We're Buggered Anyway - Why Bother ?

Rabidlamb

I wonder how many people on here feel the way I do about climate issues.

With the worlds population expanding expoentially & developing countries demanding more & more resources there's no real way to solve the carbon problem. All we do by turning off our lights & using our green bins is just tinkering at the edges for our moral satisfaction.

Unless some smart engineer can find a way to bottle hydrogen in the next few decades we're all going down the tubes. The only way of saving ourselves is by destroying ourselves. A 21st century world consuming plague seems to be the best solution we can look forward to.

Something sad to think of next time you look for the number in the triangle.

Spyral

actually if everyone got thier fingers out and did their bit there woudln't be a problem.

Rabidlamb

Rabidlamb wrote: »

I wonder how many people on here feel the way I do about climate issues.
.

No; think about the "millennium bug", it was hyped up to be one of the biggest threats to mankind (aeroplanes dropping out of the sky, lifts stopping etc)in the late 1990's, what happened... nothing!!

WHY; because the problem was identified and resolved before it could have caused any major problems.

Same with global warming, we really need it to be a non-event!

sarahirl

switching off lights is part of a larger drive towards getting people to think before they consume resources.... engineering a solution will only take us part of the way, the rest of the work has to be done through realising that over consuming is not good for the planet or for fellow human beings

Grizzly 45

Yes,old Geezer alarm here!:D.
We were all worried and moping around that any moment the Red hordes would desend on us in Europe overnight and the World would be a very radioactive mostly glass field within five days of that happening.
Closest was even before I was born and that was the Cuban missile crisis.
Scroll forward20 odd years,we have had,
Acid rain......[Should be getting worse with global warming]
millenium bug...[Ok should have known more about computors]
SARS.......[100 odd dead worldwide??]
H52n1 Chicken flu........[Any day now this will happen according to the doom mongers]
Metorite impact[do you think the powers that be will tell us until the last week??]
New World order take over,and other nutter theories.
Now the big one is Global warming.... 24 years ago it was Global cooling/Nuke winter.
Ask yourselves one thing.WHO is getting rich out of this???There is a whole multi BILLION Euro Green industry around this now.Of course it would be heresay to say this is another money spinner..
So sure weare all screwed,been waiting for somthing to happen for a long enough time.But seeing it willall happen around 2050.I dont think I'll be around to see it.:(

bonkey

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

We were all worried and moping around that any moment the Red hordes would desend on us in Europe overnight and the World would be a very radioactive mostly glass field within five days of that happening.

No. We, in Europe, generally weren't worried about that at all. There was the occasional sensationalist article in the media, but mostly it was confined to the works of Hollywood and authors like Tom Clancy.

Acid rain......[Should be getting worse with global warming]

Why do you think acid rain should be getitng worse with global warming.

millenium bug...[Ok should have known more about computors]

The millenium bug was a non-event because enough was done in advance to ensure it was a non-event. Anecdotally, I heard that the first "readiness" check that ESB performed resulted in what would have been about a 4-day outage. We didn't have that outage because the check was done, the results looked at, problems identified, and resolved in time.

SARS.......[100 odd dead worldwide??]
H52n1 Chicken flu........[Any day now this will happen according to the doom mongers]

Media has been talking up the next big killer disease, pretty-much forever. YOu forgot to include Ebola, and the initial coverage of how AIDS was going to kill us all.

Now the big one is Global warming.... 24 years ago it was Global cooling/Nuke winter.

24 years ago, it was not global cooling. There were a handful of mainstream media articles which misrepresented and overstated the scientific perspectives on which they were based. The scientists, however, were making nothing like the claims of confidence that they are making today.

As for the threat of a nuclear winter...that was a threat only in the sense that "if a nuclear war breaks out...". Aside from the aforementioned fiction writers and Holywood movies, though, very few people were seriously concerned that it was an imminent reality.

Ask yourselves one thing.WHO is getting rich out of this???

Why? Why not ask who'd get rich out of "muddying the waters", with regards to the science?

I notice that one of hte big things from the 80s you don't recall was the fairly-constant debate as to whether or not cigarette-smoking really caused cancer. Why? Because scientists kept finding mixed results. Who got rich? The people funding enough science to ensure the waters were middied.

Today, the people getting rich regarding global warming are twofold:

1) The traditional hydrocarbon economy, who are ensuring that their financial model remains as valid for as long as possible.
2) Those who are pioneering the changes ot the new economy.

Often, these two groups are the same. We see the likes of Toyota building the Prius and talking a big talk about how we must all do our part....then taking the US Administration to court because it doesn't think the US Administration should be demanding better mileage from its regular vehicles.

There is a whole multi BILLION Euro Green industry around this now.

My god. Thats almost as much as the oil industry makes in a month.

Of course it would be heresay to say this is another money spinner..

Amazingly, the only people who make this claim of heresy are those who say its a money spinner.

My guess is that its to deflect from the reality that if we look at the numbers, the money being made from 'Green Industry' is pitiful compared to money made from 'non-Green Industry'...which would mean that the "qui bene" argument should apply more to those fighting the change than those embracing it.

Tipsy Mac

With Gormley backing down and not giving lower car tax to low CO2 emitting pre 2008 imports there is little encouragement for any of us to do anything about it.

Burga Galti

Rabidlamb wrote: »

I wonder how many people on here feel the way I do about climate issues.

With the worlds population expanding expoentially & developing countries demanding more & more resources there's no real way to solve the carbon problem. All we do by turning off our lights & using our green bins is just tinkering at the edges for our moral satisfaction.

Unless some smart engineer can find a way to bottle hydrogen in the next few decades we're all going down the tubes. The only way of saving ourselves is by destroying ourselves. A 21st century world consuming plague seems to be the best solution we can look forward to.

Something sad to think of next time you look for the number in the triangle.

Even the bottled hydrogen won't help. Good old water is actually a bigger green house gas than carbon dioxide. That's why they want to use comets to push Mars into global warming for terraforming purposes.

In reality, the world has been getting warmer for millions of years. If you look into the ancient history of the Earth you'll find that arctic sea temperatures averaged around 10-20 C at one point (higher than the Irish Sea).

Saving energy is still a good idea since it means cheaper bills, but the Earth will still get warmer, the climate will still change, and the seas will still rise. We should start planning for the changes our world is going to face instead of burying our heads in the sand and pretending that if we work together we can stop a juggernaut with a peashooter.

djpbarry

Burga Galti wrote: »

Even the bottled hydrogen won't help.

Why not?

Burga Galti wrote: »

In reality, the world has been getting warmer for millions of years.

Has it really? Based on what exactly?

Burga Galti wrote: »

If you look into the ancient history of the Earth you'll find that arctic sea temperatures averaged around 10-20 C at one point (higher than the Irish Sea).

But I thought you said the Earth has been "getting warmer for millions of years"?

Red Hand

djpbarry wrote: »

Why not?
Has it really? Based on what exactly?
But I thought you said the Earth has been "getting warmer for millions of years"?

Burga Galti means getting warmer (and cooler) cyclically. During the Triassic and Jurassic it was warmer than it is now. The areas that are now Britain and the USA at that time would have been a mixture of warm shallow seas and tropical/desert landmasses. Plus, due to tectonic shift areas in the arctic might have been located in a different area compared to where they are now.

Likewise, there are ice ages, the most recent one starting to end about 12000 to 14000 years ago.

Whats unusual about global warming is that humans are contributing towards an atmosphere that hasn't been see for quite a long time by burning up carbon that was fossilized during the Carboniferous period (and other later periods).

Húrin

Rabidlamb wrote: »

I wonder how many people on here feel the way I do about climate issues.

With the worlds population expanding expoentially & developing countries demanding more & more resources there's no real way to solve the carbon problem. All we do by turning off our lights & using our green bins is just tinkering at the edges for our moral satisfaction.

I agree that turning off lights and such falls far short of what is really required. I agree that it does little other than aussage guilt. But in carbon emissions peak in 2015 there is a greater than 50% chance that we will stay below 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. Buggered we may be but not thoroughly so.

nice1franko

Agree with OP that it's too little too late. I hope it doesn;t really hit the fan til I've just seen my 140th birthday though.

That said, I've complete confidence that our children, our children's chrildren and our children's children's children will take it on the chin like men and evolve into rats or something.

derek27

I for one am undecided as yet on the issue of global warming... the historic records of climate status that we have at our disposal indicate many fluctuations in the planets climate over extended periods of time, so perhaps we just happened to be watching during one of those fluctuations (i.e: over the period that we have researched the climate, both scientifically and historically). However, in the off-chance that we are having a significant impact on our climate which could have disasterous consequences, and we have been told this is the case, then what sense does it make to ignore simple advice that's been given to curtail the problem while we look for a longer-lasting solution. At the end of the day, if everyone takes the simple advice being given, we'll all have a bit more money in our pockets if nothing else. There's always going to be some enormous issue that drives people to fear it... when this one passes, it'll be something else.

Also, a little research on the strategies that can help to reduce or even reverse and control this potential climate change might lead you to some interesting innovations... a simple example recently put forward was to actually deposit microscopic particulate matter high into the atmosphere which would have the effect of sheilding the amount of sunlight that reaches the earths climatic region, in much the same way as volcanic ash has been shown to do in previous volcanic eruptions in the past, such as St. Helens, which is estimated to have reduced average global temperatures by about a degree for a 2 year period.

unreggd

Ye need to change your view of it OP

Yes, theres always gonna be people who wont do anything about it

They wont make a difference cos they wont be doin anything, but everyone who DOES do somethin, COULD make some sort of difference