In a message dated 3/21/2007 7:55:53 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
rtarara@saintmarys.edu writes:
Can we take all the political bashing of the right and left off this
list--take it to PHYSOC if you must (far left liberals are very welcome
there and conservatives even tolerated). Suffice it to say that both
extremes of the Global warming debate have played hard and fast with the
facts, that governments (all) tend to shape those same facts to their
purposes, and despite the illusion of unanimity on the issue amongst
scientists, we need only look to this list to see that many here are not so
ready to get on board the 'humans are destroying the planet' express. {A
good friend, initially trained as a physicist to the masters level then
turned air/water pollution engineer, is an extreme skeptic.}
There was, recently an interesting discussion on PHYSOC about the much
touted announcement by the EU about commiting to more stringent CO2
controls. Apparently such is mostly illusion (with only GB actually doing
anything) due to a lot of technical and statistical shuffling of the
numbers. Turns out that little new (or old) is actually being done in
Europe at all.
Another example of playing with numbers (this time to bash the U.S.) was the
recent report that the U.S. was expected to increase emissions by 20% from
2000-2020 (not counting any possible [probable] new initiatives to be taken
in the next 13 years.) Check out the expected population rise in that
period--seems to me that a 20% increase in emmisions represents a NET
reduction in emissions per person, even without taking any explicit steps
towards a 'cleanup'. Of course that was NOT reported.
Rick
The United States is about 6 percent of the world population but produces I
believe at least a third of world's green house gas emission. It's true this
is partially a reflection of our affluence but it is also a reflection of
our wastefulness and general indifference to the impact our daily chooses make
on the environment. There is a lot of low lying fruit in terms of energy
conservation we could do that would be wise even if Global warming didn't exist.
You mention China and this is indeed a big part of the problem. Add to
this India etc. The real core problem underlying all of our resource based and
environmental problems is the over population of our species. It would take a
lot more than one planet earth to provide a resource base to allow all of
the world's current population to live as well as average Americans or even
Europeans.
I think that there is little chance we will escape this century without
massive environmental changes and /or significant shortages of needed
commodities to maintain our standard of living. In fact the extinction of the Human
species is not that far fetched Or we may just sink back into a pre
industrial society with nature providing the necessary population correction. It
may well be that the emergence of intelligence in the evolutionary process
often creates a dead end with the intelligent specious multiplying out of
control until the resource base is depleted and /or the environment is made
uninhabitable.
This is not a left right thing. This a reality based -delusional thing. Of
course there are uncertainties in this or that detail concerning global
warming or other environmental questions. But the basic trajectory seems pretty
certain, the building up green house gases causes environmental change and
like biological mutations , change is almost always a very bad thing. Also
given a finite resource base we can't sustain our growing world population. The
solution to our grave problems requires something that evolution hasn't given
us in sufficient abundance. That is the ability to accept facts that make us
uncomfortable and the ability to engage in real global cooperation to save
our species.
For many years now SETI has searched for other communicating intelligent
beings but with no success. The vital factor we have no way of knowing
concerning the number of such life forms within radio distance is the mean lifetime
of intelligent species. Based on the results of SETI the silence we are
hearing may be a message as to our own future.
Bob Zannelli
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