Bigthink - Idea Comments Feed

Comment on: Can we really solve global warming?

Bigthink — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:35:30 +0100

We're not going to be able to stop global warming any more than we are able to stop the sun from shining or the Earth from spinning. It is all apart of the natural processes of things. 1)The sun's heat output is increasing. We have no effect on the sun's cycles. We pretend to know what it's doing, but we haven't been around long enough to observe everything it can do. 2) The Earth is going through another warming period. There have been small warming periods before and there will be more in the future of different magnitudes.

We pretend to know more about the Earth and Solar System than we actually do. Man will never tame nature, or have it completely figured out. We just go off of what is most likely to happen, but it doesn't always turn out that way.

Comment on: Can we really solve global warming?

Bigthink — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:41:06 +0100

wow hugh you figured it out. have you talked to your therapist about this?

Comment on: Can we really solve global warming?

Bigthink — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:18:38 +0100

I hate to say it, but I think we're already too late. Even if we could cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero today, the oceans would still continue to absorb existing CO2 for hundreds of years, and suffer the death of reef systems and sea life to a point where the oceans would be toxic. The wheels of progress on environmental issues just turn too slowly, or can be monkey wrenched by neocons and Christian rapture-heads, as we've seen happen of late. Decades of progressive environmental legislation erased by a single president who would never sign the Kyoto Protocols in a million years. All pessimism aside, I think we still need to do everything we can, and we need to get it done yesterday. Like an ER doctor, we can't call the planet's time of death until we've lost all vital signs. Until then, it deserves every fighting chance we can give it. Many will give up and start planning a Battlestar Galactica mission to colonize outer space, but if they're so game to split mother earth, let's send them sooner rather than later, so those of us who care won't have short-sighted, self-interested idiots standing in the way anymore.