jvj

Having missed most of the Gaza thread, I thought I'd come up with another talking point. I have very strong thoughts on this subject, but I won't enter the arena just yet. So.

What do you make of this issue, and wider environmental ones generally?

Nothing will change as far as stopping/slowing down the changes. Humanity is too self-absorbed, too greedy and too shortsighted. Sure a few individual people with pull will continue to lobby for it but I'm realistic. The big guys want their money now and won't care what happens in a few decades.
Its a shame and I sure don't do well with extreme temperatures, be it hot or cold (tho I handle cold better) but this is the world of today.

My opinion is, our lifespan is too short. If a human would live, say, 500 years on average they could see the effects of the change clearer and perhaps act on it if nothing else out of fear for their own old age in a few centuries..but the way it is now.. nothing is gonna change until people can make huge huge money with the changes.

Jaded or realistic? Your call

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This is one of those subjects that makes my head spin. It is also one of those subjects I feel too passionately about to have an objective discussion over. I will give 2 quotes though from Gandhi...

"To change the world, you must change yourself" in other words, change the world one person at a time starting with yourself.

and

"The world provides enough for every man's need, but not for any man's greed" I think the whole world should have listened far closer when he said that. Although he wasn't speaking in environmental terms at the time, I think it is applicable for pretty much all aspects of life.

Note: The quotes are not exact, mainly because I am too lazy to look them up right now.

In the back of the late Michael Cricton's environment thriller "State of Fear", he presents a sample of what he found when researching for writing the book. If memory serves (and many times it doesn't), Mr C goes on to say something to the effect of...."mankind is ignorant to think that we can affect this planet to the extent that the environmentalists are saying.

oh sure, I could go get the book off my shelf, look at the last 20 pages and report more specifics. I must have caught Di's lazy-bug (heh).

What basis did he have for saying so, though?
The world has been made in humanity's image. We've deforested vast areas of land over the millenia, reshaped rivers, dried out swamps and wetland. We've hunted species to extinction and also introduced entirely new species (eg Cane Toads in Australia) to environments that have been devastated by them.
Evidently the whole carbon thing is immensely complicated, and natural features like Volcanos emit vast amounts of greenhouse gases, but I do believe that our use of fossil fuels has had an impact on global warming, too. Oil, coal and gas are all the product of billions of tons of biomass gradually transformed by millions of years of heat and compression. The climate in the periods that provided the material (trees, animals/whatever) was vastly different to what it is now. So it doesn't seem so daft to me that releasing all that carbon back into the atmosphere might have an effect.

I watched a documentary the other day called "Swarm", which looked at the behaviour of certain species that conglomerate in huge numbers. Three of these were created by humans; agressive "Killer Bees" that were the result of cross-breeding two other species, Silver carp that were introduced the Mississipi (sp?) and the honey bee. Whether you accept man-made global warming or not, I am doubtful that one can argue that man has not had a massive impact on the environment- virtually always negatively.

Preface: This is a super long post. Sorry .

I'm debating whether i want to jump in on this issue or not. I'll probably just end up pissing more people off and alienating myself even further. Oh well, here goes.

The thing that the vast majority of the public doesn't understand is the true complexity of environmental science. The sheer number of variables are so far beyond our understanding that its almost sad. I mean think about it, we can't even predict the weather with 70% accuracy, and people have run rampant believing that human caused c02 emissions are going to wreak havoc on the environment.

The alarmists are appealing to emotion, trying to make out the issue as something that if we don't take care of now the world is going (essentially) cease to exist as we know it. The majority of the "anti" global warming people are simply pointing out the fact that the industrialized world is already on the path of decarbonization, and that the effects that are predicted by alarmists are exagerrated. They're basically saying we dont need to invest additional R&D money into the field to "speed up the process" when we can't even accurately predict reasonable gains. None of us are arguing that humanity should just run rampant with the use of carbon fuels, but to suggest that our govt and our corporations should be forced into investing billions of dollars into decarbonization research and initiatives is dangerous, especially when there are other places that money/research time, etc, could do far more good for humanity.

