Consumerism vs sustainability

[davereid]

Well, as I understand, there's no real argument about whether global warming is actually happening. Drowning polar bears is testament to that. The argument lies around whether the global warming is man-made.

Personally, I think that the link between carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures is pretty overwhelming, although admittedly there are those who disagree. I've read some of their arguments and am not impressed.
Note that carbon emissions are man made, and CAN be affected by sustainable living.

So the only question left is whether global warming is bad. Scientists predictions seem to range from a significant inconvenience, to outright disaster for humanity. I'd rather not gamble on this one :-)

1.
Its far from certain that Global warming is even happening. It would appear to be happening in some places.

But ask the Chinese currently freezing in the coldest winter for 100 years if it's happening in their polluted backyard.

Certainly in our own recorded history we are at a low point in the global temperature cycle, not a high point. Thats why the Romans wanted to grow grapes in York in the UK - they considered the climate perfect for viticulture. Bit cold these days to grow grapes there, at least commercially.

2.
The link between carbon dioxide levels and temerature is well established. But, its the other way around. Carbon dioxide levels increase after temperature increases. Mr. Gore and others cooked the figures to make it look the other way around. (Google it !)

3.
Is Global warming bad ? We don't even agree it's happening !


Kyoto ?
Possibly the biggest fraud ever perpetuated on the world.

Ask yourself a few questions about Kyoto.

1. Who wins from Kyoto ?
The Pollys will tell you that you do.
But actually, all that will happen is your energy costs, and thus everything else too will go up.

Your Mum will freeze in her pensioner apartment as she can't afford electricity, and her wood burner is banned.

She won't be able to afford good food as it will be too expensive, due to the cost of transport, and the diversion of crop land to biofuels.

She will be stuck at home watching TV as private transport has been priced out of her reach.

So, the pollies are wrong. Someone else is winning.

The nuclear industry will be quids in. Already are. China and Russia are building nukes as fast as they can chuck - em - up. Even Finland is in on it, chucking in a giant Nuke.

The petrochemical companies are a winner too. As you pay the tax, not them. And if consumption goes down, they have a longer future in business. All hey need to do is crank up the profit margin, and that will be easy. Doubling the margin on a litre of gas from $.10 to $.20 will be a breeze when politicians are sticking $2 on for carbon.

And the banks ?
Yep, you will be trading carbon every day, on everything you buy. And guess what. A little swiss bank will be getting a cut on it all. A brand new market, invented just when it was needed. Very cunning.

[Cruisin' Craig]

Certainly in our own recorded history we are at a low point in the global temperature cycle, not a high point. Thats why the Romans wanted to grow grapes in York in the UK - they considered the climate perfect for viticulture. Bit cold these days to grow grapes there, at least commercially.

I'm not quite sure where this comes from. I've just done some googling.
The first three global temperature graphs I found showed the current temperature to be at a high point for the last sixty years or so.
Then I found a global temperature graph covering all 4.6 billion years of the Earths history.
This shows our current temperature to be the third highest peak in the history of the Earth. Certainly a local high!

Here it is: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/

2.
The link between carbon dioxide levels and temerature is well established. But, its the other way around. Carbon dioxide levels increase after temperature increases. Mr. Gore and others cooked the figures to make it look the other way around. (Google it !)

I haven't been able to find this. I'd like to have a read if you can help with a link??

[Hitcher]

Concern about "global warming" is, in my opinion, a red herring. It's a fear tactic that propagandaists, such as the lovely Al Gore, have overused to make a point.

Living more sustainably makes sense on several levels without the need to endeavour to resort to dodgy statistics or equivocal science to frame a point. It doesn't cost, it pays dividends to all who embrace it. Lots of small initiatives collectively add up. The scale of human waste, as referenced by the link in the first post in this thread, is truly phenomenal. Doing nothing is not an option.

[Usarka]

Limit population growth.

three kids maximum per family.

injected contraceptive given at collection of dpb payment.

[Hitcher]

Limit population growth.

three kids maximum per family.

injected contraceptive given at collection of dpb payment.

