Thread: Global Warming

For those of you doubting that climate change is occurring or that it is man-made, the Royal Society has alot of resources available to you. I suggest this resource as it is a pre-eminent independent scientific body, and as such, it is also rather boring and non-sensationalist. The Royal Society was created in 1660 and boasts fellows such as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, Watts, Banks, Farady, Rutherford, Oppenheimer and also contemporary scientists such as Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins.
The Royal Society - the UK's national academy of science

The upshot is, however, that the science will never be perfect, as the concept is predictive in nature and the calls are for preventative action.

Therefore if we take action, we will never have evidence because global warming would not have occurred (at least to the extent imagined).

So how should we make our decisions?

Originally Posted by Latherty

So how should we make our decisions?

Stop focusing on the warming and who caused it.

What's the damage? How soon? and most important, if these things are not dire or a crisis, why should we care about it?

Originally Posted by kmiller1610

Stop focusing on the warming and who caused it.

What's the damage? How soon? and most important, if these things are not dire or a crisis, why should we care about it?

The UK's Stern report was pretty detailed about this....
Stern Review Index page

Long long long laborious read if you really want it, but in summary it comes to the conclusion that on a risked and discounted valuation basis, it is economically rationale to undertake measures to stabilise carbon dioxide emmissions.

I don't think its an issue of whether or not its a "crisis", more an evaluation of the relative costs of future adaptation v current prevention....

Originally Posted by Latherty

For those of you doubting that climate change is occurring or that it is man-made, the Royal Society has alot of resources available to you. I suggest this resource as it is a pre-eminent independent scientific body, and as such, it is also rather boring and non-sensationalist. The Royal Society was created in 1660 and boasts fellows such as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, Watts, Banks, Farady, Rutherford, Oppenheimer and also contemporary scientists such as Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins.
The Royal Society - the UK's national academy of science

The upshot is, however, that the science will never be perfect, as the concept is predictive in nature and the calls are for preventative action.

Therefore if we take action, we will never have evidence because global warming would not have occurred (at least to the extent imagined).

So how should we make our decisions?

Well I looked at your link and I learned a couple of things. First the UK NAS is also a political organization, they say so in their mission statement. I could not find the articles on climate change but I did find a discussion on carbon tax credits. Virtually no one responded to the main point and virtually everyone said that global warming was not happening.

Could you link directly to one of the articles rather than the home page?

Originally Posted by kmiller1610

Stop focusing on the warming and who caused it.

What's the damage? How soon? and most important, if these things are not dire or a crisis, why should we care about it?

We should anyway because there are more immediate impacts of fossil fuels than just global warming. Such as acid rain, smog and other crap like that.

When did acid rain or smog resurface as issues? They went away as soon as the lefties could no longer blame them on Reagan, just like the homeless bogusness.

and if we do destroy our economies to prevent a global warming our economies aren't contributing to, and global warming doesn't occur because what may have been causing it just happened to also ease up at the same time as we commenced our economic hari-kari, when will we be able to know we can put the Wakazashi away and stitch our economic guts back together?

Then again, if we actually take the time to do the science, we can figure out what's already fairly evident, that human activity is not causing the observed slight warming.

Also, before we rip our guts out, shouldn't we at least stop to consider if global warming is actually a problem? Fine, it stops the Gulf Stream. Doesn't seem like anything to get Americans excited about, so no point in us wasting our money on fixing it.

What are the Europeans going to pay us to curb our CO2 emisions, if the science shows that CO2 is the actual culprit?

The world wants the U.S. to pay for using relatively more carbon than the rest of them.

Then the U.S. pays north korea to stop it's nuclear program.

And presently Iran just might be in the process of blackmailing the U.S. regarding it's own nuclear program. (Well, that or they really want to blow people up.)

Let's be more like North Korea. As someone said they should pay us to stop using CO2.

Originally Posted by kmiller1610

...if these things are not dire or a crisis, why should we care about it?

Why not make a change for the better if its possible? The people who play off change because they don't see immediate results are usually the ones that don't go very far in life.

The use of corn for production of ethanol has increased the demand for corn. 20% of corn grown in the uS now is used to make ethanol. That is a sugnificant amount. Farmers are growing record amounts of corn but cannot meet the demand. Because of this prices have gone up. Dairy and beef producers feed their cows corn. This increase in corn value has impacted the meat and dairy industries.
"...The trend is bruising some livestock farmers. Dairy farmer Mike Aardema, who milks 4,000 cows near Burley, Idaho, says the corn rally is increasing his livestock feed costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He usually spends about $6 million annually on rations.
"I don't like this ethanol boom," says Mr. Aardema, who worries that he might have to cut production if corn prices continue to climb. A dairy cow must eat roughly 10 pounds of corn daily in order to produce milk. In the ranching industry, it takes six pounds of corn to produce one pound of beef..."

Have you noticed the cost of milk lately? I think I am paying about 30 % more than I did a few years ago. And beef? I am shocked by the cost these past couple of years.
What is bothersome to me is that we must pay extra taxes to subsidize the ethanol industry. Then because ethanol is using 20% of the corn produced, we must pay much much more for meat and dairy. We are paying and paying for ethanol, but at the pump it looks resonable. It is very expensive indeed!


Corn Is Booming as Ethanol Heats Up - WSJ.com