Climate Change (fka man-made global warming)

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GORDON
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Climate Change (fka man-made global warming)

Post by GORDON »

Remember how it was an absolute certainty that the ozone hole was caused by pollution?

Ozone hole repairing faster than can be explained by elimination of CFC's.

Straight from NASA.

Now let's hear all about how global warming is caused by man.
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TheCatt
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Post by TheCatt »

Did you read the article?
It concludes that about half of the recent trend is due to CFC reductions.


I.e. Man is affecting the environment. Does this mean you are willing to concede that half the temperature changes are due to man's activities? i.e. That there is global warming?




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Post by GORDON »

Yes, I read the article, and the point I took from it was that there was more change than could be explained by CFC's, and the rest was a mystery. I believe "mystery" was even in the title of the article. Therefore anyone who sold you as fact that man alone can change the environment is absolutely brimming over the top with horseshit.

Glad you're back.
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Post by GORDON »

I believe "mystery" was even in the title of the article.
Oops, double checked... "puzzle," not "mystery."

And if you can prove the ozone hole somehow changed global temps, I'll listen. Last I heard it just let in more UV waves to the ice and peeps were concerned it could mutate the dna of... stuff that lives in Antarctica.

I don't think anyone ever thought the ozone hole was going to change the climate, there was just concern for people if it got bigger and caused skin cancer.

Calling Al Gore.
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Post by TheCatt »

I don't think the point has EVER been that man alone can change the environment. The point is man CAN change the environment.
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TPRJones
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Post by TPRJones »

Big deal. So can beavers, ants, grasses, and every other living thing that has ever existed.
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TheCatt
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Post by TheCatt »

--TPRJones wrote:Big deal. So can beavers, ants, grasses, and every other living thing that has ever existed.

Order of magnitude.




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Post by GORDON »

I just wish that in 100 years we could dig up and bitchslap all of the "we're destroying the planet!" idiots.

For that matter, I wish I could bitchslap all of the "Lake Erie will never support life again!" idiots from the 60's.

And the "we're entering new ice age!" idiots from the 80's.

Once... just once I'd like to see an idiot look back at his/her doom and gloom predictions and say, "You know, that was pretty dumb of me to say all that."

But like I've said before, in America in 1946 nobody would ever admit being against America's involvement in the war, even though plenty were.
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Vince
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Post by Vince »

My problem the the ozone stuff was always that we NEVER had a clue as to what was going on there. One time they were watching a 40,000 acre thinning patch over one of the poles and within a couple of days it just sort of filled up.

Plus the whole CFC thing was always an unproven theory. They couldn't even make CFC's react to ozone in a controlled lab environment.
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Post by TPRJones »

Plus, don't forget that there's evidence in the ice cores they've dug up in Antartica that there've been high levels of UV down there on and off since forever. I figure the dinosaurs must have been using CFCs way too much, it's the only possible explanation.
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Post by TPRJones »

--TheCatt wrote:
--TPRJones wrote:Big deal. So can beavers, ants, grasses, and every other living thing that has ever existed.

Order of magnitude.

I strongly disagree. Let's see, the blue algeas pretty much completely changed the atmosphere of the planet, the Sahara desert is believed to have been created by overpopulations of grazing animals, and I vaguely recall something about the rapid spread of hearty short-blade grasses being partially responsible for the extension of the dinosaurs.

The point is, ecologies change. It's what they do. The idea that ecologies stay in some sort of eternal balance is total bullshit. If that were true, we wouldn't be here, the dinasours would never have evolved, and the world would still be a lifeless chunk of rock. To think that humans are the key to all climatelogical changes without any evidence is simple egoism.




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Post by TheCatt »

Next time I want remember what it's like to be stoned stupid, I'll just revisit this thread and the last few posts.



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Post by GORDON »

Next time I want to see the religion of enviromentalism, I'll do the same.
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Post by TPRJones »

I find it ironic that there's such a similarity in how the right-wing hard-core Christians view the environment and how the left-wing treehuggers view the environment. Both think that ecologies never change and evolve. The Christians think it was all created a few thousand years ago exactly as it is now, and will be so until the end of times. The treehuggers ... well, I'm not sure where they get the idea that ecologies should be expected to remain stable, since they are supposed to believe in science and everything in science defies that concept.

I guess the Christians are actually more logical, they just have wacky premises.
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Post by GORDON »

Environmentalism as Religion

I know that because it is Chricton it will be dismissed out of hand, but whatever.

So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven't read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don't report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn.

I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. I can tell you that a blue-ribbon panel in Science magazine concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt the rise of carbon dioxide in the 21st century. Not wind, not solar, not even nuclear. The panel concluded a totally new technology-like nuclear fusion-was necessary, otherwise nothing could be done and in the meantime all efforts would be a waste of time. They said that when the UN IPCC reports stated alternative technologies existed that could control greenhouse gases, the UN was wrong.

I can, with a lot of time, give you the factual basis for these views, and I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigious science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won't impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependent on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.

...

Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible.

...

The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge.



I would like to see his sources, though. I'm too lazy to look or them myself. I want them handed to me.
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Selby
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Post by Selby »

I don't know... whenever my grandmother lit up I got sick as a dog around her and had trouble breathing. So whether second-hand smoke is harmful or not being a scientific fact or not doesn't matter to me, I just know how I feel about the stuff.
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Post by Vince »

I would like to see his sources, though. I'm too lazy to look or them myself. I want them handed to me.
Chricton is an MD. He never practiced medicine because his first novel, The Andromeda Strain was bought for publication in his last year of college. He finished his degree and became an author instead.

Which is what he wanted to do when he first went to college. The a lit teacher in his freshman year told his class that only one out of every 10,000 hopeful authors ever get a book published. So he decided to become a doctor instead.
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Post by Leisher »

I know his sources on the second hand smoke: the World Health Organization. They did a huge report on second hand smoke and couldn't find a single death attributed to second hand smoke. Those commercials that talk about 50,000 a year die from second hand smoke get their info from...(drum roll) this very same WHO report. It's called massaging the numbers. If a smoker has a heart attack, they (the people behind the commercials) claim he/she died of second hand smoke.

It IS smoke, and as such, HAS to be harmful in some way, they just haven't found that link.

So if someone is getting sick from being exposed to second hand smoke, it's most likely because they're allergic to something in it or it's a mental thing.
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Post by Malcolm »

Animals & plants can't set off nukes. We could absolutely fuck over this planet if we wanted & make it uninhabitable for the next few hundred thousand years at a minimum. & we could do it in a matter of months or years.



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Post by GORDON »

Animals & plants can't set off nukes. We could absolutely fuck over this planet if we wanted & make it uninhabitable for the next few hundred thousand years at a minimum. & we could do it in a matter of months or years.
Eh. That's an extreme case. If we wanted we could probably divert an asteroid to smash into the planet, too.

And besides, in those scenarios it isn't the planet that's going to die, it's humans. The planet will go on just fine.

Besides, there's a non-permanent nuclear reaction over my head right now, speaking of 'nature can't set off nukes.'
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