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Will we be able to stop global warming?
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According to the IPCC, James Hansen and other serious scientist about the subject, we already surpassed the worst case scenarios of previous model predictions - not in a good way.
I fear that our world will collapse and our governments are uncapable of preventing it. It is a serious topic and we should never forget about it, especially when ignorance arises from its graves again to infect science with lies and bad reputation.
Before major weather changes disrupt civilization significantly?
Nope.
Maybe we shouldn't spend so much trying to stop global warming in the first place but instead adapt to the changing environment instead...
It would be less politically controversial, therefore able to gain more governmental and corporate support, which would lead to better results for humanity (or at least certain segments of humanity anyway...).
Nature changes all the time, maybe it's time we acknowledge that and try to find our ever changing niche. Humans are very adaptable creatures, I believe we (the human race as a whole) can survive whatever planet Earth can throw at us (can't guarantee exo-solar events though...)
Adapting "to the changing environment" is what stopping global warming means.
Not exactly, stopping global warming implies turning back the clock, of assuming that there is a level of CO2 (and other greenhouse gasses) that is "natural" i.e. a level seen historically.
I'm advocating more projects without disrupting our current industrial economy (based on the oil & coal), so that there would be more support among governments and corporations, of which we definitely in order need deal with the rising see levels and other disruptions.
No, stopping global warming foremost means stopping further global warming. Turning back the clock is nearly impossible except if we are trying geoengineering - which has more down sides than anything else we could try.
I am afraid it is not possible. Especially since alternative energy sources are already at a promising technological level. The technology of the golden age wont get us out of it.
Idealism alone won't save the planet. The only way we can save even a part of present day humanity is to cooperate with the current society, all the corruption and other negatives included. Otherwise we would just get stuck with partisan politics and little concrete results. Compromise is the only way, no matter how unsavory it is at times.
Global warming is just exaggerated and already over-spoken topic. We have bigger problems to face now.
Totally disagree since the efforts of most nations are considered well-intended tries at best.
perhaps there should be a debate about whether global warming is true or not and whether its over exaggerated or not.
No, we don't have bigger problems. It IS the biggest problem, and currently the only one that WILL significantly disrupt our civilisation.
And no, there shouldn't be a debate. The debate about wether or not it's real is over. It is real, end of story. It's worse than predicted, too.
I agree with you, but there's no need to be so hysterical about somebody's opinion.
I think global warming is exaggerated too, who are we to judge the temperature of the planet? the planet is way older than us and proved to be capable of taking care of itself however we.... we need a serious software as well as hardware upgrade. Let us think about ourselves first before judging the planet. We really dont know anything about anything and we have more problems to solve than the stars in our galaxy... Even here, you can barely find 2 people who can agree on something.. @#$%*& humans!
Wrong. Science is the tool to know something that others found out for us. So yeah, we have good reasons "to judge the temperature of the planet" because it affects billions of people around the globe already. If it goes further it will cause a greater flow of refugees, war, diseases that come along with the refugees, mass starvation, rise of superstition again, a collaps of natural balance and maybe much more.
i didn't mean we dont have to measure and monitor the temperature of our planet, im just saying that a 100 or 200 years of temperature data is irrelevant when compared to the age of the earth, and the good old ice age. so i really think there is no global warming happening in the first place. Also many scientists already developed lots of concepts that have a good chance of being valid and can help fix it if such a thing is happening.
We dont have just 200 years of temperature data, we can reconstruct the climate from 1.5 billions of years ago including its atmospheric compensation. Our climate is well, but sadly not fully studied, but a rapid change as we had in the past 100 years is only possible if there are massive events going on - like massive CO2 emissions for example. After all, in our earths history whenever the CO2 was high the climate went crazy.
Scientists have good concepts to fix this because we are experiencing it first hand. Do you think we would have those concepts otherwise? I wish I could agree that global warming isnt happening because of my health - lets just say some people called me Mr. Freeze for a reason -, but there is no evidence that suggests otherwise.
James Hansens report from 2012/2013 says that we had a standstill in the rise of global temperature because of reduced solar activity during the last 25 years and a strong emition of aerosols. He doesnt exclude the possibility of a cooling stage, but thats highly unlikely according to his own words. It is rather the case that globale temperature will increase.
Nasa.gov
The laws of the EPA changed and increased a lot during the past 80 years. There have been an environmental awareness trend in the world since the mid 90s and especially after Rachel Carson's book. I do agree that scientists have good concepts because some of them think its a real threat however the media played a huge role too. I got introduced to the topic when I first watched the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". Later we found out that Al gore hurts the environment more than the average american citizen... In college, I had 2 environmental engineering professors who were debating this topic but at that time it was new and a lot of things changed since then. Anyways, you got me interested in this topic again, so Im gonna read that paper and probably ask my professors about it cuz I am gonna see them on Sunday. Yet, I still think there are many arguments against this theory and that it requires further testing.
such as:
1. There is a huge hype about this topic in the media and in the 70's they thought we were heading for an ice age, then in just a few years it turned out that the opposite is happening?!
2. Humans & Data can be wrong.
3. If its really happening I still doubt we are the cause of it.
All the above is just my thinking and my own opinion
1. Climatetology was young and it did make some mistakes. Later, skeptics were the one who pushed scientists hard enough so they had to correct a few mistakes in their instruments and data - thats how global warming turned out to be the case.
2. But in that case a massive confirmation by evidence wouldnt be the case. Nowadays Humans & Data are only wrong on minor issues, not about the theory itself.
3. We have enough nukes to wipe out almost all life on earth and you still think it is impossible for us to have an impact on the climate? Mankind is terraforming the planet for about 9000 years (since the birth of agriculture). Burning forests, building cities, livestock farming... Especially the last 200 years had the most impact on our climate.
All that is my answer to your opinion, based on the information I gather around the topic.
Global warming is bad.
Guys, there is going to be another ice-age soon. These are cycles. And some scientists say that before it comes, there will be some weather fluctuations. Start of it may be what we experience now.
Agreed with Flanker.
But for humanity, there ARE bigger problems. Money system where money comes without value, behavior between people + international relationships, oil crisis and much more. Effects of global warming could not even affect us, because as we are now, there is a big chance we won't survive to that point it becomes important.
By the way, if more people start to solve energy crisis and new reactors come real, there will be less CO2 as result.
As far as I know, we have no oil crisis and it might run for a hundred years at least.
We will survive 'till global warming effects will hit us really hard.
Some scientist say that we should have an ice age right now, but our CO2 emissions canceled overcame the circumstances that would lead to an ice age.
No oil crisis, right. That's why there are wars about it. And that's why scientists are looking to another power source. Hundred years you say? But it gets less time to make rest of oil too expensive for average people and we also need some time to find something else.
More than global warming I fear nuclear winter...
You are talking about the "Easy Oil", that which was reachable with relatively no effort compared to the more complicated sites like oil sand or so. Additionally more and more technology switches to clean renewable energy which reduces the oil consume step by step. Also there is a way to refine CO2 back to hydrocarbons.
A nuclear winter seems highly unlikely. The first and only country so far that dropped a nuke onto a war target was the USA and thats about 70 years ago. And there are efforts for reducing nuclear weapon stocks instead of increasing it. And rest assured, even if they dont unarm their warheads, they radioactive material that they are using is decomposing and it will get more and more expensive to maintain those things functional.
But global warming already affects the prices for food.
you said it, "Easy Oil", technology for "Hard oil" needs more time to mature and R&D to make it possible and practical is expensive. Regardless of whether global warming is happening or not, we should reduce any type of pollution we do to the environment, that is what basic logic says. We dont need a topic like global warming to start reducing our emissions of CO2. However, what happens in the event of a huge nuclear war or what happened when that asteroid killed the dinosaurs is very different than what happens if global warming is underway. For example, global warming is a gradual change however nukes and asteroids are considered a very sudden change / impacts.
Typical effects of a relatively large asteroid hitting earth would be:
""""The impact would have caused some of the largest megatsunamis in Earth's history. A cloud of super-heated dust, ash and steam would have spread from the crater as the impactor burrowed underground in less than a second.[24] Excavated material along with pieces of the impactor, ejected out of the atmosphere by the blast, would have been heated to incandescence upon re-entry, broiling the Earth's surface and possibly igniting wildfires; meanwhile, colossal shock waves would have triggered global earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.[25] The emission of dust and particles could have covered the entire surface of the Earth for several years, possibly a decade, creating a harsh environment for living things.""""
