Good MPG Target for Mass Market (Eco Rant)

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

What really worries me is that there is still enough nukes to completely eradicate humans several times over...

Only if you built a whole bunch of robots with AI, and they got together and decided to run around whacking all the humans over the head with the bomb casings. Otherwise, it'd basically amount to an extreme form of slum clearance. Bad if you happen to live in or near an urban area (or military base), otherwise it'd just be a major annoyance for ruralites. Most of Africa & South America wouldn't even notice.

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by Gasoline Fumes

I'm really glad to hear that 97% of climate scientists are wrong about global warming. From now on I'll get my unbiased information from Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.forbe...100-wrong/amp/

Whatever the number the scientists are not unbiased either, they only get government or university funding if they hold the acceptable position. From what I learned in my nuclear chemistry days, ask a scientist what something is and they will reply, "what do you want it to be?"

[oil pan 4]

Global warming scientists funded by pro global warming money are as unbiased as tobacco industry scientists telling you that smoking isn't bad for you.

[Natalya]

Y'all are taking this way too personally.

[redpoint5]

I'm not taking the topic personally at all. Instead, I have a realistic pessimism about our ability to understand and proactively respond to something so complex as climate change. We adapt though, like we always do, so my optimism is that climate change will be no big deal for most people.

I find it way more terrifying that nuclear warheads are programmed to hit us at a moments notice. Ever watch the movie Dr. Strangelove? That sort of "accident" is very feasable.

[Natalya]

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:

I have a realistic pessimism about our ability to understand and proactively respond to something so complex as climate change.

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.

We adapt though, like we always do, so my optimism is that climate change will be no big deal for most people.

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.

[oil pan 4]

Global warming that started around 12,000 years ago has been the best thing that ever happened to the human race.
When I read things like "global warming will soon make snowy winters a thing of the past" and "the permafrost is melting" those don't sound like problems, they sound like solutions to problems.

[cowmeat]

Here's one about global warming you can quote me on:

If everybody's in the pool and we all keep peeing in it, eventually the pool will be full of pee. Will it kill us? Probably not, but do we want to keep swimming in a pool full of pee?

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

Here's one about global warming you can quote me on:

If everybody's in the pool and we all keep peeing in it, eventually the pool will be full of pee. Will it kill us? Probably not, but do we want to keep swimming in a pool full of pee?

Not really, to fill the pool with pee you would have to start with an empty pool. The oceans are the pool in our case and no amount of lifeform pee will be more then a drop in the bucket. In the case of CO2 there is a much bigger natural supply of the "pee", our "pee" is almost insignificant. You have to believe that the planet doesn't have the ability as a buffered system to adapt to a small change. That is was sitting right on the edge of its limits and then humans came along. I feel it's been through a lot worse and is capable of balancing itself.

[Ecky]

We're certainly not going to destroy the earth, and to my understanding we are living in a period of gradual natural warming, but it's widely agreed that humans are accelerating climate change (by orders of magnitude) by contributing gasses to the atmosphere that trap heat. The faster the change in climate, the less able ecosystems are to respond and adapt to it, and the larger the loss in diversity and quantity of plants and animals.

Fun facts:

Antarctica had trees during warming periods as recently as 15 million years ago, and was temperate enough to support forests as recently as 33 million years ago. The continents have not moved significantly since then. So, the earth has a long way to go before it's that warm again.

HOWEVER, warmer ocean temperatures historically (I've studied paleontology extensively) result in decreased circulation between deep and shallow water. Earth's warmest periods have been those with the largest dead-zones and least variety and quantity of ocean life, because deep waters turn anoxic and nutrient deposits don't get recycled to the surface.

Marine vertebrate populations have dropped an estimated ~50% since 1970, and it is most widely believed that this is due to overfishing, not from major changes to the amount of habitable volume in the oceans.

Earth's warmest periods have also had the greatest extent of desertification, though there were more zones of extreme diversity, e.g. rainforests.

In the last 40 years, the earth has lost around 1/3 of its arable land, and nearly all arable land that exists is in use. Effective use of this land has improved, so we're producing about the same amount of food we did 40 years ago, but the world's population has also increased substantially so today there's less food per person than was available 40 years ago.

~


In the US, we'll probably not be affected nearly as much as the 3 billion people living on under $10 per day. Shifting growing zones, increased desertification and an increase in the severity of weather are going to cause major problems for the world's poorest people, and I honestly care about people other than myself, and people who live outside of my country.

If the poorest 3 billion want a standard of living similar to what we experience in the US, the world simply cannot support that. I don't feel it's right for wealthy countries to deny access to energy, food and goods to these people, but it's possible that by developing cleaner alternatives, the standard of living for people in the world can be improved without exceeding the world's capacity to support it. Reducing consumption in wealthy nations also helps.

My 2 cents.