Global Warming: reality or hoax?
 

The more I look into the whole global warming scare, the more I think it's about taxing and controlling people and less about saving the planet. Guess I want to see where people on this forum stand.

Also, not really necessary to this discussion, I've found a couple of youtube videos (one a hillarious parody of the other) to highlight the different tactics of the sides.

It really doesn't matter what you think. It's real and it's happening. What you think has absolutely no impact on it's existence.

And whether you believe in it or not, there's nothing you can do about it, which is even more depressing.

Even if America took every car off the road tomorrow, the pollution from China would continue the carbon emissions destroying the planet.

There's nothing America or Europe can do. China is killing the planet and there's nothing we can do to stop them.

I think the world will start cooling down in about five years time. It's all going to be about Global Cooling.

The sun is coming closer to Earth. This is why the Earth is getting warmer. The Human Race are probably contributing a small fraction to it. Not much difference will be made though if someone decides to take up a few extra carbon footprints by driving to work though.

Won't happen in my lifetime. So I frankly don't give a fuck either way :)

As opposed to finger pointing people should be doing their own little bit. Two wrongs dont make a right.

Maybe the pollution from China is the greatest contributing factor, that doesnt mean America and Europe should just carry on polluting the way they are.

You wont get anyone to stop doing something willingly that you are doing anyway until you show them that you are doing what you want them to do.

The Earth goes through periods of cooling down and heating up naturally, the sun is expanding all the time. We cant stop that, however we can reduce our contribution to climate change.

thats how I feel.

Little me can't do anything so why fuss about it.

If you look at the history of the planet its been through some very extreme changes over millions of years so Im sure its always gonna be that way regardless of what humans do. That said, I do think we should use our intelligence to find alterior sources to satisfy our needs. We are destroying many of the planets natural resources. They will run out eventually.

Hardly a Hoax.

Yeah apparently the UK is meant to have the same tempature that you'd find in Spain and Turkey in the near future.

I just wish it would hurry the ****** up.

We could always...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ikXLRUWks3...RandyMarsh.JPG

Haha. Oh usually France is hot enough for me. Can't wait for the sun though :D

Patrick, is that my fabulous Aisleyne in your avatar?

:lovedup:

Government says that carbon emissions from human activity are creating global warming and this global warming will have potentially catastrophic impact on the world. Right?

So why do the government not immediately ban all carbon emissions outright???

Because government is lying, just like they lie about EVERYTHING.

It is just a money making scam.

Rule number one is: If the government says it, its bollocks.

For billions of years the Earth has gone through periods of warm climate and cooler climate.

Over the whole course of Earth's history, the planet has warmed up and cooled down without any input from human beings. It is a natural and inevitable phenomenon and any actions taken by environmentalists to slow down global warming are just placebos to make them feel better - ultimately anything human beings do is not going to be enough to counteract the ongoing evolution of our planet.

One thing that does piss me off is people cutting down trees. Cos that is actively destroying nature

I think its a hoax

Dunno really, I'm pretty cynical of how much influence we can actually have over the Earth's climate though

Be sure to tell that to your kids before you die. "Fuck you I'm outta here".

I don't want kids, they get in the way :nono:

The skeptics should give this a watch.

I wonder if you will be of the same opinion when love comes a calling.

Either way, there is nothing much we can do. Even the people who try to help are a drop in the ocean

With a defeatist attitude like that, nothing ever changes.

Nobody is saying that the surface temperature of the Earth doesn't fluctuate naturally, but I'm pretty convinced there is a strong correlation between the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the Earth's surface temperature. There is probably not much to be gained from us debating it though. None of us are geologists. But I would rather take the side of caution, given just how potentially dangerous and destructive global warming could be. Our Earth is the only possible source of intelligent life for a radius of at least 4 light years (the distance of the nearest star system from ours, Alpha Centauri). And that's before we can even think of just how unlikely an accident we are. Destroying ourselves would be an unimaginable tragedy and not merely on a human scale.

Even if I were wrong, there are plenty more reasons to look for renewable energy sources. We are living on borrowed time, because of our dependence on fossil fuels not only for electricity generation, but also for plastics, make-up, etc. Once we run out, say goodbye to our current comfortable lifestyles.

I personally don't buy the skeptics' conspiracy theory anyway. It's the sort of thing that sells papers and earns money for half-arsed newspaper columnists and bloggers and protects the reputation of international energy companies, but that's just my opinion.

Yes The Sun will destroy this Planet in
the very long term future.


And we add to the problem
but we are not the problem.


Building a Space Station on other planets
will be our Very Long Term Future.
Walmart Space Dome with Non Stop Veg Growing.

"...Blow Up China"


No Pat that would not work
as near every electrical Item in your home is made in China.

Infact they help you
post on here.

I watched the video and I must say I am not impressed with his logic and reasoning. At all.

I majored in mathematics and I know there was a mathematician (not sure of the name but could figure it out if you're interested) centuries ago who used an analogous argument that we should believe there is a God and worship him.

His reasoning was more or less as follows: there is a level of uncertainty on whether God exists. If we worship God when God does exist then we are rewarded with eternal paradise. If we worship God when there is no God we are wasting some of our time. If we do not worship God when there is no God then we have more time to do other things. However, if we do not worship God when there is a God we are punished with eternal damnation. His conclusion was we should worship God because it's the better "column" if you will.

So Stu, should we all become religious and go to church every Sunday?

This argument he uses is one of the reasons why I think this global warming myth has in a lot of respects become a religion. And the clerics of global warming keep propogating the myth because that's how they make their money (just like religious clerics).

When the polar ice caps on Mars are melting, it begs the question how carbon emitions on earth are causing that. The sun goes through natural cycles and whether the earth is warming or cooling, I am absolutely convinced that the people behind global warming are using it to try and squeeze more taxes out of us and control us.