Whats truly makes me sick is that the entire issue has turned into a religion of sorts. It has gotten so bad that people react the same way to your questioning global warming as if you were attacking their religion. They instantly revert to a "fight or flight" state of mind, and are unwilling to listen to reason and logic. Now, this is a fine position to have regarding one's faith, since that is not something that can be scientifically argued for or against. Global Warming is very much something that can be argued scientifically. The viewpoint has become so deeply entrenched in society that people react the same way to you questioning it as if you were trying to argue that the earth is flat. We have to hold our tongues for fear of social ostracization. The difference is we know that science will vindicate our position.

This is a great place to start, if you really want to be objective regarding this issue (It's a long read, but gives a very broad understanding of the issues at hand):

US Senate Committe on Environment and Public Works, Minority Staff Report (PDF):
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... 2d71db52d9

Some choice quotes from the report:

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.”
- Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.”
- Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC
(Thats the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the very same panel who concluded in 2007 that "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.", and that warming is, "... very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.". The IPCC also shared the nobel peace prize with Al Gore.)

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.”
- Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of
Monthly Weather Review.

“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken...Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science.”
- Award Winning Physicist Dr. Will Happer, Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and Former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy, who has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.

“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.”
– Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.”
- Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.”
- Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

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Wether we change climate or not: We have to stop wasting natural, limited ressources and destroying habitats of other animals or torturing them - just for our indulgence. We have to find our balance with nature again.

This does not only tackle emissions, though they are part of it. Think (or google) about where our food comes from. Our furniture. Our electricity. We are a big bunch of abusers.

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Akerbos wrote:Wether we change climate or not: We have to stop wasting natural, limited ressources and destroying habitats of other animals or torturing them - just for our indulgence. We have to find our balance with nature again.

Thank you! And it is exactly this that makes my head spin. Tis all connected, and spiralling downward.

Personally I think the part of the solution would be more transparency in consumer products. For instance, here in Aus, if you purchase home brand toilet paper, which a lot of people do due to financial constraints, you are actually directly contributing to the deforestation of Indonesia. Not that you would know this without doing an extensive search on product information. This is just an example (personally I think by global law, all loo paper should anyway be derived from recycled paper), my point is that if more product information was readily available to the general public, people would have a far clearer idea of what practices they may inadvertently be endorsing.

Another thing is pricing. It is more expensive to buy green products than the standard home brand and big brand varities. Unfortunately that ever important profit margin means a number of people who would like to be more environmentally friendly, quite simply can't afford to be. Without going into a major essay on the subject it is quite simply why extreme capitalism and deregulated markets are not a good idea in my head. (Not even going to touch commercial farming and genetic modification here.)

Lastly - choosing to do the right thing and being aware that small actions make a huge difference. When I was living in beautiful clean green New Zealand, there was a major drive on to save water. NZ only has 4 million people, but everyone got involved. To save water meant we had to save energy. So all office buildings and shopping centres switched off all lights at night during one summer. Corporate office blocks ensured all workstations were powered off at night when no-one was using them. Everyone stuck to the 4 minutes max in the shower. The savings were huge, in water, in energy usage and in carbon emissions. This was 4 million people in a tiny country. Can you imagine the savings impact if implemented by larger countries? The personal effort required was next to zero. It really doesn't take a lot to switch a light off, and yet the impact of everyone doing it was so great.

I have already said more than I intended to, but I would like to say our world is everybodies responsibility and everyone has the power to make a difference. It doesn't matter how small, the cumulative effect is enormous.

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sumigo wrote:Well Hrimnir I readily admit that I am not a scientist so I do not know if Global Warming is real or not. SO I guess its possible that this is all propaganda from the left.

Its not entirely from the left, there are plenty of people on the right who are proposing the same changes. The problem is (at least in the US), some hardcore leftist politicians, like Al Gore, were using the idea of Global Warming as a political means to pursue agendas, mainly against industry and corporations, specifically automakers and oil/energy companies.

