An interesting blogpost re: global warming

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

From Tim O'Reilly:

Pascal's Wager and Climate Change
by Tim O'Reilly | comments: 2

Every time I blog or tweet something about climate change, a raft of climate change skeptics come out of the woodwork. For example, this morning on twitter, I pointed to new White House science advisor John Holdren's excellent talk on climate disruption and got responses like this one from Andrew Riley: "I assume you're passing this on in an attempt to make a case for the global warming cult." Meanwhile, Chris Lockwood wrote that "global warming is a hoax spread by socialists and those who profit from it."

To be sure, there were also people pointing to reports of global cooling in an attempt at actual debate. I started to respond to individual points, but in the end, I don't think data will persuade anyone who is so strongly convinced that global warming is a hoax. After all, the history of science shows us that even the top scientists in a field can be wrong, and those who argue against the reality of global warming can always fall back on that premise.

In my talks I've argued that climate change provides us with a modern version of Pascal's wager: if catastrophic global warming turns out not to happen, the steps we'd take to address it are still worthwhile. Given that there's even a reasonable risk of disruptive climate change, any sensible person should decide to act. It's insurance. The risk of your house burning down is small, yet you carry homeowner's insurance; you don't expect to total your car, but you know that the risk is there, and again, most people carry insurance; you don't expect catastrophic illness to strike you down, but again, you invest in insurance.

We don't need to be 100% sure that the worst fears of climate scientists are correct in order to act. All we need to think about are the consequences of being wrong.

Let's assume for a moment that there is no human-caused climate change, or that the consequences are not dire, and we've made big investments to avert it. What's the worst that happens? In order to deal with climate change:

1. We've made major investments in renewable energy. This is an urgent issue even in the absence of global warming, as the IEA has now revised the date of "peak oil" to 2020, only 11 years from now.

2. We've invested in a potent new source of jobs. This is a far better source of stimulus than some of the ideas that have been proposed.

3. We've improved our national security by reducing our dependence on oil from hostile or unstable regions.

4. We've mitigated the enormous "off the books" economic losses from pollution. (China recently estimated these losses as 10% of GDP.) We currently subsidize fossil fuels in dozens of ways, by allowing power companies, auto companies, and others to keep environmental costs "off the books," by funding the infrastructure for autos at public expense while demanding that railroads build their own infrastructure, and so on.

5. We've renewed our industrial base, investing in new industries rather than propping up old ones. Climate critics like Bjorn Lomborg like to cite the cost of dealing with global warming. But the costs are similar to the "costs" incurred by record companies in the switch to digital music distribution, or the costs to newspapers implicit in the rise of the web. That is, they are costs to existing industries, but ignore the opportunities for new industries that exploit the new technology. I have yet to see a convincing case made that the costs of dealing with climate change aren't principally the costs of protecting old industries.

By contrast, let's assume that the climate skeptics are wrong. We face the displacement of millions of people, droughts, floods and other extreme weather, species loss, and economic harm that will make us long for the good old days of the current financial industry meltdown.

It really is like Pascal's wager. On one side, the worst outcome is that we've built a more robust economy. On the other side, the worst outcome really is hell. In short, we do better if we believe in climate change and act on that belief, even if we turned out to be wrong.

[Ashur]

I don't think we need to wave the "global warming" boogeyman around in order to make these changes any more than athiests believe you need to wave the "hell" bogeymen around to act moral.

[Zaelath]

I don't think we need to wave the "global warming" boogeyman around in order to make these changes any more than athiests believe you need to wave the "hell" bogeymen around to act moral.

That's hardly the point he's making...

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I believe that is exactly the point he is making. That whether or not the climate changes are real, changing our reliance to clean energy sources is a smart move all around. My only true fear for an oil-less world would be the Middle East with a shit ton of weapons and no money coming in. Would that make them more apt to try to set off WW3?

[Gzette]

My only true fear for an oil-less world would be the Middle East with a shit ton of weapons and no money coming in. Would that make them more apt to try to set off WW3?

maybe. maybe not. without any oil there we can ignore the region like we do africa.

im not saying im against that. ive become pretty callous towards the whole region.

