good point HLJ.

IMO, if you don't believe in climate change, you are a moron.

But even if you don't, even a moron has to know that the use of fossil fuels and chemicals in plastics, etc. as well as garbage and waste disposal is not GOOD for the planet.

Please to define good for the planet.

Being in orbit around the sun, clearing the neighborhood of hoodlum asteroids wearing hoodies, sufficient mass to keep it fairly round, not acting like Pluto.

Those are all things that are good for planets.



Planets. Ask for them by name.

Bright aurora borealis and hoodies [tails] on comets,
Size to shape ratios and planetary status,
Celestial objects that are called by their names,
These are a few of my favorite things. ;)

Never doubted it was happening, just couldn't get good answers to, so what?
One side said it didn't matter, while the other side said the sky was falling. I knew neither was true, but I still don't know how far, how fast, what are the consequences, and can we do anything about it.
I know if all the polar bears die, that's a shame but it won't affect me very much. However, if the glaciers are gone that supply a quarter of the world's population with fresh water, that might.

I think the thing to worry about is not the big critters, but the small ones. You know the old food bacteria saying, "Life begins at 40?" as in 40 degrees? Notice how it isn't 39 degrees or 41 degrees?

At certain temps life is kept in check, a quarter of a degree and the scales are tipped in favor of exponential growth. Just ask any home brewer.

It's the things we aren't aware of that we should be concerned with. Fuck the polar bears, per se.

Too many wacko political types were preaching for self serving power purposes.

Meanwhile, those who actually know this stuff have been saying the same all along. The problem is created by man. We do not yet have all details. We do not know how severe this problem may become. But we do know what is created today may generate consequences twenty, fifty, or 100 years from now.

Does the ozone problem still exist? Of course. But its consequences are slowly being solved. So political hypsters are no longer perverting those facts, creating confusion, or making denials. They cannot obtain power by hyping spin and lies about ozone depletion.

Is mankind changing the climate? Of course. Confirmed consequences will not be known for decades. Maybe minor. Maybe not. But those consequences will be significant.

For example, to deal with is known, NYC is already making infrastructure plans. Because cities must plan and do now for what is needed 20 or more years later.

Unanswered questions remain how severe its consequences will be. We explore all worst case scenarios to define an answer somewhere inside those extremes. Unfortunately wacko political types must hype those extremes into hate, fear, and confusion. Rather than learn why those extremes are defined.

We know the problem exists. Finding numbers to quantify the problem is the unknown part. Meanwhile those with self serving agendas, little education, and a need for power are the 'sides' that too many entertain (hear) rather than learn the science.

Problem with such a subject is that it is so charged politically. My own opinion would probably make an ecologist go up in flames but here it goes :

We're not the cause of global warming.
Most probably it is a phase our planet goes through.
We're just accelerating it.

You'll remark that I do not deny the climate is changing. Yet, a lot of people would think so.

Sure, we should do something to at least minimize our impact in this. But we're going at it without thinking clearly.

All of us have to change our manner of thinking. And you can not make it happens by issueing laws.

I don't know the situation in other countries but, here in France, wind power is all the rage. Since Brittany is a windy place, there are wind farms projects nearly everywhere. Personally, I don't have a thing against wind farms if the project is about producing energy not making a political coup.

Did I mention that Brittany is windy? It is windy enough that for nearly a quarter of the year we have winds in excess of 55 mph... the cut-out speed of a Nordex N80/2500 a typical windmill model.

Solar power is still in its infancy. In France, it was sustainable because you could receive state subsidies.

Hydro power? While our potential for huge dams is probably at full capacity, we could use microhydro to generate power. Around home, I know of at least 15 former watermills that could be equipped. Systems are well known, low maintenance and have relatively low installation costs... but when you try to come up with a project, the ecologists begin crying for the fish. Most of these places have been mills for decades, if not centuries, so the river ecosystem is running OK.

They want us to make use of public transportation. Again, no problem to do that, at least on my part. I even tried it recently when I took a 3 months job in Brest. Train station : a 5 mn walk from home. First morning train : 6:52. Second and Last morning train 7:52. No angst there.

Transit Time by train : over 45 mn (station to station) (add 15 mn walking)
Transit time by car : a little less than 30 mn (door to door) (no walking)
Last evening train : 17:24 (I worked from 8:30 to 18:00)

And it is not going to change.



Sorry for my rants but it had to get out... and don't get me started on our farmers.

What about your farmers??

And if that acceleration is significant enough in itself, it makes sense to slow it down. I know that I will die eventually, but I would certainly like to put it off.

A lot of the fish we now eat is now poisoned. Logically, one would think that if most of the earth's surface is water, that it would take a lot to pollute the ocean.

But in reality, that amount is still finite. Even at 332.5 million cubic miles, we're talking about an 860 mile globe of water if it was removed from the surface. It doesn't take as much pollution to affect something like that over decades, especially as technology advances and with it increasing pollution and more exotic toxins.

So the earth is big, but the surface of the earth really isn't compared to the mass of the planet. And affecting what is essentially a skin extending up a few miles into the air and a few miles into the ocean is not that difficult. We already do this on a small scale with cities covered in asphalt and concrete that trap heat, something that is being looked at and corrected in some places.

In the last decade we have given up a lot of money and some freedom to keep us safe from the possibility of a terrorist attack that might kill hundreds or even thousands. How much effort should we put into dealing with the possibility of a global problem that can kill millions?

Very nearly correct, IMHO. Let me change a few things ...

We're not the cause of global warming.
Most probably it is a phase our planet goes through.
We're just accelerating it.


Climate has been unstable for around five million years, due to either the Panamanian land bridge separating the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the Himalayas being thrust up preventing the monsoons from reaching into North Asia, or both. Since then we've been swinging between glacial and inter-glacial ages.

Our activities - including what we put into the atmosphere, and widespread changes of land use and cover - will change climate in ways it would not otherwise have changed.

Now for my climate heretic moment ...
If we did not alter the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, ti is nearly certain that sometime in the next couple of tens of thousands of years, the Earth would return to glacial conditions. For human purposes, that would be bad.
[/heretic]

But if we overdo the greenhouse gases, we over-warm the planet, and push through a whole bunch of other changes, most notably shifting weather patterns and sea level rise. Given that our whole infrastructure is set up for things as they are today, significant change to climate is also bad for human interests.

[handwringer] ... but I also think that climate change won't really start to bite us on the arse for 50 to 100 years, and serious sea level rise will take several times longer, and we'll have screwed ourselves up with simple resource depletion (soil, water, fish, forests) and pollution long before then, so although I believe we are fooling with the climate, we have more urgent things to worry about. [/HW]

So, how about that celebrity gossip and sporting scandal, eh?

I don't know about that. We're seeing stronger storms, more tornadoes, loss of snow pack causing drought, more insects and insect borne disease.

Some of these might be cyclical, related to El Nino or other recurring patterns, but some may be man made. I'm personally not happy with an almost year round allergy season.

True, but I consider those irritants on the level of a mosquito-bite.

By "bite us on the arse" I was thinking of catastrophic flooding that forces the permanent evacuation of tens of millions of people from places like Shanghai, Dhaka, New York, and London, or permanent shifting of rainfall areas forcing he abandonment of huge tracts of farmland, leading to famines that kill huge numbers. Real arse-biting stuff.

But relax, that's at least 50 years in the future! :D

*shrug* Been warming since 1830 and no cities abandoned for it yet.