TOO LATE? Why scientists say we should expect the worst

you know, its odd, people will keep talking about global warming affecting weather patterns, etc. The odd thing is, with 9-11 hit, and they grounded all the planes, what did everyone, especially meteorologists notice? within a few days weather acted 'normal' and like it was actually supposed to.

Think on that one for a moment and consider the further reaching aspects of that. Could our over reliance on air travel be a major contributor to 'things going wrong"(tm) than this so called global warming nonsense?

That's just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure. no pun intended, but it is telling of what we're not looking at.

Will the downturn in the economy bring less air travel and maybe a bit of a break in this all? Time will tell. I wonder of there's a certain threshold that causes a 'tipping point' in the weather.

I noticed a lot of rain this year in Illinois, and a lot of snow last year. Then I thought about it, then looked it up and yeah, thats normal for this area, we've been in a drought so long we don't really remember what it is to NOT be in one. The farmers know though, I'm sure.

What can we do?

Hang on to your butts...

That's all I can say. We are changing the face of this earth, in some cases for the better, but in more cases for the worst.

Sit down, shut up, and hang on. We're in for one wild ride.

Funny how that the same sources that are used to support global warming are the same used to support natural earth cycles.

The fact is, no one really knows but I would err on the side of caution.

Lets say that the earth does indeed have cycles, they are supposed to take thousands of years. You should not be able to witness it in a lifetime.
IT is the speed at which it is happening that is alarming people.

While it could be said that some scientists are profitting from research for global warming, there are those that could be profitting from saying their ISN"T global warming.
Because there are a lot of businesses, especially BIG Oil, that could be really hurt by those reports.

Like the PP said, any drastic change, is not good. While people are stuck in linear thinking of opposites, that ice cannot mean global warming, GW affects individual weather patterns, affecting local areas. lets say that it is true that icebergs are getting bigger. If giant shelves are shrinking exponentially and that ice is now careening around the planet in the form of a berg, that is NOT a good thing.

The environment is complicated. Adn to put it in a cut and dry category you are only shortchanging yourself and others.

Everyone has heard the story about squirrels forgetting where they buried nuts so they grow into trees. That is mother nature in her very simplest. I have come across situations of ecologies that effect each other in very complicated ways, that take a scientific brain to understand.

you can't expect 5 billion people, and 150 years of un repenting industry, to not affect a planet that is only 8,00o miles across.
The planet isn't that big. It is Rhode Island in teh scheme of things. It doesn't take much.

When the Chinese built the Three Gorges Damn, they figured it would put a second on the spin of the planet every year, because the shift of such massive amounts of water actually effects the planets spin.

Near me, there is a beautiful barrier island called Assateague, it is known for its wild horses and beautiful forests and desert landscape. It was once one long island. The upper portion now an entirely paved resort town. In the 1920s, a hurricane opeend a spillway creating two islands, which normally fills back in over time. Humans like the access to the bay so they shored it open with some walls. Just in 90 years you can tell that the lower island has moved in shore. So much so that bay oyster shells are showing up on the ocean side. The upper island(Ocean City) looks like it is hanging out in the middle of the ocean. Since the spillway, the upper island gets all the sand regeneration coming down the current, and Assateague gets none. Now allowing the island to move inland at a phenominal rate.

In the next 80 years Assateague will meet the mainland, all its history being erased.

In 160 years, a local town managed to split a massive barrier island in two, paving one and causing another to dissappear.

IN ocean City, they have had to regenerate their own beach so much by pumping sand from offshore, that now they actually changed tides and the beachfront and the waves.


We have all also heard the little house on the prairie stories. If you ever read them, you know that the Ingalls would sometimes travel for days and weeks without ever seeing another soul.
Only one percent of that prairie remains.
The entire prairie is now farmland.

So if a handful of humans can wreak that much havoc locally, how can you possibly think that we cannot wreak havoc as a whole?

Right now our government has a nifty red phone that can call in a nuclear attack. We can attack another country in a matter of hours and devastate it. That country can also send a nice volley our way in return. Just a few of these nuclear missles can launch half the planet into a nuclear winter lasting for 50 years.

So if we can launch the planet into a nuclear winter in a matter of 15 hours, is it really so hard to believe that we can't warm it in a matter of years?

reply to post by CoffinFeeder


I was watching an interesting show on how trains are becoming more efficient and faster all the time. So much so that they could compete with planes soon.

If they could afford a mag-lev train, (though they can't) it could get from New York to Los Angeles in 10 hours.
That is not bad, in that case I would certainly rather take a train with a nice dining car then a plane.

Like CSX says, they can haul massive amounts of materials on little fuel. Most of our coal is still only shipped that way.

I thought it was interesting that things could come full circle back to the train again. I am rooting for it. I like trains.

I'm very confused...I hear the doom and gloom that will result from "Global Warming"...that is, the warming of the earth's climate producing mass ice melting resulting in higher sea levels, etc. At the same time; however, I'm also hearing (and heard this not long ago on Coast to Coast AM, along with various other postings on the internet and more and more scientists agree) that Global Warming is not at all the case, and that the polar caps are actually growing in size and what we need fear is an ice age of sorts.

Somebody get there friggin' facts straight for us all...please!!

It doesn't really matter at all. The earth has been warming and cooling for thousands of year. Whether we are warming or cooling now, our impact has been minimal at best. I'm not buying into this crap that we are the sole source of all the earth's problems. Nature will do what it wants. If nature feels like killing us off to protect the earth, it will do it for sure. It should be obvious that we as a species do not have much time left on this planet. We need to make the most of our time and enjoy what we have left. We have already passed the point of no return and its time to accept it and move on.

Here's a take on the Global warming issue from the founder of the weather channel and a few of his scientist friends, about 30,000 friends.

reply to post by Shadowflux


Typical American.... why stop China Pollution? if we in america generate 40% of the whole planet's pollution. We need to act here and now, not ask another country to stop polluting if we arent doing anything

Originally posted by ll__raine__ll
reply to post by infolurker

 

are you saying global warming is not a threat? that it's just a money making venture?

serious question cuz i don't know anything about global warming.

It would seem so. Research a little about Al Gore and the millions hes made over Global Warming Fear, and GE and the Millions they have made over that same fear.

Then we have Mild Summers and Cold Winters.
Also, I believe most of the planets are going through a cycle right now of percieved warmth compaired to our VAST knowledge of what they should be. Because we all know, scientists know everything and have known everything since before they measured Temperature by weather your pee froze when it hit the ground or not.

Its all a scam. Man made global warming is a money making ploy to freak everyone out so you will buy up Carbon credits, Green Light Bulbs, Green Weenies..... We blame this all on man while dismissing that big giant bright thing in the sky as the leading cause. Because its so darned bright and hot, it couldn't possibly be the cause, nor could the Trillions of Tons of Ash being pumped into the air by the Earth Itself have anything to do with it, nor the Methane seepage from the Oceans. Nope, its Aunt Margie's Gas Guzzling Mo-Ped and Cow Farts thats doing it to us.

Whats more plausible?

Humans contribute in a very negative way to the environment. Here is how: we pollute the environment with heavy metals, pharmaceutical waste and plastics. We destroy more forrest area than we allow to grow back naturally. We create urban sprawls that added to the desertification of the planet, because little grows in a parking lot. So, let me start by saying we are indeed environmentally detrimental.

But taxing carbon is just a scam. It's a poverty tax, hitting on a life cycle gas, criminalizing people for breathing, for cooking, for driving, for everything. It's an elitist control mechanism, pure and simple. And it's easy to solve. Legislate to save the forests. Give incentives to plant more forrests. Change to cleaner energy. The fact that so much marketing weight in thrown behind it, despite mountains of evidence against it, the fact that it's easily solved but the solution focused upon is taxation, betrays the intentions of the sociopaths who thought up the scheme.

We need to clean up our act. We have the wrong leaders for the job. So I suggest we just ignore them and clean up our act anyway. Let them tax their own learjets, the parasites.

So yes, we have grave environmental problems, but this issue is just a reflection of the parasitism we are under.

I'm going to take as many hard drugs as I possibly can because there's nothing we can do.

I hope scientists abort what technology we have into outer space to be found by generations in millions of years to come. It's too much of a waste not to.

If Al Gore was as honestly concerned with fighting for our planet against global warming, the someone please explain this to me

www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp

The fact that GORES mansion " in one month alone, consumes more energy than the average American household in AN ENTIRE YEAR" proves to me that climate change is a cash cow for Gore, and not some great humanitarian effort to save our planet.

Sorry if this has already been posted, but I had to show people the link!

treemanx

I would like to state something for the record.

If the world does indeed have another ice age, and us humans are in danger of extinction. I propose that if there are any underground bunkers or something similiar, Al Gore is the last one let in.

Sorry, I haven't had time to read entire thread and I shouldn't really write but fifty years ago we needed to plant every tree we destroyed ten fold and we didn't. N


I would think that now we would probably need to plant a hundred (better yet) a thousand fold per tree destroyed to take the CO2 out of the air and replenish our oxygen supply.

Imagine Earth's people grave stone saying:

"We should have planted the trees."

reply to post by infolurker


Some criminals stick a gun in your face and take your wallet. Other criminals spawn confidence games like Carbon Credits. I have more respect for the latter. At least they don't deny they are stealing your money.

Because we (most of us at least) are laypeople and not scientists, we are utterly at the mercy of the media and publishers of information with regard to what we know about the potential for man-made climate change.

I grew up in the 1980s, where we were constantly bombarded in school with articles in Weekly Reader or other publications warning of the greenhouse effect and what it would do to the world eventually if left unchecked, so I grew up believing firmly in global warming. I no longer hold that belief.

More recently, it has become clear to me that there is a distinct possibility that man-made global warming is in fact a scam. Let me be clear: that isn't what I believe, but I acknowledge the possibility. I don't know what to believe frankly, and that is what scares me.

One of the best pieces of evidence presented by those who hypothesize that man-made global warming is a fabrication is the historical record indicating that periods of increased global temperatures precede upswings in greenhouse gasses. On the surface, this would seem to suggest that there is no link between greenhouse gasses and global warming, however it needs to be pointed out that in a natural period of warming, greenhouse gasses may be released from the world's oceans as a result of increased temperatures. What does this mean? It means that greenhouse gas increases following periods of warming - instead of the other way around - make sense in natural periods of warming.

This isn't what's happening currently, though. Right now we've been experiencing warming following decades upon decades of increased greenhouse gas emissions.

So, what can we say for certain? We can say that the world has been getting warmer. We can say that greenhouse gas emissions have increased. We can say that the ozone layer has been impacted by those emissions. We can say that there is correlation.

What we cannot say with certainty is that these things are linked by causality. So, the real question is, "What if all of this really is just a natural warming trend?" The answer, in my current opinion at least (which changes with newer and better information as I travel through life,) is that even if this is a natural warming cycle, we are still going to end up with more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere as a direct consequence of our lifestyles and current technologies, than would be the case naturally.

In other words, no matter how we slice it, and totally regardless of whether we are strictly to blame for (or even contributors to at all) the current warming trend, we are still having an impact which we can and should in my opinion lessen, and we still need to prepare for potentially catastrophic climate change even if it isn't definitively proved to be imminent in our lifetimes... just in case.

[edit on 12/9/2008 by AceWombat04]

reply to post by sputniksteve


Perhaps he could have an igloo and we could toss him some scraps now and then?

That guy gets under my skin worse than any politician in my memory. He is such a sleaze.

reply to post by AceWombat04


We all want a clean environment. I don't think there is any argument about that.

Some are just Anarchists searching for a cause. Others are criminal in my opinion like Mr. Gore. They need to make us into monsters and pretend we don't want a clean environment too.

Every time I look at satellite photos of the giant brown cloud over China and especially when it makes its way over Anchorage where I live, I see proof how little these people truly care. Can't upset China now by calling them to task can we

While we have been doing a better and better job of cleaning up our act, China has been given a pass it seems. It is time they stop with the guilt trip directed at us and go after the third world for not using available clean technology. Now that China has built those plants, can anyone believe they will turn around and build them all over again?

People like Gore never seem to mention that, do they? How sad.

There is no doubt there are changes. To deny it is to bury your head in the sand. The question is why. Natural cycles? Ok.. I suppose there is a slight possibilty that an event that occurs every 3k.. 6k.. or 11k years, COULD be happening now. By an amazing chance. At the same time we are releasing more CO2 into the air than ever before. But the odds would say it's not a cooincidence.

Even if it were, do we really want to take that chance? Gamble our future on the fact we *might* be in a cycle? And I don't know why people are against the thought of having a clean environement in the first place. Having a cleaner atmosphere is bad why again?

Originally posted by fleabit
There is no doubt there are changes. To deny it is to bury your head in the sand. The question is why. Natural cycles? Ok.. I suppose there is a slight possibilty that an event that occurs every 3k.. 6k.. or 11k years, COULD be happening now. By an amazing chance. At the same time we are releasing more CO2 into the air than ever before. But the odds would say it's not a cooincidence.

Even if it were, do we really want to take that chance? Gamble our future on the fact we *might* be in a cycle? And I don't know why people are against the thought of having a clean environement in the first place. Having a cleaner atmosphere is bad why again?

Than *ever* before i think you will find is wrong,having a clean evniornment is good,i agree,being taxed under false pretenses is not.Livestock farts contribute more to global warming than we do,methane is even worse than CO2...the perma frosts in siberia melting would do more damage than we could ever dream of.