Global Warming - Explain It to Me
Offline I don't deny global warming, but I'm also not a huge advocate of it. To be honest, I really don't know too much about it other than the basic concept, and my problem is that the majority of sources I've learned from make me skeptical due to their biased standpoints such as POLITICAL AGENDAS, which I NEVER trust. In other words, I don't have a stance on it yet, and I'm trying to be critical about what it is and isn't.
It seems there's a big stigma attached to anyone who questions it. The environmental "craze" lately of becoming more educated on recycling, saving resources and cutting down on waste is definitely eye-opening to many people. Along with that comes a group of extremists, so to speak, who cut you down if you utter a word of skepticism.
I tend to feel that aside from taking care of the planet for our own benefits (resources, longetivity) and out of love of nature, the earth is likely to regenerate one way or another. I have a hard time believing that we are going to DESTROY it completely, or make it unhabitable for life. Not that I don't recognize the great importance of respecting the planet.
Didn't the Earth turn very, very warm before the Ice Age? Are we in for another one? How much of our waste is directly effecting, if we could know that, the destruction of the ozone layer?
I really don't know much about this. I'd love an unbiased, critical perspective on it.
*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*
"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby
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Are you familiar with the population dynamic concept of carrying capacity? Because the human population is way, way over the carrying capacity. It is most certainly not something that requires a hard time believing that the human population at this time can completely destroy the planet. This needs a rigorous definition. When I say "destroy the planet" I am actually referring to the present ecosystem. Once we drive enough species to extinction, which can cause global collapse of ecosystems with components that have developed symbiosis requirements, there is the potential to cause a permanent impairment of the ability of Earth to sustain advanced forms of biological life. I say "permanent" because much of the damage we are doing is permanant. For example, do you know of the charmingly named Pacific garbage vortex? It's exactly what it sounds like. The plastics are non-biodegradable. Long polymers of hydrocarbons just break into shorter fragments. The very high concentration of plastic polymers in the garbage vortex will enter the ecosystem because when they are small enough, they will be swallowed by marine life. As with any food chain, poisons that accumulate in an organism lower in the food chain accumulate as we travel up it. The problem is that advanced ecosystems are highly sensitive to alterations of conditions. Now, let's return to the point of carrying capacity. What we are measuring here is the resources required to support humans living on this planet. For a modern human in a first world city, the resources are absolutely tremendous. The problem is that the continuation of supporting everyone with these resources depends on the ability of the natural capital (such as wood from trees) to regenerate faster than we take it (otherwise we will get diminishing returns). Obviously this is not happening. In about 1960, the human population reached the point of 100% carrying capacity. At this point, the rate at which we extracted natural capital was equal to the rate at which it was regenerated. We have long since exceeded that limit in the last 50 years. If we continue to strip resources away at this rate, it is indeed very possible that we could make the planet completely uninhabitable for all but primitive life forms. The rate at which the oceans are being depleted now has the potential to cause global collapse of marine ecosystems, which would be catastrophic for all land based animals.
You mean compounds called CFCs? That's actually one of the success stories mankind has had. The ban on CFC stopped the hole that we were happily ripping into the ozone.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
I don't know much about it either but I hate people who talk about global warming all the time, and environmentalists in general. It's always something about how people who don't bang the drum for them are enviro-criminals or some such nonsense. There's even a thread up right now about what we should do to people who deny global warming, fine them, put them in jail, or just kill them (the last one will help with that overpopulation problem). That's the sort of thing that makes me glad that environmentalists are usually marginalized.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
Oh your full of shit. Maybe we can damage our biosphere for a while. Maybe a few million years. But that only erases humans. Our planet will just fine.
I still find it odd that this is referred to as a 'success story'.
"HOORAY! WE STOPPED DEPLETING THE OZONE LAYER IN TIME TO PREVENT THE EARTH FROM BECOMING A CHARRED AND BARREN ROCK! YAY FOR US!"
Um. Yay?
It's like celebrating having not driven your car into the nearest lightpole at 200 mph.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Yeah! DeludedGod is so full of shit! What does he know, anyway? He's just a biologist.
Fuck biologists! Thinking they're so smart, with their protein folds and their base pairs and their DNA sequencing and crap! Bunch of hocus pocus baloney.
