What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Richard Atkin]

Without meaning to sound unfeeling....I think dead people should be ground up and used as fertiliser. Really. It could be looked upon as grotesque, or it could be viewed as a beautiful step in the life cycle of mankind.

Not me though....I want to be frozen (Cryogenics?spelling?) until technology progresses and I will wake up and probably be horribly traumatised. Nothing to do with climate change...sorry.

 

[longliner45]

richard,,,china has seen a spike in newborn birth defects ,,,(probably because of thier newborn industry,,,,,,,no osha ,,no epa,,,dumping toxic waste where ever it is conviniant ,,govt corruption ,,,I will go on to say we have all gone through this as a learning expieriance(we now understand the term (mad hatters),,because they used mercury to finish the hats,,we learned from this ,,and so will china,,,but what is appaling is that ,,,now they know and continue to keep going,,,,,,as the same for american automakers taking jobs to mexico ,to avoid health rules,,like they know in USA not to dump waste en our rivers ,,but in mexico it is ok,,,so their birth rate of handycpped children ,continues to climband this is done by companys that know the facts and risk ,,like general motors chrysler and so on,,I say this online and in open view of all ,,,,,,because they know they are guilty of this,,by the way did anyone catch hillary ? saying she was goiing to fix the nafta problem?her husband approved nafta,,,,,,,,and made it law ,,,,,longliner ..one more thing ,,ciggeret sales to 3rd world countrys is through the roof,we know they kill ..(with a slow MISERABLE death )and the commercials target the young,but do they know what we know ,,in thialand ,,china mexico indonesia ,vietnam,ect ,,ect? longliner

 

[Jimbo1490]

PAR's assertions about the REAL peril to the environment, which is the double whammy of serious overfishing combined with estuarine (think fish nurseries) destruction is the thing we should be worried about. But instead we spin our wheels worried to death over the hobgoblin of global warming.

But his subsequent rant

"Humans are more akin to a virus then an intelligent species, consuming, altering and destroying everything in sight until they've eating and toyed themselves out of house, home and food supply. A fitting result in the Petri dish of life, if you ask me."

is just the purest Malthusian balderdash. I think he was actually quoting agent Smith from the Matrix

All these sorts of predictions spouted by lefty green types are purely philosophical ravings, devoid of any scientific merit. The massive food shortage predicted by the Malthusian leftists never happened. As a percentage, far fewer people starve today than ever before, despite prodigious population growth. And so it goes for numerous other life-quality factors such as air quality, deforestation and etc.

It must be very frustrating for them that the very thing they hate so much, namely human industrialization, is the very thing that has made it possible for the planet to carry more and more human inhabitants with a decreasing per capita environmental impact 'footprint'.

Imagine if we all still burned wood to cook and keep warm. How much pollution would that produce??!! Yet the greens rave on about evil fossil fuels, which can be burned so cleanly, virtually all you get for smoke is water and CO2. No problem for them, though. They just trump up a case against CO2 More on that later.

What if we could only use organic (antiquated) farming methods as virtually all the greens demand? Do you think we could have re-forested much of the earth as we have done over the past century, again despite many more mouths to feed?

On the whole CO2 causing climate change thing, it has been famously asserted that there is no "serious scientific opposition" to the idea that CO2 is driving climate change, and that anthropogenic CO2 is the scale tipper. I dare anyone to watch the video of this lecture and still come away with no doubts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN06JSi-SW8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCXDISLXTaY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQQGFZHSno&feature=related


If you are a "true believer" then of course you will be unhindered by any of these facts. That's OK. I understand, really. But even given that the assertions about anthropogenic global warming are true, doesn't it make sense to use the best possible approach to the 'problem', not the knee-jerk reaction? So just what is the best approach, the one that will produce the best result (REAL sustainable reductions in carbon emissions) for the least cost and pain? Have you ever even seen a cost-benefit analysis of competing solutions? Or is only one solution ever even considered, namely "we must force mandatory cuts in carbon emissions NOW!!" Watch the next video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtbn9zBfJSs

Jimbo

 

[masalai]

Oh dear, everyone seems to be getting tooooo excited. utube is a nice place to be entertained, as I implied long ago, peer (or even Par) review and supportable & repeatable experiments etc to prove hypothesis please.