[Canelek]

That whether or not the climate changes are real, changing our reliance to clean energy sources is a smart move all around.

QFE

Al Gore went out of his way to make "clean energy" appear as more of a hippie movement as opposed to a smart way to clean up air and water pollution and at the same time conserve on fossil fuels.

Sensationalist documentaries do more harm than good to the moderate, thinking crowd.

[Animale]

Hey, look at this!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/ ... index.html

Scientific consensus is grand, isn't it.

Animale

[Zaelath]

I believe that is exactly the point he is making. That whether or not the climate changes are real, changing our reliance to clean energy sources is a smart move all around. My only true fear for an oil-less world would be the Middle East with a shit ton of weapons and no money coming in. Would that make them more apt to try to set off WW3?

Yes, that IS what he's saying. What's he's NOT saying is that global warming is a "bogeyman" we should use to scare the children into behaving properly.

The other point he makes has been made here before and included a video presentation of the thesis:

- React to non-existant global warming, there's a cost but it won't end us as a species and we're still better off.

- Not React to actual global warming, there's a much higher cost that may well end us as a species.

[Ashur]

Exactly, I dig clean energy and less reliance on oil/foreign oil (and the middle east). I just hate it when people get all GLOBAL WARMING! on me. It's really not necessary and it's very easy to liken it to the argument that people should be moral without the threat of HELL! being thrown in their faces.

EDIT: "What's he's NOT saying is that global warming is a "bogeyman" we should use to scare the children into behaving properly." Actually I AM saying "Global Warming!" = "Bogeyman!", sorry - my reply was yet unposted when I left for the day.

[Zaelath]

Exactly, I dig clean energy and less reliance on oil/foreign oil (and the middle east). I just hate it when people get all GLOBAL WARMING! on me. It's really not necessary and it's very easy to liken it to the argument that people should be moral without the threat of HELL! being thrown in their faces.

EDIT: "What's he's NOT saying is that global warming is a "bogeyman" we should use to scare the children into behaving properly." Actually I AM saying "Global Warming!" = "Bogeyman!", sorry - my reply was yet unposted when I left for the day.

My bad, "he" in this case was meant to be "Tim O'Reilly".

I took your original post to mean that you felt Tim was suggesting we should "wave the bogeyman" to scare people into progress. I disagree, in that I don't think Tim feels it's a bogeyman...

[Wulfran]

Hey, look at this!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/ ... index.html

Scientific consensus is grand, isn't it.

No, its not.

Scientific consensus in the 1400s held the earth was flat. In the 1800s it held that diseases like malaria were caused by "bad air". Scientists are capable of exhibiting herd-like behaviour if it means protecting their reputations/tenure/etc.

I agree with the end of the blog post about global warming being a form of Pascal's wager and I agree our governments and society have been astonishingly slow in acting in ways that would be in most of our countries' best interests but a group of "scientists" proclaiming something as truth without hard research and fact (and lets be honest there is more speculation, theorizing and preliminary conclusions in climatology than fact at this point although work continues to be done) doesn't mean a damned thing and shouldn't. I can cite the example of Dr. David Suzuki in Canada: the nation's most outspoken "scientific advocate" of addressing climate change... except he's not a climatologist, but a geneticist; sorry but thats one scientist that is speaking out of his area of expertise and this whole area is rife with this type of thing. Some people want to claim that "oh its in how he's trained to think" but that measure, you can call any engineer or medical professional a scientist because that analytical process is ingrained in all of them. I'll go one step farther and state that intuitively I agree that some of the climate change is man made but I also keep hearing that one old (and brilliant) organic chemist that I used to work with, in his teutonic-accented English (Drolgin would have loved to hear him sing ) saying "for complex problems there are always easy to find WRONG answers".

Scientific consenus is fickle and ever-evolving and not to be trusted of its own accord. Look at the data, not who supports it and draw your conclusions/formulate your questions and opinions from that.

[Xyun]

Hey, look at this!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/ ... index.html

Scientific consensus is grand, isn't it.

