Not looking for a major debate but was curious to see how divided people here are on the matter.
I’m often surprised by some of the people in my life when it comes to what they do believe. (For either side) It’s interesting to see how their opinions are swayed or how much they are even willing to listen to opposing views.
What say you?
I can’t vote because the option I need isn’t there.
“I believe it’s happening, I believe we’ve influenced it in some way but not anywhere near as much as the politics of it have made it out to be, and it doesn’t really matter because there is no turning back now anyway.”
It’s turned into a new way to tax us forever claiming the tax is going to magically stop the ice caps from melting and flooding some coastal areas. News flash, the default state of this planet has no ice caps. We only get ice caps during ice ages and the current one was coming to an end regardless of how much humans may have sped that process up.
I don’t want to politicize it and this is something that I do not get my information on from news outlets. Would this be more accurate for you then?
As for this:
At what point in time do you believe Earth was in its ‘default state’?
It’s estimated that in this history of the planet there has only been permanent ice about 20% of the time. The other 80% the earth has been ice free. I’d call 80% the default, wouldn’t you?
I voted, but I am with Jay on this one.
Humans aren’t helping but we also can’t compare our short records to the longggg undocumented records of this planet (aside from scientific data that we HOPE to be accurate)
In the 4.5 billion year history of the planet there have only been 5 glacial periods, the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-Saharan, Karoo Ice Age and the Quaternary glaciation. The Quaternary is the current ice age (the one that formed the Fingers Lakes etc) and that ice was receding long before man’s industrial age. Are we speeding it up some? Probably. Should we tax ourselves massively when other developing countries are just going to keep pumping out CO2? Definitely not. Should we continue allowing billions of dollars of real estate to build on our coastal areas when we know they’re going to just keep getting damaged by rising oceans and storms? If you don’t know the answer to that one there’s really no point in debating you. Just raise your hand and Tommy will come smack you in the head with a tack hammer.
Where is the “The question is moot because we will be dead from Fukushima long before global warming” option?
i would vote for JayS’s option.
i concede that it may be happening but also challenge that all of the more prominent supporters, among non-climate-scientists, are pretty much just responding to media and using media-provided facts as actual facts.
i also agree that working toward sustainable energy is genuine advancement and we definitely should be doing it but i do not share the sense of urgency as some.
Again, not politicizing it. This is good discussion.
The stance of people like @JayS and @Motocrossx23 interest me the most because it sort of puts humans in a helpless position unless we become interplanetary. I say that because in the history of the planet, humans have only been part of it for <.01% of time. So the ‘default’ of Earth in that sense means that life barely exists at all.
Is there a general sense that we should try to correct what we’re doing and try to maintain a livable environment? Or is the thought that we won’t reach that point? (Ignoring the tax talks)
Humans are a hearty bunch, we don’t need to leave the planet just because it’s going to get more tropical. We simply need to smarten up and stop building mega cities in flood plains and hurricane strike zones. Every time a major hurricane wipes millions in property on some barrier island, or billions like it did in NJ/NYC we blame climate change like that’s magically going to stop it from happening again. Then we bury our heads in the sand and stubbornly rebuild right in the same hurricane prone area.
We don’t have a climate change problem per say, we have a hubris problem in that we feel simply because we’ve built billions in real estate in sensitive areas that we’re entitled to keep it there despite a changing climate.
After being in China im not very worried about what the US does to curve emissions :lol:
I’d vote for Jays option, but since it isn’t up top i’ll vote for ‘IDC, i’ll be dead’
x2
To be fair, people blame climate change as the reason for increased severity and frequency of the storms, not for the storms in general. They also aren’t the people rebuilding in those areas.
So let’s take some observable data. We can determine the CO2 content in the air going back ~500k years (Showing the previous ice ages) by using ice cores in the Arctic/Antarctic. The more recent years of the ice cores correlate to live data having been collected in the last half century or so and all of them show a drastic increase in C02 followed by an increase in temperature and unpredictable weather patterns.
To say that we don’t know in perfect detail how the planet will react to this is fair, but it’s reasonable to think that it won’t benefit humans. When the planet went into it’s ‘natural cycles’ they were accompanied by mass extinctions.
Is this information mostly known and accepted? Or simply disregarded?
Watch this magic within 200 years sustainable energy will be solved…So the 1950 - 2150 blip will be nothing more than a blip in the history of the planet 
You know whats funny? Global warming causing a drought in Texas and Cali that would never go away and then it did :lol:
^Yup. 100%
I am really hoping if Trump builds the wall, it will be covered in or made of solar panels. 
Matter can not be created or destroyed, only changed, the same goes for mass.
Extremely rough, don’t take this analogy too seriously, gasoline = C8H18
C=812(weight) = 96 total
H=181(weight) = 18 total
~84% weight of gas is C (then that combines with it O2 and then we have CO2 out the tailpipe. One gallon of gas is 6.3#, say 15,000 miles a year, 30 mpg = 500 gallons a year, 3150# of gas of year = 2646# of C. Now multiply that by 100s of millions of cars. I can’t comprehend what happens to 2,646# of physical matter, that is like someone dumping 2,646# of coal in your driveway, and the way you deal with it is sprinkle a little bit out your window everyday on your way to work.
Do I care, not really.
So how much CO2 was released during the Lockport tire fire and Bethlehem steel fire? Instances like those should be taxed well before citizens should be legislated into driving Prii.
How well did they predict weather 400 years ago?
In 1991(?) Mount Pinatubo wiped out all human efforts to “help” the environment… just like that. lol
The effects of the eruption were felt worldwide. It ejected roughly 10,000,000,000 tonnes (1.1×10[SUP]10[/SUP] short tons) or 10 km[SUP]3[/SUP] (2.4 cu mi) of magma, and 20,000,000 tonnes (22,000,000 short tons) of SO[LEFT]
2[/LEFT], bringing vast quantities of minerals and toxic metals to the surface environment. It injected more particulate into the stratosphere than any eruption since Krakatoa in 1883. Over the following months, the aerosols formed a global layer of sulfuric acid haze. Global temperatures dropped by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) in the years 1991–93,[SUP][7][/SUP] and ozone depletion temporarily increased substantially.[SUP][8][/SUP]
If driving your Prius helps your virtue signaling status feel free to drive it but don’t kid yourself. lol
My view pretty much lines up exactly with JayS.
We may just need to move our ports inland a little if things get crazy.
Dan