Climate Change

[marharth]

There was a topic about this at some point I think, no idea where it went...

 

Not going to post any opinions yet.

 

1. Do you think man contributes to it?

 

2. Do you think it is a serious threat?

 

3. Do you think the media correctly reports on it? (Does the media make it seem like a big threat or a small threat?)

 

4. Why do you think people act like its not a issue, and what is your reason behind it? Why do you think people act like it is a issue, and what is your reason behind it?

[HeyYou]

Global warming is a normal occurrence. Michigan, where I live, has been both a tropical rainforest, and buried under a mile of ice, (several times...) in its history, LONG before industrialized man was on the scene. Are we contributing to the process? Probably. Can we stop it? Not a chance. Is it a threat? Heck Yes. Another Ice Age would not be good for us. ESPECIALLY those of us in the northern hemisphere..... significantly reduces the arable land available.....

[Ghogiel]

^basically that.

 

My philosophy on the matter of being green in terms of climate control, won't help all that much.

 

I must always ask this question when ever there is pollution, environment destruction, and waste: Where Is The Need? If there is no Need, then don't do it. Just have respect.

 

It's not like everything can be 100% eco friendly. You do have to throw stuff away. You do Need to burn things. You don't Need 5 different plastic wrappers around a couple carrots though. It's utter madness.

[RZ1029]

Stupid Al Gore. I told him it was a bad idea, he didn't listen. Now it never snows here anymore.

 

Seriously though: Climate change, I'm calling natural cycle. Prehistorically speaking, I'm 90% sure my Earth and Environmental Science teacher told me that we used to have a ton of CO2 in the, way more than we do now, and it was way warmer, et cetera. Of course we've also got the ice age stuff everyone else has mentioned.

 

Does it happen? Yep. Do we probably speed it up a bit? I think so. Can we stop it? No. Should we try to lessen our impact? Yes. Natural is natural, no need for us to try and manipulate that too... unless it's to save all of humanity or something like that. The media over-hypes it just like everything else they think would make ratings. I've lost my faith in the media a looong time ago.

 

I'd say most don't think it's an issue/don't treat it as one because they either 1) don't care, 2) don't know, 3) realize there probably isn't anything we can do about it, and decide to continue about their life as comfortably as possible before we all toast in our own atmosphere... or something like that.

Edited June 13, 2011 by RZ1029

[NinjaGoddessAyra]

There was a topic about this at some point I think, no idea where it went...

 

Not going to post any opinions yet.

 

1. Do you think man contributes to it?

 

2. Do you think it is a serious threat?

 

3. Do you think the media correctly reports on it? (Does the media make it seem like a big threat or a small threat?)

 

4. Why do you think people act like its not a issue, and what is your reason behind it? Why do you think people act like it is a issue, and what is your reason behind it?

 

1. I guess

 

2. Not at all

 

3. No the media does not correctly report on it considering there were supposedly emails of scientists going back and forth going on about how the theories aren't working and the supposable "proofs" that they had were natural occurences.

 

4. I think the reason there is such a mixed response is because there are so many different reports on it from the media and everything else. Some people say that if we cut down our energy we can help prevent global warming, however on the other hand, people say that we'd have to completely stop using energy entirely before we notice a difference.

 

I personally think outside of the box and form my own opinion. The way I see it, they changed the name from Global Warming to Climate Change because it wasn't warming up the way they were saying it so they changed the whole approach to Climate Change. I don't know about you, but the region that i'm from had a REALLY long and cold winter this year.

Finally, the biggest reason why I personaly don't think it much a threat is because 10 to 15 years ago, everyone was worried about global cooling though not many people know about that.

[Skevitj]

It's unfortunate how the media reports the issue, since I've seen so many people who believe that "if it exists" it's a "100% human-made" problem which could be entirely prevented if we all stuck solar panels on our roof. Natural or man-made, significant or not, we need to be able to adjust our housing/agricultural methods to be able to deal with any variation in conditions. Green energy sources, closed loop industrial systems is just common sense, but there are a whole heap of other areas which are being neglected such as city planning -> How many cities are there where urban sprawl is seen as an integral part of the area's culture? It's one of the most damaging and counter productive traits of a city, capable of single-handedly negating any "green" effort put into a improving a city, yet you suggest a way to counter it and everyone starts complaining about you're trying to take away their quality of life? How are you supposed to get people to accept a different, but nessecary town planning strategy if 90% of the topical reports in the media are families saying they're being hard done by because they can't have their double block and their grass lawn? This actually happened recently again, after a report was commissioned to determine the effects of a "build up not out" style city planning strategy: Out of 8 prime-time media reports on the topic, 5 of them were families saying how much they like their lawn (ie, no information at all), 2 focused solely on one section where it said that prices for larger blocks was likely to increase (ie, almost completely irrelevant to the report, the actual section of the report was barely more than a side note). The final report was the only one which actually mentioned any of the benefits from the planning strategy (significantly reduced water and electricity consumption, and massive reduction in expenditure and waste by utility companies) but even then this was given one quick mention near the middle of the report, while the rest focused on families who liked their lawns.

 

Climate change is no-longer a scientific problem the academic community (and industry) needs to "solve", the technologies/planning methods are there to safeguard/improve the lives of people and industry, but they're being stalemated by paranoia and lack of information. Coping with climate change is now mainly a PR problem, getting relevant information out there, in a form which can be easily understood with minimal to zero false information. "false information" isn't some wibly-woble concept which is better ignored, there may always be two sides to an argument, but more often than not those sides are far from balanced, and representing them evenly is straight up misleading.

 

A quote I'm hearing more and more is: "80% of dealings with the media is dealing with the fallout from misinformation". It's one of the reasons that people are told (when dealing with the media) to write as if it is intended for a 3rd-4th grader, simply to minimise the media's ability to misquote and misunderstand what is being said. Even when put into the simplest of terms though, the media has nothing even resembling the "peer review" ideal prevalent in the academic community, one single rumor, or an out of context quote can just as easily make a story as any academic/industry report of any quality and bias (or lack of).

 

There are geological formations which are "supposed" (I'm not a geologist, but this is coming from a university professor in geology) to prove (with a very low uncertainty) that some of the ocean and atmospheric changes we're seeing now are happening much slower than ones which have been seen dating back 10,000 or so years.

 

IE: There was a media frenzy a few years back when some new report indicated that sea levels are likely to rise at 2-3 meters every thousand years and this was considered good news as it was the universal view of geologists (from a previous report) that there was more than enough evidence to justify sea levels changing at a rate of 10m every 100years about 8000years ago (in the same area as the study, 50x slower than well before human interference). The values the media were getting worked up over (Increase of 2-3m) was received as good news, but it was stating the exact opposite of what the media said was happening in an area. It just shows how easy it is for one meaningless piece of information to be taken far enough out of context that it can be used as "undeniable proof" that something "bad" is happening, when in truth, it's still as meaningless and insignificant as it has always been.

 

 

 

50 years from now...

"Wait, so your telling us that climate change was actually a myth and we just made the world a better place for nothing?

[HeyYou]

The trouble with 'going green' is, some of the things that are touted as 'green' really.... aren't. Wind power for instance. Due to the unreliability of wind power, there has to be some flavor of backup system in place, for the times when demand is high, but, wind speed is not...... So, what's is the usual answer? Diesel generators.... not exactly green.

 

Another issue, as I see it.... is: Unless EVERYONE gets on the same page, a few countries destroying their economies in the name of "environmental protection" isn't going to be worth diddly squat, so long as other countries do nothing at all. China is a booming economy right now, and lots of folks are interested in locating there, simply because there are very few, if any at all, environmental laws in place, to prevent them from just dumping their industrial waste wherever they care to. If China starts altering their current "do what you want" stance, manufacturers/industries are going to be less likely to want to locate their. (not to mention the extremely low labor costs... but, that's another issue.)

 

So far as I have seen, none of the efforts put forth by government really do much, aside from increasing the cost of doing business here, and driving up the prices of most products. We don't have the scale of industrial pollution we once did, and I do indeed see that as a 'good' thing, but, I question just how much of that is due to the environmental efforts, (aside from such efforts driving business OUT of the US), and how much of that is simply due to the fact that a fair bit of our industry isn't even HERE any more. Have a look at Gary, Indiana, a once booming steel town, that boasted a population of near 180,000 in the 1960's, down to about 80,000 now. And Detroit Michigan...... a peak of near 2 MILLION people in the 50's and 60's, down to just over 700,000 now..... quite the decline, wouldn't you say?

 

As for the media.... I don't watch mainstream media on TV anymore. It's pointless. I read most of my news online, and get varying viewpoints on whatever the issues of the day are, and form my own opinion. Media is all about ratings, and advertising dollars these days. Expecting 'truth', or 'accuracy' from any single source, is an exercise in futility.

 

In any event, the climate is dynamic. Just because you had a mild winter this year, does NOT imply you can expect mild winters for the rest of your life. Everything goes in cycles. Nothing is static.

[Aurielius]

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac177/Aurielius/demotivational-posters-global-warming.jpg

[JimboUK]

Governments have finally found a way to tax the weather, they won't give that up easily. :thumbsup:

[brokenergy]

When people here actually use real evidence to support their "idea" that climate change isn't man-made, then maybe I'll give a full answer instead of a cheap sentence.

 

So instead here's a link to a TV Q&A show with one of the world's leading climatologists over climate science. Whether it'll change your mind after watching, I do not care.

 

http://www.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/401#watchonline