Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => The Environment => Topic started by: pencilhead on 30/01/2004 20:20:24
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Has anyone ever heard of the Aral Sea? The shoreline is now 40Km from the actual dock.
http://www.redtailcanyon.com/items/15603.aspx pictures
Why is our earth(your part of the earth) temperatures dropping below the "normal" cold temperatures & heating above the "normal" hot temperatures?
What are WE ALL doing wrong?
Can we still pollute, use up our resources, and SMILE?
How selfish are you? How much do you take and not give. Do you help out this inbalance crisis?
NEXT YEAR what new species will die and what dead animal will ocean shore bring upon the beach shore?
When will you care to help conserve and use less NOW OR WAIT UNTIL you have NO WATER for YOUR LOVED ONES?
[:(][:(][:(][:(][:(][:(][:(][:(][:(][:(][:(][:(][:(][:(]
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What do you do daily to help? Do you waste water, leave lights on. Liter? Do you spit carelessly, do you have very lazy manners. Do you waste paper? Do you not care about the evironment to stuck into your own world to care? If you do care that's great but help others care. Time is now don't put if off till tomorrow. If you overlook this now tomorrow the ozone layer will be depleted. Don't BE APATHETIC!!!
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I wouldn't worry too much about the Earth...if Nature gets tired of us fouling the place up, she'll gladly wipe us out. I'm more worried about the other forms of life, ourselves included.
Besides, aren't a lot of the temperature changes considered to be part of a normal cycle that we just happened to notice for the first time now that we're all technically advanced? (But I'm right there with you on the topic of pollution)
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I don't have any doubt that human activity is causing noticeable and probably significant changes in the atmosphere and the climate. Is the change going to be as devastating as some want us to believe? I doubt it.
I also doubt that the conservation measures that are so vigorously put forth here and in most other places are going to make any difference whatsoever. I hate to be cynical, but the recommendations are puny compared to the problem. What will truly make people be more conservative is when the prices go up. If something is cheap people will waste it. If it is expensive, relative to their income level, they will conserve it and use it sparingly.
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John
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So you're saying you want gas prices to go up again, John? [:P]
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Personally I'm apalled at how wasteful our society is. I try to recycle everything from clothes to plastic bags. I make my own soaps and non-toxic cleaners (which actually work better than their commercial counterparts) and have left instructions for my body to be recycled when I die. Many people think I'm extreme, I think I'm practical. It took extreme irresponsibility to pollute the entire planet in roughly 100 years and now we NEED to be extremely responsible (every single one of us) to give Mother Earth enough breathing room to recover.
My worst contribution is the amount of driving that I do. My next car will be something energy efficient; likely a hybrid.
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It's true maybe the Arial sea would have dried up eventually. I do think so. But with human intervention it's drying up sooner. Maybe the problem is big, but even the smallest little contribution is BIG! Awaken a person to the beauty of nature and you will effect mother nature. As long as you contribute and remind others. Help others see and remind those that see to help others. Everything counts no matter how big or small it is.
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What we need is everyone to sign the Kyoto protocol, and stop being so economically minded ...
Am I dead? Am I alive? I'm both!
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Yeah, because we all know the leaders of the major polluting countries care more about the environment than they do about money.
/sarcasm
We're being so damn cautious not to contaminate Mars but yet we foul the air, water, and land here without a second thought. Oh, the irony.
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Signing the Kyoto protocol would be a step in the right direction... it also may help if americans stopped driving around in cars with 6 litre engines!!!
On the other side of things... yes i believe we are part responsible for the general changing of the planet... but don't jump on the bandwagon too quickly, our planet has been through hot and dry periods before, such as during the Devonian so yes lets try and save energy but try not to panic too much! It won't be long till fuels like oil run low and it'll force industry to look at alternative ideas for fuel!!!
catch me if you can!
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Bin, I thought you were only into destruction!
