Question for the Geniuses on Global Warming Section?

Question

You are obviously a smart lot so I challenge you to come up with POSITIVE suggestions only to the following question:

Lets pretend the concept of Global Warming has never existed. Looking at the problems attributed to it today what can we do now and in the future to solve these problems?

Remember you can't use anything associated with Global Warming Arguments for or against because it never existed. Bet you can't do it. Lol.

Great Start Bob. In the UK How? how do we move people away from coasts? How do we grow enough food also for world's poor? How do we fix the land?

Thanks Trevor. I am sorry, by leaving the question too open I have not given enough direction. Do you know of the works of Peter Andrews and Bill Mollison (Permaculture). Improvements to these or alternative ways?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7pMDHJ1sbY&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye90FxJmuw0&mode=related&search=

Bill came up with his solution in 1975. Can anyone come up with any better ones?

Bob. 5* for good answer. Flooding, drought and irrigation systems. Easy to solve all 3 problems now and this shouldn't cost huge sums of money. Anyone can do this, you need time to observe the land and lots of manual labour. Look at Yeoman's Keyline System, the work of Peter Andrews http://search.abc.net.au/search/search.cgi?form=simple&num_ranks=10&collection=abcall&query=Peter+Andrews&meta_v=austory&submit=Search
or Youtube links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7pmdhj1s...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye90fxjmu... Greening of the desert on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk 'We could re-green any desert and we could desalt it at the same time' You can fix all the worlds problems in a garden' Greening of the Desert. So no ruined land from drought or salt water flooding around the world. We move people TO the coasts, get them to use the enrichment systems listed here to prevent flooding entirely. I agree we need more creative solutions.

Oh Trevor, there are a lot of smart people on YA but the problem is that people become entrenched in arguments, the minutia and detail. This is the trap of academia. So how do we get people like you from different disciplines to concentrate on solutions so that we can use all that creativity and intellect? I don't know, from my experience the more you quote and reference other people's works, the more you become entrenched in the irrelevant detail yourself. When you are stuck you stop being creative. Desertification in China, drinking water, food, abnormal weather conditions - Green the desert see answer above. Populations have all their needs met in their original homelands because they are now all resource rich. You do get the 5* for excellent referral - pointing me in Byderule's direction. And Trevor, how do we get you knowledgeable people on board, to develop and extend creative solutions so large scale alternatives to intensive agriculture can be implemented?

5* for rational argument to Amancalledchuda – we can waste our time working out if Global Warming is actual happening and to its cause or we can take action to deal with problems that we can see happening now. I like the idea of reclaiming more land and Aquaculture. Again loads of it in Permaculture stuff. I like the idea of growing more food too. Desertification; I am too lazy to want to bother with desalination plants. Much better to Green the Desert or to use a system like Yeoman's Keyline. I like to do a small amount of work once then let the system maintain itself. I am a Yorkshire Lass, so I really don't want to have keep paying for services either.
Great response Geniuses– thank you. You all got me thinking. Best Answer Trevor for referral to Byderule lol.

Answer 1

I'm not totally sure what you're asking. Is it something along the lines of 'if the changes attributed to global warming were caused by some other factor(s) how would we address them?'

That makes it hard to answer because you're looking for a solution to a problem with an unknown cause. It's like going to a doctor and expecting him / her to prescribe medication without ascertaining what's wrong.

The alternative is to treat the symptoms but not the cause. A bit like the doctor prescribing painkillers but ignoring the six inch nail sticking out of your leg.

The problems associated with global warming are diverse, from desertification in China to potable water deplition on India, from islands lost in the Pacific to abnormal weather events around the planet.

These varied problems, whatever their cause, would require equally varied solutions. In many instances populations would have no alternative but to migrate, this would see hundreds of millions of people on the move, longer term the figure could be up to 2 billion people. But there's not that many places for them to go as resources are severely restricted in many places, it could mean the emigration of millions of Africans and Asians to resource rich areas such as Europe and America.

Wherever a person is they are more prone to experience weather abnormalities and short of living underground or vacating the planet there's no escaping this.

I can't add much further without hypothesising and in doing so could, in some cases, find a multitude of potential solutions to each individual problem, none of which would be relevant.

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Re your addit details:

Unfortunately permaculture isn't one of my strong points, you need an expert like Byderule to give you some ideas.

I understand the concept of permaculture and am vaguely familiar with the work of Bill Mollinson (I beleive he is what you could term 'the father of permaculture'), I certainly wouldn't be able to do any better than Mollinson but I think that with some knowledgeable people on board, his ideas can be developed and extended and perhaps large scale alternatives to intensive agriculture can be implemented.

Not being knowledgeable about the subject makes it difficult for me to comment constructively but I should imagine that great benefits could be achieved, perhaps none more so than in parts of Asia and Africa.

Answer 2

I’m not genius either – I’m even having difficulty understanding the question! LOL

I think you’re saying how should we go about resolving the problems caused by global warming, assuming that we can’t stop the warming itself – since, given your scenario, we don’t know it’s happening.

Well, I believe that this is actually our only option anyway. Since I don’t think that mankind is causing global warming, we have no choice but to deal with the difficulties it will cause.

Having said that, I also doubt that there will be that many difficulties, but I’ll go through the one that the Global Warming Alarmists (GWAs) usually claim are going to cause a catastrophe.

Sea level rise.

Sea levels have been rising at a fairly constant 1.7mm per year for the last hundred years. So that’s about 6 inches in a century. This really isn’t very much at all. Bob, above, suggests that millions of people will have to move away from the coast due to flooding. Why would we do this? Wouldn’t it be easier, cheaper and far more sensible to simply build sea defences to keep the water out? Holland has reclaimed vast areas of land from the sea by the use of dykes. If they can do that, why do GWAs like Bob think that we’ll simply run away screaming and do nothing to save our homes? It’s nonsense, of course we will. Thus, sea level rise is unlikely to be a problem.

Mass Starvation.

Despite what we hear from the GWAs, global warming will be good for plants for three reasons: 1) CO2 is plant food. More CO2 in the atmosphere will allow plants to grow faster. 2) The warmer it gets, the better plants are able to make use of the extra CO2. Thus, more CO2 *and* more warmth will be a double whammy benefit for plants. 3) A warmer climate will lengthen the growing season; plants will start growing earlier in the year and continue to grow later. The result of all this is that, as a result of global warming, we will be able to grow *more* food, not less.

Water Shortages.

GWAs constantly suggest that global warming will cause desertification. It sounds right, doesn’t it – deserts are hot places, so if the world warms up we’ll get more deserts. But this isn’t necessarily true. The Amazon rain forest is closer to the equator than the Sahara desert, so hot doesn’t necessarily mean desert. Also, as the world warms more water is evaporated from the sea into the atmosphere, so hotter doesn’t necessarily mean drier, either. As far as mankind is concerned, we can create all the water we need via the use of desalination plants that can take water from the sea and remove the salt. Bingo! Fresh water, and as much of it as we want. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia get huge quantities of their water from desalination plants, which is how these nations survive in the Arabian Desert.

Worse Weather.

Weather is cause by “weather fonts” colliding. The bigger the difference in temperature between the fonts, the more severe the weather caused. Thus, the severity of the world’s weather is caused by the difference in temperature between the hot and cold parts of the Earth; in other words the difference in temperature between the equator and the poles. However, as a result of global warming, the poles are warming faster than the equator. Therefore, the difference in temperature between the two is reducing, which will lead to less severe weather.

In conclusion, I think it’s fair to say that “problems” of global warming have been greatly exaggerated by the GWAs in an effort to scare people into jumping onto their bandwagon.

As ever with global warming - don't believe the hype.

Answer 3

I'm not a genius, but I'll give it a try.

What you said. No global warming, just the problems attributed to it.

We can move millions of people away from the coasts to avoid the flooding. It would be easier and cheaper to start doing that now.

We can spend huge sums of money building new irrigation systems to repair the damage caused to agriculture by drought. And to replace a bunch of expensive stuff we've lost to flooding.

We can, while doing all that, feed millions of poor people around the world (like in Bangladesh) whose agriculture has been ruined by drought and salt water flooding onto much of their farm land.

EDIT: We know technically how to do all that. Raising hundreds of billions of dollars/Euros to actually do it is another matter. The Permaculture ideas can help, but honestly I think they're not going to be enough.

Answer 4

The real problem is global cooling. Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth.

Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy Canadian food crops.