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Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability
And how do you "retard its progress," exactly? I can't figure out how. Even if you could somehow stop all fossil fuel consumption right now, it'd still take decades for the atmosphere to recover, right?
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Not just the atmosphere, but the entire global climate. And it's not about recovery, as such, but more about equillibrium. It's not possible to reduce our impact on the environment to nothing, but it is possible to drastically reduce it. If it takes decades, or longer, for things to stabilize, then so be it - just because it might take a long time is no reason not to do something about it. Some people seem to think that it is though, and unfortunatley a lot of those who are in a position to actually do something think that way (including it seems the current occupant of the White House). There isn't much chance that the public as a whole is going to suddenly wake up one day and thing "Hey, we need to do something about this" simply because the effects of wuch action would impact on what has really become an unsustainable way of life. No more disposable consumer culture, no more cheap flights abroad, no more three-car households - it's hard to see beyond that
now to it's inevitable consequence.
You're absolutely right about the oil business. Our global civilisation is based on the consumption of crude oil products. The oil companies know this, and even though some of them are now making small moves in the direction of renewables, the sort of serious persuit that's really needed
right now just isn't happening. The oil business won't do anything, so governments must, and fortunately some are (notably Germany and China).
Nuclear is a tricky option at best - France is probably the only country in the EU to actively embrace it - but despite public opinion being mostly firmly against it, it is unforunately something that we're going to have to rely more on anyway. The kicker is and always has been waste. It's got to go somewhere, but nobody wants it next to them. It's the lesser of two evils though, and that's only ever the logical choice to make.
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Originally Posted by Burt
I think it's must be something real. I can't believe all the stuff we do to the Earth won't have some bad effects. I think it might be a little overstated. I mean, I've read about the 'mini iceage' in the 17th-18th century, when the river Thames froze over for a number of years each winter. I guess sometimes things can be weird on their own. Evertime we have a hot summer in England some people says it's because of 'Global Warming' - couldn't it just be a hot summer?
But on the other hand there is all the evidence about the ice in Greenland melting much quicker...So something must be up!
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There is such a thing as natural climate change, of course, but the long and the short of it is that human activity is short circuiting in just a few hundred years shifts that usually take place in tens of thousands of years, and no-one with even the tiniest grasp of reason could think that that's a good thing.
Greenland is worrying though. I read in
New Scientist not so long ago that it's only in the last five or six years that the rate at which the ice sheet is melting has started to surpass its ability to reform - the critial point at which it becomes an unstoppable process could be as little as a century from now. Scary stuff, really.