My aunt's flowers bloomed about 3 weeks before they usually do. Yet on average this winter has been on the coldest in years. (at least in my location). One scientist says the ice caps will melt in 150 years another says it'll happen in 10000 years. And yet on discovery and those other intellectual channels say the Earth is most likely ended it's temperate period and entering a global heat wave where it will eventually cool back down into another ice age. All this is just part of a grand climatic cycle that we really have little control over. Who's really right anyways.
I will state the obvious though. When it comes to the destruction of the environment, global warming or not, people have been by far the most devistating to this planet that we know of. The problem, imo, is human growth. We've all probably heard the idea that the planet can only maintain 8 billion people. My uncle, in a similar discussion, bet that 30 years ago some scientist figured only 6 billion. Again who's really right? Regardless as long as humanity continues to grow it will consume more and more resources. And the real problem is not developed countries but under-developed countries that are just starting to grow into real industrial powers. Especially countries like China, India, Indonesia and Mylasia. Nearly half the world's population is in that region of the planet. We might point to technological innovations to stem the problem. And sure we could build dams construct tidal harnesses on the ocean's shoes, take advantage of wind, solar and geo thermal energy. But at what cost to the environment? Not just the damage a single dam can have on an area's ecology, but the actualy cost on the environment to build the stuff in the first place. We might be building re-newable energy resources that in the long run might be beneficial but building a wind farm might actually require more resources to build than say a natural gas plant. There's the trade off.
While I don't think we've put enough green house gasses into the atmosphere to really contribute to global warming; gloabal warming is also increased by a thing called
albedo. Its basically how much energy the Earth reflects back into space. Lower albedo means more heat is warming the surface and high albedo visa versa. High albido is caused by reflective surfaces such as sand and
ice. The one thing I've seen over and over is that the Earth is warming up. Really there just might not be anything we can do about it. And the warming the Earth is the smaller the ice caps are and lower the Earth's albedo. So obviously as the Earth's ice caps melt the Earth will warm up. Now if we really did add a significant amount of green house gasses we'd really be screwing ourselves because the gasses would act like a blanket. But again if the figure of 0.001% is even close then that is not a significant amount. What we don't know is the over all impact the de-forrestation will have on global warming. Obviously it will ruin the ecology of many regions, but as these places become more sandy that might actually increase the planets albedo, possibly slowing down how fast the Earth warms up - no way am I trying to justfy stripping these places just point out how little we really know about global warming. Yet there is no way we could really know for certain. One thing is for certain we can at least slow global warming. The question is are we willing to pay for it.
This post has been edited by Acid09: Jun 25 2007, 06:55 PM
Global Warming, The offical global warming thread
Acid09 Global Warming Jun 20 2007, 06:47 PM