No, its not.

Scientific consensus in the 1400s held the earth was flat. In the 1800s it held that diseases like malaria were caused by "bad air". Scientists are capable of exhibiting herd-like behaviour if it means protecting their reputations/tenure/etc.

I agree with the end of the blog post about global warming being a form of Pascal's wager and I agree our governments and society have been astonishingly slow in acting in ways that would be in most of our countries' best interests but a group of "scientists" proclaiming something as truth without hard research and fact (and lets be honest there is more speculation, theorizing and preliminary conclusions in climatology than fact at this point although work continues to be done) doesn't mean a damned thing and shouldn't. I can cite the example of Dr. David Suzuki in Canada: the nation's most outspoken "scientific advocate" of addressing climate change... except he's not a climatologist, but a geneticist; sorry but thats one scientist that is speaking out of his area of expertise and this whole area is rife with this type of thing. Some people want to claim that "oh its in how he's trained to think" but that measure, you can call any engineer or medical professional a scientist because that analytical process is ingrained in all of them. I'll go one step farther and state that intuitively I agree that some of the climate change is man made but I also keep hearing that one old (and brilliant) organic chemist that I used to work with, in his teutonic-accented English (Drolgin would have loved to hear him sing ) saying "for complex problems there are always easy to find WRONG answers".

Scientific consenus is fickle and ever-evolving and not to be trusted of its own accord. Look at the data, not who supports it and draw your conclusions/formulate your questions and opinions from that.

DUH HUH DUH HUH. SCIENCE IS STOOPID AND FICKLE. IT'S RARELY CORRECT JUST LOOK AT THE 1400s!

You sound like an uneducated buffoon.

[Boogahz]

Hey, look at this!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/ ... index.html

Scientific consensus is grand, isn't it.

No, its not.

Scientific consensus in the 1400s held the earth was flat. In the 1800s it held that diseases like malaria were caused by "bad air". Scientists are capable of exhibiting herd-like behaviour if it means protecting their reputations/tenure/etc.

I agree with the end of the blog post about global warming being a form of Pascal's wager and I agree our governments and society have been astonishingly slow in acting in ways that would be in most of our countries' best interests but a group of "scientists" proclaiming something as truth without hard research and fact (and lets be honest there is more speculation, theorizing and preliminary conclusions in climatology than fact at this point although work continues to be done) doesn't mean a damned thing and shouldn't. I can cite the example of Dr. David Suzuki in Canada: the nation's most outspoken "scientific advocate" of addressing climate change... except he's not a climatologist, but a geneticist; sorry but thats one scientist that is speaking out of his area of expertise and this whole area is rife with this type of thing. Some people want to claim that "oh its in how he's trained to think" but that measure, you can call any engineer or medical professional a scientist because that analytical process is ingrained in all of them. I'll go one step farther and state that intuitively I agree that some of the climate change is man made but I also keep hearing that one old (and brilliant) organic chemist that I used to work with, in his teutonic-accented English (Drolgin would have loved to hear him sing ) saying "for complex problems there are always easy to find WRONG answers".

Scientific consenus is fickle and ever-evolving and not to be trusted of its own accord. Look at the data, not who supports it and draw your conclusions/formulate your questions and opinions from that.

DUH HUH DUH HUH. SCIENCE IS STOOPID AND FICKLE. IT'S RARELY CORRECT JUST LOOK AT THE 1400s!

You sound like an uneducated buffoon.

Put down the bottle before you drop it on your foot.

[Wulfran]

Hey, look at this!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/ ... index.html

Scientific consensus is grand, isn't it.

No, its not.

Scientific consensus in the 1400s held the earth was flat. In the 1800s it held that diseases like malaria were caused by "bad air". Scientists are capable of exhibiting herd-like behaviour if it means protecting their reputations/tenure/etc.

