Saving the Planet

Well said Peter.:cl-p:

 

Hi Peter. Thanks for the reply. Yes, I saw the prog you referred to. I think we all accept the fact that the Earth is warming, the argument seems to be, what's causing it. As regards your analogy (see, Kristen, I'm learning:wink about drinking/disease. If you're that heavily into your addiction, I don't think you worry about the consequences. I think that's the problem now. My belief is that we evolved to deal with problems that were an immediate threat to our survival/reproduction chances. (like, watch that lion, tough, it got you:(). I'm not sure that we are capable (as a species) of worrying about things that are too far into the future. We only have to worry about living long enough to reproduce. I'm not sure that we qualify as an "intelligent" species.

 

If only the experts/commentators/media/politicans could be as succint as Peter in explaining the facts as they are known, to the General Public, we'd all be in a better position to understand what's going on and why.

All we seem to be getting is, "because of 'Global Warming' we're going to stop you doing this, raise the Tax on that and reduce this service", which (IMHO) turns Joe Average off the whole subject.

 

Thanks Cajory and Doodle. I believe you are right Cajory about the time perids involved. All systems are associated with reaction times. A pedestrian can stop very quickly, a car may take 100 feet, but a supertanker can take 10 miles to stop or alter course. The bigger the object the bigger the inertia.

I worked for many years with temperature control systems and they are subject to exactly the same rules. The earth is so large that I could understand if someone said it took 500 years to alter course. I have no ides what the figure is, but it is possible that the earth has only reacted, so far, to what happened 50 years ago and that the changes since then haven't kicked in yet! We just don't know. The Romans and the Victorians had the vision to operate on a long time scale, but modern man can't. We have to show a profit this quarter or else someone gets fired.

 

I don't think its all hype. But yes I am getting fed up with it all.

My reasoning is this: As ordinary individuals we are constantly being told it is all our fault, yet large companies who actually have the power to make real changes are just interested in their profits. Sure some companies take little steps in improving their eco image, but not because they think they ought to for the sake of the planet, they do it so they can boast about it and hope we switch to their product.

Then there's the fact that we tend to jump onto the latest bandwagon without questioning it first. A few years ago garden wind turbines were all the rage, and if you didn't buy one then you were single-handedly destroying the planet. Then someone said, hang on a minute, these things take more energy to manufacture than they will ever generate in their useful life. Further back than that when we found out that CFCs in aerosols were making a hole in the ozone layer, lots of people actually threw full cans of stuff away because it was bad, without thinking about how much energy had been wasted in in its production or how it would be disposed of. I bet there's thousands of tonnes of full aerosol cans in landfill sites everywhere, their metal cans slowly corroding and releasing their contents.

Then there's this strange territorial attitude to climate change. Britain has to be more efficient than China, or America has to be cleaner than Zimbabwe (for example). Do the governments of the world not realise that it doesn't matter who makes the mess, as it affects us all anyway.

 

Might also be helpful if high rise office blocks turned off their lights of an evening. If you're ever been wandering around Canary Wharf at night time, it looks like Christmas, so many lights are left on.

Peter mentioned population control. An excellent idea - it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the planet can only sustain a finite amount of us.

 

Hi Peter, clueless. I'm sure you're both right about the "profit" motive. It's whats called "Capitalism". The problem is in trying to find a different system. No point in relying on the current bunch of politictians, the recent revelations have shown what they're interested in:wink::hehe:. It's not in "saving the planet":(