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Global Cooling, Its official!!
Comments
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In the 12th century there werent 6 billion people relying on mass agriculture
Not "mass agriculture" but agriculture just the same. If the weather is going to affect your crops it doesn't matter how big your field is.
The people in the 12th century weren't that much different to us in the sense that they ate what they could grow or kill. We do the same thing."modern" mass agriculture relies on a very average climate, ask a grain farmer, of the African people who arent geting donated grain from the USA this year because there was no surplus
But that's because the yanks are using the surplus to produce fuel, not because there isn't a surplus.A very small number of humans lived through Ice ages, not 6 billion, where do you foresee that the population would migrate to if the icebergs return, or if sea levels rise ? -
Well a couple of them can come round my house
Maybe 6 billion didn't live through the ice age, but these days we have far more resource than they had. The ability to build shelter and heat it much more efficiently. We can pump drinking water, gas and oil thousands of miles accross the world. We can move vast numbers of people accross oceans.
There may be more people today, but we have a much better chace of surviving.during the last ice age we were a small band of hunter gatherers
Yep, and we hunted and gathered and survived. We are still hunter gatherers, only now we are smart enough grow plants so we don't have to go far to gather them. Also, hunting a cow in a barn takes a lot less time and enegy than it did when we let them roam free.
we survived when the plants and animals were left to fend for themselves, so we should survive now we can look after the plants and animals we need for food.People keep pointing to waarm years because we have have had a succesion of very hot years recently, which suggests a trend
A trend yes, but not a man made one. Anyway, the average temperature of the earth hasn't increased since 1998, so it could be we have reached the peak of tis hot spell.The British Isles will cool rapidly only if the gulf stream stops, that hasnt happened yet, but heres hoping it doesnt.
Well if this so called global warming continues it will stop.0 -
well, good luck, I'm sure everythign will work out as you say, your kids will thank you for your attitiude no doubt, or maybe taking a little personal action would be worth it, up to you0
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I am afraid your arguments are typical of the 'converted''!
I assume the quote above is in response to my post #17?
If you read it carefully I never stated that oil(or any finite resource) running out is a 'con'; as it obviously makes sense to husband those resources.
My theory is that the man made 'Global Warming' argument is being used to 'frighten' some sections of society into making those savings in energy, and to a certain extent justify increased taxation of energy.
The 'take this nasty medicine as it's good for you' approach! I personally have no objection to the objective, rather the disingenuous approach.
However there is a more important point.
For the sake of argument let us concede that the earth is getting warmer.
What you and the 'Al Gore' brigade do not know, is to what extent(if any) that Man contributes to this warming.
Yet like all zealous converts to a 'religion' the Green movement will not countenace any counter-argument - 'there is but one God!'
Yes we do, people have calculated the climate forcing produced by man, read the IPCC reports, I'm not "converted" that suggests something religious, I have merely read arguments on both sides and happen to believe the proof sits on the side of human climate forcing, and even if I didnt, I'd be hard pressed to argue against a reduction in the use of finite resources, or the development of technologies that are more sustainable, I find the attitudes here strange from people interested in money saving
With regards to it being used as a weapon to frighten the masses, the threat of terrorism has been used far more blatantly and poses much less risk, so I find it doubtful, personally, ymmv. To pull off something like that you'd have to have the bulk of the scientists throughout the world on board, which seems rather unlikely, but I guess not impossible
I will certainly listen to counter arguments, the only one you've made concerns a theory about mass propaganda, which i'm not on board with, or because we all survived previous climate catastrpohes in pre-history we'll be fine making it through this one, when the earth has a population that is exponentially larger and more fragile with billions living in coastal areas, most in abject poverty
My personal view, climate change is man made, we need to do all we can to reduce consumption and production of forcing agents into the atmosphere, I am also quite objective about our ability to manage our way out of the mess we've made, I think we'll do it, I think on that basis to just deny everything and hope it's all ok is shortsighted. Fine, argue against me, produce any demonstrable evidence that I'm wrong, the vast majority of scientists, and even, god forbid, politicians now accept climate change as being real, even GW Bush, their reasons for climbing on board may be suspect in some cases, and politicians may be using it for political capital, and companies using it to seduce consumers or con them into paying more for something, that doesnt remove the fact that a significant body of evidence does in fact strongly suggest that we are causing the world to warm up faster than at any point in recent history. Blaming the sun isnt going to help when we get 50 years down the line and realise actually we were wrong, the absolute worst that can happen if we reduce Co2 is that we save a bunch of money on our bills, we learn to recycle, and the challenge spurns the development of a bunch of new sustainable technologies, if we do nothing and find out we were wrong, then what happens..... it's a giant exercise in risk mitigation0 -
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My personal view, climate change is man made, we need to do all we can to reduce consumption and production of forcing agents into the atmosphere,
I do not disagree that the climate is changing, but I disagree that "it is man made".
The earth's climate has varied for warm to cool over the life of the planet, why should this present (fairly small) warming be attributed to man's activities ? The tide comes in and out twice a day, is that man's doing ?
The man-made global warming "thing" has been hijacked by an elite of failed politicians and scientists after money, who if they had their way would have us living in mud huts and eating grass (except Al Gore who would stay in his 50 room mansion !)
The antics of some of these people is little short of the tactics employed by stone age man during an eclipse - make enough noise and sacrifice a few lesser mortals and it will go away - and it worked !!
The basic fault line in the man made warming theory is to assume that the climate in 1980 (or whenever) was "normal". Greenland was named thus by the Vikings because when they got there it was green , I presume they thought that was "normal".
Many climatologists think that glaciation in the European Alps is actually "abnormal", so when they all melt, we will be back to "normal"!
I can remember back in the 70s when the "experts" were all gloomily predicting an imminent ice-age - pull the other one, it's got b*lls on it !0 -
moonrakerz wrote: »I do not disagree that the climate is changing, but I disagree that "it is man made".
The earth's climate has varied for warm to cool over the life of the planet, why should this present (fairly small) warming be attributed to man's activities ? The tide comes in and out twice a day, is that man's doing ?
The man-made global warming "thing" has been hijacked by an elite of failed politicians and scientists after money, who if they had their way would have us living in mud huts and eating grass (except Al Gore who would stay in his 50 room mansion !)
The antics of some of these people is little short of the tactics employed by stone age man during an eclipse - make enough noise and sacrifice a few lesser mortals and it will go away - and it worked !!
The basic fault line in the man made warming theory is to assume that the climate in 1980 (or whenever) was "normal". Greenland was named thus by the Vikings because when they got there it was green , I presume they thought that was "normal".
Many climatologists think that glaciation in the European Alps is actually "abnormal", so when they all melt, we will be back to "normal"!
I can remember back in the 70s when the "experts" were all gloomily predicting an imminent ice-age - pull the other one, it's got b*lls on it !
Good points
I'll just re-iterate what the debate around warming is, it's not that it's been warmer or colder in the past, thats evident, it's the speed with which the warming has occured that generally has people concerned - clearly if the climate warms by 20 degress but over a million years, the impact is different from if that warming all occurs in one small space of time like 50 years, giving us no time to adapt our way of life without serious disrupption, death, conflict, etc
I dont agree about the mud huts - I dont want to see us in mud huts, I enjoy my gadgets too much - what we need to do is adjust how we use technology and lifestyle so that we aren't helping the planet warm up, I dont see any policies from anyone except the extremophile who occupy all parts of any debate that we should end up living in mud huts, that would obviously never work unless imposed on us by circumstance, so the challenge is, how to do we slow down our impact on tjhe planet to allow us and the eartch to adapt to each other bearing in mind it has a finite carrying capacity and there alre likely to be 10 billion people very soon.
I agree that things have been different in the past and that greenland was once green, however, at the time 8 billion plus people werent relying on a fairly benign climate to grow crops, in a bad food year theres a good likelyhood that even large communites could have just upped sticks and moved, you cant move New York, or Tokyo, or the wheat plains of Kansas as they stand now
And yeah, great point about the coming of the ice age, I really remember that as well, and that should all give us pause, because mistakes about this sort of stuff can be made, but there is a good and growing body of evidence that the climate is getting hotter faster, now, and that is not good for us, I dont know if anyone has been watching Tropic of Capricorn on the BBC but the episode set in Australia was very sad, that country is suffering from an apparently unprecendented (at least in our memory) drought in its agricultural heartland, if this is indeed a harbinger of things to come, then shouldnt we be at least listening, rather than just assuming its a bunch of people out on the latest trendy disaster scenario trip and that we are not in fact in for difficult times.....0 -
and just to clear up a question I had myself as I was writing...
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html
6.5 - 6.7 billion people and reaching 9 billion by 20500 -
and a great page from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
population in 950 BC was circa 250 million, isnt that like only 5 times the population of what is currently tokyo0 -
Ok, I'm bored and cant resist addressing these after all.....geordie_joe wrote: »Not "mass agriculture" but agriculture just the same. If the weather is going to affect your crops it doesn't matter how big your field is.
IMO - wrong, and a bit naive...we rely on intensive agriculture, look at the coming water wars in the middle east and the drought in Australia as only two examples of why we rely on agriculture much more now that we ever have, and if large areas of land are made useless by global warming we are not going to come out of that well (unless mass starvation of millions is well)
The people in the 12th century weren't that much different to us in the sense that they ate what they could grow or kill. We do the same thing.
When did you last kill anything ??? - also they had a lot more land to play with compared to the size of the population so didnt need it all to be so productive
But that's because the yanks are using the surplus to produce fuel, not because there isn't a surplus.
Maybe, but lets just say that warming causes the kansas breadbasket to reduce by 50% in yield, what then, I'm also fairly sure but cant find it that I read somewhere recently that biofules were only one compoentnt of the shortage and not the whole deal
Well a couple of them can come round my house
Maybe 6 billion didn't live through the ice age, but these days we have far more resource than they had. The ability to build shelter and heat it much more efficiently. We can pump drinking water, gas and oil thousands of miles accross the world. We can move vast numbers of people accross oceans.
Where are we moving them to ? - if we cant get a runway or a windmill built without protest, imagine the problems we'll have moving millions of people into someone elses back yard
There may be more people today, but we have a much better chace of surviving.
The rich do, yes, the poor are screwed, we cant feed them now (well, we could by choose to do other things....)
Yep, and we hunted and gathered and survived. We are still hunter gatherers, only now we are smart enough grow plants so we don't have to go far to gather them. Also, hunting a cow in a barn takes a lot less time and enegy than it did when we let them roam free.
what if the cows are wiped out my disease moving North in a warming climate, or the plants dont grow because the climate is too warm or there is not enough rainfall to irrigate, we dont hunt and gather now, we produce, we live beyond our means by relying on intensive agriculture which might become impossible if the environment is hostile to the foods we like
we survived when the plants and animals were left to fend for themselves, so we should survive now we can look after the plants and animals we need for food.
How do we do that if we cant water or feed them ??
A trend yes, but not a man made one. Anyway, the average temperature of the earth hasn't increased since 1998, so it could be we have reached the peak of tis hot spell.
Erm, evidence please, can you cite this because I would love to read the source.....
Well if this so called global warming continues it will stop.0 -
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