Quizzes & Puzzles3 mins ago
Global Warming - Alternative Views
I care very much for our planet but I am somewhat perplexed when I hear various scientists and intersest groups, via the media, making statements about the levels of green house gasses, global warming, damage to the planet, plastic bottles, aircraft emmissions...........
The reason I am perplexed is thta these statement are made unchallenged. I do no doubt man is damaging the planet but if I were to go on the radio or TV and make a claim about say...levels of benefit fraud...I would quite rightly be asked to substantiate my claims. Enviromental issues are just not questioned? Why is this? Is it because enviromentalism is now an industry itself which needs to sow panic in order to remain in business?
The reason I am perplexed is thta these statement are made unchallenged. I do no doubt man is damaging the planet but if I were to go on the radio or TV and make a claim about say...levels of benefit fraud...I would quite rightly be asked to substantiate my claims. Enviromental issues are just not questioned? Why is this? Is it because enviromentalism is now an industry itself which needs to sow panic in order to remain in business?
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Your last sentence has a lot to do with it. There's billions of dollars to be made out of green policies and climate change, and a great many are jumping aboard the gravy train. Dissenters are shouted down since they could be putting jobs and huge profits at risk.
But there are voices in the wilderness, like here.
But there are voices in the wilderness, like here.
Benefit of the doubt answer - if you truly believe the world is going to hell in a handbasket and you think you know why, then I reckon you have a duty to speak up - lots of scientists fall into this category. They may be proved wrong in the long term but that doesn't alter how they feel now. There ARE challenges; some to the detail, some to the rate at which things are supposed to be happening, some to the routes being taken to stop the rot. Some scientists believe all the effects are real but that we're looking at the wrong causes. The big problem of course is that this isn't some esoteric question like "is time travel possible", it could be affecting our quality of life and those of our descendants for many , many years. Ultimately it may affect our very existence on the planet.
A couple of parallels in the past. When Wegener produced his theory of continental drift, the immediate reaction of most scientists was "rubbish", while the general public took one look at the way South America fitted into Africa and said "obvious when you look at it". It took years to be accepted scientifically because no one could come up with a causal mechanism. Now it's one of the most basic facts in our understanding of the Earth. Conversely 40 years ago when scientists and doctors first laid out the association between smoking and lung cancer, most people said "scaremongering", "where's the proof", "association is one thing, but show me the causal agent". People may still have doubts about governmental actions to curb smoking, but I don't know anyone who's prepared to argue that it's healthy!
There is a "big business" strand to this argument and I distrust it thoroughly - that's not to say it isn't founded on fact.
A couple of parallels in the past. When Wegener produced his theory of continental drift, the immediate reaction of most scientists was "rubbish", while the general public took one look at the way South America fitted into Africa and said "obvious when you look at it". It took years to be accepted scientifically because no one could come up with a causal mechanism. Now it's one of the most basic facts in our understanding of the Earth. Conversely 40 years ago when scientists and doctors first laid out the association between smoking and lung cancer, most people said "scaremongering", "where's the proof", "association is one thing, but show me the causal agent". People may still have doubts about governmental actions to curb smoking, but I don't know anyone who's prepared to argue that it's healthy!
There is a "big business" strand to this argument and I distrust it thoroughly - that's not to say it isn't founded on fact.
Environmentalism is the new religion. As with all religions there are certain 'truths' that cannot be challenged. To do so is heresy. A good book by a statistician below challenges some of the claims.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Skeptical-Environmenta list-Bj�rn-Lomborg/dp/0521010683/ref=pd_bbs_1? ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1202833226&sr=8-1
One of the first converts to Global Warming theory was thatcher. It helped her make the case for closing all the mines.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Skeptical-Environmenta list-Bj�rn-Lomborg/dp/0521010683/ref=pd_bbs_1? ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1202833226&sr=8-1
One of the first converts to Global Warming theory was thatcher. It helped her make the case for closing all the mines.
I honestly think that this is the earths natural way of preserving itself. It seems that it has gone through similar cycles before (or thats what some scientists believe).
I always do my bit to help the environment, but I think the changes that are happening woudl have happened anyway.
Am I just in denial?.... Who knows, but this world has gone through some dramatic changes throughout time with no help from mankind!
I always do my bit to help the environment, but I think the changes that are happening woudl have happened anyway.
Am I just in denial?.... Who knows, but this world has gone through some dramatic changes throughout time with no help from mankind!
Newspapers and TV programs have a bad habit of muddling lots of environmental issues together. Some are related and some are not so I'm not surprised you're confused.
The main one of course is global warming. The fact that this is generally unchallenged is that the fact that it is happening is now largely incontravertable.
If you want to claim it isn't you have to explain where all the glaciers have gone to.
Man's cause of this is slightly more debatable but the case is still very strong. So strong indeed that the view is supported by the vast majority of scientific institutions.
However it's not as simple as pointing to melting glaciers and so after a few airings the media tends to avoid it as too technical.
However in a world where even presiden't Bushes advisors say it's man's fault you've got to sit up and take notice!
The main one of course is global warming. The fact that this is generally unchallenged is that the fact that it is happening is now largely incontravertable.
If you want to claim it isn't you have to explain where all the glaciers have gone to.
Man's cause of this is slightly more debatable but the case is still very strong. So strong indeed that the view is supported by the vast majority of scientific institutions.
However it's not as simple as pointing to melting glaciers and so after a few airings the media tends to avoid it as too technical.
However in a world where even presiden't Bushes advisors say it's man's fault you've got to sit up and take notice!
I've posted this before, but it thought i'd share my views too.
