Healthy economy equals quiet bulletin board

[Shapley]

Darn! And I just signed up as the exclusive distributor for swimming pools in the Antarctic region.

I hope I can still get my money back.....

[barfle]

Barf,

Can you give me some scenarios on the loss of human life? That is a long stretch at this point.

More hurricanes, avalanches from melting permafrost, mosquitos spreading diseases, stuff like that.

[barfle]

Barfle,

I don't deny that global warming is upon us, although to what extent and from what causes I cannot say. I don't know if it's a long term effect brought about by the production of greenhouse gases, or a simply the natural cycle following a period of global cooling. I don't deny that people will be affected by it, some positively, some negatively.

While I've never been a defender of the status quo simply because it's what we're used to, I can't help but believe that a climate change like we've been led to expect won't cause drastic upheavals in the lives of many people.

I believe I've noted here that winter is my least favorite season. Being cold is an experience I have had more than enough of, and that was true when I was ten, so I've had my fill of it. So when I first heard of the phenomenon, my reaction was that it was a good thing. But that was 1)selfish, and 2) short sighted. I hear of permafrost melting, and structures that were "anchored" in it slumping or collapsing. I hear of animals losing their grazing grounds, because the plants no longer grow where they used to. I hear of glaciers receding and disappearing. While these aren't disasters on the level of the Christmas tsunami, they are still indications that major changes will be upon us, and those who are incapable of adapting are going to lose big time. And even those of us who can adapt won't do so at zero cost.

I'm not afraid of global warming, since I'm probably old enough that I won't survive to see just what its effects will be, but I am concerned that it's going to affect economies in ways that will make some of them collapse.

[BigJon@Work]

If the climate changes we are observing are a result of 100% natural cycles, we would have to adapt and survive anyhow. In my opinion, the effects are almost 100% natural, therefore the best course of action is to put our money into adaption plans, not prevention plans. It's going to be cheaper in the long run.

The natural world has survived these (even wider) swings without our intervention before. Why would this be any different? Some nature will win, some will lose, but that is nature.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

There's also a school of thought that the warming trend is going to melt enough of the arctic ice to dilute the top layer of the ocean. This, in turn, will cause the arctic cold water sinking to cease. The end affect of this will be to shut off the deep ocean currents, kill the warm northward surface currents, and trigger another major ice age.

I'm buying a sun hat, and wooly underwear, just in case.

[BigJon@Work]

There are so many poorly understood feedback loops in the system that most of the computer modeling is laughably unstable. The butterfly's wing beats can crash many of them. And the way some of these reserachers harden the model against these perturbances is by programing in their preconceived notions of how the climate should go. Sad.

[barfle]

If the climate changes we are observing are a result of 100% natural cycles, we would have to adapt and survive anyhow. In my opinion, the effects are almost 100% natural, therefore the best course of action is to put our money into adaption plans, not prevention plans. It's going to be cheaper in the long run.

The natural world has survived these (even wider) swings without our intervention before. Why would this be any different? Some nature will win, some will lose, but that is nature.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to say what effect human activity is having on global warmng. I have the opinion that its significant but not major, but that's just from what I've been able to read, and even the authors aren't all that certain. So it's a WAG, not even a SWAG.

But we do know that we're burning a LOT of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide levels are rising both in the atmosphere and in the oceans, and there are organisms like reef corals that are dying off at a rate not witnessed before. Is there a cause/effect relationship? Seems like there could be, but that's not reason enough to outlaw the burning of coal, petroleum, and natural gas, all of which produce carbon dioxide from non-renewable resources.

I believe there are plenty of reasons to change to renewable energy sources, or at least those whose ashes can be reabsorbed through renewable (that's spelled s-o-l-a-r) energy. Whoever comes up with a cheaper, cleaner automobile fuel will make Bill Gates look like a pauper.

[OperaTenor]

In my opinion, the effects are almost 100% natural,...

Does that go for that big hole in the ozone layer?

[BigJon@Work]

We are fighting Physics and Economics here Barf. The sciences show that fossil fuels are still the most economical by a long stretch even when you count in possible remediation. The miracle car you desire just doesn't exist. We are nibbling around the edges of some seemingly amazing energy breakthroughs, but we are not close to a practical application yet. And some of the hurdles are emotional and political when you speak of using nuclear or using genetically modified organisms to make fuel.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It never was, never will be. Keep saying that over and over when you read about global warming. If the article you are reading calls it a pollutant, you know you are dealing with someone who has an agenda instead of science to back him up.

