[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

Certainly make it easier to grow a good crop outdoors in BC.

But all those greenhouses out in Ladner along the 99 look so awesome!

[andyt]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

No call to end oil and gas subsidies though?

I think I may have to change my avatar

[jambo101]

Interesting you tube video chronicling the Earth temps over the last 120 years ..

Probably just a liberal media photoshop as most rightwingers tell me global warming is a hoax purpetrated on the world by Al Gore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YuH8LbSWk60#!

[desertdude]

Love it when youtube videos are posted as "evidence"

[Zipperfish]

desertdude desertdude:

Love it when youtube videos are posted as "evidence"

Fine, have a graph then...

[Gunnair]

[Unsound]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

desertdude desertdude:

Love it when youtube videos are posted as "evidence"

Fine, have a graph then...

The flying spaghetti monster will save us from certain environmental doom.

[CanadianJeff]

QBC QBC:

I believe that is the crux of the matter. There is no doubt that the climate is changing and rather quickly. Is it natural? or us? or a combination of both. Me thinks the latter. As I've said before, you can't keep peeing in the pool, if you do, before long you're swimming in piss. Sorry all, we've been peein in the pool for a few centuries now. All that pollution can't be doing nothing to the environment.

But what is a few thousand years compared to a few billion. I'm sure we are not the absolute worst the earth has ever had to deal with in terms of problems and I doubt we will be the last (no sunlight once the sun goes out is a huge problem ). I'm just not quite convinced that the pool is as small as many claim.

[Zipperfish]

I don't think we are a problem for the earth. It will do just fine with or without us. Also, the sun will go supernova, not just go out.

[raydan]

Sorry Zip, our sun is too small to ever go supernova.

[Brenda]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

I don't think we are a problem for the earth. It will do just fine with or without us.

I'm thinking it would do better without our species ruining it.

[andyt]

The earth can be pretty good at ruining thins all on its own:

$1:

The Permian–Triassic (P–Tr) extinction event, informally known as the Great Dying,[2] was an extinction event that occurred 252.28 Ma (million years) ago,[3] forming the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, as well as the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. It is the Earth's most severe known extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species[4] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct.[5] It is the only known mass extinction of insects.[6][7] Some 57% of all families and 83% of all genera became extinct. Because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after any other extinction event,[4] possibly up to 10 million years.[8]

Researchers have variously suggested that there were from one to three distinct pulses, or phases, of extinction.[5][9][10][11] There are several proposed mechanisms for the extinctions; the earlier phase was likely due to gradual environmental change, while the latter phase has been argued to be due to a catastrophic event. Suggested mechanisms for the latter include large or multiple bolide impact events, increased volcanism, coal/gas fires and explosions from the Siberian Traps,[12] and sudden release of methane clathrate from the sea floor; gradual changes include sea-level change, anoxia, increasing aridity, and a shift in ocean circulation driven by climate change.

$1:

Since life began on Earth, several major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago (Ma), was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. Mass extinctions seem to be a Phanerozoic phenomenon, with extinction rates low before large complex organisms arose.[3]
Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

It may be interesting to note that several of the "pro-green energy" countries have cut off subsidies to green energy suppliers. Germany completely eliminated all green energy subsidies and is going back to lignite.
Britain has eliminated green energy subsidies because they've been finding out the hard way that green energy=negative employment(something that's happening in Ontario as well).
Denmark has put the kibosh on any new wind farms or the expansion of existing ones.
And IIRC, Holland's love affair with green energy is coming to an end as well.

That's not to say that we should just pollute away, but it would seem that current green energy technologies are NOT solving any problems and are in fact, causing even more problems.

Look at Ontario. Billions of dollars spent on 1500MW of wind power. Yet Ontario's emissions from hydro generation hasn't dropped one bit. Rates sure went through the roof though. And what of the 50,000 jobs green energy was supposed create in Ontario?
McNuggets claimed the Windsor tower plant would employ 900 people. Reality: 50 people work there.
McNuggets claimed the plant in Wallaceburg that makes turbine blades would employ 600 people. Reality: 30 people work there.
Meanwhile, over 60,000 jobs in ONtario have disappeared, many of them due to the skyrocketing hydro rates in Ontario, though certainly not all.

