You Guys Need To See This...

[Dracomax]

personally, i have some issues with the whole global warming thing.

not that I don't think it's happening, and I'll even buy that it's human caused(though most of the evidence that has been brought up is correlative, rather than causative), but I think people tend to overstate the case, especially in movies dealing with it. for example, most of the reputable figures for flooding I've seen tend to be in the neighborhood of a few feet over the next hundred years. not good, but not the massive flooding I hear people panicking about in the next 10. If anything should be worried about, it's alge die-offs from the cold arctic water entering the currents, because they produce large portions of the earths oxygen. however, none of the global warming "cures" has a real chance of reversing arctic melt in time to make a great difference.

exagerations and hollywood science aside, however, the thing that upsets me the most about the global warming advocates is the suggestion that we should start doing these things now in order to stop global warming.

fact is, we should have been doing these things 20 years ago, for dozens of reasons. clean energy, and smokeless coal plants are a fact, and they should be used because we like to breath clean air. we should have been looking at alternative fuels because a. oil isn't going to last forever, and b. most of the oil producing countries are run by douchebags. turning off lights, maintaining vehicles, and many other "green" ideas are just good alll around for buisnesses and the general populace, because most of them save money in the long run, and it's stupid to overfill our dwindling landfill capacity.

[[AOD]]

As someone who lives in Canada, there is a certain appeal to global warming. However, it's still probably not good for the planet, especially for those who live in hotter areas.

This is actually one of the predicted benefits of global warming. Global warming is expected to give Canada longer, warmer summers and much milder winters, while enhancing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are expected to give strong boosts to Canada's agricultural provinces, such as Alberta and Saskatchewan. On the whole, when you look at most models' predicted outcomes for the next hundred years based upon a business-as-usual doubling of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere by 2050, it looks like Canada will be one of the biggest beneficiaries from climate change, along with other northern nations, such as Russia and the Scandinavian countries.

This, of course, neglects to account for other effects of climate change, such as the spread of tropic pestilences northward and migration of refugees from areas severely impacted by climate change, such as coastal regions and the midwestern United States, where conditions are expected to trend towards drier and dustier -- effectively re-transforming America's breadbasket into desert or semi-arid areas.

exagerations and hollywood science aside, however, the thing that upsets me the most about the global warming advocates is the suggestion that we should start doing these things now in order to stop global warming.

fact is, we should have been doing these things 20 years ago, for dozens of reasons.

Entirely true. Much debate now centres around questions like "Has it already been too late? Have we already tripped one of these CO2 positive feedback loops and thus are committed to climate change that slips out of our control?" One example is currently seen rates of permafrost melting in eastern Siberia and northern Canada. Permafrost, you see, contains locked up within its permanently frozen (hence the name) soil, organic matter that has been sealed in ice for thousands of years, ever since the height of the last ice age some 25,000 years ago. Thawing the permafrost allows bacterial decomposition to occur at a much faster rate, and when the anaerobic bacteria responsible for this decomposition eat organic matter, they release methane, a gas that is 23 times stronger than CO2 at absorbing infrared radiation. The released methane catalyzes a cycle in which more methane is released, causing greater and faster permafrost melting, and further methane release.

A survey published three or four years ago, I believe, showed that indeed, this permafrost feedback effect is currently underway in the Arctic regions. In fact, the researchers were astonished to find that methane was escaping from the ground at such a rate that it was unable to re-freeze in the wintertime.

Aside from causing property destruction through settling and landslides -- prominent examples are occurring in Alaska at this moment -- the permafrost-methane feedback is one line of evidence that points to the conclusion that we may already be on the track towards unstoppable global warming.

@~[AOD]

[Rkolter]

exagerations and hollywood science aside, however, the thing that upsets me the most about the global warming advocates is the suggestion that we should start doing these things now in order to stop global warming.

fact is, we should have been doing these things 20 years ago, for dozens of reasons.

There is a disconnect here. Are you really upset at current advocates and their platform for not campaigning retroactively into the past, altering history to be more to your liking?

I've just managed to get the chicken to fit back into the egg, and I still end up with pissed off cramped chickens. We're nowhere near ready to send environmentalists back in time. Your demands that we alter the timeline simply aren't going to be met without significant additional funding.

[Dracomax]

exagerations and hollywood science aside, however, the thing that upsets me the most about the global warming advocates is the suggestion that we should start doing these things now in order to stop global warming.

fact is, we should have been doing these things 20 years ago, for dozens of reasons.

There is a disconnect here. Are you really upset at current advocates and their platform for not campaigning retroactively into the past, altering history to be more to your liking?

I've just managed to get the chicken to fit back into the egg, and I still end up with pissed off cramped chickens. We're nowhere near ready to send environmentalists back in time. Your demands that we alter the timeline simply aren't going to be met without significant additional funding.

no. what I'm upset about is the fact we knew about all these problems 20 years ago and did nothing until global warming came along, and then everyone starts arguing about this one aspect of the overall problem.

the fact is, we need to stop arguing about why we need to do these things, and do them because they're just plain darn good ideas, not because it's the latest fad.

as for the time machine, I have $20. will that be enough?

[Rickford]

Wizards will fix it when it gets too hot for them to wear thick robes comfortably.

[[AOD]]

Now here's an interesting question I'd like to pose to those of you visiting this thread. A comment I've heard tossed around in regards to this guy's argument - that the potential risks of doing nothing about global warming outweigh the possible risks from doing something and global warming turning out to be false -- was that it was a version of Pascal's Wager. What do you think? Is this another version of Pascal's Wager?

I would tend to disagree and say no, since it is possible to scientifically prove that global warming is either real or not real based on evidence we have at the present, while it is physically impossible to prove the existence of God.

Any opinions?

?~[AOD]

[Jesusabdullah]

It sounds somewhat analogous, yes. Though, changing the energy infrastructure of an entire world may be tougher than defining ones personal beliefs.

I should probably watch that video.

Edit: Also, it's probably more apt because there aren't really multiple mutually exclusive global warming theories running around the same way there are multiple religions.

[Rkolter]

Pascal's Wager comes up whenever someone doesn't like the conclusions of a risk assessment.

But this isn't like Pascal's Wager except in the broadest sense. While Global Warming isn't a proven fact, there is a significant body of scientific evidence that suggests there is a high probability it is happening. Even the skeptical admit it's a matter of scale - only the fringe say Global Warming is a myth; most admit it's possible, and merely differ in how possible. The different hypotheses about Global Warming still stand on the position that it is happening, and simply disagree on causes.

And, as Dracomax pointed out, many of the solutions involve changes that are better for society in the long run. At least some of the risk of doing something about global warming is paid off with gains that will happen regardless of if global warming is real or not.

It would be like if in Pascal's Wager, those who believed in God glowed brightly while harp music played around them when they died, and those who did not believe in God caught fire when they died. While there would still be no absolute proof of God, at a minimum there'd be strong evidence in favor of the benefits of believing in Him.

[[AOD]]

But this isn't like Pascal's Wager except in the broadest sense. While Global Warming isn't a proven fact, there is a significant body of scientific evidence that suggests there is a high probability it is happening. Even the skeptical admit it's a matter of scale - only the fringe say Global Warming is a myth; most admit it's possible, and merely differ in how possible. The different hypotheses about Global Warming still stand on the position that it is happening, and simply disagree on causes.

It's worthwhile to note that there are no truly "known" facts in science. Even the most fundamentally accepted of theories in modern science, such as evolution, plate tectonics, and relativity, are not known to 100% certainty. There is always room for improvement, and for a newer, truer theory to come in and tackle the status quo. Hence while global warming "theory" is not "perfectly certain" a substantial body of modern science, in fields such as population biology, epidemiology, meteorology, ecology, oceanography, and others, in fact depend upon global warming theory for many of their forecasted results, in the same way as GPS systems depend on the theory of relativity to make their measurements.

@~[AOD]

[Rkolter]

But this isn't like Pascal's Wager except in the broadest sense. While Global Warming isn't a proven fact, there is a significant body of scientific evidence that suggests there is a high probability it is happening. Even the skeptical admit it's a matter of scale - only the fringe say Global Warming is a myth; most admit it's possible, and merely differ in how possible. The different hypotheses about Global Warming still stand on the position that it is happening, and simply disagree on causes.

It's worthwhile to note that there are no truly "known" facts in science. Even the most fundamentally accepted of theories in modern science, such as evolution, plate tectonics, and relativity, are not known to 100% certainty. There is always room for improvement, and for a newer, truer theory to come in and tackle the status quo. Hence while global warming "theory" is not "perfectly certain" a substantial body of modern science, in fields such as population biology, epidemiology, meteorology, ecology, oceanography, and others, in fact depend upon global warming theory for many of their forecasted results, in the same way as GPS systems depend on the theory of relativity to make their measurements.

@~[AOD]

The video goes into this to some depth. It seems that while people will readily admit they don't know more about plumbing than a plumber, they assume they know more about science than a scientist. They accept the sound of running water in their walls as evidence of a leak, but won't accept anything short of absolute fact from science.

[McDuffies]

It's worthwhile to note that there are no truly "known" facts in science. Even the most fundamentally accepted of theories in modern science, such as evolution, plate tectonics, and relativity, are not known to 100% certainty. There is always room for improvement, and for a newer, truer theory to come in and tackle the status quo.

Though it's often not so much a negation of the old theory but it's expansion. Like how theory of relativity is expansion of Newton's laws, that is Newton's laws are basically a special case of theory of relativity.
Of course nothing is known with 100% certainity. I could be dreaming all this.

[RPin]

As someone who lives in Canada, there is a certain appeal to global warming. However, it's still probably not good for the planet, especially for those who live in hotter areas.

Well, instead of moving to a coastal city, in a few years the beach is probably coming to my city, so it's all good.

[Risky]

Hey listen here younguns, don't think we weren't working on fixing things 20 years ago. We did quite a bit. Enjoy your ozone layer, we had to fix that after our parents ripped a hole in it. Never hear about the ozone anymore? That's because the hole pretty much closed. Because we stopped putting the crap in hairspray that our parents were using to kill our planet. The amount of trees in the U.S. has also dramatically increased over the last century, which unfortunately means most of them are under 100 years old, but at least we're not as bad as those 1800s industrialists who had pretty much denuded the continent. The fact that people in London can breathe tells you that things have improved dramatically.

We can fix detrimental global climate change because it's not even the first thing we've fixed. Even if you argue some of our "fixes" weren't actually causative, it's definitely better than it would have been if we'd done nothing.

[Dracomax]

Hey listen here younguns, don't think we weren't working on fixing things 20 years ago. We did quite a bit. Enjoy your ozone layer, we had to fix that after our parents ripped a hole in it. Never hear about the ozone anymore? That's because the hole pretty much closed. Because we stopped putting the crap in hairspray that our parents were using to kill our planet. The amount of trees in the U.S. has also dramatically increased over the last century, which unfortunately means most of them are under 100 years old, but at least we're not as bad as those 1800s industrialists who had pretty much denuded the continent. The fact that people in London can breathe tells you that things have improved dramatically.

We can fix detrimental global climate change because it's not even the first thing we've fixed. Even if you argue some of our "fixes" weren't actually causative, it's definitely better than it would have been if we'd done nothing.

I'm not saying that nothing has been done environmentaly in the last 50 years.
but...

when I was in grade school, about 1987 or so, environmentalism was big. we watched captain planet and had assebies and lectures about recycling, using less water, and saving power. then.... it more or less died. people stopped talking about things.

then, around the early 2000s, global warming started becoming a pop culture issue. all of a sudden, humanity is in danger of extinction! and whatwere the proposed solutions? more or less exactly the same things that we had been told to do in the eighties, with the exception that now we had the technology to make things like hybrids practical.

Eventually, someone's going to come along and say, "Global warmings subsided, and it was never quite as dangerous as the worst of the doom and gloomers claimed" and we'll go right back to not doing the kinds of things we should be doing for the environment. until the next crisis comes along.

and I read once that most of the oxygen produced by trees is produced by fairly young and/or small trees, as larger, older trees use more oxygen. on the other hand, they provide an ecosystem for wildlife. I just don't see a major problem with having trees younger than 100 years old, for the most part.

as for fixing climate change, I think we can fix the human part, but it won't be quick. even counting only from the industrial revolution, that's 100+ years of damage. just stopping the things that make the problem isn't going to bring a fix in the next 10 years.
the non-human elemts for global warming are probably out of our hands, given the current levels of technology, though.

[Rkolter]

Sorry Risky - I like your arugements and I like what you have to say, but the Ozone hole in particular is still a big issue.

http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/

And Dracomax - that's human nature. The crisis isn't a crisis... what's the next thing on TV? There are huge numbers of people still living in FEMA trailers from Katrina... never hear about them, and that was only three years ago. People say that the Y2K bug wasn't anything big. But that's only because of the effort put into the fix. Who keeps Afghanistan in mind, when Iraq is in the news? Humanity moves on to the next issue the second the current issue isn't interesting anymore.

As for fixing things - you're right on the human effect. Any change we make now will not act as a brick wall against Global Warming but more like a brake - changes will occur but they will occur over a number of years, or maybe decades.

That's why I've always said that we need to find things that will interest the average person. Make CFC bulbs roughtly the same price as incandescent and then outlaw incandescent bulbs. Offer a tax-exemption to people who recycle. Offer a tax-break to people who buy a hybrid. Give a discount to anyone who replaces their toilets with low-flow versions.

People will do what they HAVE to do, so long as they are being watched, or are interested. People will do what they WANT to do, all the time. You can't make people WANT to fix global warming. You can make them WANT to do things that end up fixing global warming.

[[AOD]]

People will do what they HAVE to do, so long as they are being watched, or are interested. People will do what they WANT to do, all the time. You can't make people WANT to fix global warming. You can make them WANT to do things that end up fixing global warming.

Now that right there are some wise words. Evironmentalists who want to stop global warming should take this to heart and invest in a creative marketing team to brainstorm fun, easy, cheap fixes that ordinary people can understand and will want to do, simply out of their own short-term interests. That would be a great idea!

@~[AOD]

[KWill]

Hey listen here younguns, don't think we weren't working on fixing things 20 years ago. We did quite a bit. Enjoy your ozone layer, we had to fix that after our parents ripped a hole in it. Never hear about the ozone anymore? That's because the hole pretty much closed. Because we stopped putting the crap in hairspray that our parents were using to kill our planet.

Good heavens, no. Cataract incidents and skin cancer in everything from humans to animals are still increasing. It'll be a while before the situation is fixed because the residence times of CFCs are pretty long. A good deal of what we put up 20 years ago is still there, doing damage.