The arguments that still hold scientific and economic water:
-We should reduce our dependence on dirty fossil fuels because they do release real pollutants that are detrimental to everyone. Then we can make rational decisions about the value of reduced pollution to increased costs. You may safely ignore the precautionary principle folks in this argument.
-We need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels sourced from tinpot dictators who don't have our country's best interests at heart and cost us significantly in military spending and the lives of our soldiers.

I can get behind either of these as long as the costs are discussed openly and the national consensus is the costs are worth the benefits..

[BigJon@Work]

In my opinion, the effects are almost 100% natural,...

Does that go for that big hole in the ozone layer?

<confused> Dunno what that has to do with the current conversation. </confused> Did you read recently that the hole is shrinking?

[analog]

Barfle,

I don't know if it's a long term effect brought about by the production of greenhouse gases, or a simply the natural cycle following a period of global cooling.

As the eternal optimist I say:
"Global warming - just in the nick of time!"


(On this graph, Time flows right to left - ie now is at the origin)

It pretty well lays right over the CO2 graph. We'll probably avoid the ice age that's about due.

Call me Pangloss.....

source: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/vosto ... pplot5.gif

[shostakovich]

From Shap:

"You're wrong. Bush proposed cutting the national deficit, not the debt. The deficit peaked at about $400 billion in 2004, and has been dropping since. The debt is increasing, but we've had discussions on this before, and I still say it's not a big deal. Prof. Walter Williams agrees me, or me with him, whichever. I do believe he said it first."


You may be right about Bush's promise not being about the debt. But doesn't the deficit need to be made up by borrowing, thus adding to the debt? So the debt keeps increasing, the interest on it keeps increasing, and we keep getting worse off. Prof Shos believes it is a big deal, and future generations will think so, too.
Citizen Shos of Deadbeat USA.

[Shapley]

Shos,

My point, which I think I've already expressed sufficiently on another thread, is that debt isn't a problem as long as we have the assets to cover it.

Right now, I owe considerably more money than I owed ten years ago. yet my financial situation is much better now than it was ten years ago. My debt/asset ratio has improved, even though the debt is probably four times what it was then (new house, new (to us) automobiles, business), but assets are more than sufficient to cover that debt. Our government works the same way.

Barfle,

Yes, economies will rise and fall, but this will happen regardless of the climate. People, their governments, and their economies, will have to adapt to the changes of climate, just as they have had to adapt to other changes throughout the centuries. The Inuit may lose the ability to live on the ice, and will have to adapt, like their Polynesian cousins, to the climate they will find themselves in. Those Aleutian Islands that survive the rising oceans will be tropical paradises, an Aleutian Tahiti if you will.

V/R
Shapley

[barfle]

We are fighting Physics and Economics here Barf. The sciences show that fossil fuels are still the most economical by a long stretch even when you count in possible remediation. The miracle car you desire just doesn't exist. We are nibbling around the edges of some seemingly amazing energy breakthroughs, but we are not close to a practical application yet. And some of the hurdles are emotional and political when you speak of using nuclear or using genetically modified organisms to make fuel.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It never was, never will be. Keep saying that over and over when you read about global warming. If the article you are reading calls it a pollutant, you know you are dealing with someone who has an agenda instead of science to back him up.

The arguments that still hold scientific and economic water:
-We should reduce our dependence on dirty fossil fuels because they do release real pollutants that are detrimental to everyone. Then we can make rational decisions about the value of reduced pollution to increased costs. You may safely ignore the precautionary principle folks in this argument.
-We need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels sourced from tinpot dictators who don't have our country's best interests at heart and cost us significantly in military spending and the lives of our soldiers.

I can get behind either of these as long as the costs are discussed openly and the national consensus is the costs are worth the benefits..

So far you're not telling me anything I don't already know, except that you consider carbon dioxide to be benign. I know I expel it regularly because my body doesn't seem to thrive on a steady diet of it.

Anything can be toxic in sufficient quantities and concentrations.

I believe there's another reason to get off fossil fuels besides the tinpot dictators. During the last big war we were in, if my history books are remotely accurate, shipping was a major target, and supplies of all sorts became quite dear. We could make up the loss with significant sacrifice to our way of life and our economy, but if we were self-sufficient, we wouldn't have to worry about losing a source, and our trade balance would improve. I'm not sure what American goods the Saudis are spending their petro dollars for, but somehow I doubt the flow is anything close to being equal.

