Global Warming!

[HawkLord]

A few days ago after talking with one of my teachers about global warming, it suddenly hit me how real the threat was. I think that within about 50 to 100 years, the world will be uninhabitable for humans if we do nothing about it. Now I love life and the world in general and I really want to do something about it. My friend and I are joining the Green Party and we're also taking steps to improve awareness, starting off in our school, then when we gather enough supporters we will start protests, posters, writing letters to MPs etc.
I was wondering what you guys in America think about the whole issue, and also if some of you could start campaigning over there. Right now Bush doesn't seem to care at all and he needs to.

I believe that global warming is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced and we must do something NOW, or face the end of the world. I think in Britain we need 80% of our electricity from renewable sources within ten years. It may seem unrealistic, and the Government may say they have not enough money, but think how much they spend on weapons. That money I think could be put to better use.
Any discussion and ideas would be welcome.

[silverhand]

There was a programme on BBC2 last Thursday in the Horizon series about a phenomenon called global dimming. Unfortunately I didn't get to see it & forgot to set the video. :oops: From the review in the Radio Times, apparently there is less sunlight hitting the Earth now than previously, so mitigating global warming. Confusing or what? :? Did anybody see it, was it convincing?

[HawkLord]

Yeh I also missed it(I was at a guitar lesson) but I heard about it. Apparently global warming is ten times worst than they thought.

[L'Etranger]

It may encourage you to learn that the German Green Party just celebrated its 25th "Birthday" last week and has become an important factor in parliament and is sharing power in the government coalition with a lot of responsibility.

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Yeh I also missed it(I was at a guitar lesson) but I heard about it. Apparently global warming is ten times worst than they thought.

Potentially, apparently, Global Dimming, caused by tiny particles of soot and other forms of related exhaust pollution (the sort that causes chemical smog, etc), has been masking the effects of greenhouse gasses (like carbon dioxide and methane) in the atmosphere. Because of these pollutants, the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface appeared to have dropped by 10% in about thirty years! When places like Europe and California started to clean up exhaust pollution, temperatures started to rise even more steeply than before, even making allowances for what had originally been predicted for Global Warming.

One of the clinchers appears to have been the day when all civil flights were grounded in the US, after 9/11. Temperatures rose so steeply on that day, scientists realised that the jet contrails had had a huge masking effect, reflecting sunlight back into space.

So, risk living in an increasingly darkening World, breathing in an increasingly toxic and poisonous atmosphere, or live in a World where Greenhouse gasses continue to raise temperatures, melting the Greenland Ice Sheet risking sea level rises measured in meters, large parts of the Temperate Zones becoming seasonal dust bowls, or swamps and the Equatorial regions become virtually uninhabitable.

Considering that we have been dumping 4 billion years worth of fossil fuel greenhouse gasses, tens of billions of tons, back into the atmosphere in only a couple of hundred years of the Industrial Revolution and that the World's population has increased from some two and a half billion in the Sixties, to some six plus billion now, the chemistry and physics don't look good.

The more scientifically minded can explain what the Chaos and Catastrophe Theories have to say about an increasingly unstable, complex system put under the sort of pressure we are putting the the Earth's Biosphere under, these days.

The very fact that George W., Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice are all ex-OIL Company executives, should give US citizens extra pause for thought as to where their loyalties may lie, when it comes to the dangers of Global Warming versus their stock portfolios and business interests.

:(

[Pietro_Mercurios]

... I seem to recall that the Mediterranean was once a valley. ...

You would not have wanted to be standing in that valley when the dam broke.

I would like to know what the alternate is going to be regarding fuel? Are there any objective sources that estimate how much is left? How will the west make all of its products without oil? I keep saying it, but it seems to me that civilization rests on its existence.

The sources are out there, solar, wind, biomass, water and wave power, geothermal, etc. but renewables cost extra. Consumers and businesses in the US pay a pittance for their oil based fuel, compared even to Europe. There is a secondary cost in blood, of course, but we live in a society that still doesn't believe in paying the real rate for its pleasures.

