Global Warming

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What do you think about Global Warming?

  • We caused it and we must try to fix it.

    Votes: 32 21.5%
  • We caused it but there's not much we can do about it.

    Votes: 8 5.4%
  • I'm not sure what caused it.

    Votes: 11 7.4%
  • What Global Warming?

    Votes: 5 3.4%
  • It's a natural cycle and nothing to worry about.

    Votes: 16 10.7%
  • It's a natural cycle and we need to adapt.

    Votes: 77 51.7%

  • Total voters
    149
  • Poll closed .

SimonD

Settler
Oct 4, 2010
639
1
Lincolnshire
Two things. Your rhetorical skills are poor - you equate people agreeing with you as 'intelligent', presupposing that those who disagree with you are unintelligent. That's a shoddy debating tactic to load your argument like that and expect people to fall for it. Secondly, your main argument is a non-sequitor - why, just because one likes to be outdoors, should it follow that one would agree that humans are affecting the climate? People who play golf go outside - would you expect the same of them? Or are you just relying on some kind of lazy stereotype (i.e. bushcrafters are into wood and natural things and are therefore also New Agers, for example)?
It obviously upsets you (as you say in your opening sentence) that people will think for themselves and some may disagree with you - what makes you think you are so 'right' and they so 'wrong'? Ah yes, because the intelligent ones agree with your ideas, and so the dissenters must be unintelligent. They were your words.

Me? I have absolutely no idea. For me, it's like who shot JFK - the truth is probably out there already but it's become so mired in argument and counter-argument that I can't tell what's right and what's not. I'm just a lay person. Yes, I could Find Out For Myself (tm) but I can't be bothered. I'm interested in some things and not interested in others, and I suppose that, ultimately, I'm not that interested in the climate debate. Like 99% of the population (which is why they don't find out for themselves either). So I do the best I can (split my refuse into 'recycle' and 'land fill', try not to be wasteful, and things like that) and let the Devil take the rest. That's the reality - deal with it.

My favourite post out of the 160+ this thread has. Sums up my standpoint and nicely addresses the slightly arrogant tone, good job fella:35:
 

ged

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jul 16, 2009
4,981
15
In the woods if possible.
...you equate people agreeing with you as 'intelligent', presupposing that those who disagree with you are unintelligent. That's a shoddy debating tactic...

Shoddy tactic yourself. The poster to whom you are replying said no such thing. Are you in advertising? Politics?

My take on it is that intelligent people can understand the meanings of a whole raft of measurements which are (1) published in peer-reviewed literature (2) incontrovertible (3) broadly in agreement with each other (4) widely accepted as representative of the way things are and (5), unless you've got your head up your jumper, more than a little alarming.

Not arguments. Measurements.

You can disagree with the arguments, but you can't argue with the measurements.

...load your argument like that and expect people to fall for it.

But you can do the same thing and get away with it?

.... your main argument is a non-sequitor

Sequitur. And when your own case on this point fails the same test you can't expect to get away with it either. Once again, tomongoose did not say what you say he said, and although you may carry a debate by playing to the crowd with your word twisting ways, the fact remains that this really isn't a debate. It's a long way past being debatable but it seems that most people haven't spotted that yet. The meaning of the measurements is denied in public by many people know perfectly well what's happening, but they choose to further their own private (and usually financial) agendas rather than risk some miniscule personal inconveniences. It's them that you need to worry about. Forget the bankers and the taxmasters, they're almost completely irrelevant to the survival of our race. Think about how we will feed ourselves when the Garden of England starts to look like north-western Egypt, quite possibly complete with minefields.

It obviously upsets you (as you say in your opening sentence) that people will think for themselves...

My interpretation is that tomongoose is more like me, in that I'm upset that people will not think for themselves. Here's an example of why I believe that, taken from this very thread:


[taken out of chronological sequence for the purpose of this illustration]
I was taught (yes I really was taught to think, to deliberate, to understand, to be critically analytical :D )

ged said:
For pity's sake look at the graphs, and ask the obvious questions. Here's one of the graphs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_(lin-log_scale).png

There's no disagreement about what's shown there. You can't argue with it. The figures are real, agreed, undisputed, incontrovertible and downright scary.

Have any of the obvious questions made themselves uncomfortable yet?

No absolutely none.

Y'see, I don't believe that anything appalling is going to happen.

I think that just about sums it up for mankind. Take another look at that graph. If you haven't noticed, the graph has a logarithmic scale. Please take a thirty minute course on graph plotting so that you can understand just how terrifying that graph really is. The graph says that to go from twenty million people on the planet to twenty million people in a country took us about two thousand years. To go from there to twenty million people in a city took us about another two thousand years. That's where we are now. The rate of population growth is completely out of control and cannot continue. It is the fundamentally and undeniably the cause of global climate changes taking place as most of us sit, and watch, and argue the toss about who said what. If the population is not controlled by us, and soon, it will be controlled for us, by Mother Nature. As everyone on this forum should know, Mother Nature treats her children very harshly. She is, after all, just obeying natural laws. Laws which she could not break even if she wanted to.

Getting back to debate:

durulz said:
...what makes you think you are so 'right' and they so 'wrong'? Ah yes, because the intelligent ones agree with your ideas, and so the dissenters must be unintelligent. They were your words.

They were not the words. Here are the words that you willfully misinterpreted:

tomongoose said:
...I wrongly assumed that as you all seem intelligent and love the great outdoors that you would be more receptive to seeing how we have upset the balance. Obviously I can't expect everyone to be of the same opinion...

Nobody said anything about agreeing with anybody. What was proposed was (1) intelligent + (2) love the great outdoors = (3) more receptive.

The posts in this thread have amply demonstrated the fallacy of that proposition, and tomongoose is quite right that his assumption (that was what he said) was wrong. There. He said it. He was wrong. You're completely missing the point. He said he was wrong, and you're lambasting him for admitting it. Shame on you.

Me? I have absolutely no idea. For me, it's like who shot JFK - the truth is probably out there already but it's become so mired in argument and counter-argument that I can't tell what's right and what's not.

Well if you're bothered by the fact that it's all mired in argument, why add to the mire with your own sophistry? This is not in fact about argument and debate. As I have already said, this is already a long way past debatable. It might have been debatable in 1995, but after another fifteen years of data collection and correlation it's just too late for that. Here's my take on the attempts to debate this issue away:


Scientists: "This is your captain speaking, if you'll look out of the windows you'll see that the engines are on fire."

First class passengers: "Well if all those people in coach will just jump out, we can probably land safely."

Me: "Please return to your seats, make sure all your belongings are safely stowed and the tables are put away, fasten your seat belts securely and adopt the brace position for impact."

Durulz: "You said look out of the window! There's blue sky out there. Anyway I've put my paper napkin in the little mesh thing. I can't be bothered to do anything else no matter what you say. I don't care. Deal with it"


durulz said:
I'm just a lay person. Yes, I could Find Out For Myself (tm) but I can't be bothered.

I've spent a few days trying not to reply to your post, but this most of all is the thing which I can't leave unchallenged.

How can you possibly not care? At the very worst, if you reason that we have a lot better chance of doing something about a man-made issue than a natural one, you should at least hope that it's really man-made.

So I do the best I can (split my refuse into 'recycle' and 'land fill', try not to be wasteful, and things like that) and let the Devil take the rest. That's the reality - deal with it.

You shot yourself in the foot with that one. If, as you say, you really don't care, why would you even do this?

If you really don't care, then please just get out of the way of those of us who do.
 
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Shambling Shaman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
May 1, 2006
3,859
5
55
In The Wild
www.mindsetcentral.com
Firstly may I apologize, I have not read all the posts so this my have been asked, Has there been any research in to whether the huge amount of volcanic ash that was thrown in to the air from Iceland has coursed any weather pattern shifts? As I understand it large volumes of volcanic ash have been responsible for climatic weather shifts in the past.
 

Wayland

Hárbarðr
Snip> I hope we can keep it all friendly
battle.gif

Snip> Deleted <Snip

Tone it down a bit Ged. There is no need for that.
bluThinking.gif
 
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pastymuncher

Nomad
Apr 21, 2010
331
0
The U.K Desert
My take FWIW,
I have had the pleasure of working with some world leading scientists in their respective fields, and while they are truly on a different planet when it comes to understanding their particular field they are completely lost when it comes to other subjects. e.g. a family member is a doctor of physics yet doesn't see the need to keep his tyres inflated on his car!!!!!!!!
The problem we have with climate change is the variables involved are so vast that no one person or even group of people can understand the whole system and what influences it. More to the point, I don't think we ever will.
If you take into account the recent volcanic events for example and solar activity and obviously technology advancements, small changes can make big differences. We only really have short term records for weather, although trees and ice cores have expanded our knowledge, but we have too small a data set to actually attribute any one thing to causing climate change.
Divers have found human remains hundreds of feet underwater, indicating that sea levels have risen massively since the origins of man, but that does not mean man was responsible.

Too sum up, climate change is happening, it always has and always will. Are we responsible, maybe we are, maybe we aren't.
Do we need to stop wasting and destroying our resources, of course we do.
Are you willing to change your way of life to stop the waste??????????

Just because a product is cheap in monetary terms does not mean it hasn't cost the planet a lot.
 

ged

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jul 16, 2009
4,981
15
In the woods if possible.
Tone it down a bit Ged. There is no need for that.

Well I've toned it down as you requested, but as I've said before I'm only saying what I can see.

I waited long enough for tomongoose to reply, but his post in this thread seems to have been his last. I hope that he hasn't walked away because of the way he's been treated.

If somebody misrepresents something that someone else says here, he should expect to be pulled up for it.
 

ashes1627

Nomad
Nov 13, 2010
271
0
North Walsham, Norfolk
Personally, I feel that if we don't adapt, nature will make us adapt. The population is one of the biggest problems that we are facing ,but it seems to me that population increase is largely ignored by the politicians of the world.

The UK has a huge population for our size and something has to be done about it, but what can we do to stop the problem? Immigration needs to be restricted to just people who speak English and have a skill the country requires. Immigrants would be unable to claim benefits until at least 2 years of employment in this country, but thats a different story altogether. I will be interested to hear other people's views on how we can stop the growing population increase.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,751
1,999
Mercia
Lots of people pointing out a problem with Global Warming here, but I haven't seen any concrete proposals to address the emission of greenhouse gases. Should the Western world reduce its emissions to those of the third world (and its quality of life to match)? Should the third world be allowed to catch up with 1st world (per capita) emissions? How would the proponents compel, for example, China, to follow their plan?

Until these types of questions are answered, its an exercise in futility to say "Britain should cripple its economy by insisting on rules that will make no difference to the outcome other than impoverishing us". A full global plan is needed, with plans to compel those who don't want to follow it, or acknowledge that nothing can be done. There is very little point in preserving fossil fuel stocks for other countries to burn up.

Red
 

ScotsSurvival

Member
Oct 12, 2010
39
0
Scotland
Greetings Folks

I am very saddened to see how this vote is going. I had thought that people such as ourselves would have a more concerned attitude to the environmental problems we all face. Sadly that seems not to be the case.
I shall not lecture here on the subject, but I shall say only;

Despite the past changes and how they effected the Earth, they cannot be used as suitable models to indicate how the Earths systems will behave in the future. Continents are in different positions, Ocean currents flow differently as a result, And too, levels of Methane / Methane hydrates greater.

No folks, if the gulf stream does not change due to increases in fresh water input within the next 30 years ( if I believed in a god, I would pray it would ) and we get to +2C, which we will ! Then we will more than likely NOT be able to prevent further rises to 5 or 6C.

That being the case, few humans will be able to survive and those that do may wish they had not. I do not care to get involved in heated debate on the issue. I just worry for my children and grand children.

I am one of those Scientists folks tend to slag off ! I didn't spent 20 years studying Physics, Biology and Planetary Science to have my teaching ruined by conspiracy theorists, something I see happening daily these days.

The only thing we have to loose folks, if we take this issue seriously enough to protect our Earth is money and time. If we don't take it VERY seriously then we will no longer have a suitable home.

What do you value more, your money or your Planet?

It really is that simple, trust me, you do not have the time to study it much further. Trust those that have.

Kind regards

Antonia

There in lies the rub though money. Business and goverments want more and more so the whole climate change/ global warming issue has been monetised. Almost all the research is funded by goverments and multi-national companies who will stand to do very well from this debate in revenue and taxes.

Until profit is removed from the equation and scientists are allowed to do there job properly we will never get a concensus. I dont see much theroy, test, prove disprove out there from scientists only subjective thinking with fancy hockey stick graphs which in the long run are usless.
 

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