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Forums - General - Do you think humans are helping cause Climate change?

 

Are humans the leading factor in our changing climate?

Of course we are. 73 55.30%
 
Probably. 17 12.88%
 
Probably not. 12 9.09%
 
Absolutely not. 23 17.42%
 
I have no idea. 6 4.55%
 
I wanna change apms climate ;) 1 0.76%
 
Total:132
happydolphin on 26 April 2012

So what would be worse in yours' view, deforestation or green-house gas emission?

Also, does the extraction of oil have intrinsic negative effects? (What I mean is, does less oil where it comes from have an effect on the environment, apart from the pollution caused by extraction processes?)



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kaneada on 26 April 2012
killerzX said:
global warming is the biggest hoax of our lifetime. just 30-40 years ago, the were talking about us going into another ice age. the years will go on a people will realize how much of a scam it is.

remember the green movement is really RED. its communist, its all about redistributing wealth.

the earths climate has been changing since it was made, theres nothing diferent going on. we are safe.


LOL...if its communism then its Blue not Red.

In all seriousness though, the jury is really still out on human impact on climate change. The only real atmosphere we have to base our assumption that this is possible is planet Venus which is has been in a perpetual state of global warming for quite a long time; but, one also has to consider the amount of volcanic activity on that planet in which is about 100% of the time non-stop. Does a planet with 7 billion humans have the same impact as the environment of Venus is really the question here.

 



-- Nothing is nicer than seeing your PS3 on an HDTV through an HDMI cable for the first time.

fordy on 26 April 2012
HappySqurriel said:

We can power the world on 5,000 tons of thorium per year and there are 34 million tons of thorium in the world which means we will run out of thorium in about 6,000 years ... I believe it is kind of foolish to worry too much about a problem that might occur thousands of years from now; we (realistically) have no idea what kind of technology people that far in the future will have to produce energy from alternative sources.

With where research was at in the 1970s before funding was pulled from thorium research (probably) because it could not be weaponized, we could have (probably) had viable large scale thorium reactors in the early 1990s. If we're lucky we will be in a similar position with solar and wind power in 2050, and (realistically) I can't see us getting there in our lifetime.


So if we're going with a new technology, why stick with just the one that would NOT require the changeover in a few thousand years? It woud, after all, stop yet another disruption of the energy market should such technology not be as ahead as you think (see "stagnation of technology" explanation in one of my earlier posts).

Renewable is getting closer to grid parity as we speak, and has the potential to get even cheaper. It's "exhaustion" time is when the sun consumes the earth in a few billion years (and that's providing we haven't found a new star to harness from). 

Heck, even the use of just photovoltaics needs a miniscule area of the earth to match out current energy output (in black):



Player1x3 on 26 April 2012
Jumpin said:
Silver-Tiger said:
Jumpin said:
It's scientifically proven that overpopulation and industrial civilization has been the leading cause of climate change on the planet. Currently, global warming is now progressing faster than even the worst case scenario predictions from scientists. Not to mention all of the desertification that has been occurring.

This just shows how stupid many people on this website are, only 50% agreed with fact, an additional 14% thought it was probably, and 36% of you are just flat out wrong on a question whose answer should be very obvious by now.

Pretty much this. It's embarassing and disgusting that some people still hear to crtics. Coincidentally, it's mostly Christian people who think humans have the "god-given" right the destroy the environment.

Heh, I happen to be a fairly extreme Christian =P

There is a difference between Christians (those who understand the religion, and its highly liberal foundation), and fans of Christianity (those who treat Christianity the same way they do a football team, simply as a fan).


Christianity is highly conservative idea, thats why its the strongest belief system in the world :)



HappySqurriel on 26 April 2012
fordy said:
HappySqurriel said:

We can power the world on 5,000 tons of thorium per year and there are 34 million tons of thorium in the world which means we will run out of thorium in about 6,000 years ... I believe it is kind of foolish to worry too much about a problem that might occur thousands of years from now; we (realistically) have no idea what kind of technology people that far in the future will have to produce energy from alternative sources.

With where research was at in the 1970s before funding was pulled from thorium research (probably) because it could not be weaponized, we could have (probably) had viable large scale thorium reactors in the early 1990s. If we're lucky we will be in a similar position with solar and wind power in 2050, and (realistically) I can't see us getting there in our lifetime.


So if we're going with a new technology, why stick with just the one that would NOT require the changeover in a few thousand years? It woud, after all, stop yet another disruption of the energy market should such technology not be as ahead as you think (see "stagnation of technology" explanation in one of my earlier posts).

