Look A Unicorn
Rising sea levels or sinking land masses?
- Thread starter Angel
- Start date
unfortunately it doesn't matter if you paid 1 cent more or 100 cents more or even 100 times more for your power, in fact turn off every power station in Oz, it won't make a scrap of difference, asuming there is a difference to be made. Our actions are cute tho.
Once again - you've very quickly escalated "the debate" into the personal realm....which you don't really like going into, and take great offence at.
Your emotive sentences - brought up twice now - about exposing your children to hazards, brings the argument back to the elephant in the room....over population.
Anyone who has a genuine concern about this topic and has procreated and heaped a bunch more humans into the mix is quite hypocritical.....but once again, it's a no-go zone, for you and everyone else.
The desire to procreate is extremely strong. You've made your choice.
Having children in the 1st world, and bringing them up in the first world is going to impose huge huge huge penalties on the environment. You knew that but went ahead anyway....as we all did. We are all the same.
Anyone in that situation - bringing up children in the 1st world, is a complete and utter hypocrite if they criticise human pollution. I haven't met one first world adult bleating about climate change who doesn't live in a house chock full of mining and petroleum products.....drive vehicles chock full of mining and petroleum products, use electrical goods chock full of mining and petroleum products and do absolutely everything in and around a bunch of mining and petroleum products......including their precious solar panels which are chock-a-block full of mining and petroleum products.
If anyone lives in a hole or den, has no access to electricity, has no kids and gets about only by walking, then OK, I'll listen to the bleat. They are practicing what they preach.
I've only met a few people living in conditions like that, some bedouins in a cave on the steppes of the Yemeni desert. Funny thing is, they couldn't give a rats about the environment, but they really wanted running water and electricity (however it was generated).
The only ones bleating about the effects of first world luxuries provided by modern industry and modern invention, are those that are able to afford to enjoy the luxuries and the very best that are provided by the first world.
The rest of the 7 billion people on this rock are struggling to simply feed themselves. Why not give them a break.
Exactly....
This from the NASA link on sea ice....
So, 1979 thru 2000 is apparently long term with respect to discussing stuff happening with the Earth. ?? Get real.
Humans have no clue about this stuff long term.
All this is very interesting, but ultimately the earth will do what it does, it will adapt and adjust as it has in the past.
We are probably accelerating the process but it will eventually happen.
Mankind will just have to accept that some things we just cannot change. Mother nature will do the rest.
We are probably accelerating the process but it will eventually happen.
Mankind will just have to accept that some things we just cannot change. Mother nature will do the rest.
I agree with nearly everything you said in this post. Great stuff. BTW I didn't personally insult anyone or be accused of having vested interests by people with vested interests - that's all I've ever complained about on this forum. I don't expect the Bedouin or any of the world's poor to make any contribution - happy to give them a complete break.
This is why I feel an obligation to assist personally in contributing my skills and talents, for what they're worth, to making the production of power more sustainable where we can easily (very easily) afford it. We should be the first cabs off the rank... and the best way to achieve that for me personally is to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
I know we are on the cusp of a boom in renewable energy investment driven by it becoming cheaper than the fossils but that won't happen by itself. It will need another 5-10 years of support by governments and nations to achieve the last step up in economies of scale (and for the fossils to take their next step up in price to the crossover point).
This will provide a path for the developing world to get access to the cheap forms of energy they need on a micro scale, in particularly solar panels for their ability to provide refrigeration and water pumping, to quote two major priorities. We in the first world have enjoyed the ride on the fossil fuel bandwagon but now it's our responsibility to ensure we can all make the switch, while improving everyone's standard of living.
If you think it can be done, it can. And I know it can be done...
When I look at the minor pain it causes us (and the other developed nations also implementing similar policies) in the short term and the huge gain for the globe in the long term, the pathway is crystal clear to me.
This sums up the inner conflict I've been having for most of my adult life.
No matter which end of the political/social/environmental spectrum, there are some uncomfortable truths which need to be acknowledged.
