Thread: Climate change and religion

Originally Posted by majurey

Damn, I hate carbon offset schemes!

It is going to get worse. Obama's plans for recovery of the US economy are about offset schemes and the related green technologies (the motivation for new technologies == how to best avoid climate related taxation).

1984 is here. We have had the eavesdropping of citizens around for a while, the government-designed pseudo-industries are coming, too.

Originally Posted by majurey

I'm going to hijack my own thread.

Carbon offsets are perhaps the biggest con in recent times. We have a problem with output and consumption, so what do we do? Do we reduce our consumption so tackling the root cause? No fear! Or do we create some trumped-up quasi-economic system of paying money to assuage our own guilt about how much bloody unnecessary consumption we perpetuate in our throwaway society?

Pay a little cash and you can [1] feel good about 'doing something', [2] not compromise your lifestyle one bit, [3] point to this hugely pointless scheme which is failing in its mission and then somehow equate it with the idea that climate change by man is therefore bogus.

Damn, I hate carbon offset schemes!

I offset my carbon by having more stainless in my rotation than HCS....

I have a hard time believing those who deny the likelihood or even the ability of humans causing great harm to our environment. I am more inclined to believe the denial of man caused global warming is simply the easiest way to avoid one's personal responsibility to act in a more ecologically sound manner. Is there also the denial that we have killed lakes and rivers? Do some refuse to admit belief in the tremendous dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by chemical pesticides and fertilizers along the Mississippi River? Do you deny the continuous destruction and burning of rain forests? Do you deny the over fishing of our vast oceans? Do you deny the overpopulation of the Earth? This list can go on and on however, I am hoping you catch my drift. My point is that if we as humans can cause such massive damage to our planet, why is it so difficult to believe in the possibility of "global warming"?

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I really cannot understand how anyone would doubt that industrialization and the dramatic increase in our population would contribute to the climate change. This is not something I've studied but it just seems obvious to me that the pollution we've created must be a contributing factor. Drowning polar bears would probably think so. Natives of Alaska who have to move from villages in existence for centuries because of melting permafrost might also.

Do you think that the fact that so many species have become extinct, deforesting has led to erosion and flooding, overfishing to the eventual disappearance of fish to eat isn't something that 'we' have contributed to ? It probably doesn't matter to me personally since as Bush told Woodward on Iraq, it doesn't matter because when history judges we'll be dead anyway.

You have, in your own words (emphasis is mine) proved my point. You have essentially admitted that your belief is not based on any science, but on faith alone.

Originally Posted by icedog

I have a hard time believing those who deny the likelihood or even the ability of humans causing great harm to our environment. I am more inclined to believe the denial of man caused global warming is simply the easiest way to avoid one's personal responsibility to act in a more ecologically sound manner. Is there also the denial that we have killed lakes and rivers? Do some refuse to admit belief in the tremendous dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by chemical pesticides and fertilizers along the Mississippi River? Do you deny the continuous destruction and burning of rain forests? Do you deny the over fishing of our vast oceans? Do you deny the overpopulation of the Earth? This list can go on and on however, I am hoping you catch my drift. My point is that if we as humans can cause such massive damage to our planet, why is it so difficult to believe in the possibility of "global warming"?

Your use of faith based and emotionally charged words such as "deny" is proof possitive that you are operating from a religious rather than scientific framework. I do not deny anything, but I am skeptical of the current hypothesis that human activity is the source of the recent global warming trend. If sufficient evidence is presented to change my mind, then I will have no problems doing so.

regardless of why the earth may be warming and if humans are contributing to it, I like the idea of Intellectual Ventures to develop a hose to the stratosphere that will pump sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere near the earth's poles, which will then cause a reflective blanket over the ice caps . . . read all about it! http://intellectualventureslab.com/w...per-300dpi.pdf I wonder what IV's straight razor might look like??

RalphS

SO2 will fall back to the surface of the earth they say. Wasn't acid rain caused by SO2? Didn't that cause large-scale dying of fish in lakes in Sweden (country near the North Pole) and even Scotland?

I think it is a ludicrous idea.

Given that all scientific knowledge, from a certain point of view, is just a set of working hypotheses that have not, as yet, been disproven, one would think that someone with a true appreciation of the nature, and limitations, of science would have no problem with the idea of taking things on faith. In fact, if everything ever discovered by science were considered absolute "truths", why do we continually pursue research into these areas? No, a true scientist takes on faith the discoveries which have come before or are currently going on around them.

And this to me is the big problem with science - It is palmed off as the antithesis of "faith", but really, at best, theoreticians just make things up in their heads, and empiricists measure things that are mere human constructs. And for some reason, if the equations look complicated enough, or the measurements are abundant enough, that is somehow considered more "rational" than believing in a God. We are all, heathen-scientist and man-of-God alike, wandering around in a miasma of faith.

James.

Originally Posted by Kees

SO2 will fall back to the surface of the earth they say. Wasn't acid rain caused by SO2? Didn't that cause large-scale dying of fish in lakes in Sweden (country near the North Pole) and even Scotland?

I think it is a ludicrous idea.

I dunno, Intellectual Ventures founder is the retired chief strategist and chief technology officer of Microsoft. Now, I'm an Apple guy myself, but that doesn't mean this idea wouldn't work.

I think the point is the sulfur does not return to earth as quickly once it reaches the stratosphere.

RalphS

But when it does it will wreak havoc on low lime content soils. Fight one evil with another.