Climate Change- What to do?

In my opinion climate change is happening, but we are approching it from the wrong angle now. Sure kyoto had a noble goal, but it is apparent now that its scope was not broad enough or effective enought to stall climate change.

We should be focusing now on preparing for and adapting to climate change. Money should be spent not on emmission reductions but on preparing evacution plans for coastal areas, beefing up disaster rescue teams and programs, reniforcing structures to withstand more wild weather, and educating the people about what is happening and what they can do to save themselves. Also research into geneticly enhanced foods, such as drough resistant grians, should go ahead despite concerns over the genetic engineering. Governenments should also be preparing programs to cut back on emissions, but not to the extent that we are now.

Recent weather has convinced me that climate change is happening now and i'm frustrated that governements are too caught up in politics to see it. Hurricane Katrina was a dry run for what is to come. Prepare now.

-DSO

I would like to know your opinion on climate change and what to do.

To be honest, I do not believe that there is really anything that can be done to stop climate change. The earth changes its climate, sometimes drastically, quite often. perhaps human activity have some impact. but if you were to remove modern civilization totally, I do not think that climate change would stop.

While the egg heads of the world figure out how to make things right the leaders of the world should be getting people out of the danger zones. Not just coast lines either.

That is exactly what most of the scientific and public policy world have been advocating. It's inevitable, regardless of any actions taken by man. At best, we could slightly slow the rate of change, but not change the course.

So adaptation and mitigation is the wisest action. Not wasting resources, time, money, and effort on a futile attempt to stop the unstoppable.


Of course, there are still idiots like al gore running around using global warming as a wedge issue to further their own political agenda. Most people are smart enough to see through that green smoke screen.

Here in Canada the conservatives have quietyly scrapped nearly every climate change program in the country (particularly kyoto) which is good. Still there are all these tree hugger, hippy's, and left wing nutcases (like david suzuki) runnning around screaming about climate change and who we must stop it. We can't.

^^^ my rant for today.

I agree with all of you, there is no stopping climate change, and there are still questions about who or what is casuing it. However that is all irrelevent. The fact is that it is happening and we need to do something about it, ie start adapting and mirating to safer areas. If governments are not going to take on this responsibility, then they have failed their citizens.

Adapting to the more exteme possibilities of climate change aren't advisable, not with this level of uncertainty. Change is happening, how much and how fast, to the point of being able to make informed policy decisions like that, we just don't know.

If I recall correctly, the majority of humans live in cities, and a huge number of those cities are on coastlines, not to mention that many low lying areas in the interior of the continents may also flood.

I don't think that we can relocate. New Orleans was below water level, and we didn't move it out.
If flooded, and was destroyed. We're rebuilding it.

How can we evacuate New York, Boston, DC, when the water level isn't even rising at the moment?

The thing is we can't do it if the current metality keeps up. People are concerned about climate change and see Kyoto as the solution to their problems. Well its not.

Relocating or even evactuating these cities is not the answer at all. These cities will have to deal with damaging storms, surf, and increased coastal erosion. This will lead to much higher costs for the citizens of these cities, either through construction of seawalls and other measures of protection, or though repair costs. These cities need to start thinking about these problems. I don't have the answers yet nor do they.

All i know is that we will face unprecidented challenges in the future due to global warming.

Oh and one more thing, Rona Ambrose (canada's enviroment minister) rocks!!!!!!!!

skady the evil elf yo are absolutely right. even with all peoples gone it would still go on. our earth, the solarsystem and the sun and the moon and all the celestrial objects in space, like asteroids ect. all can cause global warming or global cooling. we just happen to be in the global warming. im sure that some of the pollutants add to the problem and should be adressed, but the big issue to the global warming is left up to the objects in space. like the sun, example. unless people come up with controling these factors, global warming will continue with or without us. or maybe you can bring an asteroid down and make it hit the earth, causeing ash to go into the air, causeing the sun to be blocked out and then causes an ice age. until we have the power to manipulate the celestrial objects in space global warming will just have to go on. can anyone of you manipulate celestrial objects, not, so put up with the global warming and stop putting the blame on this or that or this. we know that knowone likes pollutants, i would love a cleaner earth and even if there were no pollutants there would still be global warming, so there.

