[quote]artw wrote:
[quote]Sick Rick wrote:
Don’t care. We aren’t destroying the world, the coming and going of ice ages is a natural process as is the changing of the thermohaline circulation (what that conveyor belt dude was talking about).
I’ll be dead long before the earth will be burnt up, so fuck this whole global warming crap.[/quote]
While the cooling/warming of the globe is a cyclical, natural process, the changes that have occurred in the last hundred years previously took thousands of years to happen. People don’t realize that even a slight change in the Earth’s temperature could be catastrophic. A six degree change in the Earth’s temperature in either direction may sound like nothing, but if it were to happen, we would be in another ice age or we would experience massive flooding along the coasts of every continent. Even a one degree shift in either direction would be near-catastrophic.
And as for the claims by previous posters that this global warming “theory” (kind of like calling evolution a theory) is some scam created by Al Gore is immaterial. Whether or not people are getting rich off of “green technology” is not evidence of some massive, far-reaching conspiracy. Treating this issue like a political, partisan issue is foolish. It’s like turning the fact that clean drinking water is inaccessible to 90% of the world into a political issue. The reason it has turned into a political issue is due to many things, but it is not due to a lack of credibility on the part of scientists who argue that global warming is occurring. I find it amazing that “liberals” (of which I am NOT) believe that warming is happening and “conservatives” do not believe so.
It’s due to a lack of education on the topic. It’s also due to the fact that, in general, big business is represented by Republicans and big businesses that pump huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere stand to lose a lot of money if they are forced to enact certain regulations to reduce carbon emissions.
The writing is on the wall. 9 out of 10 scientists agree that global warming is occurring at a highly accelerated rate that coincides with a huge, geometric increase in the globe’s population following the Industrial Revolution. People can ignore the facts or search long and hard on the Internet for a scientist who disagrees with this “theory”, but I fear that in another 5 or 10 years those who DO believe that global warming is happening at an accelerated rate due to human-caused carbon emissions will be saying “I told you so.” I certainly hope that I am wrong, but overwhelming anecdotal evidence and credible scientific evidence indicates that I and many others are probably correct.[/quote]
Hey Dude… The saddest fact about cliamte change and the cheif reason we should be concerned about finding a proper response is that the countries it will hit the hardest are already among the poorest and most long suffering. The Copenhagen Consensus dispatched researchers to the worlds most likely global warming hot spots. Their assignment was to locate and ask locals to tell them their views about the problems they face. The things that concerned them the most were and in nearly every case-it wasn’t global warming. People spoke powerfully about the need to focus attention on other matters. 'If I die from malaria tomorrow, why should I care about global warming?" “When my kids don’t have enough to eat Global Warming is not a concern for me.” “There is no need for ice on the mountain if no one is around because of HIV/AIDS.” My point is : The money spent on carbon cuts is money we can’t use for effective investments in food aid, micronutrients, AIDS prevention, health and education infracstructure, clean water, sanitation, etc. By 2100 scientist have estimated that 3% of the planet will have malaria. We should be focusing on the real issues and spend the billions elsewere. I am not saying to completely avoid the issue of global warming, I am simply saying that because alternative energy technologies are not ready to pick up the slack and cutting carbon emission is so expensive, more time and effort needs to be put into R&D for green energy.'The most efficient global carbon cuts designed to keep the average global temperatures from rising any higher than two degrees celcius would cost over $40 trillion a year in lost economic growth by 2100-which would have a marginal impact on controlling global warming and helping the at-risk malaria population." BJORN LOmborg Since the industrial era/over the ast several centuries the world economy has exploded and the human condition improved immeasurably becasue of cheap fossil fuels; we are not going to endthat connection in just a few decades for reasons already addressed above.