more scary stuff

[PvK]

Personally, I'd say the loss of petroleum and nuclear fuel would be good goals, if done without a catastrophe. They're both pretty foul. So would the reduction in the human population and land use by a factor of 10 or more. Hopefully, we won't have to destroy all our freedom and civilization to do so (although some of our civilization would be nice to lose, too, in my opinion). Also, although especially in the USA, we are massively car & gasoline oriented, I think that's also not necessary, nor desirable. I much prefer pedestrian-oriented communities, with as little exhaust pollution as possible.

PvK

[narf poit chez BOOM]

divide everybody into family's of four. divide the araible land of the us and canada among them. i'm sure there's enough for everyone to live off, just not feast on. and that leaves the rest of the world.

[AMF]

I'm glad someone came forth to say the emperor has no clothes. I avoided it becuase of the risks of bringing up politics in this very important issue which should NOT be political which always seems to be...and for the wrong reasons.

Shutting up now.

Originally posted by PvK:
Hmm, at those links I see links of erruptions to ozone depletion, but also:

quote:

---

First site (NASA):

"Climate change combined with aftereffects of large volcanic eruptions will contribute to more ozone loss over both poles," Tabazadeh said. "This research proves that ozone recovery is more complex than originally thought."

"... the early and rapid growth of the Antarctic ozone hole in the early 1980s may have been influenced in part by a number of large volcanic eruptions ..."

Second site (ozonehole.com):

"However, man-made chemicals such as CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons are now known to have a very dramatic influence on Ozone levels too. CFCs a were once widely used in aerosol propellants, refrigerants, foams, and industrial processes."

Third site (Cambridge):

"despite the provisions of the Montreal Protocol, the atmosphere will contain enough CFCs that the ozone layer will be at risk of other events of severe ozone loss at mid-latitudes for at least fifty years."

Fourth site looks to be only about volcanoes anyway.

That is, it would be easy to misinterpret what Fryon said, to think that human pollution is not a contributing cause to ozone depletion. It would seem it is a cause, in addition to volcanoes.

PvK

---

[Fyron]

It is certainly a contributing factor, just a rather minor one. Volcanic eruptions put out many orders of magnitude more pollutants into the atmosphere than humans ever have. They have a much greater effect upon the ozone than we do.

Originally posted by alarikf:
I'm glad someone came forth to say the emperor has no clothes. I avoided it becuase of the risks of bringing up politics in this very important issue which should NOT be political which always seems to be...and for the wrong reasons.

What are you talking about? We are certainly not helping the environment, we just did not cause the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. That was caused by massive volcanic eruptions.

[ February 12, 2004, 16:46: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[AMF]

I just meant that talking about global climate change almost always immediately devolves to a political discussion when it shouldn't. I don't think we humans should be talking about right wing/left wing political discussions when we're discussing the future of the planet - whether changes in planetary climate are caused by volcanoes, pollution, cow farts, or trees.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
I'm glad someone came forth to say the emperor has no clothes. I avoided it becuase of the risks of bringing up politics in this very important issue which should NOT be political which always seems to be...and for the wrong reasons.
What are you talking about? We are certainly not helping the environment, we just did not cause the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. That was caused by massive volcanic eruptions.

[Fyron]

Umm... I was not engaging in any sort of political discussion, more of a factual one... you can't really fight what the planet does to itself to cause damage.

[ February 12, 2004, 17:09: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[solops]

Originally posted by alarikf:
I'm glad someone came forth to say the emperor has no clothes. I avoided it becuase of the risks of bringing up politics in this very important issue which should NOT be political which always seems to be...and for the wrong reasons.

[/QB][/quote]

Energy is an engineering problem. It becomes political as soon as people don't get what they want, be it money or cheap products or satisfaction of their pet convictions, i.e. pretty quick.

[ February 12, 2004, 17:20: Message edited by: solops ]

[AMF]

Absolutely agree. Who was it first defined politics as the distribution of scarce resources...?

Originally posted by solops:
Energy is an engineering problem. It becomes political as soon as people don't get what they want, be it money or cheap products or satisfaction of their pet convictions, i.e. pretty quick.

[rextorres]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Umm... I was not engaging in any sort of political discussion, more of a factual one... you can't really fight what the planet does to itself to cause damage.

Well . . . the Volcano myth has been one of the arguments proposed by some political pundits (Rush, for instance, has long diatribes about it in his books) as a reason to ignore warnings by "wackos" about damage humans cause the ozone layer and to suggest that they are trying to disrupt the "American way of life".

With that said, climate change would happen even if humans didn't exist. So the fact that humans help change it is probably a moot issue because ANY changes would probably be bad for us anyway.

[ February 12, 2004, 18:09: Message edited by: rextorres ]

[Will]

Excuse me, but I just read through this really fast. If I missed something, I'll come back after class and amend myself

The statement that volcanoes release more 'pollutants' than humans do is really a factual one. Some eruptions can release more sulfur dioxide (which causes sulfuric acid rain) in the span of a week then humanity has in a few to several years. Ditto for carbon mono- and di-oxide, methane, etc. It is a natural process, which has a natural recovery time faster than what most environmental Groups are willing to admit.

This doesn't mean, however, that humanity should be contributing more to it. I, like Fyron, live around LA right now. The Last time I had a breath of fresh air was just after it had stopped raining, and most of the smog was filtered out of the air... the stuff ain't healthy. There are lots of people shouting at both ends of the spectrum ("Save the Planet!", "Don't mess with our way of life!"), and usually when you have two diametrically opposed Groups like that, the 'right answer' is somewhere in between.

Eh, I'll finish later...