I agree with the end of the blog post about global warming being a form of Pascal's wager and I agree our governments and society have been astonishingly slow in acting in ways that would be in most of our countries' best interests but a group of "scientists" proclaiming something as truth without hard research and fact (and lets be honest there is more speculation, theorizing and preliminary conclusions in climatology than fact at this point although work continues to be done) doesn't mean a damned thing and shouldn't. I can cite the example of Dr. David Suzuki in Canada: the nation's most outspoken "scientific advocate" of addressing climate change... except he's not a climatologist, but a geneticist; sorry but thats one scientist that is speaking out of his area of expertise and this whole area is rife with this type of thing. Some people want to claim that "oh its in how he's trained to think" but that measure, you can call any engineer or medical professional a scientist because that analytical process is ingrained in all of them. I'll go one step farther and state that intuitively I agree that some of the climate change is man made but I also keep hearing that one old (and brilliant) organic chemist that I used to work with, in his teutonic-accented English (Drolgin would have loved to hear him sing ) saying "for complex problems there are always easy to find WRONG answers".

Scientific consenus is fickle and ever-evolving and not to be trusted of its own accord. Look at the data, not who supports it and draw your conclusions/formulate your questions and opinions from that.

DUH HUH DUH HUH. SCIENCE IS STOOPID AND FICKLE. IT'S RARELY CORRECT JUST LOOK AT THE 1400s!

You sound like an uneducated buffoon.

No, I am not saying that science it stupid but that it is held hostage at times by the views of those who have vested interests to protect with specific results. I've seen it first hand: people don't want to admit the validity of conclusions that run counter to their interests. When you take in the context of climate change I think both sides are guilty of this.

Now put your bong down and take a reading comprehension course: it might help you get a job if you can actually understand the points people are trying to make to you.

[Xyun]

I understand exactly what you are saying, that any scientific theory that has wide ranging consensus among scientists can and should be questioned by ignorant people because rare examples of such consensus being inaccurate in the past exist, despite the extreme rarity of those examples. You say it is held hostage "at times" as if that is a common occurrence in the modern world, yet you have to pull examples from six centuries ago to make your point, which speaks highly of the validity of your point. Do you have any such examples of wide ranging scientific consensus that has been wrong over the last century?

If your own conclusion agrees with the data, why do you feel the need to criticize others who support and agree with it? Especially when those very people are experts in the field or in related fields? The argument that scientific consensus should not be trusted entails questioning the very nature of science and scientific discovery by scientists. That is the argument you are pushing, despite your own admission that you agree with their conclusions.

[Aardor]

Good Lord, I'm a bit flabbergasted here...


Lets start with the Flat Earth theory. First of all, just about every person on this message board who is talking about the Flat Earth theory has shown themselves to be ignorant of the facts. Please, anyone who is not aware that most of the world did not think the world was flat for thousands of years (including Christians, Europeans, and Ancient Greeks), read this article: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/history/1997Russell.html.

The big highlights of it are:

• Since about the 3rd century BC, no educated person in the western civilization has believe in a flat earth
• The modern view that people of the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat is said to have entered the popular imagination in the 19th century, thanks largely to the publication of Washington Irving's fantasy The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828
• Despite attempts of the past 70 years, this information fails to make it's way to school children being taught false information, thus perpetuating the information that everyone thought the earth was flat

I mean, it becomes fairly obvious (yes, obvious, even to people alive thousands and thousands of years ago) that the earth is round once you do any sort of study of lunar eclipses (good work Aristotle), let alone someone (Eratosthenes) calculating the circumference within 5% margin of error in 240BC. Oh, and hey, lets not forget that while you're sailing on the ocean, you can actually see the curve of the earth.

So, saying that there was some large consensus about the Earth being flat, which was proved wrong any time recently is completely false (Geocentric theory would be a much better example).



As far as wide ranging scientific consensus that has been proven "wrong" in the past century? Well, the definition of "wide ranging" can cover a great deal of things (I mean, look at how far we've come in the past century regarding medicine and treatment), so I am going to go with "the past decade" instead. In the past decade, the theory that we had 9 planets in our solar system was shot down by a consensus of scientists. Sure, there may be a huge split on whether Pluto is a planet or not, but it is widely agreed that if Pluto is a planet, so are many other things (some bigger and more planet like than Pluto) in our solar system.

