Global warming

[harris7]

Benagain...I think that's the right attitude - whether it's real or not, we can do things and help the enviroment whether we'll be here or not. Maybe it's generation down the road that can benefit.
After seeing An Inconvenient Truth and buying the book, I knew there must be more I can do.
A few things I've discovered that I've started working on:
eplace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl)
Move your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer
Clean or replace filters on your furnace and air conditioner
Install a programmable thermostat
Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket
Use less hot water
Turn off electronic devices youâ??re not using
Only run your dishwasher when thereâ??s a full load and use the energy-saving setting
Insulate and weatherize your home
Buy recycled paper products and RECYCLE
Plant a tree
Switch to green power
Buy locally grown and produced foods
Buy fresh foods instead of frozen
Buy organic foods as much as possible
Avoid heavily packaged products
Eat less meat
Reduce the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit wherever possible
Keep your car tuned up
Check your tires weekly to make sure theyâ??re properly inflated
Use the good 'erb and obtain enlightenment

Okay, so I added the last one and skipped a few 'no-brainers' ... but this list is from: http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/

No Worries Ben,

420,

You forgot a very important thing, Lobby the Government!
It is the easiest way for a country. The amount of difference one person can make by changing their own habits isnâ??t very large (but it is important).

The difference one person can make if they
-start writing letters to newspapers on the topic
-write, phone, email your politicians
-organize public forums and educate the public; get more people to lobby

Whats sad is that We all bash China about their emissions but they have some very good policies. There car emission standards are so much higher. Probably 30 years ahead of us. Changing that policy would be relatively easy and would bring so much change.

[benagain]

LOL. Funnily enough, there's a global warming special on the science channel for the next 2 hours. hopefully if work is slow enough I'll get to watch a bit

[Bob the Awesome]

I am a psychology major also, thanks for noticing However, now I have to switch sides for a second.

I saw those suggestions from 420izzle, and I need to take up issue with a couple of them.

First, the talk about recycling paper. I'm no expert, and no, I have no sources at this time, but does anyone know the process that goes into recycling paper? I don't usually recycle paper because I was taught it releases crap into the air from the processes related to it... if anyone wants to challenge me on this I'll go find some sources but I'm pretty sure recycling paper isn't gonna help the atmosphere.

Second, the whole thing on Organic Foods... sorry people, but I won't take it. Organic growing takes up more space than genetically-modified foods, and from one estimate I heard, if we all grew organically the Earth could only support 4 billion people, food-wise. That's pretty bad, trying to get 1/3 of everyone to sacrifice themselves.

Again, no evidence right now but the other claims didn't have any scientific journals/studies to back it up, so it's just word for word as of now.

[benagain]

I dunno about the paper recycling as I've allways saved my paper and burnt it myself when fast hot heat is needed, but this is the 1st time I've ever heard that organic growing was bad. I don't see how it can take up more space. You still grow it in the ground, you just do so without harmfull chemicals and such. More info on this organic food issue please.

[dutch.lover]

please please please don't bash organic foods. what you heard about organic foods not feeding enough people is a total lie that gm scientists have made up to convice the public of their cause. I will let harris7 brief you on this one too....haha im not exactly lazy, but he just does a better job at these things and he is much more knowledgeable than me in this area.

ps: to learn more about genetic engineering and organic food, watch the movie Future of Food. it's one of them "informative" movies, but it's really good- i promise.

[Bob the Awesome]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic...fied_organisms

The Organic Farming movement staunchly opposes genetically modified foods, despite that a lot of them have helped places with starving populations by increasing crop yields. Thanks for the concern, but I'll bash organic farming all I want.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have an issue with avoiding harmful pesticides and other such things, but if you don't understand what genetic modification is you shouldn't be opposing it. Genetic modification has been practiced for centuries, starting with Mendel.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

I guess this guy is evil because he opposes widespread organic farming because he, too, feels it'd take up too much land area and cause deforestation. Remember, more crop land means less room for other things.

[benagain]

I just care about the pesticides and stuff, and it's not like I can really afford to eat organic every night. I'm doing well enough to make all my meals from scratch 6 times a week. I'm sure there'll eventually be a new category of food to cover this little issue. The organic label seems to cover a lot of ground.

[harris7]

Second, the whole thing on Organic Foods... sorry people, but I won't take it. Organic growing takes up more space than genetically-modified foods, and from one estimate I heard, if we all grew organically the Earth could only support 4 billion people, food-wise. That's pretty bad, trying to get 1/3 of everyone to sacrifice themselves.

Well bob youâ??ve stumbled on the topic that I am probably most informed on, bar none.
That would be GMOâ??s and organic foods.

First off I would like you to keep in mind the huge argo. Companies in the USA and the enormous invested interest they have. They actually run adâ??s on TV with blatant lieâ??s on them. And they can because as Fox Newsâ??s favorite defense: â??lying on TV isnâ??t illegalâ?�.

Fact 1: No GMO crop has ever exceeded the production per hectare than a Natural crop!
-remember that organic farming and GMO are separate. So this comparison is between the same growing techniques. Organic or Chemical

But how is this related to Global warming???

It is the production of the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. For example, to produce ammonia they use the Haber-Bosch process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber-Bosch

They take Nitrogen and Hydrogen in gas form, you might have noticed that the left side of the reaction contains 4 moles of gas (mole=unit of measurement) and the right side contains only 2 (less thus less volume).

So to push this reaction into spontaneity they must compress and heat the gasses together. This enormous use of pressure and heat takes a lot of energy from electricity to produce. And since most of the world get their electricity from Coal we can see the effect.

Because of this the farming industry has become dependent on fossil fuels. Modern farms use ore petroleum than any other single industry, consuming 12% of USAâ??s total energy supply!
Some info on this front: http://www.321energy.com/editorials/...rch040205.html

Now could earth support only 4 billion people only growing organics? Well first off, most third world countries grow organically! So most people are living off it already.
On another note, some scientists believe the carrying capacity of the earth for humans is only 5 billion people. We have exceeded this capacity and thus are over fishing, over farming and over using every natural resource we know about.

More importantly synthetic fertilizers are addictiveâ?¦
By that I mean that a farmer will have to apply more synthetic fertilizers each year to maintain the same yield. Principally this is because synthetics harm the soil life. But, many other aspects of chemical farming are also harmful and they all relate to the soil.
If you pop over to the cultivation section of this message board you might hear the slogan â??feed the soil, not the plantâ?�. Itâ??s just a phrase demonstrating the importance of the soil life.
I will stop here, but Iâ??ll keep going if youâ??d like. The importance of soil life cant be emphasized enough, but Iâ??m getting somewhat off topic.

Soil life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_life

Carrying capacity (important concept in ecology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity

[MastaChronic]

using every natural resource we know about.

except one.......................................hemp.
hemp could completely replace petrol as an energy source.

for more information, read jack herer's book "the emperor wears no clothes"
found at jackherer.com
although i assume youve already read it, this fact just slipped your mind perhaps.

[Bob the Awesome]

Well, OK, let me clarify: My problem with the Organic Farming idea is solely against the fact that they dislike genetically modified foods.

I will not debate fertilizers. I do not know much about them, and I could see us needing to reduce using most of them. I want to stick to going against GMO's

As for more food being produced:

Taken from http://www.reason.com/news/show/27665.html

"But Borlaug and his team were already engaged in the kind of crash program that Ehrlich declared wouldn't work. Their dwarf wheat varieties resisted a wide spectrum of plant pests and diseases and produced two to three times more grain than the traditional varieties."

"In 1960, the production of the 17 most important food, feed, and fiber crops--virtually all of the important crops grown in the U.S. at that time and still grown today--was 252 million tons. By 1990, it had more than doubled, to 596 million tons, and was produced on 25 million fewer acres than were cultivated in 1960. If we had tried to produce the harvest of 1990 with the technology of 1960, we would have had to have increased the cultivated area by another 177 million hectares, about 460 million more acres of land of the same quality--which we didn't have, and so it would have been much more. We would have moved into marginal grazing areas and plowed up things that wouldn't be productive in the long run. We would have had to move into rolling mountainous country and chop down our forests. President Clinton would not have had the nice job of setting aside millions of acres of land for restricted use, where you can't cut a tree even for paper and pulp or for lumber. So all of this ties together."

So if you grew EVERYTHING organically, no genetic modified anything, you'd have to chop down forests, which would cause less trees, who suck up carbon dioxide... see? It's about balance, and going 100% no-GMO isn't balance.