global warming vs. ww3

[bergenhell]

which will end human civilization first?

my money is on global warming. with all the science behind it I believe this planet will be irreversibly damaged by the melting glaciers within the next 15 years, and parts of the world will be uninhabitable in my lifetime.

thoughts?

[Kersk]

Where's the option for a stray malfunctioning WW3 nuke accidentally hitting a polar icecap?

[bergenhell]

fuck i knew i forgot one

[wads]

neither, no ones dumb enough to REALLY launch nukes, and the earth has its own natural cycle of warming up and ice ages, its bound to happen someday.

[leg]

The Islamic extremist are dumb enough to launch a nuke. To them, killing and dieing in an act of jihad will allow them and possibly their family members to heaven.

I would bet on WW3 before global warming, but I really don't know.

[Scorcher]

neither, no ones dumb enough to REALLY launch nukes, and the earth has its own natural cycle of warming up and ice ages, its bound to happen someday.

yeah

we are in a warming up period right now, it's just dependent on whether humans are accelerating it or not. some glaciers will melt and coasts will flood eventually

[leg]

I think it may be possible that the Earth naturally warms and cools, but I find it hard to believe that us humans have no way of effecting it.

[Kersk]

neither, no ones dumb enough to REALLY launch nukes...If only this was true. :(

[bergenhell]

the problem with global warming is that once enough glacial ice melts, the damage is irreversible. the ice reflects a lot of sunlight and thus heat, the more it melts the more water there is to absorb heat (and less ice to reflect it).

and yes, the earth has had warm up and cool down cycles. but with the CO2 we're releasing, 20 of the last 21 years are the top 20 hottest years on record. The sea level has rised significantly in the last 100 years too.

I'm personally kind of scared, knowing that the US is by far the worst CO2 producing country in the world (4 times more CO2 per year than developing country China, who is 2nd place).

[Glue]

they should launch nukes at us then

[}tHoL{-Bout2plucku]

where's the option for Manbearpig?

[Suicidal Anomaly]

If anyone launched nukes anywhere we're all fucked. That would start a major chain reaction just like the crap that started back in WWI and WWII due to alliances only this time it will be with nukes. I'm not discounting global warming at all and I don't doubt that 20 of the last 21 years were the hottest recorded but our recordings haven't been around for that long. People in the early to mid part of the 20th century could talk about how that storm or tornado was the worst one ever but there wasn't much recorded evidence on how bad it truly was. It's hard to know exactly what's going on to a planet that's billions of years old. Like I said I don't doubt that what we do as humans is having an adverse affect on our planet but for how long we've been here and how long we've monitored the weather it's hard to make accurate assumptions for a planet that's 4-5 billion years old imo. I'm no scientist so I'm sure someone can post a billion links for and against global warming but it's just my opinion. I know they have ways of testing to see what climates were like years and years ago but I'm still not discounting that a lot of it could be cyclical.

I had to vote for shut the fuck up Berg solely because of what I said above.

[bergenhell]

I think the leading tree ring analysis of 800 year old trees shows temperature changes, and no one can deny the impact of CO2 on our ozone and temperatures worldwide.

I'll look for the link when I'm done with the website I'm working on.

edit: im winning the poll vs ww3 and global warming, WOOO!

[Ignatz]

In other words berg, you're worse than global warming and WWIII put together. gj

[Suicidal Anomaly]

I think the leading tree ring analysis of 800 year old trees shows temperature changes, and no one can deny the impact of CO2 on our ozone and temperatures worldwide.

I'll look for the link when I'm done with the website I'm working on.

edit: im winning the poll vs ww3 and global warming, WOOO!

Like I said I don't doubt what we do as humans is affecting the planet and they have methods of figuring out temperatures in previous years from trees, soil etc but 800 years out of 4-5 billion isn't a huge sample size.

[leg]

I agree.

[Kap`n]

umm as far as global warming goes, understanding the severity of the problem is as simple as 10th grade science. Photosynthesis is a vital part of the production of oxygen through the consumption of CO2 by plants. CO2 is the key component of the Greenhouse Effect (defined as the radioactive process of warming the planets atmosphere). The more plant life is reduced (through humans destroying forests or plant life for development for example) the greater the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Not to mention the amount of increased CO2 as a direct result of the industrial revolution.

That being said its believed that the greater the amounts of CO2, the greater the Greenhouse Effect will warm our atmosphere. Also if the CO2 levels reached a certain height, and there was minimal plant life, it is possible that photosynthesis would no longer take place. Since that is a vital part of the oxygen cycle, within 5000 years of the end of photosynthesis there would only remain minimal traces of oxygen in earths atmosphere due to terraforming. People are directly responsible for the conditions of the earth.

i find voting in this poll impossible as global warming could take years, while someone tommorrow could decide(though unlikely) to launch a nuke that would get other countries launching them and so on. So who knows. I say SHUT UP BERG, for making me remember science classes.

[bergenhell]

but that could be the biggest danger of global warming, everyone thinks our actions won't catch up to us specifically because it's 5000 years down the road.

What if it isn't?

[Kap`n]

well 5000 years down the road isnt what seems to be the timeframe for the full effect of global warming, its just my personal way of giving perspective here, such that even if we survived floods and unnatural weather occurences as a result of global warming and greenhouse effect, humans wouldnt be able to exist without researching the problem and finding a solution to the C02 problem as well.. Its our gross misuse and obsession with fossil fuels and our resources that is sending us spiraling dangerously towards extinction.

I think the simplest of solutions is to work vigorously to restore destroyed forests and plant life in as many areas as possible. The problem with this is that urban sprawl due to over population causes the need for new development. This development of land reduces plant life and increases human consumption of oxygen and releasing of C02 as the world population increases.

[Scorcher]

umm as far as global warming goes, understanding the severity of the problem is as simple as 10th grade science.

no it's not =(. My geomorphology teacher was asked a question about it in class one day, and this guy is one of the smartest people I've met, at least in relation to earth science and he was just going on and on with all the factors that have to be taken into account. It's much more complicated than what it first seems.

While the last 20 of 21 years have been the hottest we have on record, out of 800 you said because of tree ring analysis, that is such a short period of time if you compare it to how long the earth has been around. We are in a natural warming phase and eventually we'll warm to a point, and then the earth will start to cool down. The earth will warm, regardless of what we do to it, it's just a question of whether we're accelerating the process or not. But that's pretty hard to determine, knowing the earth is warming naturally, and maybe it's warming quicker than ever naturally. Who knows.

[Kap`n]

i said understanding the severity of the problem, not understanding global warming itself in its entirety and every factor that goes into it..i just gave a specific example of what a result would be.

[Suicidal Anomaly]

umm as far as global warming goes, understanding the severity of the problem is as simple as 10th grade science. Photosynthesis is a vital part of the production of oxygen through the consumption of CO2 by plants. CO2 is the key component of the Greenhouse Effect (defined as the radioactive process of warming the planets atmosphere). The more plant life is reduced (through humans destroying forests or plant life for development for example) the greater the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Not to mention the amount of increased CO2 as a direct result of the industrial revolution.

That being said its believed that the greater the amounts of CO2, the greater the Greenhouse Effect will warm our atmosphere. Also if the CO2 levels reached a certain height, and there was minimal plant life, it is possible that photosynthesis would no longer take place. Since that is a vital part of the oxygen cycle, within 5000 years of the end of photosynthesis there would only remain minimal traces of oxygen in earths atmosphere due to terraforming. People are directly responsible for the conditions of the earth.

i find voting in this poll impossible as global warming could take years, while someone tommorrow could decide(though unlikely) to launch a nuke that would get other countries launching them and so on. So who knows. I say SHUT UP BERG, for making me remember science classes.

We've all had biology/chemistry/physics and learned about what the theory of global warming is in one shape or another. Like I said I'm not even trying to say that what we do as humans isn't affecting the planet because I'd bet everything I own that it is. A bad but somewhat true anology would be the stuff that people do to their bodies which increases cancer risk. Anything foreign introduced to out bodies or the planet will have some kind of affect. Whether it's good or bad it remains to be seen in some cases until years down the line when we've had enough time to see the results. My Grandma's generation grew up believing that sun was good for their skin so now you've got old ladies with cancer who look like strips of leather because they never used sunblock. The same can be said about global warming when you look at the big picture which is that 800 years out of 4-5 billion isn't telling enough to say for sure what the affect is. I think a lot of this cyclical but I have nothing to back this up other than my opinions that I've already stated. We affect the planet no doubt but I'm not really into the belief at this time that what we've done for the last couple hundred years is undoing billions of years of our planet developing.