Global Warming is a scam.

It's climate change, I'd hardly call the months @ the tail end of last year warm

I think the mathematician was Blaise Pascal in the 17th century?

If people want to believe that they are doing their bit for the planet, good for them, but that is all it is, their BELIEF. ( And why is everyone using the incorrect spelling of sceptical?)

That's probably the mathematician I'm thinking of. I'd have to check this history of math book I have buried somewhere in my room to be sure but that's most likely the guy.

I think the Planet is warming up and that also we Humans do not help the situation but I also believe we can do little to make a really big difference,as Angus58 said, the Planet warms up and cools down periodically so its a natural thing to happen.

Just as well again into the future when it likely cools again, we the Human race will have some small effect to that but it wil be as ever a natural evolution of the Planets climate.

Except it's not at all the same. You need faith in order to believe in God. There have been philosophers who have attempted to use reason such as the ontological argument of Anselm and Descartes, but their dualistic metaphysics didn't stand up to scrutiny from the laws of causality or the principle of the identity of indiscernables. In the case of Pascal whom you mention, all he could do was appeal to fear as you say.

There is scientific evidence for the effects of carbon dioxide has on the ability of heat to escape the Earth's atmosphere. The irreversible impact of global warming is a very real possibility. The possibility of our souls going to Heaven or Hell after we die goes every natural law, whatever your philosophical views on it may be. Pascal's fear of divine punishment was likely a product of the religious prejudices of France in his day. He lived in a Catholic theocracy under Louis XIV. This was a time when clerics burning books was commonplace.

I think they are very much the same. The global warming video and my religious argument are based on "uncertainty". There's a difference between believing in a God and believing there's a chance a God exists. Even atheist Richard Dawkings (author of the God Delusion) says that there is a chance that there is a God. A very, very small chance but still a chance. You don't need faith to believe there's a chance God exists and are, to some extent, "uncertain" on whether God exists. I base my religious argument on this "uncertainty" on whether God exists just like the global warming video bases its argument on this uncertainty on whether global warming is happening.

Organized religion and global warming are very, very similar. Both religion and global warming have millions of followers. Both are billion dollar industries. Both groups of zealots outright ignore and are deaf to evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Both have shaky evidence that supports their beliefs: religion gets its evidence from a few desert scribblings and Global Warming gets its evidence from this misleading correlation between CO2 and temperature (higher temperatures lead to more CO2 not the other way around).

Pascal didn't prescribe agnosticism. He said we should believe in God and obey his laws, if there is so little as a small chance he existed, we would have to worry about going to Hell otherwise.

It's not that Christians don't listen to evidence that contradicts their beliefs. It's just that they have no evidence to support their beliefs in the first place. Besides, what do you even mean that scientists are ignoring evidence? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

Well inverting the relationship between the presence of CO2 and the earth's surface temperature hardly supports your case. I thought this was down to the burning of fossil fuels and the human/animal population taken in conjunction with the state of the rate of consumption of carbon dioxide by the world's plantlife.

Ever heard of the Climategate scam? These were scientists who knowly fudged the data to get a predetermined conclusion that the earth is warming up. They tried to find ways to "hide the decline" of temperatures. Scientists are just like other people and can be corrupted like everyone else especially when there's money involved (like getting funds from the government, etc.).

Climategate was a transparency issue. One that lay on the shoulders of the UEA's administrators, not the scientists involved, who were cleared of wrongdoing at an early stage. Even if it turned out they had an agenda (something I doubt), that would be manipulating evidence to suit their cause. Christianity is predicated on ignoring the evidence altogether.

I'm not concerned about what Pascal personally thought. I threw his name in just to highlight that similarly erroneous logic has been used centuries before.

There is uncertainty that God exists. You cannot disprove God exists so there will always be a level of uncertainty. You say there is no evidence God exists well what about the millions who have had near-death experiences saying that they saw dead relatives and a bright light? Some would call that eye-witness testimony.

If it makes it less confusing for you just ignore Pascal and let me say that I, Liberty4eva, am presenting this argument just like that guy in the video.

There is uncertainty that God exists. If we worship God when there is God, and so on and so on. The conclusion we derive from my argument is BS just like the conclusion the global warming video derives is BS.

The "Pascal" argument is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my problems with this video. He says that the cost of doing something about global warming is that we lose money and go into a depression but it's easy to forget that people around the world will suffer from higher food prices. Higher food prices for some people means the difference between life and death. And I would make the argument that if the earth is warming up it may benefit life. The vast majority of life exists close to the warmer climates by the equator and hardly any life exists in colder climates like the north pole. Maybe in the shortrun a degree increase will hurt life but longterm it will help life because plants will grow where they didn't before which will benefit animals and man. Someone still needs to convince me that a degree increase will certainly be bad for humanity because I'm not convinced.

I must admit that video irks me. I have a masters in mathematics and I feel I am educated enough to respond to it. If I had the technology I'd be tempted to make a video response to it and rip it to shreds.

An unconscious person is not somebody I would call a reliable eyewitness. So-called 'out-of-body' experiences are incorporeal by their very definition and logically speaking, no different to the Christian notion of God so using it as evidence is tautological.

But the problem is, Pascal's wager is what every agnostic is faced with. Since we cannot know for certain, it is better to accept the teachings of the Bible, since the risk of eternal torment is too great. I disagree that there is such uncertainty as the failure of reason (and by reason's very own laws, its conclusions are universally true) to account for God's existence would serve as absolute proof in itself.

Global warming is something we are faced with as a material possibility, one agreed upon by people who dedicate their lives to examining the natural world. Disagree if you wish, but the ball is in your court to explain why.