No call to end oil and gas subsidies though?

Nope, because oil and gas DON'T create negative employment. Nor does excess production merely get "dumped". Now to be honest, Germany scrapped the subsidies to wind and solar because those power sources don't fit in very well with a Balkanized power grid. Maybe you can ask them why they're going to continue subsidizing lignite production, an energy source that's dirtier than oil sands oil.

Look, if wind and solar were doing anything positive for the environment, that would be great. Fact is, they don't.
Here's what's happening in Ontario. McNuggets spent BILLIONS of dollars to generate a whopping 1500MW from wind power. However as a result, ratepayers have not only seen exploding hydro rates but they've had to dig deeper because Ontario Power Group has been losing about a half billion dollars a year since McNugget's green energy policy.
And yet, the percentage of emissions-free energy from power generation that Ontario produces is EXACTLY the same as it was over a decade ago.
But I guess the exhorbitant hydro rates, the hemmorhaging OPG and the thousands of jobs lost were all worth it, just so McNuggets could show he was in line with party ideology.

[Brenda]

andyt andyt:

The earth can be pretty good at ruining thins all on its own:

$1:

The Permian–Triassic (P–Tr) extinction event, informally known as the Great Dying,[2] was an extinction event that occurred 252.28 Ma (million years) ago,[3] forming the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, as well as the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. It is the Earth's most severe known extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species[4] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct.[5] It is the only known mass extinction of insects.[6][7] Some 57% of all families and 83% of all genera became extinct. Because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after any other extinction event,[4] possibly up to 10 million years.[8]

Researchers have variously suggested that there were from one to three distinct pulses, or phases, of extinction.[5][9][10][11] There are several proposed mechanisms for the extinctions; the earlier phase was likely due to gradual environmental change, while the latter phase has been argued to be due to a catastrophic event. Suggested mechanisms for the latter include large or multiple bolide impact events, increased volcanism, coal/gas fires and explosions from the Siberian Traps,[12] and sudden release of methane clathrate from the sea floor; gradual changes include sea-level change, anoxia, increasing aridity, and a shift in ocean circulation driven by climate change.

$1:

Since life began on Earth, several major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago (Ma), was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. Mass extinctions seem to be a Phanerozoic phenomenon, with extinction rates low before large complex organisms arose.[3]
Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.

I don't necessarily think that change is a bad thing. The planet has overcome every time. It is just that WE, as a species, think we are all mighty. We're not. The sooner we understand that no matter what we do, nature will take its course, the better. We're here for only a short time, yet, we are very, very good at leaving a mess for others (our offspring, another species, the planet itself, an evolved human) to clean up. We are just a dot, but we manage to do a lot of damage because of our greed and laziness.
And we call that "intelligence"...

[andyt]

Well all that we are came from nature, unless you consider us God's special creation. Ie we are just as natural as any other species on earth. Breeding to extinction is built into all of them if conditions are right, (take the Lynx Hare cycle say, we don't always have to use yeast) greed is natural, so is laziness (conservation of energy). Nature just hasn't evolved in us the ability to act on what we know is good for the human race, because we don't really have an identification with it. It's me, family, tribe, and that's about it.

I'm not even sure what not leaving a mess would look like, in a way. Primitive societies only didn't do large scale destruction because they didn't have the knowhow, but Easter Island is the classic example of where they led themselves to extinction anyway. None of us want to live a primitive lifestyle, so that means carbon inputs into our system for fuel etc. (guess we've always had those, since the invention of fire.) And other toxins that come with that. If we really wanted to have less impact on the earth, we'd stop breeding right now - but look at what problems the declining birthrate has on our economies. Our whole way of living is based on more more more, our hope for economic recovery is based on more more more. And all the scolds on this forum who will tell you how people shouldn't have cell phones or what have you are doing more more more right along with them.