global warming, greenhouse effect

[boston]

I agree we need to take care of the earth but I am not a doom & gloomer thinking the world is coming to an end.

Somethin to think about........How old is the earth? According to scientists how many ice ages and warm ups has the earth had over its existance? Supposidly man was not around yet so what caused that to happen? I can remember back in the late 70s early 80s we had some very cold winters followed by cool summers and these same "experts" were saying we were going into another ice age, now they are saying the exact opposite so what do you believe???

[lovetogarden]

I don't know if the world is doomed, but I think its a good idea to save seeds and try to be more self sufficient. No one thought the Titanic would sink so there were not enought life boats. Not many people planned on the great depression so a lot of people starved and loss everything. It makes sense to be prepared
no matter what happens in life.

Hey Guys:I too am a strong proponant of saving seed and practising a self-sufficent lifestyle however the amount of people on the planet that think this way is extremely small.In order to make the type of changes that would make a difference requires Huge # of people to shift their lifestyles.
Oil and Big buiseness is what makes the "Machine of Progress"work.I am just being realistic.If you shop at WalMart you are $upporting GMO proliferation.You simly can't have it both ways.
CNN and MSNBC get better ratings and More Money by reporting Doom and Gloom,but yet there is a lot of Beauty in the World.Life in 2006 is Really Exciting.
The End of the World is in 5 minutes!Do You have Film In Your Camera?-

[Cricket]

Wait a minute, Johno, global warming is something that can make us all quite miserable before we die of something related to overpopulation of Homo sapiens on this planet. Trying to get our federal government to address the warming problem as Al Gore has been doing is a good approach regardless of the Malthus-Verhulst equation. As for whether it's happening or not, right now I'm carrying water from a neighbor's system who has two creeks running through her property. We live on the top of a foothill of the Selkirk Mountains and our water table has dropped below anything we have ever experienced before in the 24 years we have been on this land.

Peak oil is part of this and it's really important for the government to address it. I'm not for building any new nuclear power plants because we haven't solved the nuclear waste disposal problem except to put it into weapons. The government could do a lot about vehicle manufacturing by raising the law concerning gas mileage a car must get. Our American culture based on cheap oil has to change and we can conceptualize and organize to do this. Just having a garden and raising one's own food can lower the number of trips to the grocery store in the summer. I know that's a very small thing compared to the seriousness of the problem, but it's better than being cynical or giving up. Making national policy decisions about the environment based on a religious belief in Armegeddon is not the approach I want my government to have. I'm not unpatriotic and don't tell me to move to another country.

[HillsideDigger]

"... global warming is something that can make us all quite miserable before we die of something related to overpopulation..."

Not really, global warming (unguided human caused climate alteration) = overpopulation or at least is one of the many symptoms of overpopulation, the world is already well beyond a sustainable number of people at even the barest level of existence. There was a thread about this before and many seem to think otherwise, that we can squeeze many more people onto planet Earth, well obviously, we can, but only temporarily and at a compounding cost, the higher the numbers go before NPG sets in, the fewer the Earth will be able to sustain afterward because of the deteriorated life systems (which would take eons of natural action to restore) from the brief period of overpopulation.

The really bad effects of climate change (which ultimately might be severe cooling, in any case will be erratic and unpredictable, I think) may take several more decades to set in, but any of a number of conditions resulting from the current overpopulation (most notably is resource depletion) may well cause a considerable die-off and soon.

I saw the presentation by Al Gore on TV which he then made into the movie and if anything, I would say he is to optimistic.

[johno]

I guess I do sound a little gloomy relaying this information, but doom and gloom was not the point.

I reiterate to you: look it up for yourself. This equation has been monitored for decades, and despite some miniscule variations along the way, the data supports the theory regardless of what you would like to believe.

[TastyofHasty]

I'm posting some pictures from the book ... (had to keep size down so as to be able to upload)

first one is about precipitation. From previous page,

... Paradoxically, however, global warming causes not only more flooding, but also more drought. ... One of the reasons for this paradox has to do with the fact that global warming not only increases precipitation world-wide but at the same time causes some of it to relocate.

Next page is picture about precipitation showing blue dots for places that have been receiving MORE precipitation (bigger dot = bigger increase)

... the effects of climate change on precipitation are not uniform. Precipitation in the 20th century increased overall, as expected with global warming, but in some regions precipitation actually decreased. The blue dots mark the areas with increased precipitation--the larger the dot, the larger the increase. The orange dots show the places and amounts of decreased precipitation. Sometimes the effects of such a large shift can be devastating. For example, focus on the part of Africa just on the edge of the Sahara.

(entire map is the pic labelled "worldprecipitationdots.jpg", unfortunately not big or high resolution.) (just the US page is the pic labelled "precipitationdots.jpg.")

He then goes on to show incredible pics of how Lake Chad, formerly the sixth largest lake in the world, in Darfur, Africa, shrank ... with explanation of how it has shrunk to 1/20th of its original size (original size was similar to Lake Erie) in a period of only the last 40 years.

He goes on to say that while global warming

produces more evaporation from the oceans to fill the warmer atmosphere with increased moisture, it sucks more moisture out of the soil. Partly as a consequence, desertification has been increasing in the world decade by decade.

Then on next page, he shows a picture of

what is projected to happen to soil moisture in the United States with the doubling of CO2, which would happen in less than 50 years if we continue business as usual. According to scientists, it will lead, among other things, to a loss in soil moisture of up to 35% in vast growing areas of our country.

(this is pic titled "ProjectedSoilMoistureReduction" ... it's sideways so as to have been able to upload it at the size it is! )

Hope the pics come out okay.

[HillsideDigger]

Amazing TOH, because I am located right at, in fact underneath, that orange dot (first picture, WNC), surrounded by many blue dots in your photo

and for 10 years running here, soil moisture has decreased in a formerly very wet place.

[Cricket]

Johno, your theory could well be true, but I still laud any attempt by a politician to make the environment a part of governmental planning. Right now, ecology is being ignored. I think as conscious citizens of this planet, no matter what the future will bring for me as an individual, I deeply desire that governments all over the world give our planet the care it needs to sustain all the wonderful things we take for granted like purity of water, air, and soil and our temperate climate. I also hate to see the diversity of plants and animals so grossly devasted. Our country which has the dominant currency now is shamefully setting a bad example. It's hard to recover from such an onslaught and it's ethically indefensible. It makes me angry and then depressed because there's nothing I can do about it since I live in a very red state and my vote in a national election doesn't count. Furthermore, the other political party makes a lot of mistakes too, like NAFTA, for instance. I feel that our whole American culture is sadly lacking in values for the environment. We are so urbanized that we think nature is a tree planted in a hole in the pavement.

[johno]

Amen, cricket.