It's Worse Than We Think

Originally posted by LoneGunMan
Just the fresh water we contaminate alone through manufacturing is enough that we cannot keep the pace up much longer.

And it's that same manufacturing that made the chair you sit in, the computer you're typing on, the walls of your house and the electricity that flows through them. Referring lightly to what defcon5 stated after your post, so much of what the average person living in the "first world" takes for granted has been produced by environmentally unfriendly means.

We need drastic changes how could a thinking person not agree to that fact? You going to just concentrate on "global warming" how about the fact we are living like a cancer itself instead of a co-existing life form. This makes the great mother unhappy and when Mother Nature isn’t happy, we wont be happy.

And what drastic changes do you recommend? Shutting down all manufacturing? We could impose excruciatingly strict environmental manufacturing standards (stricter than what are already in place), but guess who gets to foot the bill on that? Certainly not the corporate execs. That's a different kind of "trickle-down economics": a small plastics molding company needs to institute a $450K water filtration system, which gets paid for by their customers (the ones who create the products that you buy), and they pass those savings on to you.

Of course, they need to help pay for the cost increases incurred by all their other suppliers, so you aren't just getting the nickel added on to cover the plastic company; you get to pay for the ventilation system at the metal pressing facility, the chemical neutralization processes at the labeling company, etc., etc., ad nauseum. By implementing "drastic" changes--and by "drastic", I'm assuming you mean forcing every company to take on a fully and perfectly environmentally friendly manufacturing process--you increase consumer costs across the board.

Granted, not every manufacturer is going to be able to implement these new standards--they won't have the capital to get it started, or they'll feel it's just not worth the hassle. So they shut down. A small company puts 10-20 people out of a job. (You may think this is unreasonable, but a company I was working for recently faced this very dillemma, and ended up sending work out of state to an area with much more lenient environmental laws.) So that's say 15 people in one town who can't pay their bills or buy groceries. No biggie--let 'em get a job at McDonalds or Walmart or whatever. But all of that company's customers now need to look elsewhere, and what problems will that cause for them?

Sorry to go off on a tangent like this, but (as I said) I was working kinda close to the top of a company that just had to put up with all of this, and they were very close to just locking the doors and telling 20+ people to find someone else to pay for their Christmas, and it was because of strict environmental standards. I'm all for keeping things decent, but I do believe there's far too much ground going towards the extreme green.

MCory1, there are a lot of people out there that don't understand, or don't want to understand. They think there is a way to easily get out of oil products and it can be done fast. Some people will continue bashing and blaming all the manufacturing companies for what they think is the cause for global warming, but those same people will never give out their computers, their electricity, their cars. But then you will get some people saying, "oh but i use a bicycle to go to work. I guess some people think bycicles are made with environmentally friendly products...

That is the simple stuff, there are people walking in the streets that have pacemakers, and other products which is literally keeping them alive, but then again, I guess some people will never understand that.

Originally posted by Muaddib
There is something which some people still don't seem to understand. Just because a lot of "environmentalists" agree human activity is the main cause for global warming, does not make it so...

[edit on 13-11-2006 by Muaddib]

Sounds like another denial of accountability to me. Why is it that according to some, there is no way that the "innocent" human race could possibly have anything to do with global warming? Why is that? Someone please "enlighten" me. Please!! Because I just don't understand that line of "reasoning" at all.

Q. What are the most dire predicted effects of GW?
A. Rising sea levels, more hurricanes/stronger hurricanes, flood, drought.

Even if we assume GW is caused entirely or mostly by humans and we do nothing to stop it, what then?

1. People will move away from current coastlines (to the new costlines if they are ocean lovers).

What if ALL the ice melts?

2. People will move away from areas affected by hurricanes/typoons. Or get good insurance like people in the Gulf Coast States. Personally I'd move away from an area prone to hurricanes.

3. Civilization has managed to survive quite well and has sustained floods/droughts throughout history. Further, thanks to today's oil based technological civilization (which is the source of all GW evil according to some) we are much better suited to cope.

If it is discovered GW is mostly caused by some natural phenomena that we don't understand then what?

Same thing.