The internal combustion engine and cheap energy are the heroin and crack cocaine of our civilisation. They are just as enslaving.

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Pollution, what is it?

I'm always reminded of the Kilgour Trout tale, about the two yeast cells having a discussion about the increasing pollution, as they slowly drown in their own waste alcohol, in a brewing vat of beer.

:(

[hapkidoman]

Greed to stay alive on the part of corporate heads may save us all.

Isn't that a scary thought. Currently our greed and consequent technological advances have kept us ahead of the Destroy-The-World curve. It seems to me that with ascencion of Capitalism and advent of an accessible global economy the Destroy-The-World curve is steepening rapidly as unregulated players enter the market to satiate their greed (I.E China, Russia).

I think the question here is will our corporate heads share their proprietary knowledge to those who cannot afford to pay their price?

[DiGiMac]

Be a skeptic and don’t litter

My biggest doubts about the warming/pollution connection come from the data they are using. Some "experts" and "scientists" are very selective about what they take into consideration and what factors are relevant.
Not enough thought is given to the differences between data collection in 1850 and 2000. Technological developments - just because now we can detect something doesn't mean it wasn't there before - sounds basic but it's disappointing how often learned authorities make direct comparisons between incompatible data-sets; diffusion - in 1850 there were fewer measuring stations, nearly all in cities. There is a whole series of factors that influence proper reading of statistics and if you start ignoring some because they mess your results (ie you've already decided what you want to see and you need some numbers to back you up), that's bad science. Not evil, but not good either.

People make money off of spreading these kind of scary ideas.

One of the first jobs of the prehistoric shamen was predicting the weather. The more we learn the more we realise how much we still don't understand. The big craze in research now is computer modelling but your model can only be as good as the data you put in (see above). We still can't accurately predict the weather for next week but we base government policy on primitive, partial computer models that make coloured patterns on a screen, rather like 'reading' scattered bones.

[DiGiMac]

the Destroy-The-World curve is steepening rapidly as unregulated players enter the market to satiate their greed (I.E China, Russia).

Which countries do you consider to be "regulated" ?
Who regulates them ?
If the regulators are external, does anyone take any notice of what they say ?

[DiGiMac]

Oh yeah. I may be sceptical about the so-called science being thrown around to support the greenhouse effect theory and mankind's possible connection to it's apparent increase, but I am definitely anti-pollution as TheAd says "for it's own sake". Whether or not it's doing everything they say, it's inherently BAD.
Air and water pollution are just large scale littering. You don't spill junk all over your own garden so don't come and do it in mine or in this public space.

[Groakes]

Global warming or no - the signs aint good. The First World needs to fuel its markets and its life style through unrestrained consumuption. Unfortunately the resources are finite. Hydrocarbons, required for fuel and plastics etc, are becoming more and more difficult ,that is expensive to extract. More and more production leads to the generation of more and more waste in turn which leads to greater and greater environmental damage which leads to more and more resources being used to make the life of the First World more comfortable....

Entropy tends to a maximum....

Global warming, declining bio-diversity and other symptoms of environmental damage can only be changed through a radical rethink in what we as First (and Second) world citizens want out of life. While we continue to consume at ever increasing rates we are not changing things for the better. As the "Screaming Blue Messiahs" put it.... Smash the Marketplace.....

[Groakes]

Here's something else to bare in mind
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4226917.stm

The more you look the more you see.... But of course environmental maintenance yields only losses on quarterly balance sheets so don't expect any action soon :x

[markb777]

yes researchers have discovered why the ice caps were melting...it was once thought that increasing CO2 levels were the cause by global warming...but this photo has been taken proving without a doubt that polar bears having too many BBQs was the real reason the ice caps were melting...

[Tales from Tanelorn]

When all biological negative feedback systems have been destroyed positive feedback will quickly result in a climate somewhere between our present one and the one on Venus! When the tipping point has passed it will likely be unstopable.