Are the global warming brigade being ever so slightly dishonest?

Question

According to scientists global warming is caused by human activity and we must take action now if we are to avoid catastrophe. What they and the politicians don't say is that if the measures taken are to be effective then millions, possibly hundreds of millions of people will die of starvation.
It is only modern energy guzzling technology that has enabled the world to feed it's fast growing population, if we turn the clock back the consequences for the human race will be as bad as if we just took our chances and carry on as before.

Answer 1

I think a lot of people would be praying for global warming if we had an ice age right now.

Those "scientists" make money off of research. The more they yell "panic" then the more jobs are created.

Also, there are many scientists that don't agree with the theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus

Mr. Gore's movie left out these facts:

1) 6,000 years ago, the earth was hotter than it is today. 6,000 years is less than a second when compared with the age of the earth.

2) Temperatures dropped in the 1950's and 1990's when CO2 levels were increasing.

3) 140,000 years ago the earth had record CO2 levels and there were no gasoline powered cars.

Answer 2

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

There is no going back. Edward O. Wilson calculated the theoretical carrying capacity of the planet at 14 billion people. We could live on boats and grow hydroponic food in caves covering every habitable square inch, but it will “surely be a hellish place to live”. The calculated theoretical sustainable carrying capacity of ~2 billion has been crossed. Think this through. What if energy was free and non-polluting? We still need a functioning biosphere to survive. We can't develop every square inch of the planet. To absorb our waste and regenerate itself, the biosphere needs more than what we have left it. Ecosystems need large connected areas on the same scale as continents and oceans.

If this is true, and some people including myself passionately believe it is, we are in some deep ****. I never went through denial. After I read Silent Spring it seemed self evident. You can't put the Genie back in the bottle. Is there any reason to think that humans will spontaneously stop what they're doing and start working together to undo what we've done? Yeah, right after we have a global crisis. It might already be too late.

Environmentalists are ex-communists? Thoreau came before Marx. You're just as whacked to the right as the ELF is to the left. Asimov once asked why someone had to be religious to be moral. Why can't you be good just for the sake of being good? What’s wrong with trying to save the natural world just for the sake of saving it, like for your children? Did it ever occur to you that the economy is a subset of the environment? Without a functioning ecosystem you can't do much. Capitalism sucks at protecting the environment. If you can't see that just by looking around you're blind. I'm an Environmentalist and a Socialist because socialism is the only hope for saving the planet. By the way, we live in a mixed economy with less freedom than some other less capitalistic countries. Why don't we just get it over with and privatize everything. Then the top 1% of the population will own everything and rest of us will have nothing to worry about because we'll be powerless to do anything about it.

Should we start now, or wait to see what happens? If you think doing nothing is the better option, go for it. I hope prayer works.

Answer 3

You cannot turn back the clock - we have to adapt and change the way we are behaving. We need to act sustainably and that means using renewables rather than fossil fuels.

If you look at the graph of population growth it is predicted to top out at about 9 billion. Any ideas why that happens? Better contraception? No. A global pandemic of homosexuality? No - don't think so. Making babies becomes unfashionable? No. The reason is becasue we are going to reach a starvation equilibrium. That's coming irrespective of the type of fuels we use.

Regarding carrying on as before - no, no, no, no. Please read the Stern report - business as usual is not an option - and that's from an Economist, not and Ecologist.

We are in for a rough ride and the longer we leave the worse it gets. How about some of these highlights: The Greenland ice sheet and West Aantartic ice shelf - gone, melted. Sea level rise 10-15m.
No more amazon rain forest - burned down due to dry weather.
Gulf stream - stopped. 100's of millions perhaps billions, displaced. Global weather gone haywire. Its gets worse: methane hydrate destablisation releasing 300 years worth of current emmisions in a decade. Global temperature up by 50+ degrees. All plant and animal life (including us) dead. Oceanic acidification kills all marine life bar the most hardy extremophiles. Oceanic evaporation induces Venus like atmospheric conditions which in turn stops plate techtonics. Planet earth is dead, all life on it, dead. And no hope of a repreave. Sounds great doesn't it? This is what could happen and would most definitely happen if we carried on "as usual".