I'm entirely for moving towards more environmentally sustainable practices and technologies, but I'm also aware that I'm a member of a very small and privileged minority and, whatever my fair share is, I consume well above and beyond that.
Right now I'm typing about environmental issues on a computer, with the light turned on and in a bit I'll probably switch on the heat. When my husband gets home, we'll stick some packaged food in the oven and switch on the TV and Playstation. Oh, yeah, and we'll feed the cats canned food made from carbon-emitting livestock. We'll probably complain about Melbourne's weather at some point, that's just how little we have to complain about.
I'm sure if I was struggling to feed myself or my family, an environmentally sustainable future would be far from my mind.
....it's simply impossible to discuss an environmental issue without having first consumed a bunch of mining and petroleum products.....
The plastic (read oil) computer is chock full of mining products in the internals
The electricity (solar / wind / tidal / fossil) are all generated using mining and oil
The mobile phone (there are some very exotic mining products in those)
Even if you are sitting in a cafe discussing how you can help the environment....you are ;
Either sitting on either metal (mining) or wood (forest) or plastic (oil)
Have your feet on concrete (mining) or carpet (lots of agr / mining / petr)
in a building (clay bricks, mortar from a lime pit, tin roof held up by wood)
Sipping from a ceramic cup (mining)
Coffee (agr. farmland from a cut down forest, then shipped in a metal tub across the world with oil)
Stir in some Sugar (agr. farmland from a cut down forest)
with a metal spoon (from a mine)
heated up to a nice temperature by electricity (fossil fuels)
chatting on your charged up (fossil fueled) mobile phone (mining)
The whole thing is a farce. You are using everything you are complaining about. No one is insulated.
If you are successful and you manage to shut down and take away the things you are complaining about, you'd be sitting in the dust with nothing.....which is where we all were before we starting mining / using oil.
The "debate" is one huge farce.
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So from this thread I can conclude:
1) We shouldn't do anything, because anything we do would be insignificant and make no difference.
2) We certainly shouldn't do everything, because that would mean going back to living in caves and nobody would do that. By inference that implies that doing everything would actually make a difference?
The third option is to do something that does make a difference but not so much of a difference that we go back to living in caves. The old 80/20 rule - take out 80% of the emissions with 20% of the effort. Given that power generation accounts for nearly 50% of our emissions, that would seem a good place to start?
I'm certainly not happy to leave the earth to her man made fate. Over-population is consistently cured by economic growth. Australia has had a fertility rate below replacement level since 1976 - we have to import all our population growth through immigration. If everyone was as equally prosperous as us world wide there would be negative global population growth. We have an obligation to assist the rest of the world in that goal and it will be done in a more sustainable way because the unsustainable methods just haven't worked for those communities - they need to do something different to what we did. Silicon will work for them where coal doesn't because they don't have any coal but they do have sunlight.
And we can still have a mining industry - oil is a tiny proportion of global GHG emissions anyway. I don't see the goals of sustainable development, economic growth, renewable energy and population control as being in conflict. I only see a conflict between short term and long term thinking and the danger of the first world reaching for that last luxury goal in it's short term advantage while telling the rest of the planet to eat cake...
1) We shouldn't do anything, because anything we do would be insignificant and make no difference.
2) We certainly shouldn't do everything, because that would mean going back to living in caves and nobody would do that. By inference that implies that doing everything would actually make a difference?
The third option is to do something that does make a difference but not so much of a difference that we go back to living in caves. The old 80/20 rule - take out 80% of the emissions with 20% of the effort. Given that power generation accounts for nearly 50% of our emissions, that would seem a good place to start?
I'm certainly not happy to leave the earth to her man made fate. Over-population is consistently cured by economic growth. Australia has had a fertility rate below replacement level since 1976 - we have to import all our population growth through immigration. If everyone was as equally prosperous as us world wide there would be negative global population growth. We have an obligation to assist the rest of the world in that goal and it will be done in a more sustainable way because the unsustainable methods just haven't worked for those communities - they need to do something different to what we did. Silicon will work for them where coal doesn't because they don't have any coal but they do have sunlight.
