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122 Comments
- ramiro, on 10/12/2007, -7/+17Hey, can you help by posting more diggs about how the planet is on the imminent catastrophe caused by global warming?
I don't think we have enough of that kind of diggs yet. - Tycho7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Here's an idea. Lets find out how many species the Earth has, and THEN figure out a percentage that's going to become extinct.
- JelloZ, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Why is it every 2 months I read an article about how a species, thought to be extinct for thousands of years, has reappeared? i.e. the Ivory Billed Woodpecker in Arkansas, a new species of Coelacanth, or all the new species found in New Guinea.
These articles are scare tactics so the Feds allocate more grant money to "study" the "problem". - LucasOman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yukevster: Godwin's Law. You lose.
- wilkeson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Wow, it's down to a quarter of species in 50 years.
Thirty years ago it was half of all species in 20 years.
I suspect in 10 years we will be reading about how ten percent of species will disappear in 100 years. - DannyPage, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I think I speak for everyone when i say:
... *sigh*
We just need a Messenge Board so people can fight about this stuff there, instead of link after link of global warming debates.
Or get a filter on my front page. Either one works. - mlarsen, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Yea, this happened before, when the dinosaurs died off, and humans were no where to be found. Stop blaming humans for natural cycles that we have no control of.
- graphicNature, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Show me a consistently accurate 10-day weather forecast and I might believe what you say is going to happen in the next 10 years.
What ever happened to that hole in the ozone? Or west nile, sars, mad cow, ebola, killer bees, anthrax, blah, blah, blah.
98% of total global greenhouse gas emissions are natural (mostly water vapor) only 2% are from man-made sources.
According to Accu-weather, over the last 100 years the temperature has increased 0.81 deg. F., and 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to 1940. Most likely when their instruments were less accurate.
The only guarantee is that our taxes will go up trying to reverse something we know nothing about. Money that could be used for other things...like education.
Save the planet, kill yourself. - Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I just hope that the crappiest 25% of species become extinct. Not the cute ones like kitty cats and birdies.
- paulrus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Fear mongers. John Stossel is right:
In 1972 the Limits to Growth report projected that, at the exponential growth rates they expected to occur, known world supplies of zinc, gold, tin, copper, oil, and natural gas would be completely exhausted in 1992.
Harrison Brown, a respected member of the National Academy of Sciences, published predictions in Scientific American in 1970 which estimated that humanity would totally run out of copper by 2000, and that lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would all be gone by 1990.
For the first Earth Day in 1970, Ehrlich, in an article entitled "Eco-Catastrophe" in The Progressive magazine, offered a scenario in which four billion people would starve to death between 1980 and 1989, 65 million of whom would be Americans.
Go back and look at all the predictions from the 70's, 80's & 90's. These guys need to scare people so the government will give them more funding. - RomeyRome, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm not touching a hybrid, or any other "efficient" car till they can get 300+ hp & 300+ lb-ft of torque.
- Tynan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Boo hoo hoo.... actually, wait. I'm not that concerned, since there is a pretty much infinite supplly of species since evolution generates them all the time anyways. Ah, ok, great.
Just wait till everyone democratizes and the worldwide birth rate is 1.2/woman. Not enough people - we'll be desperate to ***** ourselves back to life. - Schwingding, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hey space, don't chastise me because of your lousy choices in life. I'm a free man. This enviro crowd is even less tolerant than the single color Rainbow Coalition.
- Schwingding, on 10/12/2007, -0/+32 Suburban sized vehicles, 2 boats with giant V8 engines, 1 gas powered lawnmower, and tons of lights! (Plus a couple of PCs and plasma TVs sucking up juice. Plus, I do one or two Ironman triathlons every year or so. So I put out a lot of CO2.
You could get rid of 3/4 insects and plants and I wouldn't care. I have no kids, don't care about yours, and when I'm gone in another 40 years (if I'm lucky), I couldn't give a rats about what this place looks like. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Those things that keep stinging as they hit you in the face are called FACTS.
- chriskzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Unfortunately, we probably haven't cataloged even 50% of the species on the planet.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I think you're all missing the point.
We see something changing. We know that it has changed before. What we don't know is how much impact we have on it. It'd be stupid to assume humans have no impact. The question is if we have enough impact where our actions will actually affect the outcome.
If stopping all industry today would push back global warming 5 years, would you be for it? I'd say no. the benefits of industry outweigh those 5 years. If stopping industry would stop global warming, then I think we'd have much more support.
BUT WE DON'T KNOW.
Drastic knee-jerk reactions to the analysis of the month is not the way to deal with this.
Regardless, we have much better reasons for curbing our waste. We know for a fact that we dump chemicals into the sky, sea and land which cause illness. If anything, we should be more worried about things we know we can fix than things which we might be doing and might be able to postpone. - RobotCitizen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As long as the cute fuzzy mammals are not disappearing most people won't care about this.
- THEMACGOD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3DAMN YOU, FIERY ORB IN THE SKY!!!
- rohcky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Most bugs have already evolved to adapt to our presence. Mosquitoes, roaches and termites for instance have thrived because of our habits.
