Climate Change & Global Warming

[ArabiaTerra]

I generally don't get involved with enviro'mental' debates but I have a question...

 

Let's just say (for arguments sake) that the scientists have got it right for once and concluded correctly that humans are contributing to the increased rate of change to the planets' climate... So what?

(Typing that feels rather unpatriotic.. Which is good)

I'm likely to get a negative response to my non-conformist attitude but my view is.. We've all enjoyed the party without thought to the future, we've all watched while countries were invaded without cause and peoples human and civil rights were contravened, we (none of us) did anything but pray (effectively shut our eyes) for the abused catholic choirboys (O, don't get me started on religion.. If god created this planet, I'm sure he has an interest in saving it)... My point is. If this is the education we're passing forward.. What is worth saving?

 

Do you, or any of your immediate family have kids, NorthernXposure?

 

The generations that came before us have an excuse for f*cking the world, they didn't know any better. We don't have that excuse. We know what we're doing, and what we have to do to fix it.

 

The party was good while it lasted, but now it's over. It's time to clear up the mess, despite the hangover, or Mother Nature will do it for us.

 

Our society is far from perfect, but it is the best that's been so far in human history (for those in the West, anyway). We can work to make it a sustainable society, to extend it to include all the people of Earth, or we can flush it down the toilet and say f*ck you to all future generations. The choice is ours. I know what I want.

[ArabiaTerra]

Another independent line of evidence confirms AGW.

 

http://www.enn.com/sci-tech/article/41241

 

These broad-scale patterns of change are qualitatively consistent with simulations reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

[Guest Anonymous]

The generations that came before us have an excuse for f*cking the world, they didn't know any better.

 

I really don't think I care for your profanities being directed towards me. Is intimidation the last tool in the box of our 'planet saviours'?

 

And my family is none of your concern. As yours is none of mine.

[Fjool]

Although he shouldn't have, AT was just using strong language for emphasis - I don't believe he meant to attack you. At least, that wasn't my reading of it.

 

And, by the way, ArabiaTerra, this is one of the reasons why we have a swear filter. Circumventing it is disrespectfully missing the whole point. Please don't.

 

So... let's keep the tone civil, eh? No need for profanities, but no need to take things too personally either.

[ArabiaTerra]

Apologies if I've caused any offence. Fjool is right in his interpretation of what I was trying to say. I was simply reacting to the extreme selfishness of the "I'm all right jack, I've had fun, sod the future and all who may be cursed to live in it" tone of the previous post.

 

Such attitudes are the very reason we're in the mess we're in. This annoys me.

 

I'm likely to get a negative response to my non-conformist attitude but my view is..

You asked for it.

[Guest Anonymous]

Selfishness?.. I think you'll find that everyone in the western world suffers the same disease (except maybe Sir Bob). I honestly believe that our collective, western approach to 'saving the planet' is based upon a fear that our 'personal' world suffers no inconvenience and that the balance of power (the first/second/third worlds) stays exactly as it is! We systematically strip the planet of its resources for greed and profit while spewing pompous spin about 'environmental management'. I'm afraid that I find your blinkered and brain washed view of your ability to wipe your debt by sorting your plastic from your baked bean tins is extremely annoying!

I bet you still buy bottled water? Have a look into how destructive an industry that one is my little 'Eco warrior'.

[ArabiaTerra]

I have never bought bottled water in my life, and oppose it's very existence.

 

Apart from that, I agree with you. Capitalism has failed.

 

On the other hand, fixing capitalism, turning it into something which is sustainable is a task which is going to take up the rest of the century, whereas AGW has to be tackled within the next ten years if we are to avoid catastrophe. This means we have to use the system and institutions which currently exist, not what we wished existed.

 

We have to save the planet first, then we can set about building a fairer civilisation.

[Njugle]

Would this be a good time to trot out the chestnut that the internet and computers have as large a carbon footprint as air travel?

 

My other pedantic observation is that all humanity still consists of a large percentage of people who are not messing up the planet, even now. It is only us industrialised consumers who are a part of this perceived planetary poison. 10000 generations existed without doing so before our immediate ancestors and in certain cultures across the globe, they were fully aware of the consequences of over-exploitation, it is not a new discovery, it has merely been re-introduced by the pompous religion of science and hailed as the intellectual second coming.

