Global Warming Poll (2010)

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

2. What one do you belong to?

camp2

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Bump for more votes

 

[DanDaManJC]

May I suggest a Camp 7:

I don't really care about the politics nor whether GW is man-made or not. What I do care about is that I become more responsible and a better steward of the limited resources of this earth. I believe I should use what resources I have to the absolute fullest, that I should re-use and recycle as much as possible, and I should minimize waste as much as possible. I believe that I should strive to have a more sustainable lifestyle that is more healthy for myself, my family, my children, and my neighbor's children. I also believe that the search for renewable, domestically-produced energy sources will also have a positive impact on our trade imbalance, GDP, employment rate, and our national security as less money will go to terrorist-sponsoring nations.

That's something we could all agree on

 

[datalink7]

Camp Me: Global Warming Real, Part Natural Cycle, Man may be affecting, may not be, but we should act as if we are

 

[clamum]

I'll go with a hybrid of camps 2,3, and 4.

It is certainly possible man's activities are affeting climate but to what extent is unknown. Our overall understanding of planetary climatology is still pretty narrow for us to be throwing absolutes around either way.

Efforts should be made to curtail greenhouse gas emissions but that should be part of a larger project to move away from fossil fuels (particularly coal and oil) and their consequent political problems (and eventual depletion). I'm more interested in reducing the amounts of harmful elements being spewed into the biosphere that can make their way into the food chain (like mercury for example) or have drastic effects on soil chemistry and plant life.

Yep, this is pretty much what I believe as well.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Camp 3, I believe that the climate is changing. But, I am not convinced that the majority of it is our (humanity's) fault. Not sure what the "end result" will be like. But, I know what the end result will be if we push through radical legislation that sends our industries to countries that do not give a damn.

 

[mesthead21]

Camp 4. Scientists cant predict what the weather will be like tomorrow. How can they figure out what is gonna happen in the 5+ years??

 

[TehMac]

The world is going to be destroyed tomorrow.


This can be avoided by sending me a million dollars. email me at algore@hysteria.com

 

[KeithTalent]

I'm sort of a combo of options 2 & 3. I think much of it was probably not caused by humans, but some of it was and made things even worse. Future is unknown.

KT

 

[moshquerade]

Global warming sure has been going on for a loooooooong time.

 

[BrownTown]

None of those options suit me. It's real, it's likely caused by humans, impact is not a big deal.

This is mine as well. Climate change may happen but it will be so slow that we will be able to adapt without having a huge negative impact on the world as a whole. Certainly I believe the negative impact would be less then the considerable negative impact we will cause trying to stop it.

For example it is entirely possible that price climate change legislation in the United States (about 400 billion a year) will accelerate the demise of this country since it will not be economical to produce ANYTHING in the USA due to incredibly high energy prices. Of course the irony is that such legislation doesnt even help the environment much since all that manufacturing goes to China where their Coal plants are FAR worse polluters, pluce we have to burn oil to chip the products half way around the world.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Camp 4. Scientists cant predict what the weather will be like tomorrow. How can they figure out what is gonna happen in the 5+ years??

Specific data points (temp tomorrow) is a different beast from long-term general trends.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Camp 4. Scientists cant predict what the weather will be like tomorrow. How can they figure out what is gonna happen in the 5+ years??

Scientists can't predict the exact motion of a single atom, therefore they can't predict the motion of a tennis ball falling in a vacuum.

/faulty logic

 

[FelixDeCat]

Scientists can't predict the exact motion of a single atom, therefore they can't predict the motion of a tennis ball falling in a vacuum.

/faulty logic

If the years of watching Star Trek have taught me anything its that you can predict the motion of anything if you apply the right spatial algorithm.

 

[WildW]

Like any religion, climate change has its share of fanatics, heretics, and agnostics. With all the arguments that go on I now realize it shares another characteristic with religion - all points of view are unprovable.

The believers quote the evidence, the deniers claim those sources are unreliable, including the official line taken by governments. If you can't trust your government, who are you going to believe? Whatever evidence appears from any imaginable source, the other side with rubbish it, and so the argument never ends.

There are too many fanatics that damage the real debate. There is more than one solution - personally I think we should look at technologies to engineer a solution, to modify the climate and/or better cope with a changing environment, rather than put all efforts into the single-minded persuit of trying to avoid a problem that may already be too late to stop. There's a subculture of people who want everyone to religiously practice self-denial and live a pre-industrial utopian existance - even if we were to invent a way to fix everything tomorrow.

