I sure would like to "call out" all the sifters who said global warming was a conspiracy theory.

it's cold as fuck today - i'm calling it bullshit
edit: weird css. feels like i'm inside a giant square onion or something

asterisk quality

Not too sure about humans causing (the current) global warming, myself. Nevertheless, it's certainly a possibility.

>> ^rasch187:
Not too sure about humans causing (the current) global warming, myself. Nevertheless, it's certainly a possibility.


Well, the Science is in, and they say we are. So it's up to you to decide whether or not you want to believe what 98% of the planets top climate scientists are saying.

Sitting on the fence will just keep this conversation going.

Astronomers say the entire solar system is heating up:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton.html
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-05-04-jupiter-jr-spot_x.htm?POE=TECISVA
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warming_021009.html

Solar physicists say that the current lack of sunspot activity may predict abrupt global cooling:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html
"solar scientist, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is certain that it’s an indication of a coming cooling period."

Government studies say it's man made.
Conspiracy theorists say it's all a hoax.
Alex Jones (quite rightly) points out that CO2 feeds the trees.
Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal in London doesn't believe that humans will survive past the end of the century.


My thoughts -
Humans are killing the planet by our servitude to the unsustainable system of development we have created, and that is now our master. And how we *love* our servitude to it, and how it rewards us with shiny *things*.

The mess we are in now was completely predicted in the 1950s. Huxley and many others warned of it.

I believe the situation will have to get worse before the message of "doing something about it" will be potent enough to act as a catalyst for real change, real sacrifice, and a real return to the archaic.

This is how it has always been. Christianity would not have brought the Roman empire to its knees had the empire not been so brutal and destructive. The worse the situation, the more potent the spark of hope when it appears over the horizon.

"I sure would like to "call out" all the sifters who said global warming was a conspiracy theory."

Not a conspiracy-A piracy of the collective attention. A diversion. A way to take the eyes of the world from where it could naturally be, were it not so unnaturally assaulted with trivia, infotainment, and other deleterious, mind-robbing, distraction.

Believe the buzz if you will.....there bees a higher path-Al Gore is a charlatan, and Mr. Sun, the great liberator.....

"The science is in"....to consumers of spin-The science is infinitely malleable and hardly able to be scrutinized with verification one can trust according to one's ability to think critically, copious amounts of marijuana and over-exposure to ELF, VLF from one's monitor burning 24/7-"Believe it!! It must be true if I found it on the internet and see it enough on TV, and all my cadre of familiars whom I discuss it with can agree....huh?"

This is what I don't get. At first it was Global Warming, now it's turned into Global Climate Change. That way it's easier to deal with when scientists start to see cooling trends amongst the data collected. The way I see it, this planet has been supporting life for oh several billion years now. To assume that it will suddenly, with the last couple hundred years of limited weather data come to a cataclysmic end seems rather dramatic for something that's been several millenniums in the making.

I think the earth goes in cycles, in the 1980's it was a second Ice age, in the 90's it became Global Warming, now it's placated itself in the 00's to Global Climate change. I don't know I think I'll wait it out a couple more decades and see what happens when it changes to Global Climate Steadiness.

To each their own I guess, its very easy to ignore if you wish, but the only scientists who are denying climate change are those who are being paid by those who profit from reaping the planet of the resources.

The pollution we put in the water is killing reefs, life and changing the currents of the ocean.

The pollution we put in the air is changing the environment and melting glaciers that have been around for longer then us.

Extreme weather has always been around, its just now we have proof that what we are doing is helping create more extreme weather. Katrina for example would not have been as powerful if the ocean hadn't warmed up in the past few decades. Warmner equals more evaporation etc... I'm not a science teacher or anything but the facts are very easy for any educated human to read.

Sure.. It could be a big scam or ploy brewed up by the world leaders and conspired on by global scientists...But at the rate we are going at we'll have no clean lakes, no tropical rainforest's and no coral reefs during my lifetime oh, and a garbage dump in the pacific ocean the size of texas.

I've always said, who cares about the Global Warming/climate change debate its more about doing whats best to keep this planet (and its citizens) healthy.

If a simple change to Clean energy will clean the air. Why not?
If a simple change to making corporations responsible for their pollution will clean the oceans and save the reefs. Why Not?
If a simple change to our diet will save the tropical rainforest. Why not?

or are we a point of no return, where we best spend the rest of our days fighting for power of the remaining natural resources and consuming them as fast as possible...because at the rate we are going at today, we're pretty fucked.

Global Warming can be argued, easily argued especially by people who know nothing about science (like myself) but I grew up in Ontario, and in the last 10 years we have been introduced to "Smog" its an unpleasant haze that hangs above the city making it near impossible to breath on a hot summer day. If we can fix that by simply changing our auto motors to emit no pollution? Why Not?

It has has been pointed out ad infinitum, there are certain parts of the ball that are more toxic to humans, etc. than others-cyclical is the key, and our part in all of it is as it should be-a minor fucking role-the planet can take care of herself.....we need to take care of the money-changers-Those behind the veil that cause the bulk of the bitches listed above to reach chaotic proportions, as they try to control the bitch called K A O S......and all the monkeys that continue to play their game.

-Like Carlin said, "Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that."

-There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

All for alternative forms of energy being unlocked for all to avail themselves of.....Like I said, kill the motherfuckers that hold the keys-it's already here, man.....

I posted it the last time this came up in sift talk and its still relevant. So, here is the copy paste to save me the re-write:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html

"Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

I think the ultimate point of this article is that the scientific debate is not over. Conclusions have been reached that are not supported by data being collected over the past few years. This includes not only the general hold on rising temperatures, but the record increase in sea ice levels in Antarctica. My favorite part is the end:

"Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a religion of gloomy faith. (Faith, ungrounded certainty, is no virtue.)

"Fighting" climate change makes you *feel* good because you're taking action with good intentions. Working towards cleaner industry and a generally more environmentally friendly society is a great goal. Throwing trillions of dollars at something that scientists do not even agree is a real problem is just a poor idea. Costs are fine, if you can prove you are actually going to fix something. Don't forget that regulation is a business. Apply the same skepticism to handing them trillions of dollars that you do to anything else. It's almost become fashionable to be environmentally conscious today with the government regulating us damn near into oblivion. You can't drill for oil here, you can't build power plants here, you have protected habitats springing up all the time, initiatives to change all light bulbs to the mercury filled energy savers are in place, and the list goes on. Basically, the planet's weather and climate systems are incredibly complex, and the data/support from the scientific community is just falling away from global warming. What I think will be even funnier is when we reach the point where the doomsday prediction deadlines have faded into history, there will still be people preaching environmental doom just over the horizon, and the failed predictions will be explained as being narrowly avoided by whatever feel-good eviro fad we're currently into. Of course by then we'll most likely be fearing death by another ice age if the historic trends keep up.

Here is a final bit for you from the Royal Society's talk on the future of science and the distaste for global warming junk science.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Future-of-science-talk-at-the-Royal-Society
(1 minute mark)