Renewable is getting closer to grid parity as we speak, and has the potential to get even cheaper. It's "exhaustion" time is when the sun consumes the earth in a few billion years (and that's providing we haven't found a new star to harness from). 

Heck, even the use of just photovoltaics needs a miniscule area of the earth to match out current energy output (in black):

I would rather use well understood, cost effective technology that can be produced today than waste money pushing energy technologies that are decades or centuries away from being cost effective. Eventually these alternative energy sources may be viable, but pushing them when they're not ready will only push energy costs on average consumers up and make them substantially poorer; after all, how "wealthy" would you feel if your total energy expenditure a month increased form $200 per month to $1,000 to $2,000 per month.

 



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Andrespetmonkey on 26 April 2012
Player1x3 said:
Andrespetmonkey said:

As a guy who sucks at God of war, I beg to differ.

Mythological ancient pagan Gods are a joke. The only real God that lives up to the definition of a God is the abrahamic God, thus hes the only real God. Greek  Gods are even dependent upon human prayers

;)



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Andrespetmonkey on 26 April 2012
Player1x3 said:
Jumpin said:
Silver-Tiger said:
Jumpin said:
It's scientifically proven that overpopulation and industrial civilization has been the leading cause of climate change on the planet. Currently, global warming is now progressing faster than even the worst case scenario predictions from scientists. Not to mention all of the desertification that has been occurring.

This just shows how stupid many people on this website are, only 50% agreed with fact, an additional 14% thought it was probably, and 36% of you are just flat out wrong on a question whose answer should be very obvious by now.

Pretty much this. It's embarassing and disgusting that some people still hear to crtics. Coincidentally, it's mostly Christian people who think humans have the "god-given" right the destroy the environment.

Heh, I happen to be a fairly extreme Christian =P

There is a difference between Christians (those who understand the religion, and its highly liberal foundation), and fans of Christianity (those who treat Christianity the same way they do a football team, simply as a fan).


Christianity is highly conservative idea, thats why its the strongest belief system in the world :)

Silver-tiger and player, please keep this thread secular so it stays on-topic. 



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Kynes on 26 April 2012
Silver-Tiger said:
Kynes said:
Silver-Tiger said:
Jumpin said:
It's scientifically proven that overpopulation and industrial civilization has been the leading cause of climate change on the planet. Currently, global warming is now progressing faster than even the worst case scenario predictions from scientists. Not to mention all of the desertification that has been occurring.

This just shows how stupid many people on this website are, only 50% agreed with fact, an additional 14% thought it was probably, and 36% of you are just flat out wrong on a question whose answer should be very obvious by now.

Pretty much this. It's embarassing and disgusting that some people still hear to crtics. Coincidentally, it's mostly Christian people who think humans have the "god-given" right the destroy the environment.


Oh, come on. The climate "science"is more a religion, with Michael Mann "hide the decline" and Al Gore as prophets, than as a science. It's funny that you criticize Christians when this is like an organized religion. Don't listen to critics, you have to believe what those politicians say, it's a matter of faith.

Pure polemic, as always. How about you prove the things you say, show me where the climate science is acting like a religion. You're denouncing a science that existed for several hundred years, scientists all over the world come to the same conclusion, and the very few who disagree happen to live in...America, which is known for radical Christians influencing the science and politics.

It's not a matter of faith. I'm one of these "weird" people who know instead of believe.

 

 

It's not a science when you keep moving goalposts. The IPCC predicted 4 to 6 C more at the end of the century, but for the last 15 years this manmade global warming hasn't happened at all. It's not a science when you have to change global warming to climate change because people begin to see that it isn't happening. It's not a science when you have to hide the Medieval warm period and the little ice age to create your hockey stick graph. It's not a science when you only use the ground stations that provide you most warming, but you discard the ground stations that provide you cooling. It's not a science when you can't suggest any other possible explanation, like O3 or cosmic rays and it's influence in the cloud formation. It's not a science when you say that CO2 will reduce crop fertility, but it's just the complete opposite.

 

A science has to accept all the possible hypothesis and criticisms, but anyone that has doubts of global warming is labelled a negationist and someone paid by petrol companies, or Christian fanboy, or any other stupid adjective. It's not a science when people try to destroy the messenger and not the message. It's not a science when lots of people live of the money they receive of asserting one and only one hypothesis. It's not a science when alarmists use images of refrigeration towers (which expel clouds of vaporized water) to represent CO2 pollution, when you can't see CO2 clouds because it's transparent. Something that don't accept criticism isn't a Science, and most defenders of the global warming theory don't accept any criticism.



thranx on 26 April 2012
SvennoJ said:
thismeintiel said:
Rath said:
thismeintiel said:

Lol, I'll see you in 8 years, when we are still using oil like today, and yet mysteriously still have more.

