Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of AGW?

[AF]

Wether the world is warming up or not can be seen as a side arguement.

Lets assume the world is NOT warming up and global warming has been proven a myth. This would mean funding would collapse and the following problems would run rampant:

• No need for recycling? We have a huge waste problem, If only because landfills are filling up, some landfills are so full they have more precious minerals in them than the sites that were mined to create the rubbish sitting in them!
• Oil is on its way out, warming is irrelevant this is and always has been a foregone conclusion, OPEC anyone?
• CO2 is doing more than just warming things, it acidifies things, namely water. The pacific ocean is on course to fail EPA pollution standards. These are the sort've standards you only get violated if you pour toxic waste in a pond, and ocean acidification is doing the job instead!
• Power generation problems are forecast worldwide within the next decade with or without fossil fuels.
• Coal is bad, it always was considered bad, its just in the 19th century it wasn't deemed too much of a problem, just like asbestos was considered harmless. However its cheap and its widely available so we're using it.

We're going to pay the price, so what if its not global warming? Itll be something else we don't expect, either way you dont dump trillions of tonnes of wast gas and products every year and expect absolutely nothing to happen.

To spend your time arguing about exactly what will happen is stupid, its better to prevent it and never have to find out.

[Forboding Angel]

So your argument is the "Global Warming" is needed as an excuse to guilt people into recycling and look for other sources? Moreover, without "Global Warming" recycling is suddenly a stupid idea? That's just messed up.

[smoth]

well forb in all fairness global warming is a natural phenomenon but we are not helping

[tombom]

"Climate Change" is subversion, and I don't particularly care for subversion. I do think it's cute that people think that they are single handedly capable of destroying an entire planet. The sad part is that they have to buy into some bullshit like "Global Warming" to get them to do things they should have been doing already (I.E. Recycling).

I'm not going to touch anything else, but you realise nobody is talking about "destroying the planet"? The results would pretty much be 1) a lot of deaths 2) a worse quality of life for everyone 3) massive upheavals 4) large scale species extinctions. These would all happen regardless of whether it's natural. I can't really imagine us shitting on the world so much that we make everything extinct or something like that, but the affect on us would be pretty large.

[AF]

Forb thats a leap, one I did not make.

What I am saying is that many people see global warming as the only justification for the measures taken, which is why they so vehemently attack it, because without global warming its business as usual.

Yet most industries involved realize their past behaviour has been reckless and business as usual is not sustainable even from a politicla and economic point of view.

one example is the waste industry which is running into dire problems because of our throw away consumer culture. All this 'stuff' had to go somewhere.

[Forboding Angel]

well forb in all fairness global warming is a natural phenomenon but we are not helping

The earth's climate has cycles, anyone with a brain should understand that. What I reject is the ridiculous "Man Made Global Warming", it's a complete load of bullshit. Sure, we could fuck up the planet by having global nuclear war, but this man-made shit is just ridiculous.

And don't get me started on the idiocy of "Carbon Footprints" and "Carbon Credits"... Seriously? People are honestly THIS stupid?

[AF]

Its a case of nobody proposing a better idea while certain people push it because they can make a profit out of it

[Gota]

Isnt the issue that there is still no way of making non polluting energy without losing $$?Isnt all green tech being subsidized?

Who would argue that making shit that creates energy but does not pollute the environment for people is worse than shit that does the same but does pollute?
Only idiots.

The way the system works in that for something major to happen you have to have a certain group of buisnessmen thinking there is big $ to be made from this change.
To make big $ out of clean energy now those businessmen need to summon enough political power to subsidize green E more and more.

And yes we the middle/lower class will probably subsidize this move to cleaner energy making but its better to shell out some more $ than breathing polluted air.

There are many reasons to move to cleaner energy that have nothing to do with global warming.
And even if we are not causing global warming a lot of the changes that combat global warming are good for many other reasons.

Humans are changing the environment one way or the other and we are doing it without knowing the consequences.
The less changes we induce in this chaotic manner the better.

[SwiftSpear]

well forb in all fairness global warming is a natural phenomenon but we are not helping

The earth's climate has cycles, anyone with a brain should understand that. What I reject is the ridiculous "Man Made Global Warming", it's a complete load of bullshit. Sure, we could fuck up the planet by having global nuclear war, but this man-made shit is just ridiculous.

