Greenhouse gas levels pass symbolic 400ppm CO2 milestone

[Jaskalas]

It's funny that it's the conservatives' lack of intelligence that makes them unable to be conservative on this issue. They simply lack the ability to imagine the possible consequences.

What is conservative about the proposed 'solutions' of government dictating energy? Or... failing that, cap and trade?

If you're attempting to force a shift from our infinite growth model to sustainability, perhaps you should call it what it is and then discuss the imperative END to the right to have children. Cannot stop humans from destroying the ecosystem if we keep growing by the billions.

The first step in your quest is to implement China's 1 child policy, forced upon the entire planet.

 

[nehalem256]

The first step in your quest is to implement China's 1 child policy, forced upon the entire planet.

This would require them to be honest with themselves.

Considering liberals in the US seem to want to the let the poor breed out however many children they want... it seems they lie even to themselves.

 

[umbrella39]

alarmist crapola drum beat for the warming religionists and "sky is falling" aficionados.

Typical thread crapping MO...

 

[slayernine]

The sky is falling so you need to buy this product that will make you think you are preventing the sky from falling. In reality you are most likely just breaking the environment in a different way. Using electric everything just pushes the fumes out of a coal power plant instead of in your face.

 

[sandorski]

meh, Venus had runaway GW and it's still in the sky. Why worry?

 

[brandonb]

Damn it.

The plants are going to kill us soon.

(I watched the Happening yesterday!)

 

[BoberFett]

The planet will do just fine with even higher levels....the question is if we will be. As levels rise, life and by extension humanity, will change.

Maybe not in the numbers we have now, but is that really a bad thing?

 

[Texashiker]

alarmist crapola drum beat for the warming religionists and "sky is falling" aficionados.

As long as your grocery store has food, who cares?

 

[BoberFett]

what level is 'bad' ?

Bad is anything other than what we're used to. "Liberals" sounds remarkably conservative when it comes to climate change, don't they?

 

[piasabird]

Are we dead yet? Unless you can get other countries like china, korea, south america, Africa, and the rest of the world like India to cooperate nothing the US is doing will help much. Sure we could force you to buy a car that pollutes less, but will it make a difference?

 

[piasabird]

When I was in Korea last 1980? they were still heating houses with charcoal.

 

[piasabird]

One think I notice as a trend is that people want larger and larger automobiles, and larger and larger houses, both of which use more energy. Maybe we should ration energy and gas and if you use too much you have to pay a premium price so there is more left for the little people.

 

[piasabird]

I dont think it is that bad. If we just did a few things like kept replacing older cars, we could significantly improve air quality. The usa could just force all the car manufacturers to build smaller cars and make some minor improvements and attempt to build some facilities with solar panels for a substantial improvements. The key would be to have a goal and a logical and pheasable plan to make some improvements. Stupid ideas like carbon credits will not work. We have to make improvements that are possible and affordable. Everyone does not need an SUV and a dodge Mega Truck.

When you build a smaller car, you need less equipment to meet EPA standards.

 

[werepossum]

Well, I'm pretty agnostic toward the usual calamitous portents of doom, but one thing we absolutely know is that the increased levels will increase ocean acidification. It might well be a good thing for the world to be a bit warmer, but it's unquestionably a bad thing for reefs to be more acidic.

 

[Jaskalas]

Well, I'm pretty agnostic toward the usual calamitous portents of doom, but one thing we absolutely know is that the increased levels will increase ocean acidification. It might well be a good thing for the world to be a bit warmer, but it's unquestionably a bad thing for reefs to be more acidic.

Didn't appear to be a problem when CO2 was 2,000-3,000ppm 65 million years ago.

 

[werepossum]

Didn't appear to be a problem when CO2 was 2,000-3,000ppm 65 million years ago.

I don't think most reef fauna were around 65 million years ago, and I'm pretty sure that other stress factors like overfishing, pesticide- and phosphate- and nitrogen- and herbicide-laden runoff, and estrogen-mimicking compounds were not so prevalent. I doubt siltation was such a problem either, although it might have been. I think reef-building coral genera are only ten or twenty million years old (or so), and the reefs themselves but a few thousand. Fish can speciate fairly quickly and reefs can eventually regrow in more temperate climes as in yesteryear, but the widespread loss of coral reefs would be a crash in the oceans that in human terms would seem quite long. And unpleasant.

 

[Moonbeam]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...e-scientists/2012/05/31/gJQAVvwP3U_story.html



I don't think anyone can give a definitive answer on what CO2 emissions will do to this planet down the road without a certain amount of people calling those people alarmists, thus the present roadblock facing us on how to move forward. So what do you make of this?

What I make of it is that conservative brain defects will be the end of civilization.