[edit on 16-11-2006 by littlebird]

[edit on 16-11-2006 by littlebird]

I personally believe that we are atleast 50% responsible by the
major shifts that are happening, that is I believe that either we
started a climate change cycle artificially or we're accelerating
a natural one at an unprecedented pace.

That said, I think that we do need to put money into preventing
the disasters that will occur if we don't do anything, that is
New York city flooding.

But we should still be putting money into alternative enrgies
and emission reductions.

alternative energies, thats a good idea. now all we have to do is get rid of big oil that runs USA, because they keep buying up all the new technologies that come in conflict with big oil loosing buisness. i like the idea of a cleaner earth, but the ones on top with the power need to help the little guy to get this accomplished. do you know of a way to do this? cause all i see is just a few naturalists in a bind in riots and nothing happens. if you know of a better alternative , so please tell and maybe some big wig is listening so that he can make money off of it and maybe we might get lucky and get a cleaner earth out of it. GOOD LUCK. i sincerely wish you the best of luck on that one. i currently work in a plant that makes parts for the hydrogen car. the water car. i contribute to the clean earth cause , what do you do?

Originally posted by littlebird
Do you know of a way to do this? cause all i see is just a few naturalists in a bind in riots and nothing happens.

Umm what we're doing now, speaking out, electing those who will
force change.
I suppose boycotting oil companies could work, though since they
only have on prduct, it would'nt be a very diverse boycott.

if you know of a better alternative, so please tell and maybe some big wig is listening so that he can make money off of it and maybe we might get lucky and get a cleaner earth out of it.

Well if they converted to Biodiesel and Hydrogen, they could
just do what they do now, except with a cheaper (for them to
create) product

I currently work in a plant that makes parts for the hydrogen car. the water car. i contribute to the clean earth cause , what do you do?

I walk instead of drive, I recycle, I conserve energy, I promote
alternative enrgy, I vote for those who advocate change in the
area.

Apart from that, there's not much I can do.

Originally posted by iori_komei
I personally believe that we are atleast 50% responsible by the
major shifts that are happening, that is I believe that either we
started a climate change cycle artificially or we're accelerating
a natural one at an unprecedented pace.

Well i am glad you used the word 'feel' as there seems to very little 'good' science involved in this scam. Even if we do everything as laid out in the Kyoto treaty we will at best gain six years in a hundred; that's if it is established that we are actually involved to any extent worth noting.

That said, I think that we do need to put money into preventing
the disasters that will occur if we don't do anything, that is
New York city flooding.

Well if you go read some reports you will find that the Arctic ocean sea level ( or the antarctic, i forget ) dropped 6 feet a year for a few years in the last ten or so; did you hear about that on the news?

But we should still be putting money into alternative enrgies
and emission reductions.

We should be putting our energy in activism and spreading awareness of the sham that is human caused or aided global warming. Print stuff from the Internet and put together a few pages showing the main stream news reporting news that is in dark contrast to the global warming claims. If you can show them that the media is distorting the evidence ( and it's not hard in this specific field) you open the door to being able to show them all the alternative free energy possibilities a few months or years down the road. If you must drive around in a SUV to do this your not just making it easier for the biological entities of this planet but doing your part in retaining the relative high living standards and protecting and building the environment.

Umm what we're doing now, speaking out, electing those who will
force change.

That is for now almost impossible as there is not a large enough public awareness.
First people must know the truth and then you can move them towards action...

I suppose boycotting oil companies could work, though since they
only have on prduct, it would'nt be a very diverse boycott.

We need oil and fuel to drive around and agitate for change and we can most certainly not hamstring ourselves by immobilizing ourselves. If you want to really help the planet join Shell and tell the world what relatively cheap fuel and energy have done for our living standards! Let the oil flow ( and keep improving our lives as it has) while we agitate and create the public awareness of vacuum energy and cold fusion technologies.