Please if you haven't already watch "An Inconvenient Truth" then, just when you think its safe to come out, watch the programme on Global Dimming - this really got me worried.

We must do something about this. You, me, all of us. Watch these programmes read about the subject then act - go Green and make a difference - we are all going to have to change the way we live.

Answer 4

I do not think technology is quite so crucial to basic food production. Intensive farming is mainly about increased yield and fewer workers to increase profits. Also to give us certain products all year round instead of just in season. It is a proven fact that most countries where starvation is a problem are those which are socially and politically unstable and functioned well enough a cettury ago. However you have hit on one good point which also concerns me. The negative effects of what humanity do is multiplied by their numbers. So perhaps those who blame over population for social problems should include global warming too.

Answer 5

Its hard to say they are dishonest when they are such stupid dupes. They thrive on hysteria and shun the light of truth much like rats only run around at night in the dark. The behind the scenes perps are dishonest. They hate western freedoms. Prior to becoming enviros, they were dupes for the commie symps, pinkos. When communism fell, they were lost in space until they became enviros. The same liberal,leftists with Hollywood money, and certain other media types are now Enviros!! The same mass of whining, howling dupe types are their soldiers. Probably descendants of the Salem witchhunters. The liars are suppressing the truth.

eg oceans are the primary CO2 sinks. They absorb all the CO2 presented, instantly. The colder the water the more it absorbs. Land plants are a minor factor in the system. Growing plants absorb CO2 instantly also but only when growing, day time, and not in the winter. Plus land is only 15% of the earths surface.

eg JET planes are producing the CO2 that is rising for the last 40 years. An inconvenient time line!! They burn 2-5 tons of kerosene per hour per engine!! This produces 3.66 tons of CO2 and 1.56 tons of H2O per ton of fuel burned. There are thousands of hours of jet traffic per day over the world. Nature has not worked out a system for ridding the upper atmosphere of these pollutants very quickly.

Probably have to stop flying and start hoeing our own gardens.

I too also believe the Enviros with the governments they have hijacked are trying to use GW for their own purposes. The enviros want to make a hell on earth for everybody, get rid of the hated western democracy freedoms. And the government with their 'carbon credits' stand to make a huge tax windfall.

Answer 6

i dont see how suvs are feeding people. anyway i'm guessing'modern energy guzzling technology' could easily be made more efficient. if we dont take all these measures the next ice age could start. the last one was caused be only a couple of degrees of a change.
oh and hows this for a fact:
in the days following 9/11 when all airtravel was stopped, america enjoyed clear skys(less clouds etc) and colder nights. airtravel uses up so much oil or kerosene or whatever that in the future it wont be sustainable on any level because
1. our oil supplies are running out. believe whatever you want about this but our oil is running out and we wont have any left in 50/100 years time and
2. we are polluting the sky so much that the earth is becoming like a greenhouse and all the co2 emissions are making holes in the sky which will cause problems with skin cancer for years to come. airtravel is one of the worst culprits for this.

whatever you do your children (if you have any) and their children will know that global warming is real and if we dont do something about this they will have to suffer the consequences.

Answer 7

I watched the movie with Al Gore talking about Global Warming. You might have seen the posters. I forgot the name, but it sure convinced me that global warming is real.

I don't know why scienctists would want to make up this whole idea of global warming. It seems real enough. But people who are against it might have more reasons like getting money or something. (not having to spend money to change the ways we live?)

I think that to fight global warming, we do not need to go back in technology and produce less food. What we can do is improve our technology to reduce CO2 emission and also conserve energy. Conserving energy is really not bad to do. The U.S. has done it in the past and should be able to do it again.

I don't see why reducing CO2 emission and using fuel efficient cars would cause starvation.

Answer 8

Al Gore mentions that most people, when confronted with this issue, turn first to denial. This is where you are now, and your trying to justify your position.

When the evidence becomes overwhelming, most people turn to despair, circling aimlessly screaming about the apocalypse or armageddon.

Then a small group of intelligent people suggest perhaps we can do something productive and positive to curtail this inevitable future, while attempting to maintain our way of life and standard of living.

This is of course blasphemy to both the denialists and the despairists, because one won't admit it needs attention and the other is too distraught to contribute, or considers attention to be pointless.

Hope, it seems, is the first casualty in the minds of many potentially valuable stakeholders. After all, its our lives we're trying to save, yours included. I bet you've heard that before. Perhaps a press release issued by the department of defence right before your country sent troops to the battlefield. Well this is not war, people. You cannot win this by fighting global warming, because evil begets evil. Shooting will only make it stronger.

The world entire is currently experiencing the effects. No place, not even space, or the core, has remained unchanged by what human society has done to our home. We must overcome our deepest fears and create new, innovative ways to continue our existence, as individuals, as a species, and as a planetary ecosystem, a unique member of the universe which boasts life, intelligence and limitless potential.

Renounce your selfish attachments and possess only that which is most important to you. I choose my spirit, my conscience, my enthusiasm, my hopes and dreams, a few clothes, shoes, a job, a bed with a roof, and my body, mind and soul. And I would give up a great deal more for the chance to see us excel into a negative footprint society, or at least a zero footprint society.

Funnily enough, change always begins by challenging that which people consider most valuable: God, money and principles. in this case I will give an example of monetary activism.

A movement begins with a group of individuals with a similar idea on what should occur getting together and announcing that they want to oppose or promote something, or someone. They send out media releases that grab the attention of the public, who then react as consumers by spending or not spending their money on products that support the movement. The movement quickly becomes famous forcing governments to change laws that instate the movement's purpose as a reality.

As a consumer, which you, the reader, most definately are, what can you do to achieve the goals that you seek to achieve. Are you spending your money wisely, or do you buckle under the pressure of endless advertising sent by millions of corporations and organisations.

It is advertising just like that that has convinced you, the asker, that "millions, possibly hundreds of millions of people will die of starvation" and that "if we turn the clock back the consequences for the human race will be as bad as if we just took our chances and carry on as before." Each advertiser has a vested monetary interest in making claims that refute the professional, educated opinions of thousands of climatologists, paleontologists, geologists, geophysicists, etc, etc, all of which are making calculated assertions based on recorded statistical information on what the future will most probably include. As a result of their professionalism, they are unable to provide the public with postulations without solid foundations, which means that if anything the scientific community is most likely being slightly dishonest in a conservative sense, not a liberal sense, because they can't say anything that they cannot prove.

Nevertheless, all the scientific assertions in the wold cannot ever be perfectly accurate. All we know for sure is here and now, and I see here and now cloud formations that seem erratic and violent, rapidly changing wind directions, sudden and severe heat waves, cyclonic systems that appear out of nowhere, fires that rage hotter than ever before, tsunamis that drown thousands, earthquakes off the richter scale, ... and it's all accellerating, increasing in intensity and frequency and duration and speed and ... and it's happening everywhere, and it's probably because of our changing atmosphere which traps more solar heat.

It's Global, and it's warmer. And we made it warmer. and it may have been warmer 6000 years ago, but perhaps at that time Earth experienced an event that caused a short, sudden global heating, and when the event dissapated so did the heat. Not this time folks. The Earth has never, in it's history over its billions of years here, ever had conditions anything like this, EVER. For this reason, scientists really have no idea what the future may bring, in 10 or 50 or 100 years. All I can hope is that I live through enough of it to know whether the human race will continue to exist, or not (and that's my optimistic attitude. There's a part of me that wants to fall into despair too).

Answer 9

What a totally asinine argument.
I assume you are not a billionaire so have no vested interest in your beliefs?
Millions are starving now, through waste.
The system may work for you but it doesn't for everyone else. They are dying.
All that I ask is that you do not consume more than you need. And that you do not destroy needlessly.
This will benefit others, and you might have to take a bicycle to the commuter train.
I really feel your potential suffering.

If we just carry, you or your children will die.
If they are lucky, your children may live the way the world you have forgotten live now. Dirty water, no food and polluted air.

Answer 10

Its a farce since no one can really judge the pattern of the weather. If they can say how the weather will be a 100 years from now then why can't they get tomorrows forecast right? Since scientists' need money to continue doing research they need evidence of something going wrong so they can be funded money from the goverment for something that won't happen.