In a series of events this week in New Zealand, there is now boat tours to go see (3) giant melting ice bergs of the coast of NZ. It started ages ago with 100 being spotted far South of NZ, a bit unusual but Antartica is South of NZ so ice isn't anything to get excited about, then early this week 2 had moved West of NZ and had scared fishing boats out there, plane trips had started to see them because they were quite close, then they moved within easy helicopter distance so even more trips came, then they moved within visible distance so bored West coast marijauna growers flocked to the beachs, now they are within a casual boat trip up close, with the larger one breaking into 2. This all leading to some cool video on the news here over the last few days, here is todays story, its an internet link so its horrible quality and half of it is talking to bored marijauna growers.

I'm tempted to drive down and watch global warming for the hell of it but I'm lazy and its just ice. It would be cool if they hit land, it should be impossible for the iceberg not to melt when approaching the coast but it wasn't supposed to go this far up and this close either.

Yay Global Warming. I'm ready for a penguin to come on one of those icebergs just for me.

The earth warms and cools itself every 500 hundred years anyways

But I do want a penguin too...

ditto... we can just ditto, can't we?

Maybe...

Can we just maybe?

Yeah channler, I've seen records of the earth warming and cooling, and the warming periods are one third what this "warming period" is, and it's only getting hotter.

The big deal about global warming wasn't the fact that the earth is warming, everyone assumed that was just normal until they tracked what actaully happens every 500 years, every 1000 years and every 10'000 years and found that it definitely wasn't normal. Most of the world's glaciers have disappeared over the last 30 years even though they have been around 1000s of years but most things talking about global warming talk about ice records, its how this thing started, when the nobel prize winning scientists got together back a decade ago and told the world that it was going to drown/dehydrate/blow away, 10+ years later its got some media attention as petrol becomes inefficient anyway.

Besides simple fact is that carbon products have a greenhouse effect and we are putting carbon into the biosphere which has not be in the biosphere for millions of years, one leads to the other, nobody has explained how causing global warming will lead to not causing global warming yet.

I´m afraid it´s gonna be rather wet......when all that ice is liquefied...Ewwww

Yes, the Earth is warming, and people are the cause (There are some interesting graphs that hammer this point home). Alas. Since I live above 3000 feet elevation I won't be drowning (and it will be a while before we see any really extreme sea level rise anyway, unless we hit a threshold and Greenland quickly melts--which could cause any number of crazy things to occur) but I'll be saddened to see the effects of a warming climate on the local mountain ecosystems.

An aside: Earth's climate does change in cycles due to the asymetric orbit the planet takes around the sun (We call these Milankovich cycles). But, if I recall correctly, our relation to the sun should have the planet cooling. I think this may have been responsible for the brief cooling that occured from about 1950-1970. But, of course, the Earth is now warming. The amount of carbon dioxide we've thrown into the atmosphere has overwhelmed the other factors that contribute to climate.

So lemme guess... You hung out with the dinosaurs? Go eat a sock doomed.

Alls I can say is that if we evolved like you guys are trying to hammer into my head then that means we and what we create are part of nature. If so, why should we worry about this? After all, its only nature. Stopping it would be artificial O_o

We worry about it because a hotter climate would be detrimental to our quality of life--because we don't want coastal cities flooded, mass extinctions, massive drought, etc. Human civilization (as we think of civilization) has developed during a period (the last 10,000 years or so) of remarkably stable climate. Upsetting that stable climate (one of my professors likened it to poking a stick into a sleeping dragon) will very likely have some extremely undesirable consequences. We'd rather not find out what they are.

Bah.. Shoot it takes a bit of death for anything to work

It takes a bit of death for the numb-skulls to wake up and realize not only is the world getting hotter then usual but it's our fault. The worse part is before we get any results back the process will already become irreversible. And then all the people that were telling the world to do something NOW are still going to be stuck in the same oven as the morons with their heads in the sand.

Well sense it seems that its a loose loose situation just hamster it all aye? Booze anyone?

Yes please! Anyway I´m going to the very land of Booze tomorrow! Russia..here I come! Murmansk....to the eternal night, I won´t see the sun nearly at all next week!

Be well all of you while I´m away huh!

I just realized that I fuxxored my grammar up in that previous post lol

Well, Rainer wonders if that killer Hurricane season that one year might have been a product of our messing the earth up...

but He lives in central Alberta, and he is not very much looking forward to the heating of the earth. It would make the already unbearable Stampede Parade even hotter...

Meh, call me an optimist but I this just a hiccup in global advancement. I still firmly believe that we as humans are nature, and that which we build is nature.

When a bird builds a nest don't we call it nature? compassion, for all we know they could be calling us nature in all their little chirps..

That which is natural is not necessarily desirable. Malaria, for instance, is totally natural...

But debating about whether humans are natural or not is maddening and rather unproductive. Natural or not, the fact is that we're causing the world's climate to warm. That warming is by general consensus considered undesirable. Considering that we caused it, I think that we ought to act to prevent this undesirable warming. An ethicist would, I think, say that the situation implies a moral obligation on our part to do so. If it were happening just because of changes in Earth's orbit relative the sun the whole deal would be out of our control, but that isn't the case.

Meh, I suppose.. But I do have a question then..

Do you support saving africa? I mean places like Darfur and those that don't produce enough food or infrastructure? If so you obviously support global warming cause the more we help (or the more the Africans help) industrialize the worse emissions and waste becomes...

The starving people in Africa? or the warmth of the world?

Global warming affects countries like Darfur the most and because Darfur isn't developed it doesn't have the ability to adapt to global warming like the countries which caused it can. Besides the stratergies combatting global warming exclude the third world anyway which is the given reason why the US doesn't sign up. Global warming->no Darfur to be developed.

And I am actaully working on the development of Darfur, they have a very potiential for renewable energy production (solar) which is being introduced by development agencies, fossil fuels won't help them develop unless you still believe neoliberalism.



And on the topic of the icebergs, there were more icebergs come up, Aussies decided to be checkie and put an Aussie flag on one because they "like stealing everything which belongs to the kiwis" (they said that), but what they didn't realise was the day before some Kiwis put a New Zealand flag on the largest iceberg. And Shreik the sheep (was the wooliest sheep in the world before it first got shaven to measure the wool, managed to get pretty wooly since then too) got shaven on one of the icebergs for random publicity. And the leader of a major right wing party resigned and got replace by someone who actaully believes in global warming so now about 85% of our parliament has global warming policy and the rest appart from the 3% party on the far right, say they believe in global warming but haven't developed a policy to combat it...now to wait 2 years for some policy to actaully be implimented.

Uh.. You mean like 20 years.. Remember I said something bad has to happen first? Icebergs are cool, wait till they sink a ship...

Anyways you would be silly to say though that the development of 3rd world countries (which is a outdated name anyways.. They do deserve better then that) could be done without fossil fuel. Sure maybe in a hundred years and lots of investment, but a simpler process will be used first and that process with need.. Gasoline.

At least, thats my idea.

As long as you don't believe that Rock for Darfur stuff works I'm all cool with your liberalness

Sudan is an exporter of oil actually--it enrichs the government scammers at expense to the environment

One of Africa's main problem is drought-related crop failures, which may be related to global warming.

As for development, I favor raising living standards in developing countries, if it occurs coincident to conservation on our part and global population reduction--preferably by taxing large families. Of course, it isn't THAT simple, but we could certainly do with a tax on large families in the United States, as opposed to the current tax system which encourages large families. 2 children per family is quite enough.

Edit: I imagine that there should be a lot of potential for sustainable energy in Africa. North Africa has a lot of sun, and probably some wind. Same for other desert or semi-desert areas. South Africa could surely use waves and tidal energy to some effect. The problem is, petro-states like Sudan will be more hostile to sustainable energy because the government controls the oil, enriching the leadership, whereas sustainables tend to be more locally-controlled.

Tell me what exactly are they going to use gasoline for? Cars, the roads there are compassion even if they could afford enough cars to do their part in emissions, power generation? The majority of the population doesn't have a electricity grid and it would cost billions to build one, for individual generation it would cost individuals a large proportion of their income and require hours of time to get the petrol, villages in the middle of no where tend not to have petrol stations capable a supplying the village. Solar power is much better for development.

But I really don't want to get into development stratergies, they are so long and there as so many of them.

You increase infrastucture.. you increase mobility. Look at China. At one point in time it was stupid to think that you could travel, but once the government loosened up regs on everything and the price of the car was in reach of the middle class.. BOOM! China is exploding with economic development.. And guess what? They need more fuel..

So sure, I'd rather see wind farms then these big factories, but with our current mindset it won't work. And yes, it is still expensive.



I don't think so.. Looks at the population statistics for most European and Asian countries. Heres a quote from an article on VanityFair...



As you can see, less is not a good thing. In fact we should reward people for having children and taking care of them. I r sycko!

And why is lower population in these developed nations a bad thing? It causes a few problems for welfare programs where the working support the non-working (i.e. Social Security) but this is mainly a problem of accounting--the primary reason for the problem is politics. But declining population is good for the Earth--if developing nations reduced their reproductive rates (by incentives, not force--I hope) the world would be in much better shape. If global average reproduction was 2 children per family population would decline and eventually stabilize at a healthier number. The European nations (esp. France and Germany, I think) worry about declining population because Muslim immigrants are moving in and making up a larger proportion of the population, changing long-established cultures. And it may be a legitimate worry, but I think they're just making it worse by demanding either absolute assimilation or total separation. There's a reason all those folks rioted around Paris--they don't feel welcome, and they don't have jobs. The two are related, I think.