Guys What is your take on the climate change deal situation

[PenseWes]

I admire this guy for taking matters in to his one hands and wasting no time. Just wanted to find out general opinion what do you guys think.
Copenhagen, Denmark - Delegates at the U.N. Climate Change Conference are "running short on time" to reach agreement on a deal, U.S. President Barack Obama told them Friday.
"There is no time to waste," he said. "Now I believe it's the time for the nations and the people of the world to come behind a common purpose. We are ready to get this done today, but there has to be movement on all sides."

[Connor22]

I REALLY hope the world wakes up and starts to fight Global Warming with everything we've got, instead of tax rises. Mainly due to the fact that if sea levels do rise by predicted levels. Ireland will be UNDERWATER. I don't want that to happen because I live there (here) and I F***** love this country. That and I don't want to have to move to Germany.

[partietraumatic]

Please don't try and give Obama credit on the climate change front! The U.S.A. and president Obama are offering nowhere near the cuts in emissions required. Other countries, notably the EU have agreed to huge cuts, the US has agreed to tiny cuts. As one of the biggest emitters of green house gasses this is pitiful. In Britain we are promising at 42% cut on 1990 emissions. The EU as a whole is promising 30%, Japan 25%. Obama is promising 4%. Its quite frankly a derisory amount.

I have lost alot of respect for Obama over his stance at Copenhagen

[Just Adam]

whats that i hear is it bells on the roof???? oh no its obama saying stuff and doing nothing ...oh well.

if only the world could do summat.

the fact is im not convinced on teh global warming thing but i do know lower emissions can only be good if only for our sakes as traffic fumes are bad to us so i can buy its not good for teh planet too even if i dont go down the were all doomed route.

the fact is the summit is a pointless loead of crap nothign will happen..today theyve put out news all leaders are beeing asked to stay till a deal is done..1) that means tehy will never leave 2) the deal would be feck all and would be meaningless. as it would be rushed.

i dont believe any deal is inforceable though what happens if someone doesent meet their mark on emmisions? does copenhagen write a nasty letter to them?.

i dont think gordon brown is offering near enough either 42% on 1990? thats a joke people the traffic in teh last 20 years has atleast quadroopled if not more...

i say we need a 52% emissions on 2000.... thats gonan be super hard but atleast its progress thats actually noticable and not jsut some gimmick.

thats the problem with obame and brown and other leaders they get by on gimmicks and sound bites... they forget your judged on what you actually do and dont do and they are failing. jsut agree to summat. 4% is disgusting the usa is so backward in these issues reminds me of bush almost laughing over green issues.


and please tell them all bio fuel isnt an answer destroying plants and food for fuel is stupid we need to pour all efforts into fuel cells .

*rant over*

[Schu]

I like how some people think scientists are secretly collaborating to destroy the economy by not publishing findings that anthropogenic climate is true. Because, clearly, scientists hate money.

[Austin]

I think some part of it could be natural. And I think humans are probably not helping though. Either way I think we should find cleaner energy sources etc, whether or not it's contributing to global warming.

[Astaroth]

Anyone interested in the debate on climate change should watch the Intelligence Squared debate on the subject. I will post all five videos below.

Part One

+ YouTube Video

Part Two

+ YouTube Video

Part Three

+ YouTube Video

Part Four

+ YouTube Video

Part Five

+ YouTube Video

[Emberstone]

just remeber, the hacked and stolen emails dont actually contain anything that dispoves the science.

just because neo-con hackers from a republican anti-climate think tank illegally hacked a hundreds of thousands of emails doesnt mean the science isnt true.

nature does cycle, but there is no evidence nature has gone through a warming cycle in such rapid sucession ever in the retrivable history of the earth. that challanges the notion that this is purely a natural cycle.

the question is, how much are we contributing, and we need to continue persueing it.

but that doesnt mean we need to be shitfucking asstards about it, and continue polluting up a storm while we await further understanding on the deeper issue.

if something has evidence as being bad and damaging *and we know we do have a effect. basic elementary science is that the more CO2 we have in the atmosphere, the more it traps heat. there is no counter to that*

you dont keep kicking the wolf once you learn it has fangs.

we should be capping emisions as a precaution as we continue to further study just how much of a impact.

Bush is out of the white house... enough with the 'lets not act until its too late and we have done all the damage we should have avoided' mentality. It fucked the world econamy over... i fucked up our education systems... it fucked up our job markets... lets not let such a ignorant mentality fuck up our ability to sustain life on this planet.

better safe than dead.

[Gaetan]

It is a natural cycle in which the earth warms, and then cools. We've been able to show that, at the time of the dinosaurs before the last ice age, the earth was MUCH warmer than it is today.

However, I do believe we are accelerating the changes. Above all, I really think we need to be thinking of "sustainability" far more than just climate change.

[Emberstone]

see, that is why we need to further explore this from a scientific, not from a pesudo-fundementalist christian propagandist approch. The science on the cause of excess CO2 is rock solid and undebatable.

The question is how much of a effect do we have in relation to natural processe.

Why are humans so stupid that they will wait till the eleventh hour to deal with their actions rather than being proactive for the sake of preventing a possible wrong.

[Gaetan]

Originally Posted by Emberstone

see, that is why we need to further explore this from a scientific, not from a pesudo-fundementalist christian propagandist approch. The science on the cause of excess CO2 is rock solid and undebatable.

The question is how much of a effect do we have in relation to natural processe.

Why are humans so stupid that they will wait till the eleventh hour to deal with their actions rather than being proactive for the sake of preventing a possible wrong.

Because we're such great procrastinators. Why do it when it can be put off for another generation?

Has anyone stopped to think that Methane (Basically cow flatulence) is something like 10x more harmful than CO2 to this global warming?

Really the only way that the UK government can think of sorting this 'mess' out is to tax us poor Britain's until we are pennyless. NO! That's never going to work you need to change peoples mentality's.

As for using alternative fuels I don't think that would be good as were would the UK government get their £billions from? Taxing the duty of petrol and diesel! </rant>

[Emberstone]

well, remeber, petroleum is not a unlimited supply.

it also is the main cause of excessive CO2 release.

I also have heard that cow flatulence has less methane in it than cow manure, and that a good way to counter that is to burn cow manure to burn off the methane, which produces co2, which as you said, is less detrimental. I know some farms are exploring that. not many though, as it is still new and costly, but eventually, dairies can use that to produce power to save money, or even return to the grid to make some.

I had a science teacher who built his house to be energy producing, and use less then it produces. his house actually earned him 20-30 bucks a month, which might not seem much, but was still better then paying 60-80 bucks a month on electricity.

I agree... the mentality needs to change.

in america, pass a law... if you cant compehend basic science princibles, you cant attack them.

[UserName]

Really, Obama only giving 4% for global warming is one of the only smart things I've heard him done lately. We don't have the money to give more then that, and if we did, we could use that money in efforts to get us out of the damn recession - our economy is already terrible.

[Astaroth]

Here are a few stats I gleaned while researching the topic today.

The main sources of greenhouse gas emissions are as follows:

21.39% is caused by power stations.
15.36% is caused by industrial and manufacturing sources.
13.82% is caused by transportation fuel burning (cars).
12.78% is caused by agriculture and livestock.
11.36% is caused by fuel processing.
10.27% is caused by residential sources.
10.07% is caused by biomass burning (forest fires).
3.45% is caused by waste disposal.
1.00% is caused by CFCs.

Of the breakdown above, 72% of emissions are carbon dioxide, 18% are methane, 9% are nitrous oxide, and then the 1% CFCs listed at the end. While agriculture and livestock produce well over half of the methane and nitrous oxide (40% and 62% respectively), it only makes up for about 10% of the total gas emissions. Therefore, the best way to reduce the greenhouse effect is to alter the biggest causes: power stations, industrial sources, and transportation. In addition, reducing our consumption of meat will, in turn, create less demand on the agriculture and livestock sector and lower that 10% contribution as well. Unfortunately, the rest (residential, fires, waste) are fairly difficult to put a dent in.

As an aside, the burning of coal products of all types produces twice as much carbon dioxide as natural gas or liquid petroleum. And most developing countries rely almost entirely on coal consumption.

[Pseudojim]

Originally Posted by Astaroth

Here are a few stats I gleaned while researching the topic today.

The main sources of greenhouse gas emissions are as follows:

21.39% is caused by power stations.
15.36% is caused by industrial and manufacturing sources.
13.82% is caused by transportation fuel burning (cars).
12.78% is caused by agriculture and livestock.
11.36% is caused by fuel processing.
10.27% is caused by residential sources.
10.07% is caused by biomass burning (forest fires).
3.45% is caused by waste disposal.
1.00% is caused by CFCs.

What is the source of this data?

[Astaroth]

The data I posted was taken from the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research version 3.2.

http://www.mnp.nl/edgar/model/v32ft2.../edgv32ft-ghg/

With a visual breakdown

[RaeofLite]

Let's see here...

We will lose (due to global warming and flooding)
-major coastal cities (Vancouver, NYC, LA maybe, London, Venice,
-awesome tropical islands (Bora Bora, Maldives, Indonesia,
-parts of continents (eastern Africa, North America on all sides, flooding Iceland and Greenland obviously)


Things will:
-heat up in the summer (forcing us to stay indoors ALL day everyday unless we want skin cancer and serious serious burns)
-winters are getting cold and freakier (wicked snow storms)
-force us to pay for higher electricity (AC and heaters in the winter)
-start shifting (LITERALLY) with the tectonic plates. I swear part of california is going to split down the middle any minute, along with the strait between Victoria and Vancouver (In Canada)
-The ring of fire might flare up shocking the world more than any set of nuclear bombs
-storms are getting worse (think Katrina, and tornado warnings where there have never been any previous tornado warnings)
-become extinct (they already are... like animals whose habitat is either melting or being cut down or slaughtered by us; or plants whose forest we killed, thus possibly killing our own cures for cancer...)


Hm? Is Global warming really a problem? HELLA YES.

(Those are just some things I can think of off the top of my head.)

judging by the what i have seen it looks like american politicians are trying to make themselves look good by spraffing a load of rubbish. unfortunatly for the size and power of the country i personally dont think they are doing anywhere near enough to make the planet better. many other countries are the same though. more people should be doing more to help. the politicians unfortunatly are all talk. they went to copenhagen in their private jets and have their own limos and stuff. maybe they should have set an example and used better forms of transport that aint making the globe that much warmer!!

Originally Posted by RaeofLite

Let's see here...
-start shifting (LITERALLY) with the tectonic plates. I swear part of california is going to split down the middle any minute, along with the strait between Victoria and Vancouver (In Canada)

The rest of it is more or less true (if not exactly what will happen). This, on the other hand, is wrong. The movements of tectonic plates have to do with tectonic plates sliding over a liquid layer of the earth's mantle. And it takes millions of years for any truly noticeable effect to take place. By the time California splits from the continent (if it were truly going to do that), our species will have been long since extinct. And we can't control the movement of continents, there is no point in even trying.

Other than that, global warming is a big issue. It was hypothesized that plants would be able to adapt to increase carbon dioxide concentrations and photosynthesize more efficiently, but work with algae has since shown a breakdown in the carbon dioxide sequestering ability of photosynthetic plants. To translate, it means plants/dinoflagellates/algae will get WORSE at dealing with carbon dioxide. There are some severe evolutionary consequences to deal with.