West Antartica Ice Melt Now "Unstoppable": NASA

Curious George said:

No. But I am not trying to blame some mysterious higher ups whom we empowered. Bamboo and banana trees grow fast. Other plants grow fast as well. weed hardly has the market cornered. But this is not a single facet subject. What about all those monoculture farms. What about the landfills, the spendthrift consumers, the homeowners, the SUV owners, the supermarket shoppers, the meat eaters, the party goers, and even the hippies in the sixties traveling the states in their VW's. Roads are not exactly the pinnacle of environmentally friendly. We all contribute to waste.

We have been for centuries. You and I are just as much part of the problem. We cannot point our fingers as say, it was those dirty "higher ups." They should have thought better, offered us different choices.

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How can you blame us when we had no say in the choices?

Basically, it's like saying if I only offer my kid candy bars to eat and he develops health problems by eating them it's his fault not mine for not giving him the choice of real food to eat.

We contributed because we had no say.
What part of that are you failing to understand?

Should we have froze to death in the winter and walked 10-50 miles a day to work and only worked at places that did not produce things unsafe to the environment?
Is it our fault too when big businesses pay off the gov, so they can continue to pollute the very air we breathe?
Is it all those in 3rd world countries fault that they have no clean water to drink because their gov allows big business to dump all their waste in it?

You reasoning is severally flawed.
Science knew from the beginning, common man did not.
In fact, some scientists are still in denial themselves and completely ignoring the problems.

I guess its the fault of us too that there was a race to get to the moon first and the continuing ruining of the ozone layer to keep the space station going too huh?

Sorry but you have this whole thing twisted to blame us as common man for what science did and is still doing.
Again, what part of them suppressing everything that doesn't make big business richer don't you understand?
What part of them now messing with even worse stuff that makes asbestos look like cotton candy and keeping it hush hush, don't you understand?
I bore easy and this is getting too ignorant for my tastes.

Good luck with your flawed reasoning.

kashmir said:

How can you blame us when we had no say in the choices?

Basically, it's like saying if I only offer my kid candy bars to eat and he develops health problems by eating them it's his fault not mine for not giving him the choice of real food to eat.

We contributed because we had no say.
What part of that are you failing to understand?

Should we have froze to death in the winter and walked 10-50 miles a day to work and only worked at places that did not produce things unsafe to the environment?
Is it our fault too when big businesses pay off the gov, so they can continue to pollute the very air we breathe?
Is it all those in 3rd world countries that have no clean water to drink because their gov dumps all their waste in it?

You reasoning is severally flawed.
Science knew from the beginning, common man did not.
In fact, some scientists are still in denial themselves and completely ignoring the problems.

I guess its the fault of us too that there was a race to get to the moon first and the continuing ruining of the ozone layer to keep the space station going too huh?

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Your kid doesn't have a choice who his father is. You did have a choice. Don't pull the victim card once the fan becomes brown.

I watched a documentary series a little while ago, I forget the name, but something like "The Amazing Orbital Journey of the Earth", which in one part talked about ice ages and how they are cyclical. The next one is due in 50,000 years. It's a result of three astronomical effects, including the tilt of the Earth's axis, the position of the Earth in its parabolic path around the sun and I forget the other thing.

CynthiaCypher said:

Wow, this thread was totally ignored. Like nobody wants to think about it.

Facts are 4-6 more degrees Celsius and we will have no more ice caps or civilization for that matter. We are barely feeling the effects of greenhouses released in the 70's and 80's, this is just the beginning.

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There will certainly be economic & political turmoil with rising sea levels.
But civilization coming to an end? No, not from this. There will be plenty
of arable land with balmier temperatures, & there will of course be larger
seas for fishing. Consider how the Earth will look if all ice melted....
Rising Seas - Interactive: If All The Ice Melted
Revoltingistan looks to be spared any land loss, but we'll see a lot of refugees
from what's left of Cuba. We should be concerned, but not because the planet
& civilization will be destroyed. Reserve that fear for killer asteroids.

Revoltingest said:

Reserve that fear for killer asteroids.

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Or the eruption of a super-volcano... That kind of devastation will happen in days and weeks following an event... not decades later.

Steven Hawking is so "optimistic" about our future that he says we're going to need to start preparing for leaving Earth to live elsewhere. He says that what some call our "selfish gene" is going to probably undo us because we tend to think both short term plus what's in it for us personally.

Curious George said:

The earth will be fine.

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Yeah, the earth will be fine but us humans will be ******!

YmirGF said:

Or the eruption of a super-volcano... That kind of devastation will happen in days and weeks following an event... not decades later.

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Or a combination of all the above. We're overdue for a super-apocalypse. Over time, it seems that a great dying-off is always followed by a new flourishing forth, out with old forms of life to make room for the emergence of new forms.

Straw Dog said:

Or a combination of all the above. We're overdue for a super-apocalypse. Over time, it seems that a great dying-off is always followed by a new flourishing forth, out with old forms of life to make room for the emergence of new forms.

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Hmmmmm. I wonder if this is all just an elaborate fear of ego-loss on a global scale? (Half kidding.)


That said, I tend not to be too concerned about things I cannot stop. We are an amazingly adaptable species.

YmirGF said:

We are an amazingly adaptable species.

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And so were the dinosaurs...now look at them. The once mighty T-Rex reduced to the level of a chicken.

YmirGF said:

That said, I tend not to be too concerned about things I cannot stop. We are an amazingly adaptable species.

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I'm not terribly bothered by what is beyond all control, but am aware of our species' role in helping to cause the current mass extinction, which may have further unforeseen chain reactions and feedback loops that return to annihilate most, if not all, of the human race. In accepting all this, I'm somewhat of a tragic stoic.

EDIT: Or, alternatively, I am bothered subconsciously but managing mortality anxiety well-enough right now.

CynthiaCypher said:

And so were the dinosaurs...now look at them. The once mighty T-Rex reduced to the level of a chicken.

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maybe this is blessing in disguise, people want to be chickens :sarcastic
bahh tumm tishhhh....

Breaking news: Primate species Homo sapiens sapiens, which lives on the planet Earth, displays no ability to live in a natural balance with its environment. Yet, individually, they do display a keen talent for blaming this on everyone but themselves.

kadzbiz said:

I watched a documentary series a little while ago, I forget the name, but something like "The Amazing Orbital Journey of the Earth", which in one part talked about ice ages and how they are cyclical. The next one is due in 50,000 years. It's a result of three astronomical effects, including the tilt of the Earth's axis, the position of the Earth in its parabolic path around the sun and I forget the other thing.

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The bummer about this is that the cycles themselves are very long. In fact we started down the road to the next ice age roughly 10,000 years ago, getting colder and colder by the century......Untillllll.......that's right! Industrialization. :yes:

Sir Doom said:

So, does this mean we had a plan in place to stop it and that plan is no longer viable? Or did we just confirm finally that coming up with plans to stop it is useless? And what now?

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Primarily I read it as we need to double down: as I have seen the phrase a few times now; "Do everything, all at once."
We need to stop building so much and with such fragile structures so close to coastlines, and other soon to be flooded regions. Similarly, stuctures/civilization where worsening storm activity is expected should be built tougher. And early warning systems need to be improved.

But, it does not mean that we should abandon efforts to decrease CO2 emissions, :no: as we are just entering into the exponential portion of the pollution curve. As stated, the inevitable that we are seeing now is resulting from activities 20+ years ago. But in the last 19 years our output has greatly multiplied; and if we don't react/think, then the next 20 years will be astonomical based on population growth alone (not to mention global increased use of fossil fuel per capita; plus oceanic and sub-tundra methane release, etc...etc....)

Flooding and desertification are one thing, but if insects and crops start to fail, then all the best infrastructure in the world won't keep your great-great-grandchildren from starving to death.

CynthiaCypher said:

Yeah, the earth will be fine but us humans will be ******!

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CynthiaCypher said:

And so were the dinosaurs...now look at them. The once mighty T-Rex reduced to the level of a chicken.

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I seriously doubt that we will go extinct. But a serious die-off of humans is certainly possible. Political unrest and the use of modern weapons of mass destruction is the more likely final nail in our collective coffin.

So, in essence, adopt the "progressive" plans immediately, at any cost, or die.


Spiffy.

YmirGF said:

So, in essence, adopt the "progressive" plans immediately, at any cost, or die.


Spiffy.

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Seems like a good idea, never the less, "going for broke" seems like a better plan, after all, it's been working all this time for us.

This is reason 6154 that I am glad I didn't have kids.

YmirGF said:

So, in essence, adopt the "progressive" plans immediately, at any cost, or die.


Spiffy.

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Oh Boo Hoo! Cry me a river.

The world's scientists figured this stuff out. Gore just had the gall/foresight to make a movie out of it.
If "An Inconvenient Truth" had been produced and narrated by Bob Dole, y'all would be screamin' about how its God's will that we adopt more energy conservation, and produce less CO2.
...and you UNDENIABLY know it. :yes:
Let's see.
- Make the air (and God's gift of the green Earth) cleaner.
- Reduce dependence on Arab oil zillionaires.
- Reduce involvement in the middle east, especially in regards to decreasing funding to Islamic countries and their business interests.
- Boost American jobs, technology, and research in a race to the top uber all other wannabe countries.

Yeah. The Pugs would have loved that.....if only it had been some conservative delivering the message from the scientists to the world. :yes:

Jeez Louise! :slap: Now suck it up! and do the right thing, without thinking of your short term worthless political hineys. :slap:

It seems the louder someone screams about anthropogenic global warming,
the more they do to cause it. Comparing Algore with Dubya....
Fact Check: Is Al Gore's mansion a lot less green than George Bush's ranch house? | members.jacksonville.com

OK, now that we've had some fun with those 2 boobs, there is a real problem that
even those who take it seriously don't take it personally (generally, not always.
They want someone else to be regulated into stemming the problem. This fails to
work & it fails to motivate.

The reality is that taking steps dealing with global warming is a win/win situation. By doing as such, we reduce pollution levels, conserve our natural resources, reduce costs in the long run, etc.

Revoltingest said:

It seems the louder someone screams about anthropogenic global warming,
the more they do to cause it. Comparing Algore with Dubya....
Fact Check: Is Al Gore's mansion a lot less green than George Bush's ranch house? | members.jacksonville.com

OK, now that we've had some fun with those 2 boobs, there is a real problem that
even those who take it seriously don't take it personally (generally, not always.
They want someone else to be regulated into stemming the problem. This fails to
work & it fails to motivate.

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Sorry, but your info is years out of date.
The Gores show that they have taken the scientific community's information to heart.
Al Gore’s Mansion
Gore greens his Tennessee home | ThinkProgress
We are all in this together....like it or not.

Metis is correct. There really is no downside to improving our tech, our infrastructure, and our planet. :yes: