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Termyn8or -> RE: Obesity contributes to global warming: study (5/16/2008 9:51:44 AM)
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I am having trouble seeing how the two things are related.
First of all not all obese preople eat alot. While hauling their asses around might take more gas, putting it in perspective, to claim that this has any significant effect on global warming is quite AlGoreish.
I mean it is going to get to the point where having a cookout is illegal if this bad science keeps leading them by the nose.
Let me tell you exactly what I think of global warming - I DO NOT FUCKING CARE.
We are all dead. We are also part of the problem. Yes the billions of us who do everything with heat, we are contributing to global warming, but take (here's one for the math students) the sum total of all fossil fuel burned, and all heat produced by those things which are designed to produce heat, and all the heat we pump out of our dwellings using AC units, and of course the heat they generate and add it all up. I want the figure in BTUs.
Now take the radiant power of the sun, broken down to the portion of it we get, and get an average or aggragate figure on it's contribution. I would suggest that number is alot bigger once reduced to similar or comparable terms.
As usual I will argue against myself. Now not all the natural heat of this planet comes from the sun. This is completely discounting anything the beings on this planet do (I almost said humans). First of all just because of mass and gravity the Earth itself produces X amount of heat. Add to that all the heat energy that has been stored from sunshine over the millennia. Space is a pretty good insulator of heat. It is a vacuum therefore there is no convection or conduction. Only radiation.
But here on Earth convection and conduction rule. Meteorology is the study of exactly that. But more precisely, on the crust of the Earth. Basically if you refer to the temperature down in the magma, the mantle and the core of the planet, what we do has a negligable effect to be sure. But when we talk global, we are really talking about the Earth's crust. The part where we live.
To say that we have not had an effect would not be logical, but quantifying that effect has been the subject of much debate. Personally, I think our effect has been very minor.
This is pretty much like the ozone issue (up in the ozone somewhere). My buddy said there is no ozone layer, at first I thought, what a dick. But then I thought about it. I don't think this planet ever had an actual ozone layer. Because of how it is, it seems to concentrate over the equator, this because it is pretty much in orbit and thus centripetal force applies.
In other words, it was never a layer over Antarctica. But then it is not needed there. The ozone band, or ring, both of which would be more descriptive, centers itsel around the equator. And that is where it is needed the most. It was never a layer like the troposphere, ionosphere or anything like that.
Maybe a million years ago so much ozone got released that there was actually full coverage, which would technically constitute a layer. But over time, between the properties of O3 and the forces exerted on it by nature, it became a band. This may have happened before Mankind existed, the short decades in which we have been able to even detect the ozone "layer" are like a microsecond, once put into perspective.
The ozone band is most needed in regions near the equator. With the highly oblique angle of incidence of the sun's rays in the polar regions, they simply don't need it.
So what they are really talking about is a shrinking ozone band.
But back to the subject. We have warmed the globe, if you want to put it that way. If our impact was significant we will pay dearly. If the mean temperature on the entire SURFACE of the planet were to rise five degrees, the seas swell up because of melting ice. We lose land.
But then back to perspective, an iceberg is mostly underwater, the density of ice is only margianlly less than that of liquid H2O. Ask the people who were on the Titanic.
So the rise in sea level will not be as drastic as some predict, because certain factors are left out. Global warming is a farce, even though it is true. And there is not a thing we can do about it. Take a glass tumbler (why are they called that ?) and out a bunch of ice cubes in it. How much water do you have when they melt down ?
Now we have a situation where we are heating our environment, and most of us live on land. The mean temperature on the crust of this planet basically determines the water to land ratio. That is what they are crying about, the we will see more flooding etc., I bet Holland would be in a spot, but if you think about it a different way........
Nature is trying to regulate herself.
Nature provided that ozone band so we could live outside, and at the dawn of Mankind everything was outside pretty much. Inside came later.
We have supposedly learned so much about nature, but most fail to see the bigger picture. Everyone is a specialist. It's like everyone has their eyes trained on their own little magnifying glass and nobody can even see each other. That is the way I see today's science.
Nature provided this environment in which we live. If you can see the complexities in that and think there is not some sort of intelligence behind it, state your case. You would have to say that we are a fluke, that all this happened just by chance. That nature is a blind force, and the balances embodied in our environment are rare, possibly even unique.
Theologans rarely even consider the possibility of extraterrestrial life, even in the midst of how many species on this planet ? Think of insects and their adaptability. I think that over the millennia the complexity of the environment has lead some to believe that we are unique in the universe, and that thinking has led to alot of bad religion.
Like on Star Trek, what is a class M planet ? A planet that can sustain human life. But look at our planet, it sustains many other forms of life as well. Our first contact with ETs might be with six foot tall cockroaches. In my view though, if they have spaceships and come here and try to communicate, we must do the same.
Nobody read the artice I scanned about the deer on the island. Your loss. What I amsayingis that Nature is making a correction. Anytime any species produces overpopulation, Nature has been dealing with it in her own way since the dawn of time.
Global warming will raise sea level, which will decrease the space available for us to live. It is a simple adjustment, like everything else that has happened to facilitate our existence.
Enough for now. Yes there is global warming, one would have to be stupid not to admit it. But also realize one thing,no matter what I said about Nature andhow she might even be pissed off, we are a part of nature. We do what we have to do.
T
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