Global Warming: Absolutely True, or Sadly False? (Discuss & Vote)

[J-Dude]

Like I said, I'm for any "green" technology and changes to protect against pollution, but we're wasting our time and money on Global Warming.

 

[Fire Phoenix]

Yeah I read an article at work about global warming, Since from 1886 to 2006 the temerature average rose a whole... get this a whopping 1.86? F. Do the math. It's not a lot. It's certainly nothing to panic about. And Hworang is right. We are spiraling into the sun. So naturally it will get warmer. And of course green house gasses and other fun stuff with speed up the process.

I don't see what you guys are all "OMG global warming!" about. We'll just naturally adapt to it. And if we don't, we'll create something for us to survive. Hence why we're the superior race. That's how I see it anyway. I just figure we'll evolve.

EDIT

God damn I'm lazy. As for Katrina and all that spiffy stuff. Yeah that's a natural occurance. It's not because we drive cars everyday, and produce methane gas. Or carbon dioxide/monoxide. It's because the places forest fires occur happen to be very hot due to where they are on the earth.

you know what I bet? I bet that the ice age was because humans didn't drive cars. Or use electricity for that matter. (for the record, cows [along with humans] naturally create methan gas, which is a greenhouse gas] no matter how hard you try, you'll always contribute to "global warming")

 

[frsrblch]

On the list of greehouse gases, water is numbers one, two, and three, with CO2 coming in at a distant fourth. The thing is that humans do not have a large impact on water vapour levels which fluctuate reagionally.

Basically, the world's greenhouse emissions aren't going to be changed because of a couple conscientious people in first world countries. If you hadn't noticed, there are a couple billion people in asia that are currently industrializing their nations. Whatever greenhouse gases we can produce are about to be dwarfed by their emissions anyway, so I figure why bother worrying about something you can't control in the first place?

Besides, it isn't as though any of us have any legitamate knowledge on the subject beyond what we've seen on TV, read in the paper, or have been lectured to by a teacher that clearly feels strongly one way or the other or they wouldn't be talking about it in the first place, so why expend calories typing inanely?

 

[Cold Steel]

So what, if the temperature goes up or down a few degrees, that has been happening pretty much as long as Earth exists. All our spraycans and cars may speed it up a little bit, but my bet is, that within a few years the temperature will go down again.



On a sidenote, what's wrong with political discussions? They're a perfect sample of a forum where everyone gets to have his own opinion.

 

[Majin_You]

On a sidenote, what's wrong with political discussions? They're a perfect sample of a forum where everyone gets to have his own opinion.

There's nothing wrong with political discussions; there's a problem with their outcome and, frankly, their participants. Feel free to search for past discussions of that nature, and you're going to find a lot of disrespect in those threads. If you want to call the policy into further question, I ask that you do it in private with an administrator. This is not the place.

EDIT:

And Hworang is right. We are spiraling into the sun. So naturally it will get warmer.

Well, the fact that the sun is expanding as it approaches its eventual death is a player, there. I doubt that's going to make a difference over the span of 10, or even 100 years. In a few million years, we may see a significant, sun-induced jump in temperature (I can't remember the exact numbers, but I was taught that in a few million years, the average surface temperature on the planet would be close to, if not above, 50 C). Even if the orbit of the solar system were decaying and the planets were falling toward the sun, I doubt it'd be happening at a rate which would cause temperature increases as rapid as those being mentioned.

Just as a side-note; I don't think Mercury was, at any point, like Venus; it doesn't have the mass to hold an atmosphere that significant. Also, while Mars was ostensibly a different place in the past, it did not change due to warming, but due to cooling.

 

[sub]

"You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature."

There you have it folks, global warming is indeed real, but caused by a decrease in the number of pirates.

 

[Killface]

Katrina was an unfortunate thing because it hit an area that rarely recieves full-force hurricanes. It was also because of the infamously underenforced levvies which gave way and flooded the whole city.