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John
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Donnah, I agree that we all need to be extremely good to try an undo some of the damage. However, to be pragmatic, human nature being the base thing that it is, things are not going to significantly change until the economics of the situation change.
And, no I don't want gas prices to go up again. But I don't have any sympathy for the folks driving their V-8 SUVs. My next car is likely to be a hybrid, but I'm kind of waiting for the technology to mature a little.
/Rant
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John
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John, I had to chuckle at the programmer coming out in you (/Rant). What language do you use? It's not C or your comment would be //rant.
Either the economics need to change or people en mass need to comprehend that money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. There also needs to be a major shift in priorities, but that might have to wait until we run out of clean air and water (duh, let's wait 'till the car hits us before we move).
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Last week there were trials with the navette, the mini free bus that goes around centre-ville, which was electric. I don't think it was electric with fuel cells lol but it's a step in the right direction anyway :)
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Donnah,
Do you think people en mass will ever comprehend anything that doesn't hit them? I'm an eternal pessimist and believe that people will change when they are forced to change.
And, I do program in C. And SQL and Unix korn shell. C++ uses the //comment format. In C it's /* comment */ The /Rant comes from then "end tag" notation in XML and HTML though.
I am one, but I hate being called a programmer. I'd much rather be an engineer, but I don't want to take the starring role in my own version of "Dilbert" (been there - done that - got the coffee mug [:)] ).
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John
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hi pencilhead
pollution the major problem for spoiling our environ. this can be controlled by using the resources in an efficient way, like using the solar energy insted of fossil fuels, and many more, using nature products than plastic products.
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Haha tweener - Dilbert ! I love that comic strip, he's so funny. Dogbert's the best.
Am I dead? Am I alive? I'm both!
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I love the strip too. But I hate working in a job where I can contribute to the content in a major way. I once had a manager that made the pointy-hair guy look pretty darn good!
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John
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I have to agree with most of the previous posts, and I am glad to find a forum that discusses these problems (and I've been looking).
Pollution is a subject close to my heart and I have taken a keen interest since childhood. One of the only things I have managed to work out is that there are more contributory problems than it seems.
Also I haven’t heard many solutions. There's an idea that if governments subsidised the installation of solar panels on every roof in a country, it would rid the need of power stations. However this fails to take into account that if we started to make more demands of our silica industry we would run out in a fairly short space of time, and at the same time cripple our computer industries.
One of the other major problems that I think will have to be faced is over population. Part of our world is struggling with trying to manage the amounts of people we have, most of them crammed into cities with a socially declining environment.
The other is that we have dumped so much crap and chemicals into the seas that we might lose a lot of the life in the seas. This will probably have knock on effects. And drinking water will probably become an important issue.
However we may find solace in organic compounds, finding organic substances that can be grown in structured forms that can work as transistors. Nanotechnology working towards producing usable substance in usable formats out of resources that have the right atomic makeup and can be easily grown. But if it all fails maybe cannabinoid is right, and nature will decide to wipe the slate clean and start again.
However I am only young, and maybe I will see the great change, from working out how to needlessly destroy to working out how to carefully create.
Subconscious or unconscious?
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We are in an "arms race" to keep our standard of living to a livable level by means of technology. If we humans fail in this race, Mother Nature will most assuredly wipe the slate and try again. And the whole of human existence and failure won't even take the blink of an eye in geological terms. Something to think about.
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John
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I thought the drying up of Aral sea was initially caused by the improper irrigation method used by the local villagers. Am I right? Or is this for a different case study?
Angel
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I heard that the Aral sea depletion is due toa regional desertification trend. Theories about why this is happening include the improper irrigation techniques used over the past 4000 years, over the entire central and southern european region. Mostly, the irrigation has put a lot of salt in the ground, therby reducing the fertility and the vegatative cover. This in turn has led to reduced rainfall because the albedo is higher and there is less moisture in the air available to precipitate.
