Will we overcome the problems of Global Warming?

[Quokka]

I disagree that its because theres so damn many of us, there's plenty of resources to provide for the needs of 6 billion people.... it's the result of supplying the created wants of a couple of hundred million that are causing problems, that and the pressure this places on other communities to 'catch up'.

I believe the problems are predominantly cultural rather than technical and seeing as culture is reactive that's not particularly optimistic.

Still I agree with other posters, Humanity will adapt, willingly or not.


Slightly off-topic but Ive always believed that even if humanity pushes nature too far, whatever it is will force it's way back to a balance and if, in the extreme circumstance that this is at the cost of humanity, that the Earth or the universe will go on as intended. Now here's the bit that may sound strange.... I've always found that idea comforting.

 

[PERCON]

Since we have the knowledge of the consequences of our actions on the environment around us humanity must now adapt to survive. I don't like the term 'global warming' it's more of a 'climate change' really, possibly leading to another ice age in the distant future that will truly test humanity's ability to adapt and survive anything thrown at it.

Although I am not religious I do believe that every action, no matter how big or small, provides consequences. I have no sympathy for humanity over this topic anymore. The changes to our industry that are required to prevent global warming from escalating further won't happen, so nature will have to intervene and balance out the situation in its own unique way.

After all, everything happens for a reason.
And every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

 

[Green]

I saw a programme about global dimming a year or so ago, which I found interesting. Here's a summary of it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml

Global warming could be worse than we thought, but it's effects are being masked by global dimming. Looks like we need to combat both, at the same time, or we're b0rk3d.

Either that, or put on the biggest, riskiest tightrope show this planet has ever seen

 

[speedingslug]

A topic I like

I agree we cannot be bothered to stop climate change as it would cause us the lost of some comforts. But I don't trust the goverments and they should finally agree on some course of action.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/5005994.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4467420.stm
I fear it is too late

and yet some people think that the change is a natural occurring event just part of a cycle and mankind is having little effect on the world ?
http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_3899807
http://www.westernroundtable.com/news/article.asp?id=1729

With veiws like this there is truly no hope for us

 

[j d worthington]

I wouldn't say "no hope" but I think it's rather scarce. Look, folks, if you really take a look at human history, no, we don't always find solutions. We're very bad about wearing blinders until we get ourselves into a corner and huge masses of people suffer/die because of it. And we've scarcely been on the planet 5 million years as hominids, let alone any sort of "civilization". Where that's concerned, we've taken, what? less than 4 millennia to cause global muckups some of which simply cannot be corrected and those which can will take literally thousands to millions of years to set right -- and we aren't likely to be around to see it.

As for colonization -- I'd love to see it. Ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Does anyone here remember the experiment in the Arizona desert where they tried creating a small colony of supposedly compatible scientists? The project was supposed to last for 5 years. In just over 2 it went so sour they had to dismantle it before someone literally ended up committing murder. Put people into the close confinement needed for colonizing in space, enough to avoid the dangers of endogamous breeding, and you're looking at bloodshed, most likely massacre or extinction. Unless, of course, we can actually make a workable cryonic system and sophisticated enough technologies to allow a ship to pilot itself to whatever destination, set up the colony, avoid any unforeseen hazards along the way, and then go "wakey, wakey" to the human cargo. Then, given the above problems, it would be transferred from the trip to the actual colony -- BUT, if we are able to spread them out fast enough via terraforming, and send replacements quickly enough to make up for the losses along the way due to accidents, unforeseen dangers (again), flareups, etc., it MIGHT have a chance of surviving. One colony. One. Out of how many? billion by that point? (And, on the subject of world population, when I was in high school in the mid-70s, the figures stood at just over 3 billion. In 30 years, we've doubled that. We're growing at an exponential rate, people; and the human race ain't gonna stop breeding any time soon. The estimates are that, within 50 years, we're likely to top 12 billion; I'd say 15-20. Anyone think that, with what we're doing to the planet, it's going to be able to support that sort of number?) Not to mention the bottleneck of expense, and people who feel we need to be spending the money on problems here rather than spending huge amounts going "out there" (not realizing, perhaps, that it's part of the same problem in the long run; but quite right that in the meantime people are starving unnecessarily).

