Seems to me that's what calling our species a "virus" is more likely to encourage than anything constructive.

After all, what do you do with a virus? You don't modify it, you quarantine it, you attack it with drugs, you eradicate it, then you vaccinate against it to keep it from coming back. That is not exactly the kind of verbage i want to hear when we talk about the relationship of our species to our home world.

IMO, the human race only has one thing it needs to do in order to solve global warming, and that is to get it's population growth under control. As long as we continue to breed like rabbits any carbon saving, pollution control scheme we come up with is bound to fail.

Yeah, we basically are. We cause more damage than good. We take; we do not give. We're a doomed and simple race flying through space in a solar system with several uninhabited planets on a sphere that's mostly made up of water that is stranded on an island of ignorance, cursed to remain as such throughout eternity on a cruise through infinity.

I believe that global warming is nothing but junk science used by a growing political community to rob and control wealth and redistribute it to another. Look no further then the Obama sponsored bill that would pledge $849 billion dollars to the UN over the next 10 years in the form of a carbon tax. The longer this goes on the more obvious the charade becomes. Earth's climate is a dynamic environment and if it is going to change, there isn't a thing we can do about it. It has been warm in the past, and it has been cold in the past. I don't think the dinosaurs were out driving SUVs when they were around but it is generally known that the planet was pretty darn hot at that time.

Historical Fact: The winter of 2008 in the USA gave us the most ice and snow since 1966. Many areas of China this winter had record snowfall. It snowed in Baghdad, Iraq for the first time in January 2008 in over 100 years. Three weeks ago I was cleaning over 2 feet of snow out of my driveway. The weather still sucks and it is April 13 and it is supposed to snow later on today.

Historical Fact 2: 1998 was the warmest year on record. Since then global temperatures have fallen.

Don't even get me started on greenhouse gasses and carbon dioxide. This whole carbon footprint scheme is another scam. Many businesses and insurance companies now offer these "offsets" which is a scam. Sure they will ease your guilty liberal conscience and take your money. They will then go plant a bunch of trees that they can cut down for paper and lumber 20 years from now.

There are real scientists and heliologists out there that are pointing to the obvious that the left is ignoring. For some time now these scientists have notice little if any solar activity and sun-spots. If this continues we may be entering a Maunder Minimum cycle. The last time this happened was from 1645-1715. This created a "little ice-age". If you check the historical records, none of us want to be around to experience something like this.

Thats why i personaly prefer the term parasite, but is arguing semantics than anything else really.
As for solutions to the glogal climate change issue geting population growth under controll is only one part of the puzzle, a pretty large one at that, but there is need to find alternative energy sources to fossil fuels. Nuclear energy seems like an acceptable stop gap mesaure to me untill something better can be made practical.
But as I said (or at least tried to) coming up with general ideas is the easy part, finding practical solutions is the are where the real struggle is.

Actually China surpassed us last year. They went on a coal fired power building binge so jumped ahead of schedule.

Yeah and that is crazy considering the Chinese have massive hydroelectric power plants all over the place capable of generating a lot of power. Is that Three Gorges Dam complete yet? I remember reading it is supposed to be capable of generating over 22,000 megawatts at full capacity :o

I dont think so.


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/1..._2005_warm.jpg 2005 was the warmest year since the late 1800s, according to NASA scientists. 1998, 2002 and 2003 and 2004 followed as the next four warmest years. Credit: NASA










http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/env...5_warmest.html

The five hottest records all within the last 10 years.:sunny:

I've looked at a lot of evidence for Global warming, and I find it to be inconclusive.

The so called 'experts' can only really make judgements based on available records. That limits them to a couple of hundred years...if that. To judge the health of a planet that has been evolvong for millions of years based on a timeline of a couple of hundred years, would be like a Doctor assessing a patient based on a one minute examination out of a 70 year lifespan.

I certainly think that we should do more to lessen the amount of pollutants that we create, but I don't see a catastrophe around the corner. :D

Actually, there are quite a few ways of extrapolating medium-distant climate patterns. Just a couple of examples:

Tree growth rings are a pretty good indicator of how conditions were year by year for some thousands of years. Big rings indicate good conditions. Thin rings indicate poor growing conditions.

Air bubbles trapped in ancient ice give valuable clues as to air composition (eg the amount of CO2 in the air when the ice formed. In turn, this gives good data for computer models - not day by day, 1/10 of a degree info, but solid data on general conditions and trends.

Plus which, while there are certainly not scientific records kept, even during the dark ages,there were comments written down on cold spells, rainy spells, etc.

It's not entirely ouiji-board-and-tarot guesswork.

If you look at all of the available evidence in totality, you see a pattern where the planet can enter a given climatic condition for quite a few years. To make a judgement as to the condition of the planet while we are within a natural planetary climatic cycle (which may last longer than a human lifespan of 60 to 80 years) will give you inaccurate data. That's the mistake that a lot of these folks are making in my view. They mean well...they're just wrong. :D

You are not wrong about natural swings and trends. They are a reality.

Given that, the impact that 6,000,000,000 people make cannot be just ignored. Everything we produce, consume and do has an effect and - natural trends notwithstanding - there is every reason to believe that we as a species are making a potentially bad swing much worse.

We cannot do anything about the natural cycles, but we can reduce our own effect.

Yep. I agree totally. :D

Well said :yep: This only makes sense, we need to be much better Stewards of the land.


RDP

But is the condition accelerating faster than other climactic changes in our history. You just see it as there's a climatic change and I get the impression you think we should wait till the end of the cycle to come to a decision. Exactly how would you determine when the cycle should be at an end? How would you determine if it's as should be or that something isn't right.
Nature is a complex system of balances. Any changes that nature takes, takes centuries to implement and natural adjustments made. When artificial changes imbalance nature there are going to be repercussions. We have imbalanced nature faster than the blink of an eye. The world is not a sponge that soaks up imbalances forever. It can filter as nature intended but if it can't filter fast enough there are going to be repercussions. There has to be. Thats what gets me is that people can't or won't seem to come to that simple conclusion.
Nature doesn't adjust to man. Man must adjust to nature.
Or to put it simply "You don't f#@k with mother nature. You'll loose".:)

Edit: Take water pollution for example. Everybody knows there is water pollution and the level is pretty bad. Everyone sees that. Yet we are doing the same thing to our atmosphere and people are under the assumption that the world can sluff off or soak up pollutants. What is the difference between the two? It's estimated that mankind has pumped 3% of the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If I gave you a glass of normal water and added 3% sewage to it would you drink it? Think fish can live in it? Before you drink it be aware that 15 micrograms per liter is the allowable pollution for drinking water.

To bradclark1, we see the data differently and we must therefore agree to differ.