OT: I know how to solve global warming

[Gozra]

No one is disputing we have a warming trend. The earth has been cold for most of it's history. We are at the tail end of one of the picnic times. That is why it is important that we act for future generations. Or climate change can knock us back to the stoneage technologically.

[Raapys]

We're too preoccupied with our human-created problems to worry about anything so abstract as global warming, though.

Isn't much of the problem more that we're cutting down all the forests and such( i.e. the instruments of the removal of CO2), rather than the amount of CO2 we're releasing?

[Cipher7071]

I haven't read every word in this thread, but one thing I didn't see mentioned was the huge amount of building materials that such a project would require. I think we'd be hard put to come up with enough.

[Suicide Junkie]

Cutting forests dosen't help, but the billions of tons of hydrocarbons we dig and pump out of the ground to burn is the big thing.

[NullAshton]

Possible that there is no global warming? One theory is that it's just a regular up-down cycle of the earth, and that the warming is normal.

[Renegade 13]

NullAshton said:
Possible that there is no global warming? One theory is that it's just a regular up-down cycle of the earth, and that the warming is normal.

That's the thing, we just don't have enough data to know whether or not it's natural or if it's caused by humanity.

From what I recall reading somewhere, there's two possible ways the future will go. One, we keep heating up and heating up until we have massive and radical climatic shifts. Two, we heat up until we reach a certain point, at which a sudden and sharp reversal begins. I think there's some geological evidence supporting both sides. Personally, I tend to favor number two. The Earth has a very delicately balanced set of climate parameters. If one of these parameters messes up too badly, the others often compensate. I bet the Earth has some mechanism for cooling down the Earth when it gets too hot (ie: another ice age if we get too hot) and a mechanism for heating up if we get too cold.

From what I can remember, summer's have been hotter, and winters haven't had as much snow in recent times where I live. However, two years ago, we had the coldest day I've ever seen and I think it was the coldest day my parents had ever seen as well. It was -49°C when I got up one morning. Previously, the coldest I'd experienced was about -44°C a few years before that.

Who really knows what's happening? It's all just speculation based upon unprovable initial assumptions.

As for deforestation, well there's some other factors as well. Where I live, in Central BC, almost all the pine trees have been killed by a massive infestation of the Mountain Pine Beetle, a bug that eats the layer of a tree just beneath the bark, killing it. We have hundreds of thousands of acres of dead, lifeless, red trees. In essence, it isn't just mankind who causes deforestation; nature does it once in a while as well.

[Wade]

Well if we advance technologically far enough then we can move the planet away from the sun like the Pupputeer civilization did in the Ringworld series by Larry Niven.

[Atrocities]

Suicide Junkie said:
Cutting forests dosen't help, but the billions of tons of hydrocarbons we dig and pump out of the ground to burn is the big thing.

I don't recall where I read or even heard this, but it was speculated that we are causing the planets core and mantel to heat up by drilling and removing such things as natural gas, oil, and methane. ????? I don't see how this would matter, but thought I would post the info any ways in hopes that someone may have more info.

[Starhawk]

I do admit I get a kick out of people saying mankind will be long extinct as if it will happen some time in the next few years or something.

No offense people but Mankind has been believing it will go extinct within the next few years or few decades or yadda yadda. Yeah for the first time in our history that we KNOW of mankind is capable of making it's self go extinct on a massive scale but for the most part MOST humans are to smart to do anything to completely exterminate ourselves....except for the Iranians who seem to want to bring an end to the world but if they even TRY it iran will be the only glowing crater in this world.

Now if we can get our collective heads together and start working on a space program for the entire civilized world (mideast/africa are not likely to get anywhere) we can easily set up colonies on Mars, Luna, and several of Titan's moons from what I've read not to mention Io.

Yeah they'd be harsh places to live for a while but so was every colony man has ever established even on Earth.


Then again if you listen to some very interesting theories that I've heard Mankind did not originate on Earth at all but are likely the survivors of a colony from God knows where.

Heck I've even heard people use this as an explanation FOR evolution (i.e the reason there is no missing link is because our ancestors had nothing to do with the previous "species" of man but instead were transplanted here.)

[Phoenix-D]

Starhawk said:
I do admit I get a kick out of people saying mankind will be long extinct as if it will happen some time in the next few years or something.

I think I'm the only person that's made that reference, and it was refering to the time when the earth's geological activity stops.

In order for us to be around at that point we'd have to survive longer than ANY species in the history of the entire planet. I don't see that as likely.