I heard some guy, and he was on TV and everything, and he says it's all a bunch of hoo-haw. We have enough oil to last us 500 more years, and we're planting more trees than we ever did before, and we'll all be up to our necks in owls and bankrupt if those damn biologists and ecologists and environmentalists don't just shut their damn mouths. Guess what season it was last december? WINTER! Ha! 'Global Warming'... those guys don't even know what they're talkin' about.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Well, it's a relative term.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Well, the basic physics (over which there is no debate, as far as I'm aware) are extremely simple - and they're also what the bottom line is when it comes to climate change:
The sun emits radiation, and this is the source of all of the Earth's energy. The radiation that initially strikes the Earth is short wave length radiation; after hitting (and being partially absorbed by) the ground, it is re-emitted as long wave radiation. The short wave length radiation passes right through the gasses in the Earth's atmosphere to little effect, however, the long wave length radiation 'bouncing back' from the ground is absorbed by methane, hydrogen and carbon dioxide molecules.
This is a good thing, as it allows the Earth to retain much of the energy it receives from the sun. Bodies like Mercury or our moon, which have no atmosphere to speak of, freeze on their 'dark sides' (the sides not facing the sun) because of their inability to effectively retain the heat (think of having a hot air dryer and a blanket. If you simply turn-on the hot air dryer and point it at yourself, you'll only receive the heat on he area you're pointing it at. If you wrap the blanket around yourself, however, turn on the same hot air dryer and put the nozzle up the blanket - do not actually do this, you may start yourself on fire - you'll receive it's heat all around you.
Too thick an atmosphere of heat capturing gasses, however, and you end-up with conditions like those on Venus.
In other words, there's a balance that must be achieved. The question is: are we upsetting that balance with our current emissions?
Now, like any good hypothesis, the climate change hypothesis makes certain predictions. IF climate change is a real danger, we SHOULD see evidence of it in the form of radically changing migration patterns, radically changing precipitation patterns, radical ice depletion and (of course) an overall upward trend in the global average temperature.
So, do we see these things? I would argue that we certainly do.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
No, I wasn't familiar with that! But it does make sense, seeing as how we've already caused or helped the extinction of so many species. How long do you think it would take? I wonder if we might be gone by then.
*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*
"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby
I can't really answer that. I'm not a marine biologist or an ecologist, and I won't pretend I'm familiar with their projections, but from everything I've heard, it does not look good. Oceanography and marine biology were recently ranked as the "worst jobs in science", not because there is anything wrong with the disciplines, or that they are not interesting, rather because there is nothing but bad news, day in, day out.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
I think the last paragraph is a bit unfair. He seemed to be implying he thought we'd kill ourselves off and ravage the biosphere, but in several *million* years the planet will have recovered, at least somewhat. Hardly the idea of there being no problem.
Edit: I'm aware a few million years isn't all that much. I'm not arguing that he's correct, just that he's not denying the issue, simply saying it'll be less catastrophic. Still a catastrophe.
What the....oh, wait a second.
SATIRE!!!
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
This is a photograph of a forest in Colorado.
Do you see all of the discolored trees? They're dead. Killed by an unprecedented blight of Pine Beetles, whom almost every forestry official agrees are becoming such a problem due to increasingly mild winters.
...Does this somehow not constitute a very serious threat to the biosphere to you? If not, why would that be? Do you think that the beetles will begin regulating themselves?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Those who dedicate themselves to protecting the environment should be lauded in prolonging but not preventing our extinction. Whether global climate change is natural or artificial, this will in the end have no meaningful impact on human behavior. We have about 6 billion people on this planet and growing. Even if we all took the bus more often or rode our bikes and ate less cattle, we will still overpopulate this earth and consume all its resources. Thus, CO2 levels will continually climb even if despite our best efforts we try to slow it down. If in the end our goal is self preservation, then we should look towards departing this planet and colonizing space. Or we should manipulate the human genome to adapt to the harsh climates. Another possibility (but also remote) is transhumanism. With enough understanding of nervous system and consciousness, could we not end our biologic stage of evolution and have mankind transition towards artificial intelligent machine evolution?
I would agree. I think we could probably make a life in space for ourselves on Mars for example, though it would be extremely difficult and we might not last long. I always found the idea fascinating.
*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*
"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby
Signature ? How ?
OK, first off, you should be awarded for you good skepticism on the matter. By any chance, do you watch “Penn and Teller's Bullshit”
You are going to have quite a hard time getting that. Let me give you an analogy:
Imagine a six inch thick cement slab covered by three feet of bullshit. What is underneath is as solid as solid gets but you still have to wade through three feet of shit to get to it.