The universe is expanding, so why not everything in it?
http://www.continuitystudios.net/clip12.html
http://www.nealadams.com/nmu.html
The universe is expanding, so why not everything in it?
http://www.continuitystudios.net/clip12.html
http://www.nealadams.com/nmu.html
here always has been "climate change " and always will be, fair enough greenhouse gases have a slight effect and you can reduce them but you cant do any thing about the aforementioned continental shift and orbital changes (Milankovitch Cycles )that have ,and will occur again naturally every couple of million years or so! look at the evidence around you? we have valleys that we know were once rivers and now we're told we're in danger of the ice caps melting and getting flooded again! well all this water went somewhere in the first place! and it will come back some time too -thats nature! it probably helped wipe the dinosaurs out too and could do the same to us too but as already been mentioned there is big business in climate change to tell the truth I cant wait till the uk is back on the equator (where it has been before) not that it will be in my lifetime - "global warming"? -bring it on
oh and one more point we have governments taxing us on climate issues who are they giving this extra money to -god? no - more money for more jags and expenses now these are the same people who suck gas,oil and coal out off the ground then blame climate change for every natural disaster that occurs
imagine filling a balloon with air (gas) water (oil) and sand(coal) what does your common sense tell you what will happen to the surface when you start taking every thing out ? I may be wrong but maybe not
oh and one more point we have governments taxing us on climate issues who are they giving this extra money to -god? no - more money for more jags and expenses now these are the same people who suck gas,oil and coal out off the ground then blame climate change for every natural disaster that occurs
imagine filling a balloon with air (gas) water (oil) and sand(coal) what does your common sense tell you what will happen to the surface when you start taking every thing out ? I may be wrong but maybe not
Thank you all for your comments. This is the debate that should be going on in general.
I noticed this morning's Guardian newspaper is running a story about thye amount of C02 being produced by ships..... I am not surprised and was actually wondering when the blame would shift to shipping. It just seems almost random the way the envoromentalist argument shifts on an almost day to day basis.
For what it is worth my view is that enviromentalists and do gooding middle class liberals are trying to force us to live their lifestyle. I find it quite fascist.
I noticed this morning's Guardian newspaper is running a story about thye amount of C02 being produced by ships..... I am not surprised and was actually wondering when the blame would shift to shipping. It just seems almost random the way the envoromentalist argument shifts on an almost day to day basis.
For what it is worth my view is that enviromentalists and do gooding middle class liberals are trying to force us to live their lifestyle. I find it quite fascist.
Okay, to clear a few things up.
1. Roughly every 10,000 years our planet undergoes a disruption in it's thermaline cycles, which is underpinned by the equator's warming, and the icecaps cooling the water in the oceans, every now and then the temperatures spread out and even out a bit, making poles warmer, and allowing the wholeplanet to rise up in temp just before it crashes, after it crashes, the equator gets hot for a bit as the caps flashfreeze, this flashfreeze is the start of an iceage, which then creeps down, allowing the cold of space to dominate most of the planets temperatures, eventually pulling out even the equators heat.
2. Humans have produced a relativly small amount of CO2 and CO compared to even one volcanic erruption, and since some are going all the time, one could say that we have had little if any impact on the actual "green house gasses" which also include methane, which humanes really don't make that much of, but the earth does.
3. Even if we were to be the cause, the friggen enviromentalist of the last era, the anti-nuclear ones, are to blame for our current CO2 levels being as high as they are by forcing us to burn more coal that we would have otherwise, by the stats i've heard 70% of human CO2 production is from coal fired power plants ( mostly U.S. and now largely China, no regulations there) and 10% is from motor vehicles.
4. One major issue that people have to get over to understand this is that The world is not static merely because we are now here, it will continue to change and be dynamic as it has been in the past
Yes, they are melting, yes it is cyclical, and yes, there is nothing we can do about it.
One interesting correlation is the cycle of the caldera under Yellowstone national park and the timing of the ice ages, that's one giant volcano, and it is active once again, just as the ice age begins to loom over the horizon, hrm.... maybe i should move
1. Roughly every 10,000 years our planet undergoes a disruption in it's thermaline cycles, which is underpinned by the equator's warming, and the icecaps cooling the water in the oceans, every now and then the temperatures spread out and even out a bit, making poles warmer, and allowing the wholeplanet to rise up in temp just before it crashes, after it crashes, the equator gets hot for a bit as the caps flashfreeze, this flashfreeze is the start of an iceage, which then creeps down, allowing the cold of space to dominate most of the planets temperatures, eventually pulling out even the equators heat.
2. Humans have produced a relativly small amount of CO2 and CO compared to even one volcanic erruption, and since some are going all the time, one could say that we have had little if any impact on the actual "green house gasses" which also include methane, which humanes really don't make that much of, but the earth does.
3. Even if we were to be the cause, the friggen enviromentalist of the last era, the anti-nuclear ones, are to blame for our current CO2 levels being as high as they are by forcing us to burn more coal that we would have otherwise, by the stats i've heard 70% of human CO2 production is from coal fired power plants ( mostly U.S. and now largely China, no regulations there) and 10% is from motor vehicles.
4. One major issue that people have to get over to understand this is that The world is not static merely because we are now here, it will continue to change and be dynamic as it has been in the past
Yes, they are melting, yes it is cyclical, and yes, there is nothing we can do about it.
One interesting correlation is the cycle of the caldera under Yellowstone national park and the timing of the ice ages, that's one giant volcano, and it is active once again, just as the ice age begins to loom over the horizon, hrm.... maybe i should move
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