Well if they converted to Biodiesel

25 000 people starve to death every day for lack of food and or the resources to buy it so i think it unwise that we mess around with biodiesels when entire countries still practically float on oil. Oil supplies ( in the ground at 20 - 30 USD ) are not peaking and they will not for decades at the very least and anyone who tells you differently , as they have tried since at least the 60's is just plainly lying to you to try restrict your movement and thinking.

and Hydrogen, they could
just do what they do now, except with a cheaper (for them to
create) product

Hydrogen is just a way to store energy and it's pretty damn inefficient unless you create it at your home ( as one can very safely) . To centralize hydrogen production ( same infrastructure as oil then ) is rather more inefficient than what we are working with now and wont imo change all that much.

I walk instead of drive, I recycle, I conserve energy, I promote
alternative enrgy, I vote for those who advocate change in the
area.

Apart from that, there's not much I can do.

Take the time you spend walking to inform others, preferable those who do not spend time online. Recycling does not contribute much under the current laws and regulations ( which i guess could be change but that's another topic entirely) so there is not as much point in it as many may believe. It normally requires as much energy if not more to recycle... A lot is being said about environmental destruction and while some of it is in fact true most of it could have easily prevented ( at very low cost as well) had our governments not wanted to do as much damage as possible to the environment to later use as ploy to make us feel guilty about living as well as we deserve to.

Some stuff i posted in previous threads which suggest or proves what i say in more factual terms...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Stellar

Here's a clip I think might be useful.

Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried?

Ignoring or downplaying the probability of abrupt climate change could prove costly. Ecosystems, economies, and societies can adapt more easily to gradual, anticipated changes. Some current policies and practices may be ill-advised and may prove inadequate in a world of rapid and unforeseen climate change. The challenge to world leaders is to reduce vulnerabilities by enhancing society’s ability to monitor, plan for, and adapt to rapid change.

All human endeavor hinges on the vicissitudes of climate. Thus, the potential for abrupt climate change should prompt us to re-examine possible impacts on many climate-affected sectors. They include: agriculture; water resources; energy resources; forest and timber management; fisheries; coastal land management; transportation; insurance; recreation and tourism; disaster relief; and public health (associated with climate-related, vector-borne diseases such as malaria and cholera).

The key is to reduce our uncertainty about future climate change, and to improve our ability to predict what could happen and when. A first step is to establish the oceanic equivalent of our land-based meteorological instrument network. Such a network would begin to reveal climate-influencing oceanic processes that have been beyond our ability to grasp. These instruments, monitoring critical present-day conditions, can be coupled with enhanced computer modeling, which can project how Earth’s climate system may react in the future. Considerably more research is also required to learn more about the complex ocean-air processes that induced rapid climate changes in the past, and thus how our climate system may behave in the future.

***

The NAS report: Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. Climate change may be inevitable. But it is not inevitable for society to be surprised or ill-prepared.

1. Start voting and buying Green.

www.greenfinds.com...

This search engine can help you with the latter.


2. Start a composting bin.

www.canadiangardening.com...

Here is a good howto.


3. Buy Local "Slow" Food.

www.slowfood.com...

Try to buy food grown/raised within 100 miles of your house. If that is not possible then 150, 200, and so on until you get into a "comfort" zone. Anything less than the current average of over 1000 miles is a good start. The primary goal should be 80% within 100 miles.


4. Eschew Fast Food

www.supersizeme.com...

This movie should help you do that.


5. Get rid of your wasteful Incandescent Lightbulbs with dimmable compact Fluorescent lightbulb, or if cost is not an issue, then buy LED lightbulbs. Also, If possible, try to buy from a company that manufactures them within at least 1000 miles of your current location. Bump up by 50 miles every time but stay below 2000 miles.


6. Join a Cooperative or Start one. I've seen urban growers cooperatives grow quickly the last year or two.


7. Adopt a piece of environmentally degraded land and try to "rehabilitate it". Try to get land owners involved in the process and always ask permission. If you convince them that it will increase land value, then they'll be glad to have the free labor. Another strategy is to start a Coop and lease roofspace and land to grow native perennial crops.

Originally posted by sardion2000

Enjoyed the list and while action is great i would just want to spread some understanding as well... If people think that environmental destruction is inevitable if we want these kinds of living standards it's just harder to get them involved in protecting it as people most certainly hate getting involved in such obvious contradictions.

So if your going to help move them towards action they must also be aware that it does not logically have to lead to changing their consuption levels or general standard of living.

