Why it's not easy being green

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I do question the cause: From where I sit, your analogy is a bit flawed, but then most analogies are. The question is what situation are you really dealing with. If you're going down a cliff face that's near vertical, accelerating isn't going to help, but putting on the brakes isn't going to do you any good either. Gravity clearly has control. I'm suggesting we could be in that scenario now, not necessarily because of something we did, but because it's just the nature of the phenomenon.

In your scenario, if it's better than mine, you have two choices. You can put on the brake, or you could steer away from the block at your current rate of acceleration and avoid catastrophe.

I don't question that climate change/global warming is happening. I think the evidence is clear. Yes, we're contributing CO2 to the atmosphere. That's clear as well. What I see global warming advocates neglect is this thing called the carbon cycle, something I was taught in jr. high school. There are many processes on Earth that absorb carbon. It's not just trees, crops, and wild plants. The oil we get out of the ground is a product of this.

By the way, the idea that we get oil from dinosaurs is a myth. The sea absorbs quite a bit of CO2, as do some minerals in rocks (it causes chemical weathering). Microorganisms in the sea absorb the dissolved CO2 and carry it down to the sea floor when they die. They are then buried under sediment. It's a natural carbon sink. Over millions of years as the pressure builds they turn into crude oil. It's still going on to this day. I'm not implying it's a renewable energy source, just saying the carbon cycle is something that needs to be considered, and rarely is WRT to the global warming debate IMO.

Something that is of real environmental concern is the seas turning more acidic, due to the increased CO2. This is basic science. Carbonated water in soda drinks is just CO2 mixed with water. Just as with that it makes the water acidic. The acidity affects the underwater ecosystem. It dissolves the shells of coral, which has been a concern for many years, as they make up coral reefs. It also affects other marine life, which require a certain pH level in order to live.

I would just prefer that we stick to causes of problems that we can verify, as opposed to speculating on others. Science does itself and society a disservice when it promotes speculation as truth. To the best of my knowledge the hysteria around CO2 as being the sole cause of global warming is based solely on computer models which can't even model the climate of the past with any degree of accuracy using historical data. They are constantly being updated and corrected as well, which tells me the people creating these models don't understand what they're talking about yet. I hope you realize that it was just 30 years ago that due to a global cooling trend which occurred between the 1940s and 1970s that climate scientists were predicting we were headed for another ice age.

By the way, the period between the 1940s and 1970s was the greatest period of industrialization in the Western world. By your logic that CO2 causes global warming, we should have seen global temperatures increase over that time period. Care to explain?; Posted by: Mark Miller Posted on: 01/25/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use