How can we help Global Warming?

Question

Okay, so there's all this stuff about Global warming on the news and quite frankly, it scares me. Too many people have this "I'll be dead before then" attitude and it's not the right one to have. Our children/grandchildren WILL be around to see the effects global warming exerts. Is there anything that can be done at all? Or is it quite possibly too late?

I'm not a scientist or anything. It could be possible that this was always going to happen. The ice age, for example, happened without any help from mankind. Perhaps we have just sped it up with our abuse of the environment?? Came up with the idea or just living in submarines/boats/underwater stations, but there are so many things that could conteract these ideas. Even the idea of a massive perspex glass complex which surrounds the country! But wouldn't be possible to obtain enough glass to cover 94,000 square miles for England alone!

Anyone have anything to say? Even if it's just worries about global warming in general??

Answer 1

You are joining a growing number of people who are finally waking up to what is REALLY happening...
The tragedy is that it is already too late. Our leaders know this which is why they are so actively pretending that nothing is wrong and hiring "scientists" to back up their lies. They know that it has already started and that panic will only ad to the problem.
Get out of the cities and start learning how to be self-sufficient.
I don't mean to be all doom and gloom but the more you read up on it the more obvious it is.
We've passed the era of procrastination and denial and have entered the era of consequences.


our just desserts...

LATER: amancalledc has a point. If we just go on thinking nothing is wrong and ignore the OBVIOUS changes to our weather then there's nothing to worry about.
No offence, dude, but have a look out the window!
The glaciers are receding, Record number of typhoons and twisters, CO2 levels in our atmosphere highest level in the past 650,000 years (evidence from ice core samples). They're now at twice the highest level in that history and set to rise to ten times that within our lifetimes.
Research the facts and see the light! Don't make it worse!

Answer 2

My advice would be to take a deep breath and calm down. There is no reason to be scared about global warming.

The truth is, it is *not* going to be as bad as you probably think it will be. There is an awful lot of scaremongering going on about it.

Some people *want* you to be scared, so that you'll part with large sums of money to try and fix the "problem". These people always quote, very loudly, the worst case scenarios they can find. They then use words such as "catastrophe", "tipping point" and "point of no return."

'ZZ9', above, is a classic example of this with his quote...

"The tradgedy[sic] is that it is already too late."

Is it really? Gosh! I had no idea. Why did I have no idea? Because it's nonsense, that's why.

We have been told we should be scared about global warming for 20 odd years now. And after 20 years, can you honestly say you've noticed anything that, in itself, actually scares you? What I mean is; if you hadn't heard about global warming, would anything that's happened in the last 20 years be worrying you?

Remember, during the medieval warm period - that lasted between about 1,000 AD and 1,400 AD, the climate was up to 3°C warmer than it is today, and mankind lived perfectly happily, thank you very much.

Don't believe the hype, there's probably nothing to worry about.

Answer 3

Kyoto cost...


Since February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol has cost US$ 294,793,647,883 while potentially saving an undetectable 0.003057119 °C by the year 2050.

Malaria cost US$ 258,281,391,037 in lost GDP and 5,306,285 lives over the same period.
http://www.junkscience.com

Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt -- although the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. Past studies, he believes, should be reassessed by competent statisticians and in future, the climate science world should do better at incorporating statistical know-how.

One place to start is with the American Meteorological Society, which has a committee on probability and statistics. "I believe it is amazing for a committee whose focus is on statistics and probability that of the nine members only two are also members of the American Statistical Association, the premier statistical association in the United States, and one of those is a recent PhD with an assistant-professor appointment in a medical school." As an example of the statistical barrenness of the climate-change world, Wegman cited the American Meteorological Association's 2006 Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences, where only eight presenters out of 62 were members of the American Statistical Association.

While Wegman's advice -- to use trained statisticians in studies reliant on statistics -- may seem too obvious to need stating, the "science is settled" camp resists it. Mann's hockey-stick graph may be wrong, many experts now acknowledge, but they assert that he nevertheless came to the right conclusion.

