Our world is dying

Post Reply New Topic

If we do not do something to stop global warming we will all DIE! javascript:emoticon(':o')

Many animals we love are becoming exticnt, many poor people are suffering and dying and the world is dying fast due to all this pollution! Please do something about it! Actually, luckily, I've got some suggestions we can do to help animals, people and to help stop global warming!

Recycle: To think that everyone knows about recycling but so little people do it! Luckily, I recycle, but I bet a lot of you don't already, so I suggest you GET TO IT!

Save electricity A lot of us waste power leaving stuff like radios, TVs and lights on for HOURS on end! Maybe we should try and switch off more of those buttons...

DO NOT THROW LITTER! To think that we are making our world look ugly by throwing litter, it's terrible. Maybe a bin - or even better, a recycling bin is a better place for all those plastic bottles and crisp packets..?

Well, I think you've/we've got the message, eh? Please reply if you are doing your bit to help the world or if you would like some further tips, happy to help our dying earth!

Regards, mightyzebra

I reckon the human race is CAUF. Not enough action will be undertaken in time, and the world will burn.

Oh noes!! !! !!

We're all going to die from global warming!

The shock horror. We'll build arcologies and use technology to sustain ourselves, whilst colonising other planets.

You're bloody optimistic. Action needs to be taken now, and it ain't being taken.

There are much worse issues than climate change. We should colonise other planets, moons, and asteroids, and ensure OUR survival. We will build arcologies on earth by the end of this or the next century. We can't halt advancement.

'Ark at 'im. "There's more worse issues than climate change." God, you sound like John Howard, the waste of space Australians call Prime Minister. He prevaricates on any measures to halt climate change 'cos they'll harm the economy, yet what good is an economy if there's no one left to spend money? An asteroid impact is a little lower in priority, not because it won't happen, but not only is it less likely to happen, but it's no use if we can't keep this planet habitable for at least the next million years or so....

Oh jeezus, global warming will kill us all... yeah, right... but, there isn't exactly a scientific consensus that humans caused global warming, and theres even less consensus that we can do anything about it... as a matter of fact, some scientists believe that global warming is part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling that the earth has been going through for millions of years, and that human activity has actually abated some of this by the action of smoke and soot in the air that serves to block some of the sunlight, shielding the planet from deadly solar radiation...

furthermore, before humans harnessed the forces of oil, coal and wood for energy, they burned pretty much out of control in massive fires that make what we burn today seem insignificant...

yes the ocean is rising, yes the icecaps are melting, but thats been happenning for thousands of years... 10000 years ago ice covered half the world... in those days, ogg the cro-magnon environmentalist said OMG, in 10000 years 90% of that ice will have melted! The cro-magnon will be extinct if that happens, and the world will be lost! But nobody listened to them, and now the mastadon are all gone and the cromags are all dead. But the world lives on, and we really don't miss old ogg and we learned to eat tastier things than cold mastadon and dodo eggs...

Currently, the Earth has more bio-diversity then it ever has had in its history. That means things have been going well for a very long time, long enough for evolution to create more specalized and advanced organisms. We are also currently experiencing the fastest loss of that biodiversity in the history of the planet. Mother nature is always changing and balancing itself out, and will theirfore select individuals or species for death or life based on their ability to adapt and change.

Indeed, the human population will someday exceed the planets carrying capacity. I have done a little work in this feild of study actually, and can say usually in areas of extreme poverty and malnutrition, thats a warning that those areas have too much of a concintration of humans their and so Earth balances itself out by killing individuals off to the point that carrying capacity is no longer exceeded by that human population.

Indeed, global warming may be a natural process, but humans have definatly accellerated this process, so that puts pressure on global biodiversity to change, adapt and survive, with less time to do so, the result is we will see much more loss of these specalized creatures, and much more hunger, poverty, war ect as humans continue to exceed the Earths capacity to support them.

The International Panel on Climate Change states a 90% or larger probability that global warming is caused by human activity, and that is under political pressure from US and Chinese delegates to water down the message. That looks a lot like consensus to me. Much like the consensus scientists had about smoking contributing to cancer when the tobacco companies still swore there was no scientific evidence.


