What if we ARE all wrong about global warming?

What if we are? A clean environment is a good thing, because it would be selfish not care about the environment.

Environmentalists were wrong when they said that we would run out of natural resources by 1850. They were wrong when they said the population would skyrocket to the point where everyone would starve, like Malthusian antelope. They were wrong about global cooling. NASA was wrong when they said that in 1992, a hole in the ozone layer would open up over the US and we'd all die. Environmentalists were wrong when they said that nuclear disarmament was the only way to save the planet, when in fact nuclear missiles were they greatest assurance that we wouldn't be attacked by the USSR. They were wrong when they said that acid rain was raising the pH of lakes in the northeast to the point of killing fish; and when a team of scientists funded by Congress proved them wrong, did that do anything? No.

If scientists prove that Global Warming is wrong, will that change anything? No. What if the earth doesn't warm up after all? Then the environmentalists will declare a victory for them, for saving the world. And then we'd find something else to be our self-destruction

We should always take care of the area we live in. Global warming has already started in the north. Polar bears are dying because glaciers have been melting. They travel to find food and end up drowning because the distance is too far for them to swim (miles and miles). It'll sooner or later move on to the rest of the world. We pollute our cities and we'll have to eventually suffer the consequences.

"It isn't what you don't know that hurts you," said cowboy philosopher Will Rogers. "It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

"Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) -- one of four bodies which monitor global temperatures -- declared this past October to have been the warmest ever. This was startling to those who knew that on Oct. 29, 115 communities in the U.S. set or tied records for low temperature; that the day before it snowed in London in October for the first time since 1922, and Tibet experienced its worst snowstorm ever.

It turns out that Mr. Hansen -- who set off the global warming scare with his testimony before a committee headed by then Sen. Al Gore in 1988 --had carried over temperature readings from monitoring stations in Russia from September, an error so glaring it calls into question the reliability of all GISS data."

Jack Kelly, 25 Nov 08

Yes, acid rain and soot deposits on leaves are a real environmental nightmare for our ecology.

Polluted streams and rivers kill off the wildlife, and plant life.

It is not as important to clean up the environment to abate global warming as it is to keep our planet from getting too toxic to support life.

Al Gore is actual right. I survive an island and we are noticing an dazzling upward thrust interior the extreme tide line. There are spots that i take advantage of to coastline comb that are actually completely below water - Already! .. human beings seem to think of that "chilly climate" ability that international "warming" would not exist .. those human beings could get knowledgeable!!! Its the comparable crucial as putting an ice cube in a tumbler of water .. because of the fact the ice cube MELTS (polar ice caps) .. it is going to quickly reason the water interior the glass to sit down back. as quickly as the ice is long gone .. (because of the fact warmer water and environment has melted it) .. nicely .. by that element you;ll have extra to fret approximately than "warming"! lol .. specific desire y'all can swim! And sure .. the planet has "commonly used" cycles of heating and cooling .. yet - we (human beings) have created an unnatural difficulty with all our polluting and carbon emissions, we've created a situation and quite than getting actual and finding suggestions (cuz that would advise giving up some conveniences) .. we'd quite pretend it would not exist. i could additionally decide to point that in case you have watched some crap approximately international warming and/or climate replace no longer being a actual element - those shows are in all probability backed by Exon, Lockhead or yet another extensive corporation that stands to income a super variety of YOUR money by persevering with to rape and polute this planet. yet . what can we care .. right..

Many of the things we are doing to stop global warming are good for us even if carbon is not causing global warming. The proposed cap and trade tax however could devastate the economy and that would not be good if carbon is not the cause of global warming. You have seen how a couple of trillion dollars that is needed to fix the economy has upset everything, the cap and trade program will cost an estimated 10 trillion dollars.

Even if carbon emissions are not a problem, if population and energy use keep growing at present rates and we don't switch to renewable energy, then global warming will still be a problem on only a slightly longer time scale. That is because of waste heat, and the deniers can't make an argument against that unless they find a way around the second law of thermodynamics. To quote Sir Arthur Eddington

"If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations—then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—well these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."

EDIT: jim z, you've never heard of waste heat? I actually heard a very prescient lecture on it back in the late 70's, when all the "skeptics" were apparently worrying about a new ice age--the rest of us were worried about warming even then. There was also a recent cover article on it in EOS, the transactions of the American Geophysical Union. I'm not sure if a geologist would be familiar with that publication.

The debate of global warming has been going on for years. There will always be two camps of people. For those who don't believe there is global warming, I think there are so many areas in related to environments that need your care and contribution. For those who believe in global warming, you know already what need to be done.

By focusing to what needs to be done instead of debating the existence of global warming, we have a much better chance to make an impact.

Interesting question and of course, the short answer is absolutely, we need to care a LOT about how we treat the planet-6 billion + human beings have a huge impact in a lot of different ways, even if global warming turns out to be less of a threat than some are predicting.

It seems to me though, that there isn't really much debate about climate change-that it is a combination of natural processes and mankind's activities. The disputed points are how much, when and what the outcome will be with some saying mankind is the driving force of recent warming and is accelerating it faster than mankind will be able to adapt unless we take immediate action while others are saying that CO2 emissions are insignificant in terms of outcome. Now, as a layman I have made observations about the state of the research on climate change that appear in some cases-after the fact- to contradict what the scientific community is saying, so I won't pretend to speak about something I apparently don't fully understand, but that hasn't stopped a lot of others from pronouncing their limited opinions fact, so if anyone wants to fine tune my comments about global warming, be my guest.

But my opinion is that global warming or no, considering the strain that so many billions of humans are putting on the environment and limited resources using current technology-like for energy-it is downright ludicrous to use the debate on global warming to rationalize away political and economic investment now to do everything we can to ensure sustaining the population as best we can in the future,

Whether the earth is threatened with becoming a vast wasteland due to global warming, is ravaged by our continuing rapacious and unsustainable use of resources, or the world's population is just endangered because there isn't enough food to eat, water to drink and clean air to breath, the outcome is the same-massive loss of life and a breakdown of society and stability as we know it.

Since alternative and renewable energy is a component of mitigating the possible effects of global warming, preserving resources, and sustaining an ever-growing population, it is beyond me why the quasi-scientific debate is so vocal at places here like Y/A and why people who have no credentials at all believe they are so expert on the subject that they can pronounce it a 'hoax' or (you choose the opposiing opinion absolute). The research is continuing and nobody in the scientific community has all the answers, or even a single truly definitive one, and nobody who is has access to and is fully conversant with all the data even really pretends to. But here we got store clerks, security guards, motel housekeepers and food service workers-just to name a few and without intending any insult to any of those honest occupations-who claim to KNOW, mostly based on what radio talk show hosts and internet blogs have to say about it. Kinda CRAZY, isn't it?

But the bottom line is it doesn't really matter if we ARE all wrong about global warming, either for or against. What does matter is if we allow the debate over it to cloud our collective judgment in terms of sustainabilty of the global population in years to come. If people think the only reason we need to get away from our dependence on oil is global warming, and global warming is NOT occurring, so therefore we don't need alternative and more environmentally friendly energy sources, they're out of their frickin' MINDS and it doesn't matter what they think about what all the Al Gores or Rush Limbaughs have to say about it.

All organisms have had to live sustainably for all of time. When an organism exploits their environment too heavily, the environment will no longer support them. That is a basic truth.

We are obviously exploiting our environment heavily. Any efforts to live more sustainably will help YOU. I mean, if you enjoy living.