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So here is my take on the matter:
The global average temperature changes over time. On one end we have ice ages and on the other end we have interglacial periods. Right now, we are headed in the general direction of an interglacial period.
Today, it is warmer than it was 30 years ago. However, 30 years ago, it was colder than it was 30 years before that. In fact, 30 years ago, the panic was that we were heading into the next ice age. That did not happen.
Is the warming wholly and entirely caused by human activities? Well, consider that at the end of WW2, when human society in general really did the major gear up to an industrialized planet, the global average temperature started falling and that after nearly 80 years of continually getting warmer.
So lots of warming happened when not a whole lot of industry was happening, only to see global cooling once industry kicked off in a major way suggests that simple explanations are not realistic.
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Another point that you have probably heard about is that the arctic ice is disappearing. Often, that is accompanied by concern about the extinction of the polar bears. Well, the fact is that a thousand years ago, it was a good deal warmer than it is today and the polar bears figured out how to deal with the matter. I tend to think that if they could do it then, they will do it again.
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So yah, sure, global warming is real. The actual cause is uncertain. The effects are uncertain.
That much having been said, it seems to me that we are way too full of ourselves as a species to think that we have some special place in the universe. At some point, whatever we call human will no longer exist. If our descendants exist, they will evolve away from what we are today. If we die off as a race, then fuck it. We will be no different from 99.9999% of all species that have ever lived. I certainly do not plan on being alive 10,000 years from now, let alone 10,000,000 years from now.
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Past that, we need to consider stellar evolution. The fact is that in about 940,000,000 years, the diameter of the Sun will be the same as the orbit of the Earth. I really don't care how muchwe learn in the mean time. The fact is that stellar evolution trumps everything.
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Mmm, thanks Answers. You make good points.
Hmmm, I heard that 30 years ago, the scare was caused mostly by the media and the public while the majority of the scientific community actually held that global warming was the issue, not global cooling. Most climatologists (is it climatologists?) had predicted that the greenhouse effect would overshadow the cooling effect caused by pollution in the atmosphere. What is your perspective on those points?
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Well, I have never heard that one before. To be honest, it doesn't match with my living memory or what data I have seen. Since you are going on the “I heard that...” principle, I would like to know where you heard it.
Really, I have heard that George W. Bush is an alien reptile who is in league with the other alien reptiles and that Princess Di was murdered because she was going to reveal the truth to humanity.
In all honesty, the onus on proving a claim is on the person who makes the claim. So I can't really see tendering an opinion on that until I see the source. In internet shorthand:
Got a link?
Really, what I am offering is a restating of the Copernican principal. We just are not special enough as a species to warrant much concern. We are here today and one day we will not be here. I can see lots of ways that we could end up not here, global warming being only one of them.
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Butterbattle is right: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
No serious scientist concerned about Global Warming is claiming it will "destroy the planet".
Neither are they claiming human activities are the sole cause of any warming effects.
Yes , it does seem the IPCC predictions appear to be in inaccurate - they are too optimistic, partly due to pressure from government representatives from some governments with strong interests in playing it down. For example nations relying on sales of fossil fuels don't like pressure to reduce consumption of such major CO2 generating substances...
Yes, the earth has been warmer in the past, 'all' we are doing is speeding up the process rather significantly. The latest estimates of the probability that our activities are the dominant contribution to the current rate of warming is over 90%.
The cooling prediction in the recent past was a shorter term and more local effect, mainly confined to the northern hemisphere around Europe and maybe the US. It is used as a good test for the accuracy of computer models used by the IPCC - if they show results consistent with the observations when given the known atmopspheric conditions and composition at the time, we can have more confidence in their predictions of future conditions.
A common claim of deniers is that water vapour is the major contribution to greenhouse effects, swamping the effect of CO2. This is a sign that they don't understand the science. Yes, it has a larger effect that CO2 but its global concentration is mainly determined by the surface temperature of the oceans, which is affected by other greenhouse gasses, so rather than masking the effects of CO2, it acts to magnify the effect of increases in carbon dioxide and methane, etc.
Major effects that are of concern are:
1. Reductions in the areas of the planet suitable for food production, due to rising temperatures and less rainfall in areas closer to the equator. There is expected to be increased rain and snowfall in cooler latitudes, due to increased evaporation from the warmer sea-surface;
2. Rising sea levels due to thermal expansion and melting ice-caps - also note that where ice is not floating, if it slides off the land into the sea, it will have made its full contribution to sea-level rise immediately, it doesn't actually have to melt.
