Do you think Global Warming is BS?

+1

I am very suspicious of the whole thing. In some ways I see as more money to be made.

Steyr wrote: »

Well do you think we caused it or its the Earths natural cycle, think about it, the Ice Age disappeared many moons ago and back then we didnt have the pollution that we have today.:pac:

The fact that Mars is warming at the the same rate as us pretty much convinced me on the subject.

Cow farts FTW.

BS, bull/cow fart, insect fart, it's a cycle.

The Cyclic warming of the earth is a natural thing but the worrying thing bout it is that now due to all the Green House Gases, it's happening at a much faster rate than ever before.
Like the cyclic climate change and temperature rise/fall usually happens over a period of 1000's of years. Giving enough time for all the species to adapt to the changes taking place.

But now due to the increase in greenhouse gasses (after the industrial revolution), its happening over the course of just 100's of years. About 10 times faster rate. This is giving not sufficient time for the species to adapt to the change and resulting in serious problems.

And anyone who says climate change is BS, go to Africa. Climate change doesn't effect everyone equally. All it has done to Ireland is that no more snow in winters and warmer summers. But in places like africa where the seasonal changes are more drastic, it is causing in rivers to dry up and decrease in rainfall causing serve draughts and famines.

So Climate change and Global Warming ARE serious problems and they should be taken seriously.

galwayrush wrote: »

BS, bull/cow fart, insect fart, it's a cycle.

or :mad:

not sure what you mean.

Cow farts produce more "planet killing" emmissions than our road traffic does.

On the other hand, the ozone hole hasn't been in the media lately because, thanks to the likes or Ryanscare, "planet killing" aricraft emit enough ozone to keep it under control.

af_thefragile wrote: »

The Cyclic warming of the earth is a natural thing but the worrying thing bout it is that now due to all the Green House Gases, it's happening at a much faster rate than ever before.
Like the cyclic climate change and temperature rise/fall usually happens over a period of 1000's of years. Giving enough time for all the species to adapt to the changes taking place.

But now due to the increase in greenhouse gasses (after the industrial revolution), its happening over the course of just 100's of years. About 10 times faster rate. This is giving not sufficient time for the species to adapt to the change and resulting in serious problems.

And anyone who says climate change is BS, go to Africa. Climate change doesn't effect everyone equally. All it has done to Ireland is that no more snow in winters and warmer summers. But in places like africa where the seasonal changes are more drastic, it is causing in rivers to dry up and decrease in rainfall causing serve draughts and famines.

So Climate change and Global Warming ARE serious problems and they should be taken seriously.

How do you explain the fact that average global temperatures have dropped over the last two years?

sorry no link, heard it on the radio.

WEST wrote: »

Scientists dont just decide to make up crazy claims how we are all doomed. Plus just because something is not in the papers does not mean its not there.

Correct, they'd be scientologists...

kwestfan08 wrote: »

Total BS in my opinion. Every decade scientists seem to come up with something "terrible" thats going to kill us all just to get the research dollars rolling in. My case in point, the hole in the o-zone layer was big news in the 90's, you dont seem to hear too much news of it now.

Haha you just proved yourself wrong with that example you gave!! The Ozone layer was a HUGE problem. The reason it isnt anymore is because that problem was solved. CFCs caused ozone layer destruction. So research was put into alternative chemicals to use in the applications CFCs were used in. CFCs are no longer used anymore and therefore the Ozone layer is repairing itself veeeerrry slowly. Problem solved or improving anyway!

And as for global warming, thats happening for definite whats causing it is the question. It doesnt really matter really as far as I can see. What we do to help prevent it can only improve the situation. We have to switch our dependence from fossil fuels anyway global warming or not for two simple reasons, 1) they are running out 2) the pollution is causing serious health problems etc. just look at the smog in some major cities of the world.

dlofnep wrote: »

No, I don't think it's bs. We didn't even get a spring this year. Winter still hasn't ended. It's freezing every day, and I've already seen 3 really heavy hail storms in the past 3 or 4 weeks.

We are definately contributing to it. It's fact.

