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Global warming...fact or $$$$

Useful Idiot

Active member
Veteran
I really want to hear what my stoner friends think about this.I argue all the time with other friends about this subject. I have a personal opinion on the matter, but I want to know what you think. Let er rip!!:thank you:
 

northstate

Member
ICMag Donor
$$$$
We are taking from the earth at a crazy unprecidented scale, but cycles are a bitch and politicians are most definately using the scare of climate change to make money from carbon credits/trading.
 

Avinash.miles

Caregiver Extraordinaire
Moderator
ICMag Donor
Veteran
fact..... only head in the sand (right winger types) think otherwise, imo....
same people who think more research is neccessary @ global warming think more research is nesseccary to prove marijuana has medical value....

mtns that are supposed to be covered in snow (worldwide) are barren year round, pretty much the proof i need.
 

BlueBlazer

What were we talking about?
Veteran
Beg to differ my friend. I am not right wing or left wing . . . I'm wingless.

Yet I believe global warming has been used for scare tactics and profit. Whether it's real or not is not the issue. Whether we impact it like we've been led to believe by some it if it is real is the issue. JMHO
 

Useful Idiot

Active member
Veteran
This is just ONE disturbing situation that I must share.Folks, this shit is real and happening all the time. My heart goes to the families who have lost everything for others love of $$$$$$$.KICUCULA, Uganda — According to the company’s proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner.
People here remember it quite differently.
“I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside,” said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. “The houses were being burnt down.”
Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers.

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.
The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations.
The company involved, New Forests Company, grows forests in African countries with the purpose of selling credits from the carbon-dioxide its trees soak up to polluters abroad. Its investors include the World Bank, through its private investment arm, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC.
In 2005, the Ugandan government granted New Forests a 50-year license to grow pine and eucalyptus forests in three districts, and the company has applied to the United Nations to trade under the mechanism. The company expects that it could earn up to $1.8 million a year.
Disgraceful indeed. But though credit is due to Oxfam for exposing the scandal, can anyone detect a whiff of hypocrisy here?
After all, few NGOs are more assiduous than Oxfam in talking up the threat of "Global warming":
Global warming can be tackled, and disaster avoided, if world leaders act together, and act soon.
Oxfam believes all nations have a part to play – including the poorest, where people may have to find new ways to farm and make a living.
And the richest – particularly the US and members of the EU – should reduce greenhouse gas emissions – immediately. They should also help poor countries cope with the likely impact of global climate change.
There’s no time to lose.
And presumably, the kind of concerted action Oxfam is urging world leaders to adopt includes measures like the carbon credit scheme yielding such fat rewards for those caring, nurturing environmental types at businesses like New Forests Company.
Let's just have a look at New Forests Company's list of directors, shall we, so we can get to know these delightful people better:
Chairman is Robert Devereux, ex-business partner and brother-in-law of another leading environmental campaigner, Richard Branson.
Director Jonathan R Aisbitt is ex-Goldman Sachs.
Executive director and CEO Julian Ozanne is the ex-husband of the X-Files's Gillian Anderson who starred in the infamous No Pressure video.
I'm sure that every one of these kind, caring people is properly appalled that Ugandan children are being burned alive in order to facilitate their company's carbon credit trading operation.
Then again, this wouldn't be the first time that Third World natives have become accidental casualties of the holy mission to save Mother Gaia, would it?
 

Useful Idiot

Active member
Veteran
fact..... only head in the sand (right winger types) think otherwise, imo....
same people who think more research is neccessary @ global warming think more research is nesseccary to prove marijuana has medical value....

mtns that are supposed to be covered in snow (worldwide) are barren year round, pretty much the proof i need.
I will not be the typical basher and hater type towards your comment or belief. I just ask that you google, carbon credit issues and global warming myths.The carbon credit thing will really be a interesting read for you.:thank you:
 

unspoken

Member
It may be used for profit, but that doesn't mean it's not real nor man made. Anyone who says this is natural hasn't studied milankovitch cycles very much. We have deviated from the norm (read "natural cycle") pretty rapidly and drastically starting around 1970. Greenhouse gasses are a real problem, covering the earth with concrete is a real problem, cutting down huge swaths of rain forest is a real problem. Anyone who denies that is simply doing so because they don't know the facts and science, they are a science hater, or they are too wrapped up in their conspiracy theories to see the forest for the trees. The biggest problem with it is when this whole thing got going there was some bad science, which gave a lot of people doubt, including some scientists of which almost all of the have changed their mind and now agree that this is a real problem which man plays a role in.
 
