Earth Hour

[manticle]

Global warming is a scam and I marked Earth Hour with a celebration of human progress by turning all my lights on. Better than darkness, ignorance and repression.

Scam or not that's a bit like cooking a steak just because your next door neighbour is a vegetarian. Chalk it up.

 

[Duff]

Greenland has always been full of ice and Iceland is more green. Believe it or not it's true. Greenland has been used for geological studies because of it's ice content

CM2,

Greenland was called that because the Vikings/Dutch grew wheat and grapes there. Wasn't always ice.

 

[Dazza_devil]

"for our purposes ice age would refer to the last glacial maximum" boagsy (sorry my browser is giving me all sorts of grief with posting in this forum. you'll have to live with a little paraphrasing)

no. ice age would be what the experts refer to, and that's what we are in right now. why you would insist on using ice age to refer to something it's not when we both know what it means is beyond me. yes we are in an interglacial but it's still an ice age. we know this by looking at this sort of information. you will notice that in the last four interglacials the maximum temperature at least 3 degrees warmer and up to 4. this is without mankinds help. if the temperature goes up another 3 degrees from todays then that is to be EXPECTED. you maintain we will be ok given the past history of the ice but then baulk at a few more degrees that we have also repeatedly survived.

i know CO2 has an effect on the temperature of the planet. water vapour has an even larger effect. this fundamental of science allows us to be here at all. but compared to things like the planets albedo and solar activity, CO2s contribution is relatively small. and it's contribution does not increase with higher PPM in a linear line. i'm well aware of what carbon is and how it affects us. dropping carbon emissions is probably a good thing and i don't stand in the way of people who want to do that. but i will fight long and hard against people who think something has to be done and justify themselves forcing bad ideas onto people for the sake of doing something.

as for the storms and rising sea levels i asked you specifically to find something else. you didn't so i can assume then thats all your worried about.

firstly storms are not a likely threat. precipitation would be due to higher water vapour in atmosphere, however storms require a temperature gradient to propagate. if the polar regions become warmer they will become warmer more than the equatorial regions. if anything massive storms could become less likely.
rising sea levels can or would displace many people. of course there would be some friction as all the coastal population needs somewhere to live. but this will be a fairly lengthy process and no-one will just die from drowning in the ocean.

on the other hand three degrees cooler and you find millions dying of famine. with migration from polar regions in europe because it's just too cold. we can survive a glacial period but you have to realise that ice sheets reached to texas during the last glaciation. if you think rising sea levels will displace a lot of people then you should be able to understand how much more effect cold can have. yes we survived but we huddled in one continent. do you think fitting all of the human race into afrcia is a good plan?

i mentioned desertification first and said don't bother. deserts are not caused by heat. desertification damage done today is a result of sand moving. most non-sandy deserts can recover with enough rainfall. (something global warming could help with) but the sandy deserts like the sahara and gobi are blown around by the wind and destroy everything in it's path with no chance of rainfall fixing affected areas. given that both areas are ancient i doubt your going to blame them on us, or at least industrialisation.

mr boagsy i hope you don't really think i just read one article and ran with it do you? i have read the IPCC reports. they are full of the sort of information picking you blame me of. for instance how may climatologists are saying "don't worry it's actually colder than we expected it to be" or "warming the earth by 3 degrees will result in better crop yields helping with world feeding."
you don't see this because too many global warming proponents are not using science but scare tactics. when someone try's to scare you into submission they rarely have real authority on their side.

Re-read my post on ice age. For our terms(colloquially speaking) not the experts, an ice age would be a glacial maximum, we haven't been around 2.58 million years. Perhaps you misunderstood my point.

You can't predict the future or deny human impact is increasing can you? Scientist can't tell us how much hotter it's going to get so how are you gonna do it?
We could prematurely trigger the end of an ice age in an extreme way. We have evolved completely in an ice age which has continued for the last 2.58 million years, you reckon we'll be right if the change is suddenly put into an exponential rise because of increased human activity bringing it to a premature end?
I'm not using any tactics to scare peolpe, just putting forward the possibilty of it happening. Perhaps it's worth thinking about.
Can you safely say that if we continue the way that we are then we will have no serious impact on the climate? The facts are not there to prove it either way, you can't rule it out because we are having an effect and it is increasing.
As for the weather, it's been covered, extremes of weather kill people we all know that.
What's wrong with making the place a cleaner and safer place to live? Is that such a bad idea?
Science can't produce an accurate prediction, it's based on facts. We have no facts on the future. We only have assumptions based on trends with variables that are beyond our comprehension.

Edited to say this is beginning to interest me but I've got chores to do. I'll read up all your links, do some more research and attempt to give you my alternate swing on it later.

 

[boingk]

bum, I think he meant 'forcing' as in possible economic sanctions. However, you're right - its total BS.

Us refusing some economic sanctions that could help reduce any possible global warming is tantamount to the medieval Lords and Ladies dining on fine meats and wines and living in castles while the poor paid them taxes and starved. Most of the world is doing a hellava lot worse then us when it comes to living standards - I believe we're currently #2 in the world, behind Norway (b@astards...).

- boingk

 

[haysie]

big PP type posts here, when was this umm lights out thing? Did Crown/Star/West/ etc Casinos participate? Sure, we can all do samll things (to reduce our bill) yet whom sucks the most! Us or them.

 

[bum]

bum, I think he meant 'forcing' as in possible economic sanctions. However, you're right - its total BS.

Well, if that is indeed the case then I'll dial down the scorn of my post but the position is still incongruous at best.

 

[manticle]

big PP type posts here, when was this umm lights out thing? Did Crown/Star/West/ etc Casinos participate? Sure, we can all do samll things (to reduce our bill) yet whom sucks the most! Us or them.

Would be good if they did but I doubt it. Those gas burner eyesores out the front of crown would probably power the next four decades of AG brewing for me in just one week's usage.

 

[bum]

Would be good if they did but I doubt it. Those gas burner eyesores out the front of crown would probably power the next four decades of AG brewing for me in just one week's usgae.

For all of us, manticle. At opening, Crown stated those eyesores cost $1000 every time they let them off.

 

[geoffi]

CM2,

Greenland was called that because the Vikings/Dutch grew wheat and grapes there. Wasn't always ice.

I think you'll find that it has been mostly ice for a long, long time.

The period of Viking settlement coincided with a warm period which created a relatively hospitable southern coastal fringe.

 

[Steve]

FFS what is the world coming to (pun intended) when shite like this isnt in the off topic section!

 

[Pollux]

big PP type posts here, when was this umm lights out thing? Did Crown/Star/West/ etc Casinos participate? Sure, we can all do samll things (to reduce our bill) yet whom sucks the most! Us or them.

Star City tends to turn off the big neons and does a dinner by candlelight thing in the rooftop restaurant.....

Security concerns are the usual claim as to why they don't do much else.

 

[roo_dr]

:blink: Is our horrific over-population and extending desertification not the greatest threat to our existence?

The planet will recover and carry on long after we're gone and the monkey's are in control...

 

[bradsbrew]

So how much energy has been wasted on this thread???

 

[Dazza_devil]

Not as much energy as it takes to rape the planet

 

[haysie]

Star City tends to turn off the big neons and does a dinner by candlelight thing in the rooftop restaurant.....

Security concerns are the usual claim as to why they don't do much else.

Forget Oceans 11, AHB Goons!! Now there`s a reason for em to dip the lights!

 

[Bribie G]

CM2,

Greenland was called that because the Vikings/Dutch grew wheat and grapes there. Wasn't always ice.

The ice cap only covers 80% of the country.



In the Summer an area the size of Victoria is green and pleasant. I once dated a Danish lass who had been born and grew up in Nuuk (Capital) and she says it's almost like Scotland in the summer and they would go on school camping trips into the hills, BBQs etc (prolly no skinny dipping however )



Edit: not looking too hot at the moment, though



obviously suffering from that gobble warming today

 

[rimrunner]

:blink: Is our horrific over-population and extending desertification not the greatest threat to our existence?

The planet will recover and carry on long after we're gone and the monkey's are in control...

these scenarios are far more important to us than CO2. i'd also add epidemics and space borne dangers like meteorites.

i'm actually very scared on chinas part for their upcoming battle with the desert. what other natural disaster has been so overwhleming that china is seriously considering moving bejing.

you do know we are monkeys right? advanced perhaps but still monkeys.

 

[Dazza_devil]

I once dated a Danish lass who had been born and grew up in Nuuk (Capital)

You lucky bugga BribieG, I bet she was a real honey.

 

[tcraig20]

CM2,

Greenland was called that because the Vikings/Dutch grew wheat and grapes there. Wasn't always ice.

Actually, according to the sagas it was called "Greenland" because Erik the Red thought it would be a good idea for the place to have a 'fortunate name'. I could give you a quote, but unfortunately my copy of the saga is still packed away with most of my other books.

The climate was probably a little warmer than today, and certainly warmer than conditions in the little ice age which probably killed off the Scandinavian colonies, but it was by no means a verdant wonderland. However, it probably was warm enough to draw the Inuit back north - the Icelanders found evidence that they had been there in the past when they arrived (bits of old canoes, etc. from memory). At any rate, there has been some kind of permanent ice cover on Greenland for at least 800,000 years.

Mind you, 6000 odd years ago we had dugong and coral reefs in Sydney harbour...

 

[jyo]

You lucky bugga BribieG, I bet she was a real honey.

Can someone post a pic of lovely Danish Lass...I need something to break this thread up a bit...

Ok then: