Forum Moderators: open
Dell today announced a global carbon-neutral initiative that plants trees for customers to offset the carbon impact of electricity required to power their systems.
[biz.yahoo.com...]
So nice idea Dell. But unfortunately I fear it's too late to stop climate change it's already here.
But even with a "too little, too late" mentality, I don't see anything wrong with planting trees.
and so it goes on ..we hope :)
Who in their right minds really think that humans are going to do anything to change it?
I think we already did. But don't worry - now we have the rest of the world crteating a new coal fired factory every seven days, we'll know for sure soon.
If we can get to a new planet, we can certainly damage the old one. Sure - she'll recover. But long after our children feel the hurt.
Hey - I'm just saying, turn out the light.
I'm not a huge fan of ole Al Gore, but the facts and science put forth are sound and pretty startling when looked at it as a whole.
Sure climate change is always happening, but we have FAR exceeded anything in our history thanks to the VAST amounts of pollutants we put into our atmosphere.
The attitude of "we can't do anything to harm such a big planet" won't work much longer. Unless something is done, the next 50 years will likely be the most catastrophic ever recorded.
we have FAR exceeded anything in our history thanks to the VAST amounts of pollutants we put into our atmosphere.
I just read an article about a week ago citing research showing that the current climate changes are normal for a 150,000-year cycle that has repeated numerous times. (Sorry, I don't have a citation for you.)
There's also the meteor strike that killed off the dinosaurs- that happened much faster than the current rate.
Look, I'm certainly not advocating we do nothing. All I'm saying is to avoid a Chicken Little mentality and automatically blame ourselves for something that may be nothing more than the normal course of events that have been going on for millions of years.
As a counter to Al Gore's movie, I suggest reading Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" and check out the extensive citations of data in the back of the book. He makes a very good argument that much of the "scientific data" is biased, incorrect, inconclusive, and contradictory.
Carbon Dioxide is one of the major causes of global warming as it is what traps the heat. The earths temp. generally parallels the amount of Carbon Dioxide found in the atmosphere. The more, the hotter, the less the cooler.
Do a bit more digging you and you will find the truth. You have to beware of some articles as it's not uncommon for writers to have an agenda.
[en.wikipedia.org...]
It seemed to end around the time of the Industrial Revolution, when humanity started burning large amounts of fossil fuel.
Are you sure that we are not really supposed to be in an Ice Age right now, but we are holding it off with the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere?
It is also inconvenient and unpalatable to face the reality of what we need to do prevent further damage.
But there are at this point just too many facts, not theory, not conjecture but facts, to deny that global warming is happening. And that is it damaging. And that unless we start facing up to that and dealing with it pretty soon we are facing a horrible future or our children are.
Nobody likes to be faced with inconvenient and unpalatable facts like so there is a rush to discredit them, to wish them away as a sort of defence which is as understandable as it is pointless.
Dells trees won't of themselves make a lot of differnce, though they certainly won't do harm. But the awareness raising effect of something like this is just as important if not more so, and on that basis all credit to them.
There's also the meteor strike that killed off the dinosaurs
Not sure that is a very comforting comparison!
...but then perhaps we are.......
(added)
Oh, I'm always planting stuff....
(/added)
I won't bother to check though. I live my life and have a pretty good time. If the earth warms up a bit, I'll go outside in the winter more often.
[news.monstersandcritics.com...]
and another article out today on climate change that also restates what I said earlier about the carbon dioxide levels being at their highest in 650,000 years.
[washingtonpost.com...]
I think some people need to wake-up a bit to the reality.
[edited by: Philosopher at 9:58 pm (utc) on Jan. 10, 2007]
..trees is what they makes strats out of ..cut em down when they are too young ( just for kindlin' ) and there'll be no more geetarhs ..
and you'd have to become an ayuhrgeetarhwrist..
..remember the pic? ;-)
and where d'ya'll think they make yellah pads and those pencils from that those lawyeh guys stick in theyuh noses and ears and uthah beezarh such places during those long trials ..huh
'n' toothpiks ..
and ya need wood ta make jack daniels ..cos it sure don't taste like it's made with good grain ..
dogpile on the mod :)
on a serious note ..this is the second week, in Jan and the birds here are singing like spring time ..the trees are all in bud ..and it's 10°c over normal ..and france as a whole is officially 8°c over the average temp for the last 100 years ( and last winter at this time we had ice and snow and minus 5°c most of Jan ..and I'm sitting in the path of the gulf stream ) ..
And my fishermen friends are catching mediterranean octopi and other stuff where normally they caught lobster ..
It's not coming ..
It's here ..
and accelerating ..
all we can do now is try to make it last for less than the next couple of thousand years ..because everywhere the swings in climate are going to get a whole lot more extreme and worse before they get better ..if we all wake up and do something ..maybe it will only last 20 to 50 generations ..if we as a species get real real lucky ..
you can keep making your money ..but try to make a change ..
[en.wikipedia.org...] has a good list of arguments for/against the "concensus" of global warming and the magnitude of its effect.
It's not just a few crackpots. It's entire governments.
Look at the Kyoto Protocol
[en.wikipedia.org...]
All but two advanced nations on the planet of signed it (sadly the US is one that hasn't..with australia the other).
It's not just a myth...it's reality and we are smack dab in the middle of it.
[edited by: Philosopher at 10:54 pm (utc) on Jan. 10, 2007]
Given the magnitude of the adverse outcome is it more rational or less rational to disregard the risk? (that the projections are accurate)
Would I rather be wrong in choosing to tilt towards conservation, or would I rather be wrong in tilting towards disregarding or denying the risk?
My conclusion is that it comes down to a choice to minimizing risk when the adverse outcome of realizing a risk reaches the magnitude of global consequences of some significance.
It strikes me as more rational to needlessly minimize the risk - with there likely being some consequence - economic or otherwise - than to wrongly disregard it, and thereby possibly increase or actualize the risk.
[edited by: Webwork at 1:29 am (utc) on Jan. 11, 2007]
If global warming does not exist, our loss (the investment in our mistaken belief) is measurable but not insurmountable.
Might be best to plant a few trees!
Problem is that so few people understand it, care about it or have even heard of it.
Of the 6,000 residents recently questioned in one of our polls - only 2% were actively doing anything to reduce their carbon footprint. This comes from a fairly well educated area. Surprisingly, backlashes against moves to slow climate change are starting to rise too. Recycling is talking a bashing in the national press (UK) at the moment despite the increased rates nationwide.
There is a large pot of DEFRA funding being distibuted to authorites throughout the UK. They aim to change behaviour of the public by 2010 but I don't hold out much hope with the current public attiutdes.
I quizzed my friends about this and sadly almost all of them have resigned themselves to an inevitable apathy. It would seem that the 'public' are massively misinformed on not only the way it will effect us but also how making minor changes to daily life CAN slow the impacts that climate change will bring.
There is nothing we can do to stop Climate Change
Theoretically, if we can model - and thereby understand - the processes that have set climatic shifts in motion we might possibly, with some greatly measured wisdom and significant advances in science and technology, be able to either affect, or even halt, the cycling. (Assuming it's not a matter of solar energy shifts and that we never quite master fusion as an energy source here on earth.)
What I'd like to know is whether the cycling plays a life sustaininig role, perhaps by virtue of some system rebalancing that the cycling achieves (even as a side effect) OR whether the capacity for earth to sustain life is, in its essence, built upon the cycling.
Maybe we overestimate our role on planet earth anyway. Perhaps, as science fiction writers have mused in their prose, we're just a form of herd, awaiting harvesting by some extra-terrestrial agent that considers humans a delicacy. ;0/
Our capacity to overestimate our importance is as considerable as it is constant.
Now, back to your meaningless work. There is much of value to be done before we are eaten or otherwise extinguished by our own devices.
Oh, and plant a tree, drive less, organize your shopping trips for maximum efficiency, turn down the thermostat, replace incandescent lights with flouescent bulbs, insulate your house better, use low volume flush toilets, . . . and for heaven's sake stop watering and fertilizing your lawns. Mother earth LOVES WEEDS.
Or haven't you notice? ;)
[edited by: Webwork at 3:38 pm (utc) on Jan. 11, 2007]
How else do you explain the glaciers?