Sure we can, and the earlier we do it, the cheaper it will be and the less adjustment it will take. Achieving the target of stabilizing temperature within 1-3 degrees is expected to cost, 1-3% of the total worth of the economy, depending on efficiency. Compared to the likely cost of doing nothing, that's peanuts. Standard economic risk calculations say this is sensible when looking at the problem globally. Inevitably, some people want to pass on the cost to others instead of paying their share. One popular argument is to leave it until later, because then technology will make it all go away. But the longer you wait, the bigger and the more urgent the problem will be. None of the people who make the argument can promise that technological power will grow faster than the problem. I am reminded of a cancer patient who is determine to wait with treatment until technological advances make it cheaper.

For us rich people, it will just cost us some luxuries to start with, and if we act soon enough it probably will never cost more than luxuries. Flying halfway round the world for a beach holiday, or a transatlantic shopping trip is criminally wasteful. So is driving an SUV. No one needs this stuff. It's a pure luxury, and I have no sympathy for those who claim nothing can be done. It usually means nothing can be done without giving up a long list of luxury goods that are necessities only in the minds of the terminally pampered. Another such luxury is a meat rich diet, which also has a large carbon footprint. Before you ask, I practice what I preach, and more besides.


That's been looked into. What I read is that the natural cycles (there are several) taken together are on a downturn. If the natural cycles alone were driving temperature, it would be going down.


If there was no ozone layer, it would be deadly, which is the reason why fluorocarbons and some other substances are being phased out, but that is a separate issue. Or do you mean deadly merely through its climate effects? Then sunshine is not deadly in itself, because it depends how much heat is retained instead of being radiated back into space. That's the whole point of the greenhouse effect. It makes no sense to talk of deadly solar radiation without the greenhouse effect. Think of it like the NRA slogan. When it comes to temperature, sunshine is only deadly if humans pull the trigger of excess greenhouse gases. Sunshine doesn't kill the planet, people kill the planet.

The pollution which reduces the greenhouse effect a bit is sulfur dioxide. It has the unfortunate side effects of acid rain, which is a bit of a problem in itself. The reflection of sunlight through sulfur dioxide pollution also means that global warming has been underestimated, making the option of doing nothing less attractive.


Would you happen to have a source for this?

Nothing lasts forever. That's the way of the world. Leave it be. No sense getting all upset.

There is no doubt that global warming is occurring. Millions if not billions of people will die from the effects of it. Trillions if not quadrillions (is that a word?) of dollars, euros, yens, etc of investments will be lost. All low lying cities will not be habitable. Large percentages of species will die! Financial Markets will crash throughout the world. The great depression of the 1930s will pale in comparison to this one. People will kill each other for their food. People may be killed as food. World wars will develop. Nation's boundaries will not be recognized. Chaos will reign. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and cyclones will spiral (no pun intended) out of control.

Hey this is fun. Let's have a contest to see who can come up with the most horrifying scenarios possible. We can publish it and make millions of dollars. Just like every one else.

Seriously global warming is a fact. These things are possible. But to say that man-made carbon releases are the major cause... I don't think so. The amount of energy that reaches the earth from the sun is unimaginable. People can't even match a thousandth of a percent of that. The carbon models require positive natural feedback cycles. There are very few and questionable any positive feedback loops. There is always something that restricts these feedback loops. Even nuclear reactions which are considered a positive feedback process is limited by the quantity of material to react. The strength of a nuclear bomb is limited by how much material that can react before it blows itself apart. Water vapor has a huge heat content and is a major factor in the carbon models prediction of global warming but they also assume that this water vapor will not become clouds that will then reflect the sun's energy.

Volcanoes are known to lower the earth's temperature yet the temperature rises back to normal in a few decades. That is because there is a natural balance in the the energy absorption of the sun's output.

Carbon is attributed to some heating of the earth and will continue to do so. The hype is not correct and overblown. The majority of the warming is most likely to do with a combination of the sun's output and shifts in the earth magnetic fields over several centuries.

We should find better ways to do things. Recycle, use less energy, have more efficient energy, etc. But the money we are spending telling every one that the people caused this and we can stop it is futile. We should spend that money to find ways to deal with the problems that eventually will occur due to natural global warming or the eventual ice age.

