Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!

[Tichy]

Good job destroying the light tone Xietor tried to inject back into this thread.
You're missing the point...which is that you can be SUED for throwing SNOWBALLS!

[Zeldor]

But what is the amount of human caused global warming? Compared to volcanoes, farting cows etc?

What about theories that there were no glaciers in Alps when Hannibal was marching on Rome?

But even if we assume that global warming is caused by humans, all that is done in the world to prevent it is mostly pure propaganda and abusing people and cheating them. Cars make about 15% of CO2 emissions. The real problems are bad power plant and we should switch to nuclear energy [which ecologists don't like], wind turbines make electricity 4x more expensive than nuclear one. And making a turbine is not ecological process at all. Also there are worse gases than CO2. We'd all have to resign from eating meat. But I guess even ecologists like steak

[Mithras]

Must aviod talking about global warming...
The thing about the snowballs? What scares me the most is that I am neither suprised nor disgusted.

[llamabeast]

The bottom line is that, regardless of the details, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is much, much higher than it was (a factor of 5 perhaps? something like that). And CO2 definitely has a considerable effect on the way radiation passes through the Earth's atmosphere.

That can't fail to cause changes of one kind or another to the climate. Mostly, change is bad, because locally both human society and flora and fauna have adapted to the status quo. Natural mechanisms (migration in particular, and also adaptation) can cope with slow changes, but not with fast ones. Imagine if all the local climates switch around, so that areas which were fertile become desert or swamps, and vice versa. Even if overall "warmer is better" (which I think is not true, but hey), it'd take us a very long time to adapt to that. Our cities and populations are all in the wrong place, not to mention the damage to nature. In the meantime there'll be a lot of suffering.

[licker]

Mostly change is inevitable.

Thinking that we can somehow regulate the climate to our liking is asinine at this point in our technological adventures. It's as though everyone forgets about the natural disasters which certainly happened long before humans were belching out CO2 or any other gas.

Our mere presence cannot but change the environment, and while it's a nice thought to want to minimize the impact, thinking in terms of Gaia is somewhat pointless when trying to devise methods for approaching the issue.

I strongly believe that we are better of expanding our use of renewable energies, recycling, reducing consumption, ... all of it. But I am not convinced that we are in a death spiral, or even anywhere close to it.

I'm not alone here, and if you want to poo poo the 700 scientists who break with the political orthodoxy of the IPCC so be it. Just realize that the models are just that, models, and are failing to live up to their hype from the early part of this decade.

[Omnirizon]

the people who know they're right have mostly stopped arguing a page ago and started talking about snowballs.

the people who have to fabricate truth through talk are still trying to do that.

but yeah. if animals can't adapt to human destruction of the environment, then they deserve to die. amirite? same thing for africans in poverty. what? can't stand a little slavery? c'mon, it's just the west raping your environment, economy, and culture. you can't hang, you guys deserve to die. get with the program.

[licker]

Ahh the strawman... how quaint.

Life is what it is, do you think that species wouldn't go extinct if man never walked the earth?

[Tifone]

A great reason for you not to care about the ones we kill without giving them time or chance to adapt or evolve or whatever, I suppose.
(More strawman fun? "Even the murdered ppl would have died anyway even if their murderer never walked the earth.")

PS: Sorry, I'm starting to sound like a b*stard, it's just my terrible english which reduces my choice of "neutral" words)

PPS: Hey, now that I think about it, yesterday night I dreamed it was snowing in Florence!!! Didn't happen though. Foreigner premonition?

[Tichy]

Unfortunately, this strawman didn't need to be invoked; he started talking all by himself.

Your logic sounds to me like this, licker: "Laws against murder don't prevent all murders, therefore we shouldn't have laws against murder."

Dang it. Snaked by Tifone.

[Xietor]

"In New Orleans is the "USA common law system" in force? Oh damn, feel almost useless. "

Actually the 49 states, except Louisiana have the common law that is derived from England. Louisiana's system of law is derived from the French, whose law was derived
from the Romans. It is called the civil law.

As we are fond of saying here in Louisiana, the Romans had an advanced system of law when the barbarians in Britain were still throwing sticks and stones at each other. Obviously one system is superior to the other.