Climate change- quite overhyped at the moment?

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[rant]When I read a newspaper, or watch television, I am constantly bombarded with messages about climate change. Quite frankly, the British government is dragging its heels and only taking action when it is neccessary. But, much more important in the near future, is the state of Britain's health service, its education system, debt, underfunded armed services, unfair tuition fees, crumbling justice system and police force, amongst many other things.

People are ignoring the real issues. The government seems to just sit back, and, when it is forced to take action, it shoves its grubby hands around, and comes up with a short term "solution" to get votes. In reality, the "solution" is just an election ploy, in most cases. The "New Labour" government Britain has now lacks the will, guts, and intelligence to make a difference. Never mind there not being enough funds, Blair and his administration need to stop acting like utter dope heads, and get some revenue other than taxes. Buying and using the profits from some companies, for starters, and cutting the obscene salaries of certain beureaucrats to more appropriate levels.

Climate change needs appropriate solutions which fix the root of the problem, and ensure sustainability. Britain needs to fix the more immediate problems, whilst being environmentally friendly at the same time, which is achievable.

If Britain's public services are not fixed, and the economy is not balanced and made fair, then everyone will suffer. In turn, any attempts to sort out climate change will be severely hampered.[/rant]

I'm done.

Last edited by Anubis on 05 Nov 2006, 7:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am not concerned about global warming right now. I just want to get out of Houston very soon.

Tim

Funny, I thought Climate Change WAS one of the real issues.

It is a big issue, but overhyped and approached in the wrong way.

It's one of those issues where if you do something about it now, when it doesn't seem critical, it is a manageable problem, because there is time to prevent the worst from happening. If you want until it becomes a real problem, you're up the creek.

Yes, action should be taken before it is too late, but climate change protests keep going on and on chanting the same things and not being very helpful. "Oh no, it's the end of the world, we're all going to die!" I am concerned that things are going the wrong way, and people are tarring certain sensible solutions, such as nuclear power, with the same brush , when it is in fact the future. This could go the wrong way and the wrong actions could be taken.

gotcha. I'm with you on nukes.

We also need to be conserving energy. Here in the US, people drive these huge SUVs that get pitiful gas mileage. That is just silly, and it could be tragic in the long run if people don't have some awareness of the impact of what they are doing.

I tend to agree. I've read stuff about the technical side of climate change, and don't doubt it's going to be a major problem in the future. However, even without the man-made problem, science has revealed that the climate is in fact very dynamic, and politicians should (if they were doing their jobs properly) have made plans for changes in rainfall patterns, temperature and sea level, that occur anyway through a number of natural processes. Currently, it's unfortunate that they attempt to use climate change to cover up their own incompetence. Take the "drought" in the South-east. That's got nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with the fact that they continue to cram more and more people into the naturally driest part of the UK, without the provision of additional water storage infrastructure.

To be honest, I don't think it's feasible to stop greenhouse gases being produced at damaging quantities, anyway. That's not to say some longterm effort shouldn't be made, but realistically the most sensible thing to do is to try to predict what things are likely to happen, and plan accordingly.

I always recycle whenever I can....cans and bottles, newspapers, batteries, phonebooks, bicycle when I can, conserve energy, etc. For years now. And then to hear OUR government not even take an active roll in environmental concerns, in this instance global warming--I sometimes want to just give up. Why bother if only a few of us care enough to recycle, or even more than a few? It just seems futile. But I still do it, because it's what I know and believe. I want to go to Antarctica before it's melted off more than it h as. Just today hundreds of icebergs that calved off the continent threaten the Southern waters and I think it is directly related to global warming. The ozone hole over Antarctica is the largest in all recorded past years--as big as the continent itself. And yet our government, to it's shame, says that there is no such thing, there's no proof. How can people stick their heads in the sand like this? Only for Big Business sake??To make more money? What kind of moronic thinking is this? It makes my heart heavy to hear some people not do anything because they think that environmental issues are only for liberals, that global warming is just a scare tactic and not for real. Yet, even though I am disenheartened, I will STILL, to my last breath, recycle all I can. Just allow me my sorrow now and again.

My roomie said that just this evening.
"Have you noticed that every newspaper has big headlines about global warming?"
Whereby I answered:
"Yeah, whenever that happens, it's important to ignore that particular story and try to find out what's really going one, because it is only a ruse and distraction".

Besides, it is possible that the gulf stream will cease to flow and there will be an ice age, not an increase in temperature.

Climate change exists, for certain. And appropriate action should be taken whilst making progress at the same time. Climate change should not dominate politics, as there are many other important issues which are deprived of attention.

I don't know yet if it is happening or not. But, last semester, the professor an environmental science class I had to take, who has several awards and degrees in physics and geophysics, said that global warming was not occurring. So the only expert I've talked with personally (and I asked him some questions about it) was against that it was really occurring.

If you live in Tuvalu (Pacific Island) then you know sea levels are rising. Probable cause is global warming. Are there any other theories for rising sea levels?

http://www.truehealth.org/climnw05.html

Last edited by BazzaMcKenzie on 09 Nov 2006, 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I find this is the case with most issues they hype them up to get people to listen the problem I have is not the issues but the hype they think if they don't make it sound like the world is ending tomorrow nobody will listen. So when the world doesn't end many people disregard everything they said even if they are valid concerns. I would just like it if they could come up with a better approach that would realistically make people concerned but not make them sound like raving lunatics to the masses who will then proceed to ignore what ever it was they said

You're basing that on the premise that sea levels should be static. That's not the case. However, I don't dispute that man's influence has a significant impact. I don't know much about the Pacific Islands, but do know that isostatic and tectonic influences can cause changes in relative sea level locally. That's the earth's crust moving, not the sea level. Indeed, in some parts of the world post-glacial rebound (that's been occuring since the last period of glaciation) is likely to have a greater impact on relative sea level, than alleged man made effects.

As for sea levels, generally, they have been rising for over 18000 years; I think by around 100m in total. This slowed down around 6000 years ago to a rate less than 1mm a year; I think now it's believed, due to man's influence on the climate, to be over 1mm per year.

You see, sea level changes are not new. You can go to Scotland and see "beaches" 50m above the water; likewise you can go to the South and find archaeological evidence of human habitation at the low water mark. We are not talking vast periods of geological time for these changes, either. Only thousands of years.