That's only oil sands, there's a lot of conventional oil out there still too. I'm not saying we're going to run out straight away - just that we're going to start having less than before. With the current rate of oil discovery compared to the current rate of oil consumption it simply isn't sustainable forever. Peak oil doesn't mean all oil is going to stop, it just means it will slowly wind down.

The only problem is a lot of this info comes from "proven" oil reserves, which isn't just oil reserves that are obtainable technologically (which it should be), it also takes into account politics.  Then there's the fact that the chart you posted is info from 2002.  A lot can change in 10 years.  Of course, they're also very pessimistic.  If you look at at the previous years, you'll see how greatly it fluctuates.  Some years there is barely any new oil discovered, while others there is a lot of newly discovered oil.  With new technology, one can never truly know how much oil we will discover in the future. 

Then you also have the topic of unconventional reserves, which are ones we know about, but would take longer to either obtain or refine.  With newer technology, however, these will become easier and cheaper to obtain and process.  Here's a chart to compare both proven and unproven/unconventional numbers.  Numbers are from 2002, as well, and are in billions of barrels.

Source

This is updated upto 2011

http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php

Chief Economist of the IEA, said this in a frank interview in April 2011:

We think that the crude oil production has already peaked in 2006, but we expect oil to come from the natural gas liquids, the type of liquid we have through the production of gas, and also a bit from the oil sands. But in any case it will be very challenging to see an increase in the production to meet the growth in the demand, and as a result of that, one of the major conclusions we have from our recent work in the energy outlook is that the age of cheap oil is over.

Decline rates

Perhaps an even more more significant question than 'when will oil peak?' may be: What will be the future rate of decline of oil production? Some form of co-ordinated adaptation might be possible if the annual drop in available oil was no more severe than 1-2% a year. Whereas 10% or more would soon implode the global economy. The IEA predicts a long plateau and a very modest global decline rate. Most independent models project decline rates between 2-4%.

Natural gas peak

The effects of natural gas peak are relatively localized. This is due to the enormous economic and energetic expense of liquefying and transporting natural gas as a compressed liquid. Both European and North American natural gas production have likely already peaked, so these regions are facing the extra severity of a dual energy crisis.


Looking at that graph and your previous one it looks like all they did was move the decline in oil to 2012 on. With out actually prediting what will happen. The first graph shows us on declining oil fields finds from 2003 on (the first predicted year) and than this graph shows a decline in 2013(again the first predicted year) so it seems kind bogus to me. Or am i seeing it wrong?

edit: NVm I must of been confused, the graphs are about different things entirely.



SvennoJ on 26 April 2012
thranx said:
SvennoJ said:


http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php

Chief Economist of the IEA, said this in a frank interview in April 2011:

We think that the crude oil production has already peaked in 2006, but we expect oil to come from the natural gas liquids, the type of liquid we have through the production of gas, and also a bit from the oil sands. But in any case it will be very challenging to see an increase in the production to meet the growth in the demand, and as a result of that, one of the major conclusions we have from our recent work in the energy outlook is that the age of cheap oil is over.

Decline rates

Perhaps an even more more significant question than 'when will oil peak?' may be: What will be the future rate of decline of oil production? Some form of co-ordinated adaptation might be possible if the annual drop in available oil was no more severe than 1-2% a year. Whereas 10% or more would soon implode the global economy. The IEA predicts a long plateau and a very modest global decline rate. Most independent models project decline rates between 2-4%.

Natural gas peak

The effects of natural gas peak are relatively localized. This is due to the enormous economic and energetic expense of liquefying and transporting natural gas as a compressed liquid. Both European and North American natural gas production have likely already peaked, so these regions are facing the extra severity of a dual energy crisis.


Looking at that graph and your previous one it looks like all they did was move the decline in oil to 2012 on. With out actually prediting what will happen. The first graph shows us on declining oil fields finds from 2003 on (the first predicted year) and than this graph shows a decline in 2013(again the first predicted year) so it seems kind bogus to me. Or am i seeing it wrong?

edit: NVm I must of been confused, the graphs are about different things entirely.

This one would be the correct comparison with the 2002 one


The other graph shows production peaked in 2006, holding almost steady for now and then predicted to decline slowly.