 

(If you'll excuse the pedantry and equally pompous terminology, and yes I am messing up the planet and I admit it, but in ever-increasingly less ways)

 

If you want a focused tirade to dwell on, consider the obscenity revealed by the volcanic eruption. A snapshot of the opulently wasteful and and absurd world in which we live where 150,000 people from the UK alone were due to travel home on those days. Imagine trying to explain this to aliens. We live in a culture where people have the expectation to burn large quantities of a finite fuel resource in the upper atmosphere so that they can get a tan, or have a change of scenery, and for some, this is several times a year. How do we justify to our descendants that we used up the planet's resources for leisure fripperies and cosmetic fashion. 50 years ago how many people outside of Iceland would have been affected by this volcanic event?- probably none. It is consumerism and fashion/trends that needs sorting, more than capitalism, and as an integral part of any 'planet saving' that occurs.

 

I would hope that the eruption and it's consequences would encourage people to rely less on globe-trotting for leisure.

 

(And I don't eat kiwi fruit and I never will!)

[Gorgonzola Butt-cheese]

AT said " AGW has to be tackled within the next ten years if we are to avoid catastrophe"

 

This catastrophe ? what will it contain and whats the scientific probability?

Is it based on a computer model ?

 

Experts suggest 50 % of our energy needs will still be provided by burning fossil fuels in 2050 .

So it looks like catastrophe is coming .

 

Good luck .

[Malachy]

My other pedantic observation is that all humanity still consists of a large percentage of people who are not messing up the planet, even now. It is only us industrialised consumers who are a part of this perceived planetary poison.

 

Just to be pedantic in return, this is really only true if you're just referring to carbon emissions. In terms of pollution, habitat destruction and species loss, the damage is being done by virtually every human culture across the globe. In fact, in the West, we are much better able to limit and control pollution than poorer nations, and their environments (and health) suffer greatly as a result. But they go on doing it.

[Claudias]

^ ^ ^

Just to be ultra pedantic. The poorer nations are unable to control their environments because of the exploitation of their reserves by the developed nations.

[ArabiaTerra]

My other pedantic observation is that all humanity still consists of a large percentage of people who are not messing up the planet, even now. It is only us industrialised consumers who are a part of this perceived planetary poison. 10000 generations existed without doing so before our immediate ancestors and in certain cultures across the globe, they were fully aware of the consequences of over-exploitation, it is not a new discovery, it has merely been re-introduced by the pompous religion of science and hailed as the intellectual second coming.

I'm sorry, but this is just utter rubbish. Every single human culture* since the invention of farming has polluted, over-exploited and destroyed the land they lived on. The only difference is that today our population has expanded so much that farmers can't just move on to a fresh bit of wilderness when they exhaust the land they're currently living on because there is no wilderness left which can support farming.

 

Why do you think the "Fertile Crescent" is a blasted, salt polluted desert? When a culture produces a surplus, the population rises, farming is expanded until there is no good land left then the population crashes due to crop failure and starvation once the land is exhausted. Only when the land has been left fallow for a few decades can the population recover and the cycle starts all over again. That's why the world is littered with the ruins of once thriving civilisations which disappeared into the jungle or desert when they collapsed. SE Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America, Central America, the world is littered with ruined and "lost" civilisations.

 

The myth of the noble savage living in harmony with nature is just that, a myth invented by European racists and imperialists in the 19th Century. No such society has ever existed. Even before the invention of farming the hunter gatherer societies that existed devastated the natural world they lived in. What else do you think happened to the European, Asian and North American mega-fauna at the end of the last ice age? The woolly mammoth, the mastodon, the woolly rhino, the sabre tooth tiger and all the rest of the large herbivores and their predators in Europe, Asia and North America. All these species had survived multiple ice ages and massive environmental change. What was different this time around? People were there.

 

So where does that leave us?

 

The Europe which emerged from the wreckage of the western Roman Empire after the dark ages was in some ways unique in the annals of civilisation. Instead of a monolithic, centrally controlled empire, Europe consisted of dozens, if not hundreds of small independent states in a constant state of war with each other. This lead to a constant arms race which gave us a decisive advantage in weapons and tactics compared to other civilisations. Europe was also fantastically lucky, several unique events combined to lead to the western culture we enjoy today.

 

The first was a disaster, the Black Death, which wiped out between 1/3 and 1/2 of the entire population. A devastating tragedy at the time, this, nevertheless, lead to the breaking of the absolute power enjoyed by kings, priests and nobles by causing a labour shortage which allowed the peasants to bargain for their labour forcing up wages and leading to the birth of the middle class and the end (eventually) of the institution of serfdom.

 

The second was technological. The development of the Great Ship, large, ocean-going, gunpowder armed sailing ships which opened up the oceans of the world to exploitation and allowed Europe to avoid the resource crunch which normally ended civilisations by plundering the rest of the world to fulfil it's needs. The other great consequence of the development of ocean going ships of course, was the discovery of the "New World" which, after it's indigenous population had been reduced by around 90% by the diseases brought there by early European explorers (principally smallpox), gave Europe vast new lands to export it's surplus population to and a whole range of new crops and resources to exploit.

 

The third lucky event was also technological. The printing press. This invention broke the monopoly the church held on knowledge and when combined with the rediscovery of the surviving knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans after the reconquest of Muslim Spain (the library of Cordoba is said to have contained more books than then existed in the whole of the rest of Europe), lead directly to the renaissance, the reformation, the enlightenment and ultimately, to the development of science as the principal method of understanding the world and the larger universe in which we live.

 

The application of science, principally via medicine and engineering, has profoundly changed the world. In the last 250 years we have gone from a principally agrarian society where 90% of the population lived on the land, to an urban society where only 10% live on the land. We've gone from a society where the principal cause of death was disease and, for women, childbirth, to a society where most of us can expect to die from the degenerative diseases of old age, From a society where most people lived and died within 10 miles of their place of birth to a society where you can travel anywhere in the world within a few hours for the cost of a months wages.

 

We've gone too far.

 

This technological wonderland in which we live runs on fossil fuels and thanks to the very science which produced it, we now know that our society is unsustainable. We are killing the planet, poisoning the very biosphere in which we live. And, even worse, it's only the lucky few who get to enjoy the benefits. Two thirds of the worlds population are still trapped in the agrarian society we left behind in 1750 and they want their share.

 

Well, they can't have it.

 

At least not if it's to be powered by fossil fuels anyway. I remember reading somewhere that if everyone on Earth were to live as energy intensive a lifestyle as the average American, we would need 9** planets. Leaving aside for the moment, the issue of climate change, there simply isn't enough coal, oil and gas left to sustain our society for much more than another century, let alone expand that society to include the rest of the world. Whether or not you believe in climate change, you cannot deny that there is a crash coming. Our civilisation, as it currently stands, is doomed. Furthermore, the coming crash is going to be deeper and harder than any which have come before. Never before has the whole world faced disaster, all the previous civilisation destroying events have been local in their effects, but not this time. The world today is so heavily interconnected and interdependent that when part of it goes down, the whole lot falls. And when the dust clears, there will be no more easily accessible fossil fuels to rebuild it.

 

But there is hope.

 

The very science which has led us to edge of the abyss has given us advance warning of the fact, something no other society in history has had, and it has provided us with the means to avoid it, and those means also offer us the hope of creating a truly sustainable, global, society. By embracing renewable energy, we can maintain our technological wonderland. And we can extend it's benefits to all.

 

We owe it to the world to do this. Our current society is based on 500 years of genocide, slavery, exploitation and outright theft. Imperialism has raped the world and we, in the West, have all grown rich on it's bounty. It's payback time.

 

It may be too late, we may fail anyway despite our best efforts. But failure is guaranteed if we don't even try.

 

 

 

 

* There are two exceptions, China and Ancient Egypt, both of which had great rivers which regularly flooded, replenishing their soil.

 

** It may have been 6, but I'm sure it was 9.

[ArabiaTerra]

Wow, that turned into a bit more of a rant than I intended, oh well.

[Njugle]

Never before has the whole world faced disaster, all the previous civilisation destroying events have been local in their effects, but not this time. The world today is so heavily interconnected and interdependent that when part of it goes down.

 

My point exactly. Rubbish yourself.

[Guest Anonymous]

Not sure that I can support a moderator entering a mud slinging exchange with a member (when all entries can be edited/deleted at will). However, It's my view this particular member has an unrealistic and neurotical utopian dream. So, please continue.

When confronted with statement... "We have to save the planet first, then we can set about building a fairer civilisation." It reminds me why I don't enter debate with these types.