods will be a waste of time without banning petrol/diesel.

Yet that would mean an infrastructure investment requiring of millions of charging points and the scrapping of an equally large number of cars. Plus the production of replacements vehicles.

What's the carbon footprint of (ignoring trucks, buses, trains and planes)

disposing of 20M cars (80 million tyres).

Building 20M cars (with resources required from every corner of the globe)

Installing (lets say) 1M fast charging points and the cabling for the same.

Converting houses to work of DC solar power. (more efficient than sticking in the grid).

All this when the energy/carbon used by shipping I think stands roughly 10% of the worlds use. 

https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/transport-uses-25-percent-of-world-energy


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## AlexH

Montero said:


> Yeah, I know - I've seen it in action - companies looking for green credits and tax breaks driving round in overpowered SUVs handing out economy light bulbs for free and the things are so cheap they die in a few months.
> 
> What I am talking about is at an individual level and basically a rationing system - but not just energy - ALL resources - there is only so much of everything and if you use up all the tantalum - then it's gone. I am also talking about all pollutants generated - that should be accounted for too.  We now have computers big enough to calculate it and maybe to even do so responsively, what is needed is the data, the programming and the will to do it.
> 
> My parents talked about WW2 rationing. You had a book of coupons and each week that gave you an allowance of meat, butter, etc and you went to the shop and chose your meat (if you were lucky and there was any - whale meat came into the diet in the UK during the war). Theoretically you had a choice - you only had I think it was 4 ounces, but in theory you could decide whether that 4oz was beef, pork, mutton or chicken. Petrol was rationed (in fact it was so rationed, a lot of people couldn't have any.) So I am talking the same thing writ large with all the resources people use - but still keeping choice in it to a more limited extent. You could choose to walk to work every day and so use none of your "transport ration" - and then use it on the weekend to catch a train and visit friends, or go for a walk in the countryside if that is what you like. What I am looking for is a website where you can find out the equivalents easily - and voluntarily start doing this. I have no idea whether say
> 
> We all read SFF - consider earth as a very large space station - and think of all the SF on space stations where as a minimum there is charges for air, water anything you need - because the supply is limited. Earth is a very big spacestation - but there are limits. What I am looking for is an identification of the limits and ways to stay within them that still allow a degree of choice and comfort.


It'll make countries a bigger nanny state than they already are, and how/where will this data be stored securely? What if you don't have a choice? I used to cycle to work every day, but now I work 35 miles from home and public transport isn't reliable/convenient enough (I actually drive 12 miles, then train for 20 minutes, then walk 1 mile). Even then, if my 18:55 train is cancelled, the next isn't for an hour and 20 minutes. My situation is far from extreme. It's a system where the rich would probably benefit more than anyone, if the people in control allow such a system in the first place.

I think banning certain disposable items will go a long way, like coffee cups and barbecues. Our convenience culture has got so ridiculous there are even disposable tents! I think rationing to an extent could work though - I doubt anyone _needs _a new smartphone every six months, or a new car every 3 years, for example.

This website may help you? carbonfootprint.com - Carbon Footprint Calculator



TheEndIsNigh said:


> Apparently all these generating methods will be a waste of time without banning petrol/diesel.
> 
> Yet that would mean an infrastructure investment requiring of millions of charging points and the scrapping of an equally large number of cars. Plus the production of replacements vehicles.


In the UK a few years ago, people were offered a £1,000 incentive to scrap their "old dirty car" for a new "clean" car. As far as the government were concerned, it moves pollution away from towns and cities as new cars are generally cleaner emissions-wise. So that's all they care about - reducing pollution to match targets they have to reach. Obviously they don't care about the massive carbon footprint that goes into manufacturing a new car. In that sense, it's actually cleaner to keep older cars on the road.


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## Montero

Talking about the full-on rationing system (not just a helpful website) - yes, if you do live at a considerable distance from your work, that is a problem.
BUT if such a system came in, all employers would be affected by it and they would have to do things to keep employees they really want - which could take many forms depending on the type of job, from supporting home working, to paying for relocation of employee, to providing an electric bus - the economics would encourage them towards that.
One of the things that irritates me about the current UK economy is how many jobs, especially IT ones where you could work from home, at least part of the week, many employers won't agree to it because they just like to see all the bodies in the office/don't trust people. I've worked in IT and had one employer that couldn't cope with any idea of home working and a subsequent one that encouraged it for most employees, because it meant they could rent a smaller office and save money. On the rare days when everyone was needed to be in, occasional big meeting etc, the place was heaving.