True, but its off topic and we would spot most asteroids and comets of "dangerous" - dangerous for a global scale at least - size before they hit the planet. But none the less, the danger is present.
its relevant to the topic since you was saying global warming is the most dangerous problem out there. Any major disturbance to the asteroid belt in our solar system and we are all doomed.
The Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud already have many disturbances within themselves to kick a huge rock into earths orbit, but certainly most of the huge asteroids are already predicted to miss the earth by far - and thankfully they are easier to predict than any human on earth. So I barefly fear them especially since we dont need to nuke them, but we are technically capable of harvesting their raw materials and transport them to earth.
There is an immense difference between running out of oil and needing new sources, and wanting more oil for the sake of domination.
of course! since energy is conserved and since we have unlimited methods of gathering energy, it appears the latter is more likely the problem.
The amount of heat, radiation, gasses, and dust etc... released from such impacts are considered much higher than any release of greenhouse gases by human beings and its sudden.
Now, earth survived that asteroid impact but not all living things did. Compare all what gets released in a such impacts to the change in temperature of earth and global warming would look like a trivial problem.
Please dont tell me global warming is the cause of our financial crisis, plz... The economic war going on affects the prices of food more than anything else... The war in Syria ****** the prices of every product you can imagine...
The financial crisis has its cause rooted in the highly flawed monetary system that capitalism is in my opinion. There was no intention of me to put global warming in it, even though it has large effects on our economy in many directions, the further it progresses.
However, bad harvests most certainly have their root in a changing climate that our genetic engineered crops yet have to adapt to. Global warming causes water to vaporize and vaporized water then is missing for flush the crops we need. Also the worlds population "eats" more, according to Bill McKibben in his debate against Alex Epstein Lackofenvironment.wordpress.com, than food is grown. This should be an alarming signal to us since it might threaten civilisation as we used to know it.
I have 2 possible solutions in mind to overcome this: reducing of worlds population by birth control and/or using solar energy to convert ocean water into drinkable and therfore useable water.
True, highly flawed monetary systems + a number of other reasons such as bad government + high competition from other nations (economic war). I think its normal for water to vaporize, that's the water cycle, if its vaporizing more, it will condense somewhere else and fall as rain so not a big deal. True we eat a lot and we need solutions for that, i totally agree with what you said except the part that has to do with water vaporizing since we need a better water management system. 70% of earth is water, we dont have less water.... we have less brains managing the water. We have the technology to purify water from various sources. There is a solution for increasing population which is to go to space but is very expensive and needs cooperation between nations of the world
The thing is fresh water makes only 2.6 - 3.5 percent of all the water of the earth.
Vaporized water is also a greenhouse gas, I think even the strongest of all. Only its life cycle in the athmosphere is relatively short, but the warmer it gets the longer it will be in the athmosphere before it condenses and fall as rain. And somewhere alse is easier said then you think. A change of climate also comes with a change wind direction which can lead to that one region will recieev more water than ever before and the other less than usual. Thats the reason why even some European cities in Spain and Italia started to import water from Germany and elsewhere.
yeah, that could explain why more floods are happening in the world today but its still possible that everything is part of a natural cycle. However, the technology we have today like reverse osmosis, ultra violet radiation and others can turn even the most contaminated water to water having very similar characteristics to drinking water. They are able to kill or filter 99% of viruses and bacteria too. We just need to allocate more money to build more water treatment plants and most of our water problems will disappear.
Birth control is really important too, come visit us in the middile east and you will find 13 kids per family is considered something very normal!
@ElfFriend: Regardless of one's opinion regarding the danger of global warming, humanity should be prepared for the worst, in the event that it happens.
@Everybody Else: While there may be ways humanity can stall or limit the effects of global warming, I don't believe there's anything that can be done to entirely prevent it. We can adapt to the environment by focusing on water power and new architectural designs, but ultimately, the only way to fully prevent global warming would be where all the trouble started: the ozone layer. Currently, we have no way of reinforcing it.
The atmosphere of the Earth will kill some portion of the population, but the real damage will be caused from the breakdown of our civilization because everyone on Earth will start panicking and going ape **** all over the world. People will be running, screaming, killing, rioting, and the chaos would show exactly what we really are when we don't have technology caring for us. I wouldn't want to miss this show, even if the show itself kills me.