Global Warming?

[Nanabunga]

Originally Posted by boo_cocky

When you consider how old the planet is, we really don't have much data in weather trends...who's to say Earth hasn't gone through these same climate changes 1,000 times already in the past?

Actually there is a large group in the scientific community who have already shown this to be fact, so not only are you 100% correct but you have scientific data to back your assumption.

There are core samples taken from the Alaskan Tundra that show that thousands of years ago (or perhaps millions, I forget) a huge forest existed there, possibly even tropical in nature, due to the climate at that time. As the earths climate changed the forest died and an ice age took over, for the next hundred thousand years or so, the tundra has been nothing but a vast grassland during it's warmer months. Photographs taken in the 1950's when compared to photographs taken of the same spot today, show an ever increasing amount of bushes and trees taking hold.

Seems like the same cycle is playing itself over again, which if it's true has fuck all to do with man.

I believe we may be a small contributing factor to the increasing climate but the earth has gone through these cycles countless times before the invention of the gasoline powered engine...

Originally Posted by boo_cocky

Aren't you glad I enlightened you all with this post?

Actually yes, it reminded me of this conversation only in an earlier thread. I wish I knew where it was because I mentioned the program and the channel where I saw this I think...

[JACKASS2009]

[Raidenator]

Of course global warming is happening. But fuck if we can do anything about it. I'm sure it's just part of the natural cycle of the earth. Besides, if it was our fault, the earth would figure out a way to fix it. What it boils down to, is I honestly just don't care.

The people that bitch about global warming are the same ones that bitch about the swine flu.

[Quackers]

I don't think the fact that its part of the natural cycle of the world is in dispute, I think it's disputed over how much humans are hastening it on, and how much can be done to marginalize that.

[OfficerFrankSerpico]

FACT: Global Warming does not exist

[YMBOTS]

David Attenborough says its happening, and thats good enough for me! Poor polar bears.

[envious_silver]

Its Global Climate change. Its a natural fluctuation

[Outsource Moderator Rajan]

Rajan wonder what peoples of Tuvalu have for feeling on climate change?

[MontysDouble]

http://www.theage.com.au/environment...0612-c67h.html

Journey to a hostile climate
JO CHANDLER
June 13, 2009

THEY'RE on talkback most days. They're writing for the letters page or thundering from opinion columns. You can find several archetypes neatly rounded up in Canberra, in the Senate, where Steve Fielding is the new doubter, Bob Brown is the old believer, Nick Xenophon is alarmed at the problem but unpersuaded by the solution, and Ron Boswell explodes at the very mention.

They are individuals finding different voices to reconcile their beliefs, ideologies, aspirations and histories with the alarm bells of climate science.

So many voices. It was lighter green versus darker green in Canberra this week, where fellow travellers were in schism on whether the Rudd Government's emissions targets were a creditable start or a poor joke. Analysts and industry were tying themselves in knots over the repercussions of the Government's crafty play in hitching the unloved emissions trading scheme to renewable energy targets.

Quiet relief in one camp and wails from another as word seeps through that the Japanese have wimped it on carbon targets. Meanwhile, in Bonn, at talks supposed to ease the way to a hallelujah moment at the Copenhagen climate summit in December, they're bogged in the rich-versus-poor quagmire of who bears the cost. Back on talkback radio, it was such hard going that a switch to FM top 40 suddenly seemed the happier option.

Crazy stuff, but every one of these reactions now makes perfectly awful sense to one of Australia's leading climate scientists, Dr Graeme Pearman. After almost 40 years studying the complexities of atmospheric science, Pearman found himself at an impasse late last year and sliding into a deep personal depression. The planet he understood — probably as well as anyone ever could. But the people on it — the species he viewed as increasingly endangered — were doing his head in.

The moment spurred him to venture into new, fraught scientific territory — the human psyche. He apprehensively set out to cross the no man's land from the physical sciences to behavioural and social science, looking for answers to questions that the most sophisticated climate models could never answer.

Science had made a powerful case on the reality of climate change and the urgent imperative to act, he says. "So why haven't we?" He wanted to know whether humans had it within their nature to understand the problems, and achieve solutions. Or might human nature actually conspire to build barriers to change?

"What is it about us that makes it so difficult for us to respond? And then came perhaps the more searching question: are we up to the challenge, or are we destined to just live with what we've instigated?"

He enlisted the help of Monash University behavioural scientist and psychologist Professor Charmine Hartel. He swung the focus deep into the most confounding, complex, contradictory environment of all. Himself, Fielding, Brown, Xenophon and Boswell, et al. What factors drive individuals to such different responses to the prospect of a climate emergency?

What he found was less than reassuring, but crucial to the next phase of responding to climate change, he argues.

Pearman, a former chief of atmospheric research and climate director at CSIRO, has acquired an international reputation for his broad grasp of climate science. Governments, climate change campaigner Al Gore, corporations and citizens seek his advice in trying to figure out the future.

His professional journey has coincided with climate peak hour. It began as a young graduate when, in the early 1970s, he and a colleague stumbled on some curious readings as they measured carbon dioxide exchange from wheat crops.

"By 1985, the message was pretty clear from the international science community that we had a risk of potentially important magnitude emerging," recalls Pearman. There was lots of talk, not a whole lot of action. Then, when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put out its fourth assessment report in early 2007, Pearman hoped this was the clarion call to action. The work of 130 lead authors, with contributions from more than 800 scientists, the oversight of more than 2500 expert reviewers (Pearman was one) — here was a powerful consensus document declaring that global warming was "unequivocal" and that human activity was "very likely" the main cause.

Then, suddenly, not much happened.

Pearman had a revelation. He had been "suffering under the delusion that as knowledge of the physical world improves, rationally based information would lead to rational responses to such threats as climate change".

"Indeed," Pearman says, "it is possible that society in general suffers from this delusion, concluding that with a little more time and money, the answers will be provided and this will solve our problems.

"Then I realised, and maybe I had been a bit slow, that it wouldn't really matter if we ever had the physical science perfect … there was no guarantee that we would manage the problem properly."

He saw the same insight dawning on colleagues after the Copenhagen meeting early this year, where the despair of scientists was widely reported. "They were coming to the realisation that no matter how good the physical science was, it wouldn't lead to the responses needed."

The explanation rested in a parallel universe of science. "What behavioural scientists tell us is that rationality is circumstantially based. So what is rational to me is not rational to the next person, because they come from a different circumstance. They also tell us that when we are confronted by a threat such as climate change, people experience many alternative emotions, and employ different coping mechanisms."

The anxious might deny; the sad might avoid; the hopeless become resigned; the frustrated, cynical; the depressed, sceptical; the angry, just fed up.

Then an individual of a different temperament might take any one of those emotions and be empowered, turn it into action. All those familiar talkback voices, all shaping the political and commercial and social agenda on climate change.

Pearman's exploration of the personal now means he is less surprised by this. It's all part of what Professor Ross Garnaut, in his review of climate change in Australia, identified as the "diabolical" nature of the issue. It is uncertain, insidious, long-term, international and potentially dangerous. These traits push our buttons differently. Understanding this, Pearman argues, is the new frontier in confronting climate change — engaging social and behavioural scientists to move policy discussion to a new level by helping people understand their responses to the issue.

As he writes in a forthcoming paper, and has begun telling forums including business leaders at a dinner last week, it is time for the physical and psychological scientists to get together to explain how hidden human traits have underpinned the development of climate change as an issue, our responses thus far, and how to better transfer scientific knowledge of risk into action. "These behavioural issues are likely to be much more important than the development of improved descriptions of exactly what has happened or might happen to the climate. These are the main barriers to the actions that are needed."

Pearman and Hartel, in a paper to be submitted to an international psychology journal, explore how rationality is defined by genetics and by our cultural, educational and personal experiences. How collectively and over time, these shape the social structures that organise and control societies, and are embedded as social norms. And how these factors determine the responses of individuals and institutions, from scepticism to activism.

"There is so much of what we do day to day that we actually don't think about. It's subconscious … These need to be looked at much more carefully, because the indications are, with climate change, that maybe they have led us in the wrong direction." Indeed Pearman raises a larger question: has social evolution led us towards an unsustainable future?

Pearman argues that discussion of human aspiration, the nature of consumerism, the formation of attitudes and the roles of education and ideology need to be on the climate platform alongside emissions targets, carbon trading and renewable energy.

"So much of what we do depends on instilled attitudes about who we are and to what we aspire." The power and the growth of marketing — drawn from the science of psychology — shows that these can change.

"Climate change is telling us that we have problems in converting expert advice into sensible policy development. We have invested in the development of fundamental knowledge through science. Then the scientists come back and say, well, as best we can judge, there is a risk here. But if no one actually believes it or takes action, then why bother to do it in the first place?" Pearson asks.

A better grasp of the psychological issues at play would improve the chances of translating expert advice into action.

"Each of us carries a propensity for one kind of behaviour or another. How we deal with change will reflect that predisposition — being conservative or radical, positive or negative, short-term or strategic. Irrespective of whether this is shaped by nature or nurture, it will play a significant role in how we respond to an environmental threat."

Much of the psychological response is shaped by natural aversion to uncertainty and complexity. But changing climate is a threat unlike anything we've dealt with before, says Pearman. "If we are waiting for perfect knowledge and perfect solutions, it will be too late. We have to learn to manage this as a risk in which the probability of outcomes is weighted against the impact of those outcomes if they do occur.

[MontysDouble]

Continued:

http://www.theage.com.au/environment...0612-c67h.html

"The view of the larger science community is that currently anticipated climate changes are large in terms of what we know occurred in the distant past — and we know how much these changes actually impacted on the planet — and therefore the urgency, the risk, is high.

"We need to search deeply within ourselves and as communities for the sense of the responsibility we have towards others, and to the stewardship we owe to the millions of species that share the planet with us."

And we have to do this quickly, Pearman says. Responding last month to the latest climate projections, Australia's Chief Scientist, Penny Sackett, said the world had about six years to get emissions under control.

Pearman has gained insight, but not much reassurance, from his psychological journey. "We may not be up to the challenge," he says. "I'm an optimist at heart, but I'm actually really pessimistic about us responding to this in time to avoid significant change."

Then he looks at his own response — recovering from the inertia of depression by beginning a new field of study. He wonders whether insight into the mysterious internal world of the individual might be the most powerful piece of climate science uncovered to date.

[Josh85]

Originally Posted by Raidenator

Of course global warming is happening. But fuck if we can do anything about it. I'm sure it's just part of the natural cycle of the earth. Besides, if it was our fault, the earth would figure out a way to fix it. What it boils down to, is I honestly just don't care.

The people that bitch about global warming are the same ones that bitch about the swine flu.

agreed.

The world can look after itself.

I'm more worried about overpopulation then global warming.

actually that speaks for itself, because i'm not worried about global warming at all.

Plus, knowing how much of a bitch karma can be sometimes.. we could probably do all this work to stop global warming.. then a comet will come out of nowhere and destroy the earth.

[JACKASS2009]

Originally Posted by Josh85

then a comet will come out of nowhere and destroy the earth.

we can only hope.