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
- Login to post comments
Well, this is where you and I differ. In my opinion liberty and responsibility walk hand in hand. I would rather see people afforded liberty and then suffer the consequences of their irresponsibility than be denied liberty to spare them those consequences.
Now, you might say that it is unfair that you suffer for other people's irresponsibility and I would agree with that. But I think if we're to have any chance at fairness and survival we need to have open dialogues about what our responsibilities and prospects are collectively. Not a dialogue that's hedged in misanthropy and fascism.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
Al Gore wrote a book in French? Or is that just the translation of "Earth in the Balance"?
This is already covered. Tons of third-world countries are covering all the birth and death they can handle.
The real obvious conclusion is that fewer people have to be born, or those people who were born will suffer famine. India, China, and a good part of the African continent are most likely going to see the greatest death tolls in the case of resource-scarcity famines.
You're right, Gauche: someone has to die. It's going to be the poor and powerless, just like it has been for millennia. No one will have to micromanage their destruction, because everyone who has any amount of power and resources will be escaping the same fate.
To be perfectly honest, I don't think we could do anything even if we wanted to, and our inevitable population loss will be part of the solution. (Which is grim, but most of the Western world will most likely be fine, with our decreasing birth rates.)
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Well, yes people already die. I concede that much. But I don't think I am overstating the implications of CO2 emission control. After we have co2 emission control will I have more free time, more high quality consumer goods, more ability to travel, etc? No, of course not. Those things are being characterized as excessive.
The entire issue is being framed as "the earth is being destroyed by your excesses". So if there's a need for an accounting and curtailing of your "excesses" then how is that not micromanagement and austerity? Especially if I don't even consider my excesses to be excesses.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
The thing is, with a population of say, 2 or 3 billion people, much of our behavior would no longer be excessive. One more reason for aggressive birth control policy.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Yeah, I meant earth in the balance. I didn't know the english title.
Well, if the people are going to have carbon caps forced on them that prevent industrialization then why would their population trends reverse?
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
I don't think carbon caps will have any effect at all, frankly. I think it's a terrible solution to a problem that, like Hamby, I believe wouldn't be an issue with a smaller population on earth.
You think two or three billion, Hamby? I might say an even one billion, especially given the pillaged state of the oceans and rainforests.
This latest bio-fuel thing is the last straw, though. Turning entire swaths of rainforest into desert so you can have "eco-fuel" is the most ass-backwards "solution" I've ever seen. Just ask Willie Smits. He rebuilt a rainforest after it had been destroyed for a biodiesel palm plantation.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
We really have to get away from industries that are particularly dependent on fossil fuels, so the carbon caps should not be an issue.
Oil is running out, oil prices are gonna continue trending up, constrained only by the inabilty of a collapsing world economy to pay them...
Coal is very dirty unless burned in high-tech power stations with some form of carbon capture, and is only going otherwise to aggravate CO2 warming and unhealthy pollution from domestic scale burning.
India seems to be having some success in relatively clean service industries. Although there is growing concern about the energy consumed by the massive server-farms needed to support the online world.
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
Nah. I don't think anything specific. I just threw those numbers out to illustrate that I think we are way overpopulated. You might be right that the damage we've already done can only be undone if significant areas remain devoid of humans for a long time. I dunno. I'm not an ecologist.
Like I said, it's not something I lose sleep over. We're not going to do anything about it. We love babies too much.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism