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ORIGINAL: cuckoldmepls

Well there is no doubt that mankind has a negative impact on our planet. However, It's pretty obvious to me that we have been in a natural warming period for hundreds if not thousands of years.

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 The icecaps were receding in the early 1900's before the Industrial revolution had even come full strength and cars took over the world. We certainly aren't helping though. It is cause for concern though, and the only practical method to avert it is nuclear power and electric cars.

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I believe it won't have the impact that they predict it will though. For example they talk about how rising ocean waters will inundate hundreds of major cities. Well I believe that as much as we irrigate worldwide, which ensures that most of the fresh water will not return to the seas, it will be a neglible rise. Now if we really want to avert a global flood, then perhaps we should build a nuclear desalinizaton plant in a central location along Africa's coast, and then build massive irrigation canals to turn parts of Africa into a Garden of Eden.

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Now, doesn't that sound like a good public works project for Africans to do that will help themselves permanently, rather than expect free help from the rest of the world forever. Despite the fact, that they've never heard of birth control or vasectomies.

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ORIGINAL: cloudboy


Lovelock considers the only viable alternative energy source to cut CO2 quantities in the air to be be nuclear power.

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ORIGINAL: cloudboy



James Lovelock predicts a huge jump in the earth's temperatures:

>A new climatic jump, he concludes, will occur within the next few years or decades, and will involve an abrupt increase in average global surface temperature of 9 degrees Celsius—from 15 to 24 degrees Celsius (59 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit). Such a shift, he contends, will trigger the collapse of our global civilization and the near extinction of humanity.<

Such a temperature jump is a minority view in the scientific community, but it still makes me want to move inland around a mountainous area and take up survivalist skills.

>In identifying the root of the climate problem Lovelock coins the word "polyanthroponemia"—a condition in which "humans overpopulate until they do more harm than good." As he explains:

The presence of 7 billion people aiming for first-world comforts...is clearly incompatible with the homeostasis of climate but also with chemistry, biological diversity and the economy of the system.<

This, too, is a valid point -- namely that if climate change does not cause a calamity -- our population explosion will. I like the fact that he coins a word for the tipping point of overpopulation, but I wish he picked something a little less impossible to remember and use in one's daily vocabulary.

Reading such material cannot help but change one's outlook on both the future and the present.

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Lovelock must not be keeping up on the technology. Wind and solar are much better choices than nuclear right now and will only get better as the technologies improve. Most homes and businesses could be energy independent by putting up a couple of vertical axis wind turbines, a bank of solar panels and a battery system.

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Solar and wind power won't steer global temperatures away from his prediction. According to him, not enough power is generated from those sources to meet the energy demands of industrialized nations. This is especially true in the US.

What he's really saying is that Planet Earth cannot be steered clear of the icebergs ahead, so cognitively speaking the question remaining is: what happens after the tipping point is breached.

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

Solar panels will never be enough to power a large plant.

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

Solar panels will never be enough to power a large plant.

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ORIGINAL: cuckoldmepls

Now, doesn't that sound like a good public works project for Africans to do that will help themselves permanently, rather than expect free help from the rest of the world forever. Despite the fact, that they've never heard of birth control or vasectomies.