Global Warming- WTF PEOPLE!!!

[awakened_mind]

Every year, I hear about how humankind is sparking global warming (I'm sure you all know the details by know), and every year no one does shit. Us humans are so fucking stupid. Year after year, a documentary is created or an article is written and the whole human race figues out that we area all just setting our own fate. WTF! Why is nobody doing anything right now. I heard on History channel that we could be developing technology this very moment that will supress all the polution we're giving off, and that it will only take a few decades, AND WE'RE STILL DOING NOTHING. We should be banning fossel fuels. It doesn't matter how much the economy will be effected, we'll all fucking die unless we change our course of life completely, and I mean everyone. Even when every one of you hear this, you will all still do nothing. I understand that a few people are working on it, but this is the fate of our race here, and everyone should be working on it. By the time we DO realize that we are almost fucked, the beautiful ice caps will be completely gone. It has been estimated that the human evolution can last another 1/2- 1 billion years. well, that shit will end here and now unless all of us step up.

[Xei]

In my opinion CO2 is having only a very small effect upon the climate. Other natural factors are much more important. But humans have 'survived' high temperatures before, regardless. For many it is beneficial (new landmasses open to agriculture, etcetera). Even if CO2 is really important, it's definitely not certain that we'll 'all fucking die'. The IPCC predicted a minimum increase of about 1 degree. That's not going to cause death on a mass scale. Also, all of the carbon dioxide in oil is there due to the photosynthesis of plants. So it was all in the atmosphere at some time, yet temperatures were still low enough for plant life to survive. We can generally survive the same sorts of temperatures of non-arid plants. I don't think there's anything that any single human can do which is going to prevent the human race from using up all the oil, either. It's an immense industry, I don't believe there's any action I can take that will stop all of that CO2 being released into the atmosphere. And messing about with the atmosphere in an attempt to reverse the effects of our messing about with the atmosphere would be ridiculously dangerous. In your point of view, we've already shown that we have no understanding or control over climate. The best thing we can do is leave nature alone. I'm not sure how all of this is connected to philosophy though.

[sloth]

You're talking about 'surviving'?? How about living? Who wants to survive? You can preach all day about how 'MAYBE we're not killing off the entire human race.' Just like, 'MAYBE if I play Russian roulette, I will live.' Why take chances with something like the survival of our species. I'm sick of hearing people say, 'We're completely invincible. We could never do anything change the climate', as if they are smarter than Stephen Hawking, who has said that we will DIE because of this, POSSIBLY even if we DO act now to stop it. He says we may have already doomed our species to extinction. Who here believes they are smarter than Stephen Hawking?

[Spamtek]

I've become apathetic to the entire global warming discussion. A few reasons: 1)We can snivel and snarl about it here on the forums all we want, but people abroad will not change until immediate threats to their life or livelihood become evident. Climate change is a gradual and time-delayed threat, and by the time it gets bad enough (oil shortage, ceaseless high-impact environmental cataclysm, etc) that the majority of people feel threatened enough to finally do something about it, there will be little left to do to ameliorate our situation. 2)Moreover, people will not change something even more fundamental than reducing their personal environmental footprint, and that is multiply. Even if we got our act together and, say, reduced each person's individual environmental footprint by 20% by 2025, it wouldn't make a difference: in 2025 there will be approximately 20% more people than there are now, and exponentially growing all the time. This is why instead of calling for drastic measures on climate change, I suggest governments of the world impose strict birth control laws to edge the human race down to ecologically sustainable levels - how's 1 billion sound? Not that I think either initiative will happen, at least not in time to prevent catastrophe, nor do I think they would be fair or pleasant or not wrought with all sorts of problems of their own. But I suspect it's better than the human population plunging exponentially over a Malthusian limit and experiencing pestilence, famine, and war scoring grisly death tolls in the billions. So I think the solution lies in having less of us. Either we reduce our population by edging away from disaster or we reduce it by plummeting headfirst into disaster, but it will eventually have to happen one of those two ways. This world can't handle 6.5 billion of us, not even an environmentally-conscious 6.5 billion. And it certainly can't handle more than that.