To which Wegman, and doubtless others who want more rigourous science, shake their heads in disbelief. As Wegman summed it up to the energy and commerce committee in later testimony: "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science." With bad science, only true believers can assert that they nevertheless obtained the right answer.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0

Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we might cause in the future.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=069cb5b2-7d81-4a8e-825d-56e0f112aeb5&k=0

Answer 4

The earth normally can absorb the carbon and other greenhouse elements that humans and animals can create. However, in our greed for power (electricity), we have far exceeded the Earth's ability to absorb the carbon we are creating, along with the destruction of the rain forests in the Southern Hemisphere (which are our largest cleaners of the Earth).

There are a number of things which you can do. As a bonus, many of those things can actually save you money in the long run. (My family is actually into self sufficiency than saving the planet, but the two are so close they practically shake hands).

Make your home more energy efficient by caulking windows, adding insulation, stopping leaks.
Use compact florescents instead of incandescent light bulbs. They use 1/4 of the energy for the same amount of light.
When your appliance finally go kaput, replace them with ones labeled with the Energy Star label. (I don't advocate throwing out stuff that still works). Or, better yet, do without them if you can...wash dishes by hand (don't let the water run), use a solar clothes dryer, etc.
Try to walk and bike when possible, particularly for short trips. If you have a good mass transit system, patronize it.
Try to relocalize yourself. Must you go all the way across town to buy something? Or can you get it from a nearby store?
Don't buy fresh fruits and vegetables from another country. (Frankly, they taste like crap to me anyway...) If you can, plant a garden...it takes a lot less energy to ship a packet of lettuce seeds than it does to ship a head of lettuce (you can grow plants in pots if you live in an apartment). Buying local (i.e. farmer's market) may be better than buying organic, and its certainly cheaper.
If there is a non-electric way to do it, then do it. For instance, we chose to buy a hand-cranked baby swing with our oldest child. Its now survived three children.
Shop consignment if you can. We have found clothes for our children within consignment shops and garage sales that, frankly, still had the original sales tags on them! Never worn.
Get out of the "I must have it because everyone else does" rat race.
When possible, buy in bulk. Heck, anyone can buy toilette paper in bulk! Less packaging means less waste.

You can find many wonderful articles about self sufficiency and/or saving the planet from the links I have provided below. The first four are magazines. (Conservatives and libertarians will actually enjoy http://www.backwoodshome.com/ ). The fifth link is a family in California that is making both green living and self sufficiency work in a suburban setting on a tiny plot of land.

Answer 5

i believe man can only slow down global warming because there are many natural factors in nature to take into account.
for instance the position of the planet in its orbit around the sun alters over vast periods of time including a little wobble on its axis which alters the seasons.
on the other side of the coin the pendulem will swing the other way and we will approach another ice age.
man will not be able to influence that either.

Answer 6

According to an announcement this week by the global warming "Chicken Littles" global warming is irreversible and will continue for the next thousand years no matter what we do.

So I guess we can all stop talking about this bull crap and just start living our "best-and-most-prosperous-in human-history" lives again.

Stop Perpetuating Hysteria

http://www.junkscience.com

THE MYTH OF OVERPOPULATION
http://www.albalagh.net/population/overpopulation.shtml
http://www.juntosociety.com/guest/sperlazzo/bs_opm1010903.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=14186

Answer 7

We should quit driving to work and ride a horse, no that won't work because the horse's poop emits methane which is one of the greenhouse gases. Just walk. Use candles instead of electricity for lights and all other things. All businesses that require electricity or fuel of any kind shut down and lay everyone off. Oh and kill all the horses and cattle because they are part of the problem. Let's see freeze during the winter because we can't burn fuel and we sure don't want to cut down a tree.......oh hell what am I doing. All environmentalist should just move to somewhere in the middle east like Afghanistan you will find it about in that condition already.

Answer 8

We don't need to do anything but wait.....in a few years time the oil will run out and global warming will seem like a joke.

Answer 9

Oh please do anything, but not help warm the globe. It already is boiling.

Answer 10

i say we nuke the sun