In terms of the security of a rationing website - well heck, our bank records and health records are already on IT systems - said rationing system could be made as secure as they are. (And yes there is a degree of irony involved in that statement, but also reality - these are all systems of similar importance and are currently mostly functioning.)

Regarding carbon footprint calculator - no, sorry not what I am looking for too clunky - I am looking for an on-the-fly tool to help me with decisions as I am making them. So what I want is to have look up tables so I enter in say a flight to Spain (not that I want one). It will a) tell me the most efficient airline b) offer me the cost of alternative transport (ferry, car train) and c) tell me a number of equivalents - like this is equivalent to x journeys to work by car, or buying a new bath or etc etc. So if I have a "want" list for a year - say new bathroom and a holiday in Spain - I could look at the website and work out that it is either or. Or if I did the bathroom over with second hand things that would be better. Also on a far smaller scale - shoes, socks whatever.

Regarding the car scrap scheme - yes, that is EXACTLY what I want the website for - so that it can be calculated and everyone goes - oh, not so clever after all, let's leave the old cars on the road. There does seem to be a really big tendency to focus in far too much, not do joined up thinking and with politicians come up with some that sounds good and happens quickly - leading to things that look good if you don't look too closely but can even be worse than the problem that was "solved".


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## psikeyhackr

Climate Timeline
xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline


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## psikeyhackr

*Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown *
Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown


> Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system’s impact on the environment. In western countries,* beef consumption needs to fall by 90% and be replaced by five times more beans and pulses*.
> 
> The research also finds that enormous changes to farming are needed to avoid destroying the planet’s ability to feed the 10 billion people expected to be on the planet in a few decades.


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## Montero

Yes, but or Yes and 
This needs to be done taking into account 
a) The type of land - there are upland areas where trying to plough and plant beans would result in land erosion and no beans because the climate is too harsh anyway - so animal farming should be concentrated in those areas
b) Moving away from monoculture crops so there are more places wildlife can co-exist with farming
c) Bees are having problems with modern pesticides and there is a big drop in bee numbers (there may be other causes too) which means the pollination rates are dropping - so the bean and seed crop could fail. (Nuts are wind pollinated so they'd be OK).

Global warming may or may not kill wildlife (it is often announced as a given across all wildlife - but without detailed proof - and sometimes the proof is the habitat will disappear) but habitat removal though change in farming practices will do it immediately. As in all the birds that live on grassy uplands that need that habitat to survive, wouldn't do well if it was all turned into bean fields.
Ideally the change in farming would be an opportunity to enhance and repair wildlife habitats in conjunction with food production rather than another round of underplanned, knee jerk, big scale, one-size-fits all central government organization. To be fair there are set aside subsidies and biodiversity now included in UK planning - though I think not enough - but a big "we must offset global warming" change in farming practices could be seen as of such over-riding urgency that any concerns on biodiversity might be overwhelmed.

And let's hear it again for agroforestry or forest gardening - read more about it here The Agroforestry Research Trust – | Forest Gardening | Fruit Trees | Nut Trees | Perennial Vegetables |
Far more sustainable and biodiverse than big field farming.


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## Montero

Having gone to the Agroforestry Trust website for the link, it was there when I reopened the browser and there is a section I've not noticed before - on the benefits of tree planting for shelter, river pollution reduction and fertilization. Quite short, worth a read
Other Agroforestry Systems – The Agroforestry Research Trust

Thing is with big tractor farming bands of woodland have tended to be lost.
By the way, a book worth a read on farming is
The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland by John Lewis-Stempel. He wants to restore/re-create the cornfields of his childhood that were rich in wildflowers and wildlife and this is his readable account of how he found the land and did the work, what the results were and also the state of some of the neighbouring farms.


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## Robert Zwilling

Large wide open tractorized fields with no trees or natural growth is like an open wound that is constantly being scratched and the bulk harvested crops are what clots in between scratchings. Land with trees and other natural plant formations are like skin that is allowed to grow in a healthy manner.

When land is allowed to grow in a natural fashion with crops grown in smaller, disjointed sectors, the sum total of the area's life is dependent on the diversity of the life living there. The more complete it is, the more diversity in life there is at all levels, from dirt formation to wild plants and animals that show up. The best properties have everything from predators on down to the smallest insects. This also increases the biological activity of the soil in a very positive manner. Without a balanced predator scenario the wild life creates dysfunctional populations which in turn create dysfunctional plant populations, which can in turn, affect tree populations.

The point about bird populations being permanently and rapidly affected by natural land being converted into an artificial environment composed of monocultural products is a good reason to take a second look at just exactly how harmful wild cats can be to local bird populations. Having a cat population in a functioning environment versus having a cat population on an island, natural or man made where the birds have no other places to go is two different situations. People can distort the land to such degrees that birds are marooned to unnatural islands surrounded by land. By destroying the original diversity, then repopulating with whatever people see fit, all the while completely upsetting the wild bird populations, then turning on the cats and saying it's their fault the birds are gone for driving bulldozers, clear cutting the land down to the subsoil, and filling everything to the gills with any kind of pesticide or insecticide, is hardly logical.

Financial concerns are what usually changes things. The problem of lose plastic debris blowing around everywhere has become impossible to hide so it has made the beginning transition away from plastic able to get a foot hold. Paper straws cost ten times what a plastic straw costs. Paper bags are also expensive but it is getting easier for people to bring their own bags. Its based on the well known idea of bringing your own bottle, so it is hardly a new concept.

The change from animal meat to plant based proteins is not an easy street to travel. The synthetic meat business is growing by leaps and bounds. It has two paths, one of growing or fermenting an artificial protein mixture in a vat, the other is by processing natural plant products into meat substitute products. Using natural plants could alleviate the land grazing by enormous animal populations, but could also make even more land subject to the harshness of monoculture farming. 

The debacle of the pursuit of green oil has not been addressed except by trying to forget about it and at the same time quietly trying to find another source of clean oil. Soylent Green had an interesting transition from algae to people, but more likely it will be garbage that gets transformed into edible food. Its probably not that far a step from using petroleum products to create meat or food substitutes, but using garbage would be so much easier and would solve the problem of what to do with all the garbage we create. If you go back far enough in time, everything was recycled back into the food circles as soon as it hit the ground. Many people have no choice where there food comes from. Where the food comes from can all too easily become what the food comes from.


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## LordOfWizards

A positive take on the subject -

IPCC: Future is Fast-Paced, All-systems Shared Innovation


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## Dave

That conference is setting goals and objectives, but there is no backing from politicians to achieve them.

CO2 concentration has just risen again after a four year levelling off. They thought progress had been made on curbing fossil fuel use, but it seems it was just a result of the recession instead. There were also increases in Methane and CFC-10 (which is banned from production but still in the majority of old refrigerators and air conditioning units, and is still produced anyhow, despite the ban.)

The White House doesn't believe the word of its own scientists, and the world has other pressing problems to deal with, but can there be anything more vital to deal with than this?

There are engineering solutions that can be employed (they are now seriously talking about seeding the upper atmosphere) So, to answer the OP question, we will survive and we will overcome global warming, but we have missed the chance we had to stop it, and now we will have to ride out the consequences.


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## Karn's Return

Nah, Dave, what we need to do is leave this forsaken rock. I honestly think it'll be able to actually properly happen; even if it is on the most minute scale, I think we could survive long enough on Mars to thrive further.


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## LordOfWizards

I hear you Dave. I still don't think I've recovered from my disbelief and sadness from the 2016 election in the US. (Just a personal note - No political agenda intended).


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## Robert Zwilling

The poles have already melted, they just haven't finished melting yet. We can't stop the water from going into the sky and we can't stop the rains regardless of whatever people decide to do for or against, action or no action, the weather is going to beat up a lot of things before it stabilizes which is going to provide routes of action that don't have any hangers to hang debates on. The current executive officers are not a one off, they are a long time coming, tip of the iceberg, and quite noticeably the icebergs are melting away, just like any old castle made of sand. Since there are no priorities, as in what me worry?, I think there will be plenty of money for space exploration with no possibility of benefiting everyone.


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## Vertigo

Karn's Return said:


> Nah, Dave, what we need to do is leave this forsaken rock. I honestly think it'll be able to actually properly happen; even if it is on the most minute scale, I think we could survive long enough on Mars to thrive further.


The problem with leaving this rock is that the vast majority of people will not be able to do so. Just to keep stop population growth requires that we transport, on current growth figures, 84 million people a year. That's over 220,000 people a day, every day! And that's just to halt the growth in population never mind actually reduce the population. Think about the logistics of moving that many people and the size of fleet needed to keep that rate up.

We need to fix our population here on Earth; colonisation will never fix it for us.

