The Environment: Is it really that bad?

If the sky is really falling, could you prove it or do anything about it? Do we need to? What do the numbers really say, sans spin?

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6270
http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen/Landscheidt-1.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101707.html

Just one topic, Chris. And there are many others.

Jimbo

 

Just because you realise that you are paranoid doens't mean that they are not out to get you

 

I mean, many of the scientists claiming that global warming is not a threat or that it's not our fault are sponsored by Exxon. That doesn't mean they are wrong. Other scientists are sponsered by the government so no one is completely independent.

 

No itisn't - people are always heading off into the sun for their vacation! Nature is now bringing the sun to them! For my money if this is global warming I like it (that'll get a few going methinks!)

 

I wouldn't start planting coconuts in your backyard yet, Safewalrus, maybe wait another 6 months.

I remember when I was kid scientists were sprouting that the unusual weather pattern we were having was because of the nuclear testing. There was a cartoon in the paper of two guys in 16th century garb, standing in a storm and blaming it on the invention of the bow and arrow.

 

Raggi_Thor,

Really liked your quote on paranoia.

TGoz

 

Just look at the fact that the sun's temp is climbing... and that "global warming", which these experts said would give us an intense hurricane season, in fact did nothing of the sort.

The system that is our earth is so incredibly complex that with would be like a monkey trying to predict the status of a modern commercial ship's engine room by staring at three gauges without even knowing that 60 more exist. Metereology is still the only profession where getting it right 30% of the time is acceptable and changing you mind from day to day about the weather on Sat is normal.... And you want people with brains to believe you can predict a GLOBAL change 20 years, 50 or 100 into the future? Please, look at the news journals from the 1940s through to today and you'll see that the doomsday kids have changed their minds about whether it would warm up or cool off not less than three times in 60 years..

All these models are highly theoretical and nobody has enough data (by a span of several hundred years) to make any predictions. Just look at the recent "discovery" that sand from Africa might kill off hurricanes... Well, does the winds that kick up that sand originate from warmer airs... Hasn't anybody figured out that the system seems to be self correcting? Or that the last time we had a "mini-warming" of one degree or so, Europe experienced incredible and bountiful growth (this would be a small period of something like a hundred years in the middle ages) of crops? Hasn't anyone of the guys ever been to a greenhouse... strikes me as funny that those things are warm...

This system is just entirely too complex to just be winging theories about how we're all gonna die and destroy the planet in 50 years. Now, I'm not saying that we should just go back to belching black smoke from every stack and talepipe. These have serious short-term consequences for people. I believe that our own health standards should be our primary and sole concern.

And by-the-way, water vapor is a far greater "greenhouse" gas than carbon-dioxide will ever be.... that's why greenhouses are humid and boilers run on water...

 

had to post this for you guys
its so lame...
I thought you could have some fun with it


that hover-bike is looking pretty good

 

Steamfreak:
So much good info in your post! Yes the doomsday predictions have been all
over the map from ice age to higher sea levels and etc.

Also the models used so far have not taken into account the sun's variability.
This is an evovling area of knowledge. Turns out the sun's output is HIGHLY
variable and appears now to be the real driver for earth's climate. Gosh,
who'd have thunk it

When a theory does not fit the known facts well, we should question the
validity of the theory. We can measure the C02 content of the earth's
atmosphere from eras past. When we do we find only a poor correlation to
surface temps. You should find this troubling if you are a 'believer' in the
GHG/Global Warming theory. If not, then you are a true believer, and facts
don't matter.

Check this one out:

http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html


Jimbo

 

Sky falling?

Environmental problems are closer to home and easier to see by far. Where I live (east coast US), the inshore ecosystem has largely collapsed. Species diversity gone, water polluted. Mass to Florida. What coral we had down south- gone. Its a bit sad to be diving on the pile of rocks which are left where the coral was. The glass bottom boats still cruise overhead while the one or two fish left nibble at the algae.
Global warming? Who cares. Just look in the water and you will see the state of the environment. Better yet take a few looks over about forty years. The change is profound and hard to miss

 

Coastal oceanic pollution is one of the few REAL pollution problems of the world (as opposed to the several 'bogeyman' problems which are not problems at all but political footballs). Yet it receives little media attention. Even here in Florida we hardly ever hear about it. We hear about the bogus rare manatees (not rare, never have been), but not about the olive brown colored sea within a couple of miles of the shore. The rest of the ocean could be fine, but when the shallows are polluted, then many speicies which use shallows for hatcheries/nursuries cannot reproduce effectively.

Jimbo

 

There are a few others

 

For sure, pollution is a reality.

Examples from two ends of the Eastern Seaboard.

(1) In 1991 while attending school in St. Lucie, Fla. we did not eat the fish caught by the docks because of heavy metal contamination.

(2) While commercial crabbing with a friend from Newfoundland on his boat, I was concerned to see him continually tossing empty bait boxes, plastic lining and all, into the ocean. Next day out checking lobster traps I saw a repeat performance.

There are some succes stories though such as Lake Eire.

I'm real skeptical of so-called Global Warming. As I think Jimbo mentioned above, the Sun's natural flucuations have much more potential & realized impact on Earth's temperature than we could ever have ourselves.

TGoz

 

It's from my father, he read it on the wall in a public toilet on his firs visit in the US, after his camera had been stolen and the bus he was riding had been shot at

 

I'm NOT a scienetist, I'm NOT an expert in the fields of weather/ etc etc.
But surely when there is so much discussion and differing opinions and expert theorys about the climate change /global warming etc etc.. wouldn't it be the sensible thing to do to err on the side of caution and be conservitive, do something towards removing the risks, real or perceived.???

Mychael