And we can still have a mining industry - oil is a tiny proportion of global GHG emissions anyway. I don't see the goals of sustainable development, economic growth, renewable energy and population control as being in conflict. I only see a conflict between short term and long term thinking and the danger of the first world reaching for that last luxury goal in it's short term advantage while telling the rest of the planet to eat cake...
Yeah; ME!
Seriously, if the ice has melted to that degree as they say, then where is the corresponding rise in sea levels?
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Whilst it's true that economic growth is the best cure for over-population, the UN projects that the world's population will peak at over 10 billion. To raise the living standards of the rest of the world so that all 10 billion of us are living to a first world standard, carbon emissions/pollution will skyrocket. Consider the landfill alone.
Whilst every effort should be made to make development as sustainable as possible, there gets to a point where people need to choose between their economic development and the environment. Naturally, they'll choose their economic development, just as Australia did. Even with renewable energies and more sustainable practices, the equivalent of 10 billion Australians will put a massive strain on both resources and the environment.
This isn't to say we should do nothing and waste as much as we like because humanity is doomed regardless, I'm just asking whether it's viable for 10 billion of us to live to an Australian standard in an environmentally sustainable manner?
IMO Australians pollute and use more than our fair share and reducing that, even if the reduction is fairly token, can't possibly be a bad thing. I'm tired of the argument 'Australia is insignificant so it doesn't matter what we do'. We don't litter at the beach and say 'oh well, the ocean is already so polluted it won't make a difference'.
Only a handful of Australians would be prepared to return to the cave dwelling lifestyle of our ancestors. We enjoy our comforts, that isn't going to change. The question is whether any reduction is better than no reduction?
And I'm not referring to the carbon tax here, I'm also not referring to climate change.
It's sea ice .. doesn't contribute to sea level rises when it melts.
that's because your analogy is poor. picking up your litter is a free and insignficant task. Slashing your economy down at its knees to the point where you are at a major disadvantage to the rest of the world in order to achive an insignificant outcome to a questionable problem is another matter entirely.
no because it is piled up
amen and kudos.
the trouble is, our current system provides no incentive (educational, financial or industrial) for new product and technology and subsidises the old when one is found, making the new impossible to compete.
there is nothing wrong with looking for better products to burn to make heat and energy. in fact, it's what we, as human, are good at doing.
we stopped chopping down forests when we discovered coal.
we stopped burning coal when we realised there were two funny bits of yellow metal that, when put close together created heat, which we could pour water over and then turn steam turbines which were reversed technology of how we generated power with paddle turbines in rivers.
amazing.
and now we've realised - "hey - this photovolataic stuff - we can get energy directly from the sun by burning nothing except the stuff we need to make them - AND we can store it in this funny blue metal for when it's night time and we need power".
and it's coming. humans evolve - it's what we do - however people don't realise that it took nearly 10,000 years to make the semi-permanent swap from wood to coal, then 300 years to go from coal to nuclear which led to entrenched industrialisation - so, what - we should only take a year or two to swap the post industrialised world off coal and nuclear and onto solar?
sorry - but evolution takes time. i know the christians don't like the notion, but that's how it is.
add a dose of technology buffer in between and it could be another 100 years before we see solar on any mass scale.
but by then, it'll just be a paint that you paint your car with and wire up to a bio-based battery pack under the back seat the size of a grapefruit, and you'll buy sucrose to feed the bio pack like you currently fill up your petrol tank.
doesnt matter how much snow & ice is "piled up" on the sea, when it melts the water level doesn´t change.
of course it does. try this at home... grab an ice cream container and make 3 blocks of ice. take the empty container and stack the blocks 3 high. when they melt let me know if the container over flows
I'm thinking we are talkign about different things - when you say sea ice are you thinking of a lump of ice bobbing around in the ocean?