We need to be good stewards of the environment. We need to keep our air and water clean, We need to limit the mass of manufatured chemicals released to the environment. But lets not collapse the world economy and degrade the quality of life the world over due to worries about a possible 2-3 degree C rise in average global temps. and rising sea levels. Human caused GW has been co-opted into a political wedge issue, nothing more.

Originally posted by HankMcCoy
I'm still holding out hope for the global cooling that these same scientists warned us about in the 70's.

Warming is expected to be followed by 'cooling' - linked to the ocean's conveyor belts, and the North Atlantic Current's stopping.

Too bad there is such a synthetic polarization of the issue.

Yes - the sun, galaxy, and black holes influence earth's climate, and earth's climate cycles are related to cosmic cycles.

Yes - mankind's activities affect weather, exacerbate natural climate change - and most certainly impact our ability as a species to survive climate change.


So let's figure out what we need to accept, and what we can change - and GET TO WORK!!!

Originally posted by HankMcCoy
I'm still holding out hope for the global cooling that these same scientists warned us about in the 70's.

Couldn't we just nuke the entire planet and cause a 1,000 year nuclear winter to counter global warming?

Originally posted by In nothing we trust

Couldn't we just nuke the entire planet and cause a 1,000 year nuclear winter to counter global warming?

We most likely will not have to go that far. The world, it seems, is able to balance its overpopulation problem without human help. If this does occur, and we go through this cycle, then the droughts, famines, and severe weather are going to do the work of bringing the population back under what the world considers acceptable limits without any human intervention.

MCory1

I am glad that someone got my point about having to re-tool the entire society. I personally don’t see it ever happening, and the ramifications on our economic system will ensure that if we change it’s going to be over a very gradual period. The cost and logistics of it are simply mind bending. You can guarantee that this is why the government is not coming right out and telling us what is happening. The public is reactionary, and if they admitted this was a fact and that a major life-threatening environment was to follow, the public would begin making unreasonable demands on them without giving thought to the deeper ramifications. Unfortunately, most people do not see the bigger picture that you are referring to and I was eluding somewhat too.

In my case though I am also taking into consideration that the average person is just not going to be willing to do without their creature comforts, change in lifestyle, or the increase in cost of living associated with such a change. My gut feeling is that the government is just going to allow it to occur and the depopulation that follows the events will solve the problem for them in the short term. I am not trying to sound cold or harsh here, its simply the way I see it developing. I mean right now people can cut their CO2 emissions significantly just by simply switching from normal light bulbs to the $5-$6 screw in florescent style ones, and even that is too much to ask from most people. Now just try and tell them they have to give up on their SUV’s, or start car pooling or other more drastic measures.

You know in the long run its just a lot easier and cheaper to simply point the finger at China, or the Sun, or better yet deny its even occurring.

We are on the slippery slope and if mans activities add to the process of global warming then this process will accelerate over the next ten years. Our solar system undergoes change frequently, the Earth has been devastated before, so the process continues. What we should be doing is trying to survive such a catastrophe, maybe if we stopped spending on arms globally we would have the money to do what is required to survive. Who needs armed forces when the Earth's population are facing extinction.

Let's pray that the official Chinese policy of seeing all 1,306,313,812 with their own car, or two, includes hybrid technology. Even so that's too much Co2.

Allow me to take this moment to personally apologize Rona Ambrose. I didn't vote for her, she doesn't represent me. (She's Canada's new fall-girl for big business's policies on population control, read global warming.)
Canada will fare very badly with global warming. We're still a raw resource exporter riding on the coat-tails of Turtle Island's abundance. C'est kaput.







How does a woman get a neck as wide as her head?

