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Global warming

JDC

By JDC
in Triangle Coffee House

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DB78 Unincorporated Area

DB78

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Regarding global warming- when one is honest with all data (not looking up only data that solely promotes the side one has predetermined themselves to be on) the truth gets murky. It seems there is a small amount of global warming going on. The debate is if this is simply a part of the neverending cycle of warming and cooling that has been around since time immemoreum and will continue until after we are all gone.

I do find it interesting that the people who are screaming from the rooftops about the truth in manmade global warming are also almost always very socialist. I think many of them see global warming as an end to their means--to clamping down on industry and putting a proverbial monkey on the back of capitalism. Not exactly friendly towards free markets or freedom itself. They like big govt command and control. On the other hand, the people who automatically dismiss manmade probably have an agenda too. Probably often motivated by the money to be made in energy investments.

My guess is that like many things that we are constantly beat over the head with, the hype is bigger than reality. We're going to find out in a few decades.

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RaleighRob Burg

RaleighRob

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Global warming....global cooling...climate change...whatever.

To me, the real topic should be Air Pollution, period. No matter whether you agree on climate change/warming whatever...you can't deny the simple fact that burning stuff...particularly carbon-based fuels...creates Air Pollution. And Air Pollution is no good for you, or the ecology of this planet, regardless of whether it's raising or lowering temperatures. Oxygen is good...all those gases and fumes from combustion, not good. What's to debate about that? It's pretty dang simple.

I think if we put back the focus on that, then we can get real change.

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Tayfromcarolina Hamlet

Tayfromcarolina

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And lets add to the Air pollution Ground Pollution as it is all connected. I grew up here and although Im only in my early 20's it seems that in the last 7 or 8 years the litter and such in an around the Triangle has gotten horrendous. It seems as though people by in large don't care about the pollution our cars emit or the bottles and paper and bags and cigarette butts they toss out the window. Either that our local governments have gotten horribly slack in the litter pickup department. :(

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ncwebguy Burg

ncwebguy

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On the surface, global warming and global cooling seem mutually exclusive, but should they be?

Climate change is more appropriate. Both the heat (recent weather, an increase in hurricane activity) and cold (more snow further south over the last 10-15 years) are out of whack. The planet is trying to correct itself from the combination of buring hydrocarbons, creation of freeon and other greenhouse gases, clear cutting of forest land around the world, etc.

Will the usual checks and balances "fix" the imbalance? Who knows. While some people may think it is ok to continue to poke a sleeping tiger because it is still sleeping, others might argue that not poking it would be a better course of action.

Are laws against child labor and segregation "big government intrusions"? Slavery makes products really affordable in a free market economy. Look at the People's Republic of China as an example. Does that mean we should allow lead paint, horrible working conditions, etc. because it will help the market? No. Yet burning coal in a way that pollutes the environment is ok, despite being detrimental to the health of people nearby.

As for litter around here, the "adopt a highway/stream/street" program seemed to be going well, but people have slacked off lately. But the lack of care from motorists is to blame as well. I have led several neighborhood cleanups, some have included the New Bern Ave. corridor just east of the Federal Building. After a few days, the area is right back to how it was. Which in turn makes it really hard to get people to participate in the next cleanup. The city isn't responsible for picking up every piece of trash on every street.

To me, a lot of issues stem from the sprawling nature of the area. People don't care about anything other than their own neighborhood, or sometimes only their own property. By driving everywhere else, their environment goes from the street to just inside their vehicle. By being less dense, there are fewer people to work to keep the streets looking good.

Sorry for the rant, but there seemed to be a lot less problems -- air quality, trash, etc. -- before the death of streetcars and the rise of the suburbs and interstate highway system.

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RiverwoodCLT Burg

RiverwoodCLT

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Global warming has more to do with nature than man. The sun and the changing of the earth axis have more to global warming and can not be control by man. The cutting down of our rain forest and our pollution of our planet has to stop because we can not live in a pool of pollution. . We do need to clean up our environment, so we can live healthily live.

We have had global warming for thousands of years and global cooling also for thousands of years. What we need to do is prepare for it and stop blaming man for 100% for global warming. Man may contribute some to global warming and we need to correct that.

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raleighfan Unincorporated Area

raleighfan

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^ I don't deny the earth has gotten warmer over recent history. Though NASA did quietly

revise

some of the recent years temperature data downwards due to a Y2K glitch. What I am skeptical about is man's role in "global warming." There is definitely not a consensus that global warming is man-made.

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Spatula Whistle-Stop

Spatula

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^ I don't deny the earth has gotten warmer over recent history. Though NASA did quietly

revise

some of the recent years temperature data downwards due to a Y2K glitch. What I am skeptical about is man's role in "global warming." There is definitely not a consensus that global warming is man-made.
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raleighfan Unincorporated Area

raleighfan

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^ Again, you'd have to be living in a cave to deny that the earth has gotten warmer in recent times. I mentioned the NASA revision only because some of that data (before the revision) has contributed to the media driven hyperbole regarding "man-made global warming."

Regarding the "consensus" over whether human CO2 emissions are the main cause behind global warming, there is actually a growing list of

highly-credentialed scientists who once believed that were so but have now become quite skeptical.

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mattm Whistle-Stop

mattm

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My gawd, if you're going to believe James Inhofe on this...

The truth is, the Earth is feeling the effects of warming even more than the models predicted very recently. The ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica are melting down faster than anticipated. The "Snows of Kilimanjaro" will be past history within 10 years. The North Polar ice cap is currently at the smallest extent ever recorded, and that with another month of melting to go.

For the consensus of actual *atmospheric* scientists, instead of conservative economists and Republican senators from oil-rich states passing themselves off as experts on the subject, try realclimate.org instead. The arguments you're trying to bring up are demolished by 19th century thermodynamics.

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mattm Whistle-Stop

mattm

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Well, technically, hybrid car batteries are NiMH rather than LiON for now (except for the aftermarket plugin mods), but the environmental damage attributed to them is vastly overstated. I'm always amazed when people still bring up the "Hummers are better for the environment than Priuses" gunk.

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mattm Whistle-Stop

mattm

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Well, as a matter of fact we do. The global temperature changes the ratio of various isotopes in the atmosphere, because lighter atoms get fractionated. This is the same principle that is used to enrich Uranium for atomic power (and has from the outset). The gases are trapped in bubbles as layers of snow are laid down in Antarctica and Greenland. These records go back around a million years, and are accurate to the individual year. Further back from that, layers of sediment can be analyzed for the same effect, although not as accurately (temporal-wise, in particular).

Basically, we are at the warmest point in this interglacial period, and there are at least a couple more degrees C in the pipeline from the CO2 already released. The current CO2 concentration is higher than any time in the past 20 million years, if I remember correctly. Some previous interglacials have been one or two degrees warmer, with sea levels several meters higher than they are currently.

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