I WILL increase the size of my footprint to offset all those that have decided to decrease theirs.  If they ant to pay extra money, so they can say they are "green" I will save money in their place.  If they want to eat something that tastes like crap to be "green" I will eat the tasty things for them!  If they want to forgo the simple pleasure of riding dirt bikes and taking long showers to be more "green" I will have fun for them!  I am here for you all!!!! You may live vicariously through me! 

Global warming is a natural cycle of our planet, there is no way to avoid it happening.  Now where humans come in is how much stuff we're putting in the air, equals how rapid the climate change occurs.  The smaller the footprint, the more the planet follows its natural cycle.  But a bigger footprint will rapidly increase the rate at which the climate will shift.

And what exactly do you base the assumption that what humans put in the air speeds up climate change?

So, lets say what you say is true for the sake of argument.  We are speeding it up.  By how much would that be then?  It is coming 10 years sooner? 100 years?

If you can tell us that we are speeding it up then you must know what rate it normally warms and cools and since that has been sporadic over the last billions of years that would be pretty impressive to be able to figure out.  I'm sure you'd get your dick sucked off by all the ladies at the science conventions if you could do that.

I'm not saying that I can prove it the other way, I'm just saying that since I have to guess one way or the other I'm guessing that we do not have as much effect on the planet as most people state.  I can be pretty arrogant sometimes but to say I am killing a planet, please.

Is makin' money of the "green" hype any worse than oil companies makin' money of controlling the energy market? At least with green products, it does give the consumer an option. I like the idea of electric cars... not because I want to save the earth, but it seems to me we'll be running out of stuff sooner or later. Electricity can easily be produced with renewable resources like wind, solar and hydro.

good article paolo

let me sum it up for everyone that is to lazy to read it all themselves

yada yada yada we don't know shit.

Posted by paolosmythe 

but thanx for throwing the rabid eco-seals a skanky fish to fight over Bern.  you wanker.

We know every detail about our climate/atmosphere and everything that can affect it to come to a conclusion about 'global warming' but ships/planes/whatnot continue to disappear in the bermuda triangle and we're next to clueless?!  Oh wait....they answered all those questions in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'.....Al Gore must have written that movie before he invented the internet, my bad.

I almost got my panties in a bunch when i read this thread.







Then i realized that i was dealing with snowboarders.

This is about the easiest, but most coherent article i've read explaining how AGW works.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/080728farley.php

And after you've finished that, you can chew on this

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/12/12/115159/13

It deals directly with the article you just quoted.  I am more comfortable listening to scientists in the IPCC than the US Government, thank you.


Global warming deniers have a big task.  Physics says that CO2 keeps our planet warm by trapping heat from the sun. So while theories may fly about how this or that is actually causing the warming, you mus also explain why the record increases in CO2 are doing fuck all.  Like its some kind of fancy coincidence.

When such a theory that explains our current situation better than AGW comes along, i will listen.  Until then, keep searching, if thats that gets you off.

As for the rest of you who want to keep that rebellious attitude in the face of common sense and science, continue pissing in your own bathwater.

just to be clear, why is global warming a bad thing?  Just would like to hear personal opinions of why it is a bad thing.

Posted by SpecialKalltheway
just to be clear, why is global warming a bad thing?  Just would like to hear personal opinions of why it is a bad thing.

Well, to start off,

our civilization is the product of at least the last 200 years or so in North America, even longer in older countries.  When we settled, we tended to do so in areas that could support us (Las Vegas not withstanding).  We have lived with a relatively stable ecosystem for thousands of years, and all of our cultures have sprung from it, and been shaped by it. We are VERY intimately tied to the seasons and being able to grow certain foods at certain times.  Fuck with that, and we are in for a big shit kicking.

Examples:

People have been living in the highlands in Africa, where it is traditionally too cool for disease-carrying mosquitoes to breed.  When it gets warmer, desease will spread, when people have no where else to go.

North America, the pine beetle has been causing major damage to forests because the cold winters that usually kill them off during hibernation don't occur much anymore.

Sea levels are slowly rising, and South Pacific atolls (coral islands) are being submerged, depriving people of their traditional homes.  Expect the same to happen in most major low-lying coastal cities like Bangladesh.

More fucked-up weather.  The weather we are used to and have built our societies around is changing, bringing more 'freak weather' like floods, hurricanes, droughts, and heat waves.  Kinda hard to adapt to that.

Do you want more?  How about the fact that one species greed has endangered the lifes of millions of other species?

Oh, and basically less snow to snowboard on.  Uness ou have a hard-on for artificial snow and indoor riding, i don't see how snowboarders can


I know there are some people out there who are very nonchelant about the whole deal, saying that this is a natural thing, a way for nature to reduce to human population back to sustainable levels.  I really hope that this isn't the view held by anyone here, because such a view is usually held by a) assholes who are sheltered from the immediate effects of GW and won't be the first to starve or die from malaria, or b) peole who also dismiss war as a 'natural' populatopn control (a view also held by assholes who have never had to fight in a war).

 The people to die first (and the ones who already are) are the ones who are not living like giant digestive systems that shove in resources and fart out huge amounts of CO2.  They are victims of our luxury.

Posted by paolosmythe

just as per humanity's inability to preserve that which it is so inherently dependent upon, so too is the human renal system woefully inefficient and thus ineffectual.

 

 

Has anybody else here read Jared Diamnd's book 'Collapse- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed'?  It gives lots of examples of just how short-sighted we humans have been, and unable to adapt to situations, one we fuck up our surroundings to a certain point.

But in Environmental Philosphy class in Uni i learned about two notable examples of the opposite, societies that have been able to sustain dense populations without destroying the resource base they depend on.

One was England just before industrialization and the other was Japan during the feudal period.  Both had very complex systems for growing food and stewarding the land.  Societies CAN choose to live one way or the other, the fact that pretty well every ecosystem on Earth is in decline should tell us that we have fucked up.


A wise man once said

"I question the sanity of a society that would put a price on its own umbilical cord"

Whatever helps you sleep at night, bern

so let's see we've got

one for not wanting animals to die or having to relocate.

one for asthma

and I wasn't super clear on anti-bling, but I got people will die.

So far I'm thinking scoopy has the best reasoning.

I've heard of a think called "I kick asthma"... supposedly it's a breathing method that allows one to "kick" asthma. Check out www.Ikickasthma.com. I've been wanting to try it out, just haven't committed.

Why did I bring that up? Well, that would be "fixing" the problem. Advair, Flovent, Singulair, Albuterol, Zyrtec and all the other bullshit is just masking it, not fixing it.

Whether global climate change has been accelorated by humans or not, the climate is changing. And humans will need to adapt. Conserving some things, and figuring out how to sustain our current lifestyle with new renewable energies.

Scoopy worries about his bills getting paid. Wouldn't it be nice to heat up your house and gas up the car cheaper? Conserve on oil and gas and your energy bill won't be so high.