'Is global warming happening?' Poll discussion/results

tomhill

The fact that Carbon Dioxide constitutes a minor part of the atmosphere is irrelevant. Ozone too is extremely scarce but nevertheless has a massively disproportional effect upon the atmosphere. A few drops of arsenic in your tea would be trace but could still kill you.

I'm slightly at a loss with this one. Personally I believe in holding a degree of sceptism with all scientific endeavor ... Science is situated in the time and place in which it occurs and can often be shaped by whats looked for as much as anything else (In times of war, for example, 'aggressive' science progresses). Nevertheless, the scientific consensus on CC is completely overwhelming. Every single scientific institution in the world suscribes to the theory (1000's of scientists) with the few lone dissenter (who get disporportional media coverage) very often having links to the oil industry. I find it incredible that people are more ready to believe industry funded scientists over independent or publically funded ones. Everyone from Stephen Hawking, to James Lovelock to NASA has spoken out about the dangers of CC. If people's lack of faith in science is as great as this thread would claim I'm surprised that anyone ever flies around anyway.

As for the argument that attending to CC would impoverish the Third World ... I would suggest most green thought would beg to differ. The Third World is largely in the position it is in because of the current economic set up. As it is 80% of the worlds resources are consumed by 20% of the worlds population. To say that the Third World can develop in the way the First World has is both Utopian and deceitful - there simply aren't enough resources available for them to do so (witness the sudden keeness to grow biofuels in the US because oil prices are rising through increased global demand). The only way for the Third World to develop would be for the First World to use a smaller proportion of the Worlds resources ... this would involve both being more efficient with our resource use (making what we've got go further) and also acknowledging that excessive material abundance is not neccessarily (indeed it is rarely) synomonous with individual or societal happiness.

jetstream_2

Well if you believe the science, we are all doomed. I think we must be having some effect we cant keep burning billions of tones of oil every year and it not cause some problems.
I think what annoys me the most is that we have had some amazing technology for many years and we should have been using it, the only problem is that it is very expensive.
If we don’t start to use the technology that’s available the new technology wont develop very quickly, I mean we didn’t put off inventing the car because we hadn’t invented Dunlop tyres, and we didn’t stop using the internet because we didn’t have broadband.
Improvements will come as a natural evolution for the demand for existing technology, paying for it will always be a problem.
Tax is nothing new, they would tax us on breathing if they could, well they may do that already?

westernpromise

feesh wrote: »

What taxes are we being asked to pay though and how has it impacted on you personally? I don't think that there's been nearly enough!

Lots of ways. Local councils are moving towards fortnightly waste collection because Gordo has made landfill more expensive. The London congestion charge started out as £5 to drive into a small area of London ostensibly to reduce congestion. It has not done so, but nonetheless has been increased in area and size, the new justification being the environment. Soon it will be £25 or perhaps £50.

The justification for fuel duty is increasingly environmental.

We are paying for Galileo because it will assist snooping and we are now being forced to pay for useless HIPs so we can be taxed more heavily.

This government has never seen a tax it didn't like.

arthur_dent_2

I am not a scientist, I am an ordinairy person. I do believe that we are killing this planet and that we should ammend our ways to be kinder to where we live. That said even if there is no global warming we should still recycle and reuse etc because it is a good thing to do.

westernpromise

star2007 wrote: »

It is exactly like the medieval Church selling religious favours to the wealthy, in order for them to salve their sins for being rich and ensure a place in Heaven, according to the medieval worldview.....

Quite so, and that's not the only resemblance to be seen between environmentalism and religion.

1/ Both imagine we used to live in a paradise (Eden; before the Industrial Revolution)
2/ Both believe we screwed Eden up for ourselves (the apple; the Industrial Revolution)
3/ Both have a rigid set of dogma (scripture; MMGW) which it is heretical to challenge
4/ Both have a clergy (the clergy; environmentalists)
5/ Both promise salvation if we live according their tenets, but unfortunately the benefits happen after you die
6/ As you've already pointed out, both sell indulgences; you can pay to get into Heaven
7/ Both kill people in pursuit of their beliefs (it was environmentalists who got DDT banned even though it's not harmful, resulting in millions of deaths from malaria in the third world).

Environmentalism is a religion, and if you buy it, you are simply demonstrating your personality type.

Michael Crichton puts it very well here:- http://www.perc.org/publications/articles/Crichtonspeech.php

Badger_Lady

westernpromise wrote:

The London congestion charge started out as £5 to drive into a small area of London ostensibly to reduce congestion. It has not done so, but nonetheless has been increased in area and size, the new justification being the environment. Soon it will be £25 or perhaps £50.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6936470.stm

C-charge hiked for gas-guzzlers


Low-efficiency cars could be hit with a congestion charge of £25 under tough new measures announced by London mayor Ken Livingstone.

The vehicles that would fall into the £25-a-day category are those in vehicle excise duty band G, which produce 225g of CO2 per kilometre, and vehicles with engines larger than 3,000cc that were registered before March 2001.

nej

To those who think the sun (the big ball of nuclear gas, not the newspaper) has nothing to do with it, try this:

Go outside on a hot, sunny day.
Put your hand up in the air, with your palm facing the sun.
Notice that your hand gets rather hot.

The energy from the sun travels over 90 million miles and is still hot enough to burn your skin after a few minutes. The sun has an internal temperature of something like 17million degrees Fahrenheit.

Are you really telling me that it can't increase the temperature on Earth by 1%? Are you seriously saying the huge nuclear reactions taking place inside the thing that makes up 99% of all matter in our solar system are so stable that it can never change in intensity and therefore could not affect the temperature on the planets it warms (iboth Mars and Earth are warming), and that similarly it can't make them colder when it is less intense?

denny250

Might be an idea to get the governments of this world to try to stop the deforestation of the rainforests I read an article by Richard atinborough which claimed that the removal of one acre of rainforest does the same ecological damage as a small family car being driven over 80,000 miles
On another point if they want us to use public transport i for one would be in favour of this if it was clean, safe, cheap and reliable (who would want to drive somewhere if they could afford to catch a train etc) i couldn't get to work without a car because there is no public transport that would get me there
Fuel Tax makes everything you do or buy more expensive as it is now all moved by road instead of rail (which also if you drive enough you will see causes most of the congestion on major roads as there will almost always be a heavy goods lorry holding the traffic up) and because of the massive road haulier's lobby we wont see an end to that in our lifetime

Smaller_Bill

superhoop wrote: »

I just think the way the poll results are shaping up is very scary. At present over 40% of respondents think that Global Warming is not happening.

Everyone is entitled to their view, but what will it take to persuade people to change their minds?

Is it that people value their 'comforts' so much, e.g. the foreign holidays, the gas-guzzling 4X4s, the central-heating etc etc that they just won't accept they are the cause of the problem?

You wouldn't trust a drug addict with your money. Why would you trust western-lifestyle addicts with your children's future?

star2007

Hi Westernpromise,

I think you make some interesting points in response to my quote, but I think you may have misinterpreted the spirit of my post above.

I was drawing a parallel between the corruption of the medieval Church and modern "green consumerist" type environmentalism (for want of a better phrase). Whereby, if we buy the right type of "ethical" products or carbon offsets for the impact of our purchases and lifestyle, it doesn't matter how much we consume... our consciences will be clear.

I believe does very much matter how much we consume in our current lifestyles. We all need to take responsibilty for our own welfares (something the many fecckless in our society don't do....) at the same time taking responsibilty for the consequences of our actions on others in society and the environment.... (something the selfish don't do). Responsibilty isn't a fashionable word these days.... people bang on about their rights constantly. But we all life on this planet together, and we all have obligations both to ourselves and all the other people and myriad life forms. I believe we need to think holistically about our consequences in this age of selfishness and instant gratification.

This isn't about religion at all (although my pantheistic spiritual beliefs do neatly dovetail with my holistic worldview). My views on the environment would be the same if I were atheist, Muslim, Christian, whatever. It's about ethics and moral philosophy.... how we should live, not religion.

Please read facts about global warming, not opinion. The vast majority of scientists (of all persuations, not just biologists and climatologists), have a level-headed and objective point of view, believe in the reality of anthropogenic climate change. People whose field of speciality bears no remote connection to the study of climate, still believe in man-made global warming as they keep up to date with all peer reviewed objective scientific journals. Please continue to read all sides in this issue, but stick to work written by academics, rather than mainstream journalists, who have a political axe to grind (on either side of this debate).

And your assertion that environmentalists kill people is frankly astonishing and outrageous. Millions of people have died and been laid ill from environmenatal catastrophes big and small. What about the Bhopal disaster in 1984, which released 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate, a chemical constituant of pesticide, killing up to 22,000 people, and which people today are still suffering with birth defects, miscarriages, cancers etc. And Agent Orange in the Vietnam war??? I'm an environmentalist because I'm a humanitarian primarily.

Star.