A very convenient Truth ?

Don

You are coming over as rather smug here. Maybe that's the intention?

Nigel

quote:

Maybe that's the intention?

That wasn't the intention, but i won't quibble.

I'm more interested in what people think is

The problem
The cause
The aim (of those who are concerned about global warming)
The probability of success in achieving this aim

of course I have my own thoughts and these don't line up with the likes of Al Gore, or REW and their wind-farms on hill tops.

My perception is that modern humans have intervened in the normal cycle of periodical glaciation
this has been caused by farming starting about 10,000 years ago
been accelerated by industrialisation over the past 200 years
and population explosion in the past 100 years

What evidence do we have that global warming will be an unmittigated disaster

Should we aim to allow natural glacial cycles to restart?

Should we try to engineer a climate balance based on an environmental state that existed (say) 50 years ago, or 500 years ago, or 5,000 years ago (a bit like King Canute IMHO )

Smug? No!

Concerned? yes! But only concerned that big-business is cashing in while others are pissing in the wind.

Cheers

Don

Don

quote:

of course I have my own thoughts

Let me look in my crystal ball.....wait, it's becoming clear....unsustainable world population levels.....

The problem - too many people
The cause - mankinds natural genetic programming to breed
The aim - reduce global warming to save the planet by reducing the population
The solution - remove the reproductive apparatus of 75% of the male population at birth based on lottery system....

Sorry Don, but I think I know where this is heading.....apologies in advance if I'm wrong.

Cheers

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Exiled Highlander:
The solution - remove the reproductive apparatus of 75% of the male population at birth based on lottery system....

Cheers

Jim

Jim,

You got the gender wrong. Gotta tackle the female population otherwise that 25% of the male population can invest in a bike and get around more!

Willy.

Willy

Is that a prophetic name in this thread given my last post?

Good point....never thought of that aspect. So, Mick was right in his "get on yer bike" approach in the recession thread?!

Sorry to all for the flippancy on this important subject but it's been a long day!

Cheers

Jim

I had a teacher Phil in grad school for Landscape Architecture, If you're interested in reading his book he follows the civilizations that rose and fell mostly because they used up the resources, tired out the soils, cause erosion, and then did it all over again somewhere else. It's not just our industrial revolution tho that sped things up considerably.

Philip Pregill Landscapes in History; Design and Planning in the Western Tradition.

He covers early history and Europe, Nancy Volkman covers the Americas It is now THE text in all major planning and design universities.

I confess I"ve not read half of it. I was on a 10 week study Tour of Italy with him and had the best time South of Florence but went all over Italy except Sicily and Sardinia. The school bus would take us all to a hilltown, he'd give a short orientation and tell the students when to meet and where, they'd all wander off and we'd look at each other and go for a macchiato.

In Venice he said don't go out tonight we have a long day tomorrow. I had 4 roomates that left me alone they didn't think much of this old guy (42) in their room. 7:30 AM after breakfast Phil said "I don't understand why they're dragging so much?" I said, It's tough to look chipper when you come in at 4:30 drunk.

You've heard of the Batan Death March. Phil was just raging around Venice, these poor kids whined and looked to me for help. I said, "This is Disneyland for adults and especially designers, LOOK AROUND YOU! " and left. We ended up at Guggenheim's Plazzo, I raced inside, the scattered bodies of the near dead were all over the street and courtyard.

We had a good laugh over that one.

Sorry I digressed and didn't answer your 4 questions but that would really be a doctoral thesis. Everything is interconnected and it starts in the solar system and ends up in a grain of sand. Every breath you take alters the world.

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
I'm more interested in what people think is

The problem
The cause
The aim (of those who are concerned about global warming)
The probability of success in achieving this aim

Don

The problem - chemical and hydraulic (think water use, oceans, ect...) changes in the environment are threatening huge changes in human life styles.

The cause - human activity and solar cycles.

The aim - mitigate the damage and change attitudes.

About success - Who can say? When it gets bad enough, things will change.

Is that clear enough?

BTW, you won't find me hugging any trees. Environmental activism is just another life style with a big carbon footprint. But that doesn't mean it isn't real ...

Take a look at the changes in world population between 1900 and 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...h#Population_figures

Kind of spells out the problem.

John

Wow Frank....pinning the global population increase since 1900 on GWB is a new one....

Jim

quote:

The solution - remove the reproductive apparatus of 75% of the male population at birth based on lottery system....

How would that help? The guys with the thing left will just do it much more...

JohanR

quote:

Sorry Don, but I think I know where this is heading.....apologies in advance if I'm wrong.

apologies accepted Jim.

Cheers

Don

It depends how you look at it. The world moves in cycles, and we are living at just one very minute point along one particular stretch.

Global Warming is a natural process. Earth, at the moment, is still coming out of the last ice age. Hence there are still ice sheet and some glaciers etc. Evidence suggests that in the past there have been times when there were no ice sheet or glaciers. So to a point, what is happening is natural.

Now obviously us humans are having an impact. Speeding up the process or making it worse, whatever it is, there are consequences. However, as there hasn't been a situation like this before, we don't know what might happen.

Man kind, in its currently evolved state, feels the need to try and save everything. Plant and animal species alike, we want to make sure as much lives on as possible. Whether these species would have done so or not without our intervention we will never know. There is a part of me that believes we are just holding out on the inevitable.

As for the population problem, that film 'The Day After Tomorrow', whilst grossly exaggerating the process, was fairly factually accurate. When the ice caps and glaciers melt enough, and the ocean's salinity is reduced to a certain point, the Thermohaline Circulation will collapse. This has the knock on effect of causing the Gulf Stream and other such sources of warm air to collapse also. Over an extended period of time, global temperatures then plummet, a lot of the worlds population will be wiped out and things will start again.