Will the human race adapt? Probably. But this isn't the only thing we have to be concerned about. Supervolcanoes, for instance. We know of at least 3; one of them, they expect, is due to go sometime in the next 3-5 centuries. The last time that happened, Europe's population was something like 10,000,000. Once it was over, it was down to around 500,000. That's a pretty serious drop, wouldn't you say? (And they had a lot less people and a lot more natural resources per capita than we -- at least until the ash and nuclear-winter-style climatological changes began to tip the balance.) And the possibility of near-earth objects actually not all being discovered, and one maybe connecting, can't be ruled out, either. And blowing 'em up doesn't help, because then you just end up with lots of little buggers spread out coming down. Anyone around here seen the effects of a shotgun blast? Now magnify that by a few thousand times in the size of the projectiles, not to mention the velocity/impact.

And then there's just plain greed. Even the most enlightened people are reluctant to give up their comforts; say air-conditioning when it hits those 100+ days... We've seen what happened in Europe when things got a little warmer than usual the last few winters. Not to mention the number of elderly folks and babies that expired over here due to the heat.

And so it goes.....

No, it's not hopeless; but it's pretty bleak. And it certainly isn't something that any of us can afford to just sit back and feel smug about. The piper's been toting up that bill for a long time, and I'm afraid he's about ready to start collecting.....

 

[Carolyn Hill]

Did anyone here see the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth that opened in the U.S. recently? I haven't yet seen it, but it's supposed to be persuasive and to suggest ways to reduce global warming without putting a halt to technological advancement or comfortable lifestyles.

 

[j d worthington]

No, I haven't seen that. I'd like to, just to see what the arguments are. I'm afraid I'm in agreement with Chris; from all the research I've come across (all right, the synposis of the research; when it comes to the actual papers, I'm afraid I don't read the language), there's no way to stop or reverse the problem, the most we can do is slow it down and buy ourselves time. But if they've got solid evidence that disproves that, I'd love to hear it. I'm just sceptical of any politico on this topic -- not-so-hidden agendas, and all that.

 

[Ryu Gaia]

Has anyone yet considered the possibility that maybe we're looking at much too little data for it to possibly be conclusive? Compare the length of human existance to that of the planet's... and then compare the length of time that we've even been capable of monitoring it to the span of time that it has existed and changed without us. Maybe, we have nothing to do with it, and it's just a natural thing the planet goes through. Who knows? We've only been paying attention for a few hundred years (and that's stretching it!), so we can't be certain. As much as we try to piece it together, we don't know exactly what happenned in our planet's past, so we can't say for certain what its future is going to be.

 

[j d worthington]

While we may not be "certain" I agree (at least, in the sense of absolute, irrefutable proof no matter the circumstances), we have some pretty darned good indications from various types of soil testing to pretty deep levels, coupled with our learning on geology, electromagnetism (including shifts in the magnetic field, which we're due for again in a few thousand years, it seems -- I pity the birds, who seem to have evolved an actual "compass" that includes a tiny bit of magnetic metals in their brains; this is going to mess them all up!), and far too many types of research to mention. We do know that we've had a terrible impact, especially since the Industrial Revolution, and simply the numbers -- including the near-exponential population growth mentioned earlier -- cannot help but paint a pretty bleak picture.

While I'd very much like to believe otherwise, I'm afraid that the data is much more conclusive than we'd like to think; Chris could fill you in with considerably more hard data on that than I, I'm sure. But, as said, this is no reason not to do all we can to at least slow the process down as much as possible, and at least buy ourselves some time for finding solutions for not only our survival, but for mediating as much suffering as we can. But to do so means taking a good, hard, realistic look at the implications and not falling into the fallacy that things aren't as they truly are.

 

[Ryu Gaia]

We've only been really using this earth for the last two hundred years or so, and I'm pretty sure that there's no possible way that humans could have affected the planet that drastically in such a short time. It's like saying that in the span of one millisecond (probably less, actually, if we were to go for an accurate analogy) every action that would lead to a person's death could take place. No death takes place within a millisecond. It's just not temporaly possible.