[Xei]

You're talking about 'surviving'?? How about living? Who wants to survive? You can preach all day about how 'MAYBE we're not killing off the entire human race.' Just like, 'MAYBE if I play Russian roulette, I will live.' Why take chances with something like the survival of our species. I'm sick of hearing people say, 'We're completely invincible. We could never do anything change the climate', as if they are smarter than Stephen Hawking, who has said that we will DIE because of this, POSSIBLY even if we DO act now to stop it. He says we may have already doomed our species to extinction. Who here believes they are smarter than Stephen Hawking? People get a tad edgy about these kind of debates sometimes, perhaps it'd be best not to call other posters immature preachers for their views if you don't want flames. But anyway, Stephen Hawking is a brilliant theoretical physicist with no qualifications in climatology. I searched what you said on Google (I was surprised he'd said that) and found this at the top: http://www.space.com/news/hawking_rebuttal_011016.html Hawking was predicting a Venusian climate to arise from our CO2 emissions, even though the CO2 concentration of our atmosphere has been many many times what it is nowadays in the past, and no Venusian climate arose. I've read some of his books, and he's always going on about how humanity must go into space for some reason or other. I don't know why, but he's consistently pushing for offworld colonisation... I don't believe the human race is invincible. However, I do see the incredibly huge issue of overpopulation as an undeniable and much more terrible threat, when compared to the theory that man-released CO2 will cause a greenhouse effect that might cause deaths. The whole Russian Roulette thing's not really that wise either, in my opinion. Back in the day, there was a huge fuss about the ice age which is overdue. If the whole apathy wager had been applied back then, the people saying, 'MAYBE the ice age isn't coming, MAYBE everybody isn't going to die, MAYBE we shouldn't pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to combat it', would have course have been completely right. So anti-apathy is quite a dangerous mindset, I think. That's not a good reason for doing something. However, I DO think we should be slowing down our rate of oil consumption anyway, to avoid the economic crisis that will arise if we don't. So I am actually pro-action anyway, but not because of the climate theory, which does not effect my decisions. However, even if we do take action and slow down, if man-made climate change is real, I don't see any way of avoiding the fact that ultimately, we are going to burn all the oil. Fortunately I don't believe that this'll make a significant difference to our climate, but those who do are facing a problem with regards to what action they can possibly take.

[BeautifulDreamer]

Shifting our pollution level is better for us whether GW is real or not... Deaths, Economy..

[TheUncanny]

A number of scientists believe that global warming is due to the Sun emitting more heat than its has for a while, which before recently seemed just as speculative as the "its all the humans fault" theory. But now that we know the ice caps on mars are melting, along with ours, I think its safe to say that the sun is indeed playing a very significant, a perhaps primary role to global warming...and maybe not us. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2..._southpole.htm http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?...lover&ie=UTF-8 And not to mention that humans account for only what, 5% of the earths CO2 production...maybe? And all of the CO2 in the world, nature and man-made combined, only accounts for a fraction of the earths total greenhouse gasses. If you work out the math, you will find that we are only .28% of the problem, which means if we were to stop all man-made greenhouse emitions completely, 99.72% of the problem remains... http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?...lover&ie=UTF-8

[Xei]

'But now that we know the ice caps on mars are melting, along with ours' Awesome, I hadn't heard that. Heheheh, that's great. The next time someone says, 'buT teh ICES ARE MELTING!"?1', I can just say, 'yeah, they're melting on Mars too, is that because of our greenhouse emissions over there?'. And then watch them go through the 5 stages of mourning for their raving eco-war agenda.

[Sornaensis]

The polar ice caps will be gone in 10 years. 100 species of animals go extinct every day. 250,000 humans are born everyday. 120,000 humans die everyday. the rate of increase that global warming has is accelerating humans won't survive the next ice age. Case in point. We're doomed.

[TheUncanny]

That my or may not be the case. The point is, is it because of our actions, or are we just victims of circumstance? People just assume its our fault, perhaps because we have a hard time understanding how insignificant we really are.

[Ynot]

Adapt or die, simple as that Can we adapt fast enough to change? Who knows Can we slow down the change? Possibly Whether it's actually our actions tipping the balance isn't the issue

[TheUncanny]

Whether it's actually our actions tipping the balance isn't the issue Sure it is. In fact, that seems to be the main issue. Just about every GW debate revolves around the idea that we are to blame. And because of this, we think we can save the world by reducing our emitions. Of course, our emitions amount to only .28% of greenhouse gasses. I'm no expert, but reducing our emitions doesnt seem like its going to do much. It doesnt hurt though, except perhaps our quality of life. But it seems to be a necessary sacrafice to move away from being so dependent on fossil fuels, which in my opinion is the real concern, not GW.

[Xei]

That's exactly how I feel. This whole GW thing, which I consider to be a nonsense, has detracted an incredible amount from the real issue at hand; people simply don't seem aware that we simply won't have any oil to burn in 25 years. It's incredibly important that we start making ourselves more efficient, regardless of the anthropic GW hypothesis. I also think it's likely that we'll survive any oncoming climate shifts. We've survived before at the tribal stage; ice ages and the like. Considering how far we've come technologically, I don't think it likely that the entire population of Earth will die. I think we may survive in dramatically reduced numbers, but we'll survive all the same.

