Climate, paradigm and popular opinion shifts

[femoimal]

Climate Shifting. Collapsing ecosystems. A reality ? A fatality ? A destiny?

A few years away, there where legions of people/specialists that screamed against the very idea. Now it seems it's becoming mainstream. How come ?

Is it trend, ecologist propaganda, the disappearance of communists of just the acceptance of indisputable scientific evidence ?

Did that change in tone affect you ? Are you really worried about the environment and the possible retuning of our biosphere ? Are you ready to devote some resource, effort and time to make a contribution towards a healthier planet ? Are your peers ready ?

If the planetary shit is about to hit the ecological fan, what hopes do you have we as a specie can avoid or survive it ?

-

[femoimal]

erm, that deafening silence is quite astonishing.

Did you guys just close 10 environmental threads I missed, or really nobody gives a fuck about climate change ? It will happen to the others but not me?

[Neo]

Sorry, but your first post kind of went over my head.

What exactly are you asking?

The whole Eco-Stuff going on at the moment usually amounts to people in two camps:

One is that Global Warming (and by extension anything else) is crock

and the other is that we should take this stuff seriously because GW IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW OMFG.

Really the arguement can be made for both sides, with no clear answer/winner.

I think the problem here is the major disconnect, one side wants to much, and the other is unwilling to even entertain the logical point of view that we should, at the least, limit the pollution and other bad shit we do to the planet before it does because an issue.

Then again I could be wrong. Still not sure what you're asking :p

-Neo

[femoimal]

yeah, i mean there are 2 points i think are only remotely connected in people's mind.
As you say, one is pollution, that is immediately perceivable. Everyone has got some water stream polluted nearby, or a factory discharging smelly fumes around. Tree, fish, animals disappearing etc....
This small scale neighborhood thing is also connected to the wider planetary problem. We are so many and have so much industry that the planet itself becomes our neighborhood. I understand That someone might be skeptic about the second large scale evolution (that is, until he gets some information from historians -yes look at lead levels), but can anyone not notice the vicinity degradation of the environment, and its climate ?
The melting of icecaps is for instance not quite an illusion, where does the liquefied water go ? The Aral Sea has disappeared too, and there are many dust storms in the US...

Since its getting less green, less animal populated and more charged with chemicals around our houses, can't it be happening on a larger scale too ? Or we still think we live in a world too large to take notice of us ?

[Lazere]

First, I would like to point out that, in my area, animal populations are not decreasing like in the areas you are describing. The only real depopulation going on in my area is attributed by hunters, which can be argued as being part of a natural food chain.
Second, the melting of the icecaps. There is a lot of evidence for the reality of global warming. Yes, the earth as a whole is warming. Yes, climates are changing on a global scale. Yes, the icecaps are melting. And yes, it is going to affect us as a species. But there is one thing that many "normal" people don't consider. This global warming could very well be a part of the earth's natural cycle. There has been proof in written history alone that they have gone through these cycles. (Think great flood of Mesopotamia) Also, it has been thought that during the middle ages, a small ice age begun. Is it not possible then, that we are just warming up from this "mini ice age". Also, consider the dinosaurs. This was a time period when creatures the size of houses roamed the earth. All of these were cold-blooded. Wouldn't these large, cold-blooded animals require a tremendous amount of heat? More than a "normal" earth can provide?

In conclusion, am I ready to devote resources and time to reversing global warming? No. I will not attempt to reverse something that I believe is a natural cycle.

[Toucan]

Aww, this is awesome, I love the anti-climate change propaganda and yes, I have read it all.

Its a natural cycle, it was this warm just 1800 years ago, problem with this theory, ice that is 200 thousand years old is now melting, if it was this hot 1800 years ago (or anytime in the past 200 thousand years) why didn't it melt then?
Why has the estimated melt that we expected to occur over the next 120 years already melted?

Why are carbon levels over the great southern ocean increasing?

Why is salinity and density of the ACC decreasing? And what effect will it have on the rest of the world if it breaks down all together? If???? funny statement, the ACC will be gone in a minimum of 5 years, what effect its absence is going to have on the world? is the real question.

[Magmaniac]

The levels of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases have risen exponentially since the dawn of the industrial revolution, and with them have come global warming. It's a natural cycle, sure. But the levels we are at are far beyond what has ever happened within this cycle. We broke it.
It's all about equilibrium. One of the main problems causing global warming is overpopulation. I think that we have seriously overshot our carrying capacity and there just are not enough resources to maintain a stable environment in our world because of the tremendous amounts of waste we put into it. What will happen is the greenhouse gases will cause ice caps to melt, first of all the one in greenland. The greenland ice cap will flow into the north atlantic, cooling the important ocean currents there that affect global weather, and plunging all of the northern hemisphere into an ice age for oh... a couple thousand years, likely killing billions of people during the change in climate. The waters also could reach a critical desalinization point where the amount of freshwater added due to melting ice will allow for all the nitrogen within the seawater to suddenly release into the atmosphere, effectively killing everything on the planet that relies on atmospheric conditions for survival, such as by breathing.
We are pretty fucked either way, and there are probably quite a few other scenarios that I have forgot that are probably equally gruesome. The thing is, the damage has already been done to our planet, the effects are inevitable. Trying to stop global warming now is like locking the barn door after the horse ran away.
We are all fucked at some point.
But hey, it could be a year, could be ten, could be a hundred. No real way to be 100% sure just yet, so might as well enjoy the beautiful planet we have been raping while the opportunity is available.

[singo]

But there is one thing that many "normal" people don't consider. This global warming could very well be a part of the earth's natural cycle.


Could be, but the IPCC (International Panel for Climate Change or some such) came to the conclusion that there is at least a 90% chance this particular lot of warming is our fault.


Oh, and a retired scientific advisor to the UK government said that the main obstacle to doing something about it was enviromentalists, which was rather amusing as well as disturbingly likely. After all, no one wants to be told that they will have to voluntarily lower their standard of living to accomodate anything at all.

[UMSLdragon]

Global warming? Try telling that to my town. It's reached -40C without a windchill for the past four + days! Global warming indeed :P

I know, it's just a ranting spam. But in reply to MagManiac up there:

I don't think there would be enough nitrogen for that to happen globaly. Just doesn't seem likely. From my standing point, I also don't think that GreenLand glacier would be able to make that large of a climate change with just one slip of ice. Yes, I know it's large, but I doubt it will all fall in at the same time.

But you're thinking on the idea that if it did all fall in at once, ya, it would probably change water currents, wind currents, thus changing temperatures. I wonder, if the colder the winter, does that make the summer much more hotter the closer to the equator?

As with climate change, I don't think that it's the amount of Greenhouse gases that are being pumped into the air, but the concentration at certain points. Way up there in the strata, I don't think it circulates very well.

And, what about Ozone... no ones really mentioned that yet.

UMSL

[WhatIsStarcraft]

I don't think we have a overcrowded planet, just that some people are using way more energy here, in Europe and America(and some other regions)than in other regions, like Africa, and parts of Asia. We should lower our carbon emissions, because if we don't do anything, the world may look like this. http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8qmaAMK4cM