 

[j d worthington]

We've only been really using this earth for the last two hundred years or so, and I'm pretty sure that there's no possible way that humans could have affected the planet that drastically in such a short time. It's like saying that in the span of one millisecond (probably less, actually, if we were to go for an accurate analogy) every action that would lead to a person's death could take place. No death takes place within a millisecond. It's just not temporaly possible.

I'm going to have to ask for some clarification here: How do you mean that "we've only been really using this earth for the last two hundred years or so"? If you mean all the artificial pollutants, you may have a case; but as far as our impact on the ecosystem, it goes 'way, 'way back -- as far as human history. As soon as we began to be toolmakers, we began to seriously effect the environment, which gives us about (someone could be more accurate on this, I'm sure) 2.5-3 million years; long before we were true homo sapiens. But it isn't just time -- it's the kind of things we've learned to do, and the things we've done without understanding the consequences, and then, once we knew the consequences, which quite a few scientists have been warning about since at least the latter part of the 19th century, completely ignoring those consequences and going full-tilt-boogie! And, as I've said, the exponential rate at which we've managed to pollute the planet has now become a geometric progression far in advance of our impact simply on a population level. Once we split the atom, all bets were off -- and we human beings are still running nuclear tests here and there around the globe -- and that stuff simply doesn't heal, not for a long, long, long time. Wherever those tests are run, that place is uninhabitable for any healthy, living organism. We've managed to drive to extinction over 200 known species in just over 150 years, and show no signs of stopping (hamburger corporations, last I heard, were still buying up rain forest land and turning it into ranch land for cattle to cut down on the price of beef, for instance -- at the rate of literally thousands of acres each year).

No, the evidence is pretty stark, once you start looking into it seriously. We've made a pretty sorry mess of our nest; it's just that the worst effects aren't quite hit-you-over-the-head obvious yet, like the disappearance of several glaciers (that have existed for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years). Just in the last half-century, we've had such an impact there that mountains that have been covered in snow for as long as human beings can tell, are now losing their snowline (Kilimanjaro being a good example). True, some such things do tend to happen naturally without human culpability, but compared to our impact, it's in the neighborhood of less than 5% -- barring such things as the supervolcanoes or asteroidal impact. And the level of greenhouse gases just keep climbing each year, and we're still diddling about with internal-combustian engines without getting serious about finding some alternative method of transportation with less environmental impact, rather than some slight cosmetic changes on the level of removing a wart on the hand when the patient's riddled with cancer.

You'd be surprised what's temporally possible. It's shocking, and dismaying -- but the evidence is there for anyone willing to look; and it really isn't open to too much question, I'm afraid. I wish it were different, I really do. I have a daughter, and I'll probably have grandchildren some day, and I hate to think of the mess we're going to leave for them to live in. Even in my own life, I've seen so many changes that are detrimental to a healthy growing experience (both physical and emotional/mental) for children; and it's only likely to get worse. I would dearly love to go to my grave knowing that we'd managed to turn all this around, and my descendants will have a place where you can breathe the air more easily (look at the incidence of allergies, and how they've climbed in the last century because of the pollutants we've put into the atmosphere to eat away at our natural defenses -- which is what allergies really are, our natural defenses run amuck -- turning them against us; and that's only one tiny, almost minuscule part of the picture).

I'm sorry. I don't mean to beat this into the ground; but I worry when I see intelligent people who seemingly don't realize just how far down that road we've come, and that we've got to find a way to buy ourselves time until we find ways to survive outside of this planet -- because, unless we truly do adapt evolutionarily, about which I'm not as sanguine as some here, due to the decreasing time factor, this planet isn't likely to support us as a form of life for a whole lot longer; I doubt beyond well into the next century or two -- because, unless we stop debating the question and start actually doing something, I'm afraid our goose is very much cooked.

 

[Ryu Gaia]

Well, as far as global warming, it can only get so hot. I don't really see the planet being set on fire any time soon, that's not what anyone's told me. So, we lose some continental mass and have to put up more air conditioning systems. Humans learn the error of their ways, and most of them live. The end. Really, no matter what happens, if we're on the freight train of destruction everyone describes, we're doomed no matter what we do, unless we move off the Earth. The moon's looking pretty nice this time of year.

 

[j d worthington]

Hmmm. Building more air-conditioning. Now, that's a whole 'nother thread....

I suppose (to keep this brief) I'd just like to see us use a little sense and try to minimize the damage as much as possible, and keep the death-toll from being something astronomical in scope. Unlikely to happen, but at least these things are now within our power. If we can just get our heads out of our posteriors long enough to actually do some brainstorming on the issues.

 

[jof]

hey, i just came across this, and ill post in here what i said on another forum, so apologies if it has already been said.
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Firstly, Drawing on my GCSE geography...The world goes through bouts of cooling down and heating up, we are in one of those natural heating up cycles now, pollution has increased this drastically but chances are that the ice caps would melt anyway.

This next sections a bit hazy,on the rivers in London during the 17-1800's (?) there was a celebration called the 'frost fair' this was when the thames (?) froze over completley allowing stalls, dances and whatever else happens in an ye olde englishe fair to be present on top of the ice. Now by i would say it was 1850 latest (again very hazy it may of even been 1900's) the rivers melted and didnt freeze to the extent that they previously did. This made it dangerous to travel on the ice and so the frost fair was disbanded.

As far as i know there wasnt wide spread coal, oil and gas being burnt at this time showing the natural heating up period. Theoretically the Earth will got through a natural cooling cycle (the ice age was one of these i think) after it has gone up to its hottest. Pollution of course would drastically increase the chance of the Earth being, if you will 'destroyed' by us. I do however think that this is a minor possibility as renewable/flow resouces are used more and more often making the use of these fund resources such as coal and oil and gas (lots of and's) redundant.

there are however (without going into renewable resources) limits that wind power can be used i believe its 25% but again very hazy, after the exam i proceded to forget everything possible and focus on more important things such as lord of the rings and forums.

Sorry if the data is incorrect or not accurate.

 

[Dave]

Will mankind be successful in overcoming the challenges of Global Warming or will those that come after us face even bigger challenges?

To return to the orignal question, I think we love our modern world and it's technology too much to give it up. Unless we find some cleaner way to make the energy we need to run it, I can't see us giving up Fossil Fuels and so we will continue to produce Carbon Dioxide exponentially. Politically the decisions are too difficult to make. And vast areas of the world do not have, but want the same standards of living that are normal in the West.

So, Global Warming is set to escalate. We are very adaptable organisms and we will adapt to the higher tempertures and higher sea levels and more energetic weather, but we will also use technology to solve some of the problems.

Why not build 'Larry Niven- Ringworld' shadowsquares in orbit to collect energy via light cells and prevent it reaching the Earth?

As we begin to better model climate and weather, would it not be possible for us to control it via shadowsquares or other such mega-structures?

At some point Fossil Fuels will run out, and then we are going to have to find some other way to generate energy anyway.

 

[Briareus Delta]

"Never doubt that a group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

 

[jackokent]

"Never doubt that a group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

That's why we're in this mess

 

[Briareus Delta]

lol

 

[Whitestar]

After seeing Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", I was quite appalled at how we're treating our planet. However, according to Gore, he stated that we have ten years to clean up our act before we reach the point of no return, plus, he provides several tips on how to do that. Despite being a self-proclaim eternal optimist, even I have to admit that its too late, too late by far. I'm sure even Gore knows this to be true, even though he would never admit it in public because it would lower moral, hence, it would undermine everything he's trying to accomplish. I think the best course of measure is to do what we can to clean up our environemt as much as possible and also create a backup plan and prepare for the worse when the time comes. That way, we'll buy ourselves a little more time until the time is right to get off this used up planet.

Whitestar

 

[Saltheart]

Well, supposing global warming is true, it will rectify itself. Once are the coasts are flodded and the heatwaves are deadly enough to kill, many humans will die. When the population has severely declined, it will take quite some time for humans to populate the Earth, thus stopping humans from polluting so much and reducing their affect on global warming.

Either that, or people should start making the individual effort now, because one person can make a difference.