Eaarth

[NeilBlanchard]

If you want to look for ulterior motives, you only need to look to the large energy companies who are making record profits right now. And to the others who are dependent on all of us continuing to consume this most amazing resource.

A tiny portion of those record profits is all it takes to buy the FUD makers.

The only real doubt is the exact timing of the changes. If you look at the predictions of GCC in the past 20-30 years, the only trend is that things are already worse than they thought they would be in 50-100 years. The rate of change is surprising even the experts; possibly due to the fact that many of the multiplier effects are happening already.

We are acting out a huge and incredibly risky experiment, and the whole world and all the life on it -- is the guinea pig.

[Weather Spotter]

I think that being a good steward of what God gave us is important, to that end I try to promote green things but not to the point where they cost my lots of $$$$ or if they impact my standard of living. People come first.

The things I find interesting about climate change:
1. God mad the earth to have lots of cyclical patterns (think seasons). We know that there was a time when Ice covered most of North America. We also know that in the 1500's (not sure of the exact date) people moved to Greenland and farmed there. Then things got colder.

2. when my parents were in school the big thing was the next global ice age environmentalists were warning about how in the next 50 years we will see a massive cool down.

3. Show me the reliable data for the last 1000 years, 1/8 of the length of earth has been around (If you believe the Bible), if not then the last 1000 years is only a paper thin line on the time line of this planet. The data that I have seen leads me to think that there are cycles of warmer and colder times. There might even be 3 or 4 going on (think floods 10yr, 30 yr, 100yr etc).

4. are humans changing things with pollution? Yes. To what extent are we and what will this cause? We can not tell that yet. Is change bad? Maybe we can not tell yet.

5. God made the earth for us to use (not abuse), so use it wisely.

Summery: Nature is full of cycles, we have not determined what is normal and therefore can not tell if anything is wrong. Should we impact people quality of life now for a possible help in the future? NO! small things to reduce polution, fine, but keep the costs down.
I say that it might be a conspiracy to control people and to distract them from fixing other things.

[C3H8]

biggest detractor from global warming is the beatnicks and refuse who won't take a shower like hippys that preach about it all day. i cant help but oppose any views these people have.

take a shower and get a job! or atleast join the military.

[gone-ot]

...uh, isn't the "...third rock from the sun..." about 4.567 billion years old since creation...and only about 4.54 billion years old since firmament?

[RobertSmalls]

Well, I have something to say about Thomas Jefferson's excellent "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth", but:

For the way off-topic topics (lighter stuff). Political discussion? ONLY topics directly related to efficiency are allowed. And keep it civil!

So I'll just say that I like to respect other religions as a general principle, even though certain beliefs and disbeliefs test my dedication.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by Douglas Adams

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever.

This is not her story.

.

[dcb]

here is earth through saturns rings from voyager:

[Arragonis]

That quote in text. Its pretty good.

Originally Posted by Carl Sagan

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

[NeilBlanchard]

I'll add that this pale blue Eaarth may be the only home we will ever know; unless we get through this rough patch. Let's err on the side of caution, shall we?

[Weather Spotter]

better safe than sorry, but can you say we are in a rough patch? Where is the data to show we are in a "rough patch". Show me the data on what is normal (over the last 1000 years) and then I will see if we are in a rouch patch. Pending the data, we can not draw conclutions. that would be the same as saying that my last take of gas was the normal and that this one is way lower so I did somthign wrong. You would ask me to show you the last seveal months of data before you could draw a pattern. the same thing applys to the earth! We do not have reliable data for more than a few 100 years (under 300). Past that the numbers get hard to pin down. what data we do have has been "tweeked" and then the origanls were "lost". If that were the case for some new 20MPG boost snake oil we would all cry foul. this makes me think that there is somthign going on behind our backs.

Therefore, I am verry hesitant to bend over backwards to fix a "problem" that might not even be there.

Can we be more responsablle with our tratment of the earth? Yes! Should we sacrifise a lot to do it? No! Techonogly will help us change while keeping our standard of living.