And, if you'll reread the last sentence of my previous post, you won't see any reference to anything but private enterprise.

[Shapley]

Just when I'm becoming at peace with Global Warmin, it seems that it may be a fallacy after all. According to National Review, the big story on melting ice caps isn't really that big of a story after all. Apparently the ice covering the land masses of Greenland and Antarctica are thickening, even as the shelf ice, or at least large portions of it, are melting. The resultant net loss in polar ice mass is nearly negligible.

It also appears that temperatures in such places as Europe, where reasonably accurate climate information is available for the past millenium, are cooler today than they were 1,000 years ago, when we had our last warming trend (obviously the fault of Dark-Age Republicans).

Granted, subarctic glaciers are melting, continuing a trend started somewhere around 22,000 year B.R. (Before Reagan). This would seem to point to an absolution of man-made factors as a cause for this, but I did read an article online a few weeks ago that blamed mans shift from hunting/gathering to agriculture as being to blame for the beginning of global warming (who would have thought that Neanderthal men were Republicans). I would tend to think that the opposite cause/effect would make more sense: the beginning of global warning gave man the ability to abandon his hunter/gatherer way of life in favour of an agriculture based lifestyle, but then I'm not a scientist.

Whatever the case, it seems that I may not be able to cash in on that Antarctic swimming pool chemical franchise for a couple of centuries, at least. Darn it.

V/R
Shapley

[Patateek]

Shapley,
Nice read.

The most interesting thing about the responses? It took and incredible 7 replies until someone blamed Bush! I thought maybe the 2nd or 3rd. Maybe his popularity is going back up?

I guess if the sun don't come up tomorrow it will be Bush's fault.

Global warming caused by man? What a crock! I have been spending some time in B.C. Canada and everyone talks about the glaciers melting. "Oh my!" I said. "How long have they been melting?" Answer, "Oh about a 100,000 years" Yeah, the planet is warming up and we are arrogant (or stupid) enough to think it is our fault. I wonder how many years worth of man made CO2 those volcano's in Indonesia are spewing out this week. The planet is a big place and mother nature is more powerful that we will ever be.

Patateek
in Huntington Beach, CA

[Shapley]

Patateek,

Welcome to the B.com BB!

Yes I was fascinated to read that man has apparently been destroying the environment ever since he climbed down from the trees and began to walk upright. I wish I could find a link to the article. I'll have to keep searching for it.

V/R
Shapley

[Marye]

Global warming caused by man? What a crock! I have been spending some time in B.C. Canada and everyone talks about the glaciers melting. "Oh my!" I said. "How long have they been melting?" Answer, "Oh about a 100,000 years" Yeah, the planet is warming up and we are arrogant (or stupid) enough to think it is our fault.

People from B.C. are environmentalists. I rather like them, myself.

I rather think we are arrogant and stupid enough to continue to polute. It is May and Toronto Canada has had it's second SMOG alert in as many days. I don't remember SMOG alerts when I was a child... I can hardly breathe outside. Who is the cause of this then, if it isn't man?

[DavidS]

Marye, I just wonder whether the Toronto smog isn't something localised like the London "pea-soupers" mentioned in Sherlock Holmes, which I experienced in the 1950's-60's. Then came the Clean Air Act banning the use of untreated coal, and the problem is now far less acute, so I'm told.

[barfle]

I'm not sure how much of the glacier meltdown we're observing is humanity's fault.

I know that humans can cause large-scale changes in the environment, including extinctions (unless someone has another explanation for the demise of the passenger pigeon, once reputed to be so many in number that they darkened the sky). We've been increasing our ability to control nature since we started grasping tools (and perhaps even before that), so I believe that disregarding our effects on the environment as puny is a bit short-sighted.

The environment will continue to change, even if human beings suddenly disappear. The sun is aging, the planet is being bombarded by cosmic dust and radiation, the tectonic plates are active, erosion continues to happen, so certainly we're experiencing a climate change. With the improved measurement and recording techniques we have today, perhaps we are more able to notice it than in the past, or perhaps it really is more severe than it was a hundred years ago.

And perhaps there ain't a damned thing we can do about it except cope with the changes (which I suspect to be the case).