Speaking of thorny issues

[funnymouth]

Evild
SERIOUSLY! thats bugged me for so long. here in cali, arnold (the governator) has proposed a plan to add something like 4 new dams to counter our dwindling icepack (most of californias water comes from winter snow deposits in the sierras, which are on the decline). great solution, make more dams to counter the inefficiency of existing dams (they predict that a number of the existing dams will be rendered usless because of the reduced water flow). i say invest it in to technology for \"cleaning\" sea water that we could could sell to everyone else (marked up, of course ).

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by funnymouth
i say invest it in to technology for \"cleaning\" sea water that we could could sell to everyone else (marked up, of course ).

The truly sad thing is the technology is already here. The USS Nimitz has the capability to distill 400,000 gallons of fresh water a day. There are passive filters today capable of filtering the salt from the water. It\'s not even a matter of \"If\" it can be done, it \"can\" be done. It\'s only a matter of engineering and building now. And of course, getting the government to actually do it, then the lengthy drawn out court battles with the environmentalists over whether the pumping will harm the ecology of the blue bellied speckled sea bass or some such creature.lol

 

[farseerlum]

oh noes teh fishes will unhappy!!!

yeah and meanwhile a gazillion land loving animals cark it. :no:

 

[funnymouth]

dude, 71% the earths surface is covered with salt water (and its deep. right now we get our water from streams, aquafers and riparian ares, with a huge environmental impact. we need to drink water, and its a big source. the water could even be recycled (one of the latest things in wate management is \"ecosystem processing.\"

of couse , everything has negative environmental impact (picturing huge intake valves). im sure there would be BIG consequences, but what are we going to do when the aquafers star to go? most other alternatives would be much more nasty. maybe. hard to say but it seems like a good idea to me. we might have to stop dumping raw sewage in to the oceans then too...

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by funnymouth
we might have to stop dumping raw sewage in to the oceans then too...

Heh, we even got filters that can handle that.
Enough time , pressure and the right filters I could give you a glass of water that tastes and smells like regular water, reclamated from urine. Not too many people would want to drink it if they knew where it came from though.lol

 

[DrEvilmonki]

Originally posted by Evil Dave

Enough time , pressure and the right filters I could give you a glass of water that tastes and smells like regular water, reclamated from urine. Not too many people would want to drink it if they knew where it came from though.lol

Hell some people think it\'s healthy WITHOUT the filtering!

 

[Avelorn]

I prefer my Urine with filtering, please..

Shaken not disturbed

 

[Evil Dave]

Ok, I\'ve autoCADded a few simple pics to show you why I think Global Warming is natural and not man-made.

Now the earth has gone through several cycles of intense global coolings known Ice Ages, followed by warming periods known as Global Warmings. These cycles have been verified through Ice Core samples.

So we have this:

Not to scale mind you.
Now, keep in mind that each rise and trough covers billions of years, therefore the global avererage temperature that we\'ve been calculating for the last hundred years or so is a mere eyeblink of information in the geological scale. Just as an eyeblink of a movie doesn\'t give you the whole synopsis of the movie, the recordings of only a hundred years of temperature on a climate scale gives you even less.

Now scientists are not quite sure where our civilization falls on this cycle, but it is generally accepted that we have just come out of the Ice Age or are actually still in it\'s dying throws. So for sake of argument we\'ll put civilization here:

As you can see, no matter where we put the dot of civilization (unless at the very top) temperatures will continue to rise, naturally as it is part of a natural, recorded cycle.

Is the Earth warming? Absolutely, just as it will reach a peak temperature and start falling culminating in another Ice Age.
Is Global Warming man made? Absolutely not. As Global Warming has occurred before man was even around, it would be silly to attribute it\'s invention to man. Were we at a contant global temperature that never changed, then global warming started happening, then it would be logical to assume we were causing it. As it is now, there is no such thing as a constant global temperature, as there is irefutable proof that Ice Ages have occured, and the Global warmings that followed them, it would be far more logical to assume this was the natural course of events.
Are we accelerating the cycle? Unlikely, and very, very hard to prove as there isn\'t a very good way to compare between cycles what the rate of temperature rise was before and over what scale.

 

[funnymouth]

what you say is not in doubt, and certainly true, but it in no way dissuades my fear that we are in fact influencing climate change. merely because the environment changes natually, does not mean that all environmental change, is therefore natural.

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by funnymouth
those same core samples indicate that the planet is warming faster than it ever has before.

It has been my understanding that while Ice cores may show a broad spectrum of data such as CO2 content in the air, they are by no means a very exact or even remotely exact at fine tuned predictions, say in the area of a couple centuries, and while they may be able to guess what the temperature was at the time was during the core strata was created it is by no means perfect or uniform. Furthermore, there is no real way to verify the preciseness of ice cores as we cannot travel back in time and take actual temperature estimates. They are rough estimates at best.

what you say is not in doubt, and certainly true, but that in no way dissuades my fear that we are in fact influincing climate change.

Does it matter? Can you stop the inevitable by cowering in fear of it? How much time do you think we could actually buy? It will not go away.
We don\'t even know if it will be a catastrophic as predicted. (Which I will say for my fellow scientists, we are a doom and gloom bunch. Global Cooling, Y2K, Hurricane season of 2006, anyone?)

merely because the environment changes natually, does not mean that all environmental change, is therefore natural.

Neither does it mean that it is man-made. Nature is rarely, if ever always exactly the same. There are always discrepancies and differences here and there. There are no absolute straight lines in nature.

 

[funnymouth]

true about the core samples. they lack a lot of resolution too, so its tough to say on such a short time scale. comment edited

if we are contributing to global warming on an upswing things could get real bad. as you said before,the planet will get hotter. the key thing is how fast, and how extreeme. ecosystems and societies need time to change (move cities, shift foodwebs), or they will do so violently (bad news for everyone). that is the concern, not whether it would happen anyhow. no one knows whats going to happen, thats the scary part. maybe not much, or maybe humanity dies out. i like to gamble, but that os a gamble im not willing to make.

 

[vincegamer]

Just two questions, Dave:

If we follow the stop global warming crowd and they are wrong, what are the consequences?

If we follow your side, and you are wrong, what are the consequences?


For those of you who disagree with Evil Dave:
Step It Up this weekend!

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by vincegamer
If we follow the stop global warming crowd and they are wrong, what are the consequences?

Nothing, Global warming continues. History shows this. Except you\'ve now wasted time and resources trying to stop something, when you should\'ve been preparing for it.
Can you stop a Hurricane? A tornado? A tsunami? An earthquake? No, but you can prepare for them.

If we follow your side, and you are wrong, what are the consequences?

Nothing, Global warming continues. History shows this. Except you now have the resources to prepare for the eventuality.

The consequences are the same, it is inevitable.

Unless you seriously want to screw with the natural cycle of global warming and cooling,
you may slow it down by a couple years, a decade at the most, but it will happen as it has before, when man was not even a factor, and when the earth was greener.

 

[wiccanpony]

Free Birth Control would go a long way to helping the Earth. :beer:

 

[vincegamer]

Originally posted by Evil Dave
The consequences are the same, it is inevitable.

You missed the point of the exercise.
This is one of your presumptions, and the second question asked what if you are wrong. You have to assume your presumptions are wrong, and that global warming can be stopped (or at least slowed) by human action.

Also, you say we would have the resources to prepare. Just what preparations are you proposing? So far the \"it\'s not human influenced\" crowd has only attacked the idea and has not proposed any positive action.

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by vincegamer

Originally posted by Evil Dave
The consequences are the same, it is inevitable.

You missed the point of the exercise.
This is one of your presumptions, and the second question asked what if you are wrong. You have to assume your presumptions are wrong, and that global warming can be stopped (or at least slowed) by human action.

No I didn\'t miss it, I saw the blatant \"Wouldn\'t it be better to be safe than sorry?\" card and deflected it. But to use that particular argument. I am God. If you Vince, do not send me a million dollars next week, I shall smite thee. Now I know you are an atheist, I know you do not believe, but wouldn\'t you rather be safe than sorry? lol

Also, I would assume my presumptions were wrong if they actually were presumptions, this is basic fact, backed by many of the sciences and history itself. The evidence is stronger by far than evolution, which if I recall, you have defended.

Do you concur that there have been several Ice Ages? Do you also concur that something caused those Ice Ages to end, involving the the temperatures increasing, causing warming over the globe? Is this not Global Warming?

Also, you say we would have the resources to prepare. Just what preparations are you proposing? So far the \"it\'s not human influenced\" crowd has only attacked the idea and has not proposed any positive action.

I personally would say every man for himself, but then again I\'m a Darwinist, a cynic, own a lot of guns with tons of ammo, and have far more outdoor skills than your average person.
Other common sense measures might be hydroponics, Fresh water filtration from seawater (which we have discussed, which we have a need for now, and which we have the technology for), Possibly floating villages (The UAE has just built beautiful man made islands, as well as Fiji, I want to say but don\'t hold me to it, has built a floating airport, there\'s even a guy who build his own personal island using water and coke bottles to build pontoons and piling dirt on them to create a floating island, I\'ll have to find the link for that it\'s really cool.), population control, terraforming of other planets, there\'s also maybe, uh, I don\'t know, moving from low land areas to higher ground.
But then again, the \"other side\" has labeled those that disagree as \"deniers\" even going as far as trying to pass laws to arrest those that disagree in public. Nor have they offered any real solutions. As I\'ve pointed out that putting out less CO2 (if it is the culprit) is still putting out some CO2, Carbon offsets are also dubious, since I\'ve yet to see any scientific declaration of exactly what given tree scrubs out what percentage of CO2. They do however tend to overlook the fact that most green energy sources cannot generate the power it takes to recreate themselves, (Nuclear power excluded) meaning it would take much carbon burning in a shorter period of time, causing greater concentrations, to produce the wind turbines or solar panels needed to power the country.