Last edited by LogicGenerator on 29 Sep 2007, 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Global warming and Global cooling are entirely natural processes.The Earth is not a German Refrigerator or an American computer.It heats up and gets cold every few centuries.800 years ago the north of England was as hot as the south of France is now.The Earth cooled and by the 1750s London`s River Thames used to freeze up every year.Since then it has warmed again-relax the sky isn`t falling...

Global warming is a myth.

I have to be skeptical when self-appointed scientific experts throw around arbitrarily created statistics like this, especially when they don't bother to show mathematically how thay came up with these numbers in the first place. I'm 99.99999% certain that they chose this number because of the psychological impact it would have on the gullible masses.



Now this is where it gets really scary... Rushing to take action to 'correct' a natural process could doom humanity just as easily as save it




That sounds to me like a political argument rather than a scientific one. Why not go even further than this? It is a well known fact that agriculture causes more greenhouse emissions, by several degrees of magnitude, than the burning of fossil fuels. things like fertiliser production and cattle raising could be eliminated completely, and the greedy fat lazy people of the industrialised world could return to the natural situation of hunting wild animals and foraging for nuts and berries. Sure, most of the population would starve, but you gotta admit, it would be a whole lot greener.


I find that extremely hard to believe, considering the amout of energy you're wasting right now by using a computer to communicate... wouldn't you save a lot more energy if you used a drum instead?



What I read is that nobody fully understands these cycles enough to make an accurate assessment either way. There simply isn't enough data to come to a conclusion. People who claim to have reached a conclusion are the worst kind of scientists, not too far removed from the shamans who directed their leaders to throw people into volcanos in order to improve the weather.



Actually, carbon emissions account for only a tiny portion of trapping solar radiation, aka 'the greenhouse effect'... The major culprit is water vapor. Most of the solar energy reflected off the planet is absorbed by the first 30 feet of water vapor.


My biggest fear about the global warming situation is that well-meaning scientists will devise a way to radically alter the planet's temperature, throwing numerous undiscovered processes out of kilter and causing irreparable damage... Global warming will not destroy the earth, but 'correcting' it just might...

I can kind of see your point. But it will be terrible to feel guilty knowing that we caused it if it happens while WE'RE alive.



Oh and I didn't mean to bring up any arguements - why does that always happen when I put up a discussion? I hope I have encouraged at least one person to recycle or something like that. As for Global Warming is a myth - why do you think I would put up this discussion then!

I think I will put this discussion in the kid's crater...

They are not self-appointed. You don't get onto the panel just by volunteering.


What makes you think it is arbitrary?


I believe the number is justified in the detailed report. It comes from making the best possible estimates (taking into account the error margins of these estimates) of the relative magnitudes of natural processes and those caused by humans.


How do you derive that number, why did you choose it, and what would be the scientists' motive? Do you believe in the great liberal conspiracy to destroy the lifestyle of fun-loving people?


The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not natural, and it is the highest in 480000 years (measured by comparison to air trapped in old ice cores drilled out in Greenland and Antarctica).



How could politics not come into it? If a problem needs to be solved, you have to find a solution that combines effectiveness with least negative consequences you can practically achieve. Take biofuels. If we want to fill up all the developed world's cars with biofuel, it means diverting so much global agriculture from food production that people will starve. I think the responsible political solution is to cut back on car use, rather than starve people. If available technology gives you a better solution, that's good. But for a thought experiment, if biofuel or food where the two options, what would you choose, and would you consider the argument to be scientific or political?


Do you mean methane emissions? A large proportion of those come from cattle. Another large part of agriculture's contribution to the greenhouse effect comes from the inefficiency of producing meat by first growing things humans could eat, then feeding them to lifestock to produce meat which will feed far fewer people.


I never suggested that, and I wouldn't want it. If you want to criticize my argument, would you be kind enough to criticize what I actually argue, instead of a caricature distorted beyond recognition?


Is this meant to be serious? If you don't want a serious argument, please say so, and I will stop wasting time and energy on it.

I generally argue that you can significantly reduce your environemntal impact by giving up the luxuries that do the most damage. I specifically said that I don't fly for leisure purposes, don't drive an SUV (actually, I don't drive a car at all, one of the choices going beyond the claims I made in my last post), and I don't eat meat. Your criticism of my computer use would be valid if the energy use of internet communication was greater or even in the same ballpark as flying, driving and eating meat. Show me that this is the case, and I will apologize to you, and stop using computers for any leisure purposes.