I am not a scientist, but I believe that:
a. We have the technology to continue our lifestyle founded on electricity and power, but without damaging the environment.
b. This technology is in sparse use, but will gradually spread and become more practical and affordable, even if it takes hundreds of years.
c. Our carbon emissions will, one day, be miniscule.
d. The earth is billions of years old. Humans have been damaging the ozone for just 200 years. I believe it can recover.

What do you think?

ok, i am a fourth year University student at the university of guelph with a degree in environmental science. I have backing for all statements, ask me for references.

a) the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles all the time for various reasons, the orbit fluctuates, the tilt fluctuates, and the conditions on the earth (volcano's and such) fluctuates. These things combined create ice ages and warm ages. That has been found in glacial records and lake sediments. So its natural for the temperature of the earth to fluctuate.

b) the human race currently is acting as a volcano (just slower) and emissions are high for carbon and methane (p.s. methane is 10 times stronger a greenhouse gas then carbon).

c) in the 60's and 70's scientists were warning the government that if they do not dramatically cut down on emissions within 20 years that we are screwed. its been more then 20 years and only now are we actually looking at implementing solutions.

d) there is no real way to sequester (capture) the carbon from the atmosphere unless we somehow did it in the oceans. I say real because deforestation will continue, peat mining will continue, and animals will always breath and fart.

e) the earth will survive. that is a guarantee, its just a matter of the human race being there or not. realistically even if we destroyed all life on earth, it will come back again. Look at the bacteria that created oxygen, this bacteria literally did kill everything else on the planet, but without it we would never be.

f) the whole question about global warming isn't whether or not its happening/ will happen, its if human induced it or not. that's what the debate it about and that question as far as i am concerned has no answer as of yet.

this is what i think from reading text book, scientific journals and government documents. argue it if you dare. lol

Every reputable scientist I know of has moved on from the phrase "global warming" to "climate change." And it is certainly possible to see the current climate change in context of those that have affected the planet in the past. However, that viewpoint is not going to be comforting to people whose houses are destroyed by hurricanes that are stronger, and reach further inland. Or to those whose farmland starts producing less, because the optimum growing temperature of the crops they've always produced is not met. Or... well, you get the idea.

The thing that pisses me off royally is people who don't understand the full effect of climate change cycles, and look at a big blizzard and then smirk and say, "Well, so much for global warming!"

We're killing our oceans. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting at unprecedented rates. We will have rising sea levels, enough to affect people living in coastal areas.

This is serious stuff. And I don't think the majority of humans are taking it nearly seriously enough.

you are entirely correct. People don't take it seriously. like how i mentioned in the 60 and 70 that's when the real scare started but nothing was done. still today barely anything is done. I mean do you really think that compact light bulbs and a few windmills is going to fix it? no, its not. Even solar panels are made from plastic and cannot last in our climates for more then 5 years but are so expensive they don't pay themselves off for more then 20 years.

However that being said, even if we do understand the affects completely (which we don't, honestly... we don't.) the only way to get people to do something about it is to over dramatize it and scare people into doing something. Al Gore's fucking movie is wrong on so many parts it makes me sick, but he got the point across that its happening and we have to do something about it before it is too late. So it was really a convenient truth but from the environmentalist perspective.

edit:

global warming to climate change - proven that its not actually warming all that much its just that the colds are colder and the warms are warmer so the dry parts are dryer and the wet parts are wetter. hence not global warming but climate change

I was going to reply here and then decided I have to say I don't really know enough to do so.
Nice to see your input,bloodstainedwings

I always thought it was strange that some people outright denied global warming.
My all time favorite being a person who said to me, There's no global warming, you're just getting older and more aware/sensitive of warm temperatures.

lol! oh my gods! Claudia, that's amazing! i don't think i have ever heard a more ignorant statement! i mean i know that scientist are never listened to, but that... that is just too much. Old people are awesome. their stupidity even amazes myself from time to time.

but thank you for posting and realizing that you may not know enough on the subject. nothing bothers me more then people who think they know everything. i know that i don't, but i also know that what i do know about is environmental science issues. I have family members who recently graduated and they think they know everything about everything because they graduated. He actually told me that i didn't know what i was talking about, without any facts to back that statement. I mean sometimes i may not know what i'm talking about and a debate is in order, but without facts a debate isn't a debate, its just an argument on opinions.

i know that this isnt the main point but i have to say what a load of rubbish resycling is (no pun intended).

how is the act of pulping bits of paper and melting down tin cans ment to help save the planit? it cant! simple as. think about it. a truck will go round collecting the items to be recycling, usually over a number of days, then the items are prossessed to be able to be made into something else.

its nonscence. ok recycling is good i will admit, but its not something that is going to save the planit. hell there have been news reports about the stuff turning up in skip yards! they just ended up throwing it away! as if it was normal rubbish!

re use, not recycling i better. finished with your chocolage tins from christmas? keep them! they are good for storing things in! your empty bottles, good for taking drinks out with. waist paper good for beding for small animals.


as for global warming, i think we give ourselfs too much credit. sure we may end up killing ourselfs, probably started this already with the amount of trash we use to kill other countries. however as far as killing a whole planit, na. the earth will live on long after we are gone. it will change and probably something else will live upon it. heck they may end up getting into the same situation as we are now.

take the death of the dinosours, is we were the ones alive then then it would look like the end of the world.. but the world continued and sdomething else rised to the top of the evolutionery chain.

i'll end on this. i belive in global worning and the end of OUR days, but i think that we give ourselfs too much credit in saying we are killing the planit.

I agree with you Juno, we're not killing the planet, we're killing the environment and the things that live -on- the planet.

I did see one history channel show about the planet's past temperatures and how they cycle high and low at different points, and the causes of some of them; Volcano's and shifting plates releasing gases from the ocean into the atmosphere. It was quite interesting, and I have to agree with bloodstainedwings that we are merely hastening the inevitable.

My only hope is that we can find a way to reverse the inevitable, or prevent it somehow, before that time comes. Though with how seriously we take it, best case scenario imo is that we merely slow down how quickly WE are making it come on.

actually the whole thing about recycling is that 90% of recycled products are thrown out. only 10% of the old product is used to make the new one.
the saying is reduce reuse then recycle. but people are terribly lazy and its easier to recycle and feel like your helping when your not.

Juno, you should read cradle to cradle. i think you would enjoy it. its about the design flaws and how things today are built to be thrown out not recycled. and if we built things to be recycled it can be done way more efficiently then it is right now because we have the technology to do so. and that whole book was designed to be recycled, 0 waste. its a fascinating novel.

and Veris, as far as my teaching in university have taught me. climate change is not reversible, it is inevitable. and that is the real inconvenient truth! take that Al Gore!

thank you, i shall try find a copy :)

as for reversability of climate change, no i have to agree that it can not be stopped. however i d think that we should be able to adapt. if we can devise methods to get into space, to the depths of the sea and to the harshest reaches of the earth then i think it was be a big embaresment on our part if we can not find some way to addapt to any changes.

Let's put it this way, if you have a better idea than oil, the oil companies will make you an accident.

Some are not, like animal extinction and plant i guess...but other things like the rainforest destruction are. in some cases, trees are planted specifically for lumber; this saves some of the other trees. the sooner we can find alternative fuels, the quicker we can stop CO2 emissions. Recycling is a really good idea too, and watching toxic waste in animal habitat. stuff that can go in landfills can also be used as a power source less harmful than CO2.

So, there are a decent amount of things we can do stop global warming as of now, but there isn't so much we can do that will actually reverse quite a few of effects.

Well, the earth does go through heating and cooling cycles. The reason why this is getting to a record High is only because we don't have a complete record. We might end up getting into another Ice Age after the temperature peaks.
I think that to an extent the effects of global warming are reversible, but it takes time, or if we wanted to play God as a race, it would take a great deal of effort and research to find a way to restore ozone to the ozone layer and to take methane and carbon dioxide out of the upper atmosphere.

We're already playing God though, or at least the big multi-national companies are. They don't respect our planet at all, and as others have said, we're an extremely lazy race, who are disinclined to do anything if it means making much effort.

Money/greed and laziness have put the planet in the peril that it's in today, best throw some politics in there too actually..
We've used fossil fuels for generations, despite the polution they cause, simply because they were there. If all the billions in cash that was wasted on things like Star Wars and other anti-terrorism things had been invested in sustainable energy research instead, we'd all have really cheap solar/wind/hydro-electric systems now, and probably decent alteratives to the combustion engine too, but no, governments like to spend people's taxes on ways to blow other countries up, not ways to make their own citizen's lives better/save the planet : /

Anyway..I'm unsure if it can be reversed now, maybe it can, but I feel things will get much worse before they start getting any better. Especially because poorer/less developed countries are still using things that have been illegal in the "west" for some time now because of greenhouse gas emmissions and so on. I heard that when McDonald's had to stop using CFC laden polysterene packaging in the 80s, they sent it all to Russia to use in the stores just opening over there >_>

Also there's those frozen peat bogs in Siberia, that currently absorb huge quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere, but are starting to thaw from the global temperature rise, and will release not only all that CO2, but monster amounts of methane into the atmosphere too..

Plus of course the methane from cow farts..

So, completely unrealistically, and generalising wildly, to fix the state the planet is in, I'd say we'd have to..

• All become vegetarian - because not only do cows produce massive amounts of methane, but thousands of miles of rain forest have been ripped out to make way for arable grazing for livestock. And it takes one hell of a lot more grain to feed a field of cows that's going to become beefburgers than it does to feed an entire African village for example. Also, livestock are a huge drain on water too. Poor South American farmers that are forced to raise beef for the US market use all their water on thirsty cattle and have none to water the crops that they're growing to feed their own family..
  And the plants that process meat use monster amounts of electricity, all pumped out by power stations that create pollution..
  
• Go back to transportation without engines. Pushbikes, sail boats and horse and carts FTW!
  
• Get rid of all forms of heavy industry that used vast amounts of power or has belching chimneys
  
• All become self sufficient again. Grow/raise your own food, dig your own well, gring your own corn..

Basically give up pretty much every "comfort" that modern man is used to, because it's all these comforts that have combined to create the problem in the first place, either by how they are produced and /or used.
Can you see many people wanting to do that? I'm deeply worried for the state of this planet, but even I baulk at the thought of the extent to which our lives would have to alter to have a real chance of preventing global meltdown.

I bet the Amish are laughing up their sleeves though, because how they live is really what we'd need to be doing, though without the religious side of things.

Well now, there's a nice wall of text for people to read xD

@ Jellysundae: I don't think we'd have a global meltdown, just that the earth would get flooded, and we would have "another great flood" on our hands. A sort of Noah story all over again.

That's pretty much what I'm talking about though. I say "global meltdown" but it's just a phrase to cover a massive change to the landscape that we're used to.

I'm unlikely to live to see too much change, but the general prediction is for a sea level rise of over a metre by 2100, which will pretty much drown Holland entirely, and a great deal of the world's heavily populated coastal areas will become floodplains, too dangerous to live in and completely valueless. Look at the people who live in New Orleans and can't get house insurance now..If sea levels rise, New Orleans goes back to being a swamp full time..

Millions of acres of farmland will become salt marsh and impossible to grow crops on any more, forcing people to move to higher, less fertile land hence driving the cost of food up. Millions of people will become destitute and homeless and all forced to move further inland, to cities that don't have any room for them.

Can you imagine having a beautiful mansion down in the Florida Keys for example, say a modest little 6 bed/5 bath pad in Key West with a value of $7,000,000 or so, and to be able to sit there in that beautiful home, and know that it wasn't worth a penny because it would be flooded every time there's a mild storm. That's the harsh reality of sea level rise for a lot of people. Much of people's wealth is wrapped up in bricks and mortar, and insured to the hilt. So when your insurance is denied and your home becomes worthless, that's many millions of people's lives ruined completely, right there.

It's a shallow and selfish thing to say, but I'm glad that I'm not going to be around when this happens, because it's going to be very nasty. It makes no different that we know well in advance either, as we've proved in the past, we're great at totally ignoring stuff like that.

Scientists knew about CFCs making a hole in the ozone layer back in the early 70s! But it wasn't until years later, after we'd been making it a whole lot worse with a decade worth of hairspray during the 80s, that things started getting done about it..