Acer;1731276; said:
So if you can't orchestrate the actions of billions of people, you might as well give up and not make a personal attempt at responsibility? Even if your actions do not have an impact, it is far better than apathy, which is the most despicable mentality for any issue. If I'm on a sinking ship, I'm going to be bailing to the end and fighting the whole way down, not arguing why doing nothing is the best option.
Climate change is global, but I care about what my country is doing first, because that is where I live and have some say.
India and China are 'doing it' because now it is their turn to live the "great North American lifestyle". People act shocked or disgusted that everyone in India or China wants a car or is polluting like mad with their booming population... well, we were there in the industrial revolution and are still going that route. We have the right to tell developing nations not to follow our path to prosperity?
Climate change is a fact; it is going on. I'm not talking about Al Gore/right-wing politicizing B.S., I mean peer-reviewed scientific journals that support the evidence.
Whether or not it is a result of anthropomorphic activities or not is negligible - does it really change anything? I don't see why people take this "left vs. right" approach to any environmental issues, it makes no sense. Science should be void of politics and religion.
Science should be void of politics and
religion? i disagree, i think god plays an enormous part in science.
There is little to no objective evidence that man is the cause of global warming, nor that the effects will be catastrophic.
Global warming “facts” are notoriously hard to come by. One of the few facts universally agreed upon is that the current average temperature of Earth is indeed rising at this time. According to most estimates, this increase in temperature amounts to about 0.4-0.8 °C (0.72-1.44 °F) over the last 100 years. Data regarding times before that is not only highly theoretical, but very difficult to obtain with any accuracy. The very methods used to obtain historical temperature records are controversial, even between the most ardent supporters of human-caused climate change. The facts leading one to believe that humans are not responsible for the current change in temperature are as follows:
· Global temperature changes from past millennia, according to available data, were often severe and rapid, long before man supposedly had any impact at all. That is, the current climate change is not as unusual as some alarmists would like to believe.
· Recent recorded history mentions times of noticeable global warming and cooling, long before man had any ability to produce industrial emissions.
· Water vapor, not CO2, is the most influential greenhouse gas. It is difficult to determine what effect, if any, mankind has on worldwide water vapor levels.
· Given the small percentage of human-produced CO2, as compared to other greenhouse gases, human impact on global temperature may be as little as 1%.
· Global temperatures are known to be influenced by other, non-human-controlled factors, such as sunspot activity, orbital movement, volcanic activity, solar system effects, and so forth. CO2 emission is not the only plausible explanation for global warming.
· Ice-age temperature studies, although rough, frequently show temperatures changing before CO2 levels, not after. This calls into question the relationship between warming and carbon dioxide; in some cases, the data could easily be interpreted to indicate that warming caused an increase in carbon dioxide, rather than the reverse!
· Computer simulations used to “predict” or “demonstrate” global warming require the assumption of human causation, and even then are not typically repeatable or reliable. Current computer weather simulations are neither predictive nor repeatable.
· Most of the global temperature increase of the last 100 years occurred before most of the man-made CO2 was produced.
· In the 1970’s, global temperatures had actually been dropping since 1945, and a “global cooling” concern became prominent, despite what is now dismissed as a lack of scientific support.
· The “consensus” claimed by most global warming theorists is not scientific proof, it is a statement of majority opinion; scientific majorities have been wrongly influenced by politics and other factors in the past. Such agreement is not to be taken lightly, but it is not the same thing as hard proof.
· This “consensus”, as with many other scientific theories, can be partially explained by growing hostility to those with differing viewpoints, making it less likely that a person without preconceived notions would take on the subject for research. The financial and political ramifications of the global warming debate are too serious to be ignored, though they should not be central to any discussion.
· The data being used to support anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming is typically based on small data sets, single samples, or measurements taken in completely different regions. This creates an uncertainty in the results that rarely gets the attention that alarmist conclusions do.
While the above list is not exhaustive, it does include several of the major points that raise doubts about mankind’s actual effect on global temperatures. While no one can deny that warming is occurring, “overwhelming evidence” of any objective type does not exist to support the idea that global warming is significantly influenced by human actions. There is plenty of vague, short-sighted, and misunderstood data that can be seen as proving “anthropogenic” global warming theory. All too often, data used to blame humans for global warming is far less reliable than data used for other areas of study. It is a valid point of contention that the data used in these studies is frequently flawed, easily misinterpreted, and subject to preconception.
It is still important that we should focus on finding alterative methods and energy sources that are cheap and easy to mass produce. Its apparent to most of us that gas prices may never go down but instead will continue to keep rising.
