Who belives that there was actually a global cooling before this warming thing. Who thinks that global warming will be a problem. Explain, show your opinion. Who thinks that the efforts of governments would help with anything. Who thinks that the nations would band together to fight this threat in case, as an example, Tokyo and NY dissapear under water.

Ugh..

I actually got a headache from facepalming.

The earth naturally changes between Glacial and Inter-Glacial periods.
There is less airborne Carbon Dioxide in Glacial periods = COOLER
There is a greater amount in Inter-Glacial periods = WARMER

We are currently in an Inter-Glacial period, and thee last Glacial maximum was about 20,000 years ago or so.



It is already a problem, you just have to look in the right places.



Governments are already making efforts through the introduction of emission control policies, however a lot of the Global Summits which involve most of the largest emitters of GHG's (Greenhouse Gases) never seem to come out with a legally binding contract. People don't want to slow their own economy down.

They will only band together when it is too late. Human civilisation seems to wait for the problem to seriously effect us before deciding to take any action upon it.

People should be acting now, but people will not change unless it makes a serious difference to their lives.



My opinion? It's not the greatest threat to human civilisation anyway. Over-population is.

kthxbai.

Apparently the person who started this spin-off from the Immortality thread after I mentioned taking it to another thread for discussion; he just explained the premise poorly. It's about the global cooling hype from the 70s that you mentioned.

call it climate change

saying global warming just shows that you don't really know what you are talking about.

-ERMAN

indeed I don't know, that's why I made this topic,to not have to read hundreds of pages of theory and such googling it ;p
I want to know about the opinion of people.I know there are people that think global warming doesn't exist. Or they think it is not harmful.
That is what interests me most, not The truth...
And also, if the globe warms up by itself, if we stop producing so much co2 it really wouldn't make too much of a difference would it.

As ERMAN said, its climate change, similar(and far more drastic) changes have been seen in the artic ice core samples.

"Global warming" however is real, in the sense I use it in, meaning that Humans are influencing the speed at which it changes. The debate as far as Im concerned is by how much.

The climate is changing. The climate has always changed. There are three conditions I can list off the top of my head which will cause the climate to stop changing: #1 The Earth is physically destroyed (blown up, sucked into a black hole, etc.) #2 The Sun and stars finally burn out, leaving the Earth and the rest of the Universe at a temperature of absolute zero. #3 Humanity or some other intelligent species develops the means to control the climate so completely that they set the climate at a temperature they like and leave it there.

People obviously have some effect on the climate. Even our breathing produces greenhouse gasses after all. However, saying that we have some effect isn't the same as saying we have a noticeable effect. For example, if you're lying on the ground, you will slow the rotation of the Earth when you stand up by moving your center of mass farther from the center of the Earth. The main difference between that and human-caused global warming is that the Al Gore types haven't yet figured out how to implement a rotational inertia tax.

Even if we are having a noticeable effect on the climate, we are faced with two options: #1 Keep on doing it, or #2 Stop living. Sorry, but that's where we are as a world. Paying Al Gore for the privilege of heating your home in the Winter is not going to solve the problem. You will need the heat to stay alive, so you will pay the carbon fines. Oh, it may be your electric company that actually pays the fines directly, but they will just pass the cost along to you. Then there is all of your food. Every bite that you eat is grown and transported at the cost of ENORMOUS carbon emissions. So, the people who grow and transport your food will pay the carbon fines and then pass them on to you. Then you have to cook the food. . .you get the point. Even if you try to return to primitive life you have to burn something to keep warm and cook your food.

If you try to eliminate or even appreciably reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you kill off a large portion of Earth's population. The U.S.A. and a few other nations can still afford some experiments with more expensive forms of power, but the rest of the world is barely staying alive as it is, and much of the population of the "third world" is only alive because the industrialized nations are supporting them - and emitting greenhouse gasses in the process.

Some people actually advocate a drastic reduction in the world's population to under half a billion or so as a means of reducing our impact on the environment. If reducing our footprint is your goal, then their method is the only option that will work. Period. Like I said, we go on emitting greenhouse gasses or we quit living. I'd rather keep on living, thank you very much.

tl;dr Climate change is natural and normal. While humans obviously have some effect on the climate, it's so small that it's really impossible to tell whether changes are "our fault" or just nature. Even if the changes are our fault, there is currently no way to stop them without killing off a significant percentage of the human population in the process.