Which one in particular? Why, is one headed our way? I thought people had said the problem on Earth was too many people? Could be a quick fix. :biggrin:
For Pete (without quoting him at tedious length - just go back and read the long post above): Have always enjoyed a vigorous discussion, Pete, even if I was never a member of the Union. And I’m used to holding the contrarian view. Maybe something in my nature (isn’t riding bikes contrarian, when you consider society as a whole?). Perhaps an ice age is/was upon us, although this is news to me. What is the basic theory and what are the observable facts that would lead us to this possible conclusion? It’s something I have clearly missed. AGW, if it means rising sea levels, is undoubtedly a bad thing as far as the human race is concerned, as it means that the populations in their locality will suffer greatly. I am not sure that the Bangladeshis will be overjoyed even if Canada throws open its northern expanses to them. This will be unlikely to happen. More likely, the Canadians (the Siberians, the Greenlanders) will just be glad that it isn’t so cold where they live. If New York or London is threatened with submersion, I very much doubt that Britons and East Coast Americans will find much solace in the fact that tomatoes are now cultivable in the Arctic Circle. You suggest other solutions to the problem, if the “problem” is caused by CO2. Again, you seem to possess information that I don’t. What are these solutions which have been poo-pooed by the Green “lobby”? It is so that Britain by itself cannot save the planet. However, the Western democracies do like to show leadership (could be deemed “meddling”) in all sorts of areas if they feel they threaten their interests. It would be nice if Britain could show some leadership here, rather than an insatiable appetite for consumer goods from lands which don’t seem overly bothered about climate change. I am also not advocating a “shutting down” of the shopping mall that is now Britain plc or going back to the stone age. We both know that no one is going to outlaw air transport any time soon. But do you need to heat supermarkets to boiling point in the depths of winter, when you go shopping in your down jacket and scarf? There are some quick – maybe small – wins. But with more foresight and leadership, Britain could actually be spearheading the technologies to combat climate change. And if we are, there could be more leadership and investment in bringing them to market. God knows that Britain needs to reinvent its industry if it isn’t going to go bankrupt in the next 30 years (as a recent Gov’t report appeared to say it will). I have no comment on whether the current rubbish summer has anything to do with AGW or even GW. It could easily be a random event. Indeed, the fact that about the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the last 20 or whatever it is, could also be completely random. The Euromillions lottery numbers this week were all over 30. It COULD be random. But if there was AGW going on, you’d expect to see some changes in the weather – QED. If you observe these, and also observe unprecedented levels of CO2, you’d be not too outlandish to postulate that the two things could very well be connected. The Green lobby is surely saying that we should act now because if it turns out that the two things are connected and we don’t act now, we could be in for a very unpleasant experience. The downside is some changes in our unprecedented comfort levels (in the developed world). Not to act would be to be completely certain that there wasn’t a problem, or that nothing could be done about it. Or that you just don’t care, because it isn’t going to affect you much personally. Do you really care if polar bears become extinct? Finally, may I say that it gives me no joy whatsoever to think that AGW is a reality. I have taken more than my fair share of planes over the years, and I love riding my Ducati. I don’t want those pleasures taken away from me. But equally, I don’t really want to deal with mass immigration, a totally changed habitat, and repeated global catastrophes. It’s very easy (though I am not suggesting that this is your mindset) to tar all those ringing warning bells as sandal-wearing, bearded, tree-hugging Casandras. That to my mind is a massive over-simplification. One thing this debate has brought home to me is that I need to read even more about this, to have more facts at my disposal, and to weigh up both sides of the debate. But I’d be amazed if I started to be sceptical about what I believe is a scientific consensus. If you want to point me at any literature that suggests that there is no scientific consensus, I’ll read it. I will say once again that the green partisans are not the vested interests and that there is no conspiracy. Changing our habits and curtailing our growth, pleasures and wealth is a total pain in the arse for pretty much everyone. And if it were a big vote-catcher, the Greens would have been in power some time ago. For me, it suits the real conspirators – the climate-change neinsagers – to create this pseudo conspiracy. God knows these are very classic tactics (cf Stalinist Russia for how to employ them).
Its just that I would not ever bet against nature and indeed its a sure fire way of dealing with us and there are plenty of man made bugs etc that are untreatable...... oh eck! The issue of "too many people" is again all part of "conditioning" you into forming what you think is your view. Dont get me started....:biggrin:
Nature has a way of controlling even most rabbit style humping population. For example any A-sexual individuals or homosexual are a way of population control. Their counterparts also appear in other primate species, a homosexual gorilla must be scary. If that fails we will have big natural disaster or two caused kind off by our species. All that is natures way of controlling population of species. Why is it that our own ego tries to prevent that by assuming we are to blame and it should not be that way? How do we know that? Every dominant species on earth was wiped out at one stage. It is our turn now. Meteorite or global warming caused by us that will possibly destroy the planet it all leads to the same. Let mother nature do her job and we will all be fine. Stop trying to treat diseases that she is trying to introduce to lower our numbers, spot trying to treat infertility as that is also part of the plan, stop counteracting every single way mother nature is trying to control population growth. It will not be global warming that will doom us all it will be number of people. If we stop global warming we will only make the situation worse. Now how is that for a new point of view?
