this guy beats Al Gore hands down !

[Slick Fork]

Steve: You can argue climate change until the cows come home. Neither side has produced concrete evidence that we are either causing it completely or not influencing it at all. I rather suspect that it is somewhere in the middle.

The trouble I have with those denying human influenced/created climate change is that they tend to use their doubt as an excuse to maintaining the status quo.

Lets take our reliance on fossil fuels as an example, I know people who let their cars idle for hours at a time in the winter, drive a block to check the mail, etc. When I rib them about it they just say things like "global warming hasn't been proven and as an Albertan it's my right to idle my car all day if I like so to hell with the hippies"

But... whether you believe in global warming or not, peak oil or not, there are a million other benefits to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. Anybody who has seen the summer "smog" engulfing a North American city will see the benefit to reducing the number of cars on the road. Is that smog contributing to Global warming? Probably, but even if it isn't wouldn't it be nice to get rid of it?

Less cars on the road would also go a long way to solving the "obesity crisis" that all the healthcare providers are so worried about. Think of how much weight the fatties would lose if they walked two blocks to McDonalds instead of driving there everyday.

There are so many other benefits to investing now in alternative energy and the risks of not doing so are so high that it floors me that we aren't doing more. Unfortunately, I think North Americans are too lazy and too spoiled to change. I think we need to see gasoline get to a price point high enough that people re-think their lifestyle. Same with heating fuel and fossil fuel powered electricity, until then we're stuck just watching it happen.

[Zoaelite]

Very well written Slick, as a race we need to address our foot print but because we have all been raised on a certain standard no one wants to step up and change. Even if global warming is "fake" as a society we have caused far to much damage to the earth at this point to ignore it.

If we lived in a world that valued honor and intelligence over money this would not be a problem, I hate bashing Capitalism but the over pursuit of fiscal wealth is a plague on this planet. A great example of this is the BP oil spill, as a race we have invested copious levels of money and infrastructure into the collection of petroleum products but very little into safe guards to protect from disasters. Why? Because there is no profit in cleaning up a spill, the only time it becomes profitable is when people start loosing money (such as Florida tourism). At this point people finally realize that maybe we should have safe guards in place but by then it's to late and our ecosystems are damaged beyond repair.

The current technology employed to skim oil from water will not work in applications that include areas with ice. This could spell very bad news for northern drilling and ecosystems but VERY little advancement in the technology is happening because there is only money to be made when a real problem occurs. Even if global warming isn't real we still need to loosen the grip that fossil fuels have on us, as Slick stated the benefits outweigh the downfalls greatly.
Levi

[Delphinus]

A little hesitant to weigh on this but I have to share one thought.

Climate change researchers, as scientists, don't necessarily believe that climate change is fact. Rather, they believe climate change as the most plausible explanation for the data gathered over the last 40 years or so. If you truly examine the data that's out there, it's really hard if not outright impossible to refute that climate data is trending in an accelerated rate.

What's troubling with climate change is that there are factors like positive feedback which potentially make it worse. A system that tends towards stability is one that benefits from negative feedback, that is, the more one variable increases, the more other factors push back on it. Positive feedback on the other hand is when one variable increases that other factors help to increase it further. Think of a die off in an aquarium, a little bit of ammonia can cause stressing in the livestock which can cause a secondary die-off and thus an increase in ammonia which then further distresses the remaining livestock and so on.

I think arguing against things like reducing carbon footprints is essentially folly. Whether we choose to believe that we are influencing climate change or not, increasing our dependence on non renewable energy sources is simply not sustainable indefinitely.

[Zoaelite]

Discussions on a fish forum about the state of our ecosystems has "Folly" written all over it but the only way to change these decorative arguments is educate everyone on the facts.

Regardless of global warming, the change from non-renewable to renewable energy has to happen sometime. Will be see a change in the earths temperature via it, who knows time will tell but it does need to occur.

[RuGlu6]

WoW !
i had no idea that my post generated 3 pages of interest!

As many people say it does not matter if climate change is caused by man or not we should get of the oil.
And yeah, oil is NOT fossil fuel thats for sure! it is abiotic and being formed naturally, so there is no peak, LOL we will burn our oxigen before we can burn all the oil.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by RuGlu6

And yeah, oil is NOT fossil fuel thats for sure! it is abiotic and being formed naturally, so there is no peak, LOL we will burn our oxigen before we can burn all the oil.

That's a new take on it. got supporting documentation?

[muck]

[RuGlu6]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

That's a new take on it. got supporting documentation?

Simply because carbon based fuels exist on other planets where was never any plants or dinosaurs since solar system was formed.
One example is http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01...tan_flammable/
Methane is carbon based fuel how did it formed without trees and dead animals.?

Also because on this planet oil is found at 22 000 feet and deeper as well as below ocean floor at such strata depths that never had any animal or plant matter.
LOL When we bury a cat or a grandma do we get oil ?

http://www.rense.com/general67/oils.htm
.
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/oilno...l29sep05.shtml

Also to throuw something else interesting your way check this guy out he sayis that there is evidance found of humanse on this planet as far back as 2.8 billion years back !!!
http://www.forbiddenhistory.info/?q=node/83

Metallic spheres, approximately 1 inch in diameter and some with three parallel grooves around the equator, have been found in South America. There have been two types found- one composed of a solid bluish metal with flecks of white, and the other hollowed out and filled with a spongy white substance. The spheres were found in a Precambrian mineral deposit- dated to be 2.8 billion years old.
http://www.forbiddenhistory.info/?q=node/93
.
http://www.forbiddenhistory.info/?q=node/2

[Stones]

Originally Posted by RuGlu6

Also because on this planet oil is found at 22 000 feet and deeper as well as below ocean floor at such strata depths that never had any animal or plant matter.

Speaking from a geological perspective, all of the oil reserves discovered so far have been formed from the decay of predominatly algae, bryozoans, and plankton in either a fresh water or marine environment.

The reason why such reservers are now situated at depths exceeding 22 000 feet is that all of the overlying rock is overburden. At one point in time, these organisms lived at the surface of the earth's crust in shallow lakes, inland seas, as well as the ocean. After they died and sank to the lake or sea bottom, these organisms were buried with sediments that over millions of years, accumulated to the true vertical thickness of rock we see overlying any given reserve of oil.

At one point in time, it was thought that oil could also have been generated from an igneous rock source through degration of certain minerals under extreme heat and pressure. This however, has never been proven as I've read several papers on the subject, all of which clearly state that oil has in all instances thus far, been generated from an organic source.

[RuGlu6]

Originally Posted by Stones

Speaking from a geological perspective, all of the oil reserves discovered so far have been formed from the decay of predominatly algae, bryozoans, and plankton in either a fresh water or marine environment.

The reason why such reservers are now situated at depths exceeding 22 000 feet is that all of the overlying rock is overburden. At one point in time, these organisms lived at the surface of the earth's crust in shallow lakes, inland seas, as well as the ocean. After they died and sank to the lake or sea bottom, these organisms were buried with sediments that over millions of years, accumulated to the true vertical thickness of rock we see overlying any given reserve of oil.

At one point in time, it was thought that oil could also have been generated from an igneous rock source through degration of certain minerals under extreme heat and pressure. This however, has never been proven as I've read several papers on the subject, all of which clearly state that oil has in all instances thus far, been generated from an organic source.

How about planets that never had organic life and yet have carbon based fuel ?