This is obviously just my opinion.

Earth is doing what it always does, it is just inconvenient that in this particular cycle , we are living. It could have been and ice age, humans were all but eradicated by the last, down to several 10s of thousands maybe.
Earth does not care for us really, it just does it's own thing. I guess we don't really care either.
Adapt or die.

quote:

Re population could then come via the Taliban women??

FF

Glad I won't be around for that.

quote:

When I asked each one to describe, in relation to global warming

The problem

The earth is getting warmer.....well - some scientists think this is factual, but is it?
We don't really know how much warmer - assuming it is getting warmer.
There is a build-up of carbon in the atmosphere - to levels not seen on earth for a long time. (allegedly)
We don't really know what the consequences of warming/carbon will be, eg will we reach a disaterous "tipping-point" (of no return)
Are there other "problems" eg water shortage, violent and rapid climate fluctuations over years/decades rather than centuaries/millenia?

So, what is the problem, and what evidence do we have that the problem actually exists? (perhaps we can consider my other three questions - cause/solution/success - once the problem has been pinned down)

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
A very convenient Truth ?


No doubt this forum will be able to provide the necessary clarity and vision to overcome the scepticism of people like me.


Don

Don,

This is very unlikely because:

1. This forum is not widely populated with climate scientists
2. Sceptics by their nature tend to remain sceptical whatever evidence is presented

My view is that:

1. The earth is currently warming up. The debate will continue as to what extent man it contributing towards this and to what extent this is a natural cycle but the current increase in temperature is quite well documented (check out the NASA website for historical data).
2. If the "greenhouse" model is accepted then mankind's contribution of several trillion tonnes of CO2 cannot be helping the situation. Probably the biggest factor in our increase in CO2 production is population growth.

What I really do not like is the "politicisation" of global warming with governments using it as an excuse for "green" taxes and exploitation of "carbon trading". Neither of these measures are likely to make any difference to the current situation.

All the best,
Trev

quote:

2. Sceptics by their nature tend to remain sceptical whatever evidence is presented

I'm a more receptive sceptic than normal, but only with respect to well researched evidence and remedial proposals.

The evidence I have seen, strongly supports the idea that the earth is warming up. Without man's intervention (eg farming, industry, population) the earth should be cycling towards the next glacial maximum - and it isn't!

However, I can't see any undisputed evidence as to how much the earth is warming up and what the consequence (and associated time-scale) of this will be.

Meanwhile, the current politicians are pissing in the wind (the West) or avoiding the issue (India and China), whilst Big-business is manipulatively coining it in. But given para 3 above, why should we be bothered?

All IMHO of course.

Cheers

Don

Global warming is a sore topic here in New Orleans. Katrina hit 4 or so years ago, and knocked the city flat on its back. I will not see it return to normal in my lifetime.

The last big storms I saw were Betsy and Camille. They put pictures in the paper. Katrina was at least 30 times larger than those storms. Katrina filled the Gulf of Mexico. It impacted a coastline about equal to the entire United Kingdom.

It's hurricane season now. There are two tropical storms leaving Africa. The first is no threat to us, but the second will be uncertain until about the middle of next week, if conditions don't change.

You can feel it on your back, down here.

It's very hard not to think about global warming. Hope is in short supply at the moment. Fear is in the air.

But it's not as bad as all that :-)

Scientists can't agree whether the (Milankocitch) inter-glacial cycle, without mankind's intervention, would be heading towards the next glacial maxim or whether we (as a few hundred hunter-gatherers - with or without a few Neandertals) would be enjoying the existing interglacial warmth fo another 50,000 years.

Has science failed?

Cheers

Don

The sheer volume of conflicting scientific evidence on global warming is sufficient to ensure emotional paralysis on this issue, if you try to play close attention.

Until something happens that puts a face on it.

I had to evacuate and stay away from my home for 6 weeks. My daughters lost their homes and I lost my job. My town is still in deep distress.

The average hurricane season temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have risen 4 degrees since the early '70s. No hills and valleys. It's been a fairly uniform rise. That's a lot of water to heat up 4 degrees (Fahrenheit).

When a storm blows into the Gulf, it sucks up the heat. The heat in the water is the primary energy source. It's no accident Katrina was so big. As long as they water stays hot, they'll all be big storms, barring the salvation of shearing air currents.

That's the face of global warming for me. Watching the weather for six months and hoping to be given a free pass for one more year.

Lots of people never came back. You can't help wondering who'll be left after the next one.

I did like the bit about the environmentalist already having their house in the woods. Kind of like Al Gore....

I personally am not responsible for overpopulation. Only one offspring and promptly got fixed!

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:
The sheer volume of conflicting scientific evidence on global warming is sufficient to ensure emotional paralysis on this issue, if you try to play close attention.

That's simply not true Mike. There is no evidence that global warming (as we now see it) has happened at this rate previously (which is not explained by some other factor). The scientific evidence re: climate change is overwhelming, the conflict only occurs where folk try to provide a theory to explain matters other than the effect of man.

It's the tragedy of this whole affair, pseudo-scientists have muddied the waters.

The actual evidence is extremely robust...

Some folk would rather believe the half baked theories of some Geography Professor from London however...wonder if they'd trust him to perform brain surgery on a loved one? ...probably.

So the RS is to believed without question then?

quote:

Originally posted by Mat Cork:
That's simply not true Mike.

I was referring to the cloud of pesudo-scientific misinformation that magically appears when I bring the topic up to any republican in my neighborhood.

A short lecture on Katrina followed by some comments on storm tracking usually shuts them up :-)

quote:

What was it that TS Eliot said?

Can I have tea and toast for breakfast?