Do you do anything about Climate Change

DigiGal

Smart arse replies aside for a moment(unless they are duurrty jokes)

Does anyone still care about his or is it just sort of fprgotten about.
I'm not trying to be Bono here or anything(self-righteous fool, blah bla blah the poor but I'll ignore the homeless guys sitting behind my hotel)

But do you turn of your lights or you t.v etc.
The world will be warming up by 2 degrees by 2012 which is going to have some pretty bad consequences(we can already see the effects of this now)
Irelands carbon emmissions have actually gone UP since we signed the Kyoto agreement which is subjecting us to all sorts of fines....and Obama so far hasn't done any of his wonerful energy saving initatives, then i read in the Irish Times today that Airtricity aren't green at all!

So whats the story, are we just gonna keep killing the planet or what?

No conspiracies here please.....

El Guapo!

Climate change is a natural occurance and no amount of turning off your tv is going to make a difference. Sit back, relax, and wear sun-screen! :cool:

TPD

Depending on who you listen to, climate change itself is the conspiracy. Dont cows contribute more to the greenhouse effect than humans?

Anyway, I think you're better off in the long run not worrying about it. If anything we do will have an effect, it will need to be on a massive scale, and therefore implemented by the governments as law. Until that happens, individuals being green won't really do much.

DigiGal

Dean09 wrote: »

Climate change is a natural occurance and no amount of turning off your tv is going to make a difference. Sit back, relax, and wear sun-screen! :cool:

It is natural but we are worsening it, its happening quicker than it should and its the fault of people who think like that

DigiGal

The Perfect Drug wrote: »

Depending on who you listen to, climate change itself is the conspiracy. Dont cows contribute more to the greenhouse effect than humans?

Anyway, I think you're better off in the long run not worrying about it. If anything we do will have an effect, it will need to be on a massive scale, and therefore implemented by the governments as law. Until that happens, individuals being green won't really do much.

Same thing, if everyone has this opinion, nobody will do anyhting it becomes a vicious cycle.

Nolanger

It's just another rung in the ladder of environmental 'causes' that people fill their sad lives with - greenhouse effect -> ozone layer -> global warming -> climate change -> the next big thing!

RandolphEsq

DigiGal wrote: »

It is natural but we are worsening it, its happening quicker than it should and its the fault of people who think like that

Hippy

TPD

DigiGal wrote: »

Same thing, if everyone has this opinion, nobody will do anyhting it becomes a vicious cycle.

Not really. There will be lobbyists etc. for any cause, and the government have already listened to the climate change groups. If the government still listen to these groups and implement some changes as law, the populace will carry out the changes, whether they care about/believe in climate change at all.

Mr.Obvious

hahaha. I love the way people are starting to deny global warming. It's not the type of thing you want to leave to chance.

If i was a eurocrat I'd know exactly what to do.

Ban women from wearing clothes.

Put it this way;

Ships full of clothes from asia produce loads of CO2. While men only buy what clothes they need, women go crazy and buy 10 times the clothes they actually need. They are by far the worst offenders in terms of clothes-related CO2 emmisions, and therefore measures should be taken against them in true eurocrat style (i.e tackling the problem in an ineffective roundabout way to suit your own agenda).

DigiGal

The Perfect Drug wrote: »

Not really. There will be lobbyists etc. for any cause, and the government have already listened to the climate change groups. If the government still listen to these groups and implement some changes as law, the populace will carry out the changes, whether they care about/believe in climate change at all.

Pity our government are idiots...

they were talking about nuclear power a while ago, well the Greens were but imagine if our government built a nuclear power plant, if te cracking spire and the luas with tyhe tracks that were too small and the millenium clock are anythign to go by....scary thought....prob better off with fossil fuels

skyhighflyer

I've started switching the car's engine off at night.

DigiGal

Mr.Obvious wrote: »

hahaha. I love the way people are starting to deny global warming. It's not the type of thing you want to leave to chance.

If i was a eurocrat I'd know exactly what to do.

Ban women from wearing clothes.

Put it this way;

Ships full of clothes from asia produce loads of CO2. While men only buy what clothes they need, women go crazy and buy 10 times the clothes they actually need. They are by far the worst offenders in terms of clothes-related CO2 emmisions, and therefore measures should be taken against them in true eurocrat style (i.e tackling the problem in an ineffective roundabout way to suit your own agenda).

I like your idea....benificial to both the enviroment and us...
but what about unattractive women...

dsmythy

How can we forget? There's plenty of ads on tv about it. I pull plugs and turn off lights to save money. And we are going to pay carbon tax "for the environment :rolleyes:" pretty soon too. How can we forget...

DigiGal

skyhighflyer wrote: »

I've started switching the car's engine off at night.

Do you kow how much energy you just wasted double posting...

DigiGal

dsmythy wrote: »

How can we forget? There's plenty of ads on tv about it. I pull plugs and turn off lights to save money. And we are going to pay carbon tax "for the environment :rolleyes:" pretty soon too. How can we forget...

and water tax...wtf is that about....

Acacia

Meh. The whole thing seems like a big money-spinner to me with everyone from (like the OP says) Bono to washing powder manufacturers (Ariel and their whole 15 degrees bollox) jumping on the band wagon.

Just another cause for the self-righteous to bleat on about "Oh, I only flew ten times this year to reduce my carbon number, aren't I the great fella...". :rolleyes:

mickdw

Climate change is all crap. Big news, the temperature is going to rise by x number of degrees. The whole problem is this is being based on the very short time for which records have been kept. What about the drastic changes that have taken since the ice age. What caused that change, it wasnt a few men driving around in some powerful cars thats for sure. I believe that over time, we will get natural changes in the planet. This happens so slowly that every living thing on the planet would have no problem adapting to the changes. Some people still feel its worth while to spend their life worrying about this. Well I dont.

DigiGal

Acacia wrote: »

Meh. The whole thing seems like a big money-spinner to me with everyone from (like the OP says) Bono to washing powder manufacturers (Ariel and their whole 15 degrees bollox) jumping on the band wagon.

Just another cause for the self-righteous to bleat on about "Oh, I only flew ten times this year to reduce my carbon number, aren't I the great fella...". :rolleyes:

Well I didn't fly at all

irish_bob

2009 is set to be the wettest year on record in ireland
2008 was the wettest to date
2007 was the wettest before that

no , i dont believe in climate change either:rolleyes:

Delta Kilo

Most people think that global warming is going to thaw the polar ice caps and it is the water from this that will rise the ocean levels. That ain't so. The big issue is that when water is heated, it expands, so the rising temp is causing the water to expand upwards, drowning us all. As more heat is in the environment, more water is evaporated into clouds, which means we get more rain, which is happening.

Things are happening quite quickly and we are a part of it. I still can't see why turning something off as opposed to leaving it on stand by makes any difference at all though.

El Siglo

"I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction." — John Steinbeck.

ejmaztec

Logically, thanks to the recession and drop in manufacturing worldwide, global warming should have reduced quite a bit. If it hasn't, then the mad scientists must be bullsh1tting us.

Pjays

I became a vegetarian. Save the planet and the animals!!!

gerry28

I don't worry too much about climate change or CO2 emissions. If there was no carbon dioxide then there would be no trees or life for that matter.

The planet can handle carbon dioxide.

I worry much more about over-population and all its associated problems. Such as the demise habitats and of species like rhinos, tigers, sea mammals and over fishing etc.

ejmaztec

Pjays wrote: »

I became a vegetarian. Save the planet and the animals!!!

But that's more animal farts for the atmosphere to contend with, not to mention human farts after all those sprouts:eek:


Think of the damage you're doing:eek::eek:

Pjays

ejmaztec wrote: »

But that's more animal farts for the atmosphere to contend with, not to mention human farts after all those sprouts:eek:


Think of the damage you're doing:eek::eek:

:eek::eek: I'm a goner now.

on a serious note, without intensive farming, there wouldn't be the huge number of cattle, sheep, pigs etc... on the planet. Additionally, at the moment, there has been research highlighting how the introduction of China and India to the superpowers is leading to an increased demand for meat, which in turn is putting great pressure on supplies. There are too many people on the planet as well.

Anyone do their ecological footprint? How many planets are you using?!

DigiGal

DigiGal wrote: »

.
The world will be warming up by 2 degrees by 2012 which is going to have some pretty bad consequences

Far better than the temperature dropping by just 1 degree.....nobody mentions that the little ice age which cause famine across Europe was caused by a drop of just a degree. A buffer of 2 degrees positive is a good thing....!

Global warming may take a hundred years but an ice age can come on in a decade or two.
The little ice age came on in an estimated 10 years. This caused famine in Europe.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=0aDsjjZrYCwC&pg=PA16&#v=onepage&q=&f=false

http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Little:Ice:Age.htm

The Great Famine of 1315-1317 killing 1.5 million people alone)

The IPCC describes the LIA as a modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during this period of less than 1°C.

Before all this global warming talk John Von Neumann wanted to spray the ice caps black to heat the planet up he reckoned we would be better off!
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2319080


Grain was grown in Greenland and Iceland over a thousand years ago
http://books.google.ie/books?id=6TCm8Xy-sLUC&pg=PA108&dq=average+temperature+drop+little+ice+age#v=onepage&q=average%20temperature%20drop%20little%20ice%20age&f=false

Europe isnt that hot and a drop of a degree would royally screw us:

It has snowed in Ireland before in June. All it takes is a long cold winter with snowfall to linger. The albedo effect of the snow will decrease the effects of the sun and it becomes a feedback loop. Again I want to emphasise its currently not that hot/warm when there is permanent snow in places like Scotland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_patches_in_Scotland

Its not unusual to get frosts any month except in July and August here in Ireland.
And lets not forget the snow they had in Baghdad!!! http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5huPkYk4bGVvo1Sa1tWeH-tgENiFw

Warming means more farmland with melting tundra. Desertification:

We can desalinate seawater and we can irrigate. Look at arizona:


Be pragmatic, we can deal with rising sea levels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuiderzee_Works
The Dutch reclaimed land from the sea with a project that began in 1918.

YFlyer

skyhighflyer wrote: »

I've started switching the car's engine off at night.

If it was an electric car it be best to only charge it during the night, unless we are dealing with localise solar units

BlueSpiral

I do my bit, recycling and turning the tap off, tackling my way through the cloud of flies to the brown bin.

Worst place I've ever been for pollution was India. The cities there will choke you up, you have to prepare yourself for the pollution in the air and the stuff in the streets before you go out. There was a number of times I saw rats just sitting at the side of the pavement. Most of it came from the cars and auto rickshaws, which they were changing the engines on so they wouldn't have as bad an effect on the environment and climate. You'd come back to your hostel and you'd have black nostrils and you'd get some serious dirt off when wiping your face from just walking through the city air. In complete contrast the people there are very hygienic, lining up at open water sources at the side of the street to wash in the morning and evening.

The countryside though in India is much different, amazing air for your lungs.

Turtwig

Deleted User wrote: »

Far better than the temperature dropping by just 1 degree.....nobody mentions that the little ice age which cause famine across Europe was caused by a drop of just a degree. A buffer of 2 degrees positive is a good thing....!

Ehh yeah riiggggggggggghtttttttt:rolleyes:
The temp rises....then drops.

All I'll say for now is this over 90% of the worlds UN scientists agree that Global Warming IS happening and that Humankind's activities are definitely speeding it up - the only thing they disagree over is how bad it'll actually be.

mickdw wrote:

Climate change is all crap. Big news, the temperature is going to rise by x number of degrees. The whole problem is this is being based on the very short time for which records have been kept. What about the drastic changes that have taken since the ice age. What caused that change, it wasnt a few men driving around in some powerful cars thats for sure. I believe that over time, we will get natural changes in the planet. This happens so slowly that every living thing on the planet would have no problem adapting to the changes. Some people still feel its worth while to spend their life worrying about this. Well I dont.

Well, if everyone has this attitude then we are DOOMED:(

Malty_T

Malty_T wrote: »

Ehh yeah riiggggggggggghtttttttt:rolleyes:
The temp rises....then drops.

All I'll say for now is this over 90% of the worlds UN scientists agree that Global Warming IS happening and that Humankind's activities are definitely speeding it up - the only thing they disagree over is how bad it'll actually be.




Well, if everyone has this attitude then we are DOOMED:(

:rolleyes:

I`ll put it in simpler terms. We are far better off with temps 2C above normal than just 1C below.

Yes temps are increasing and its because of us but its not all bad. Nothing is black and white. Check this out:

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january7/manvleaf-010709.html

Stanford University researchers have conducted a comprehensive analysis of data detailing the amount of charcoal contained in soils and lake sediments at the sites of both pre-Columbian population centers in the Americas and in sparsely populated surrounding regions. They concluded that reforestation of agricultural lands—abandoned as the population collapsed—pulled so much carbon out of the atmosphere that it helped trigger a period of global cooling, at its most intense from approximately 1500 to 1750, known as the Little Ice Age.

"We estimate that the amount of carbon sequestered in the growing forests was about 10 to 50 percent of the total carbon that would have needed to come out of the atmosphere and oceans at that time to account for the observed changes in carbon dioxide concentrations," said Richard

That would mean our impact on the planet is more than we think.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/climate-change-poised-to-feed-on-itself-20090731-e4gi.html

Other contributors include changes in the sun’s output associated with sunspots and solar flares, and volcanic dust. However, if these were solely responsible for temperature changes since 1850, the world should have cooled over the past half-century rather than warming at an increasing rate.

^^ So we would be in a mini ice age if we werent pumping out greenhouse gasses warming the place up.
Again I`ll state that its better for temps to rise a few degrees over a hundred years than for cooling to occur by just 1 degree.
Cooling occurs far quicker than warming. Get your head around it. We have been fed so much about how global warming is bad that few stop to consider the positive effects.

We can deal with the negative effects just look at my previous post.