Anyways

Stellar

Up until 7000bc the earth had its own climate control, it was called trees, and a lot of them, even Afrika was onced completely covered, We have so many natural process' that occur on this planet and it gives us an atmosphere to live, we could even survuve if we had a very low cooling or a very high warming, naturalkly of course. We have not had the level of GHG's in the atmosphere that we have and still increasing now. We need to live with the environment, not try and control it (as some have suggested) and that means using our brains, stop letting teh controlling factions on the planet doing there thing, they are not worried about the effects and changes that are hapopening, we have to ask ourselves why?? This isn't meant as a blame game, we each need to take responsiblity and reduce what we use (or only use what we need is a better way to put it). The only way things like this will happen is if we change the mentality of the stupid humans running around in the west, what we look like, what we have are completely irrelevant, how we live and how we take responsibilty is.

Originally posted by Hania
We have not had the level of GHG's in the atmosphere that we have and still increasing now.

To be clear, there have been periods in the past where there were more greenhouse gases and also periods where it was much warmer, than it is now.

Originally posted by Nygdan

Originally posted by Hania
We have not had the level of GHG's in the atmosphere that we have and still increasing now.

To be clear, there have been periods in the past where there were more greenhouse gases and also periods where it was much warmer, than it is now.

I keep hearing this bandied about - but need links, more info.

Do you have references Nygdan, please?

...I'm thinking that the periods of high atmospheric CO2 occurred before man's appearance or evolution...???

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
To be honest, I do not believe that there is really anything that can be done to stop climate change. The earth changes its climate, sometimes drastically, quite often. perhaps human activity have some impact. but if you were to remove modern civilization totally, I do not think that climate change would stop.

I suspect we should look at activity other than purely industrial...

NEWS BRIEF: "Malaysia to Battle Smog With Cyclones"
by Chen May Yee,
Staff Reporter of the Wall Street Journal
Thursday, November 13, 1997, page A19.

"KULA LUMPUR -- Malaysia's war on smog is about to get a new twist. The government wants to create man-made cyclones to scrub away the haze that has plagued Malaysia since July. 'We will use special technology to create an artificial cyclone to clean the air', said Datuk Law Hieng Ding, minister for science, technology and the environment. The plan calls for the use of new Russian technology to create cyclones -- the giant storms also known as typhoons and hurricanes -- to cause torrential rains, washing the smoke out of the air. The Malaysian cabinet and the finance minister have approved the plan, Datuk Law said. A Malaysian company, BioCure Sdn. Bhd., will sign a memorandum of understanding soon with a government-owned Russian party to produce the cyclone."

"Datuk Law declined to disclose the size of the cyclone to be generated, or the mechanism. 'The details I don't have', he said. He did say, though, that the cyclone generated would be 'quite strong'. Datuk Law also declined to disclose the price of creating the cyclone. But, he said, Malaysia doesn't have to pay if the project doesn't work."

WSJ-Malaysia to Battle Smog With Cyclones

BBC-Malaysia calls in Russian rainmakers

Those who doubt that Katrina, or any other hurricane, could be stopped—or created—can find substantiation in a long-forgotten article by Chen May Yee in the Nov. 13, 1997, issue of The Wall Street Journal.

The article recounts an offer by the Russians to aid Malaysia to create a typhoon to dissipate a pall of smoke that hung over the country—and still does—caused by the burning of large sections of the rain forests in Indonesia and Sumatra.

To quote from the article: Datuk Law Hieng Ding, Malaysia’s minister for science, technology and the environment at the time, said his country “would use special technology to create an artificial cyclone to clean the air.”

The article went on to say that a Malaysian company, BicCure Sdn. Bhd., would sign a memorandum of understanding with a government-owned Russian company to create a cyclone that would cause torrential rains and thus cleanse the air over Malaysia of the smoke and ash.

www.americanfreepress.net...

"Q: Let me ask you specifically about last week's scare here in Washington, and what we might have learned from how prepared we are to deal with that (inaudible), at B'nai Brith.