I haven't read much on this lately, so the theories may have changed some. Also, the climate models also show that some of the effect may be caused by more distant things such as changing ocean temperatures and currents. No one really knows for sure just how accurate all this is because there are few or no direct observations beyond the last 100 years or so. Some of the effects are most likely caused by human activity and some are most likely not.
The climate (do not confuse climate and weather) of the earth is changing. It has always been changing, even well before humans were invented. So, as much as humans don't like change, we must get used to it, and we should accept it to some degree.
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John - The Eternal Pessimist.
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If the climate changes it might trigger a global warming. Ice sheets will melt in the North and South Pole causing the sea level to rise tremendosely. In the next 100 years,the Earth's surface will warm by 3 degree C and will cause sea level to rise at least half a metre.
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I've idly pondered the idea that maybe there's a natural safety feature built in to the earth. Maybe there's not enough fossil fuel for us to wipe ourselves out that way, not enough uranium for us to blow ourselves up atomically, and so on. What do y'all think?
"Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms." - Audrey Hepburn
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Might be useles some people dont care weather global warming is triggered. Until it happens......
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quote:
Originally posted by Predator_X
If the climate changes it might trigger a global warming. Ice sheets will melt in the North and South Pole causing the sea level to rise tremendosely. In the next 100 years,the Earth's surface will warm by 3 degree C and will cause sea level to rise at least half a metre.
Might trigger the shut down of the ocean strean that bring Europeans some nice weather...
http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/climatechange_wef.html
"The day after", at least the beginning of the movie, is based on this theory - anyway it did happen before MANY times
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Donnah - You wrote: "Maybe there's not enough fossil fuel for us to wipe ourselves out that way, not enough uranium for us to blow ourselves up atomically, and so on. What do y'all think?"
All fossil fuels were deposited by a very life prolific planet. At one time CO2 was 2,500 ppm and dynosaurs and other life flourished. I believe it is simple human conceit that we are so so important, one way or the other. After all, during Roman times Britain exported wine when CO2 was less then now.
As for Uranium? It is harmless enough unless concentrated and used as an explosive. Iran seems intent on concentrating Uranium. How bad could that be? Well, Iran is a religous state that specifically reiterates again and again that nuclear war with Israel would destroy the Jews, but only damage Islam. Perhaps they are just kidding.....
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The post you addressed was from January of 2005. Why would you dig up a 5 year old thread to say the same things you've already been saying accross 56 other threads?
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Indeed! The psychology of Litespeed is strange thing to behold!
I can only assume that he must spend an inordinate amount of time looking for new targets to try and undermine with his particular brand of denial-ism.
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madi - peppercorn RE: '[litespeeds] particular brand of denial-ism.'
My particular brand of denialism is to simply point out CO2 emissions will continue to climb regardless of all these silly silly international meetings. For instance,
"Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama's promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen." http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will120609.php3
And of course both China and India are not included anyway. I read someplace that China builds two or three coal plants per week. So get over it. Accept reality. Make other plans if you you need to. But CO2 will continue to climb, probably for the next century or more. It Is An Inconvenient Truth.
And as far as I can tell, it will hardly make a dimes worth of difference anyway. Besides, warmer is better then colder. Incidentally, I watched a worthwhile TV show on the Permian extinction. Apparently the massive and continuous magma flows from the Siberian traps took 40,000 years or so to raise temperatures by five degrees. That then, perhaps, raised ocean temps enough to melt methane hydrates over a period of another 10,000 years or so that raised temps another 5 degrees C.
The permian extinction event lasted 80,000 years. Recently, ocean temperatures may actually be cooling. Further, the atmospheric temperature is well within the range variability in human historic times. Which, I must point out, followed a massive Ice Age that made much of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable.
So I admit to perplexity of the climate faithful. They SHOULD know their pathetic Kyoto and Copenhaggen meetings are nothing more then CO2 emitting party fests. Six liter SUV's look like party balloons compared to a 100 new coal plants in China every year. And the Goracles private jet makes Six liter SUV look like Honda 50 mopeds. But like the flagelants of Midieval Europe they develop neuroses over what sort of laundry dryer is best.
