Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

[fred41]

Thank you Trish, I appreciate you taking the time to write such a thorough answer. My ex-wife used to subscribe to National History (...and Audubon, along with several others). I may have to subscribe again (though I wish Kindle offered it, in which case I'd simply switch to the "fire").

...and don't worry about the "diatribe'. You break it up well and keep it entertaining.

[muh_muh]

the tragedy there is that no matter how much the sea rises (within reason of course bar something as ridiculous and impossible as noah flood or several million years of continental drift) the alps bewteen me and the mediterranean are far too tall for this to ever become a shoreline

[trish]

Hi fred, you're welcome. I feel for you muh_muh. I'm guessing you won't be planting coconut trees in your backyard then.

[russtafa]

Are global warmists insane =very probably.This century's Ludites

[trish]

Thanks for not answering my questions and avoiding my remarks.

[Faldur]

the tragedy there is that no matter how much the sea rises (within reason of course bar something as ridiculous and impossible as noah flood or several million years of continental drift) the alps bewteen me and the mediterranean are far too tall for this to ever become a shoreline

El Nino, and El Nina have more to do with the sea elevations than global warming. Unless your saying man made climate change created the two.

[Stavros]

I think that if there is a simple answer to the original purpose of this thread, it is that we don't really know. Science tells us that planet Earth is dependent on the Sun and the fate of the Sun is doomed, even if this event is several billion years ahead of us, apparently even in the cosmos, nothing last forever. In the interim, a meteor, asteroid or some other object, if large and heavy enough, could in theory whack the earth, change our orbit, and wipe out the human species, much as it is now claimed that meteorite in Mexico 65 million years ago was a cause of the demise of the dinosaur.

I don't see any purpose in thinking in terms of billions of years, other than as part of our understanding of history and the sciences, but what climate change does, is to open a debate about the way we live and the impact that human society has upon the earth on which we depend for food, water and shelter. Although I am disappointed in the quality of the debate opposed to the science of climate changed and advanced global warming -mainly because it is not scientific but a mix of politics and personal prejudice- I find that the larger cause for concern is an apparent indifference to the impact we have on our environment, not so much glaciers in Switzerland or the Himalayas but the places where we live.

Call it Green Politics, Environmental Activism, and so on -these are not new issues. There was a Chinese scholar in I think the 10th or the 11th century who complained that the demand for paper was reducing the forests, and that this could not be good for China. Some of the most powerful environmental groups in the USA, the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society were formed in the 19th century. It may be that the end of the Cold War has removed one set of antagonisms, and that Green Politics, Multiculturalism and Immigration have become the issues guarnteed to stir a frenzy of vitriolic debate. But none of this is new, but it is as it always has been, important. Because this is where we live.

If we do value our locality, be it a city, town or village, conservation is a given. If conservation if a given, a value, something that both empowers individuals, while imposing obligations on them, standards of behaviour, it also requires monitoring. We are not free to steal from others, we should not be free to pollute. How that regime of law and responsibility operates must be part of what we would call good governance. I can understand the hostility to taxation, not in principle because the principle of paying the state to do something for the benefit of society as a whole is not a problem for me; but I agree, the uses to which taxes are put, and the agencies involved might require better management; but the principle is sound. But as I said before, whatever happens, we will pay for it.

But looking back over the exhanges in this thread, it might be more honest for some people on this board to say, quite simply, as far the environment is concerned, I don't care. Then we can close this discussion and move on.

[russtafa]

I think that if there is a simple answer to the original purpose of this thread, it is that we don't really know. Science tells us that planet Earth is dependent on the Sun and the fate of the Sun is doomed, even if this event is several billion years ahead of us, apparently even in the cosmos, nothing last forever. In the interim, a meteor, asteroid or some other object, if large and heavy enough, could in theory whack the earth, change our orbit, and wipe out the human species, much as it is now claimed that meteorite in Mexico 65 million years ago was a cause of the demise of the dinosaur.

I don't see any purpose in thinking in terms of billions of years, other than as part of our understanding of history and the sciences, but what climate change does, is to open a debate about the way we live and the impact that human society has upon the earth on which we depend for food, water and shelter. Although I am disappointed in the quality of the debate opposed to the science of climate changed and advanced global warming -mainly because it is not scientific but a mix of politics and personal prejudice- I find that the larger cause for concern is an apparent indifference to the impact we have on our environment, not so much glaciers in Switzerland or the Himalayas but the places where we live.

Call it Green Politics, Environmental Activism, and so on -these are not new issues. There was a Chinese scholar in I think the 10th or the 11th century who complained that the demand for paper was reducing the forests, and that this could not be good for China. Some of the most powerful environmental groups in the USA, the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society were formed in the 19th century. It may be that the end of the Cold War has removed one set of antagonisms, and that Green Politics, Multiculturalism and Immigration have become the issues guarnteed to stir a frenzy of vitriolic debate. But none of this is new, but it is as it always has been, important. Because this is where we live.

If we do value our locality, be it a city, town or village, conservation is a given. If conservation if a given, a value, something that both empowers individuals, while imposing obligations on them, standards of behaviour, it also requires monitoring. We are not free to steal from others, we should not be free to pollute. How that regime of law and responsibility operates must be part of what we would call good governance. I can understand the hostility to taxation, not in principle because the principle of paying the state to do something for the benefit of society as a whole is not a problem for me; but I agree, the uses to which taxes are put, and the agencies involved might require better management; but the principle is sound. But as I said before, whatever happens, we will pay for it.

But looking back over the exhanges in this thread, it might be more honest for some people on this board to say, quite simply, as far the environment is concerned, I don't care. Then we can close this discussion and move on.

i care ,you can't get more caring than garbage truck recycler .But to use the environment to exploit and lie to the citizens of your country for financial or political points seems so wrong and to teach children deliberate lies in school

[Yvonne183]

I don't care about high tides, I live in the mountains.

[trish]

El Nino, and El Nina have more to do with the sea elevations than global warming. Unless your saying man made climate change created the two.

Really?! You're going to explain a steady global rise in ocean levels over the last century or more by pointing to two relatively local cyclic phenomena with periods of about five years!! The only thing El Nino and El Nina might explain is a superposition of a small amplitude sine wave on top of the steady global increase making an step-like or oscillatory climb with the period of each step being roughly five years. Sorry but El Nino and El Nina are not the cause of the observed steady increase of sea level since 1880 and not the key element in the climate models that predict the increase will extend into the future if we do nothing to forestall the dumping of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere.

http://flood.firetree.net/


http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v...geo1327.html#/

and

http://www.nature.com/news/three-qua...an-made-1.9538