The point is, people (you included) believe in Global Warming, because it gave the world something to fear. Because mankind indulges and clings to the ever-present state of fear.

Yes, that is true. The reason why New Orleans was so devistated is because of the levee's and the city being below sea level. But im not talking about the Katrina that hit New Orleans, Im talking about the monster Katrina that was slowly chruning in the Gulf of Mexico. That Katrina had winds of 175, record storm surge capabilities and one of the lowest pressure levels ever recorded in history (right near Hurricanes Emily and Dennis).

You are telling me that hurricanes evolved from little cat. 3 storms back before 2002 to monsters like Katrina, Emily, Charlie, Ivan, Francis all in 3 years.... I dont thinks so bub.



And your little "theory" on why people choose to believe in a real thing called Global warming all due to wanting to fear something is bull ****. Have you ever heard of Nuclear Warfare? Yeah, i think that has a higher magnitude than global warming.. and more people fear that over global warming. What about the oil shortage, energy crisis, inflation, depression, the second Ice age, the sun going super nova, the asteroid that is supposed to hit in 2036, the bird flu, and the thought of war to name a few? Sure, some of them aren't immediate threats, but those are examples to show that the world has plenty to fear.

Not to mention that our generation wont feel the full magnitude of global warming at all. Lets face it, most people only care about themselves. If they know that they are gonna die a couple hundred years before global warming goes into full force, than they are gonna fear more immediate threats, not something that wont effect them in their lifetime.

Take that into consideration before you decide your side on this issue.

 

[Pieter Paul Rubens]

How can you not believe that global warming is an actual thing happening right now? Polarcaps are melting, there's hardly any snow or even cold during the winter, etcetc.. What else would explain these facts?

 

[Cold Steel]

There's nothing wrong with political discussions; there's a problem with their outcome and, frankly, their participants. Feel free to search for past discussions of that nature, and you're going to find a lot of disrespect in those threads. If you want to call the policy into further question, I ask that you do it in private with an administrator. This is not the place.

EDIT:



Well, the fact that the sun is expanding as it approaches its eventual death is a player, there. I doubt that's going to make a difference over the span of 10, or even 100 years. In a few million years, we may see a significant, sun-induced jump in temperature (I can't remember the exact numbers, but I was taught that in a few million years, the average surface temperature on the planet would be close to, if not above, 50 C). Even if the orbit of the solar system were decaying and the planets were falling toward the sun, I doubt it'd be happening at a rate which would cause temperature increases as rapid as those being mentioned.

Just as a side-note; I don't think Mercury was, at any point, like Venus; it doesn't have the mass to hold an atmosphere that significant. Also, while Mars was ostensibly a different place in the past, it did not change due to warming, but due to cooling.

If that's the case, then we'll probably have evolved into something that's adjusted to such circumstances. Or who knows, we might inhabit new planets by then.

This really makes me think of spore \o

How can you not believe that global warming is an actual thing happening right now? Polarcaps are melting, there's hardly any snow or even cold during the winter, etcetc.. What else would explain these facts?

Personally, I think these things occur every few 100 or 1000 years, but previously we probably never recorded these events.

 

[J-Dude]

Actually, the caps including Antarctica are becoming colder and condensing. Only regions closer to the tropics, like the Antarctic Peninsula (which accounts for a whopping 2% of the continent) are actually calving off huge icebergs. And I can certainly say the Winter's been cold as always. There may be some cyclical fluctuations, but then again, we're due for the next El Nino.

@Walmart Security: All you did was smear with innuendo. Remember Y2K? Remember eon8 for God's sake, it was only a few days ago. All those things were irrational fears which turned out ultimatetely to be nothing. Global Warming will someday in the next decade come to be viewed as such a similar scare.

Nuclear warfare? Been a threat for a long time, and at this point I think most nations are smart enough not to screw with that. Iran is being dealt with and North Korea will be nipped in the bud before they get to T-minus 36 hours.

