Global Warming

[DonnieDarko]

My feeling is that humans will destroy themselves long before the earth is destroyed by environmental effects. No matter how it all ends, we deserve our fate.

We're afraid of everyone
Afraid of the sun
Isolation
The sun will never disappear
But the world may not have many years
Isolation

-- John Lennon "Isolation"

[jamstigator]

The earth will never be destroyed by environmental effects. Only our ability to live on it without undue hardship will be affected.

Obviously, the earth's climate does cycle between hot and cold, so we're on that cycle already, somewhere. But even though that is true, that doesn't mean that the billions of pounds of crap we spew into our atmosphere do not affect the cycle, and perhaps dramatically so. If we're cooling things down (or slowing the speed with which we move into and through the hotter part of the 'natural' cycle), that's not so bad. If we're heating things up, however, which seems pretty probable to me, that will be seriously bad news, especially for those living on or near coastal areas which might end up underwater in a decade or ten, after those areas endure some pounding from hurricanes and tsunamis for a while before they are submerged. I certainly wouldn't be looking for real estate investment opportunities in Greenland.

This may just be nature's own human population self-regulating thing. Enough humans spewing garbage into the air makes the planet less hospitable for humans. People start dying. Eventually, enough people die that there just aren't enough people left around to do that kind of damage anymore, and things restabilize, and then we can start over breeding and polluting. If we don't solve the problem by regulating ourselves, nature takes over and starts regulating how many humans are able to survive at all. Tada, problem solved, one way or the other.

[klonopin]

i agree, but my new philosophy is that if it gradually gets hotter we'll adapted through time. i dont have anything for the polar ice caps but i hope that will get figured out