Global Warming

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Originally Posted by RetiredJedi

HERE'S A LINK that says just the opposite and only a handfull of scientists believe it.

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Actually, that's not what it says. Well, it is, but that's if you believe the conservative paper and not the article it references. In the paper by Professor Hulme, he states "That particular consensus judgement, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies; other IPCC authors are experts in other fields.". In other words, a few dozen experts that actually study the specific field of detection and attribution came to that conclusion, but the other hundreds of climatologists and other scientists who specialize in other fields still agree.

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Originally Posted by RetiredJedi

I don't see a problem with looking for alternatives either but right now it doesn't work so well and is expensive. It will be pretty cool once the technology is complete. Just wanted to repost this.

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Sorry, I meant to reply to this as well. I do agree with the points made in that article, but that doesn't mean we should just throw our hands up and say "it's expensive, so why bother?". New technologies take a lot of money and time to develop. If we don't start now, then when?

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Originally Posted by xdeus

Sorry, I meant to reply to this as well. I do agree with the points made in that article, but that doesn't mean we should just throw our hands up and say "it's expensive, so why bother?". New technologies take a lot of money and time to develop. If we don't start now, then when?

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Well, I didn't say "so why bother", I just meant that the technology needs to be continuosly studied and not pushed on us. Also, we have started and are continuing to work on it.

To be honest I suspect spending money on anythng apart from fusion is an expensive mistake.

The global warming "debate" within the scientific community is akin to the one over intelligent design. Its disconcerting that validity of theories is now based upon public opinion and so deeply ingrained within politics.
Whether or not the masses accept global warming tho is inconsequential. Until bio/renewable energy is the only option or somehow able to effectively compete with the established monopoly oil industry nothing will significantly change.

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Originally Posted by RetiredJedi

Well, I didn't say "so why bother", I just meant that the technology needs to be continuosly studied and not pushed on us. Also, we have started and are continuing to work on it.

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That's kind of a tricky one in a capitalist society. Right now fossil fuel technologies are making some people a lot of money. It will take a lot of time, money and research before alternative energy technologies can compete with fossil fuels. We can either push it on the population and force development, or subsidize research/development with taxes. If we do neither, we will just have to wait until gas/oil is quite a bit more expensive than it is before the alternative energy technology becomes feasible for the private sector to develop and produce.

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Originally Posted by xdeus

That's kind of a tricky one in a capitalist society. Right now fossil fuel technologies are making some people a lot of money. It will take a lot of time, money and research before alternative energy technologies can compete with fossil fuels. We can either push it on the population and force development, or subsidize research/development with taxes. If we do neither, we will just have to wait until gas/oil is quite a bit more expensive than it is before the alternative energy technology becomes feasible for the private sector to develop and produce.

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Getting a little off track so this will be my last post on this subject but, I disagree because a capitalist society is about the entreprenuer, competition, and American ingenuity. I realize that fossil fuels make people money but so did Apple and there are still other cell phone makers in the world. Matter of fact Apple is valued around $90bn more than ExxonMobile...Apple joins exclusive $500bn club.

It's not the governments job to force ANYTHING on people.

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Originally Posted by RetiredJedi

Getting a little off track so this will be my last post on this subject but, I disagree because a capitalist society is about the entreprenuer, competition, and American ingenuity. I realize that fossil fuels make people money but so did Apple and there are still other cell phone makers in the world. Matter of fact Apple is valued around $90bn more than ExxonMobile...Apple joins exclusive $500bn club.

It's not the governments job to force ANYTHING on people.

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That was kind of my point about a capitalist society and having to be forced to develop alternative energy technologies. There won't be any innovative progress until there is a profit to be made, in the mean time we will continue to deplete the supply of fossil fuels until it becomes feasible for entrepreneurs to invest time, money and resources for a product that can make more of a profit than fossil fuel technology.

The problem with that is there are other countries that are ahead of us in developing those technologies. When the fossil fuel supply is depleted, we will be sending our money overseas to buy their products or use their patents. It's already happening and will only get worse unless we invest in developing those technologies now.

You can use Apple and the silicon valley in general for that example. American companies developed most of the electronics technology and you can see how much we benefited to this day. Without research and development, we will be dependent on other countries for that technology.

The US did have a 51% increase in investments in 2010 thanks to the Obama policies, but we're still 3rd in the world behind China and Germany. If it wasn't for government subsidies and tax incentives, we would be considerably lower on that list. As a conservative, I'm not sure how you feel about that. If we invest tax dollars now it will give us a leg up in the world and we will reap the benefits down the road paving the way for entrepreneurs and companies to flourish, or we can just let the free market take care of itself and hope entrepreneurs can catch up later on down the road when the rest of the world is ahead of us.

Go to Exit Glacier park in Alaska and tell me that climate change isn't happening.

Ever measure the temperature of a bowl of ice water? Pretty stable until all the ice is gone. We're a much bigger and more complex system, but melting glaciers and ice caps are a HUGE HUGE HUGE deal regardless of the cause.

This isn't about saving the furry animals, "the environment", or planet earth. The planet will be fine without us and life will go on. This isn't about the "evils" of big oil or red states, nor is it about the blue guys trying to falsify scientific data to run the government the way they want to.

This is about making a future for our species. If current trends continue, we're going to see drought, famine, and more extreme weather in coming centuries. We probably can't do anything to stop it, but recognizing it and preparing for it will be necessary.

The human race is having more negative impacts on the resources we rely on than just global warming. Pollution of all sorts is wrecking havoc on our waterways, our oceans, our farmlands, and more.

The biggest factor of my thoughts on the matter come from my dad. I'm not anti-big-oil, heck that industry is responsible for giving my dad a career as a petroleum geologist. However, as a geologist in his academics and as an oil guy in his career, he is pretty well versed in the modern data that supports the theory of climate change.

When you have someone who works in the energy industry for decades and is pretty sure that yeah, humans are significantly impacting the climate because of our energy use, that's got to be a convincing source.

A few further thoughts:

the biggest problem that the human race has right now with regards to ALL of the "environment" issues we will be facing in coming years is overpopulation.

There are simply too many people for this world to support, and we are fast running out of resources. Food, housing, health care, energy, and clean water aren't infinite, and if we keep reproducing the way that we are, we're going to run into "deer herd without natural predators" syndrome.

It's not going to be fun a few decades from now when billions of people across the globe look to Canada, the US, and Brazil, and ask themselves "what gives THEM the right to those resources?". It's going to be even less fun when neighbors are doing the same thing at home, because as a nation we are already surpassing sustainable capacity, but still growing. Mass famine, thirst, disease, and death will undo thousands of years of social progress in a very short time. A group of people that can't feed themselves won't be able to have any kind of health care or education for future generations, and will doom them without any kind of outside intervention.

I'd like to be able to ask everyone in the world to please consider that issue before having that second, third, or nineteenth child. It's not only irresponsible and greedy, but potentially damaging to the future of our species. However, that doesn't seem to be very PC these days.