Why do you think Global Warming is being ignored?

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Wondering

If we didn't put out forest fires, would they ever stop?

Would we just let everything burn? Maybe it is an emotional connection to the earth. But it is the only earth we have. Global warming should be a major concern because the possible effects could be very dangerous to a lot of people. Maybe even dangerous to all of us. What about the bird flu? The bird flu is natural. It wasn't created by man. Do we not have any right to try to try to stop it from happening, or cure those who are sick with it?

___Yes, the fires go out on their own. For one thing, the Native Americans used to set fires to promote healthy forests & grasslands before the Europeans came. For another thing, before people started populating the Earth the fires came & went of their own accord, and yet here we are to discuss this.
___People can't even fully understand small scale Earth functions like local weather, let alone modify an entire planet. Moreover, these climate cycles appear directly connected to the Sun & its natural cycles & we have a lot to learn about the Sun before we have any hope of modifying its behavior.
___If you google 'global warming', the result is evidence enough that folks have the topic well in mind.

[InfiniteNow]

Howdy Wondering,

Glad to have you aboard. This is a fun place and has assisted me in growing new neuronal connections for sure.

Global warming is indeed a complex topic, one which has also been explored on this site many times and many ways. You might try the Search feature and type "global warming" to bring yourself up to speed on what's been covered and what folks around here think... it's a good bunch by the way.

Search Results for: global warming

Quick bullet point answers:
- Not easy to focus on a topic with no immediate fix
- Attention is being spent elsewhere, like war and nukes and the like
- Fear is definitely a factor, and many policitians fear they will not be re-elected if the induce fear into the populus
- Most assuredly deserves more attention, but also deserves better ideas and solutions.


Cheers. See you in the forums.

[Turtle]

___Further musings:
Just as fire is required to open the cones of some trees, or a bird's heat is required to hatch an egg, maybe global warming is required to bring the Earth to its next episode of new life.

[TheBigDog]

Originally Posted by Turtle

___Further musings:
Just as fire is required to open the cones of some trees, or a bird's heat is required to hatch an egg, maybe global warming is required to bring the Earth to its next episode of new life.

I had started typing a thought in that vein in post 7, but decided to keep it simple. I have been trying to hatch a connection in my head between earth cycles (localized) and speciation.

hmmmm....

Bill

[Wondering]

Originally Posted by Turtle

___Further musings:
Just as fire is required to open the cones of some trees, or a bird's heat is required to hatch an egg, maybe global warming is required to bring the Earth to its next episode of new life.

I just think that is a bit too optimistic.

[Wondering]

Originally Posted by TheBigDog

Excellent points Wondering! Glad to have you aboard.

The point of my debating this with you is that the point is not saving the earth. The point is saving man. You just stated this above, so on that point we agree.

Next question. If it proves that man will not be killed off, or suffer any worse than he does today, if the global temerature were to go up say 5 degrees. Then what would be the point of stopping global warming? If we can survive it, then why stop it?

Bill

But isn't global warming an ongoing process? Would it actually just go up 5 degrees and then stop?

And what about the damage to the earth.. the beautiful sights we could lose and are losing. I saw on the news that in Italy, the glaciers on one of the poplular skiing sites will be gaone in 50 years. Doesn't anybody (besides the people who actually see them) care about these losses even a little bit?

[TheBigDog]

Originally Posted by Wondering

But isn't global warming an ongoing process? Would it actually just go up 5 degrees and then stop?

And what about the damage to the earth.. the beautiful sights we could lose and are losing. I saw on the news that in Italy, the glaciers on one of the poplular skiing sites will be gaone in 50 years. Doesn't anybody (besides the people who actually see them) care about these losses even a little bit?

Historically there is a cold rebound after a warming period. As all the glaciers melt the water levels rise. As they rise the wet surface of the earth increases. That causes greater evaporation into the atmosphere and increased cloud cover. The increased cloud cover causes the temperature to drop along with increased precipitation. All the things that cause an ice age. That is my understanding of how it should play out. Any way you slice it you periodically have really extreme weather. Regardless of what is living and happening on the planet. I am more concerned about poisoning the atmosphere and the water in such a manner that it causes a human catastophy than I am about how man is effecting global weather cycles.

