Despite what we have seen so far, why aren't we doing anything to protect ourselves from global warming?

Answer 1

Global warming is not an issue that can be easily fixed from a governmental standpoint. I don't know about you, but I am doing more to slow the warming. I am recycling, replaced my light bulbs with fluorescent ones, turned my heat down, turned the temperature of the water heater to 120 degrees, and i travel in the car only if absolutely necessary. If everyone did this, we sould not have nearly the same problem. The issue is getting everyone else to do this, especially if they are selfish enough to not care or believe it is a lie.

Answer 2

First thing you need to do is read this from the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. It's 58 pages long in pdf format so it'll take a few seconds to load. Here's the site:
http://epw.senate.gov/repwhitepapers/6345050%20Hot%20&%20Cold%20Media.pdf

Edit:
I see ftm is following me around again. He just loves to chase me around telling everyone what I'm doing. I don't know why, but he does the same thing every day. His temperature data is from the northern hemisphere. This is GLOBAL warming not northern hemisphere warming and I'm not pooh poohing anything, I'm just showing where you can go to get some facts in this matter and allowing readers to make up their own minds if it's true or not. Just go to the sites I mentioned and it will answer all the global warming questions you have. Yes, even ftm will learn something. He thinks he knows everything already, but I'll bet even he could learn a thing or two.

Here's an excerpt from ftm's wipikpedia site talking about Senator Inhofe: "In a July 28, 2003 Senate speech, he offered compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax. That conclusion is supported by the painstaking work of the nation's top climate scientists." So the very site he uses to discredit my source actually discredits him.

Edit: Now ftm has resorted to calling me names, etc. Grow up!!! I didn't change anything in the above quote, I copied and pasted it as it was written. Who's being dishonest?

Well let's see where the real $$ is coming from funding the "global warming" enthusiasts... The following is copied and pasted from: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23ad-440a-88824bb8e528&IsTextOnly=True

"The alarmists also enjoy a huge financial advantage over the skeptics with numerous foundations funding climate research, University research money and the United Nations endless promotion of the cause.

Just how much money do the climate alarmists have at their disposal? There was a $3 billion donation to the global warming cause from Virgin Air’s Richard Branson alone. The well-heeled environmental lobbying groups have massive operating budgets compared to groups that express global warming skepticism. The Sierra Club Foundation 2004 budget was $91 million and the Natural Resources Defense Council had a $57 million budget for the same year. Compare that to the often media derided Competitive Enterprise Institute’s small $3.6 million annual budget.

In addition, if a climate skeptic receives any money from industry, the media immediately labels them and attempts to discredit their work. The same media completely ignore the money flow from the environmental lobby to climate alarmists like James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer. (ie. Hansen received $250,000 from the Heinz Foundation and Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of Environmental Defense Fund)"

Now a Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics... They don't want anyone that disagrees with them to have a voice at all. I wonder why? Last time I checked this was a free country. Anyway here's the site: http://epw.senate.gov:80/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23ad-440a-88824bb8e528&IsTextOnly=True

Well ftm, you'll have free reign to spew your "facts" I'll heading out for a few weeks. It sure made your case that you are so smart because you worked your way through college. WOW! You must be the ONLY one that has ever done that. Unfortunately it doesn't make you the expert that you think you are.
Maybe I'll run into you and we can chat... NOT!

Answer 3

Because even if we "try" with current technology the problem is not "fixed". Even if every individual in the developed world put considerable personal effort into reducing their impact it is not reasonable to expect much more than a 20-30% reduction in greenhouse gases. Despite major alterations in our modern lifestyle, the result would only be to DELAY but not stop global warming by at most a few years.

The solution is new technologies, and currently none of them are proven to be practical and sufficient to replace fossil fuels. There is considerable research going on, and it is reasonable to expect a new technology will emerge. That technology is not viable YET, hence for most people there is little reason to change their lifestyles yet. Despite the dangers of global warming, we can not prevent it with current technology, and the strain on the economy and human well being can't be justified by a brief DELAY of the eventual warming. Scientists need to find a viable solution.

Hybrid cars, recycleing, efficient lightbulbs etc only marginally delay global warming even if they were universally adopted by everyone.

Answer 4

What can we do? If a major volcano erupted tomorrow more co2 would be spewn into the atmosphere in a matter of hours than man has made in the last 50 years.
Climate change has occurred naturally in the past, why do you think they named it "Greenland" and "Sunny old England"- there was the "great warming" which preceeded the "little ice age", cyclical climate changes have always occurred and the earth can regulate its own temperature through the salinization and desalinization of the ocean through the melting of freshwater ice.

For all the hubbub made of the Earths warming, scientist acknowledge that any overall warming recorded amounts to less than 1 degree, and that Global warming (which is now being called climate change) could actually result in COLDER temperatures- so whatever- man shouldn't pollute, i agree, but its all a bunch of overblown nonsense that isn't substantiated by fact

Answer 5

Cuz' most people hate to think about what they have to do about it themselves. Global warming is hitting us all, not just the politicians. The problems is it takes courage to think that you want to do it alone on your little island of belief when you see that everybody else is acting as if it were somebody else's fault. If you feel like it, just start doing what it takes to reduce your your own contribution to Global warming in your lifestyle, and shut it up until such a time there is a public outcry and real things start being done about that out of urgent necessity.

Answer 6

Fact is, until it's profitable to clean the atmosphere, nothing will motivate humans to do it. And reduce, recycle, reuse, is re-useless. It's like having a broken pipe gushing a thousand gallons an hour into your house. So the solution is to reduce that to 700 gallons an hour, right? Wanna sleep on a raft?

That's kind of where we are, environmentally, only the pipe's gushing used motor oil.

The best idea I've heard of is a bio-fuel whose production process involves sequestering more carbon than we burn in engines. That is, for every ton of carbon we put into the atmosphere, we remove 2 tons. And with a DIRECT CARBON FUEL CELL, that ton of carbon wouldn't even be released.

But, again, that fuel would have to be cheaper than gasoline. (GGE = gallon of gasoline equivalent).



Another Big Favorite -- GEOTHERMAL!!!! (WooHooo~!)

The article linked below tosses out numbers but none specify the cost to supply total U.S. electricity needs. The best I could make out, if we spent $400 billion over 25 years, we'd meet all our electricity needs without burning an ounce of fossil fuel -- without releasing a single molecule of carbon.

All that electricity would come from the heat of magma beneath the earth's crust. And the $400 billion? Be Ye for or against Operation Whatchamacallit, it has cost us how much? $550 to $600 billion in 4 years?

Answer 7

I have Sean nothing that converses me . The CO2 problem is a lie . If it were true people would dropping in the street in low cities. Oxygen is 20.9% of our atmosphere. 19.5 Is the low alarm point which I have never Sean. If u go below 19.5 u will pass out. If CO2 had increased the 30% they say there would many dead. The plants have prevented this by removing the CO2 from our air. If the CO2 is not there neither is global warming.

Answer 8

Global warming is indeed not there...however GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE is. The geneneral trend in some areas is warmer weather, but there are also other changes that are associated with climate, not just temperature. And someone please watch An Inconvenient Truth and still tell me there's nothing to worry about. To this person I say....what the hell is the matter with you.

Answer 9

“CapNemo” likes to go to all the global warming questions and paste in a statement pooh-poohing the threat.

Often, he says it’s only increased by 1 degree (F) in 125 years. This is a misleading number, because it is a global average: land and sea. We don’t live in the middle of the ocean and that’s not where the polar ice caps are melting. The temperature change over land surfaces has been twice that, and most of it in the last 40 years.

The truth is that those 2 degrees are HUGE in the scale of average weather change. But the real problem is the speed of change and that it's accelerating. Scientists are predicting a temp 4 to 8 degree (F) increase over the next 75 years. “This may not sound like a great deal, but just a fraction of a degree can have huge implications on the climate, with very noticeable consequences." (http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/U/ukweather2080/5_predicting.html ). Yes, scientists predict, that's their job. They've gone to school years more than we have and spent their lives studying this stuff. This representrs humanity’s BEST GUESS at where this is all going. Of course, you can believe it snows in hell, or any other stupid thing you want. No one can stop you from believing what you'd rather hear, than what is the most probable outcome.

From a book published by Harvard University Press: "In 2001 a panel representing virtually all the world's governments and climate scientists announced that they had reached a consensus: the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity." (http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WEADIS.html )

NASA says, "the general consensus among scientists is that global warming is real and its overall effects are detrimental" (http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp_docs/Global_Warming.pdf , page 6 )

In fact, it is so detremental that the Attorney General of California has filed suit against the 6 auto manufacturers and 5 utilities here in CA. (http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/cms06/06-082_0a.pdf?PHPSESSID=bcafe4e63eecea93153f25e6fe5bc9ba , http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=709&year=2004&month=7&PHPSESSID=5fa0700eb86a845983a94e26ab86a46e ) for ignoring the IPCC statements, stating in the lawsuit, "Defendants knew or should have known, and know or should know, that their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases contribute to global warming and to the resulting injuries and threatened injuries to California, its citizens and residents, environment, and economy."

"CapNemo" is touting “A Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism” compiled by United States Senator James Inhofe, as a reason to ignore the global warming threat. "The contributions Inhofe has received from the energy and natural resource sector since taking office have exceeded one million dollars." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe There really is very little controversy in the scientific community on this issue. There's a small handful of vocal people, many of whom have strong ties to the oil industry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Global_warming_skeptics ) who are keeping the debate alive.

Here's a documentary showing "how fossil fuel corporations have kept the global warming debate alive long after most scientists believed that global warming was real and had potentially catastrophic consequences”. (The Denial Machine: http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/index.html )

About the bogus volcano issue, "Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 million tonnes/year)!” http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html

Average Northern Hemisphere Temperatures for last 1000 years:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/Template/0_CO2ScienceB2C/images/subject/other/figures/mannetal_nh1000.jpg

EDIT: "CapNemo" is so dishonest. He misquoted the wikipedia entry (moving a quotation mark, so as to give the impression that the Senator's words were wikipedia's words. The whole paragraph reads, "In a July 28, 2003 Senate speech, he "offered compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax. That conclusion is supported by the painstaking work of the nation's top climate scientists." He cited as support for this the 1992 Heidelberg Appeal and the Oregon Petition (1999), as well the opinions of numerous individual scientists that he named (although most climate scientists, as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), now believe that climate change is an existing phenomenon)" -- Please note WIKIPEDIA'S conclusion at the end that it is NOT a hoax!

Nope, I don't think I know everything. But I did support myself in college as an undergraduate by grading physics exams and I do have a lot of respect for the scientists that have spent years studying this and very little respect for those who have sold out to oil money. I'm not sure what your motive is, but mine is that I have 2 kids that I'm going to leave behind after I'm gone and I want them to be able to enjoy life.

Yes, "capnemo". As you as you continue to present lies and half truths, I will continue to follow you with the facts. Get used to it, buddy.

But don't feel singled out. Wherever I discover the lack, I'mdoing my best to hold people to a standard of intelligence, honesty and substantiation.

========== Edit, 1/26 ===============

It is dishonest to remove a quotation mark when copying something, especially when that removal changes the meaning. Look at the source again and you will see the quote mark you omitted. But if you want to say that calling someone on their dishonesty is name-calling, go right ahead, no one can stop you.

The point wasn't that I supported myself or that I'm so smart, but rather that I'm trained in science and scientific method and that's why I have respect for science and the statements of the scientific community. Yes, there have always been lunatic fringe element on the edge of science, but they're largely ignored unless people like you have an axe to grind.

I mention the good Senator's ties to the oil industry in order to show where his bias originates. No one thinks the Sierra club is unbiased and I have not used Sierra club information. My sources are from the likes of NASA, Harvard University and USGS. As Upton Sinclair once said, "It's impossible to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."

But really, the three paragraphs above are completely unnecessary. What I wrote stands on its own merits. Your failure to understand or pretended misunderstanding is simply mind-boggling. It makes me realize that Sinclair could have just as well said - It's impossible to make a man understand something when his religious belief system depends on him NOT understanding. I'd be embarrassed to do what you're doing here in a public forum.

Answer 10

Money & power.