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I thought the drying up of Aral sea was initially caused by the improper irrigation method used by the local villagers. Am I right? Or is this for a different case study?
Angel
I understand that you are kind of right - water from rivers that otherwise would have reached the Aral sea - is used for the irrigation of cotton. I vaugely recall that there was a Soviet era plan to divert rivers running northwards through Siberia to run southwards to refill the sea.
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Donnah - You wrote: "I've idly pondered the idea that maybe there's a natural safety feature built in to the earth."
Your pondering may be idle but mental clarity is exactly on point. For instance, our magnificent climatologist can't explain recent cooling. Perhaps their models did not include the Topical Pacific Heat Vent. Perhaps if they were to recover all their missplaced data we would know if they have done so or not.
"ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2001) — The tropical Pacific Ocean may be able to open a "vent" in its heat-trapping cirrus cloud cover and release enough energy into space to significantly diminish the projected climate warming caused by a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/03/010301072351.htm
Further, there are both known and unknown variables. Even our 'climatologists' tell us it is a new science. However, one of the known but unquantified variables is deep ocean volcanic activity. The entire planet is stitched together like a giant baseball along mid - ocean ridges from which the continents expand largely through high temperature lava flows.
1) I would like to know whether anyone has studied ocean volcanic variability. Volcanism on land varies; dramatically at times. Why would this not be the case in the deep oceans.
2) How much direct heating takes place? After all, all the oceans seem to be sitting on one very large hot plate. We have all seen films of Black Smokers, and red hot magma pouring out under the water where it eventually solidifies. etc etc
3) Also, how much CO2 does this hot plate emit, and where does it go?
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There is no question about it -- human activity has significantly changed our atmosphere. The one certain thing in the climate change debate is the hugely increased level of carbon dioxide.
We have 400,000 years of well established fossil record in Greenland and Antarctic ice. Carbon dioxide levels have been around 190-220 parts per million during 4 ice ages, and 260-280 parts per million during 4 warmer interglacial periods.
It has taken us less than 200 years to move that level from 280 to 390 parts per million, and the level is increasing by more than 1 ppm per year. Carbon dioxide levels are now 40% higher than at any time in the last 400,000 years!
Our best atmospheric scientists are telling us that increasing levels of carbon dioxide are likely to lead to catastrophic climate change. They are probably right; I do not know; there is a minute chance that they may be wrong. But I do know that you do not fiddle with any natural system at this 40% level without some sort of drastic consequence.
I am Damocles. I see the sword there, dangling above all of our heads. It is not really a problem for me -- I am old enough and unwell enough that I will not have to wear its consequences. But I fear greatly for my much-loved grandchildren.
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I share your concern Damocles. Whether we like it or not, we are rolling the dice for future generations by conducting one gigantic, uncontrolled, and potentially extremely dangerous, experiment on our planet.
Would we let our children do a science experiment if we thought it would probably kill them?
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:) Heh, we are quite sane here.
Doesn't mean that the naked scientist ever will win a popularity contest. Those that win does it on the observers ego, and upbringing.
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Well if we are all kill along with most of the animals earth will move on. we are only 20 sec or 2 mins in all of earth in 20 min
We should try for a giant solar ring array like gundam did lol that would be to costly
but if those fossil fuel reach earths core it would of powered plate techs for a little bit longer
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Been watching too much Top Gear Pencilhead?
"Do you spit carelessly, do you have very lazy manners. Do you waste paper?"
Or maybe you just wanted to present us with your image of what those alleged 'environmentalists' are, in reality? As for the sea levels if 3 C warmer? As far as I know anything in between 10 to 20 meters. There are geological finds of seashells that we know live in a certain depth today, existing for a very long time, that has been found 20 meter above sea level. But we can't know for sure, as we never done this kind of global climate research before. And predicting a whole planets future is a hell of a lot harder than to look at the clouds and say 'it's gonna rain today'.