The oil shortage will naturally and economically push people by supply and demand to find a substitute product, like ethanol, electric, diesel engines even run on corn-oil.

I've never been affected by blackouts, have you? I think the energy department is thriving rather well at the moment. Appliances are being fitted with green energy-star technologies to better their use of power and decrease waste.

If indeed a second iceage is coming, I doubt it will come with the sudden and Hollywood ferocious manner displayed in the eco-thriller Day After Tommorrow. Our atmosphere is an amazing engine that nobody will admit how little we really know about its functioning. Its always been slow and steady and will proceed as such.

Now Sun going supernova, asteroids hitting the Earth, now you might as well tote your "repent, the end is near" sign. The Sun is middle-aged. If the human race lasts anothe five-billion years, we'll worry then. The Sun, besides, doesn't have the mass to go supernova, it will expand into a red giant and shrink into a white-dwarf. And its only been very recently that people have feared an asteroid strike. Its been 65 million years since we were last hit. NASA is tracking asteroids and celestial objects all over the place. The idea that once will threaten us even this millenium is just doomsaying. Its science-fiction.

Bird Flu is going to either mutate to something harmless or simply die from our strict and decisive quarantine actions. I wouldn't worry too much of it. If the government is doing its job no harm will come to us.

You seem concerned about safety...please...Western nations are fabulously safe. But the PLM makes them think they aren't. That's because "If it bleeds, it leads". Stories of death and dismemberment are more newsworthy than of vacationers and the newest ways to stay cool. People see more crime in the news and they think crime must be increasing, while in reality it has been on the seady decline for the past decade.

It comes down to the same thing. You've all been shunted into a state of fear and paranoid panic because the PLM tells you what to fear. The sad thing is, nobody questions them or their sources, don't bother to find the truth for themselves, and therefore the PLM gets what they want, terror in the streets. A gridlock of fear that pens us like cattle. I tell you this is how society works!

 

[Fire Phoenix]

There's nothing wrong with political discussions; there's a problem with their outcome and, frankly, their participants. Feel free to search for past discussions of that nature, and you're going to find a lot of disrespect in those threads. If you want to call the policy into further question, I ask that you do it in private with an administrator. This is not the place.

EDIT:



Well, the fact that the sun is expanding as it approaches its eventual death is a player, there. I doubt that's going to make a difference over the span of 10, or even 100 years. In a few million years, we may see a significant, sun-induced jump in temperature (I can't remember the exact numbers, but I was taught that in a few million years, the average surface temperature on the planet would be close to, if not above, 50 C). Even if the orbit of the solar system were decaying and the planets were falling toward the sun, I doubt it'd be happening at a rate which would cause temperature increases as rapid as those being mentioned.

Just as a side-note; I don't think Mercury was, at any point, like Venus; it doesn't have the mass to hold an atmosphere that significant. Also, while Mars was ostensibly a different place in the past, it did not change due to warming, but due to cooling.

Hence I said:

And of course green house gasses and other fun stuff with speed up the process.

 

[Pieter Paul Rubens]

Anyway, I just think that earth will recover itself anyway.. Yes, earth is heating, polarcaps are melting.. But that also happend millions of years ago (a lot slower though) just before an iceage.. So yea, I think we're still heading for an iceage..

 

[Killface]

@Walmart Security: All you did was smear with innuendo. Remember Y2K? Remember eon8 for God's sake, it was only a few days ago. All those things were irrational fears which turned out ultimatetely to be nothing. Global Warming will someday in the next decade come to be viewed as such a similar scare.

Nuclear warfare? Been a threat for a long time, and at this point I think most nations are smart enough not to screw with that. Iran is being dealt with and North Korea will be nipped in the bud before they get to T-minus 36 hours.

The oil shortage will naturally and economically push people by supply and demand to find a substitute product, like ethanol, electric, diesel engines even run on corn-oil.

I've never been affected by blackouts, have you? I think the energy department is thriving rather well at the moment. Appliances are being fitted with green energy-star technologies to better their use of power and decrease waste.

If indeed a second iceage is coming, I doubt it will come with the sudden and Hollywood ferocious manner displayed in the eco-thriller Day After Tommorrow. Our atmosphere is an amazing engine that nobody will admit how little we really know about its functioning. Its always been slow and steady and will proceed as such.

Now Sun going supernova, asteroids hitting the Earth, now you might as well tote your "repent, the end is near" sign. The Sun is middle-aged. If the human race lasts anothe five-billion years, we'll worry then. The Sun, besides, doesn't have the mass to go supernova, it will expand into a red giant and shrink into a white-dwarf. And its only been very recently that people have feared an asteroid strike. Its been 65 million years since we were last hit. NASA is tracking asteroids and celestial objects all over the place. The idea that once will threaten us even this millenium is just doomsaying. Its science-fiction.

Bird Flu is going to either mutate to something harmless or simply die from our strict and decisive quarantine actions. I wouldn't worry too much of it. If the government is doing its job no harm will come to us.

You seem concerned about safety...please...Western nations are fabulously safe. But the PLM makes them think they aren't. That's because "If it bleeds, it leads". Stories of death and dismemberment are more newsworthy than of vacationers and the newest ways to stay cool. People see more crime in the news and they think crime must be increasing, while in reality it has been on the seady decline for the past decade.

It comes down to the same thing. You've all been shunted into a state of fear and paranoid panic because the PLM tells you what to fear. The sad thing is, nobody questions them or their sources, don't bother to find the truth for themselves, and therefore the PLM gets what they want, terror in the streets. A gridlock of fear that pens us like cattle. I tell you this is how society works!

first off, global warming is gonna take a little bit to flare into something nasty, but it is not gonna be one of those things where we just look back in 20 years and laugh at it. It is actually a problem that is approaching the point where it is gonna get bad.

And im not concerned about safety, i was just pointing out that people across the world have things to fear, why would global warming be brought up on to fear people if they already have stuff to fear. (its kinda hard to explain what I think, sorry J-dude )

and when I refer to "energy crisis" Im talking about oil, and how to replace it. Its a global addiction, and it needs to be replaced... but it isnt happening any time soon.

But lets get off the other subjects and stay on the Global Warming issue. I cant figure out why you would think that global warming is made up just so world governments can give people something to fear.... I dont get it!

Explain this to me, so i can figure out how to prove you wrong. (if i can )

 

[SaiyanPrideXIX]

You've all been shunted into a state of fear and paranoid panic because the PLM tells you what to fear. The sad thing is, nobody questions them or their sources, don't bother to find the truth for themselves, and therefore the PLM gets what they want, terror in the streets. A gridlock of fear that pens us like cattle. I tell you this is how society works!

Well I'm glad to see that at 18 years old you have found the key sociological element to human society without being either a politician OR a scientist OR a member of the mass media.

Here in the newsroom this is a huge topic of both discussion and research and trust me, if I was able to discuss freely the political forces at work which have influenced all of these ideas that people have on this subject, all of this flavor-of-the-month republitot garbage would go right out the window. Incidentally, if by PLM you mean 'Public Liberal Media' you need to just stop short. The government is responsible for a huge degree of fear mongering, and right now the government is run in nearly its entirety by Republicans. Republicans, incidentally, are also the ones who think that global warming is some crazy made-up crap by the liberals. These same people are also the ones who keep the gas prices high and intentionally hinder other efforts to put forth new technologies to replace fossil fuels. These are also the same people who decided that America would be one of the only industrialized nations on the planet to not sign the Kyoto Energy treaty. And, once more,. these are incidentally the same people who passed numerous laws that strictly outline emissions standards to keep the average car's gas mileage HALVED, in order to keep people buying gas regularly despite shortages and rising costs. Supply and demand has little to do with it--the world does not HAVE the supply required to meet the current demand anymore, period. You're ideas about the energy industry are...completely wrong and totally uninformed. Just how they like 'em.