[JohnnyBSam]

global warming will not destroy the earth, but on a human timescale the effects are devastating. scientists are learning that earths natural systems are somewhat fragile. for example, it takes days to cut down a forest but centuries to grow it again, it takes 20 thousand years during an interglacial period for the glaciers following an ice age to retreat but 100 thousand for them to advance again, etc...

by mid-century the co2 levels in the atmosphere will be the highest they have been in 35 million years (which is fucking ridiculous). that is fine for the planet, because all earth systems will eventuall readjust, but for us, the effects are crippling. Imagine at least a hundred years where all earth systems go crazy, droughts, floods, crazy storms, etc... there are too many effects and each is extremely terrible. I find it really disheartening that we have the ability to reduce the effects or even stop global warming altogether, but we do absolutely nothing serious to combat it, at all.

also, scientists are discovering that many of the feedback loops they thought would protect the planet just dont work out the way they have planned. Currently there is an experiment in the costa rican rainforests gauging the growth of plants against the amount of co2 in the atmosphere and contrary to what most people agreed on, that an increase in co2 would cause in increase in plant growth, the scientists are finding the opposite happening. Plant growth is being stunted by increased co2.

I think that we are seriously fucked by global warming, but something horrible will happen before midcentury, which is why i voted for nukes. Maybe some genetically engineered virus will kill us as well

[wads]

if the threat of globle warming is real, then it also wont happen overnight, most likely the first real danger signs will appear in many hundres of years, or even longer. but if you look at the exponential developement of science in the past 100 years alone, then by then, science would have progressed to a stage where such a thing wont be a problem.

[Zogo]

neither can wipe out the entire world..even if all nuclear powered countries launch their stuff a few inhabited islands will go unharmed.

it's obvious that we're going through the highest temperatures ever recorded right now..but what isn't well known is that new glaciers are forming elsewhere on the globe (very few global warming alarmists will mention this because it weakens their doomsday scenarios/agenda.)

if global warming/pollution kills the ozone we'll just end up being confined to our houses during the day and/or wearing thick smocks to protect from UV rays..and if the whole atmosphere gets screwed it'll be measurable and a solution will be created.

I'd say the best thing that could wipe out the entire planet would be aliens.

[Civil]

I don't think Human Civilization could be wiped out by a World War. Unless we decide to blow the world up 20times over..then I'm sure that a couple people will make it lol.

[Kersk]

If we got into a full out nuclear war, I hate to say that organisms like cockroaches would probably be the only things left living after surviving proximity to nuclear blasts, lethal amounts of global radiation, and years of nuclear winter. I can see it now though, 100 million years after we blow ourselves up the cockroaches will have evolved into a vast civilization of highly intelligent beings. Then they'll be scratching their heads as they dig up ancient human fossils and rusted out frames of Honda Civics. Of course, Charlton Heston will find a way to avoid death and get time-warped to this distant future:

"You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

[Southparkrocks]

The Human Race will persevere even if lots of people die.

[Success@Failure]

im movin to mars bitches. Thats right i said it. M.A.R.S. MARS. The United States of Space bitches!

[leg]

That's basically what Stephen Hawking said we should do.

[Zogo]

Then they'll be scratching their heads as they dig up ancient human fossils and rusted out frames of Honda Civics.

I don't know what the half-life of a honda civic is.

[ALieN]

I already think our planet's atmosphere is getting pretty fucked up. The seasons here on the east coast where I am (NJ/PA) are becoming pretty odd. Winter was warm as hell this year, summer in the beginning couldn't decide if it wanted to get hot or not, and storms are really getting worse than I have remembered in the past. I really think there will be some noticable changes within this century.

[Zogo]

I already think our planet's atmosphere is getting pretty fucked up. The seasons here on the east coast where I am (NJ/PA) are becoming pretty odd. Winter was warm as hell this year, summer in the beginning couldn't decide if it wanted to get hot or not, and storms are really getting worse than I have remembered in the past. I really think there will be some noticable changes within this century.

well no two seasons are alike..change is inevitable.