7.9 BILLION TONS of Fossil Fuels Released in 2005

The smog alerts of the time were only an occassionaly occurence. And I haven't lived their since 1981. But a quick check revealed that the last "smog alert" (stage one) was issued in 1998 and a stage 3 (the worse) hasn't been issued since 1984--indicating that the EPA emissions requirements are working. The smog alerts are based on particulate matter in the air which no longer reach the level to initiate an alert.

But you've now lost me in your aruments. First you complain about the amount of particulates being released; then complain about the "money grubbing" oil companies, which I don't necessarily disagree with; but quitting using petroleum products isn't the answer. Now your complaining about the effects of smog from 30 years ago when the air quality over the years has markedly improved due to governmental regulation--and without decreasing over all lifestyle.

Could you please restate or clarify your point?

How is it that I am the one complaining about smog when I am not the one who initiated it into the topic?? Hmmm? You are the one who mentioned smog. I made no mention of it.

[edit on 24-11-2006 by SpeakerofTruth]

Dude!! This entire thread is founded on "smog" as indicated by the article you provided regarding carbon emissions. What do you think carbon emissions are?

BTW: I question the accuracy of that article as its source (Environmental News Network) clearly has biased views.

Judging by your posts thus far,I am sure that you'd be all too giddy to believe an article spponsored by one of the corporate giants though.

Anyway, my main beef is not with the "smog" you keep alluding to and you never really did address my question about whether you thought air quality has gotten better or if you have just become adjusted to breathing bad air. I imagine it's the latter rather than the former,but what do environmental protectionists know?

Smog is certainly an aspect of the problem but there are invisible factors that are more troubling.Smog is a culmination of chemicals in the tmosphere and not simply caused by one specific... So,no,I'm not the one who initiated the conversation about smog... You did!!

I did address it--you just choose not to read my posts!!



Apparently, you don't read your own posts either. Your first post, the foundation upon which this thread stands, is about....................SMOG!!!!

[edit on 25-11-2006 by Freedom_for_sum]

Quite amazing: who would have ever thought that we humans would need to make our adequate energy needs obtainable through the extraction, process and consumption of the earth?

--THIS JUST IN--

Man has been burning trees, leaves, shrubs and combustibles of all kinds for hundreds of thousands of years in order to cook meat, melt metal and help accomodate his various energy needs.

The amenities provided to us are by our own design and creation. We have no one else to thank and no one else to blame, and as far as I am concerned, it was a good run, but, 7.9 billion tons of released fossil fuels per annum is a joke. The number should be far more robust and round like any other thing in my life...like say 10 trillion tons!

Why is progress based on fossil fuels 'ridiculous'? What you rather have no progress under the current energy paradigm? What do you offer as alternatives for human development and growth and how do you plan on gaining public acceptance for them?



Why, in your opinion, is pollution of the atmosphere 'unnecessary' in terms of progress?



What global warming? We have had a global atmospheric cooling trend since 1999.



Simply not true as far as i can tell.



If the planet was in fact warming up the plight of humanity would get generally better as history shows us...



Then i suggest you contribute to the solution , to the common good, by jumping off something relatively high. If you think humanity is in fact the 'problem' and that pollution is a necessary result of progress your seriving no purpose and contributing not a thing to the solution.

Stellar

LOL! He isn't control of the power grid, and maybe at the local election he voted for someone who would do more power saving measures.

Duh.


Yeah, sure it is


Human activity causes the extinction of between 70 and 150 species of animal, bird, fish, insect, and plant life each day.

Haha, yeah, what a 'wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.'


I also guess Glaciers are magically melting and the great barrier reef is magically dieing. Don't worry, it's not us, lets keep killing 70 species a day, it will help the eath


Ah, yes. But we CAN do something about it.

[edit on 26-11-2006 by PisTonZOR]

Just compiled the things you have said so far here...



Well industry may be killing us but our life expectations are still rising so either they suck at it or they see the logic in keeping the cash cow alive as long as humanly possible while it's being milked to near capacity for the duration... Remember that their profit is derived from the resources you gain by your labour and if you do not labour they have nothing to take from you...



Look i do not trust them as far as i can throw them ( corporations being pure tyrannies and all ) but they are at least to some extent predictable; they need to have us around if not to work for them then to exploit us... Industry does not HAVE to be evil and destructive but since we can not affect change in government corporations can get away with as much as they currently are. If we change our perception and requirements of reality we can have industrial enterprise owned by people ( not the not so human entities that currently own so many industries) FOR the people.



Because i refuse to give up my current standard of living i will never expect anyone else below my standard to give up theirs and since that includes most of the people on Earth i am not going to preach to anyone. I want not only what i have but to do better if and when i like and since i do not want to destroy the world that sustains me i will do what i can to protect it. I for one simple do not believe that human activity logically leads to environmental destruction and that in fact ecologically destruction is a choice made and allowed by government policy. The true rulers of the world do want to see the environment destroyed as that would give them ever more control over us as one can see with their various ploys to make us feel guilty about the progress our forefathers fought so hard to attain.



If you think bettering yourself and your local community and it's environment is a 'petty affair' your not being reasonable and do not understand much about human activity in my opinion. We seem to have very tribal like considerations and in fact be shown that without a face and some background history about a person they could just as well not exist in your minds. Since our governments policy is almost always aimed at fragmenting our social behaviour ( but not our nationalistic and 'patriotic' aspirations; we want to be part of something meaningful) they know this well enough and do not want us to work together and thus fight back far more effectively.



I for one know that vacuum energy were in evidence to be extractable from ther vacuum for a century or more and that cold fusion and many other technologies could give us very nearly free energy with pollution that is inversely proportional to growth and development. Since these technologies are not being employed today it is abundantly clear that control over humanity is far more important to our would be rulers than protecting of the environment that does not seem to be doing too badly anyways.



Oh they are and i wonder how you can say the things you do apparently understanding at least partly why it's all happening. Why should humans limit their aspirations because those who seek to control us refuse to allow us the technologies which would lead to unlimited growth with pollution growing ever less as we build a new industry?



Then i guess we will have to live indoors or buy respirators for activities outside our homes? Would you rather live in abject poverty and or starvation or wear a respirator type system when you go outside to spend time on your one acre lawn? How much time do average western people spend outside of buildings where the conditions could not be controlled?



Air quality has gotten better over the years.... Bad air simple kills you in the not so long run and since we are growing ever older ( almost everywhere) i am not sure how a argument for worse and worse air pollution can made to start with...



Total environmental ( atmospheric pollution) may have increased but if it's not affecting our standards of living why should we attempt to go back to earlier times when all that pollution were in your own back yard ( sewage and cooking fires, filthy water, etc) and killed you relatively fast?

Lets save yourselves first and fight the best fight we can to maintain the environment as best we can while we develop human civilization and ourselves; i refuse to even consider a alternative where the environment comes first ( have you ever seen what a poor starving person does to his local environment in his struggle to survive; lets just say it's not pretty at all) with humans consigned to starvation and worse in some kind of desperate attempt to fix what has not been shown to be broken.

Stellar

that 7.9 billion tonne figure will increase as the rest ofthe world copies, emulates the USA energy glutton model.

i'm all for retrofitting our (USAs) power grid system to DC from AC
chemical toilets would do just as well
ethanol instead of state or regional fuel blends, (with Brazil as a starting example)
steam engine technology, synthetic gas from biomass scrap & waste is just beyond the prototype stage at this time...

a less polluted ecology is attainable & would not mean a rollback of living standards, --->but ramping up for it would put maximum economic strain or loss on established mega corps & displace the workers who are still on a payroll for those int'l mega corps
{those remaining & the jobs not already outsourced to 3rd world labor pools}

The only problem is that we need more trees. Trees love all forms of carbon emissions and spit out oxygen. In fact its known that as the carbon in the atmosphere becomes a larger percentage plants grow faster so all we need to do is stop massive deforestation and let nature do the rest.

[edit on 26-11-2006 by American Madman]

That will not help as the current 'alternative' solutions are not worth the effort compared to what is generally hidden from public awareness.



I should have instead said that if one attempts reaching a conclusion based on our limited knowledge and understanding of atmospheric average temperatures one would be stuck with a global cooling trend as 'result'. Since the science does not seem to be all that exact a global warming trend is just rather hard to defend in a remotely scientific way not mentioning the even less realistic claim that we are responsible in large or any part.



Another propaganda lie that never panned out; bring me a list.



Do you think we could have achieved our current living standards in another way?



Some glaciers are melting and some reef's are showing 'unexpected' ( you should ask by who's measure) decline but is it the norm ( when compared to glacier formation and so forth) and is there on the whole signs that the environment is being destroyed? Sure we can find areas that have been absolutely devastated but is it not true that we can find large areas tracts of land that today hold more biological material than before our arrival?



I personally wont mind if we got rid of the 50 odd thousand beetle species and at 70 a day that's two years worth of destruction i don't much care about; after that we can move on to flies, spiders and a whole host of species i reckon contribute very little to the environment. Look it's just a bunch of nonsense anyways and i would love to see you try defend that 'fact' that we are killing 70 species a day! Who's doing the counting anyways and how do you keep track of millions of beetle's anyways? You think chemtrails would be hard to hide but i can promise you the millions of specialist required to crawl around your local forest would be somewhat harder to keep from view.



Sure we can but not in the ways he proposed.... What do you suggest we do beside dismantling the industrialized western societies in some reckless vain attempt to fix a non existing problem?

Stellar

Has nothing to do with emulating the US.

Population increase (anywhere) = greater demand for power.


Do you have any idea of what you are talking about? I've bolded the sections I'm referring to. Retrofitting blah blah blah!? You obviously have no clue of how electricity is made and transmitted across the nation. The retrofit you are referring to would only allow for a transfer of high voltages across a grander plain (meaning send it from here to there with less voltage loss).

Steam engine technology? What!? umm... first, how would you make the steam?... Wish for it? You're gonna have to heat that water up some how!

[edit on 11/26/2006 by Infoholic]

The fact is Speakeroftruth just by the fact that you began the thread makes you part of the problem.

Your PC whatever make and type used loads of luvly energy and oil somewhere in its manufacture.

The electricity you are using no doubt comes from the grid somewhere. Now unless you are using a dynamo powered by hamster or horse the majority of your electrical power uses fossil fuels.

If you were using wind power or such they also contribute to the problem in manufacture. If you use lime, cement or concrete in the construction of your home, you are yet again using fossils in their manufacture. Taken a stage further using wood at all removes a tree or two from the carbon balance.

Unless you built your home, fed yourself and drink your water using local resources and use no energy to obtain these essentials you are not in any position to dictate. When you and your hypocritical type start living in Earth friendly caves and eat and drink locally.....and stop using computers.....then I will listen to what you have to say.

Personally I have no intention of bringing children into this world so as long as it lasts a few more years I am happy. I live in the UK I could do with it warming up a few degrees anyway

The way I see it, if the religious types are right and man is gods special case then no worries. If there is no god (and there ain't IMHO) man is in the poo and who cares, just arrogant man. Let the roaches and rats have it. I say....Man ain't that important you know......

I grow weary of this...

SS

over and out

You have voted SpeakerofTruth for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

The US pays farmers to keep land idol! Land that could produce soybeans for biodeisel and corn for ethanol.

Finally a post on here with a little bit of truth with regards to the environment. I wouldn't necessarily call us a cancer upon earth, because you produced some of that stuff into the atmosphere by running your computer to type up that post. But the fact remains alot of what we do is at the very least causing a slight decline in the quality of our planet (some things are affecting it significantly). However this fact does NOT need to be intertwined with any talk about global warming. In my own mind I am undecided if the noted changes in our planet's temperatures are related to our chemicals, to erratic weather patterns, or just plain old cycles of earth's climate. But it seems like any time someone mentions that we are polluting the atmosphere, there is always that jump in logic to "yea! global warming!" Instead why don't we foster discussion on what we can really do to help minimize our impact on the planet? Arguing if these changes are or are not from our actions is pointless if these actions continue the whole time we are arguing.

The earth is currently experiencing mass extinctions that some say outstrip that of the dinosaurs. Seems to me all the signs are there.

It's unfortunate the oil and automotive industries dismantled all the electric public transportation in favor of petroleum fueled. Geesh, they're even hawking petroleum jelly like some kind of beauty secret.., it's really vitamin E ointment and clean water.

There are marketable alternatives that are more or less ignored by builders. That would be a good idea for a contractor, communities of energy friendly homes.

What I find silly is things like: after Katrina a woman I know got in her SUV and drove down to save the pets. She probably burned enough Co2 to make another Katrina next year. Nevermind the destitute humans received less compassion.

What?

The extinction that whiped out the Dinosaurs, I believe was one of the more mediocre Earth has had, in fact the worst Extinction was several hundreds of millions years before that, where most of the species(above 70 percent) that have ever lived on earth were destroyed, it occured 251 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic extinction. The worst extinctions earth has ever had occured long ago, and every year I'm sure there is some species noone has ever heard of that just went extinct. It's natural selection, survival of the fittest, call it what you will, it's evolution. Lets not contribute evolution and natural disasters to the poisoning of Earth.

There is nothing wrong with the environment, the biggest disaster we have to worry about is Mt. Yellowstone that scientists believe erupts every 600,000 years. It's been 800,000 since it's last eruption, and Ice Ages are actually a frequent occurance in Earth's History. Some of the earliest dating back billions of years ago.

Bottom line, I don't think human intervention plays a MAJOR role in the decline or incline of Earth's atmospheric and terrestrial health, sure we play a role, but not a major one as people want it to be. I just think some people want humans to be at fault for something, they're looking for someone to blame.

Blatantly put, fecal matter happens. This earth is going to experience an extinction, or ice age, or a major catastrophe with or without us, we have no say in it really.

Shattered OUT...

and i get in trouble,
Because i smoke near a restaurant door, yet people are killing our resources

Maybe I overlooked someones comment, but has anybody ever noticed that even though the united states and other developed nations are causing a stir in the pot when it comes to pollution, that nations such as china, india, africa and south america are producing massive amounts of pollution... and in all reality the other corporations are market driven by share holders aka you and me... if you invest in something somehow someway its tied into some massive corporation... besides if our system was to just up and end tomorrow a good percentage of the poppulation would kill itself... riots... looting... rape... so if youd honestly like to stop the system as is go right ahead but just realize that chances are if you live in canada youll starve or freeze to death and if your in the states youll probably be beaten to death if not worse... our system might not be perfect... and of course it needs to be improved on... but dont blame it entirely on north america and dont say that developing nations dont have a right to burn down their rain forests because if you havent noticed its their land... if you dont like it go bomb them maybe you will change their mind then? Im pretty sure thats whats going on in iraq as well... americans didnt agree that women should be treated so poorly and that everyone should have the right to vote ect ect... or was it the oil... hmm so hard to remember...