I think my biggest problem is that the scientific method pretty much exists to disprove things, which seems to be an argument against science/scientists ever being right.

Edit: I apparently ate like half of my post, but the really important thing is re-educating people on this thread about flat-earth, so good enough.

[cadalano]

SO PEDANTIC.

[Aardor]

SO PEDANTIC.

Yeah, pretty much right (what else is new about my posts here).

I guess I just got bothered by both sides of the argument using Flat Earth as support for their argument. Even f'n Al Gore has done it, when he famously compared scientists who don't believe in global warming to Flat Earthers (which absolutely makes no sense, since the Flat Earth society is a bunch of non-scientists who didn't exist till the piece of fiction about Christopher Columbus was written, and the scientists who are skeptical of global warming at least have some foundation in reality).

[Siji]

Sensationalism motivates humans. So, by raising the potential threat of the end of the human race you're going to get people addressing it and looking for solutions. Simply saying that we're going to run out of oil for our great grandchildren isn't going to do shit.

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

Sensationalism motivates humans. So, by raising the potential threat of the end of the human race you're going to get people addressing it and looking for solutions. Simply saying that we're going to run out of oil for our great grandchildren isn't going to do shit.

Sensationalism motivates humans in both directions. People - in general - dislike being (overtly) told what to do and will act against a movement designed to get them to move in one particular direction.

[Winnow]

Good article on Global Warming. Looks like we really can't do much about it so embrace it and have fun.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/200 ... g-bubbles/

CHARLES J. HANLEY AP special correspondent

Sunday, August 30, 2009

MACKENZIE RIVER DELTA, Northwest Territories — Only a squawk from a sandhill crane broke the Arctic silence — and a low gurgle of bubbles, a watery whisper of trouble repeated in countless spots around the polar world.

“On a calm day, you can see 20 or more ‘seeps’ out across this lake,” said Canadian researcher Rob Bowen, sidling his small rubber boat up beside one of them. A tossed match would have set it ablaze.

“It’s essentially pure methane.”

Pure methane, gas bubbling up from underwater vents, escaping into northern skies, adds to the global-warming gases accumulating in the atmosphere. And pure methane escaping in the massive amounts known to be locked in the Arctic permafrost and seabed would spell a climate catastrophe.

Is such an unlocking under way?

Researchers say air temperatures here in northwest Canada, in Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic have risen more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970 — much faster than the global average. The summer thaw is reaching deeper into frozen soil, at a rate of 1.5 inches a year, and a further 13-degree temperature rise is possible this century, said the authoritative, U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC.

In 2007, air monitors detected a rise in methane concentrations in the atmosphere, apparently from far northern sources. Russian researchers in Siberia expressed alarm, warning of a potential surge in the powerful greenhouse gas, additional warming of several degrees and unpredictable consequences for Earth’s climate.

Others say massive seeps of methane might take centuries. But the Russian scenario is disturbing enough to have led six U.S. national laboratories last year to launch a joint investigation of rapid methane release. And in July, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri asked his scientific network to focus on “abrupt, irreversible climate change” from thawing permafrost.

The data will come from teams such as one led by Scott Dallimore, who with Bowen and others pitched tents here on the remote, boggy fringe of North America, 1,400 miles from the North Pole, to learn more about seeps in the 25,000 lakes of this vast river delta.

A “puzzle,” Dallimore calls it.

“Many factors are poorly studied, so we’re really doing frontier science here,” the Geological Survey of Canada scientist said. “There is a very large storehouse of greenhouse gases within the permafrost, and if that storehouse of greenhouse gases is fluxing to the surface, that’s important to know. And it’s important to know if that flux will change with time.”

Permafrost, tundra soil frozen year-round and covering almost one-fifth of Earth’s land surface, runs anywhere from 160 to 2,000 feet deep in this region. Entombed in that freezer is carbon — plant and animal matter accumulated through millennia.

As the soil thaws, these ancient deposits finally decompose, attacked by microbes, producing carbon dioxide and — if in water — methane. Both are greenhouse gases, but methane is many times more powerful in warming the atmosphere.