We had summer for 3 weeks a month ago or so. As for the freezing every day, etc, the Romans called Ireland "the island of winter". We only got a few days of warmth until recently, and now it's going back to the usual always-sh|te-weather as we once had. This island always had a poor supply of sunshine, so it'll be interesting to see how we are effected by global warming.

IMO, it's mostly BS. The cycle is happening regardless, but we're not doing it any favours pumping gallons of smog into it.

planetX wrote: »

Climate has always changed, the Sahara area was lush and tropical in Roman times. The drought in parts of Africa owe far more to overgrazing and deforestation than to CO2 in the atmosphere. How about the mini ice-age in Britain in the 1500s, the Thames would freeze solid, they held ice-fairs!
The question is whether change is being influenced by human activity. Maybe - personally I think the whole carbon credit thing is a huge moneymaking scam, ditto biofuels. I know some people involved in research in this area, and I've seen firsthand how they can direct and skew their conclusions in order to get 'interesting' results - a negative result isn't great for publishing papers. And the funding for anything with reference to global warming is great!

Sahara was lush and tropical 10000 years ago. Since Moses's time, Egypt was always a desert!
I did state climate change is a cyclic phenomenon and it generally takes place over 1000's of years.
But due to all the CO2 emissions after the industrial revolution that started in the late 19th, early 20th centuary, the amount of green house gases in the atmosphere has risen significantly putting the whole climate cycle out of balance. The cycle is taking place at a much faster rate now and it is not giving nature the time to adapt to the changes.

Global warming is not just due to more cars. It is a result of a cascade of events.

1. The human population has risen significantly and now the ratio of the human:plant life has increased in the human side. Causing more O2 to be consumed and more CO2 to be released than ever before. And to add to that, lately the massive amounts of deforestation that has taken place has reduced the ratio more towards the plants side. Putting nature out of balance.

2. Oil was the Carbon store of the earth. It has taken millions of years for all the animal and plants to sediment in the earth and turn into oil. Now after the industrial revolution when oil started being consumed in enormous quantities, the carbon store in the earth started being released into the atmosphere. We've burnt and released almost all of the oil in the planet in just a century. Oil that took millions of years to form and the Carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere over the millions of years was all put back into the atmosphere over just a 100 years. The CO2 level in the atmosphere is rising and that is a fact. So is the fact that CO2 is a green house gas. The reason Venus is hotter than Mercury is cuz of the amount of CO2 in its atmosphere. CO2 traps the sun's heat and raises the temperature of the planet. The reason it is so significant now is cuz we've never burned fossil fuels in this much amount ever before so now its really affecting the environment.

3. Methane is a much more powerful green house gas than CO2. It traps 4 times more heat than CO2. The increase in the amount of cattle over the years has caused a significant increase in methane too. Then methane is also stored in the glaciers as a natural store for them. Due to global warming, these glaciers are melting and causing more methane to be released into the atmosphere increasing the GH gasses more and causing more global warming. A perfect example of this is in siberia where you can acually see all the methane bubbles under the frozen ice on the vast frozen bog land.

All of this is taking place too far for nature to adapt to the changes. The frequency of freak weather has increased due to this causing more seasonal imbalances. Cold waves and heat waves during times you wouldn't normally expect them. Global Warming doesn't just cause the days to get hotter, it causes climatic imbalances with the general average temperature of the earth rising.

All of this can be slowed down by all the stuff you hear on the TV about carbon footprint and all.
Its not a fad. Its true and it is happening. We need to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use and move to more renewable resources and plant more trees to decrease the amount of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. WE have caused this climatic imbalance and we can still change it and bring it back to normal. But for that all of ye skeptics need to start believing that Global Warming is really happening and though it doesn't put any direct effect on our lives, it is causing changes to the world. We here have many means to cope with with the changes that are happening right now, neither is it really effecting us much (as just warmer summers and no more snow). But it is making life much more tougher to people in the 3rd world countries as water is getting more scarce in those places.

Global warming may be happening, but all these solutions being tossed around wont make a difference. People hugging trees, using wind-power, switching to energy efficient lightbulbs, driving Prius and recycling their own fecal matter wont save the world - some guy in a white coat in a laboratory will.

galwayrush wrote: »

BS, bull/cow fart, insect fart, it's a cycle.