Bill

[Cedars]

Originally Posted by Turtle

___Further musings:
Just as fire is required to open the cones of some trees, or a bird's heat is required to hatch an egg, maybe global warming is required to bring the Earth to its next episode of new life.

Cool thought! I like that !!

[Cedars]

Originally Posted by Wondering

But isn't global warming an ongoing process? Would it actually just go up 5 degrees and then stop?

And what about the damage to the earth.. the beautiful sights we could lose and are losing. I saw on the news that in Italy, the glaciers on one of the poplular skiing sites will be gaone in 50 years. Doesn't anybody (besides the people who actually see them) care about these losses even a little bit?

No one knows when it would stop. But history indicates it will because it has in the past, several times. http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000226/bob10.asp

Glaciers do melt in that region. Written documents going back to the 16th century exist that describe catastrophic floods caused by the bursting of glacier-dammed lakes or arable land and farms destroyed by advancing glaciers, e.g., in 18th century Norway (Østrem et al., 1977).

Now this is relatively little data on the 'normal' pattern of climate of the earth. You cannot make absolute statements as to the cause of warming based on 500-1000 years of isolated glacial information. Especially when much older evidence of past warmings of this degree, and even higher degrees are evident. Warmings that absolutely had nothing to do with human activity. Along with the extreme coolings that have occured, again not via human activities.

Every decade we develop new technologies that aid us in gathering data. This will continue. Every decade we discover many factors never imagined before have impacts on the habitat we enjoy, wetlands comes to mind on this. What is the unknown is whether we will interpret the data correctly.

[Boerseun]

Sure - there was Ice Ages and periods of global heating in the past, and all of them have affected the human race. The last Big Freeze even made the population of the Americas possible via the Bering Strait land bridge, that was made possible by the lowered sea levels.

Difference is, if we help the current heating trend along, we won't be affecting a paltry few million primitive cave dwellers scattered across the globe. We'll be affecting 6.5 billion people, and millions, a few billion even, will simply have to die due to desertification in some formerly productive areas and weather patterns gone berserk in general.

The tendency for carbon dioxide to retain heat has been well established, and is not in question. Just take a look at Venus. Fact is, there has never been as much carbon in our atsmosphere as right now - and we are well aware of the danger. From twelve years ago, every consecutive year has been the hottest on record. 2005 has been the hottest year ever, since we've started measuring. And the recorded temperatures over the last 100 years shows an unerring parallel to the levels of carbon in the atmosphere.
Surely this correlation is not accidental?

Sure - there might be an underlying heating trend, ever since the last ice age. But we are acellerating it to the tune of raising temperatures in ten years that would naturally have taken a thousand.

We know very well what damage we're causing. We shouldn't look back at a planet suffering from severely distorted weather patterns, a planet suffering from widespread famine, droughts, floodings, weather extremities etc. in 2050 and say "Damn, maybe we should've signed that bloody Kyoto thingy..."

Because then it will simply be too late.

I honestly think people don't care, because they don't bother to think about it. You won't see the damage day to day. But year by year, you'll definitely start seeing the excreta hitting the air circulation device. And governments don't give a rip, because in the short term it will be negative to Big Business, and will cost them votes. They are willing to let the planet slip down a slope of death and famine for self-centered selfish short-term gain.

Carbon that have accumulated over hundreds of millions of years, are suddenly released in a matter of less than a hundred years. All that carbon is in the atmosphere now, compared to being safely buried beneath the Earth out of harm's way. Surely, even a blind man can see that doing this will throw the balance completely out of whack. And nobody knows the consequences - we can't even look at the record for previous cases of this happening, because it simply hasn't. We are sailing uncharted waters doing this, and we should be prudent and rather listen to scientists postulating the possible negatives than to politicians who are painting the whole 'global warming' picture over with a rose-coloured brush saying 'it's happened before, it's natural, we can't stop it - so let's keep on making money and destroying the planet!'. The scientists are saying what they're saying because the evidence is pointing in that direction. The politicians are saying what they're saying because they've got a collective selfish tendency to not be able to see past their terms in office.

Welcome to Hypo, by the way. Sorry if I rambled on a bit, but this whole issue is touching on a very, very raw nerve with me.