I

Iron_Lion

Climate change is undeniable. In the last few million years the earths climate has shifted dramatically many times. It has only been in the habitable zone for a brief part of its history. So it's not that far off base to think there could be a great shift toward warmer or cooler again.

"Global warming" might not be the best title, but something is happening.
 

MIway

Registered User
Veteran
Unspoken has a solid point... You can't equate the carbon scheme as a perversion to the underlying issue of altering our climate.

We should have two discussions here, but arguing that carbon trading is a scam doesn't negate climate change.
 

iampolluted

Active member
1.8 million a year to regrow trees that are being cleared at record pace is a fucking drop in the bucket compared to the billions of $ oil and energy companies make a year by polluting our land sea and air. the problem is these companies have an enormous amount to lose should people start believing what 93% of scientists already see. oil and energy have the $ to misinform and try and discredit the science. the scientists don't have advertising $ to throw around so they rely on their experiments and the results. you can question the science all ya want. issac newton, galileo, and einstien had doubters too...
 

PoopyTeaBags

State Liscensed Care Giver/Patient, Assistant Trai
Veteran
global warming may be occuring but its not because of green house gasses... all that shit is just the elites trying to tax everything and have another reason for global government... the earth goes through warming and cooling peroids naturally.
 

big twinn

Super Member
Veteran
Our planet is rapidly warming, most likely due to increasing CO2 concentrations in the
atmosphere. additionally, UV-B radiation is increasing due to the ozone hole which further perpetuates this warming effect. While these statements are generally accepted by the scientific community, other
interest groups (largely with no scientific background) have doubts about it. How can we
obtain objective information on the state of global climate change? The most objective source of information on global warming is the Intergovernmental
Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). According to the IPCC web site
(http://www.ipcc.ch/index.htm)
IPCC “is the leading body for the assessment of climate
change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific
view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socioeconomic consequences.”
The basic conclusions stated in IPCC reports (the last one was issued in 2007) have been endorsed by more than 40 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. I encourage you to go to this web site and learn more about this important topic if you have doubts of the legitimacy of global warming. they discuss how they measured scientific data that track global temperatures and other parameters, and about computer simulations that aim at coming up with predictive models. Keep in mind that they don’t project the "truth" about the future of our planet, but likely scenarios. Scientists do not state that something is a truth or a lie (moral implications) but provide probabilities that something will occur based on statistical analysis of there data. In the case of global warming, there is nearly complete scientific consensus that it exists. Regarding the causes of global warming, there is also an almost unanimous scientific consensus that increasing anthropogenic CO2 concentrations lead to increased global temperatures.

Going further since we are all plant people, CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas. The most important GHG is actually water vapor, but this is not expected to contribute much to global warming, probably because it is not expected to change much. Other GHGs are methane and nitrous oxide in our atmosphere. The source of increasing CO2 concentrations is mainly coming from the burning of fossil fuels. This leads to the release of carbon from carbon sinks (where carbon was sequestered out of the environment/atmosphere and deposited out of the carbon cycle) that were established hundreds of millions of years ago ( the major coal formations are from the Carboniferous - 360-300 million years ago). which were formed by the accumulation of plant and plankton material under anaerobic conditions over millions of years. Additionally, geological processes resulted in enormous amounts of fixed carbon in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas. This carbon was all taken out of the global carbon cycle as carbon sinks. By burning these fossil fuels, we put it back into the carbon cycle. Furthermore, additional sources for CO2 are the arctic tundra (in Siberia, Northern Canada and Alaska). Up until recently, not much CO2 was released from the tundra because much of it is under permafrost. However, in these regions, climate change is occurring at an increasing/dramatic pace and the increase in absolute temperatures is more pronounced than in regions closer to the equator which is leading to thawing of the permafrost. This warming effect is expected to result in an unprecedented release of CO2 and methane. Methane is also released from agriculture (EX: cows) and waste management.Nitrous oxide, another green house gas is released from agriculture through fertilizers.

Our planet is much like a greenhouse with the atmosphere being the glass. CO2, like the glass in a green
house, absorbs heat that is reflected from the surface and from clouds as infrared radiation. So, this heat is absorbed by CO2 thereby contributing to atmospheric warming which in turn leads to warming of the surface of the earth including the oceans.
Based on predicted models, our planet will continue to warm up. The degree of warming will depend on the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. This in turn will depend on what our politicians as well as society and our everyday habits of energy usage, decides to do about it. Consequences of global climate change, besides higher surface temperatures in many regions of the world, will be increased or decreased rain falls leading to more severe droughts and floods, and altered water availability. In addition, sea levels are predicted to rise with consequences for coastal areas in which a large part of the world population lives. In some regions, climatic conditions will be better than they are today, at least with regard to agricultural production. The most severe consequences are expected for countries that are already poor and have no means to cope with catastrophic climate-related events. Once again, if your interested in the technical aspect, check out the IPCC website.

With regards to plants, CO2 has 2 effects, it absorbs infrared radiation in the atmosphere contributing to global warming and it is a substrate for photosynthesis as you all are aware. The effects of global warming will be increases of heat stress among plants, which may affect the water balance in the ecosystem, depending on drought, humidity of the soil and air due to rain fall, soil erosion, and flooding, the effects on the transpiration rate and evaporative cooling, which is also due to a role of CO2, by inducing the closing of the stomata).

This can even lead to changes in light on plants, which will have more profound implications. Global temperature increases may result in changes in cloud covers which affect light availability for plants. Furthermore, the green house effect traps heat in the lower atmosphere (troposphere) resulting in a cooling effect of the stratosphere. Cool temperatures in turn favor the reaction of chlorine with ozone leading to increased destruction of the ozone layer and therefore increased levels of UV-B at ground level, which has very dangerous effects by encouraging contributing to damage by way of Reactive Oxygen Species (free radicals) to all life on earth.

With more CO2 in the air, it can be hypothesized that plants can fix more CO2 during photosynthesis and therefore grow more. The same is true for aquatic environments and plankton growth. Because of this hypothesis, trees have been considered as potent “carbon sinks” becasue they sequester carbon in wood where it will stay for a relatively long period of time. The more trees we are growing, the less CO2 should be in the air leading to a reduction of the greenhouse effect. In fact, reforestation has been allowed as a ‘carbon offset’ in the Kyoto protocol of 1997 (an international treaty aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming). put simply, countries that engage in reforestation or plant large numbers of trees, are allowed to burn more fossil fuel hoping that the net carbon emission is zero. Some consider
this common sense. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. But one thing is obvious, deforestation will contribute to increases in green house gas emissions, in part because tropical rain forests are often burned to generate land for farming. which is not sustainable, because the soil layer of tropical rain forests is surprisingly thin, and thus it all to often is eroded away in the course of a few years, which leads to subsistence farmers then moving on, leaving the eroded land behind and burning more forest to obtain new farm land. Carbon sequestration also can occur in our oceans by using plankton as carbon sinks.
Through transpiration plants/plankton increase water in the atmosphere which can lead to cloud formation.
Clouds reflect sunlight and thus heat. By using wood products for construction and other durable goods, it also has a CO2 sink effect, if cut trees are replanted.Use of wood for non-durable products like paper or fuel (firewood, sawdust) does not produce additional CO2 like burning of fossil fuels, unless forests are destroyed and no reforestation takes place. However, there are some negative effects of forestation. Forests have lower albedo (reflection of sunlight) which counterbalances the reduced warming through sequestration (because reflected sunlight means heat reflection back into space). This albedo effect of forests is particularly strong in temperate non-tropical parts of the world like europe and china, because here, trees also interfere with heat reflection by snow resulting in an overall warming effect.In contrast, in the tropics the sequestration effect seems to outweigh the albedo effect leading to a net cooling. Global warming is an extremely complex issue, and it can lead to really profound consequences, by affecting the homeostasis of the entire environment that which all current living system have adapted to live in.
BT
 

señorsloth

Senior Member
Veteran
it's a fact around the world...the only people that don't believe in it are republicans from the usa...and of course they believe in it too, the rich ones anyway, the only smart ones in that party...because they know it's not about denying that it exists on principle so much as denying it allows them to defund and get rid of environmental regulations and dismantle the epa, get half the country believing it's a scam and it's a lot easier to get away with it...of course that helps big business churn more profits and fuck our country even harder...and thats what being a republican is all about...give corporations as much power as possible, because they own those corporations and get super 1% rich off them...
 
S

SeaMaiden

It may be used for profit, but that doesn't mean it's not real nor man made. Anyone who says this is natural hasn't studied milankovitch cycles very much. We have deviated from the norm (read "natural cycle") pretty rapidly and drastically starting around 1970. Greenhouse gasses are a real problem, covering the earth with concrete is a real problem, cutting down huge swaths of rain forest is a real problem. Anyone who denies that is simply doing so because they don't know the facts and science, they are a science hater, or they are too wrapped up in their conspiracy theories to see the forest for the trees. The biggest problem with it is when this whole thing got going there was some bad science, which gave a lot of people doubt, including some scientists of which almost all of the have changed their mind and now agree that this is a real problem which man plays a role in.
Agreed. We have another issue here, and that is one of terminology. I feel it is better referred to as climate change than global warming, as that term is misleading.

Is there anyone else here who has read that we are now living in the Anthropocene Age?

I have relayed that I have an acquaintance who is a paleoclimatologist who has devised a method of dating coral heads whose rates of growth are already well known and established. His goal (and he's just received grant funding for his Vanuatu project) is to determine at what rate the climate is changing, as well as what is driving this change. He feels that he's going to be able to prove the rate of change and, this is the really important point here, whether or not industrial activity is to blame. (His feeling at this time is that it's likely that human industrial activity is highly likely the culprit for driving the massive changes being observed.)

Personally, I think it's myopic and just plain silly to think that over 6 billion human beings, macro-organisms who have an incredible capability to adjust their environment to their own liking and needs, can NOT have an effect on overall climate. Hell, just look at what happened when all the air traffic was shut down after the attacks! Observable changes in the atmosphere that had observable effects on organisms, rates of evaporation, all kinds of stuff.
 

Agaricus

Active member
It's too bad the whole thing has been so politicized and wrapped up in ideology, money and emotion.

The science all points to CO2 emissions being a big factor in climate change. Contrary to what I hear some of the deniers saying, we have a long and accurate record of climate and atmospheric gases. Ice and sediment cores tell the story. There's a direct correlation between CO2 concentration and global temperature. CO2's way up there and getting higher at one hell of a rate.

What is it now, 97% of climatologists who agree that climate change is real and that man has contributed to it? It's just a little bit of a stretch to believe that they're all on the payroll of the left wing profiteers. That would be a ridiculous indictment of the entire scientific community. It makes me want to laugh and puke at the same time when I see accusations that scientists are all money-worshiping commie pinko fags or whatever.

Thank goodness for the genuinely dissenting 3%, too. That's the nature of science, to try to poke holes in its own theories.

One way I look at the situation is pretty simplistic, but maybe has some validity. Coal, oil and gas deposits that were laid down over millions of years are being burned at a rate that may have them depleted in at most a few hundred. All that carbon that took so long to put into the ground is being released in the blink of an eye. Something's gotta give.

When push comes to shove, I doubt that anything will be done. At this point maybe nothing meaningful CAN be done. Even if the energy extraction people suddenly had a collective come-to-Jesus moment, it would be impossible to change the basis of the world's economy overnight. We're riding the tiger.
 
S

SeaMaiden

Along with using up those stores of fossilized remains, our farming methods have changed sufficiently that we do not, on the whole with the type of commodity monoculture practiced in the USA, put carbon back into the soil at a natural rate. In fact, our chemical practices further release soil stores, along with preventing reintroduction of C.

Now, even though it's less than 50% of the total surface of the earth, that type of soil activity disruption has to have an effect as well.

It's like eating candy when you're dieting and lying to yourself about the calories or nutrition. Your body knows, no matter what.
 
T

toughmudderdave

If one was to read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan, one would see how our current agricultural industry is an even larger contributor to greenhouse gases than all our internal combustion vehicles on the road today. It's a very good read that I recommend.
 
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