You do realise there wouldn't be quite so many cattle out there if it was for human interaction, yes?

How anyone could possibly think trying to be less dependent on fossil fuels is a bad thing is beyond stupidity... Oil won't be around much longer... we'd be better off spending our resources on finding alternatives than waging wars to capture the dwindling resources...

Global warming or not I can't see any reason not to try and live 'cleaner' lives.

Oil will probably run out for the most part in our lifetimes, now is a good time to start looking into new technologies and ways of living.

Humans up to now have never had it so good and it's taken us just 100 years or so to REALLY change the face of this planet, a planet that is finite and can only absorb so much.

We're moving into scary times imo if not in our lifetime then for our kids or their kids.

NekkidBibleMan wrote: »

Global warming may be happening, but all these solutions being tossed around wont make a difference. People hugging trees, using wind-power, switching to energy efficient lightbulbs, driving Prius and recycling their own fecal matter wont save the world - some guy in a white coat in a laboratory will.

How can some dude in a white coat solve global warming??
What we need to do here is bring back the flora:fauna ratio back in balance and reduce the CO2 emissions to stop the levels of CO2 from rising further in the atmosphere and create ways to bring down the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere back to what it normally was and should be.
Switching to cleaner and renewable energy sources, planting more trees, stopping the amazon deforestation, saving the rain forests and reducing individuals carbon footprints is the key to bring back this balance. And we are a part of the balance so we need to act to save it too.

It is us who are cutting down all the trees in the amazon and us who love to drive big cars and use loads of electricity, gas, oil to live our luxurious lives. We are the reason why global warming is happening and if we don't change the way we are living right now, we're not gonna help the situation.
The governments need to take big incentives to move to cleaner fuels to power the cities too. But rather than that its trying to push people to reduce their Carbon footprint. People don't really pay a big role in global warming. Cars now days are pretty clean though living in better insulated homes will reduce the amount of gas/oil consumption for heating too. The government needs to move to renewable energy sources or else countries will be in big trouble seeing the cost of crude oil rocketing up every year, this is going to hit economies really bad very soon. Afterall how much are you willing to pay for a liter of petrol. I've seen the cost go up 30c/liter in just 3 years. In another 5-10 years don't be surprised to pay €2 or even more for the liter of petrol and the gas bill at your home doubling. We need to switch to alternate renewable fuels just for this one reason alone too!

Wertz wrote: »

The only flaw to that argument is that at the time of the ozone debacle we were told that CFCs would continue to effect ozone levels at the poles for up to half a century after we stopped using them.

The flaw in the argument was suggesting that the problem is gone.

Here's a report from NASA in 2006 showing that if current trends continue, the ozone layer will recover to 1980 levels by the middle of the century....more or less exactly in line with what we were told when the argument for banning CFCs was made. Note - the ozone layer wasn't healthy in 1980...but the slow-down in its degradation, and the ensuing recovery are bang-on what was predicted.

Just because it doesn't make the news any more doesn't mean that the ozone layer is healthy again.

If anything, this is an excellent example of why people should listen to scientists on scientific issues, and not what the media are saying about the science. Science didn't predict the end of the world due to the ozone layer, no more than they predict the end of the world through global warming. Rather, they predicted increased problems as a result.

In the case of the ozone layer, their recommendations were listened to (for whatever reason you choose to believe) and the ensuing result matched what the scientists predicted would come from their recommendations.

Had we not banned CFCs, its reasonable to believe that the scientific models of what would have happened would also have been accurate. The world still wouldn't end, but we'd have the problems the scientists were predicting.

To argue that the problem wasn't real because we took the preventative action we were told to and because it has had and is having the predicted mitigating effects is daft. Its like saying that because I wore a seatbelt like I was told to and it saved my life in a crash, it somehow proves that seatbelts are useless or crashes aren't dangerous.

stevec wrote: »

How do you explain the fact that average global temperatures have dropped over the last two years?

I'd explain it by pointing out that Global Warming science doesn't predict that every year will be warmer than the previous one.

I'd also point out that these figures still result in a climbing 5-year average, and that both years are amongst the top 10 on record.