Define "family". With the propensity of some fellows to repeatedly knock up the woman of their dreams, subsequently move on to a newer model and repeat the experience; keeping count of the resultant offspring could cause bureaucrats to prematurely infarct.

[Ocean1]

injected contraceptive given at collection of dpb payment.

Retroactive to birth.

[Ocean1]

Define "family". With the propensity of some fellows to repeated knock up the woman of their dreams, subsequently move on to a newer model and repeat the experience; keeping count of the resultant offspring could cause bureaucrats to prematurely infarct.

Bloody devious if you ask me, love it.

[Ixion]

Define "family". With the propensity of some fellows to repeated knock up the woman of their dreams, subsequently move on to a newer model and repeat the experience; keeping count of the resultant offspring could cause bureaucrats to prematurely infarct.

I already answered that problem
'

Easy solution. Government by law adds contraceptive pill to all water supplies. Only the Speights brewery has an exception. So, chicks remain non-preggers. Guys that drinks Speights are OK. Those that don't drink Speights are probably homos anyway, so a dose of fanny pills will probably be right up their (back) alley.

And the population will be maintained by the small but elite and refined group of chicks who drink Speights. Who obviously are exactly the sort of people we want as the nations Mums.

[Big Dave]

The nuclear industry will be quids in. Already are. China and Russia are building nukes as fast as they can chuck - em - up. Even Finland is in on it, chucking in a giant Nuke.

And Australia has most of the world's Uranium.
Sheik Big Dave of Dubbo....nice.

[Badjelly]

The link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature is well established. But, its the other way around. Carbon dioxide levels increase after temperature increases.

I haven't been able to find this. I'd like to have a read if you can help with a link??

Maybe I can help:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...-temp-and-co2/

I'll give you a hint that will help you understand what the fuss is about: some people have trouble understanding that "A affects B" and "B affects A" can both be true at the same time!

[avgas]

Ask yourself a few questions about Kyoto.

1. Who wins from Kyoto ?
The Pollys will tell you that you do.
But actually, all that will happen is your energy costs, and thus everything else too will go up.

Your Mum will freeze in her pensioner apartment as she can't afford electricity, and her wood burner is banned.

She won't be able to afford good food as it will be too expensive, due to the cost of transport, and the diversion of crop land to biofuels.

She will be stuck at home watching TV as private transport has been priced out of her reach.

Umm no - Kyoto actually has the opposite. Its a very delightful city. New Zealand could learn a lot from how clean and well thought it is. But then again when has NZ learnt anything? We still vote and then bitch, cut down our native lands, expect unemployed to improve themselves, polute more than we are worth and complain about crims - while there is not a single drop of reasonable structure to scare crims out of crime.

If it wern't for the whaling i think Japan would make NZ look like the un-clean, un-intelligent, rubbish filled country that it is
We assume that we know better here, but we are wrong sometimes too.

[jazbug5]

Yeah pretty much. We never run out of anything, because as it gets scarce, it gets expensive, so we just use something else.

Oookay. And if clean, unpolluted air and water becomes scarce, what will we use instead..?

[Ixion]

Oookay. And if clean, unpolluted air and water becomes scarce, what will we use instead..?

As was the case in the 19th century.

[jazbug5]

Ah, but Ixion- we have a rather wider range of pollutants available to us now and many of them are for more toxic and also more capable of entering the food chain. In those days there were terrible issues in new industrial centres because of the sudden population growth. Smog was poisonous, but subsided relatively quickly, and better hygiene and plumbing was enough to deal with pollution caused by human waste etc.
The scale of the issues we now face have a much higher potential scale and severity; can we really say for sure that we can turn back and reverse the damage we are doing quite as easily in the future?

[Ixion]

Every age thinks its own problems are worse than any past age.

Victorian pollution had lots of lovely nasties - lead (in profusion), mercury, tin, hells own concoctions from smelting and blast furnaces. Plus water loaded with microbes. Assuming that you had running water at all, which millions didn't.

Cleaning water isn't that hard, we do it now. Cleaning air, a bit harder , but not impossible even today.

Though none of that actually has anything to do with sustainability.