Obviously nuclear proliferation is a big problem, in fact I used to work for a non-profit whose goal is to pressure the US government towards winding down our nuclear arsenal, and we helped persuade one of our senators to vote yes on the new START treaty when it was still in committee a few years ago. I don't fully understand this issue, but I feel like I understand it better than the average person.
But this forum has nothing to do with nukes.
Global warming is an entirely different threat to humanity, and it actually sorta has something to do with ecomodder.com which is that fossil fuel usage on a ludicrous scale can slowly change the composition of our atmosphere and its climate characteristics. Cars use gas, our exhaust goes into the atmosphere, so they contribute to this issue.
There's lots of reasons to hypermile or mod your car... save money, save the environment, reduce dependence on foreign oil, keep money away from terrorists, etc. Everyone here has his or her own reasons, my two reasons are #1 save money and #2 save the environment. I started this thread to talk about reason #2. I even wrote in the thread subject (Eco Rant) to indicate what to expect in here. So in this thread, there's no need to talk about nukes or nuclear power plants because they're totally off topic. I don't go to epilepsy forums and tell them, "You know actually epilepsy isn't a big deal, we should focus on early childhood leukemia, that's the REAL problem."
Same with this nuke thing. Nukes are a problem, but they're beyond the scope of this thread and possibly forum. If you feel like global warming isn't a problem, you're certainly not alone, and you can say why you think that and be on topic, but this still isn't a nuke thread.
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Let's have some fun with quotes:
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I have a realistic pessimism about our ability to understand and proactively respond to something so complex as climate change.
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Yeah pessimism is certainly warranted, seeing all the other things we (as a species) manage to screw up. But I still have the hope that instead of cowering in fear of our general incompetence, we can you know, actually attempt to use our brains and do some thinking and make choices, as opposed to running away from it with out tails between our legs.
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We adapt though, like we always do, so my optimism is that climate change will be no big deal for most people.
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I do NOT think global warming will lead to extinction of the human species. I do however think that global warming, by altering the coastlines in the later parts of this century, and by changing precipitation and weather patterns to disrupt farming across wide regions, will lead to geopolitical instability and massive problems with unemployment in different parts of the world. This can lead to civil conflict within nations and negative outcomes for all kinds of people in all kinds of ways.
Bangladesh comes to mind, it's a low-lying country, every year the coast gets eroded a little more, and rice farmers that had been living near the coast for generations are dealing with the ocean and increased river volumes slowly taking away land. Many people there have had to move north to the capital which is essentially becoming a giant slum with all the associated problems. Climate change is also changing precipitation in the middle east, reducing crop yields and helping fuel the geopolitical instabilities we see there. Here in the USA or Canada we're shielded from these effects by our countries' per-capita wealth, but slowly our ways of life will be impacted as we walk into the future.