I don't give a crap what people say or what they think. The weather is completely F'ed up right now. I'm not afraid of it, I'm not paralyzed by the media's fearmongering, none of that. All I know is I'm looking outside and seeing completely screwed up weather. And I think it is pretty damn obvious that, when there is screwed up weather, accompanying a theory about environmental damage which could cause extreme weather fluctuations, well...let's just say I wouldn't call that a coincidence.

 

[Synth]

I say in a couple thousand years we're looking like Venus, our atmosphere mostly carbon dioxide and sulfur.

 

[Skiwan]

Here in the newsroom this is a huge topic of both discussion and research and trust me, if I was able to discuss freely the political forces at work which have influenced all of these ideas that people have on this subject, all of this flavor-of-the-month republitot garbage would go right out the window. Incidentally, if by PLM you mean 'Public Liberal Media' you need to just stop short. The government is responsible for a huge degree of fear mongering, and right now the government is run in nearly its entirety by Republicans. Republicans, incidentally, are also the ones who think that global warming is some crazy made-up crap by the liberals. These same people are also the ones who keep the gas prices high and intentionally hinder other efforts to put forth new technologies to replace fossil fuels. These are also the same people who decided that America would be one of the only industrialized nations on the planet to not sign the Kyoto Energy treaty. And, once more,. these are incidentally the same people who passed numerous laws that strictly outline emissions standards to keep the average car's gas mileage HALVED, in order to keep people buying gas regularly despite shortages and rising costs. Supply and demand has little to do with it--the world does not HAVE the supply required to meet the current demand anymore, period. You're ideas about the energy industry are...completely wrong and totally uninformed. Just how they like 'em.

Well said

I have to agree on the weather observations too, the past 5 days here have been so damn hot, its not true, all ive been able to do while the suns been up is sweat. I remember when i was a kid there was soo much more snow in winter, now we're lucky if it snows more than 4 times a year, not only that but the really strange fluxuations in weather. One week it'll be freezing cold with frost on the windows, the next week it'll be boiling hot heat. This years weather has been rather confusing, for where i am at least.

 

[J-Dude]

Well I'm glad to see that at 18 years old you have found the key sociological element to human society without being either a politician OR a scientist OR a member of the mass media.

Here in the newsroom this is a huge topic of both discussion and research and trust me, if I was able to discuss freely the political forces at work which have influenced all of these ideas that people have on this subject, all of this flavor-of-the-month republitot garbage would go right out the window. Incidentally, if by PLM you mean 'Public Liberal Media' you need to just stop short. The government is responsible for a huge degree of fear mongering, and right now the government is run in nearly its entirety by Republicans. Republicans, incidentally, are also the ones who think that global warming is some crazy made-up crap by the liberals. These same people are also the ones who keep the gas prices high and intentionally hinder other efforts to put forth new technologies to replace fossil fuels. These are also the same people who decided that America would be one of the only industrialized nations on the planet to not sign the Kyoto Energy treaty. And, once more,. these are incidentally the same people who passed numerous laws that strictly outline emissions standards to keep the average car's gas mileage HALVED, in order to keep people buying gas regularly despite shortages and rising costs. Supply and demand has little to do with it--the world does not HAVE the supply required to meet the current demand anymore, period. You're ideas about the energy industry are...completely wrong and totally uninformed. Just how they like 'em.

I don't give a crap what people say or what they think. The weather is completely F'ed up right now. I'm not afraid of it, I'm not paralyzed by the media's fearmongering, none of that. All I know is I'm looking outside and seeing completely screwed up weather. And I think it is pretty damn obvious that, when there is screwed up weather, accompanying a theory about environmental damage which could cause extreme weather fluctuations, well...let's just say I wouldn't call that a coincidence.

By PLM, I mean Politico/Legal/Media complex. The machine tha runs fear through our lives like a live-wire.

If you had read correctly, you would have noticed that the Kyoto Protocol, even with the aid of the United States would have resulted in a whopping decrease in global temperature of approximately .04 degrees Celcius by the year 2100. An infinitesmal speck of temperature. Four hundredths of a degree. And you think we should have signed it for that benefit? You must realize that every change, every action has a positive and negative effect. There can be no change without harm. Therefore, you must pick the lesser of two evils. Waste billions of dollars to cool the Earth .04 degrees in a hundred years, or find a few altenative methods that in the long run will benefit the general population more?

And I didn't say we would find more gas, I said supply and demand for gasoline would raise prices so high that ventually consumers will hunt for alternate means to fuel their vehicles. In short, the oil market will crumple due to cost and scarcity. It is natural human economics. Why waste five dollars a gallon on scarce gasoline when you could use something like the WIP hydrogen car, which is fueled by the most common element in the Universe and produces an exaust purely of H2O. I don't see how you can have read anything I have said backed by several scientific journals and books on the matter and consider me uninformed.

You say so because you see perfectly cyclical though odd weather patterns, a single chain of negligable anomalies and find a scapegoat which is fueled by such no-nothing twits as Al Gore, who by the way, was graded among the botom five of his class.

 

[Rayos]

in a few thousands years....no offense...it isn't gonna matter what i think because i will either be


A) Ashes spread out to see

B) a corpse that the worms are still feeding on because i have so much to give.

C) in a coffin just bones and that is it.



I beleive in global warming and i beleive that it CAN get bad...but i don't think it will play a major major factor anytime soon.

 

[Cold Steel]

Well said

I have to agree on the weather observations too, the past 5 days here have been so damn hot, its not true, all ive been able to do while the suns been up is sweat. I remember when i was a kid there was soo much more snow in winter, now we're lucky if it snows more than 4 times a year, not only that but the really strange fluxuations in weather. One week it'll be freezing cold with frost on the windows, the next week it'll be boiling hot heat. This years weather has been rather confusing, for where i am at least.

That's not completely true. I've seen several weather broadcast shows where it has been pointed out, that these snowy cold winters are not that usual in the region of U.K. Netherlands and Belgium. It's just that our youths were quite an exception with all the cold weather. Usually we really don't have those kind of winters, and the winters we're supposed to have are quite simular to the ****ty winters we've been experiencing the past few years. So, if you find yourself skating on natural ice or throwing a snowball or two, you should consider yourself lucky, as those are rare winters.

 

[SaiyanPrideXIX]

The oil industry has been blockading the development and production of those kinds of vehicles for years. The Kyoto treaty had many other benefits and goals, not just lowering the temperature by .4 degrees. The Kyoto treaty is one of the reasons we are allowed to hold patents on hydrogen fueled technology and hinder its development overseas. It may currently be impractical for cars but it has hundreds of other uses; electricity, heat, etc. None of this will ever come to pass because the oil industry does not want to lose their money, and does not want to sacrifice any of their stranglehold on socio-economics in the world by introducing such technologies pursuant to the elimination of fossil fuels. If we were participating with others in the Kyoto business we'd probably already have hydrogen-fueld vehicles by now. The best we'll ever do is these stupid hydrogen hybrid buses--which even then, still use mostly gas. The US government does not want you to ever have any other option besides GAS and OIL. PERIOD.

Either way you are again misinformed; we've already gotten a degree hotter in the coldest parts of the world. It is expected to rise another degree with each passing year. So if we could limit it to rising only .04 degrees over a hundred years it would be a MASSIVE improvement.

As for the rest...well, I'd like to see you go tell some Katrina or Tsunami victims that they were a victim of a 'negligible anomaly.' You talk about the planets and how what is happening now is nothing big, the earth will survive it all and it'll all be no big deal, it's just a natural cycle, blah blah blah. Well. it's scientifically proven that Mars used to be similar to Earth.

...I guess they voted republican those last few years too.