And don't get me started on the idiocy of "Carbon Footprints" and "Carbon Credits"... Seriously? People are honestly THIS stupid?

We do fuck the planet up. There's a fucking lot of us, and we do some pretty destructive things. We're responsible in part for some aspects of the current Global warming, although I really doubt we've caused some horrifying destabilization, a good few degrees of the global temperature rise has been our fault. The pollutants have many many other adverse effects as well as simply heating the globe. Many waterborne species have died already.

Sure we haven't done anything a good sized meteor smack to the earth wouldn't make look trivial. But our kids and their kids will still have to grow up here, and we've left some pretty fucked up messes for them to deal with. IMO it's better to do what we can now than continue to put it off until later.

[Regret]

The slow increase in human lifespan is probably natures punishment for screwing with it.

D:

[lurker]

Hydrogen is a bust, because it's too expensive, not to mention unstable.

What is going through your mind? Hydrogen is not a fuel source, there aren't massive reserves of pure hydrogen around. It is a storage medium, nothing more.

[Pxtl]

Hydrogen is a bust, because it's too expensive, not to mention unstable.

What is going through your mind? Hydrogen is not a fuel source, there aren't massive reserves of pure hydrogen around. It is a storage medium, nothing more.

And as for unstable: as opposed to what? By definition, all combustible fuels explode. I mean, what do you think napalm is?

I still say to just bring out the nukes. Nuclear power and hydrogen, and bury the crap in the middle of nowhere. Eminent-domain a fifty-mile radius - you can't say NIMBY if it's nobody's back yard.

[smoth]

but this man-made shit is just ridiculous

dead zones:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/dead-zone.htm

pacific plastic soup:


tasmania tiger, one of many species we killed out for lulz because we are ignorant shits with a god complex.


Cut and burn
When I was in belize/guatemala I watched miles of forest being burned down so they could farm the area. That was over the course of about 13 small aircraft flights over central america. That was 1 day, each day I saw different fires being started.

it goes on and on.

so what does man have to do with global warming. Global warming is part of the earth's natural cycles and we are coming out of a sort of mini-ice age. However, we are enhancing the global warming to the point that my grandchildren will not get to see the coral reefs. As someone who spent a lot of his childhood on the ocean I mourn the loss of a structure that took millions of years(in before new earth christian stuff). Yeah we are not going to blow up the earth at least not any time soon. However, to think we are not fist fucking the planet is just wishful thinking. Eventually mother earth is going to be so worn out from all our ravaging that she will be left with none of her youthful beauty and will be like the nightmare of a badly aged pornstar

[AF]

There's plenty of evidence floating around that the weather of the last thousand years has been influenced dramatically by human agriculture alone, many argue we should be in a much colder climate right than what we would consider 'normal' right now, and thats when you take global warming out, and talk about pre-industrial temperatures.

11% of the total land area of the earth was covered in crops in the year 2000, and since then it has grown dramatically. It would be foolish this would not have an impact on global weather.

[smoth]

Not really. For that you need to look at the ever growing sahara and the idiot afican sheep herders. The desert just grows and grows, honestly sand is the big grey blob..

[Pxtl]

Now, this is a bit off the subject, but am I the only one who'd like to track down the person who decided that ever possible American scandal must get the suffix "gate" and then kick their ass so high they'd have to take off their shirt to sh¡t?

[smoth]

I wish I believed you could pxtl but that would require forcing their head further up their ass... and their head is already pretty far.

[tombom]

For some other cool facts about the awesome effect of humans on the environment, start here and follow ~links~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_salinity

Basically our farming practises are causing many of our big agricultural areas to (slowly) go saline, which makes them unusable for thousands of years or more. This is what happened in Mesopatamia, and why the birthplace of agriculture is so shitty nowadays.

[AF]

Companies are taking big short term gains over long term massive profits. It's sad really.

Lots of people will die, and a lot of it is preventable and known about.

[hilal]

I think this is a good video...not really to do with Global Warming or AGW but nonetheless environmentalism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrTsaSUFfpo