Discussions

Completely fake news. There is “facts” and research into both sides of this story. The unfortunate part about our liberal media is that we only get one side. I don’t think that climate change is caused by anything other then time. There were ice ages and droughts long before humans could have affected it. The problems we face right now are society based. Ideas pushed on us by people we don’t know and then these same people try to make us feel/look bad when we don’t get in line with their ideas. Sounds a whole lot like 70 years ago in Europe doesn’t it? Changing law to suit their o:bjectives. What comes next?

Nobody is suggesting shutting down "our whole economy." In fact, the most *radical* suggestions don't even suggest that. At most, suggestions are made that our energy systems and economy need to adapt to the existential crisis that is global climate change.  
 
Unfortunately, half measures are not good enough on this issue, and the generation before us kicked the can on climate change down the road and now we are stuck with it. If there was significant (or even marginal) steps taken while everyone was *talking about* saving the rain forest, or investing in renewable energy instead of just empty platitudes, we might not be in this position.  
 
Consider this though, Royal Dutch Shell rakes in more than $20b in net revenue, and pays their President more than $10M per year. They have money to burn. They have money to invest in renewables, and if they were pressured to actually do it 20 or 30 years ago, instead of being allowed to profit off of global destruction and lobby their way out of any accountability, we'd not be faced with such drastic necessity.

... who said anything about shutting down our whole economy?  
 
There is always going to be an “economy”! The choice is basing it on continual exponential growth or basing it on “enough”.  
 
There can be no doubt that exponentially using the resources of a finite system will lead to disaster. If you doubt that, I have no idea what you’re talking about and further, I don’t believe you do either.  
 
I never understood how otherwise intelligent folks, all of a sudden have doubts when the OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE is clear. It’s not even close!  
 
It is not as though there is one guy on one side and one on the other. It is one guy on the “denier” side and 99 on the “we’re in trouble” side.  
 
Comparing this to Europe of 70 years ago is asinine at best and deliberately provocative at worst.

I don't think that with all the pollution happening that there is no cost to the environment. We see that in air quality in certain places, and garbage waves in the ocean. What I don't believe is that blaming the every day person as being responsible. We have hundreds of companies that have high pollution rates. Carbon tax should have started there. I think if company wants to sell something it should be on them to make sure they are doing it sustainably and if they are selling a product, make sure the packaging is environmentally friendly. I am not saying that as an individual we shouldn't do everything that is within our power to help reduce our carbon footprint, but maybe we should start with the top polluters and work our way down.

For most of this world the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. We can recycle all we want, Go solar powered. Drive electric cars. Etc. Until we have a way to internally process our recycled goods it makes no sense in trying to save the world. Current solar panel costs are more than just using power. The return isn't there. And when they die there is no current recycle center for them. We ship all our recycle overseas. Seems pretty green putting it on an ocean liner burning hundreds of gallons of fuel. There is always a new name for something. We have had everything from acid rain, ozone depletion, el nino, global warming, now they call it what....climate change?

It makes no sense to “try and save the world” !? How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you say things like that?  
 
I hope you were being facetious since that notion is ridiculous. So is comparing acid rain, ozone depletion, and climate change with El Niño.

have pledged to not have children if things don't change. Well good, stop with the over population of this world. That's a start.  
 
I had read that scientists have stated that there are countries with worse climate conditions than we have and they are still alive and thriving. But hey, let Trudeau tax us to death to see if he can get re-elected!

Usually follows America, especially when it comes to stupid ideas like the Democrat Party's "Green New Deal". So lets see:  
 
The Democratic lefties want to immediately stop all oil and coal production. They want to ban all gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. They want to retrofit or replace every building in the US. They want to do away with agriculture. They want to eliminate millions of jobs, not just with the GND, but also with artificial intelligence. They want to put everyone on a "guaranteed annual income". This is going be prohibitively expensive, especially for a country that is already trillions of dollars in debt. Oh yeah, and the Democrats, the left, want to grab everybody's guns too.  
 
What will happen after they do it and it becomes obvious that it's not sustainable and not working? I think their crazy idea, if implemented, will lead to something like what happened in Europe 70 years ago, but this time, it will be for a good cause. Right???  
 
Seriously, the way a lot of them talk, that's where I'm afraid this fanatical environmentalism will end up.  
 
Edited by Triplethreat, 2019-09-27 21:14:06

Sometimes it feels like I’m sitting on the edge of a very large valley with steep sides, and as I look down I see the hoards of lemmings running down that valley toward their demise. The shortage of resources in the world, relative to population, has an interesting history. I am concerned about the impact of climate change, but we may run into other major problems, that are population induced, before the true impacts of climate change brings humanity to its knees.

You know, I've been thinking a lot lately of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.  
 
They've recently dug up core samples from the region they think the asteroid responsible for killing off the dinosaurs is. What they found is actually quite startling about how quickly the Earth would have been impacted, and the resulting die-off would have happened very, very quickly, within a generation or two at most, measured in months or years and not centuries or millenia as originally supposed.  
 
Dinosaurs were incredibly successful. They flourished for over 350,000,000 years, and our existence is only possibly because of their demise.  
 
I'm not worried about Earth. I'm not worried about life. I am, however, worried about us. Or am I? Can our technology save us?

At the rate we're going, we're all going to die choking on micro-plastics before climate change poses any real threat to our existence...

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it"  
 
Upton Sinclair  
 
Let's add pride, greed, laziness, and simple lack of skill or imagination to do better...  
 
Also, there's the issue that there are over 7.6 billion people on earth presently. 500 million around 1800.  
 
Half of all the fossil fuels burnt since the dawn of the industrial revolution burnt in the last 30 years. The first 270 years I can understand what we got, bridges, ships, infrastructure, man on the moon. The half burnt in the last 30 years is harder to accept.  
 
An entertainment flight to Mexico emits as much CO2 as driving an hour a day for 8 months...  
 
See attached a projection of precipitation in Canada for later this century. This was part of a federal government report that they tried to keep secret, but apparently someone thought the public should know. Take the dates with a grain of salt, the projection is very conservative. Where it says 2071, think more likely 2040, or 2050. That map spells the end of farming, and cities in the present agricultural region of western Canada.  
 
By the looks of it, the climate disaster will be even worse south of the border. This is what we are up against, and why it constitutes an emergency. A bigger emergency than a world war, I dare say. Think of Houston, getting a 4ft rain event, and just last week a 3 footer, coming down at 4 inches per hour. Sooner or later cities will be uninhabitable. The Bahamas just learned that, seeing a 21 foot storm surge with 350km sustained winds. Those people need a new home. Never mind what sea level rise will bring.  
 
These events are equivalent to random, ongoing nuclear attacks. Eventually it will exceed the ability to pay to rebuild. Tens of millions of climate refugees will result. We can't cope with that scale of disruption and burden. Never mind that no advanced civilization can exist without a healthy surplus of food.  
 
So that is the real basis for emergency action.

I imagine that trying to explain how things actually are to a climate-change denier on the Internet is probably not so different than Kepler or Galileo 500 or so years ago trying to explain that the Earth really does move around the Sun to some random guy they met in a tavern who was a staunch adherent of geocentrism.  
 
Whether you believe or don't believe, I don't think it matters anymore. The world is inexorably set on this course, and I don't imagine there are going to be any policy changes or scientific breakthroughs that will radically alter the way things are about to play out.  
 
Concern about the economy in relationship to the environment is kind of a funny thing. The economy is, ultimately, a human creation. We as a society are seemingly intent on abiding by our carefully crafted economic rules, but at the end of the day real worth is what people choose it to be, or living with others having chosen it for them. (mostly this latter one.)  
 
As most 21st century governments prop up the interests of the wealthy because the rules of our economy benefit them, the way the economy works is not likely to change. Our collective reluctance/cowardice/inability to adapt the economy to service humanity, and instead keeping on trying to adapt humanity to fit the existing economy is also a part of this problem.  
 
I don't understand, for the life of me, why people so willingly choose economy over humanity/environment. When humanity collapses all of our made up value for the things we created will vanish with us.

When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted: when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.  
 
Alanis Obomsawin

"An entertainment flight to Mexico emits as much CO2 as driving an hour a day for 8 months... "  
 
https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=4  
 
A flight from wpg to Ixtapa is approximately 0.28tonnes of C02e per passenger (lots of variables here).  
My 2013 Santa Fe 2ltr turbo 4WD would have to drive 1200kms to emit the same amount. 12 days at 100kms per hour.  
 
I agree with your position but I'm not sure where you got that 8 month figure from. 100km x 30 days x 8 months = 24000 kms. Seems like your the only one on the plane.

How many people believe the propaganda that the liberal backed main stream media pushes down our throats about the Climate Change Crisis backed by pseudoscience than real scientific fact. Our climate is a cyclical engine controlled by forces we can not control, not by the amount of C02 in the atmosphere. A gas that is one of the most important corner stones of life on this planet, without there would not be life. C02 levels were 6000 to 8000 ppm back when the dinosaurs roamed and life was thriving like the earth has not seen since. It is that reason we have the oil and gas we do today. Like every thing on this earth things are controlled by a cyclical engine. Our water evaporates, condenses and falls back to earth ( we've seen a lot of that lately.) our seasons cyclical, the air we breath cyclical and even the carbon we fear is cyclical, it helps create life, life life absorbs carbon for its lifetime. Life dies and decays releasing carbon back into the engine to start all over again. We are really full of our selves to think we can control something as strong as our climate. It would be like us trying to stop the earth from spinning. Pollution well that is another thing, that is something we have to worry about not just for our survival but for every living creature. It is there that we are failing

I think it's unfortunate that the main stream media/leftist governments are using that 16 year old Greta girl to indoctrinate the youth with the climate change agenda. I personally have a hard time listening to someone who's face is twisted with hate when they speak.  
 
But anyways, we should really start using hemp to make most things.

.....that there are folks who will spout drivel indicating the current crisis is a made up scenario fabricated by the political left. Go on to say things like “pseudoscience “ and “cyclical” in an effort to lend credibility to their statements.  
 
Really, on one hand to say the science is fake and then go on to try and use science to prove your point is ludicrous.  
 
It really isn’t that hard to understand. Pull trillions of tonnes of stored carbon out of the ground. Process it and release it back into the environment all while reducing the natural mechanism of control through monumental deforestation and environmental degradation and voila, an unnatural situation in a natural environment.  
 
“Nature”will survive. Humans may. Millions of species will not.  
 
There is no legitimate argument against trying to curb our effects on the environment. It is time to grow up. As a species, as a society and individually.  
 
It is time to shed the notion of perpetual economic “growth” as we define it now and at least make an effort to ensure future generations of our species can survive in relative comfort.

I loved George Carlin, and most of his little stories are factual beyond belief.  
Here is one on climate change.  
https://www.facebook.com/TheCJPearson/videos/2102821770024240/

Thank you for your intelligent words.

that Greta is being pushed by her parents.  
Maybe she could help out climate change and not fly all over the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/jul/19/carbon-calculator-how-taking-one-flight-emits-as-much-as-many-people-do-in-a-year  
 
If you scroll down in the article, a London to New York flight represents aprox 1,000 kg CO2 per passenger.  
 
I don't see how that Santa Fe is emitting equivalent CO2 over 1,200km unless burning a pile of tires in the back...

I would like to say that I shocked but at this point I am not. I am still saddened and have a hard time believing there are so many that are sofa king dumb. The people that use science words to try and disprove the science highlights how little they know about science. Idiots. If it was not the future of the human race it would be hilarious. The over 60 crowd will be the death of human kind.

Did anyone see the sound off in the paper yesterday? ‘Global warming is a non problem and people should gather the courage to do nothing as it’s all fear mongering’.  
 
What is the harm is making better choices for the environment?? At the minimum recycling/ composting as anyone can directly see the impact of landfills being overfilled.  
 
Extreme thinking in either way of any topic is not good. I don’t see the harm in making the planet a better place??

Good lord.  
 
Follow the news. Greta sailed across the Atlantic to speak in New York.  
 
It's really difficult to have an intelligent discussion when people are that far out of the loop. Is that a product of echo chambers and right wing talk radio?  
 
6 - 8,000ppm CO2 during the time of the dinosaurs? Again, it's hard to respect information like that. Also, as mentioned earlier, rather ironic to be slamming science, while posting on a forum only possible because of the stunning success of the scientific method. Never mind every other aspect of our existence.  
 
So it's more than a little rich to be A-ok with electronics, electricity, pharmaceuticals, chemistry etc in their vast applications, and then coincidentally deny overwhelming scientific consensus on the one aspect that would require change and sacrifice, reduction in corporate profits.  
 
The last time CO2 rose to current levels was at the end of the Permian. Apparently volcanoes emitted a huge amount of CO2. Next permafrost melted, etc, emissions ran away in a feedback loop. Roughly 97% of all life on earth went extinct.  
 
There's the basic science of where we are at.  
 
If one suspects he's driving on black ice, best to slow down. As said about pilots, there's old pilots, and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots. I think this applies to civilizations also.

Conservative parents haven't used their children to push conservative agendas? So is it OK for kids to have a conservative view, but not liberal? It's OK for Conservatives to use kids as pawns, not Liberals? Kids can't have an opinion on Earth's future? And if they do they are political pawns? And if they share conservative views they are not pawns? Should kids be forced into religion then?  
 
I've been seeing many Facebook posts from the older generations that hate being called out by kids, think it hurts the adult macho ego.  
 
I remember Gary Filmon coming to my high school to use it as a political stop. Some of my classmates being given prepared questions to ask him. He used us as political pawns.

We have differing opinions on young Greta and that's fine. I'm not saying that climate change isn't happening, it has happened countless times before. But there is definitely an agenda behind the climate change narrative that is being pushed. An agenda with sinister global intentions, in my opinion.  
 
There is no doubt that humans affect the Earth. But we need to approach how we treat the Earth logically. Using hemp to produce more is one way. Not having more money taken from us by the government and having millions of it given to other countries or corporations under the vague guise of "climate change".

divide is also based on political leanings. Conservatives believe humans have no impact on the environment, it's all natural. So why change and hurt the oil industry. Liberals believe that humans have an impact above and beyond the natural causes. And want to reduce the impact.  
 
Natural causes of course happen no matter what and we can't stop it or do anything about it. While the Earth itself doesn't care what happens on it, and will continue orbiting the Sun for another 5 billion years till the Sun becomes a red giant. But our impact can be dealt with, we know burning fossil fuels have a negative impact. The problem comes with the life on it. It can only tolerate so much atmospheric change in a period of time. If life can't deal with the rapid change by evolving to cope, it goes extinct. There's a reason why there's only a few species that have existed unchanged for millions of years, some have evolved, while others are extinct. It's basic biology.  
 
While many likely won't care about the distant future of species. We could be the first species on the planet to cause our own and other extinctions directly by our actions. While a super volcano or meteor impact could do the same, we have no control over those.