[OT]Re: [oclug]Port 4662

[Shad Young]

On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 17:44, Jon Earle wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Brad Barnett wrote:
> 
> > Again, this does not mean that global warming isn't happening.  It merely
> > means that we are unable to prove it by such minor fluctuations in
> > temperature.  When we have 10 winters in a row without a single below
> > freezing temperature in Ottawa, even then, we can not "prove" it is due to
> > global warming.  There are still other factors at work.  Moving air and
> > water currents, changes in the sun's output, and multitudes of other
> > reasons could be responsible for such an occurrence.  So could global
> > warming too.
> 
> Even then, how can one explain the ice ages and other periods of extreme
> climate change throughout our planet's history?  Major climate change will
> always occur on this rock... varying between extremes of heat and cold.
> It's happened before and will happen many, many times again in the future.
> The last major ice age was 10k yrs ago... how do we not know we're not
> simply rebounding from that event (that is to say, how do we know the
> period of these climate change cycles?)
> 
> > Honestly, the price is too high.  We need to reduce greenhouse gases
> > because the theory is reasonable.  We can't risk to be wrong.
> 
> We need to stop stripping our forests.  If we had more forests, excess CO2
> would not be much of a consideration, right?  Reducing gases like CO2 is a
> knee-jerk reaction to the problem.  The problem is not excess gases, the
> problem is, in part, a reduced ability of the planet to process them.

One small caveat to your argument. There are no longer enough old growth
forests to sustain the current levels of pollution, let alone reduce
them.

It will take 200 years before planted forests would mature enough to be
of real benefit. Recall that in Canada old growth hardwood ecosystems
have been replaced with genetically enhanced single species and often
cloned softwood species planted for rapid harvest in a 20 year cycle.

These "forests" are not the full ecosystem of plants, insects and wild
life that are necessary to sustain it in the long term. They are sterile
silent forests. Go visit some in BC.

In South America, the problem is worse, because the soil in the rain
forest is very poor and unstable (most species of rain forest flora are
canopy feeders). After deforestation to make way for cattle, the soil is
dead and blows away after as little as 3 years... Where rain forest once
stood is now dust bowl desert where nothing will grow.

So IMO, we need to clean up our acts and reduce pollution levels. I do
not expect to world to fix our problem for us when we have destroyed the
tools she needs to do it with.
 
> We also need to meaningfully reduce pollution.  Reducing CO2 emissions to
> those of a decade ago is not a meaningful solution.  It's hardly even a
> bandaid.

Whats the old saying "a body in motion tends to stay in motion"? It
takes a lot of energy to get the ball rolling (overcoming the friction
coefficient - in this case political friction), but once it is, its a
lot easier to sustain and subsequent energy input results in greater
momentum. We have to start somewhere.

Shad
-- 
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"Fortune should have the arbitrant of one-half of our actions, but she
leaves the other half, or a little less, to be governed by ourselves." 
- Machiavelli
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