Global Warming Debate: Both Viewpoints Irrelevant

You're the one who sounds like a religious person, btw, you seem to think the Sun is going to solve all our problems, that everything coming from the sky is magically replenishable, and that energy is the end of everything.

Real life gives us another picture. Pollution is a real problem, ecosystems are being jeopardized, the sun is not our friend when it comes to warming, polar melting, cancer and desertification, and mass extinctions have happened before, and are happening still.

Of course we can get out of this mess by using new technology, including solar, but we need to be aware of our precarious predicament.
 
Pardalis said:
Wow, then there is no problem then if it comes from the sky.

Earth's problems solved. :rolleyes:

Not if the Earth is going to increase its temperature, and not if we're going to keep polluting our ecosystems.

I'm sure evaporation works just fine on Mars too.
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You might want to consider the problem on mars is there's no water in the first place. The giant oceans? They might be full of salt, but salt doesn't evaporate.

As for the increasing heat slowing down evaporation... think about that one for a second.
 
GreyICE said:
As for the increasing heat slowing down evaporation... think about that one for a second.
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I never said that, but increase in heat does affect the quality and availability of fresh water, in many different ways.
 
Why is this forum so hostile to the obvious fact that increasing populations put increased strain on the ecosystem? Lower birthrates go hand in hand with all sorts of other great development indicators like education and women's rights.

Do you guys really believe the earth could sustain an infinite number of people?

If not, what is the level of population at which you think a decent standard of material living could be provided on a sustainable basis?
 
In a long enough time line with the appropriate technology where natural cycles fail, any specific material is renewable. That is not what is meant by a renewable resource however. Yes, today the availability and renewal of fresh water is greater than our usage of it that leaves water unsuitable for essential purposes. However, that balance is delicate in some areas. IIRC (please correct me if I'm wrong as I'm curious about the specific numbers) estimates are that with full and appropriate uses of modern technology our water levels could support around 10-11 Billion people across the Earth. More than that and we cannot replenish enough food to keep everyone alive. I agree technology will improve as will the numbers. Still I think it is a reasonable speculation that growth can quite easily suprass technological improvements. Or even merely the ability to adapt to proper management. As far as I know humans have not experienced a pandemic famine. The possibility does appear to be something we could inadvertantly cause. Resources can be locked into an unusable form for a long enough period to cause disaster.

I think we will solve the issues of global warming and pollution. We have made great inroads into a few earlier problems. Acid rain is still an issue but I feel we have it under control as it has been reduced greatly and no longer appears to be the threat that will take us out. I suspect that there will be enough time to combat carbon emission levels even after a few coastal areas become uninhabitable. It would take decades to accomodate. Unfortunately by then many lives would be lost. So I promote solving the future problem today.
 
KingMerv00 said:
No, it is like complaining we are running out of materials which can be made into typewriters.
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Except coal really doesn't qualify under that definition. What is coal? It's just carbon. Carbon is rather easy to come by, and is fully renewable. I have to discard pounds of the stuff every year, in the form of lawn clippings. It takes energy to turn that into a coal-like form, but as you can see, that just brings us back to the question of energy. Energy is, ultimately, the only really restricting resource for humanity. As long as we have energy, we won't run out of any other resource.
 
Moose2000 said:
How about helium?
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Well, you can manufacture helium using nuclear reactions. Which you can produce even in the absence of any nuclear fuel by using particle accelerators. It's a really energy-intensive way of producing the stuff, but it's possible.
 
Ziggurat said:
Except coal really doesn't qualify under that definition. What is coal? It's just carbon. Carbon is rather easy to come by, and is fully renewable. I have to discard pounds of the stuff every year, in the form of lawn clippings. It takes energy to turn that into a coal-like form, but as you can see, that just brings us back to the question of energy. Energy is, ultimately, the only really restricting resource for humanity. As long as we have energy, we won't run out of any other resource.
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Earth to Ziggurat - recovering carbon using plants is happening almost as fast as it can happen already, and is about three orders of magnitude below the rate at which we are using it. There is a reason the railroads quickly stopped burning wood and started burning coal - they had burned up all the cheap wood.

It takes significant energy to convert CO2 into carbon. Coal is stored ancient sunlight - accumulated for millions of years.
 
GreyICE said:
Great. Then I suppose you can provide one, just one irreplaceable resource we'll run out of in lets say, the next... um... million years. How's that?
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I'll try. How about rainforests? Do unique species count as a resource? Do wilderness and habitats for wildlife count?

Population growth, at least, has to level off at some point.
 
lionking said:
Why do you say this? Most research I've seen indicates that the world's population will peak at around 2050 and decline after that.
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And that's probably a good thing.

The question is whether we run up against any serious ecological problems before the population starts to decline.

Part of the reason the population is expected to decline is continuing increases in the material standard of living, which are correlated with declining birthrates. But the more people as a whole consume, the more likely it is that we cause serious damage to the ecology.

As I argued in the other thread, the best solution is probably to curtail consumption in the affluent west and put resources into sustainable development in the poor rest of the world.
 
Pardalis said:
You're the one who sounds like a religious person, btw, you seem to think the Sun is going to solve all our problems, that everything coming from the sky is magically replenishable, and that energy is the end of everything.

Real life gives us another picture. Pollution is a real problem, ecosystems are being jeopardized, the sun is not our friend when it comes to warming, polar melting, cancer and desertification, and mass extinctions have happened before, and are happening still.

Of course we can get out of this mess by using new technology, including solar, but we need to be aware of our precarious predicament.
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Pardy, that's not the argument here. Of course we've stuck ourselves in a bad situation in some ways. It's a situation that's constantly getting better in other ways. The point is that the OP thinks that it's all worthless because we're all doomed.

That's nonsense. Whatever else happens, even if we pollute our water to undrinkability, pollute our air till we all get lung cancer, and burn up all the fossil fuels so we're living like our ancestors without ever finding a replacement - we'll survive. We fall back to the cavemen level - but we'll still be here.

So we better damn well start planning if we don't want that to happen. Because it's avoidable. It can be prevented. And it DEFINITELY doesn't involve listening to whiny little nihilists who think we're all doomed.
 
Puppycow said:
I'll try. How about rainforests? Do unique species count as a resource? Do wilderness and habitats for wildlife count?

Population growth, at least, has to level off at some point.
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I'll agree with the second. For the first, unique? Yes. Irreplaceable? Emphatically not.

Understand, I'd rather prefer they did survive. But we're not going extinct if a few of them die out.
 
Moose2000 said:
How about helium?
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Hah! Constantly generated through radioactive decay, or it would have all bled off into space ages ago.

Uranium and heavy elements are hard to replace (impossible, terrestrially), but they only represent energy, which is abundant. They're a nice source of it, we'll end up exploiting it eventually, but they're just a stepping stone.
 
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GreyICE said:
Pardy, that's not the argument here. Of course we've stuck ourselves in a bad situation in some ways. It's a situation that's constantly getting better in other ways. The point is that the OP thinks that it's all worthless because we're all doomed.

That's nonsense. Whatever else happens, even if we pollute our water to undrinkability, pollute our air till we all get lung cancer, and burn up all the fossil fuels so we're living like our ancestors without ever finding a replacement - we'll survive. We fall back to the cavemen level - but we'll still be here.

So we better damn well start planning if we don't want that to happen. Because it's avoidable. It can be prevented. And it DEFINITELY doesn't involve listening to whiny little nihilists who think we're all doomed.
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The_Animus said:
Therefor if these trends continue, then at some future point, whether it's 50, 100, or 150 years from now, we will use up, pollute, or otherwise destroy things which are necessary for our survival.
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A sustainable economy and society is the only long term solution. Global Warming may or may not cause us some serious problem in the next 50 years, but at some point if we don't change we're going to have serious problems anyway and there is no time like the present to start changing.
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Bolded to help clarify. The Animus did say "screwed" and "necessary for our survival." That might refer to specifically a complete extinction of the human species (and I feel that was the implied meaning), but I don't think your point of a scattered small population of bronze age level humans living is exactly contrary to the point he was trying to make. However even the idea of a small population of bronze age level humans continuing after near extinction is not a guarantee. Certainly not one I would want to bank on. You are both arguing that disaster can be avoided especially if we start working on the solution now.
 
GreyICE said:
Yes, in the long term the sun suffers a fatal build up of iron in its core, forcing the fusion reaction outwards, the sun expands, swallowing mercury and hitting Venus' orbit, roasting the earth to a cinder.

In the short term, you have failed to prove your arguments. You state resources are used? Really? In all of human history, we have probably 'used up' a few million atoms of copper. Perhaps a few orders of magnitude more. Certainly not as much as a gram.

Resources can be recycled. They're atoms. They're virtually indestructible.

Oh, I see. It's energy. Yes, we're rather dependent on the sun for that long term. The problem is the entire energy production of the entire human race in all of human history is maybe thirty seconds of the sun's production. Possibly a great deal less.

So we're not even close to using that resource very well.

Oh, it's food! Hypothesis not proven. Food is renewable too. And we haven't seriously tapped over half the planet's usable area - we have no ocean based food crops. That's changing. Moreover, food is a function of energy. Energy is a function of the sun. We're not close to using all of that that even hits earth.

Face it. Despite the fashionable nihilism of a few really stupid pseudo-intellectuals, humanity is going to be around for a very long time.

It's damn well time to start planning for it.
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A renewable resource only has use if it's being renewed at a rate equal to or faster than the consumption rate. Humanity's problem is that this is not true for many of the resources we consume.
 
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