Moderated Global Warming Discussion

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DC said:
A) we are not the sole cause, but the main cause.
B) We can take our input out of the equation.

i have no fear Life itself will die off. i don't think so, but even though i often moan around about Humans, i do like them somehow and would like them to not end up like the Neanderthals. ;)
yes i have a pro human bias and would not like to loose our top position in the tree of life.
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A) we are not the main cause

Water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for clear sky conditions and between 66% and 85% when including clouds.

"Water vapour caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals"

B) we cannot...unless we all just die off.
 
CapelDodger said:
The tiny bit at the end that involves human civilisation. In particular the bit around now, with nearly seven billion people on the planet and rising.

To the five Great Extinctions of the planet's history we're adding a sixth. That's an extraordinary achievement for a single species. Admittedly, changing the planet's climate is only one contribution to that, but it's a significant one. It amplifies all the others.
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cite please...to the bolded part above.
 
deepatrax said:
I think it's a bit amusing that the Polar Bear is brought into this so much by people saying, "we have to save the Polar Bear's environment!".
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I find it terribly amusing that you bring in polar bears to illustrate how other people bring polar bears into the conversation.

When the polar bear is believed to be have been descended from brown bears who got cut off up north during the last Ice Age...and they adapted
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Probably the ice-age before, but who cares?

Maybe they wanna come back down south again where it's warmer :)
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Maybe they'd just like to eat today. Like all bears, they're not complex characters, and only ever keep up with local affairs. They don't make fools of themselves voluntarily, though, so they're way ahead on some people.
 
CapelDodger said:
Seconded.

Not sure it's Science, though, and Politics is a bear-pit. History, perhaps?
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Tough call, but probably history. There are obvious evolutionary aspects, but I'm curious about Romanticism, Science, Art, Agriculture. Extreme climes seem to push humanity forward. Even racial stigmas can be attributed to climate to some degree.
 
macdoc said:
No foolin' guys we've made a mess of it ...and it's not going away.
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In which case, what I've said about finding ways to learn to live with it, is even more important.
As long as we don't continue to compound the matter by continuing to pollute the atmosphere.
 
Thunder said:
Though I must say, the clear paradox of Global Warming causing more snow and even colder winters, will make skeptics frown and say:
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How is that "clear paradox"? Global warming means that the average temperature of the earth is increasing - winters getting colder is perfectly consistent with that, so long as either summers get hotter or winters in other locations get milder.

And if anything it's clear, it's that such a change will entail variations in old climate patterns, not just a gradual warming everywhere.
 
Thunder said:
do you know what "on record" means?

it means since we have been taking records.

it doesn't mean "since time began".
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Indeed...give that man a lollipop!

Cause that's EXACTLY my point!

so how much of Earth's 4.5 billion years does that "record" encompass??

what's the small infinitesimal percentage that we are using as statistical dataset?
 
deepatrax said:
cite please...to the bolded part above.
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Silurian, Devonian, End Permian, Triassic, and Tertiary. For the sixth, look around you. And try not to focus on polar bears or other top predators. I know they attract attention, but as newcomers to the role we're programmed that way. See beyond that to the Diversity of Life (E. O. Wilson). Not new, but by no means outdated
 
CapelDodger said:
I find it terribly amusing that you bring in polar bears to illustrate how other people bring polar bears into the conversation.



Probably the ice-age before, but who cares?



Maybe they'd just like to eat today. Like all bears, they're not complex characters, and only ever keep up with local affairs. They don't make fools of themselves voluntarily, though, so they're way ahead on some people.
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I shoulda highlighted the key part of my polar bear synopsis for you...

and they adapted

A polar bear ain't gonna hug you because you drive an electric car...he might eat you though.
 
CapelDodger said:
Silurian, Devonian, End Permian, Triassic, and Tertiary. For the sixth, look around you. And try not to focus on polar bears or other top predators. I know they attract attention, but as newcomers to the role we're programmed that way. See beyond that to the Diversity of Life (E. O. Wilson). Not new, but by no means outdated
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the bolded part above...could you be more specific?
 
3bodyproblem said:
Tough call, but probably history. There are obvious evolutionary aspects, but I'm curious about Romanticism, Science, Art, Agriculture. Extreme climes seem to push humanity forward. Even racial stigmas can be attributed to climate to some degree.
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"Extreme" in what regard? Shelley's climate was exactly what he was used to. Romanticism grew out of existing culture, started by embracing science, and ended by rejecting it. A few volcanic events had nothing to do with it. The extremities involved were the Napoleonic Wars and the dark satanic mills of the Industrial Revolution.

Cultural impact of climate change : nil.

(In a larger context, the nationalism stirred-up by Napoleonic France reached its extreme in Nazi Germany, leaving Romantic, Byronic nationalism a bubble in its wake, and that had nothing to do with climate change either. The Russian winter of 1941-42 might have had an anthropogenic influence, but that's a very different matter.)

As for racial stigmas, see Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond), which is predicated on climate constants determining who got ahead in the game over the course of civilisation. The losers get stigmatised, and the winners claim inherent superiority. In later times new losers claim victimhood, but these are cultural constants and have nothing to do with climate change.
 
Let us agree that Global warming is a fact just for the sake of argument. How are we going to stop it with the third world building their infrastructure and increasing their consumption of fossil fuels? We could just go back to an agrarian lifestyle and let the third world take over but I just don't see that happening. We will need to compete with the third world and can't just screw our economy to sing kumbaya.
 
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