Global warming wipes island off Sunderbans map

Digital Drifter

we're not going anywhere except die like lemmings. self inflicted suicide. OK?

Capt, if you were in charge of Agriculture and studies say that rice cultivation with it's use of stagnant water cause large amount of methane generation(for e.g. say) and it's imperative that this be curtailed to slow global warming, what would you do?

Why us? Why not someone else? Knowing about global warming, there is scant effort in the developed world to reduce it; so why should I sacrifice my vacation drive of 200km every weekend?(I don't have a car ) why not you? Your backyard swimming pool?

AS much as it's wrenching globally, the 3rd world will pay a larger price out of this.

Fact.

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capt_mahajan

Agreed.


So my question is: do we need to engage with the developed countries, or not?
My opinion: if one wants to go the lemming way, no need to. We continue the locomotive breath way, with apologies to Tull. The train doesnt slow down.

But if we want to try to get anywhere with this problem, we'd better engage. In fact, countries like China and India are well placed to push the agenda as developing countries booming (or mayhem-ing, depending on your point of view)

And in the second scenario, we won't get anywhere without engaging the US, which consumes almost a quarter of the worlds energy.

Sooner or later, developed countries will not be in a position to ignore China and India on this.

So far, the agenda has been set by the West.. legislation included. Maybe we need to turn the thing on its head.

Maybe the developing countries need to push more.. they have more to lose, as you say

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Digital Drifter

I just realised, how stupid I am.
Who the fuck writes like that....wait

Somebody shoot me.

capt_mahajan

I am smarter than you. I realised that (how stupid I am) long time ago

crvlvr

Global warming is caused by CO2 not pollution. Air pollution causes global dimming and actually results in lower tempratures. However, the burning of fossil fuels releases a lot more CO2 than pollution hence global warming.

TulsaisntFar

Black smogs are reversing the effects of global warming in India, a new study concludes. Pollution across the Indian subcontinent is shielding the sun and depressing the winter temperature by about 0.3°C.

The scientists say the smog particles are cooling the land by absorbing solar radiation before it reaches the surface. But the bad news is that the particles could be redistributing the heat round the globe - warming adjacent regions of Asia and beyond.

Smogs are a feature of modern India as the country burns ever more coal and oil in power stations, factories and vehicle engines. "Air pollution has more than doubled in the South Asian region during the last 20 years," says one of the team, Veerabhadi Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

Black carbon and sulphur dioxide accumulate in the air during the winter months, creating urban smogs and a "brown haze"

Soot particles that absorb the solar radiation over India may travel outside the region, adding to global warming elsewhere. "This is a matter of serious concern to the environment, mankind and the ecosystem at large," says Krishnan.

I think the above reply made me think and relize that we do contribute more than we think we do to a possible growing problem. But, many people in the US realize the problem and we're trying to deal with the problem here, in the US. Our over-the-top burning of fossile fuels must slow down. But when people constantly point the finger at us without dealing with the problems that they may have at home it doesnt help anyone. Though i see trucks getting bigger, i also see hybrid cars every where i look (literally, but of coarse look where i live, it aint texas.) Global warming is split in politics at this point but i assure you that more than ever we're doing as much as we can to push this through to our politicians and people are realizing that maybe even one car can make a difference. When global warming as a result of humans is proved, i HOPE more people can come to grips. Instead of pointing, lets come together.

jyotirmoy

Good posting TulsaisntFar

sirensongs

Here's the opinion of at least one very highly regarded scientist who is not at all known for hysteria. Sorry, all I could find was this brief snippet.

Hawking says climate change worse than terror
(AP Wire story)
LONDON — Scientist Stephen Hawking described climate change Wednesday as a greater threat to the planet than terrorism.

Hawking made the remarks as other prominent scientists prepared to push the giant hand of its Doomsday Clock — a symbol of the risk of atomic cataclysm — closer to midnight. The move will mark the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward and Hawking warned that "as citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day."

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rangss

I had this whacky theory for long in my head. Industrial establishments shut part production and spend millions of dollars on capital repairs. So do governments and public bodies. Now who the hell will take an initiative to put the mad scramble for "a better way to live through more dependency on machines" and sit back and do a major capital repair on mother earth? Isn't it time we called a time out on science and development and spend the money on cleaning up our own mess? Or are we all living in the warm comfort that we shall not be alive anyway, to see the worst come?

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Digital Drifter

One of the reasons why global warming has so many sceptics is the sense of scale. We are poorly adapted to adjusting our intuition and judgement over decades over vast spaces. In each person's corner, the world is the same yesterday,today and tomorrow and so the scientists seem a little nutty saying

"see, there is 1.2 degree increase in temperature over the last 75 years" (say)

this means squat to me even though it should be worrying. That's how it is.

& pretty much all the data which the scientists show, is some 2/3 degree increase and people go 'right, can I use my SUV to do a cross continent ride,now?"

crvlvr

Or that they have not watched the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. which included a scene that stated that all scientific papers that have been peer reviewed acknowleged global warming as fact. But, in the popular media 50% of the articles questioned global warming. Unfortunately, public perception is shaped more by popular media than scientific papers.

I recently got a statement from my utiility. 50% of my electricity comes from generation plants that use coal. I figure a couple of hybrid cars, whilke it may be a step in the right direction, is not going to help much.

Last year I visited europe. I saw ONE SUV (they are huge gas guzzlers) in my entire 2 weeks there. In the US, almost every second automobile is an SUV.

TulsaisntFar

Well if it's not about cars and it's mostly about coal then you still shouldnt be pointing the finger at one source.....

From 1971 to 1995 there was an eightfold increase in coal burning for electricity generation in the industrializing countries of Asia. If the trend continues, India and China will be responsible for 75% of the increased global coal consumption.

By 2025, nearly 60% of all coal will be burned in Asia-Pacific. As a consequence, the region’s CO2 emissions are predicted to double.......This is according to WWF who is one of the world's largest and most experienced independent conservation organizations, with almost 5 million supporters and a global network active in more than 100 countries.

Anyone can look at the evidence that the earth is warming, and no one doubts global warming, not even the media. What some people doubt is that its caused by humans. I dont know the exact fact but i know one volcano erupting causes just as much co2 as years and years of human made co2, i think it may even be decades worth. I think it's caused by humans, although i think more proof needs to surface. Still many scientists doubt its caused by humans.

IndyBoy

tulsa, you may be shocked, but humans emit something like 150 times as much as all the world's volcanos do every year, and rapidly increasing.

Speaking as a PhD physicist, it would be well for the world to listen to the recommendations of the scientific community, who are the ones who have warned of it for decades, and are fortunately the ones with all the answers. This is not some "theory" in doubt, but a well documented and proven "phenomenon"

Source: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/Wh...as/volgas.html
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California, USA
URL http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/Wh...as/volgas.html
Excerpt follows:

Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.
Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 1998) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2.]. Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 million tonnes/year)!

crvlvr

No one is disputing the fact that the major increases in fossil fuel use will come from India in China. but, we have to keep in mind that they are just catching up with the rest of the western world. What gives us the right to say they should decreases their consumption when we continue to, on a a per capita basis, to consume much more than those countries?

http://www.energybulletin.net/281.html

TulsaisntFar

I never said anyone should decrease doing anything.

I said earlier it's only normal that they use as much as they do.

All im trying to say is that instead of pointing the finger only at the US, lets think of it as a global problem, especially since everyone is invloved with the problem.
......and thank you indyboy, i was shocked!!!