Environmental Awareness *Go Green!!!*

[TamanduaGirl]

My point was that those two or three little things are two or three little things almost everyone does and it's just daily life, at least in most US cities and suburbs. Who wants to pay extra for the light bill? Who wants to pay extra for trash when recycling gets taken away for free? Who wants to pay a bigger gas bill for driving when they don't need to? If that's all you are doing you aren't doing anything. I listed many things that can be done with little effort and you didn't mention any of that. Have you ever done any of them? Did you even bother to click on the link and save a few feet of rain forest? You're likely on line everyday so what harm is there to you to click daily?

As for global warming well the ice caps are crumbling at the edges but they are getting thicker in depth so are really about the same mass as always. The oceans around the equator have actually gotten cooler. The air temp has gone up a bit but the earth has NEVER had a stable envornment. There have been many ice ages and hot dry times, it cycles and this we are living in now has been the longest in between there has been yet. Finlay all the other planets in our solar system have heated up to about the same amount in the same time frame so it could well be related and we certainly aren't responsible for them too.

I wasn't going to bring that up though because it's a 100% we are harming the earth weather we have anything to do with any warming or not. Again the post wasn't saying not to recycle it was saying are you actually doing anything to help I mean realy doing something you wouldn't do every day anyway for other reasons?

[Lady's Human]

Lady's Human, my brother and I had a talk about that and he agreed with you. He doesn't care anymore because the government doesn't. How reassuring

Where did I say that?

[Giselle]

Lady's Human, he just agreed in that the government isn't doing anything. Sorry. Could see how it could have gotten misinterpreted.

TamanduaGirl, see, I don't think global warming is a natural anomaly. I don't think there is any dispute over its credibility. Yes, there have been heat cycles in the past couple hundred years that we've recorded, but this current one is incredibly larger and incredibly longer than the ones before. And at the rate we're going, it's increasing with every moment. Where did you find information about polar caps thickening in depth? I'd like to see the link.

Even if you don't believe that global warming is a serious issue. Let's consider the science. Carbon dioxide generally has a lower specific heat than nitrogen, the main component of the earth's atmosphere. Thus, co2 traps more heat. As enormous amounts of carbon dioxide are pulsated into the atmosphere, more heat and light rays are trapped in instead of bouncing back out. Polar ice caps melt. Glaciers melt. Sea level will eventually rise. More heat is continually trapped because of the lost "mirror"-effect of the ice caps. The temperature continues rising and moisture is continually pulled from land. None of this is speculation.

And since you must ask me personally, here's a short list of what I do:
- I'm a vegetarian for environmental reasons purely
- All the lightbulbs in our house have been energy efficient for the past 5-6 years
- I've made an effort to buy exclusively from the two local farmer's markets, which solves your buying local/buying organic issue at once
- My dogs and I do not eat commercialized food. We rarely, if ever, have overprocessed/overpackaged junk in our house
- I was a regular volunteer at the Oakland Zoo and donated $100 during that time
- We replaced our old washing machine with an EnergyStar
- I do recycle batteries as I know of the risks of heavy metal leakage
- Despite the relative cold weather of my neighborhood, I managed to grow a myriad of veggies and fruits and a nice, big, white, flowery tree whose name I don't know.
- I'm a SCA volunteer and donor
- And, why, yes, I did click on your link! I don't know how credible that link is (the .com caused a little doubt), but I didn't have the time nor effort to check its legitimacy.

I can't think of much else off the top of my head, but if you insist, I can certainly continue the list.

[Lady's Human]

"The government" is a vague term.

I specifically referred to the Chinese, Russian and Indian governments.

The US government is doing much in the realm of being "green", but what this country does to clean up is more than cancelled out by the three countries I mentioned in particular.

A modern SUV pollutes less running on the highway at 75 MPH than a 1980 subcompact does sitting in place.

You also have to consider what being green/eco friendly really means.

One popular "feel good" way to lower pollutants you are producing is to get a hybrid. There's more pollution and energy use involved in the production of
a hybrid auto than you could ever save by using the hybrid. Batteries, special electrical components, etc. produce more pollutants than a normal vehicle will over a lifetime.

Electric cars? Again, sounds good, but where does the additional electricity come from? Also, back to the sticky issue of high density storage batteries.

[TamanduaGirl]

That link has been around for years as well as the click to sponsure breast cancer research thing they host and I'd think it would be exposed by now if it were fake. I'm glad you're doing all that. Most don't and just claim to dive less and recycle and then complain about how things are.

The earth has been around more than 100 years that we've studied it. scientists have evidence in sea floor core samples and in various glacial ice core samples of 17 ice ages "small" and "large" over the last 1.8 million years.
and in between each "ice age" there are warm "interglacial periods". The shortest interglacial period was approximately 8,OOO years, and the longest interglacial lasted approximately 12,OOO years."


"The geographic North Pole was last covered with water about 50 million years ago, during the early part of the present Cenozoic Era. Known as the ¦Age of Mammals² and the ¦Recent Life Era,² this modern age ¤ which saw the dawn of human beings ³ began 65 million years ago."

And so the earth cycles through times of cold and hot to the point that the poles have melted to the point of just water before. Even if we are speeding it up it is something that is going to happen anyway. It warms and melts to a point where the ocean curents shift and then cooling happens and there's the new iceage to deal with.


Of course they try to blame thicker ice cap on global warming still but it does say basicaly what I said that it is getting thicker. The smaller glaciers are melting away but they would anyway as it was pointed out we are coming out of one of those icages still in one of those inbetween stages.

The arctic pole is thinning some but still gets fresh deposits of several feet in thickness every year. the antarctic pole is thickening at a rate that at least for now cancels it out.

a lot is still so uncertain with the idea of global warming and it was not that long ago scientists were predicting a new ice age which could still come about due in part to global warming. and looking at the past schedual of how long these in between stages seemed to last we are about due for a big swing. I look at it as seasons of the globe, natural cycles. Even if we are contributing to it happening a bit more quickly it would be foolish to think if humans were eradicated today it wouldn't still happen. History repeats it's self and so will the cold and hot spells of the earth. It was once warm and tropical enough all over Tamanduas lived in the UK.

And there's still no acounting for the fact the other planets in our solar system are undergoing the same amount of warming we are and they can't say why.

none of that is to say we shouldn;'t be worried about what we do to the envornment but that global warming isn't the thing to focus on. Loss of habitat is. If you loose all the wild lands and polute the oceans then you end the earth or at least destroy ourselves and leave cockroaches to rule the world.

Antarctica ice cap thickens, slowing rise of sea levels
Scientists say it's an effect of global warming
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/in...-job/#more-113
The arctic caps is however a bit thinner based on a satelite sruvey
BY ROBERT LEE HOTZ

Los Angeles Times

As glaciers from Greenland to Kilimanjaro recede at record rates, the central ice cap of Antarctica has steadily grown for the past 11 years, partially offsetting rising seas due to global warming, researchers said Thursday.

The vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet — a 2-mile-thick wasteland of ice larger than Australia, drier than the Sahara and as cold as a Martian spring — increased in mass every year between 1992 and 2003 due to additional snowfall, an analysis of satellite radar measurements showed.

"It is an effect that has been predicted as a likely result of climate change," said David Vaughan, an independent expert on the ice sheets at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England.

In a region known for the lowest temperatures on Earth, it normally is too cold to snow across the 2.7 million square miles of the ice sheet. Additional snowfall in east Antarctica is almost certainly due to warmer temperatures, four experts on Antarctica said.

"As the atmosphere warms, it should hold more moisture," said climatologist Joseph McConnell at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev., who helped conduct the study. "In East Antarctica, that means there should be more snowfall."

The additional snowfall is enough to account for an extra 45 billion tons of water added to the ice sheet every year, about equal to the annual amount of water flowing into the ocean from the melting Greenland ice cap, researchers said Thursday in the online journal Science.

Rising sea levels, which could swamp coastal and island communities, are a serious potential consequence of global warming, according to the most recent assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Sea level is believed to be rising worldwide by 1.8 millimeters a year due to the expansion of warming water and the added outwash from melting glaciers in Greenland, Alaska, tropical highlands and elsewhere in Antarctica.

Every millimeter of increased sea level corresponds to about 350 billion tons of water a year.

The growth in the East Antarctic ice cap is enough to slow sea-level rise by a fraction of that — 0.12 millimeters a year — the researchers reported.

The fresh water locked up in the ice of East Antarctica is enough to raise the level of the oceans by about 196 feet, experts said. If it continues to grow as expected, the ice sheet could help buffer some of the effects of anticipated sea-level rise for much of the coming century, the researchers said.

"It is the only large body of ice absorbing sea level rise, not contributing to it," said mapping expert Curt Davis at the University of Missouri, Columbia, who led the research team.

The researchers based their conclusions on an analysis of 347 million radar altimeter measurements made by European Space Agency satellites from June 1992 to May 2003.

[Giselle]

I disagree and agree to a certain point. Loss of habitat is an enormous concern. But our methods of destroying habitat are contributing to enviornmental health (or, rather, lack thereof) and the subsequent global warming. Slash and burn techniques in the Amazon kill innumerable animals and destroys precious habitat, yes. But it also produces acid rain and an even larger amount of CO2. Habitat destruction and global warming go hand in hand. In an effort to curb our CO2 output, we should also be aware of how we leave our footprints in the world.

Indeed, the earth has been around for more than 100 years. But in the 100 or so years that we've been studying it, we've managed to look back in time at least 650,000 years in terms of ice ages and heat waves. While that is nothing compared to our actual time on the earth and the earth's age itself, it provides a good look at what normal activity is and isn't. What we're experiencing now is not normal by any means.

Perhaps we are overdue for our next ice age, but human activity is certainly speeding it up. And should we completely ignore the signs, we might as well sign off now and continue living the trash-exorbitant lifestyle that we, as a whole, live now. The point is not to debate whether or not global warming is "real" or that it truly is happening. My point was to mention that these things are truly happening, and while they are nature driven to a certain point, we are speeding it up at an insane speed. Is that not digging our own graves? I read the article and I did not read that the antartic is "cancelling" out the overall sea level rise:

Sea level is believed to be rising worldwide by 1.8 millimeters a year due to the expansion of warming water and the added outwash from melting glaciers in Greenland, Alaska, tropical highlands and elsewhere in Antarctica.

The growth in the East Antarctic ice cap is enough to slow sea-level rise by a fraction of that — 0.12 millimeters a year — the researchers reported.

If I did my math right, that's about 6.67%. That's not nearly enough to set back the effects of glacial melting. I'll need to get back to this as Christmas festivities are calling me, but I'll finish this later.

Continuing on So we've come to the conclusion that 1) the earth has always had heat waves but there's no doubt that this heat wave is much prolonged and much more intense 2) habitat destruction is a definite problem and a large contributor to global warming 3) the enviornment is definitely in need of a little boost. So one thing is crystal clear: We as a whole community need to do something. This was the whole purpose of my initial post: to call PTers forward and urge them to make an impact in their community, and, hopefully, in the larger community - our earth and our world. It's commendable that you are so passionate about tropical forests and such as the destruction of these precious and diminishing habitats is a large contributor to global warming and the overall health of our earth and its inhabitants.

While this, er, debate might seem troublesome, I think this is a fabulous learning experience. I hope PTers do read this and make some wholesome decisions for themselves. Plant a tree (lots of trees!!), buy local and organic, dump your old gas guzzler for a more efficient car, replace your lightbulbs, replace your old appliances with EnergyStars, walk dont drive, heck, you might even consider going veg! And fight to keep your local flora and fauna. Global warming requires global changes. Global changes start locally. Let's all start locally, PTers.

[Miss Z]

As for global warming well the ice caps are crumbling at the edges but they are getting thicker in depth so are really about the same mass as always. The oceans around the equator have actually gotten cooler. The air temp has gone up a bit but the earth has NEVER had a stable envornment. There have been many ice ages and hot dry times, it cycles and this we are living in now has been the longest in between there has been yet. Finlay all the other planets in our solar system have heated up to about the same amount in the same time frame so it could well be related and we certainly aren't responsible for them too.

That's a good point. However, whether or not the ice-caps are increasing in depth and therefore staying on average at the same volume, the crumbling of the edges reduces the surface area of the ice-cap. In the Arctic, this harms the polar bear, as I'm sure someone mentioned before. The seals which it hunts do not have the relatively thin sea ice to make breathing holes in, the method that the polar bear relies on to catch them. The seals can just swim in the unfrozen water and the polar bear doesn't stand a chance of outswimming them.

It's true, the oceans will and are getting cooler, due to the ice that is melting into them. I heard that Britain will get a lot cooler before we get hotter due to a current that runs between it and Ireland being affected by the melting ice.

You do have a good point about the fact it may not all be down to us. For millions of years, Earth has plunged in and out of ice ages and heatwaves, so we can never expect that to change. But due to this unstability of our climate, we could really do without hurrying it up.

I agree with Giselle, this certainly has been an interesting thread.