[edit on 15-11-2006 by clearwater]

earth's magnetic field is shrinking and the number of cycles per second (SR) which used to be 7.8 (which the militiary had used) started increasing in 1980 and now is at 12 cycles per second. this results in many changes (earth changes) and maybe people are arfraid to beleive they can do nothing about this changing earth, granted pollution may not help, but there is something much bigger going on here.

oh and basically in layman's terms the change from earth's "heartbeat" from 7.8 to 12 generally means time is accelerating or "collapsing" . we are operating on a different wavelength, thought forms are more powerful and soon we will be in 4D and basically as our operting wavelength's are changing our (perceptions) are transforming. go ahead disbeleive, but we are in an era of transformation of consciousness, there will likely be increased chaos in the form of bigger storms, earthquakes, and the like practice kindness and beleive in yourself WEIT

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[edit on 15-11-2006 by cpdaman]

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[edit on 15-11-2006 by cpdaman]

Originally posted by cpdaman

earth's magnetic field is shrinking and the number of cycles per second (SR) which used to be 7.8 (which the militiary had used) started increasing in 1980 and now is at 12 cycles per second. this results in many changes (earth changes) and maybe people are arfraid to beleive they can do nothing about this changing earth, granted pollution may not help, but there is something much bigger going on here.

oh and basically in layman's terms the change from earth's "heartbeat" from 7.8 to 12 generally means time is accelerating or "collapsing" . we are operating on a different wavelength, thought forms are more powerful and soon we will be in 4D and basically as our operting wavelength's are changing our (perceptions) are transforming. go ahead disbeleive, but we are in an era of transformation of consciousness, there will likely be increased chaos in the form of bigger storms, earthquakes, and the like practice kindness and beleive in yourself WEIT

Cpdaman, This is very interesting stuff. Can you point us toward some webpages with technical data on earths mag field cycles?

Originally posted by RecDude

Given the large consumption of nitrogen in war, and in corporate farming, is it not possible that nitrogen depletion of some sort could be causing the other chemicals to increase their damage to the atmosphere?

Remember folks, you heard it here first.

[edit on 14-11-2006 by RecDude]

By far that is one of the most reasonable and simplist ideas I have ever heard about global warming. Of course, Nitrogen is not really consumed, but combined with other elements like Carbon, Hydrogen and whatnot, but still, if the ratio of Nitrogen to Oxygen in the air drops, then guess what would happen? Ever hear the old saying about the balance of Oxygen in the atmosphere? If the air was pure oxygen, the earth would literally catch on fire. Nitrogen in the air acts as a catalyst that slows down the rate of combustion an oxidation. So given that, I think this poster has a good theory. If Nitrogen levels drop, then it follows that every living thing would begin to oxidize hydrocarbons at a faster rate which would increase the global heat output of organic things.

I LIKE 'global warming'.



Makes for much nicer winters.

It also has another nice side effect...

of exposing Man's basic stupidity...

That they 'think' they can control the world environment.

That they 'think' they understand the 'global' model.

The system is self balancing... (both fortunately and unfortunately ).

Instead of thinking macro... folks that are ecosystem conscious... need to think micro.

The entire system of 'economics' is utterly insane... (just go spend a few hours at your local dump, you'll immediately understand this point ).

With the advent of the internet, we should start the exchange/commerce of virtual widgets...

Everyone would prosper... Everyone is a winner.

Basically about 2% of the world's population are the real producers... they rest are basically leeches on those 2%s buttocks.

Including the Chicken Little consortiums... trying to 'protect' us from ourselves.

Originally posted by Muaddib
MCory1, there are a lot of people out there that don't understand, or don't want to understand. They think there is a way to easily get out of oil products and it can be done fast. Some people will continue bashing and blaming all the manufacturing companies for what they think is the cause for global warming, but those same people will never give out their computers, their electricity, their cars. But then you will get some people saying, "oh but i use a bicycle to go to work. I guess some people think bycicles are made with environmentally friendly products...

That is the simple stuff, there are people walking in the streets that have pacemakers, and other products which is literally keeping them alive, but then again, I guess some people will never understand that.

Oil isn't an indefinite source of fuel, if we survive the next 100 years what are we going to do when the oil runs out. This is more than simply global warming, relying on a finite source of fuel is one of the most ignorant things you can possibly do. what are you going to do when you have no fuel for your car? when you have no electricity because you use a oil/caol fueled power plant? what are you going to do when you need a pace maker but there are none left because the factory's that made them had to shut down because of lack of parts.

Thats where we are heading, you can only ignore the inevitable for so long and when we do run out of fuel or suffer a worse disaster before hand ill be there to give you a helping hand.