Researchers led by the University of Florida’s Ted Schuur last year calculated that the top 10 feet of permafrost alone contain more carbon than is now in the atmosphere.

“It’s safe to say the surface permafrost, 3 to 5 meters, is at risk of thawing in the next 100 years,” Schuur said by telephone from an Alaska research site. “It can’t stay intact.”

Methane also is present in another form, as hydrates — ice-like formations deep underground and under the seabed in which methane molecules are trapped within crystals of frozen water. If warmed, the methane will escape.

Dallimore, who has long researched hydrates as energy sources, believes a breakdown of such huge undersea formations might have produced conical “hills” found offshore in the Beaufort Sea bed, some of them more than 100 feet high.

With underwater robots, he detected methane gas leaking from these seabed features, which resemble the strange hills ashore here that the Inuvialuit, or Eskimos, call “pingos.” And because the coastal plain is subsiding and seas are rising from warming, more permafrost is being inundated, exposed to water warmer than the air.

The methane seeps that the Canadians were studying in the Mackenzie Delta, amid grassy islands, steel-gray lakes and summertime temperatures well above freezing, are saucer-like indentations just 30 feet or so down on the lake bed.

The ultimate source of that gas — hydrates, decomposition or older natural gas deposits — is unclear, but Dallimore’s immediate goal is quantifying the known emissions and finding the unknown.

With tent-like, instrument-laden enclosures they positioned over two seeps, each several yards wide, the researchers have determined they are emitting methane at a rate of almost 1 cubic yard per minute.

Dallimore’s team also is monitoring the seeps with underwater listening devices to assess whether seasonal change — warming — affects the emissions rate.

Even if the lake seeps are centuries old, Bowen said, the question is, “Will they be accelerated by recent changes?”

A second question: Are more seeps developing?

To begin answering that, Dallimore is working with German and Canadian specialists in aerial surveying, teams that will fly over swaths of Arctic terrain to detect methane “hot spots” via spectrometric imagery, instruments identifying chemicals by their signatures on the light spectrum.

Research crews are hard at work elsewhere, too, to get a handle on this possible planetary threat.

“I and others are trying to take field observations and get it scaled up to global models,” said Alaska researcher Schuur. From some 400 boreholes drilled deep into the tundra worldwide, “we see historic warming of permafrost. Much of it is now around 28 degrees Fahrenheit,” he said.

A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft is overflying Alaska this summer with instruments sampling the air for methane and carbon dioxide. In parts of Alaska, scientists believe the number of “thermokarst” lakes — formed when terrain collapses over thawing permafrost and fills with meltwater — might have doubled in the past three decades. Those lakes then expand, thawing more permafrost on their edges, exposing more carbon.

Off Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard last September, British scientists reported finding 250 methane plumes rising from the shallow seabed. They’re probably old, scientists said, but only further research can assess whether they’re stable. In March, Norwegian officials did say methane levels had risen on Svalbard.

Afloat above the huge, shallow continental shelf north of Siberia, Russian researchers have detected seabed “methane chimneys” sending gas bubbling up to the surface, possibly from hydrates.

Reporting to the European Geophysical Union last year, the scientists, affiliated with the University of Alaska and the Russian Academy of Sciences, cited “extreme” saturation of methane in surface waters and in the air above. They said as much as 10 percent of the undersea permafrost area had melted, and it was “highly possible” that this would open the way to an abrupt release of an estimated 50 billion tons of methane.

Depending on how much dissolved in the sea, that might multiply methane in the atmosphere several-fold, boosting temperatures enough to cause “catastrophic greenhouse warming,” as the Russians called it. It would be self-perpetuating, melting more permafrost, emitting more methane.

Some might label that alarmism. And Stockholm University researcher Orjan Gustafsson, a partner in the Russians’ field work, acknowledged that “the scientific community is quite split on how fast the permafrost can thaw.”

But there’s no doubt the north contains enough potential methane and carbon dioxide to cause abrupt climate change, Gustafsson said by telephone from Sweden.