All sounds good Lucasz until they tell you you have meningitis or something. Not many people say "oh that's fine then. Just let me die. It's Mother Nature's way of controlling population".
I know that and despite what I put above I still think we should act, find cures and all that. However it should make you think we all assume GW is the issue but underlying issue is overpopulation. Nature is trying to cure all of this and we make it worse by being in the way. We should find ways of working with nature not against it. For example we cure diseases as they come but we limit the population growth, we do not try to cure infertility. As sad as it is people with such issue could just as well adopt, no need to add another.
Whatever your opinions on the subject the planet is bigger than all of us and will continue to exists long after we have all destroyed ourselves
Not all scientists are unanimous. It really is like the Emperor's New Clothes. So much political capital has been invested in AGW that there is no one who is prepared to say, hmm we might have got this wrong. Watts Up With That? | The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change
Well, that's kind. Fortunately, it doesn't take me as long to write these things as you might think. All pretty much trips off the keyboard!
Global warming doesn't exist - it's just random temperature change It exists but it's natural - nothing we could or should be doing about it It's almost certainly manmade and we should be urgently combatting it It's manmade - but there's no need to do anything I suspect that paradoxically the reality is that it is all of the above. Global temperatures have always changed driven by complex natural cycles and they always will. We need to allocate resources according to our real needs and problems, and there are enough of them already with a greater priority. We need to concentrate on protecting areas such as the Amazon and the Mongolian grasslands. (For a brilliant read on the environmental and cultural issues surrounding the Mongolian grasslands read http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0580NF0FRVTTNPXZMHNN ) As previously stated, we exist therefore we have an effect, if anyone wishes to sacrifice themselves or their lifestyle for the good of others then please feel free to do so, but please be aware of your own personal insiginificance in this.
The list of topics in this thread is becoming to long to respond fully. Just a few points, though. First, I’m afraid I was being euphemistic when I said ‘the jury’s out’. Actually the jury’s back in, they have given their verdict, and it is that they're not convinced. May I make a comment about economic growth v. recession. Politicians and bankers often talk as though growth was a theoretical abstraction.. In the real world though, growth means people buying more cars and driving them about, buying more fuel and burning it off, buying more food and eating or wasting it, etc. … In short, producing and consuming more stuff. When speechmakers exhort everyone to e.g. use less fuel, actually they are arguing for reducing growth and going into recession (naturally they never admit it). Personally, I am in favour of growth and against recession; my conscience is clearest if I buy and consume as much as I can afford, but I would feel guilty if I contributed to a recession by using less. In a democracy, each person must decide for themselves which is more beneficial, more growth and production/consumption, or pushing for recession by using less fuel etc. What’s your preference? On another strand of this, you may not know that Professor Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on the hole in the ozone layer, in the journal Climatic Change (August 2006 issue) proposed a method of artificially cooling the global climate by releasing particles of sulphur in the upper atmosphere, along with other particles at lower atmospheric levels, which would reflect sunlight and heat back into space. A suitable source of sulphur in sufficient quantities would be the Athabasca tar sands, Alberta, Canada, and others have proposed practical mechanisms. If this artificial cooling method worked, it would help reverse global warming, if any. There are other methods. The Greens are (surprise, surprise) opposed to all such ideas, which leads me to conclude they probably don’t genuinely believe their own data.
As regards economic growth, everything you say is true. But the nub of the matter is employment. Economic growth, if applied to all economies, will inevitably mean reaching a situation that is unsustainable in terms of resources. Resources are finite, limitless growth implies unlimited resources. You can easily see that this is therefore a nonsense. It may be sustainable for a few decades, maybe even centuries. But sooner or later it will be unsustainable. There are those who would argue that it already is, if we don't want to live in an urbanised sprawl with few green areas and all the plants and animals that supposes. Mechanisation and efficiency throws people out of work. For the owners of the machines, this is all good news: they reap the efficiencies. For the others, it is bad news - they lose their livelihoods. How to fix this equitably (could probably mean more taxation in a Scandinavian type model) is the central conundrum for the western democracies - all the more so with an ageing population. What it means in the short term is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer - which has been amply documented over the past 20 to 30 years. So buying more and consuming more may seem clever right now - but it's only deferring the problem. The massive consumption increase of the last decades was fuelled by credit, i.e. people consuming now and worrying about how to pay for it later. This is evidently ridiculous: you can only consume what you produce (spend what you earn). As regards injecting a large amount of sulphur into the atmosphere, it means engaging in massive conscious pollution, with the attendant consequences of acid rain to name but one undesirable side-effect (and the death of forests on a massive scale). Hardly surprising that environmentally conscious folk would be against. Mind you, if as you suggest, global warming is not a real problem, why would you take such drastic action?