- DNABeast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Planet Earth has been on the receiving end of many many catastrophies in it's long history and has always bounced back. If human beings are the next catastrophe why don't we just all agree that we're as much damage as a comet and get on with our lives.
- CosmicJustice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Scientists"
What scientists?
"Well, you know scientists"
Who are they working for?
"A place. You know a scientific place. Where they do science stuff"
I see. - ReinMasamuri, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have an SUV. Ford Escape. 36MPG City / 31MPG Hwy ;)
- XStatic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sure man has an impact, and we should certainly do what we can to reduce our impact and try to create an envionment suitable for life on our planet.
However...
There are many things about our planet we can not control and just have to live with.
There is some speculation that most of the current climate changes can be traced back to the Tunguska Event of 1908 that happened in a remote part of Siberia. - ReinMasamuri, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Don't forget the fact that our magnetic field is switching.
Oh yeah, and is anybody else completely uncaring about this? The statement is completely ridiculous.
First of all 99.99% of all species that has lived on this planet has gone extinct. Next they'll blame humans for the extinction of the Dinosaurs.
P.S. Didn't they say something like this like 20 years ago about this decade? - cranium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Backing your hyperbole with "science" doesn't make it become credible. It's still hyperbole.
The fact is, the climate changes over time. I find it much more comfortable to be on a warming trend than on a cooling trend. - speedmaster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Bunk.
http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/JohnStossel/2006/04/12/193443.html - mlarsen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If an owl kills all the filed mice around its nest, to the point that there are no field nice- they call it nature.
Man does something to kill off a certain animal in a certain area, and we are called anti-nature.
We are the top of nature, not it's enemy. Species become extinct weather we are around of not. We try to say that "we can control so much of the environment" bull crap, we are a tiny line in the chronology of the earth, and it will be here long after humans are gone. - ramiro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I suggest reporting these stories as spam for this is what they are. Someone is trying to fabricate a consensus in favor of global warming and against the current US administration.
- theone3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@osbjmg, it's not about evolution, its about the ability of species to thrive under certain circumstances. There are many creatures that are hiding under the surface of current weather conditions, waiting for a change, in which they can thrive.
- rohcky, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I agree. Humans think they are so important that they feel everything they do has an effect on this world (good or bad). This planet has existed for eons before us and will exist eons after, regardless of whether we nuke each other to death or not. Change is imminent.
- Agret, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There is a greasemonkey script for filtering digg, look it up.
- yakski, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4The unscientific comments from the anti-global warming community here seem to be missing the ability to look at the science vs the politics.
1. The measured (as in absolutely without a doubt) concentration of CO2 in the air has more than quadrupled since measurements first started about 150years ago. This is a fact.
2. Based on the average CO2 levels atmospheric scientists can model the effect of this change with ever increasing accuracy as more and more information is obtained about what effects the climate of our planet. These models while primitive at the beginning (60s and 70s) have now reached ever more accurate conclusions which are tested and re-tested as more information becomes available. All these models point to increased global warming occurring at an alarming rate that is to the best of scientists knowledge not natural in origin. Volcanos and other sources of natural CO2 occur at a rate as part of nature and therefore are not a factor, the environment evolved around these and a natural balance has been established. Catastrophic natural emissions from super-volcanos or other sources would be a huge impact as would the ash/debris. We would suffer horrible climate changes, but this has not occurred recently in modern human history. If it does there will be a huge global price to be paid for humans, animals, and plants. That said the largest impact right now is man-made due to industrialization and transportation (cars, trains etc).
3. Animals and plants cannot evolve to rapid environmental changes, thus mass extinctions do occur. This is proved by the catastrophic extinctions of earth's past from dramatic climate change due to many naturally occurring phenomenon (asteroids, super-volcano,..etc). Over the course of 10s of thousands to millions of years animals and plants do rebound. This is a long time folks, evolution doesn't happen in 10 years for the larger species. The larger species will vanish for a very very long time, longer than the history of human civilization.
4. I like bio-diversity :). I really do not want to lose elephants and tigers and bears (oh my :) !)... and I do not want to eat soyent green (sp?).
5. Global cooling advocates may be right from a historical perspective but the natural cooling trend that takes thousands to 10s of thousands of years has been overwhelmed by the CO2 warming trend. The rapid CO2 changes in the atmosphere trump the natural glaciational patterns which may be due to earth tilt or sun activity variation.
6. CO2 levels have been much much higher in Earth's ancient past (hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago as determined by ice and earth core sampling and tree rings and etc...) but so have temperatures. A direct correlation can be found with the more tropical times of the past and higher CO2 levels. Not a coincident methinks.
7. Scientific studies of some types of trees (common forest types throughout the US) have shown that they cannot incorporate the higher CO2 levels beyond a certain level and in fact it actually stunts their growth and causes increased die-off.
8. "All leading experts agree the planet has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century (and NOAA says the rate has tripled since 1976) ". This is based on actual measured surface temperatures and actual measured atmospheric temperatures.
