Global Warming - Tough Arguement

That's a very well thought out and pictoral version of the argument I've been using for quite some time. Sadly, it's not enough to convince anyone who doesn't want to be convinced (as many of the comments below the video show). Many people refuse to acknowledge the existance of row 2, plain and simple. Never under-estimate the power of stubborn people in large quantities.
 
I completely agree with this arguement, however.. If we are going to put the time and resources into Global Warming, I would also like us to put time and resources into the other possibilities such as Global Cooling and how to survive that if it comes.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=806936648864838201&q=global+cooling

Honestly, they both have about as much evidence of happening soon. One just has history on it's side while the other has chemicals.
 
Honestly humans have survived both. It just sucks that we're going to have to deal with it at a quicker pace on top of having the ozone layer severely damaged. Little things like could unbalance a lot of 'it's happened before' arguments. Cuz, it's never happened like this.
 
but supposedly the ozone layer isn't severely damaged anymore. <shrug> Unless I see it for myself, and have knowledge enough to know any pictures are not falsified or doctored, and I'm knowledgeable enough to know what the heck I'm looking at scientifically... it could all just be a hoax to me.

Humans are gullable. 'sides, I live in Phoenix. I *love* the dry heat. ... another few weeks and I might see temp's rise into the 120's :smiley: woooo!!!
 
The ozone isn't being damaged as quickly as it once was but it's over one of the least industrialized areas of the world at the moment. But it's on it's way back over. My family works in FEMA and I got a lot of disaster planning friends. Right now how the jet stream is positioned over the midwest and jetting towards the south suddenly is affected by it's movement. Nothing dangerous at the moment but if the hot spot moves in so many degrees in so many ways it can turn into a more 'interesting' pattern. Which all of it affects everything.
I'm just saying, our natural pattern isn't moving at it's natural pace. This is true on a couple of levels. One there's not as much light being reflected off the earth as there once was just years ago. Two Venus and Mars is also heating up so the sun is naturally hotter than usual. Three a lot of our earth's natural defenses are damaged in slight ways thanks to natural and man made causes. Four, we can if we had a global effort combat the natural and the man made, or one or the other, threats thanks to the warming pattern. Combat meaning at least predict where not to be at certain times.
Honestly tho', I'm more with George Carlin than anyone else on the matter.
 
No two instances of anything natural happened just like each other. It has always been different.. Still, we try to use past instances to know what might happen because there isn't much else to do. Tests of the earth, air, temperatures, all those point towards both being possibilities so we can't tell from them. England was warm in the past, then definitely cooled at some point. They had not been able to grow grapes for many years until 1950 because of the mini ice-age mentioned in the film.

Then again, we may just plain be in for a warming not just because of chemicals, but because we are in fact getting closer to the sun.. Of course, finding ways to help for Global Cooling might be able to be reversed for this as well since it will create the same problems with lack of food and need for more shelter.

What I find funny is that, 35 years ago they were saying our aerosol cans were creating global cooling by blocking out the sun with chemicals, so they changed the stuff inside the cans and now it eats at the ozone and NASA is trying to say we need more of the exact same chemical that was taken out. I can't really say this is an argument since my memory leaves me and I forget what the chemical is called and just remember the story.. but I find it in a strange way funny.

No, I don't really believe global warming is something to be entirely freaked out about. I know it's a possibility and it's good to be as environmentally friendly as I can afford, but I do not agree with the "facts" given and in the way they are given. There's too many normative(scare tactic) statements in that area and not enough positive(factual data) ones.
 
but supposedly the ozone layer isn't severely damaged anymore. <shrug> Unless I see it for myself, and have knowledge enough to know any pictures are not falsified or doctored, and I'm knowledgeable enough to know what the heck I'm looking at scientifically... it could all just be a hoax to me.

Humans are gullable. 'sides, I live in Phoenix. I *love* the dry heat. ... another few weeks and I might see temp's rise into the 120's :smiley: woooo!!!

Ditto.. except for the 'loving' the dry heat here in AZ part. ;)
 
If there is ever a global cooling (perhaps I should say when?), it will be a result of the combination of global dimming and global warming.
 
Keep in mind, there are far more humans alive than there are dead. I repeat, think of every human who has ever lived and died ever and you are thinking of a population smaller than that which is alive today.

Think of all the changes to the planet people have caused in the past with small scale technology- extinctions, clear-cutting Europe and the entire eastern seaboard of North America, and so forth. Now imagine all the people that have ever existed standing on the earth and all working to change it at once with our level of technology. Anyone who doesn't think we are currently capable of breaking/straining/bending natural cycles needs to look again at what the definition of a terraforming species is.

Also,
1) Pin, everything that you were talking about with aerosol cans was really muddled and misstated. That's not really how it all went.

2) Yes there are still ozone holes. Ask the Australians, it's right next door to them, over Antarctica.

3) Yes, I know about natural cycles. However, I don't see why people would think that we can't exacerbate a natural cycle and destabilize the situation.
 
Also,
1) Pin, everything that you were talking about with aerosol cans was really muddled and misstated. That's not really how it all went.

2) Yes there are still ozone holes. Ask the Australians, it's right next door to them, over Antarctica.

3) Yes, I know about natural cycles. However, I don't see why people would think that we can't exacerbate a natural cycle and destabilize the situation.

I would like to know how it truly went then. I admit all my information is second hand, which is why I said it was just something I found interesting and not a valid argument.

I also realize there are holes. There's one near where I live too(second hand information again) which is said to be the reason why we have so many warnings during the summer. Strangely, I'm not finding that temperatures really have warmed up here, but moved to the side. Winters start later/ end later and summers do the same.

I also don't think anyone is saying that we can't destabilize the situation, but it is a possibility we haven't yet.
 
Nice argument. The guy's, not the one on this forum. :(2 Seriously, I don't see there being much to debate. People are just lazy and don't want to change the way they live. If some huge natural disaster wipes half of us out, I'll be upset that humanity's collective space program will be effectively whiped out. That's about it.
 
After watching his arguement, I fully agree. I think the safer bet is to take action, but I still dont feel the need to. It's not that I have a "I'm just one person" mindset, but rather, "The world's going to end eventually. I might as well see it."

Jokes aside, I think regardless of what happens, humans will survive one way or another, even if that means going back to bronze age living. It's been hotter than this on Earth before, and it's been colder that this on Earth before, yet here we are. While taking action would be the safer bet for a better future, I'm a gambling man, and I feel lucky.
 
It's been hotter than this on Earth before, and it's been colder that this on Earth before, yet here we are.

The problem with this thinking is that, yes we have survived ice ages and warming periods before... but never as an entrenched, world-wide population. In the past, when the ice slowly closed in, people picked up and moved. Now-a-days, the world is absolutely full of people and we don't put up shacks or tents, we have quite solid buildings. That's why this time (even assuming it isn't catastrophic and is just slow and steady) will be far worse than in the past.

Also, the argument of "the world has to end sometime, so I'd like to see it" is kind of like the argument my grandmother makes regarding her health. She says she doesn't care what the doctor says because she think's she'll just drop dead one day. Sad thing is, it doesn't work that way- she (and the world) will have a long slow, painful decline that can be made better or worse by our actions. Not that I think humanity honestly deserves to survive, given how sluggish it is in caring about it's own future. I'd just rather not see us drag the rest of the planet down with us.
 
Global depression... I kind of like that term.

..It's the market economy doomsday term... Every side got one.
Luckily it's not the only economy to live in. But we only have one planet.
 
I don't buy into the whole global warming theory. Its too new and we haven't collected enough temperature data to know the truth behind this particular warming trend. Accurate temperature data using scientifically accurate measuring devices began around 200 years ago in countries like the USA. Before 1492 such data could not possibly have been collected, in the America's. Historical data shows that the mini-ice age that hit Europe during this period didn't officially end until somewhere between 1500-1800 (I don't have the data).

World wide temperature records probably weren't accurately kept until World War II when it became necessary to predict weather on a large scale in order to fight the naval war.

We don't know if the "hole" in the ozone over the Antarctic is a new phenomena. We've only had a true presence there since 1899, and I'm pretty sure the first thing those folks did was try to survive. We don't know if a "hole" appears there naturally from time to time or not. We don't have the data to make any conclusions regarding the "hole".

Humanity has been around a long time. We adapt. Life on Earth has been around for a long time. It adapts. Species come and go, whether by the hand of man or not. New species are born. The old die and vanish. Its the way of things.

My car runs only when I use it. Daily I generate more green house gas than my car ever could. I constantly generate waste heat from a core that runs at roughly 98.6 degrees. I am constantly heating the air around me in other words.

In 1900 there were roughly 1.6 billion humans on the Earth. Now we have roughly 6.6 billion. With 5 billion more heat sources around the planet, roughly 4 times the radiated heat of the year 1900, wouldn't THAT have caused a huge temperature variation? Obviously it doesn't work that way. Otherwise we'd be cooking in our own juices.

Prior to Columbus's journey across the Atlantic the common man believed that the world was flat, and that if you sailed far enough from land you would fall off the edge of the world. All because somebody had at some time said it was true. Today people try to tell us that Global warming is causing this and that. They present this theory as true and factual, and a great mass of people have taken their word as truth. The hard data necessary to come to a conclusion on this theory just hasn't been compiled yet.

The theory of Global Warming may one day be proved to be true. It may prove to be a bunch of hog-wash. One thing to me is very clear. We know far less about this planet we live upon than we think we do.

Scientific "FACTS" have changed in my lifetime, just as they will during yours.

Aelwulfe
 
One thing to me is very clear. We know far less about this planet we live upon than we think we do.

Scientific "FACTS" have changed in my lifetime, just as they will during yours.

But still, we know much. Not as much as we need perhaps, but still enough to see what we are doing to the planet. The human race is the only organism on earth hurting other species and knowing what he's doing it at the same time. We know we are systematicly wasting and/or destroying the resources on earth. We also know we can control and manipulate natural things in a unnatural way. Humans also have the power to make things unbalanced in nature, and we know that too.

If we can accept the fact that actions do have consequences and no actions also have consequences, the column Vs. Row argument in the OP, is pretty unbeatable.
 
I don't know who is arguing that we shouldn't take action. Not believing in Global Warming isn't the same as agreeing that we should waste needlessly, it just means the person doesn't think Global Warming is happening. A person who recycles isn't necessarily an environmental activist. I know I just believe we should treat all theories equal since they're all getting about the same amount of evidence. Focus just seems to switch depending on new findings that aren't entirely proven and said in a way that creates a scare factor more than gives straight facts.
 
Its hard for me to treat the "theories" equal, maybe both sides got economic interests, but one side argues the global change is false out of polluting economic interests (for example the oil/coal/meat industry). Sorry to be harch, but so far the only arguments against global change that I've seen and read, even from the academic world and different scientist, is funded by them.

The topic was about global change, not only global warming. So I'm sorry if I didn't get it, when some posts only was about the climate changes.
 

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