A day that will live in infamy

The primary goal of this site is to provide mature, meaningful discussion about the Vancouver Canucks. However, we all need a break some time so this forum is basically for anything off-topic, off the wall, or to just get something off your chest! This forum is named after poster Creeper, who passed away in July of 2011 and was a long time member of the Canucks message board community.

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Per
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Re: A day that will live in infamy

Post by Per »

Cornuck wrote:
Strangelove wrote:
I like global warming! :thumbs:
I live in Nebraska and agree. Global warming can only help me. :D

Seriously, global warming does not concern me. At all. I am more worried about the chemicals they put in my food and other government involvement in my life. Is global warming caused by me driving to the grocery store? Is it cause by sun spot activity? Is it caused by Chinese coal fires, volcanoes? I don't care. I agree with the NASA scientist who said something along the lines of, "Who are we to believe that the current global temperature today is ideal?"

I worry about pollution, but air temperature? This whole cap and trade and buying of carbon offsets is just another scam.

This is not a day that will live on in infamy. It will be forgotten in the 24 hour news cycle.
Well, I disagree. As a state relying heavily on agriculture, Nebraska may actually suffer a lot.

A warmer climate, even by just a few degrees will have a pretty serious impact on Nebraska. Less snowpack in the Rockies and earlier spring will lead to reduced water flow in the Platte River during the agricultural season. This combined with Texas style summers will mean that roughly half of the wetland areas will be gone in 50 years and that there will be significantly less mositure in the soil, thus increasing the risk of droughts. Meanwhile, the warmer winters will make tropical diseases like West Nile virus more prevalent.

Sure, Nebraska will not be as severly affected as the Maldives or Bangladesh - countries that are at risk of being wiped from the surface of the earth as the ice on the polar caps melt and sea levels rise - but problems may still be pretty harsh.

Global warming is a fact. It's here.

Since they started measuring the global temperature in 1880, these are the ten warmest years on record:
1) 2005
2) 2010
3) 1998
4) 2003
5) 2002
6) 2006
7) 2009
8) 2007
9) 2004
10) 2001

2008 is in 11th place and 2000 in 15th. The earliest year in the top twenty is 1983, in 20th place.

The climate right now is probably warmer than it has been in thousands of years.
Sure; "Who are we to believe that the current global temperature today is ideal?"
It's certainly not ideal for dinosaurs. The world was a much warmer place back when they roamed the earth. Still. drastic temperature changes of the kind we are seeing now tend to wipe out a lot of species. Humans are certainly not one of them - we are great at adapting, which is why you'll find people inhabiting deserts, rain forests as well as the arctic tundra.
But the climate change will lead to a change in the environments we inhabit. The deserts surrounding the tropics of the cancer and capricoen will expand. The sea levels will rise. The polar ice caps will melt. Precipitation in Scandinavia and Canada will increase. The arctic fox and teh polar bear are probably damned. As are the lemmings.*

Probably about one billion people will have to be relocated, because of desertification and rising sea levels.
Agricultural practices will have to be adapted all over the place, as some places become dryer, other wetter, and all places become warmer. If you have educated farmers with good equipment and reliable sources of information, this is doable. In places with illiterate farmers, poor equipment and lack of information - not so much.

So what causes it? A vast majority of the world's scientists say that there is no doubt that the main cause is human activity, but as Strangelove will be quick to point out, this is no proof in itself. Just because a bunch of people that are far smarter and better informed than you and I say that it is so - why should we believe them? Sure, solar activity, volcanoes and a whole range of other stuff will also have an impact on temperature, but charts show that the rising temperatures take off as the industrial revolution was starting to spread all over the world, and then just sky rockets as we increase our use of fossile fuels.

Basically, just because you enter a room where a man is lying on the floor with his brains blown out and a known mobster is standing there with a smoking gun in his hand, who are we to rule out heart attack as cause of death? Sure, the blown out brains look like a plausible cause, but we didn't see it happen. Maybe he was already dead?
That is pretty much what those questioning man made global warming are arguing. We know that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a green house effect. We know that we have released unprescedented amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the past two hundred years. We know that it is getting warmer. The question is, are the three things connected? Common sense says yes.

Global warming is already happening. The question is if we can make it stop at 2-4 degrees C warmer than today, which could still be managable for most countries, or if it will keep going higher. Kyoto is basically too little too late, but it's better than doing nothing.

http://www.kearneyhub.com/news/local/ar ... 03286.html
http://www.google.se/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=g ... zpLKjzthBw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument ... ure_record

*Lemmings are curious creatures. They are not really suicidal, as the myth has it, but damned near... :lol: They live nine monhs under a blanket of snow, protected from predators, and in that time they breed four or five new generations. These grow up knowing no dangers. Then for three months the snow is gone, and the brightly coloured rodents are out in the open. They fear nothing. They will attack a human or a bear or a cat that gets in their way. Normally with fatal results... In these three months some 80-90% of the lemming population is wiped out, but then the snow starts falling, and once again they start multiplying. With shorter winters and longer summers, they're doomed. Well, unless they learn to appreciate that predators should be avoided. :roll:
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Re: A day that will live in infamy

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Lemmings:

This cat is a bit of a pussy, so the lemming lived to fight another day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8zVo8IkMQs

Angry lemming trash talking a cyclist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqYr05j-8wM

Russian lemming (slightly different colouration) attcking and maiming Russian guy and his slipper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNW3B-lAodQ

Probably should have stayed away from the rottweiler though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHxgrGAPCnI
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Re: A day that will live in infamy

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Per wrote:Less snowpack in the Rockies and earlier spring will lead to reduced water flow in the Platte River during the agricultural season.
I'll have to explain the 'less snowpack' theory to all of the farmers that lost their farms this year due to flooding (from the large snowpacks).

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Re: A day that will live in infamy

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Cornuck wrote:
Per wrote:Less snowpack in the Rockies and earlier spring will lead to reduced water flow in the Platte River during the agricultural season.
I'll have to explain the 'less snowpack' theory to all of the farmers that lost their farms this year due to flooding (from the large snowpacks).

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:lol:

Yeah, well, we're not quite there yet. :wink:
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Re: A day that will live in infamy

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Per wrote: Yeah, well, we're not quite there yet. :wink:
That's ok - I accept your apology. :D
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Re: A day that will live in infamy

Post by Puck »

Ahh but herein lies the problem with climate change... warming leads to instability that brings odd-ball weather like record-high precipitation. We can expect to see more extrema like this.
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