A: Well, it points out the nature of the threat. It turned out to be a false threat under the circumstances. But as we've learned in the intelligence community, we had something called -- and we have James Woolsey here to perhaps even address this question about phantom moles. The mere fear that there is a mole within an agency can set off a chain reaction and a hunt for that particular mole which can paralyze the agency for weeks and months and years even, in a search. The same thing is true about just the false scare of a threat of using some kind of a chemical weapon or a biological one. There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves."

So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that's why this is so important.

DoD News Briefing
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen

"CNN) -- Hurricanes aren't behaving like many of us are used to them behaving. They're bigger and meaner, and more numerous than many people have seen.
Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne tore up parts of Florida last year. After tweaking Florida, Katrina and Rita are wreaking havoc this year along the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas.
But don't rush to blame it on global warming, experts warn.
Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday that we're in a period of heightened hurricane activity that could last another decade or two."

CNN-It's a 'new era' of hurricanes.

"It's worse than imaginable," the president said after walking through a battered neighborhood in Biloxi, Miss. He warned of gasoline supply problems this weekend because of damaged refineries and pipelines.

"I'm not looking forward to this trip," Bush said as he toured Alabama and Mississippi and headed for Louisiana. "It's as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine," he said.

So i think there is 'climate change' in the most limited of ways and if it can be proven that it has anything to do with our industrial activity we know who to turn to to help 'fix' the problems.

Teller says that cooling caused by volcanic eruptions shows this technique would work. For exmaple, the erruption of Mexico's El Chichon in the 1980s cooled the Northern Hemisphere by about one-quarter as much as the average prediction for global warming expected by 2100.

According to Teller, the director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program's Coordination Office has been promoting such geoengineering for three decades, and one National Academy of Sciences report a few years ago commented on "the relatively low costs at which some of the geoengineering options might be implemented."

Teller and his colleagues presented their proposal for geoengineering at the 22nd International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies in August 1997.

www.ncpa.org...

Probably the best-known of the aerial geoengineering proposals was that put forward in 1997 by Edward Teller and entitled ‘Global Warming and the Ice Ages: Prospects for Physics-Based Modulation of Global Change’ subsequently popularised in the Wall Street Journal in an article entitled ‘The Planet Needs a Sunscreen’.

Teller proposed deliberate, large-scale introduction of reflective particles into the upper atmosphere, a task he claimed could be achieved for less than $1 billion a year, between 0.1 and 1.0 percent of the $100 billion he estimated it would cost to bring fossil fuel usage in the United States back down to 1990 levels, as required by the Treaty of Kyoto.

Characteristic of the politics of Teller is the fact that he both ridiculed the idea of global warming and at the same time put forward what he represented as a solution to global warming. ‘For some reason,’ Teller observed sarcastically, ‘This option isn't as fashionable as all-out war on fossil fuels and the people who use them.’

www.spectrezine.org...

Several schemes depend on the effect of additional dust (or possibly soot) in the stratosphere or very low stratosphere screening out sunlight. Such dust might be delivered to the stratosphere by various means, including being fired with large rifles or rockets or being lifted by hydrogen or hot-air balloons. These possibilities appear feasible, economical, and capable of mitigating the effect of as much CO2 equivalent per year as we care to pay for. (Lifting dust, or soot, to the tropopause or the low stratosphere with aircraft may be limited, at low cost, to the mitigation of 8 to 80 Gt CO2 equivalent per year.) Such systems could probably be put into full effect within a year or two of a decision to do so, and mitigation effects would begin immediately. Because dust falls out naturally, if the delivery of dust were stopped, mitigation effects would cease within about 6 months for dust (or soot) delivered to the tropopause and within a couple of years for dust delivered to the midstratosphere.

books.nap.edu...

So basically if they want to take away our toys ( cars, fridges, HD Tv's and what nots) just tell them to go to hell and use the weapons they built to actually HELP those who they taxed so heavily.

Stellar


[edit on 7-1-2007 by StellarX]

If someone could find a why to stop forest fires, volcanic eruptions, thermal venting, underground coal fires, oil fires and gas fires, then I say the chances of changing the earth's climate are pretty good.

Rationing electricity use from the grid or gas rationing are not the answers to any climate change scenario. Population control is probably the best answer, but conservation is probably better. Though conservation is weak at best as an answer.

Have less children, that's about all you can do.