Just so you know, I don't drive and almost all my electricity is wind/water powered. As for consumer products I can only hope it will start to turn around soon.

Originally posted by Edn
Oil isn't an indefinite source of fuel, if we survive the next 100 years what are we going to do when the oil runs out. This is more than simply global warming, relying on a finite source of fuel is one of the most ignorant things you can possibly do. what are you going to do when you have no fuel for your car? when you have no electricity because you use a oil/caol fueled power plant? what are you going to do when you need a pace maker but there are none left because the factory's that made them had to shut down because of lack of parts.

Thats where we are heading, you can only ignore the inevitable for so long and when we do run out of fuel or suffer a worse disaster before hand ill be there to give you a helping hand.

Just so you know, I don't drive and almost all my electricity is wind/water powered. As for consumer products I can only hope it will start to turn around soon.

You are absoultely correct Edn. Carbon generated energy is finite, as is nuclear fission power. Technically solar/fusion energy is also finite but I think we don't need to worry about that based on the time frames involved.

Alternative energy generation methods will doubtlessly be mastered and be the norm by the time the carbon begins to run out. It's not as if one day there will be no gas and we all park oor cars for good. Society will adapt when needed. It's just that as a whole, society dosn't think it's needed yet.

And my hat is off to you for doing your part.




[edit on 11/15/2006 by darkbluesky]

"One of the great propaganda icons of the United Nations climate-change machine... is about to get swept away as junk science," writes Terence Corcoran "Financial Post 7/13/04, see www.sepp.org). On July 1, Michael E. Mann, one of the creators of the 1,000- year temperature chart published a corrigendum in Nature, acknowledging that "the listing of the `proxy' data set...contained several errors." After describing the errors, Mr. Mann said that "none of these errors affect our previously published results."

The Canadian researchers who pointed out the errors, Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre, stated that the claim that nothing had changed was "categorically false."

In a letter that Nature declined to publish, Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Australia, wrote: "The "corrected) Mann et al. graph shows that the northern hemisphere temperature index attained its highest values in the early 15th century, and that the 20th century warming cycle has so far only equalled a secondary warm peak that occurred late in the 15th century."

www.oism.org...

So are we really all that responsible for this crisis? Where is the evidence for that?

That did not happen. Instead, according to the United Nations, agricultural production in the developing world has increased by 52% per person since 1961. The daily food intake in poor countries has increased from 1,932 calories, barely enough for survival, in 1961 to 2,650 calories in 1998, and is expected to rise to 3,020 by 2030. Likewise, the proportion of people in developing countries who are starving has dropped from 45% in 1949 to 18% today, and is expected to decline even further to 12% in 2010 and just 6% in 2030. Food, in other words, is becoming not scarcer but ever more abundant. This is reflected in its price. Since 1800 food prices have decreased by more than 90%, and in 2000, according to the World Bank, prices were lower than ever before.

A more balanced view comes from a recent article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. This tries to count up both the problems and the benefits of the 1997-98 Niño. The damage it did was estimated at $4 billion. However, the benefits amounted to some $19 billion. These came from higher winter temperatures (which saved an estimated 850 lives, reduced heating costs and diminished spring floods caused by meltwaters), and from the well-documented connection between past Niños and fewer Atlantic hurricanes. In 1998, America experienced no big Atlantic hurricanes and thus avoided huge losses. These benefits were not reported as widely as the losses.

Yet a false perception of risk may be about to lead to errors more expensive even than controlling the emission of benzene at tyre plants. Carbon-dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm. The best estimates are that the temperature will rise by some 2°-3°C in this century, causing considerable problems, almost exclusively in the developing world, at a total cost of $5,000 billion. Getting rid of global warming would thus seem to be a good idea. The question is whether the cure will actually be more costly than the ailment.

Despite the intuition that something drastic needs to be done about such a costly problem, economic analyses clearly show that it will be far more expensive to cut carbon-dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures. The effect of the Kyoto Protocol on the climate would be minuscule, even if it were implemented in full. A model by Tom Wigley, one of the main authors of the reports of the UN Climate Change Panel, shows how an expected temperature increase of 2.1°C in 2100 would be diminished by the treaty to an increase of 1.9°C instead. Or, to put it another way, the temperature increase that the planet would have experienced in 2094 would be postponed to 2100.
The Kyoto agreement merely buys the world six years

www.economist.com...

So on the whole the environmental movement have been consistently wrong since the big media circus started. Are we really willing to kill millions and deprive hundreds of millions of a good living ( under the current energy paradigm) simply to buy ourselves six years, MAYBE?

There are no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases
in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or
can be expected to cause catastrophic changes in global temperatures
or weather. To the contrary, during the 20 years with the highest carbon
dioxide levels, atmospheric temperatures have decreased.
We also need not worry about environmental calamities, even if
the current long-term natural warming trend continues. The Earth has
been much warmer during the past 3,000 years without catastrophic
effects. Warmer weather extends growing seasons and generally improves
the habitability of colder regions. ‘‘Global warming,’’ an invalidated
hypothesis, provides no reason to limit human production
of CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs, and SF6 as has been proposed (29).

Human use of coal, oil, and natural gas has not measurably
warmed the atmosphere, and the extrapolation of current trends
shows that it will not significantly do so in the foreseeable future. It
does, however, release CO2, which accelerates the growth rates of
plants and also permits plants to grow in drier regions. Animal life,
which depends upon plants, also flourishes.
As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty
vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released
into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the
health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.
Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in CO2
level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil,
and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface,
where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living
in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result
of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more
plant and animal life as that with which we now are blessed. This is a
wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.

www.heartland.org...

So basically if we do this properly we are not even hurting the environment as a whole by warming up the place. That would obviously be only if they could actually establish that we have anything at all to do with it; to not even speak of significant our contribution is. Here is the names of a few thousand scientist who dont think there is much science involve in global warming as result of human activity:

Kyoto Accord Protest Quickening
Washington Times, April 22, 1998

by S. Fred Singer

Happy Earth Day, Al Gore! Your much-touted "scientific consensus" on global warming has just been exposed as phony. An unprecedented number of American scientists—more than 15,000, including over 10,000 with advanced academic degrees—have now signed a petition against the climate accord adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997.

The petition urges the U.S. government to reject the accord, which tries to force drastic cuts in energy use on the United States. This is in line with a Senate resolution, passed by a 95-to-0 vote in July, which turns down any Kyoto agreement that damages the economy of the United States while exempting most of the world's nations, including such major emerging economic powers as China, India and Brazil.

in signing the petition within a period of less than six weeks, the 15,000 basic and applied scientists expressed their profound skepticism about the science underlying the Kyoto accord. The available atmospheric data simply do not support the elaborate computer-driven climate models that are being cited by the United Nations and other promoters of the accord as "proof" of a major future warming.

www.oism.org...

There is so much evidence in open literature that absolutely destroys the human inspired GW ( not to mention the large volumes independently disputing global warming itself) that one must wonder how the scientist who support it can sleep at night considering the genocide and general suffering they want to impose on a large proportion of humanity.

The environmental movement has long ago been hijacked by those ( i don't mean the average ignorant do-gooder who chains himself to a tree) who have not the slightest interest in what happens to the environment as long as they can use it to retard or destroy human development or even civilization.

Please do not buy into this scam ( especially not if your typing this from your own computer in your own house while waiting for the food in the oven) as most of us here have only benefited and at least some of us have seen the destructive force that is a starving desperate human being. If you want to see environmental destruction go to a third world slum...

Stellar

Annna is fired up today:



Global Warming Rock and an Economic Hard Place

Telling 2+ billion Indians and Chinese, who have been Hollywoodized and sold on the American dream, that more stuff is not better will be a major challenge. The other challenge is that the US is sliding towards a service based economy and is dependent on increasing the the levels consumption and consumerism in order to promote growth. Meanwhile, Asia is servicing our growing debt and is dependent on the West to keep buying.

China must be consumer society, says World Bank

Since our current "profit before people, debt is wealth" economic system goes contrary to most ecological solutions, the current system will more than likely have to collapse before a majority life styles and consumer buying habits change.

So how many are actually concerned and will have no lights for Christmas? We shall see...