Best Posts in Thread: Largest Iceberg Humans Have Ever Seen

The evolution of the crack, the team say, is tied to “global climate change, although there are still no conclusions”.

Hmm. Has there ever been a time, in the entire history of this planet, when the global climate is not changing? From the heat of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum Age to the cool of the Ice Age and everywhere in between the climate has been changing. How vain of man to think we could affect the temperature of the planet anywhere near as much as naturally occurring events can do.

 

The problem with 'agreeing to disagree' is one side says "leave me alone and do what you want", while the other side says "OK, I will leave you alone" and then wants to tax the crap out you to force their side.

Want to significantly reduce carbon emissions? Convince politicians to stop doing the bidding of big coal and existing nuclear industries and remove the regulatory roadblocks requiring compliance of things that have nothing to do with Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (the equivalent of auto manufacturers convincing politicians all vehicles need seatbelts - sounds good unless you are a motorcycle manufacturer). Clean power, clean fuel for combustion engines, clean drinking water from seawater, anywhere in the world, 24/7/365.

 

Well lets look at one aspect. Forest fires. Before we started putting them out the earth was subjected to more global warming than all the emissions we are worried about today. How much? Lets take this one huge fire for example:

"The fires that swept across Indonesia in 1997, for example, burned relatively thin-trunked tropical trees. But the devastated forests were also covered in carbon-rich peat, with deposits measuring up to 20 meters thick. As a result, the Indonesian fires were estimated to have released between 0.81 and 2.57 gigatons of carbon—between 13 percent and 40 percent of the world's annual emissions at the time."

So man has actually REDUCED greenhouse gasses by simply keeping forest fires under control. But instead of patting ourselves on the back and telling ourselves we have done a great job in reducing all the gigatons of carbon that forest fires used to put in the air, we kick ourselves in the butt because we did not do enough. How much is enough? And if we did reduce emissions to zero and one super volcano erupted and undid all our hard work, would we still be here to whine about it?

Vanity, sheer vanity that man has so much impact on nature. Disclaimer: This is not to say we should not do our best to reduce our impact on the earth. This is to say we should not get our panties in a bunch over it.

But that did not change your mind either, did it? I think we either become programmed to think as we are taught or we reject the teachings of other people who are as imperfect as ourselves and we learn to think for ourselves. I remember believing the scientists who predicted a catastrophe at Y2K but I laugh about it now. Science is as much a belief system as anything else. When scientists believed the world was flat then it obviously was. When scientists believed the sun revolved around the earth then society believed it must be so. Now they believe that we humans can change the climate of the earth more than nature does or can compensate for, thus it must also be true. Or is it?

 

Getting off Topic now but in 2012/2013 I think it was, Aquino introduced the Sin tax that was supposed to pay for new Hospitals and Upgrade Education, I can see no real advancements here. Can anyone?

 

If you say so, here's me hand on it: Agreeing to disagree, and yet I have no problem with people who want to save the world and believe in what they are doing. I'm not standing in the way, I'm just saying I'm not playing that game.

 

I think you give man too little credit. We do a pretty good job of tearing up things.

How do you know that all that Y2K worrying didn't avoid a catastrophe? There was tons of money spent on it. There are certainly things that were going to fail and didn't. Maybe you can laugh now because lots of people did something. How do you know it was for nothing?

The same site you quote for you 1997 Indonesian fire says .81 to 2.57 gigatons. You have a 300% difference in the estimates, but they have it down to two significant digits. It's pretty silly when you think of it.

Do forest fires have a significant impact on global warming?

From the same site. Look at the world emissions for 1997 of around 23 gigatons. The percents just don't work.

Which Countries Are the Worst Carbon Polluters in History? (Map.)

I'm not saying the fire was insignificant, just not as significant. One example, does not a story make.

You suggested that man has actually helped by putting out fires, but that is not indicated by the NASA graph below. Using your logic that fires in ancient times would have continued to burn so we should see peaks above today's levels but they aren't there. What's the odds that a big fire didn't happen in the last 400,000 years with no one to put it out?



NASA data seems to contradict your theory unless you can share natural events that have occured since 1950 to cause the measurements to continually increase.

Let's say I'm wrong, then no harm, no foul. If you are wrong, not so good. Realistically, we will both be dead before it makes a bit of difference, but will my daughter or my daughters daughter. If you're wrong, they lose. It's just erring on the side of caution. We could have the same type of discussion about the deficit.

Science is a belief system only in that some people choose the data that suits their needs. As an example, there are people that believe the we have never been to the moon and will to the day they die. Oh, and let's not forget the flat earth people either.