A particularly good example of this was when congress passed the CAFE standard for automakers so that every vehicle in their fleet has to obtain at least 35mpg by 2020. Now, justy FYI, because we all know how popular it is to demonize President Bush, Bush was the one who signed the "Energy Independence and Security Act" in 2007 which included the move to 35mpg. The CAFE standards from an economic perspective are actually laughable. As Bob Lutz said, its like trying to fight obesity by forcing tailors to make only small clothes, its just a ridiculous initiative and i assure you it won't happen by 2020, and in the end to one who is going to suffer is the consumer.

The even more ridiculous thing is that the automakers are the ones being villified for producing "gas guzzlers" etc, and being "environmentally irresponsible" when its 90% the consumers fault. Automakers are businesses just like any other business, and they're only going to make products that people want to buy. The simple truth of the fact is that in the US, small fuel efficient cars sell poorly. People here don't want them. They also have far lower profit margins because people don't understand that a large portion of the cost of a car is the research and development costs that went into the development of the car. Look at the toyota Prius. The car is about as well equipped as any $15-18K economy car, yet it costs 30K+. People don't understand that the costs of developing and researching a small car are just as high as a large car or SUV, etc. Yes, the larger cars do take more physical materials to build, but that is a far lower portion of the cost of a car than most of the public realizes. Yet there is a public perception that a car that is "small" should cost less, because its "small". It doesn't work that way, its not like buying a pizza, it didnt take thousands of hours of work from 100's of engineers, chemists, physicists, workers, etc, to make a pizza.

But either way I still want to know the exact reason why the polar ice caps are melting and why things are changing right before our eyes. And if it isnt our fault and the world is simply changing than I guess any chance of continued survival for the human race for the long haul is a wet dream.

Its funny to me to see reactions like this because of the fact that i've studied geology in college. Now i don't say that to be elitist in any way, its just that when you learn about how something works, you realize a lot of the the things that the whole of humanity are utterly ignorant of.

Humanity has this overall elitism present. We like to think we are vastly superior to every other animal on the planet. We like to entertain the thought that we can actually "harm" the planet. Its laughable. I can assure you with 100% certainty that if humanity were to wipe every single last human from the planet in a massive nuclear war, that in 10,000 years or so, the planet would be back to business as usual, at least geologically. Obviously there would be repurcussions in the animal kingdom, but the actual physical operations of the planet would be entirely unaffected.

To answer your question, the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles about every 12000 years or so (though that number is currently being debated, some say its more like 11000 years, /shrug). They are called "glacials and interglacials. The earth is currently on the tail end of an interglacial (warming period) called the holocene, which is truthfully what can be attributed to the slight warming we have seen which global warming alarmists like to attribute to human created greenhouse gasses.

If you want to see what i'm referring to, this chart shows earth temperatures taken from the Vostok ice core over the last 400k years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vosto ... -petit.png

And regardless of the fact, the human race needs to be more responsible towards the environment either way right or wrong. We still contaminate ground water, destroy local eco systems and kill off entire species of animals. It would be nice to see those kinds of activities minimized, not that it will ever happen, but it would be nice to see it stopped or minimized.

This is something that i definitely agree with, and most reasonable people would agree with. We definitely should be rooting out things like Di has mentioned, where products you may purchase are supporting irresponsible habitat destruction, as well as other things like labor issues (big time problem in the asias).

What i find odd is that again everybody likes to act as if its the big bad evil corporations who are the ones who are burning rainforests down. And although that has happened, the truth is its the local citizens doing it to improve their standard of living, yes, we support it by buying products that those people produce.

from wikipedia article on deforestation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation

"In simple terms deforestation occurs because forested land is not economically viable. Increasing the amount of farmland, wood extraction and, infrastructure expansion are all important factors in driving deforestation in different regions [4] with mining also an important cause. [5] There is considerable interplay between these factors. For example logging(wood extraction) or mining requires roads to transport the timber(infrastructure expansion) and farmers use these roads to move into previously unreachable areas of forest (agricultural expansion). The ultimate cause of most deforestation is increased food production. Cattle, permanent crops, shifting cultivation and colonization are all equally important to global tropical deforestation


In summary, i guess the thing that bothers me so much is that the western world has this love of placing blame. Rather than trying to search for the truth, and find a solution to the problem, we would much rather use issues like this as a means of furthering an agenda. It truly makes me sick, because as a skeptic, the only thing i am concerned with is the truth. Period, end of conversation. Thats one thing i truly respect about the Japanese. When a problem occurrs, they fix the problem first, and worry about the rest later, or not at all.

Witchary wrote:if more product information was readily available to the general public, people would have a far clearer idea of what practices they may inadvertently be endorsing.

They would know and never care. Do not think of intellectual people, think of your standard couch potato. Why care for birds in Brasil, why care for whales in the arctis? "I wanna hav beer an friet chickn wings. Thinkn hurts my crotch."

Another thing is pricing. It is more expensive to buy green products than the standard home brand and big brand varities.

Right. You won't change that without states controlling prices. But state control would either be to expensive (-> higher taxes) or produce people that cannot afford simple things.
Personally, I think that this would be worth the price. I also think that people should, instead of renting an overpriced flat downtown and watching telly all evening, buy a cheap house in the countryside and grow their food (and their energy) by themselves. For me, this is a wish. If I can manage, I want to grow old living like that.

I want to add to my latest post: Doing wrong not always leads (directly) to damage. Surely, Walmart can afford me stealing two Mars. But that does not make it _right_. So, even if driving a 250hp pick up truck to go to the groceries around the corner does not change climate or kill a whale, it is a sign of utterly stupidness.
I wonder why in the USA, where some people are best described as Christian fundamentalists, there seem to be the most fans of the seven dead sins. I wonder why the neighbours of creationalists are the worst kind of animal you can imagine. (Who is the more stupid? )

It's a pity that "human rights" are defined (and ignored, but that's another matter) but no one's ever had the guts to enforce "animal rights" and "nature rights". "Each environment has the right to adapt itself to global climate changes. Each animal has the right to choose its residence and food by itself." Think about it.

Akerbos, although I agree with your general sentiment there are a few things I would challenge you on (challenge for lack of a better word).

When moving to Aus and NZ, I was deeply surprised to find out that 70% of the population are not bogans. Like most people going to SA are surprised to find out that 70% of the population there are not racist. I am sure that if I went to the States I would find 70% of the population there are not rednecks and if I traveled to Germany I am sure I would find that once again 70% of the population are not fascists. (I blame perceptions on the global media, who sensationalise situations and create popular opinions that may not be true.) The point I am trying to make is that most people are not complete idiots and when given the option to do the right thing most people will choose too.

I agree that green products are worth the expense to a point. However an awful number of people really cannot financially afford it. Also making green products cheaper should be encouraged by governments and local communities. Most green products and organics are locally derived; therefore they support the local economies and communities far more than cheap, chemically saturated, imported products. Most of these products (like home brands) fly directly in the face of fair trade, which is why they are so cheap in the first place.

I think most of the western world is guilty to some degree or another of the 7 deadly sins. Most certainly Greed and Gluttony have to be the number one sins for pretty much all of the developed world. I also think in terms of population the USA is no more or less guilty than anywhere else. In terms of population I mean, the USA has 300 million people, where Australia has 21 million. Simply because of the shear size of it I think what the US does is simply more visible but not really more guilty. (I hope that made sense to someone other than me.)

Animal rights is a subject very close to my heart. I am a massive campaigner for what I like to refer to as my silent innocents. I am a member of the WSPA and did a lot of voluntary work for the SPCA growing up. I don't go around demanding the world turn vegan, but I am very much against mass commercial farming, in terms of animal rights, environmental awareness and fair trade, I am very much against GM or GE, depending on where you are. Hunting for the sake of sport and trophies is a big no no in my world. Designer dogs - the concept in itself is evil and horrific. I will stop now because this is one those things that really does make me cry.

It brings me back to why markets need to be regulated. It is the only way to ensure that produce and products are obtained fairly and from a viable and renewable source.

I would never say that one generation is born more intelligent than the previous, but every generation is born to more information. That is why I believe that now more than ever before, with modern communication, we really do have the power to make a difference we just have to choose too.

Rainbow Warriors Unite! (Ow – I can feel myself being shot down in flames already. )