@ topic )

They don't blindly "attack consoles", they say, that _because_ the video games industry is highly innovative and successful it has a certain degree of responsibility towards our enviroment.

You know, the industry always needs "motivations" to do a bit more to reduce the use and output of hazardous materials (which could be replaced equally by non-hazardous ones), that's why Green Peace tries to put pressure on them to do something.

Consoles are a target of Grean Peaces, because there are millions of units built in exactly the same way (not just the consoles themselves, but peripherals, cables , etc. etc. etc. aswell), so a reduction or elimation of a questionable material in the built-plan of a console has quite a large influence.

That some of you feel so personally attacked and turned off by the thought of GP criticising your loved company or your loved console, seems totally redicules to me. We can only gain by companies going more "green" and if they aren't pressured to do so, then they _won't_ .


@ liunil )

the thing about global warming is .. we know that it's happening right now and we try to figure out why it's happening ( CO2 and CH4 concentration in the air seem to be critical factors in this) and what is happening if it goes on

historically the CO2 concentration always has risen after the warming set in, but this time it's the other way round, so we actually have no data to decide on what will happen ..

will the climate just reach a natural peak?
will a massive output of methane hydrate from the sea (an effect which most likely will set in, if the global average temperature has risen to a certain point) result in a mega-warm stage, which rivals the one we had in the cretaceous through eocene periodes (21-22 °C global average temperature - 7°C more than nowadays) ?
or will it result in the next glacious period by disrupting the golf stream due to large fresh water input from the north pole ice ?

we don't know, but we know, that we don't want to risk either extremes (or even other effects we couldn't even think of by now)

fact is, that both extremes have a much higher chance of happening, if the global average temperature rises, that and the fact, that nowadays we don't only feel responsible for ourselves, but for every living organism (well at least for those that are visible to us), is the reason, why we absolutely prefer a static climate to a fluctuating one and try to hold our climate as static as we can

well, according to ps360ftw's profile, it says he is 19, his education is pathetic and just says yeah right about university, so I would guess that the answer to your question, Famine, is no.

@ sqrl )

your temperature graph is flawed to the point of being useless ...

there is no y-axis marking and each step has 2000 years, so it's logical to think that the curve is an average of several years, instead of being one years data (it would fluctuate much more if it wasn't an average), so the last points on that curve could easily be an average of 50 to 100 years (it doesn't tell us, which is another point why the graph is useless), but global warming hasn't really set in until the 1970's to 1980's due to global dimming

so we can assume, that we can't see anything about the actual situation in that graph and can't use actual data to see where it is in that graph, because the y-axis doesn't have data .. highly doubious

btw - the comentation in the graph is highly flawed aswell, because glacial periods always followed a warm peak in the interglacial and never after a downslope in temperatures of the interglacial

I actually called its validity into questione earlier myself, but when you consider the level of the debate at that point in the thread it wasn't much of a problem. Despite its problems it still served its purpose quite well, which was to show that an uptrend in the last 100 years is hardly worth getting bent out of shape over.

edit: it was mostly grabbing something on the fly while the thread was moving...but that was my fault for not having a good example on hand. I'll need to beef up my image bookmarks a bit =)

edit2: Do you know of any graphs that would fit the bill? 

This thread has been quite amusing and informative.

I too am skeptical about the causes of global warming, and while it is likely I haven't done anywhere near the research Sqrl has done, I've educated myself to a point where I am unsure of the answer because the data I've seen doesn't sway me one way or the other (Having a gf who is an postgrad in environmental engineering also helps when I hear her complaining about conflicting/biased sources).

This thread however has shown one reason why I generally avoid the subject, especially outside of the academic arena. PS360ForTheWin has taken the usual argument of 'well thats what everyone says, so that makes me right' which is impossible to argue against because they've already decided they are right and nothing can make that wrong (it's very similar to discussing religion).

@PS360ForTheWin

The fact you suggest Wikipedia is a 'reliable' source undermines the credibility of your statements. While Wikipedia is a great starting point for getting up to speed on the background of various areas, it is hardly reliable and you would be laughed at for referencing it at an academic level. If anyone submitted a paper with reference to Wikipedia (or generally any encyclopedia), even at an undergraduate level, they should be marked down.

Right...with data going all the way back to 1860!....GASP!!11!

Anyways...not another one of these threads....Greenpeace should just mind their own business (i.e., quit whining). 

@ sqrl )

I cut this one out of a script to a paleontology-reading I had.
It's not the best either, because the image was pretty small in the script and I stretched the image a bit to enlarge the area which interests us. Unfortunately there is no good y-axis marking in this one aswell, but atleast we have some absolute values to go by and not just relative values as in the other graph.

note, that the time axis is variable, as indicated - the various lines are different results you get from analysis of several ice cores - the black line is the absolute average of those ice cores - there is a small line through the holocene period marking the 14.1°C degrees global average temperature, which we see as the (current) climate optimum

edit:  ah screw that graph - I found a better one - the one you had, but in a form which is useful

as we can see the data for 2004 is far above what the average curve says (and above the average of the climatic optimum 8-4 thousend years before - the 14.1°C from the other graph) - the other lines again are results from the different ice cores which were taken - unfortunately I don't know what time the "recent proxies" graph covers, but it made sense, if it was the last 200 years

I think I found a "cleaner" version of that graph:

I don't think we are going to find a good graph short of an email to someone with direct access to the data but I think for our purposes this is good enough. I think it is still important to keep in mind that this graph only covers the Holocene interglacial and doesn't even show what other interglacials were like. Considering that even within our own IGP these fluctuations are well within normal I think it is fair to say that other IGP data (which shows warmer periods) is just icing on the cake.

edit: PS - I'm done for the night, found and took notes on a bunch of new graphs to help beef up my collection of material to draw on.  The hard part is keeping things current!

@ srql )

the first graph I posted has a complete overlook over all reconstructed temperatures of the phanerozoic ( from 542 million years before now until now)

here you go:
http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/7306/graph3et8.jpg

all in all our period is one of the coldest in the history of the earth (which is, why a warming up is likely, but is also likely to have catastrophic consequences)

I remember 8,000 years ago, when all the polar bears went extinct because it was so warm.  That was sad...