I know the growth rate is dropping but even if it flattened completely and we still managed to shift that 83 million people every year (over 200,000 every day remember) it would still take nearly a century to shift the whole population! So I think you're right when you say 'even if it is on the most minute scale.'


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## Karn's Return

It sounds bad of me, but I don't mean shifting the whole population. That would only transfer our problems.


No, I meant for the general continuation of our species, we need to leave this planet. I don't expect to ever leave Earth, nor does any of my family, but I feel better somehow imagining humanity spreading across the cosmos...even if it was just a fraction of a percent of the world's population, that would be good enough, if we could survive different environments than to what we evolved upon.


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## LordOfWizards

As painful (and possibly oversimplified) as it may be to say, I think it comes down to a new variation of Darwinism: Survival of the richest.


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## Karn's Return

Not really that oversimplified, LoW. Just a sad, sad truth.


Not that it wouldn't be cool to explore space, Mars will be about the furthest outward we've ever sent living, breathing entities out to and it's just our next door neighbor...


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## Robert Zwilling

Maybe survival of the trickiest is what's happening now, that way the playing field is still wide open.


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## Cathbad

Vertigo said:


> The problem with leaving this rock is that the vast majority of people will not be able to do so.


But the rich will be saved!!


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## TheEndIsNigh

So here's a carbon footprint story.

We recently changed suppliers (joy)

As a result our "SMART" meter has become a pile of junk.. Not only does it not report usage to the mobile display, it doesn't even send the readings back to the new provider. (As I have to send them myself)

So what was the point and how does the govenment claim they will reduce energy useage (not that I ever looked but others may do).

As far as I can see, we all had a perfectly working meter replaced by two items of technology which is now or will become useless at the first renewal of the contracts.

Even if we look at the basic material/production costs and etimate it at £10 per household then we have a gigantic waste of money and more importantly carbon. (which will end up in landfill or being burnt)

A classic example of policy for the sake of appearing to do something that actually multiplies the problem and cures nothing.

I could make an argument against recycling, but I suspect I would be held to ridicule.

The case for lead free solder in electronic production was also an enormouse waste of money, both in energy costs and in perfect good machinery being scrapped and replaced, but there you go.


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## AlexH

TheEndIsNigh said:


> So here's a carbon footprint story.
> 
> We recently changed suppliers (joy)
> 
> As a result our "SMART" meter has become a pile of junk.. Not only does it not report usage to the mobile display, it doesn't even send the readings back to the new provider. (As I have to send them myself)
> 
> So what was the point and how does the govenment claim they will reduce energy useage (not that I ever looked but others may do).
> 
> As far as I can see, we all had a perfectly working meter replaced by two items of technology which is now or will become useless at the first renewal of the contracts.
> 
> Even if we look at the basic material/production costs and etimate it at £10 per household then we have a gigantic waste of money and more importantly carbon. (which will end up in landfill or being burnt)
> 
> A classic example of policy for the sake of appearing to do something that actually multiplies the problem and cures nothing.
> 
> I could make an argument against recycling, but I suspect I would be held to ridicule.
> 
> The case for lead free solder in electronic production was also an enormouse waste of money, both in energy costs and in perfect good machinery being scrapped and replaced, but there you go.


It reminds me of the car scheme a few years ago where you received £1,000 for your old car to put towards a new car, supposedly to reduce pollution. And how long will it take for electric cars to outweigh the cost of all the extra infrastructure etc? Never mind the mining practices used to get the rare materials needed for the batteries.

Smart-meter pioneer admits he has abandoned his own
Mr O’Brien told _The Daily Telegraph_: “I had an early version. After a while I barely looked at it, didn’t use it. We got rid of it.” In 2014 ministers said the meters would cut the average dual-fuel bill by £26 a year. They are now expected to cut it by £11 a year because installation costs have surged by £1 billion, according to a report. Up to one in ten first-generation devices “go dumb” because of a weak signal from the mobile network they use to communicate with the supplier and more than half stop working when customers switch providers, a group of MPs and peers said this week.

A source who worked in the DECC when it was run by Mr Miliband, who led Labour from 2010-15, said “there was already a suspicion that the tech was on the road to being out of date” even as it was being approved.


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## Edward M. Grant

We had smart meters installed in a bunch of houses here.

Then the smart meters started catching fire and burning the houses down.

So they took them all out again. I'm guessing the CO2 and other pollutants produced by the houses that burned down were far, far worse than any possible saving that might have come from the meters.


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