 

[funnymouth]

Originally posted by Evil Dave
Unless you seriously want to screw with the natural cycle of global warming and cooling,
you may slow it down by a couple years, a decade at the most, but it will happen as it has before, when man was not even a factor, and when the earth was greener.

it is possible for a single organism to forever, and irriverseably change the environment (case in point: cyanobacteria 1.7bya. before them our atmosphere was reductive). so to say that no matter what the earth will continue to exhibit a stably cycling sytstem is wholely incorrect. it is possible, through our fault or not, that the atmosphere will chage dramatically resulting in an environment that is inhospitable to life as we know it. organisms tend to create a dampening effect (whereby they modify the environment around them and stabalize it. case in point: a forest has decreased temperature fluctuations), but we\'re chopping those down, so who knows?

you cite the cycles like rules in a text book, but they are not! they are a history, and many of those environmental cycles may have been (and indeed have been shown to be)caused by organisms on the planet ( and sources other than astrological forcing).

therefore the possibility that our atmosphere could be rendered (again, for whatever reason) toxic.

consider the following:

1) we produce pollutants that are known to change environments (as demonstrated in laboratory experiments , and localized geographical occurences) or otherwise toxify them. care to dispute this point?

2) we have caused continent wide environmental effects ( asian brown cloud, oil spills etc) care to dispute this point?

3) historical environmental effects have resulted in mass extinction events. care to dispute this?

4) the environment is not static (or even stably cyclic), and has experienced many, significant, planet changing effects that have influenced both the phisical and biotic aspects of the planet, permenently. example: paleozoic O2 levels were dramatically higher: result ). here is a great quote from Dr. Dudley:

\"Uniformitarian approaches to the evolution of terrestrial locomotor physiology and animal flight performance have generally presupposed the constancy of atmospheric composition. Recent geophysical data as well as theoretical models suggest that, to the contrary, both oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations have changed dramatically during defining periods of metazoan evolution.\"
care to dispute this?

5) we can communaly modify our behavior.

thought process: we can change the environment -> the environment can become dramatically different -> such changes may be lethal to humans. -> we may be able to alter our behavior and environmental impact

logical conclusion: we should worry about, or at least seriously consider the possibility, that we could make our planet (more) inhospitable to human life, and take some action to reduce our influence.

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by funnymouth

logical conclusion: we should worry about, or at least seriously consider the possibility, that we could make our planet (more) inhospitable to human life.

Which I surprisingly enough agree with.
I would however point out that all the world changing instances you mentioned took well over the 2000-3000 years the human race has been in existence, local environments have been damaged (usually coming back strong), but we have yet to change an environment\'s climate.
I advocate thinking it through, living with the land, taking tiny steps rather than the political issue it has become in which something must be done NOW. I advocate real results rather than \"feel good\" attempts. I\'d advocate we look at some of the problems we have now with today\'s technology, (nuclear power, seawater filtering) I\'d advocate we be careful lest we do something irreversible because we didn\'t understand it fully now only to realize our foolishness in the future.

Number 5. though I disagree with, we cannot even stop killing each other over who\'s invisible man in the sky is more powerful.lol

 

[Avelorn]

Originally posted by Evil Dave

Originally posted by funnymouth

logical conclusion: we should worry about, or at least seriously consider the possibility, that we could make our planet (more) inhospitable to human life.

Which I surprisingly enough agree with.
I would however point out that all the world changing instances you mentioned took well over the 2000-3000 years the human race has been in existence, local environments have been damaged (usually coming back strong), but we have yet to change an environment\'s climate.
I advocate thinking it through, living with the land, taking tiny steps rather than the political issue it has become in which something must be done NOW. I advocate real results rather than \"feel good\" attempts. I\'d advocate we be careful lest we do something irreversible because we didn\'t understand it fully now only to realize our foolishness in the future.

I agree on many things. I\'m absolutely terrifed at the prospect of some scientist coming up with a substance that we should spray into the air or something that will probablyjust mess it up even further.

But your graphs.. I\'m not sure what you\'re getting at. Nobody has said that the temperature is constant. It\'s the hockeystick -like graph that is the controversy of the subject. It needs to be explained in some way. I\'m just going to give a link to my favourite climate homepage :

CSI

I\'d like to separate the measures though from the causes though. We can\'t stop natural climatechange and therefor we should prepare ourselves for it but that issue is a little more long-term project. I mean we won\'t be able to live on this earth either for all time.

 

[Evil Dave]

@ Avelorn the Hockey stick graph has been debunked and published by two Canadians.
I\'ll try to find the link.
Here
It\'s a PDF.