Politiscience....Global Warming

The main thing that most scientists don't know is what global warming's effect will be. There are a lot of guesses, but, up until maybe no less than a year ago, most of it was guessing and biased science. It is a huge jump to say that global warming and the recent hurricane seasons are related, I doubt any sound science would support that (I doubt any sound science has even been completed).

I've never been much on the side of the environmentalists on this debate, mostly because I do believe that the planet is very, very resilient and humans can certainly withstand heat increases, what with genetically-altered crops to get us our food. And we'll certainly protect the animals we like.

Animals and plants go extinct every day, ones we don't even know about, so that's not really much of it.

I think the big furor that we're going to see is mostly economic, as many people have to move from just about the dumbest place you can build a city: right next to the ocean. I guess it's not our fault, it was necessary to have those ports back then, but inland is the place to be, dudes. Vacation at the beach.

What I'm for is responsible and sustainable living. I agree that getting off oil is a shitload more important than cleaning up the air. I want to live cleanly because I want to walk outside and not see a cloud of brown blanketing my city.

China doesn't give a fuck about other parts of its environment, like the Yellow River, so I don't really see why they'd care about the air.

Originally Posted by PattyNBK

As far as I've read, global warming exists, but not because of anything humanity has done. As previously cited, warming and cooling is a natural cycle. This is most likely due to moving slightly closer or away from the sun over the course of centuries, as there is no real way to have a perfect orbit.

It is true that the orbit is a large contributing factor, you see a pattern in global warming, every 11,000 years, the graph looks exactly the same.

http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynolog...climastro.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

The shape of our orbit changes from round to ellipse. We are on, currently, a very round orbit, which means that the difference in solar radiation in the summer and winter is very, very low.

The tilt of the Earth with relation to the sun also cycles about every 40,000 years. We are near the middle of the cycle, which also means there is less variation between the seasons.

The Earth also moves off its orbit slightly, it won't stay on a 2D plane with relation to the sun.

Most people who bang the drum about how awful humans are and how we are destroying the planet and such don't even know that this exists. That is what bothers me about the environmentalists in this debate. If you want changes, then educate yourselves. Hell, you'll see that these theories can't really be proven as large effects any more than CO2 can, we just don't know enough yet to make sweeping changes.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by a lurker

It doesn't matter whether the planet is very resiliant or wether human ingenuity will make the banana survive the century. What does matter is how expensive the process will be. Certainly an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Well, and I agree. The largest problems are economic, but, as usually happens, when people/companies/goverments jump into a problem without thinking it through thoroughly, they end up spending a fuckload more money in the end, which is what Kyoto would have done (maximum cost for minimal impact).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

It's not saying that it isn't a bad thing, but I do believe there are more important things to worry about than Unnamed Bug being able to stick around.

Originally Posted by How Unfortunate

This goes for the entire 6 billion of us, does it? :eyebrow: It's a good thing farmers are wealthy and dynamic enough to move, or retrain and retool for new crops, if the climate shifts. Then there's the fact that we never get food from say, trees that have to be decades old for harvesting. And it's also good that the moving of sea level or the drying of rivers or the chaning of weather patterns can't impact access to freshwater or good farmland. We're a pretty fucking lucky species.

I'm not exactly sure what your point is. You seem to understand that we are talking about global climate which implies not only a wide range of the Earth (all of it) but a wide swath of time.

Again, the biggest problem of warming is that people chose to live by the oceans because you can't move, you know, skyscrapers. And if humans never touched the air, the Earth would heat up naturally at some point. Maybe we accelerated it early. But the natural time for it would have come around eventually and we'd still be fucked.

I'm not sure why you think that farmers are going to be in such trouble. Genetically-modifed crops can be (and not necessarily now, but soon) made to live in all kinds of climates. And if it becomes economically infeasable to grow, I dunno, bananas, then we'll start eating other, more adaptable fruits. Are you saying if the Earth heats up, there will be no crops which will be around? None that can adapt?

Not to mention that people in Africa are starving now. Are you not worried about people eating now? You only care about crops when it might come close (yeah, right) to actually affecting you? So, you're not really worried about global warming, but local warming.

See, this is the environmental lobby's problem: people like you. It's not as extreme as you say; calls of hellfire and brimstone is what led average Americans to not give any shit until very, very recently. It's not as extreme as the people who are crying for no change say; humans can and do need to act better. There needs to be a happy balance, so caving into this notion of fear of the world ending is incredibly dangerous. And the squeakiest wheel gets the grease: there are a fuckload more problems a lot more pressing than global warming, yet somehow people act like someone is raping their child.

I didn't think much of Michael Crichton's book because I don't like being preached to and I just don't think it is good to only show one side of science. But the whole "state of fear" thing is real and, you, my friend, have fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Skexis

Well I don't suppose I need to ask what you think of Al Gore. I'm curious as to what statistics his book uses, though, and exactly how he makes his argument in this film.

I lean more towards the alarmis state of mind myself, but it is interesting to hear soem of these arguments people are making. What's frustrating is that everyone seems to be acknowledging the problem to one degree or another, but to the best of my knowledge no efforts are being made to research alternatives. Alternative fuels, yes, but not alternative combustion engines, for instance. Funding is being spent on reduction instead of on ideas for prevention/human accommodation.

I dunno about Al Gore. I just read this month's article about him in Wired. I don't feel as dismissive of him as I do of Michael Crichton, maybe because Crichton is an author of fiction and Al Gore is pretty well respected on environmental issues. The article made me wish (again) he had won the presidency.

I know Al Gore is not a fearmonger. From what I read, he is on the mindset of for there to be any reliable and workable solutions to solving any environmental problems, there must be an economic reason for doing so, which is a point we're getting to. For example, enough research has been done by companies now that they know they can save money finding ways to create less waste, as disposing of waste is becoming increasingly expensive.

And that is kind of the problem. I wish technology was advancing faster, but how much money has GM poured into trying to get hydrogen fuel cells to work (maybe as much in advertising as in actual R&D, but still)? I heard on NPR Friday that most experts think we are still 20 years away from having reliable fuel cells on the road, and that is after a good solid 10 years of working at it.

Edit: I just watched the trailer for the Al Gore movie. It does seem to use fear as the major motivator, which I don't appreciate, but from what I hear of the film, that isn't the case at all.

How ya doing, buddy?

Japan and Mexico City both have oxygen booths, which is more for an oxygen high than anything.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

In some regions, elderly folks have to have air-tanks with them to breathe through (supposedly).

Uh, many people in the US have this and completely unrelated to air pollution; it is called "being ill". COPD, asthma, hypoxemia, etc.

I was speaking idiomatically.