And The Point of Live Earth Was?

[dang65]

he said that oil will never run out, he reckons that it will just get more and more expensive to the point that we will all have to find alternative means unless you are very rich

Yes, that's pretty much the basis of Peak Oil theory. i.e. We find oil, we start pumping it until it's at maximum productivity, then it 'peaks' and from then on it gets harder to extract what's left in the well and it starts to costs more. That is what happens. The new thing though is that the entire world's oil is at peak now (or very soon, some dispute), not just a few wells here and there. From now on oil prices will rise and rise, and it won't just impact on car drivers (in fact there seem to be some pretty good alternatives for fueling cars) but heavy industry, transport, manufacturing - just about everything we use and eat and travel on is reliant on oil at the moment.

I guess it would be pretty easy for an oil trader to be relaxed. That's one job that's looking very comfortable for the forseeable future. High demand product to sell and guaranteed price increases every day? Ideal.

[Orangutan]

If the climate is as badly affected as (some) people fear, the sooner we realise that we are far too stupid and selfish to counter the effects (assuming its even possible) the better.
But lets not waste time and money on reducing/reversing the effects, lets concentrate the efforts on finding & inhabiting a new home (one that will take us longer to destroy).


Discuss.....

[Ardesco]

Climate change is all a load of utter rot!!!

Scientists have profiled the temperatures the planet has been at before by drilling out ice cores from the arctic circle and there is scientific proof that temperatures have been both much colder and much warmer than our current temperatures. The planet swings from ice ages to hot periods and it is entirely natural, thinking it is all caused by us is utter bollocks.

Do people realise that if a volcano goes off it does more damage to the ozone layer and produces more CO2 that we do in a couple of years?

The second thing that pisses me off is all this carbon neutral bollocks. Carbon is not a particulary bad thing. Trees and various plant life use it for photosynthasis and there is actually very little evidence to suggest that CO2 itself is warming up the planet. There is quite a substantial amount of evidence that water vapour in the air has a much greater impact than CO2, however you don't see people moaning about the water vapour and trying to reduce that. CO2 is a conveniant evil, it is produced by every engine that is powered by an oil based fuel and we can use it as an excuse to villify the oil companies, and to increase taxes on oil based products "for the good of the environment". It is easier to blame humans for high CO2 levels than it is for high water vapour levels.

I tend to treat all of this stuff with the contempt it deserves. Yes the planet is warming up at the moment, but it is a cylce that will reverse at some point and it will start cooling down again. We have gone through hot and cold spells throughout the last few thousand years and we are still here and we have much more technology than we did last time this all happened.

[dang65]

let's concentrate the efforts on finding & inhabiting a new home (one that will take us longer to destroy).

Discuss.....

I think they've already tried to find somewhere and unfortunately there isn't anywhere. Well, they did find one, but it's 20.5 light years away.

To put that in persepctive, here's a quote from Bill Bryson's 'A Short History Of Nearly Everything':

Our nearest neighbour in the cosmos, Proxima Centauri, which is part of the three star cluster known as Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light years away, a cissy skip in galactic terms, but still a hundred million times further than a trip to the Moon. To reach it by spaceship would take at least twenty-five thousand years, and even if you made the trip you still wouldn't be anywhere except at a clutch of stars in the middle of a vast nowhere. To reach the next landmark of consequence, Sirius, would involve another 4.6 light years of travel. And so it would go if you tried to star-hop your way across the cosmos. Just reaching the centre of our own galaxy would take far longer than we have existed as beings.

[DodgyAgent]

Well said Ardesco, Death to the Kettle

[dang65]

We have gone through hot and cold spells throughout the last few thousand years and we are still here and we have much more technology than we did last time this all happened.

Uh, yeah, I think that's what worries the Doomers the most - that we have much more technology than we did last time. We're completely reliant on it. Last time, there were a lot less people on the planet. If it became impossible to live in one place then they moved to another place and there was room for them there. Can't really see the neighbours putting up with that this time.

Also, the olden days humans lived a day-to-day, hand-to-mouth existence based on simple survival and living off the land. Most of us don't really do that these days. Something goes wrong with the deliveries to Tesco's and we're screwed. Where would you start to look for food? (I'm including Waitrose and M&S in the food delivery hypothesis by-the-way.)

All this could happen very slowly and give us plenty of time to adapt, and we're not really likely to end up back in the Stone Age, but life's going to change, honest.

[Ardesco]

Uh, yeah, I think that's what worries the Doomers the most - that we have much more technology than we did last time. We're completely reliant on it. Last time, there were a lot less people on the planet. If it became impossible to live in one place then they moved to another place and there was room for them there. Can't really see the neighbours putting up with that this time.

Where is your proof that it became impossible to live in any particular place on this planet? We are far better equipped to move around the planet nowdays (planes and nice big gas guzzling cars exist you know) should the need arise. There are lots of parts of the planet that could be habitated if the need arose, although I think you are going way OTT here.

Also, the olden days humans lived a day-to-day, hand-to-mouth existence based on simple survival and living off the land. Most of us don't really do that these days. Something goes wrong with the deliveries to Tesco's and we're screwed. Where would you start to look for food? (I'm including Waitrose and M&S in the food delivery hypothesis by-the-way.)

There are plenty of furry things that we can catch and eat if the need should arise. It really is not that hard. Anyway what makes you think that food is going to dry up? Hot weather like this is great for growing things, some people are pointing out that they are getting two crops of blackberries this year... At the end of the day people learn and people adapt. Lots of people grow thier own veg in the garden and it is not hard to capture a furry critter and then skin it an cook it, and yes everybody can do it, not just those of us who have done some survival training at some point in the past.

All this could happen very slowly and give us plenty of time to adapt, and we're not really likely to end up back in the Stone Age, but life's going to change, honest.

Really and you based this wild assumption on what?

You really do come out with a load of drivel. You are rolling out the same old scarmongering lines that really mean very little. So the temperature is going to increase, it's not going to suddenly kill us. So water levels rise, well Holland has successfully survuved for centuries while being below sea level. You really do have a very low opinion of the human race if you think that a few more degrees is going to knock us back to the stone age....

[Ollie]

The point was....

Get wasted, and listen to music.

[dang65]

You really do have a very low opinion of the human race if you think that a few more degrees is going to knock us back to the stone age....

Well, what I actually said was, "we're not really likely to end up back in the Stone Age, but life's going to change, honest." So, pretty much the same as what you said. Sure, the human race will adapt, but it'll take a while. Apart from squirrels and rats, what sort of furry animals are you thinking of in London? The ones at the Zoo? How many people are growing more than a row of cabbages and some tomatoes?

Honestly, I'm not really that bothered what people do about the warnings. Like I said before, it's like watching the weather and deciding if you need a brolly - it's up to the individual how they react.

But denying that it's happening, or that it's going to have a big impact on us, is bizarre. It's like claiming that the earth is flat, or claiming that the universe and everything in it was created in 7 days. There's scientific consensus that climate change is happening, and it's happening a lot faster than was predicted even five years ago. That's not scaremongering or being a conspiracy theorist or a heretic, it's scientific consensus. It's bizarre that people with such a high opinion of their own mental abilities are on here saying that this is all nonsense. Where do you get that idea from? It's simply not true.

[King Cnvt]

Dang,

For gods sake turn that PC off and stop posting. You are burning up valuable resources and generating a lot of CO2.

We'd all be very appreciative.

Thanks,

****.