Canada’s pre-eminent permafrost expert, Chris Burn, has trekked to lonely locations in these high latitudes for almost three decades, meticulously chronicling the changes in the tundra.

On a stopover at the Aurora Research Institute in the Mackenzie Delta town of Inuvik, the Carleton University scientist agreed “we need many, many more field observations.” But his teams have found the frozen ground warming down to about 80 meters, and he believes the world is courting disaster in failing to curb warming by curbing greenhouse emissions.

“If we lost just 1 percent of the carbon in permafrost today, we’d be close to a year’s contributions from industrial sources,” he said. “I don’t think policymakers have woken up to this. It’s not in their risk assessments.”

How likely is a major release?

“I don’t think it’s a case of likelihood,” he said. “I think we are playing with fire.”

This article was published on page D1 of the Sunday, August 30, 2009 edition of The Columbia Daily Tribune.

[Nick]

Fuck. You know it's bad when even the men who 6 months ago were denying any change to the Earth's climate, even via methane emissions, are now trying to use shitheeled "good ole boy" reporting as some justification for.....well.... I don't even know what their point is...

Except perhaps to simply be an antagonistic piece of shit.

But that wouldn't be Winnow's style. WOULD IT??!?!?!?

[Winnow]

huh? I'm concerned about our fragile planet!


...and my alternative energy stock!

[Nick]

Shit dude You're so zany you should chug some more of that beerski BRA!

U S A
U S A

Come on Winnow my brother, your article is simply facetious and ignorant of pretty much the last 5 years of your own posting. Massively increased Methane introduction from alleviated deep sea pressure is a well known factor in the issue here, yet you are using it as some form of legitimising get out clause - and well, fuck me for thinking it! but I expect better of you than that.

[Aabidano]

huh? I'm concerned about our fragile planet!


...and my alternative energy stock!

What we need is to equip thousands of hippies with little squeezie bulbs to suck up all the methane as it bubbles up. Energy crisis avoided, global warming solved, and the polar bears eat better. A winner all around!

[Nick]

Honest question here.... in regards to global warming.

Let's assume for a moment it's not man made, or it is - let's just ignore the basis of instigation and creation.

I often have this discussion with my father - Wherein we split hairs in a debate we largely agree on.

Let's look at Arctic warming as one single element. And further than that, lets look at the "plight" (what a Gay phrase) of the Polar Bears.

Now, if Polar Ice Caps are melting, which all evidence suggests (if you respect the findings of science - and let's face it, if you don't you're a fucking moron), if this polar melting is to increase the rate of extinction of something as awesome as a Polar Bear (and again, we have a shitload of evidence for this) - then... does that not even get to you a little?

I know polar bears are only dumb animals and all that shit, but... it is a very basic emotional argument. Is there anyone here who would wish the extinction of polar bears before a natural evolutionary period? Or rather, more specifically, if we...as humans, have a say in the survival of a species we (for whichever reason) value as a worthwhile species to help, should we, or rather, do we not have a responsibility to actively try our damndest to engage in this sub-species fight for survival?

Personally, I know we all like to talk a lot of shit on VV, but when it comes to basic issues like this, I think we can all agree.

And for the record, it's not like its an "either/or" situation. We are easily capable of engaging with these issues to an absolutely minimal detrimental state to our current way of living.

And anyone who disagrees with that (and yes, we are talking in theoritical realms (the point of this forum)) is an idiot. An actual idiot.

Or shall we just engage in that thing that Americans insist on doing by ignoring basic reality in favour of their own percieved political leanings?)

Clumsily written, as I'm just home and being lazy because I had a few for my friends birthday (what a crime) - but, surely, even the most partisan of you should get my drift. Right?

[Fash]

I don't want to see the Polar Bears die, and I'd never kill one myself (or anything for that matter,) but their survival is not our responsibility.

It is your opinion, not a fact, that these changes can be done with 'minimal impact' to our current state of living. Every proposal I've seen either creates a market for rich people to game, or removes sovereignty to foster globalism, and none of them seriously address global warming in any significant way.