[Neruo]

If people can chose between "Just chill out, listen to your government/preacher/tv, and don't worry" or "We have to chance in order for ourselves and especially our children to be able to live on this planet", the little element called 'Truth' doesn't really influence people's decision making. People are sheep. Governments and economies are thinking way to short-termed to solve such problems in time. The only way we will stop mass pollution is not when we see the shit, not when we smell the shit, but only until we are in the shit and can't deny and ignore it any longer.

[TheUncanny]

See, this is what im talking about. There are just as many sheeple on your side of the argument as there are on the other side, and probably more so seeing as its trendy nowadays to hate the government and/or media. You assume that we are a significant cause of global warming, otherwise you wouldn't infer that we could significantly change this climate shift by altering our life style. Facts: -CO2 is the principle concern of our emitions -Only 5% of the planets CO2 comes from us -CO2 only makes up a fraction of the Earths total greenhouse gasses (which is what Global Warming is all about) -When considering the what percentage of the total greenhouse gasses are CO2, and when considering what percentage of CO2 comes from us (5%), then we discover that we are actually only responcible for making .28% of the Earths total greenhouse gasses. But it's just so easy to buy into the propaganda isnt it?

[Original Poster]

Awakened Mind, you see now why we're doing nothing after reading some of the more ignorant posts on your own thread, yes? it's sad that those who actually think for themselves are being cooked at the same rate as those that don't, but it's obvious that as whole the human race dug its own grave.

[Xei]

Is it me or all of the skeptics have expressed that the action being taken is necessary anyway; just not for the popular reasons? Seriously, stop being such a tool to the media, and respect that it's not for you to decide who is 'ignorant'. It seems to me that the ignorant ones have actually done a lot more research into this than yourself.

[Spamtek]

Maybe to clarify: I definitely think there are obvious realities (explosive population, peak oil) coming upon us that none of us can deny and that any sane person would have an interest in finding ways to bypass or lessen the impact of. I just don't think that there are enough people willing to make the necessary sacrifices around to be able to make a society-saving difference.

[TheUncanny]

Awakened Mind, you see now why we're doing nothing after reading some of the more ignorant posts on your own thread, yes? You wouldn't happen to be referring to me, would you? If so, just out of curiosity, tell me what exactly is ignorant about what I have said? Go ahead.

[iLight]

Global warming is real or fake in both ways it doesn't mater. Our planet will die one day. Contributing or not wont save us from anything. Thus, im sure we will ruin the planet with our own WWIII. The planet is dying day by day moment by the moment.We have brought the technology and now we will suffer its consequences. This is how life works. Nothing is immortal and everyone has its limits. To change the planet we will have to change our selfs. In any case i have this feeling it wont happen any time soon. Maybe the next world war 3 will teach us what life is really all about.

[Infraredkelp]

To be perfectly honest, I don't give a shit what happens to this planet a billon years from now. I'll be long gone by then.

[Sornaensis]

Adapt or die, simple as that Can we adapt fast enough to change? Who knows Can we slow down the change? Possibly Whether it's actually our actions tipping the balance isn't the issue But how can we adapt if there is no such thing as Evolution? :p j/k. I doubt the Human race will have time...

[Sornaensis]

Global warming is real or fake in both ways it doesn't mater. Our planet will die one day. Contributing or not wont save us from anything. Thus, im sure we will ruin the planet with our own WWIII. The planet is dying day by day moment by the moment.We have brought the technology and now we will suffer its consequences. This is how life works. Nothing is immortal and everyone has its limits. To change the planet we will have to change our selfs. In any case i have this feeling it wont happen any time soon. Maybe the next world war 3 will teach us what life is really all about. Sheesh, the planet will die when the sun goes red, not by Human influence, LAWL.

[sloth]

[quote=ethen;465256]A number of scientists believe that global warming is due to the Sun emitting ...............] There are ALSO a number of scientists that believe that we are ALL GOING TO DIE if we don't do SOMETHING about this. I know it's easier to just BELIEVE whatever is the most convenient, but that doesn't always make it fact.

[sloth]

That my or may not be the case. The point is, is it because of our actions, or are we just victims of circumstance? People just assume its our fault, perhaps because we have a hard time understanding how insignificant we really are. That my or may not be the case. The point is, are we just victims of circumstance, or is it because of our actions? People just assume that it is not our fault, perhaps because we have a hard time understanding that if you alter the atmosphere of a planet in any way, there WILL be adverse effects.