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Originally Posted by camaraderie
Because even if it is 100% inevitable "natural" climate change, I somehow doubt that the response should be "OK, then I'll just keep building coal plants and driving SUVs until we cook".
I'm having trouble following your last statement. If what we are doing does not affect the climate...then there is no reason to change what we're doing on a CLIMATE based theory.
Well, there is that breathing thing we do.
Now...I can argue against dirty coal plants and gas guzzling SUV's on several other fronts:
1. Unhealthy pollution.
2. Funding of Islamic terrorism.
3. Balance of payments/national security
4. Inperative to develope alternates to a limited resource
5. etc.
The point of this thread is to discuss if man-made global warming is or is not a fact ...not to discuss what else we might like to change in the world.
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Well, something's going wonky, and our production of certain gases due to industrial activities, electrical generation, transport etc. is the variable we know is different from previous ages. I suppose the question is whether there is a natural component (solar variation, methane bubbles from the ocean, etc.) to what we can easily estimate, being the cause and all.
I also believe that global warming is intimately tied to what else we might like to change in the world, if only because a warmer world will present a great number of hard choices.
My province announced a ban on incandescent lightbulbs today in favour of compact flourescents. I agree in principle that standard bulbs produce too little light and too much heat for too much power: my power bill reflects this. But CF lights have their own problems: namely, the fact that they are toxic waste due to the mercury content...they can't go into the recycling stream here, (nor should they, as should not the more familiar tube florescent lights).
My boat (to bring this thread even fractionally back to boating) has a mixture of LEDs and AlpenGlow 5 and 9 watt lights. They are durable and give a nice light. That decision is driven by power concerns. If we paid what Japan and Europe paid, all this would change more rapidly.
Who caught the NOVA special on solar power last Tuesday? Interesting stuff.