Basically this science is currently pointing to a global warming issue just like it pointed to a problem with CFCs and ozone twenty years ago. There is a small scientific community that wants to politicize the issue while denying that it exists but the larger scientific community says these are the facts jack, what are we gonna do about them and these are the current warming trends.. the warming is occurring, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are going up, there is no confusion here, naturally warming and cooling cycles have not occurred so rapidly in modern scientific history, we have increased the CO2 levels due to human activity... facts all of them, not speculation. After that it is politics.
What should be obvious to everyone on Digg is that we need move more rapidly to renewable energy sources (solar derived) and leave oil and coal to history. How nice it would be to not have to rely on other countries for our energy needs and be completely energy self reliant. How about we spend 350 billion dollars on making this happen now instead of wait for the $4/$5/$6/higher and higher per gallon gas prices this will drain our economy and make our enemies richer and richer. This kind of scientific break thru will not happen overnight but we need to make it happen if we want to break this addiction and improve out economic, political and environmental future. - graphicNature, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"All leading experts agree the planet has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century (and NOAA says the rate has tripled since 1976) ". This is based on actual measured surface temperatures and actual measured atmospheric temperatures.
According to Accu-weather (which agrees with the about 1 deg. change) that 0.7 of it was prior to 1940. So that only leaves 0.3 degrees in which the rate "tripled".
Too much marketing crap goes into these reports. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@MyNameIsFred:
Also Hitler. - ReinMasamuri, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I just realized something, the exact same people who believe that evolution is the end-all-be-all, can't believe that creatures will evolve to survive us.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I'm sure a government bureaucrat would be the solution, right? Too bad you missed the failed Soviet experiement, you'd have felt right at home.
- JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I would like to see you evolve.
You do realize organisms do not evolve, species do - right?
Evolution relies on mutation/diversity - and death, lots of death.
People don't just spontaneously sprout gills to breathe through or nictating membranes to protect their eyes.
Mutations only happen to some offspring and the odds of the right one coming up are not great.
Don't ask for evolution to bail you out. All it can do is kill you. Sorry, that's what it is; just a sidekick of the grim reaper. - JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hybrids get a lot less torque than you specified but why do you want that? Hybrids go really fast and drive very smoothly (too smoothly, if there is such a thing).
Acceleration of the Honda Insight is fine, and it really does get 50 or 60 mpg. The car is lightweight, so it does not take much force to move it up a hill or accelerate it.
I see almost one out of five "cars" on the road in my area is an SUV. Funny thing, I have never seen one of them hauling a boat or a trailer behind them.
All that "required" torque is not even being used for anything, except hauling SUV's lead butts up hills. Usually, there is only one occupant in them: the driver, and the only cargo is his lunch or his attache case.
reference: http://automobiles.honda.com/models/specifications_full_specs.asp?ModelName=Insight
-- or, just type into your browser: hondainsight - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@el_jefe: You are on the money.
Global warming is happening, it has happened before. We don't have enough data to claim that it's because of humans.
That said, we have plenty of data showing the negative effects of pollution. Curbing pollution that we know causes cancer, illness and infertility should be the motivation. Worrying about ice caps melting in 50+ years is silly when we have kids who can't play outside because of smug induced ashama.
We know pollution causes problems. We think we might be making the earth warmer and it might result in bad things.
Which should take priority? - LucasOman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well that's just silly. That's bad statistics--extrapolation at its worst. What if we don't know about all the species we don't know about because they have something in common? It could be their habitat, their behaviors, their chemistry; who knows. But perhaps there is a common trait that changes the probability that a species will go extinct. You can't make assumptions about species that are not yet discovered.
The other thing that has not been addressed is migration. If the geese remained in Canada through the winter, they'd die, too. - CaptainMal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2You're right. All that scientific crap fed to them in school with curriculum designed by panels of scientists is total crap.
Why bother sending them to school at all, eh? It's just going to conflict with what some corporate politicized jackoff says, so why should anyone bother to think it at all? - RomeyRome, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'll give this half a though if we live beyond the Mayan calendar. Till then, suck on my tailpipe.
- sbostedor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is all conjecture and theory, people. There is as much science here as in a John Edward show. It sounde nice but there really is no proof of any of it.
- the_toaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I heard installing boot camp contributes to global warming. Just saying. A scientist guy told me. He was wearing a white lab coat.
- MyNameIsFred, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I propose a corollary to Godwin's Law - As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving sheep/brainwashing approaches one.
- ReinMasamuri, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Didn't you hear? Apparently the Bush administration has been keeping all the scientists quiet ( ')_,( ')
- DannyPage, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks for the tip =)
- greg544, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I bet you think Bush is an idiot, but some how he is able to pull off brainwashing millions of people. That makes sense to me.
- grizwald, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@agpc:
human impact is insignificant .. when St.Helens erupted last year, it released more CO2 in 1 week than the entire USA has ever release in its entire history. and even if human impact actually made a difference .. what good does it do to reduce the USA emmisions when it is only a fraction of what mexico, china, etc (developing nations) release.
how does turning 200 million cars into hybrid vehicles matter when china has over 1 billion (and growing) .. and they have absolutly no controls on how much pollution their power plants produce.
its all about making americans feel guilty .. pretty sad how so many people want to hate america, just for the sake of hating it. -
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