- Joined
- Jul 3, 2003
- Messages
- 295
woah posts abound in between refreshes.
sorseress;87034 said:Bottom line: Even if for some reason you choose to ignore most of the world's leading climate scientists, there is no excuse for not doing what you can. If your doctor told you that your carotid was 97% occluded you wouldn't wait until you had a massive stroke to take action would you? Well, about 97% of climate scientists believe that we are in deep trouble if we don't take action now. It's a no brainer that each of us should take responsibility to do anything we can to reduce our carbon footprint. Small steps by many individuals can help. If all of us replace just one light bulb with a compact flurescent it would help. If we all replaced all of our light bulbs it would help a whole lot. Right now anything we do is voluntary. If we don't take voluntary steps now, in the not so distant future it may become mandatory.
DHyslop;87038 said:To be fair, experts can be wrong. Many modern astronomers have no problem buying into string theory hook, line and sinker despite the fact that its completely untestable. If 97% of scientists jumped off a cliff, would you, too?
My point is that the reason we get an education is so that we ourselves can be prepared to research and evaluate these concepts on our own without having to rely blindly on experts, who can be as petty as the rest of us. In this instance, the literature is pretty dense and it does take a lot of patience for someone from outside the field to get through it. But, once you have that basic understanding of how this science is done its pretty clear that climate change isn't smoke and mirrors and is very well supported with hard science.
Dan
monty;87047 said:caveat emptor: I'm opinionated, so although this is intended to be civil, it's also intended to represent my opinion without pulling punches. Feel free to punch back if it bugs you, and I don't mean any of it personally, and feel free to let me know if I should come across as crossing the line.
Except, surprisingly to all the smarmy theorists, String theory may be testable after all! I am greatly amused, and I'll be laughing whether it turns out to be right or wrong, just like I'm amused at all the people who said "it's physically impossible to make a blue LED."
But the main thing that frustrates me about taking specific measures is that people tend to apply "think globally, act locally" to the point where they don't "think globally, act globally, and address the significant contributors." Although the gas efficiency of your Prius vs your Expedition may be significant, or whether you use CF or incandescent bulbs, consider that how much air travel you do, how much concrete is cured to build buildings to support you, how many products you buy that are produced far away and shipped, and all sorts of other things may turn out to be a larger contribution. And yet people rationalize not actually looking at those numbers by saying "oh, I use CF bulbs in my whole house." And on a more extreme level, I would think that people can do more good by investing in alternative energy development or lobbying to not let short-sighted energy moguls make national energy strategy policy than any of these "personal lifestyle" goals; I'd rather see someone drive a hummer and develop usable fusion power than ride their bicycle everywhere and spend their time doing organic subsistence farming. Of course, if the fusion developer drove a Prius instead it wouldn't bother me any, but the relative impact of the two things is disproportionate... not meaning to be curmudgeon, but it irritates me when people get all holier-than-thou about making lifestyle changes that are a drop in the bucket. Not that I'm clear on how best to approach high-impact solutions, either, and not that I don't do the drop in the bucket things a bit, but I avoid pretending that the little things are good enough to do anything more than encourage mindfulness, and I don't get all stoic about it (we didn't get rid of our mustangs when we got the prius, for example, we just put most of our miles on the prius these days.)
DHyslop;87048 said:Monty, there's nothing in the post at all that I take offense at!
I'm with you 100% here. Doing the small things is good, but what we really need is a progressive energy policy at the national and even global levels. I'm a supporter of nuclear power because even if we have a Chernobyl every 30 years I think the planet would be a better place in a century than if we keep burning coal the way we do today. (!)
pipsquek;87056 said:Here's a little something that I have thought about. How much energy does the interet and it's peripheral attachments use? Does changing lightbulbs even come close to the amount we gooble up every day checking email?? Not to mention the activities involved in producing the hardware.
pipsquek;87056 said:Other than that, the number of people in the world, the rate that it is climbing, and the relative speed that we can reverse the negative impacts of our technology all add up to some crappy times ahead..