"Global warming is irreversible without massive

Started by josephpalazzo, September 25, 2013, 06:31:13 PM

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josephpalazzo

Quote from: "frosty"Global warming is a huge issue but environmental degradation is another. Sure you can talk about rising temperatures, but you can also talk about forest fires, mass deforestation, harmful toxic chemicals affecting crops, the bees dying out, bodies of water being over polluted, etc etc.


Unfortunately, this is true. It seems that we, humans as a species, are complacent, and we are motivated only when power and greed are involved. Otherwise we don't give a shit until it's too late.

stromboli

It is worse than you realize. the Northern hemisphere is home to the Taiga, the largest forest on earth. It nearly circles the globe from Canada to Scandinavia to the Siberian Taiga. Include with that the fact that Siberia is a gigantic peat bog in the summertime and frozen over in winter. Enormous drying raises the spectacle of dead trees, tinder dry, acting like wicks in a fire pit the size of the continental United States. Siberia is a carbon collector. Lose the trees and that dead mass of trees becomes a carbon emitter the size of our entire country.

 There have been massive forest fires in the Siberian Taiga
http://rt.com/news/siberia-wildfires-smoke-airport-322/

22,000 acres ain't chump change, and it will get worse.

And don't forget good ol' ocean Methane.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 76278.html

frosty

I googled Taiga Forest to see pics, and whenever I picture a huge natural forest in my mind, that would be it. And of course lust for greed money and power is harming the Earth, but another problem is apathy. People have their many modern distractions, and therefore don't feel inclined to give much of a fuck about these issues. Yes, there are people that are concerned and trying to find solutions but modern civilization runs on what we take for granted and what in turn affects the Earth. People are not going to give up their comfy lifestyles so other generations can live comfy too. Humans seem to be quite shortsighted and take for granted the planet's ability to replenish itself and keep going.

I really don't see this issue getting any better though. I've seen all my life how lots of people refuse to change their personalities. Now apply that to the entire human race, and how our greedy nature makes us think of ourselves and our desires first and foremost. Add profit and other self centered components in there, and basically you run into a solid, very thick brick wall.

SGOS

Quote from: "frosty"Global warming is a huge issue but environmental degradation is another. Sure you can talk about rising temperatures, but you can also talk about forest fires, mass deforestation, harmful toxic chemicals affecting crops, the bees dying out, bodies of water being over polluted, etc etc.
The epoch man has evolved in is not representative of the Earth's past climatic conditions, which would have been hostile to trees, as well as any other land dwelling creatures.  Living organisms that first showed up before the Precambrian explosion are partly responsible for the "environmental degradation" that turned a lifeless planet into a temperate oxygen rich habitat that made advanced life possible.  And now, mankind's help is necessary to return the Earth to the inhabitable Hell it once was, and the cycle will be complete.  :-D

frosty

You seem to either be joking or you completely missed the point of my post, but if you disagree with the whole "environmental degradation" part then that's really good for you.

Colanth

Quote from: "stromboli"It is worse than you realize. the Northern hemisphere is home to the Taiga, the largest forest on earth. It nearly circles the globe from Canada to Scandinavia to the Siberian Taiga. Include with that the fact that Siberia is a gigantic peat bog in the summertime and frozen over in winter. Enormous drying raises the spectacle of dead trees, tinder dry, acting like wicks in a fire pit the size of the continental United States. Siberia is a carbon collector. Lose the trees and that dead mass of trees becomes a carbon emitter the size of our entire country.
It's not only the trees. A peat bog is a gigantic carbon sink.  Let that bog start to rot, due to warming or anything else, and it releases not only CO[sub:tu5u7nd4]2[/sub:tu5u7nd4], but methane (another greenhouse gas) as well.  It's already happening in Alaska.
Afflicting the comfortable for 70 years.
Science builds skyscrapers, faith flies planes into them.

SGOS

Quote from: "frosty"You seem to either be joking or you completely missed the point of my post, but if you disagree with the whole "environmental degradation" part then that's really good for you.
I'm joking.  Although I admit that my humor can be rather dark at times.

frosty

Quote from: "SGOS"
Quote from: "frosty"You seem to either be joking or you completely missed the point of my post, but if you disagree with the whole "environmental degradation" part then that's really good for you.
I'm joking.  Although I admit that my humor can be rather dark at times.

Well, I was taking a nap, and I just woke up when I posted my last comment. But this whole issue could be considered dark so in comparison your joke isn't that bad.

Aletheia

I was hoping to have a few million more years before having to worry about another catastrophic event, but I guess now is just as good of a time as any. The earth has had it's atmosphere changed completely, frozen solid (long before the Ice Ages, mind you), wiped out 90% of all life only to wipe out 75% of all life a few hundred million years later, and so on and so forth. Life will continue on, but our current biodiversity will suffer and might even have to revert back to single-celled and simple multi-cellular life for a few hundred million years.

I just hope that by the time sentient life evolves again, our fossilized remains won't be so old as to risk being melted into the lower levels of the crust and erased forever.
Quote from: Jakenessif you believe in the supernatural, you do not understand modern science. Period.

JamesTheUnjust

It's too late to turn back now.

The human race will not be wiped out but it's going to be awful to stay the least. The biggest problem is what will happen ecologically speaking? Usually, in these types of events 5-10% of species get wiped out. Remember though, this is going to take place over 300-1500 years, and won't be over night.

Jason78

QuoteIn other words, even if all the world ran on carbon-free energy and deforestation ceased, the only way of lowering temperatures would be to devise a scheme for sucking hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Couldn't we just grow a buttload of trees and then bury them?
Winner of WitchSabrinas Best Advice Award 2012


We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real
tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -Plato

josephpalazzo

It's not going to happen - we would have to give up millions of acres of agricultural land to grow those trees.

SGOS

Quote from: "Jason78"
QuoteIn other words, even if all the world ran on carbon-free energy and deforestation ceased, the only way of lowering temperatures would be to devise a scheme for sucking hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Couldn't we just grow a buttload of trees and then bury them?
It took a billion years to bury enough trees to form the carbon "sink," and man has released millions of years of this carbon sink in a century.  At this point, we have wiped out most of the Earth's old growth timber.  We would have to devote ourselves to regrowing the old growth timber, which will take at least 500 years, before we can even think about burying it.  And then we would have to keep doing that for millions and millions of years.  The timber companies would go out of business, and Ayn Rand would turn over in her grave.  Capitalism (as we know it) would fail. :-D

Cocoa Beware

Unfortunately, we may not be able to agree that drastic measures are needed until a few decades down the road when it really starts hitting home that this will devastate the globe.

Humans are just not cut out for dealing with this kind of problem, with so many nations completely absorbed in competition with others. Multinational cooperation is something we seriously suck at.

Hopefully technology can bail us out to some extent.

Jason78

Quote from: "josephpalazzo"It's not going to happen - we would have to give up millions of acres of agricultural land to grow those trees.
There's all that desert that we're not using.  Couldn't we try reclaiming that?
Winner of WitchSabrinas Best Advice Award 2012


We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real
tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -Plato