I will not live long enough to see for myself whether this whole thing was true. Perhaps the climate is changing, but the rate is in question. Perhaps it is man's fault, perhaps a natural cycle.

It becomes a question of morality - do we take action that may save us, or that may be futile and hold us back. Just like a religion I do not know and indeed cannot know which God to worship, and so I put my head down and try to fit in.

Do we put all our efforts into reducing CO2 output? Can we protect our way of life and the earth's massive population forever? I don't think climate change threatens the existance of the human race. We are a tough species, we will adapt and survive, through an ice age or the opposite. It's just a matter of how many people die. Then again, if it turns out to be a fantasy and money spent managing emissions is really a waste, others will continue to die every day from starvation, lack of clean water, disease - things that could be prevented using the money we spend on reducing emissions.

I think the climate change idea is very fashionable, perhaps too much. A lot is spent on it that could do more immediate good elsewhere. A lot of people are making money from it, and when that happens you can never tell what to believe.

 

[SparkyJJO]

A combination of 3, 4, and 5. Real-ish, yes. Natural, yes. Mad-made, no. Driven by political agenda, HECK YES. If anyone denies that it hasn't been turned political is blind.

And regardless of what the EPA says, CO2 is NOT a pollutant.

 

[yhelothar]

2, 3, and 4
Man probably did contribute to some of the warming, but it seems quite clear that climate does shift naturally in cycles also.

But as far as future doom, as long as we stay set on shifting our technology to cleaner and more efficient energy and means of production, we should be fine.

In the late 1800s, people were worried that at the pace the population was growing, the demand for horses as transportation would result in the land being covered neck deep in horse dung by the mid 1900s.

 

[Adrenaline]

I clicked 3 but meant 4, whoops.

 

[Cheeseplug]

It doesn't matter what "camp" I'm in; This isn't (shouldn't be) a political issue and I'm not a scientist.

 

[ShawnD1]

You know what's weird? In USA the issue seems to be almost perfectly divided along party lines.

It has everything to do with the consequences of one side being right. If people admit global warming is real, it opens the door for whacked out government policies that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. An example of this is the idea of carbon credits - you can buy the right to pollute. wtf kind of bullshit is that? You're allowed to destroy the earth because you paid a fee?? What next, toxic waste credits? Can I pay a fee and be allowed to dump toxic waste in the river? Will I be able to buy a license that lets me dump used motor oil on my lawn?

Any government regulations imposed would certainly hurt my entire province's economy. Provinces east and west of me have lots of hydro electricity and the provinces in the east have lots of low-carbon nuclear power because they sit on the largest uranium reserves in the world. My province is powered almost entirely by coal because it's all we have. Fucktards in the east start to talk about how people should pay federal taxes on carbon because they know they won't need to pay anything. If someone imposed some environmental taxation based on energy consumption then I would probably support that just because it affects all of us equally.

 

[Chaotic42]

Future will be rough, but we'll be fine. Probably not man-made. Even if it is, it's not worth complete global economic destruction to stop.

 

[EricFartman]

Global warming just a theory in the utmost limit situation, if we lose large number of forests, that would be not enough tree to transform CO2 into O2 and some organic matter. And CO2 is heavier than air, and they can solution in the water. So i think we need more tree, that idea better than close the factory in third country, coz lot of worker will lost their job....

 

[WHAMPOM]

I will enjoy my Arkansas climate and visits South to the Iowa seashore.

 

[between]

...

 

[ShawnD1]

(because trees convert CO2 to O2) So i think we need more tree, that idea better than close the factory in third country, coz lot of worker will lost their job....

This won't work. Trees are carbon neutral. They consume CO2 when they grow but they release CO2 when they decay. That also means you can burn wood and know that you're still carbon neutral because it would have released that same amount of carbon when it naturally decays

Burning coal and oil is different from burning a tree because the formation of coal removed carbon from the atmosphere millions of years ago, before humans existed. Burning all of that stored carbon reverts our atmosphere back to the way it was millions of years ago. Since humans didn't exist at the time, we're not entirely certain if humans and current animals can comfortably survive in such an atmosphere.

Science aside, you're right that shutting down factories is a bad idea. Having third world people live in poverty and starve to death today in order to prevent the possibility of people starving to death tomorrow doesn't make any sense. Of course we all want to save the trees and the owls, but we need to be realistic and understand that shutting down factories really does lead to starvation in some places.