Else preface each para with IMHO - (In my honest opinion) or in my case, CFSR - "Communist Fish sources report....." or something similar if it is a "red-herring", one is throwing into the midst of a debate......

I concur with your proposition that if you seek to restrain an activity then one must propose an alternative which will not generate a backward step - well a little in reverse is OK for excessive consumption ******* & affiliates...

Also on this net, I saw today, was a utube on a guy who had solarised his home with typical American excess - Solar, Hydrogen, Battery & mains grid - Quad redundancy whereas most of his countrymen would be "dead in the water" if the electric or gas (petrol) supply stopped

I admire his dedication & thoroughness - on the basis of being a live-in demonstration site. and I congratulate him.

An exercise I put in motion on a pastoral (grazing) property which had a 3 cyl 27 hp kubota genset producing 240 V ac (standard for Australia) and had to be run for 2 x 4 hour sessions to keep the large refrigeration - cool storage room - (walk in refrigerator with freezer section) within temperature range. - - We added a bank of 20 x 12 v batteries to be charged by direct rectification of the 240v and had a 240 v inverter added so that the power-supply became available 24/7 - - - The Kubota genset was then set to auto-start to keep the batteries up and then ran only 1 hour a day!!!! giving access to a lot of other niceties on demand.

The other perk which was not implemented but "in-process" was a capacity to parallel the battery derived power source with the kubota genset to drive a big welder & some other heavy power need stuff which was not used...

The next step was to fit photovoltaic solar panels to meet the load used. I do not know if that was done.....

 

[Jimbo1490]

Oh dear, everyone seems to be getting tooooo excited. utube is a nice place to be entertained, as I implied long ago, peer (or even Par) review and supportable & repeatable experiments etc to prove hypothesis please.

The lecture I referenced is by a reputable scientist and numerous peer-reviewed journal papers are cited verbally, if you care to jot them down for cross-checking of facts.

The sloppiness, exaggerations and even outright dishonesty that has been uncovered recently in so-called 'peer reviewed' journals on the topic under discussion is one of the most striking points discussed in the lecture.

 

[masalai]

Not pointed at anyone, I was fishing for red fish? I did not visit those you cited Jimbo, utube sites after 2 they seem to lock, &/or I get distracted by some of the advertised "worlds funniest" etc.....

 

[Jimbo1490]

Agent Smith from the movie "The Matrix":

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.

Sounds just like PARS's rant, huh?

 

[Richard Atkin]

Human beings use up a TINY amount of the available land that is ideal for growing crops and building houses. We are multiplying?? We've barely started.
Starvation, over-crowding, and deforestation are just the result of politics and economics. We are greedy and selfish...but we are not a virus destroying the world. There is plenty of 'world' left. We have time to learn to be more responsible. Some people just love the idea of a dooms day, because they are not very happy with their life. These people shouldn't stand in the way of those who are more optimistic.

 

[charmc]

Without meaning to sound unfeeling....I think dead people should be ground up and used as fertiliser.

That's the purpose of burial. There have been exceptions in ancient times, such as the royal families of Egypt, but in general, people's bodies have been placed in the earth as a natural part of the cycle of life. Many cultures include language about the bodies of the deceased providing sustinence for new life as part of the burial ceremony. This is true even in the Christian era. I came across a family plot contract from the 1930's. It included a description of the fact that multiple generations could all be buried in the same plot, since bodies and wooden caskets would fully decompose and be absorbed into the soil within some period of years (I forget how many). fancy metal caskets and concrete vaults are aberations concocted to increase the profits of the funeral director industry.

 

[masalai]

I am all for effective re-cycling - returned to the domain of Davey Jones...

 

[alan white]

It's all good. Very emotional subject.
A lot of people justify their hypocritical behavior by manufacturing either an alarming situation or insisting there is absolutely nothing of any importance to worry about. In truth, we use our strong views to explain ourselves to ourselves in a way that makes us comfortable.
If we see almost no global destruction of air, land, or sea resources, we can more easily be comfortable with our inefficient and wasteful lifestyles.
If we become apologists for man's existence on Earth, seeing all of man's exploits as unnatural and likely destructive, we are probably only trying to become comfortable with the fact that we see man, and hence ourselves, as helpless victims who need to be taken care of.
We seldom stay quiet and just live our lives as if only our own acts matter. It's always easier to see the perceived problem as solvable by others.
Of course, others are doing the same, which is why things do get out of hand.
A few days ago, a friend and I were talking about the sad lot of people like us, tradesmen who could barely afford medical insurance, who struggled to pay every bill, who lived in a depressed area with high taxes and low wages.
Then I said, "Of course, WE personally are clever enough to survive such a predicament. We really are talking about OTHER people (apparantly) like us... who we know nothing about."
My friend nodded. "Yeah", he admitted. "That's actually true."

Alan

 

[whipper]

We have been in global cooling for the last two years hear also. When sombody is telling you something for profit you must know its a lie!{Gore} I have 4ft of snow in the front yard still today!! The ice on the lakes is 4 ft deep and we had a ice jam on the Nechaco river that broke the 200 year flood plain and the walls of ice are 20ft high. Ya thats global warming alright! Like was mentioned buy a hovercraft and switch to electric heat because the shortage of oil is sending it to 150-200 a barrel but the rivers will flow strong. Stay warm and burn your garbage your self.

 

[alan white]

We have been in global cooling for the last two years hear also.

It's anticipated, no doubt, that almost 50% of the areas on the planet are cooling. A little over 50% are warming.
When it rains a lot in your town, do you call your broker to invest in London Fog? Of course not.
I see no one here who really could intelligently argue the finer points of the issue. It would be like a group of climatologists debating the question of whether lifting keels are seaworthy.
The only thing (regarding global warming) we can talk about intelligently is who we can trust to study the issue dispassionately. All of our conclusions would then be best guesses (and not really conclusions), based on who we believe. If we did that, it seems very unlikely we'd get very emotional about the issue.
I see no reason to think Al Gore is lying to make himself rich. I could more easily imagine him simply mistaken or not mistaken, or somewhere in between.

Alan

 

[safewalrus]

Its a known fact that when you plant a tree you plant a 'body' under it as it improves the growth of the tree! What kind of body doesn't really matter as long as it's dead (if not it soon will be)!

 

[Richard Atkin]

Scientists who study the earth's climate, the earth's age, the age of fossils and other remains, the age of the universe, the size of the universe......

Well...I think most of them are just massaging their own egos. They have already found remains (including ancient human) that totally contradict their theories on the timing of evolution. Perhaps we are a much older species than we thought. The universe is expanding. What universe? All we can see is a tiny pin point of a universe. It could be radically different to what we expect to see beyond our telescopes. Perhaps we are living in a particular pocket of the universe that supports life. This may be one of many pockets that are all floating in a sea of chaotic jelly, which is hanging from a giant nose. Perhaps I should do the math to prove this!!!

Dooms day scientists like to use algebra...using the known variables to work out the unknown variables. Only problem is...many of the 'known' variables are actually theoretical. What a waste of time. (try telling them that).

They should just continue with the work that is actually worth while. (like flying men to Mars. That would make a good TV show).

Alan White, if my argument doesn't sound very intelligent, read it again. Sometimes it's better to be dumb so you can see the bigger picture.

Here's the BIGGEST picture of all: If we want people to be more caring, then we need to understand the cause and cure for Neurosis, and then work with that knowledge.