3. Increased acidification of the oceans due to dissolved CO2, affecting coral reefs and shellfish of all kinds, with major impacts on ocean ecology;
4. Changes in ocean circulation patterns and more extreme weather events, such as hurricanes.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
There's nothing to think about. They must. No more trees, no more food, no more beetles. Self regulation at its finest.
Or the trees will evolve a defense. Plants were among the first species to utilize chemical warfare after all. It is not beyond their capabilities.
Not that I'm trying to downplay the disaster here from a human point of view. Evolution will take time. We will still suffer the consequences of this problem, and they are indeed cause for concern.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Not sure if we ever had this discussion, but are you with me that it's a matter of energy? What I mean is energy in biological terms, such as available grazing land for cattle as a crude example. Having access to fossil fuels has given us an ability to fish the seas clean and grow monocultures at an unprecedented rate. Is this the "carrying capacity" that we're talking?
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Well.....no. In all honesty, I probably saw it on Youtube or something and am unconsciously regurgitating it.
On the other hand, I could do a search for scientific papers/journals from the 1970s.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Oh......
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
P&T actually have already admitted that their show on climate change was based on outdated data and some degree of faulty research.
In either case:
I don't believe that currently either magician is currently a skeptic of climate change; even if they weren't, well, they're magicians. You might want to consider looking to experts rather than enterainers for your information, Gene.
Oh, what a load.
Yeah - maybe if the 'three feet of bullshit' is what is spun by outright deniers like Michael Crichton and Bill'O, the Great Eraser. There's PLENTY of publicly available data, models, projections and conclusions made by experts in the field of climatology, paleoclimatology, geology, etc.
You might try looking inside of a scientific journal sometime, AiGs. No, I'm afraid I can't link you to one - you'll have to go to the library and do it the old fashioned way.
This is only sort-of correct.
Yes, the Earth's temperature - much like the sun's output - changes over time. However, it varies within certain boundaries, and at predictable intervals. The next ice age we shouldn't be expected for a few millennia as ice ages are triggered by cyclical variance in the Earth's orbit; seeing dramatic changes prior to that period is a rather bad sign.
We also are not 'coming up on' an interglacial - we're already in an interglacial period (as one could note by observing that there is not presently a non-polar landmass covered by ice).
Not only is this a load of total crap, it's not actually an argument at all.
First, dealing with the blatant lie:
...So, no, it was no considerably warmer in 1980 than it was in 1950.
Second, so what if it was? What's your second premise? I presume you meant to construct an argument rather than simply attempt to muddy the waters to tow your party line?
Would you look at the above graph, sir, and tell the good audience what years WW2 played-out through? And after that, which years The Great War played-out in?
Oh, nevermind - allow me:
WW1: June 1914 to November 1918.
WW2: September 1939 to September 1945.
...Now then: What does the global temperature do during this time frame? Does it go up, or does it go down?
What about immediately afterward?
Again, just plain incorrect.
*Facepalms*
...When it was a 'good deal warmer' a few million years ago, udring the pre-historic age of the Earth, there were no polar bears; not in the arctic nor anywhere else.
This is a detonation of the largest nuclear device ever detonated - the 'Tsar Bomb' (King of the Bombs). Over 50 MT of TNT.
Now, granted, even a hydrogen bomb pales in comparison to, say, the eruption of Cauldera Volcano (to name a geological event); however, my point is that it is ludicrous to state that humans, 'Could not possibly destroy the Earth's ability to harbor life'.
In fact, we very nearly did (thank goodness for the pragmatic view of one particular Soviet nuclear submarine commander).
...So, your argument is that since the sun will become a red giant in some 940,000,000 years, we may as well render the Earth uninhabitable in the meanwhile?
That doesn't seem like a very compelling argument to me.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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Come now Kevin, I expect better from you than that.
Trust me, I am well aware that Penn and Teller are magicians. Specifically, they are magicians with specific opinions on a wide variety of things. However, if you back up to post #16, you will see that I was asking the OP if she watches the series. I am most definitely not presenting them as experts on the matter.
However, since you are making assumption that they have indeed made claims of a scientific nature (they are not given to such behavior BTW) and have since recanted, let me ask you which episode of bullshit you have in mind? Honestly, I am thinking that you have not watched enough of the series to be familiar with what they do.
Did you mean they are recanting from the show where they observed that Al Gore's electric bill is 17 times the national average and that he owns the company which he buys his carbon credits from? Or perhaps you meant the other one, where they interview another person who own the company which they buy their carbon credits from and publicly admits to driving a god damned Land Rover 20,000 miles per year.
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Now, onto that video. Let me just take one problem with it as sufficient. I happen to own a copy of Michael Crichton's “State of Fear”. So let's have a look at page 315 and see just what bold claim the author is making:
“Just think how far we have come!” Henley said. “Back in the 1970's, all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming.”
That is the exact passage from the book. So the author is not making a bold claim here. A fictional character is making a claim in a point of dialog between himself and other fictional characters.
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Um, that was just a slam. What both you and I know is that google scholar will provide
OK, how does my statement of documented fact about conditions a thousand years ago lead you to millions of years ago?
That much merits a facepalm by itself.
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I don't think there is enough data to establish a sufficiently accurate estimate of the temperatures 1000 years ago to say that the mean temperature was definitely higher than today, but the figures do seem to show a general falling temperature over this period, until somewhere around the early quarter of the last century, followed by a sharply rising trend, passing the higher mean estimates of the previous 1000 years around the middle of the 20th Century, showing a strong upward trend thru the present.
This recent reversal of a falling trend over the past millennium or so is entirely consistent with the general predictions of the effects of rising greenhouse gasses especially since fossil fuel consumption really got going.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I own a copy too, AiGs.
So, do you care to explain for the benefit of the audience what the plot of that particular novel involves? Since the deceased Mr. Crichton apparently doesn't make any bold claims in it?
No; I mean the one shown in the clip provided, where they reference the 'global dimming' hypotheses as though it were ever part of mainstream science.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
...Man, I fucking hate conservatives. This is the best that they can do: deny the problem and call Al Gore a hipprocrite. No counter-arguments, no data, no citations -just hot air and innuendo.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
There are probably only a few thousand people on this planet whose views on global warming have any real value and its unlikely that any come to this to forum.
The problem with being rational in this case is the only logical view a lay person can have on this is 'I'm not qualified to comment leave this to the experts' and that view really goes against the 'cult of the individual' that many people have (especially but not exclusively on the American right).
If the majority of specialists in this area say Global Warming is a problem then I have to trust them, the word is TRUST not calculate, not examine the data and come to a logical conclusion ( I don't have the skills) but that terrible word trust.
I could no more tell you global warming was happening or not than I could fly a jumbo jet (not to stay if I didnt spend the next 10 years on it i couldnt).
Global warming isnt evolution its far more complex than that, and this really does show the problem with democracy millions of people making world changing decisions based on what newspapers they read and hunches
You are now officially my new favorite person on this site.
You just spelled out all of my epistemological principles in one sentence.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
I had to look up epistemological as I couldnt understand what my skin diseases had to do with anything
, there is a part of me that likes philosophy but there is another part that thinks its people chasing their tails and never really coming up with anything new.
Oh well got to do a university assignment (back of at Uni at the grand old age of 36 studying biology with a career change planned at 40)
Bob, why are you even bothering? Do you plan on being around when it matters?
Tell me why we are so special that we should worry about this crap?
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We live here.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Yeah, that's the main issue.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Without disregarding the valid observations, opinions and factual data that the scientitific members of our meggageboard have provided, and while in no way disputing any of their claims...
The concerns regarding the political motivations behind the "green" movement in Peppermints original post are important to consider...
While the environmental issues at hand may be entirely real, they have spawned a fear based industry built around how we are coerced into reacting to the threat of our impending demise. Various energy corperations, environmental groups, no profits and tie dye wearing spunkdumpsters have all been competing to promote their self agendizing platforms, while combating traditional energy conglomerates for public approval, and ultimately, government grants.
There *are* paths we need to be taking for the betterment of our future, but the alarmist approach will convolude reasonable sensibilities.
www.RichWoodsBlog.com
And that is an absolutely valid point. Short and sweet and I fully accept and embrace it.
The thing is that global warming is a problem. I believe that I have said as much already. However, it is a problem that, if the anthropogenic theory is spot on will correct itself in due time. The worst case scenario is that we will not be able to produce enough food for all 7,000,000,000 of us. Then some of us will die and there will be fewer people around to keep screwing things up.
Which brings me to another point. We have lots of problems that are serious threats to the environment. Take pollution in general. We certainly have not licked that one yet but we have made much progress over the past few decades.
Nobody seems to want to say it but the fact is that there was a cooling trend that started in the 40's when industry kicked into high gear and ended a few decades later when we started to get pollution under control. That is really no coincidence. The sulfur and nitrogen compounds that we were belching into the air are known well to have suppressed the warming that would have happened otherwise.
Later on, CFC's took a huge toll on the ozone layer but we seem to have them under control. While this is still a problem (and will be for a good while), it seems to be progressing in the right direction.
So then, what is a problem that I do get behind? Overpopulation. The total world population has doubled since I was in first grade. What the fuck is wrong with us?
A related issue is our dependence on energy. Simply put, we can't keep going the way we are. I could wax poetic about some of our short term issues but let me side step them for a bit. It is a basic fact of thermodynamics that energy ultimately becomes heat. Just for shits and giggles, let me posit a future world where we have reset the environment to what it was a century ago. However, we are still using energy the same way as we are today. Even worse, while we solved the environmental issues, our energy usage continued to increase.
Guess what? The environment is still getting hotter. Not as fast as when it was chemically fucked up but still, our energy usage is driving up temperatures in general. We may have solved the problems of today but if, along the way, we manage to make fusion power commercially reasonable, we are fucked.
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Population levels are a problem, but it appears that the growth is levelling out, and may well fall in future as societies change, perhaps with better education levels, etc. We are unlikely to see any more doublings.
Whereas greenhouse effects are not so readily reversible in a short enough time to avoid some very serious changes to sea-levels, ocean and terrestrial eco-systems, and food production. There are expected to be 'tipping-points', which means once we go past some point, it will not simply wind back even if we drop back to pre-industrial CO2 emission levels. Ice cap melting is just one, since ice-free water and land surfaces absorb much more heat from the sun.
Our direct energy production is unlikely to be a problem in global warming because it is insignificant compared to total solar radiation input.
I personally may not have to worry as much as younger people, but I still could live long enough to experience the early effects, which are now could well be damn serious as early as 2050, on current estimates.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Thank you BobSpence1.
But let us get down to brass tacks. Overpopulation is a problem for today. Not dealing with it now makes it a bigger problem tomorrow. That much is true for global warming as well.
So let me propose that we set a standard where some arbitrary percentage of the population of Africa must be castrated. I don't care much about the details. We are just going to go around cutting random guys nuts off.
Do you have a problem with that?
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Barring some major medical advancement that can increase longevity I'll only need the earth for another 50 years or so. Even if those advances appear, I won't be allowed access to them because "THE POPULATION IS TOO HIGH...OOOOOOOH...RUN AWAY!"
So if that's the way that it's going to be. If the survival of the earth, and the little animals, and the people who should survive (whoever they are) is dependent on me accepting austerity and a quick death, then what's my incentive to buy into that exactly? It might seem selfish but from my perspective the earth doesn't actually have value beyond my potential use of it.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
I think the problem with global warming is the people in the worst case scenarios who are most likely to be affected are not the people who come of this forum. The Western world can adapt to changing sea levels, it will be costly but not impossible. Those who are really going to suffer are those in the 3rd world with no capital or mobility.
It just a fact very few people in the 1st world really give a toss about a few million or even 10's of million dead African babies. When I mean care I don't mean give £5/5$ to a charity shop, or buy some charity record I'm talking about making real cuts in your quality of life, I'm talking about living in a house half your current size (US), maybe 25% smaller outside the US, I'm talking about doubling the price of petrol (its very possible if people live in cities like most people do in Europe), maybe say 25% cut in your income.
Not going to happen in a democracy absolutely, is environmentalism more important than democracy and civil rights possibly
One of the things that has puzzled me for a long time is that I don't understand why this isn't a really simple question to answer. Humans produce X amount of greenhouse gases. X is Y percent of the total greenhouse gases present in our atmosphere. In 1950, and in 1900, humans produced X1 and X2 amount of greenhouse gases. Isn't that enough data to conclusively say how much human emissions are contributing to the buildup of greenhouse gases? We have the total, we have a series of humans' contributions to the total. Presumably, we can account for volcanos and other non-human sources. What's the problem? (That's not a rhetorical question. I'd really like to know the answer if anyone's qualified to say.)
I think part of the problem most people have with understanding our collective fucking of the planet is that we aren't just causing global warming, and none of our creative ways to fuck the planet happen in a vacuum. In Kuala Lumpur, they've recently completed a mammoth construction project to deal with terrible flooding. The problem is that according to their figures, paving 40 percent of the land in the river basin has led to erm... I can't recall the exact number, but I want to say it was something like a 500% reduction in the absorption of rainwater back into the soil.
One of my friends is a herpetologist, and her job at present is to study the mating habits of rattlesnakes. The thing is, it's recently come to the attention of a few people with money and an environmental bent that roads really fuck up a snake's mating habits. In fact, the problem is significantly worse than we thought. Even a single road through an otherwise pristine ecosystem can severely interfere with snakes' ability to reproduce. My friend's job is to figure out where the boundaries are. How many roads can we build before we cause irreparable damage? Are there any ways to build roads that won't cause as much trouble? The thing is -- and this is a really important point -- nobody's even considering NOT invading their environments. We're just trying to figure out how we can avoid completely fucking them up when we take over their environment. People want to have babies, and babies grow up and want a house of their own. Therefore, fuck the snakes, but not quite badly enough to drive them to extinction. Rattlesnakes are top predators in some areas of the U.S. We know what happens when we fuck with a top predator, right?
These are just two examples of the thousands of ways we fuck ourselves and the environment just by being ourselves. I'm actually astonished at just how devastating our presence is, and how many really creative ways we can find to fuck ourselves.
As Deludedgod mentioned, our fucking of the planet is not just because of global warming. The permanent damage we can (and do) cause comes from the mass production of materials that will not biodegrade and will certainly re-enter the environment, and will certainly cause severe problems for all levels of the food chain. I read somewhere recently that if you stacked all the disposable (sic!) diapers in landfills in just the U.S. they would reach the moon and come back to earth. I don't know if this exact figure is true, but I do know that there are a LOT of diapers in landfills. Do a google search. We know how many were sold, and therefore, we know how many are still sitting around since most of them are made of at least some non-biodegradable materials.
How about styrofoam? Do you have any idea how many "disposable" to-go cups and boxes are handed out by restaurants in the world? What about packing peanuts? What about the millions and millions of appliances that are stabilized and shock-insulated by styrofoam? Do you have any idea how many of those damnable open-resistant plastic containers hold single razors, or single quarter-inch to eighth-inch adaptors? We fucking put every little thing we sell in its own individual plastic wrap, and often, the wrapping has more actual matter than the product it contains! Oh yeah, let's not forget plastic grocery bags. Yeah, yeah, some of the plastic we use is recyclable, but recycling is an interesting and marginally effective way of reducing the growth of accumulated non-biodegradable substances we're putting into the ecosystem.
Supposing that global warming isn't a significant problem for humans, and assuming that our population really will level out at about 2050 as many scientists are predicting, we're still fucked because even a stable human population would continue to produce more and more and more and more trash that is simply not going away for a very, very long time. Even if we figure out better and better ways to purify water, reclaim soil, and more efficiently raise food for ourselves, we're still fucked.
Now, all that being said, all the scientists I've read say that global warming is a problem, and the only real question is how big a problem it is. Factor in a rise in sea level, along with the change in ocean chemistry, add the emission of an entire world full of polluting biproducts of the production of non-biodegradable products, and deforestation decreasing the world's overall ability to recycle CO2 out of the atmosphere, and human interference fucking up ecosystems, and the alarming rise in extinction events all over the world, and you've got a recipe for Uber-Fuck.
Why anyone would actually want to bring a child into the world right now is beyond me. I mean, isn't it enough that many people alive right now could very well experience horrible consequences of our presence? If the most dire predictions are true, I might well live to see the extinction of whales, tuna, coral reefs, and polar bears, among many others. I might live to see New Orleans disappear off the map. I might live to see the Rice Famine of 2050, when 40% of the arable rice growing land in Asia is either underwater or unsuitable to continue growing rice.
My point is not that all of these dire events will happen. It's that even if these don't happen, something will, and it's inevitable, even if global warming isn't the primary cause. What if we can't figure out why bees are dying all over the place? What if we can't stop the spread of pine beetles? What if the Sea of Japan really does get taken over by jellyfish, and it becomes unfishable? It's not a matter of if we are fucked. It's a matter of when and how.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
That is by no means "the way that it's going to be". Population growth is no longer such a problem, except in same remaining areas like parts of Africa. The fact that it has dropped in most places without any need for force or extreme measures suggests that there should be no need for such measures. I am not aware of any serious proposals along the lines you describe. It simply isn't that urgent, now that the exponential growth phase appears to be over.
It would have to be very extreme for early deaths to be encouraged. The important thing is to reduce the number of children born per capita.
Getting some serious reduction in carbon emissions contributing to global warming is far more urgent, because the stuff persists in the atmosphere for so long, so the warming, which is already having effects, is much harder to reverse than population growth, which does not require any new technology or major economic/industrial changes. In absense of viable ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere on a massive scale starting in the very near future, we have to start serious reductions right now to stand any chance of avoiding very worrying temperature increases.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Ugh, considering the mathematics of it, I am often dumbfounded that overpopulation is even a problem.
Suppose that we have a hypothetical group of 100 individuals, 50 males and 50 females. If each female pairs up with one male, and the couple gives birth to two children, then the next generation will only contain 100 individuals. If the oldest generations eventually decease, and the trend continues, the population will remain constant. Now, in the real world, consider all the people that would die before they were able to reproduce: wars, car crashes, spontaneous combustion, etc. How many children, on average, do women give birth to? 2.5? 3? 4?!
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Mali leads the world at 7.3 per woman.
Hong Kong is 1 per woman.
The U.S. is 2.1 per woman.
Part of what caused exponential growth in human populations was increased lifespans. Consider a 30 year lifespan, with reproduction occuring at age 20 (for easy round numbers.)
50 men + 50 women, two children per family:
Year 1: 100
Year 20: 200 (Generation 2 born)
Year 30: 100 (Generation 1 dies)
Year 40: 200 (Generation 3 born)
Year 50: 100 (Generation 2 dies)
Year 60: 200 (Generation 4 born)
etc...
Now, consider a 70 year lifespan
Year 1: 100
Year 20: 200
Year 40: 300
Year 60: 400
Year 70: 300 (generation 1 dies)
Of course, in the real world, it's not this pretty and elegant, but you can look at population figures and see pretty clearly that human longevity is a serious contributor to overpopulation, even if people are only replacing themselves. It's not at all uncommon for someone to become a great-grandparent. That means that three generations have reproduced themselves, and the first and second are still alive.
Human longevity has pretty much levelled out after a sharp increase in the 20th century. That means that the geriatric effect will also level out. In other words, we shouldn't expect to have a population increase as great-great grandparents are still alive to see the fourth generation.
As deludedgod mentioned earlier, the issue is carrying capacity. We cannot support ourselves on this planet with our rate of consumption and waste production, at the natural levelling-off point of our population.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Your view obviously deviates from the typical environmentalist viewpoint which is based on deep ecology and placing greater value on non-human entities than on humans. I don't think I'm wrong to say that environmentalist literature like "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman or "Urgence planète Terre" by Al Gore promotes these ideas and the idea that the earth is already dangerously overpopulated. To which the obvious conclusion is that someone has to die.
Everything that people do creates carbon emissions. Calling for reduction in carbon emissions is a call for austerity. Worse than that it's ecofascism. It's literal micromanagement of every facet of a person's life, from where you live, to how many children you have, to what kind of toilet paper you can use.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
I'd rather be a fascist about reproductive freedom than lifestyle freedom, to be honest. I have no problem with the idea of "reproduction vouchers" being handed out to people who want to reproduce, and when the vouchers are gone, nobody else is allowed to have a baby in that generation. I have no problem with forced abortions. I know that's unpopular, but I don't think it should be an inherent right to participate in surpassing our sustainable capacity.
I also don't think we're going to do anything about it. This is pretty much an academic question. We're the one species who's smart enough to see our own end, but we're not smart enough to do anything about it. I think that's funny.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
People already die eventually, so that is not an fundamental problem. It really only requires a reduction in birth-rate.
Reduction, not elimination, of nett CO2 emissions is what is required, and this mainly requires reduction of fossil fuel use, since virtually all the other CO2 emissions are from sources which absorbed CO2 during their production such as burning plant material and respiration, and so produce no nett increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Properly handled, a boost in industries devoted to non-fossil fuel energy generation need not result in austerity.
Given too little action on CO2 control may well require some more serious regulations. The consequences of not addressing this problem by voluntary or involuntary measures is indeed worrying.
Overstating the implications of CO2 emmision control in this way is just as bad as any greenie exaggerating the dangers of gloabal warming.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology