Ecology and the Environment

Nothing bugs me more than global warming deniers except being lied to about global warming. Who exactly is lying is something I can't say, but someone definitely is. I want to start this thread so that I can post articles I've come across contradicting the evidence in support of global warming and/or the anthropocentric account of it. I don't know who to trust and I feel like a helpless child in a custody battle - who gets to convert me over to their side? - and I feel like shouting out "Just tell me the goddam truth!!!" I'll accept the words of the noble scientists on SFN, but that's not to say I won't challenge them. I'll take whatever you say and pit it aga…

Give me your opinions I think it will get colder in Scandinavia because when the ice melts in the North Pole the gulf stream will get colder and it will be colder than before without the warmth of the Gulf Stream. The deserts will expand. I actually have some friends in Australia and they are farmers. They have a lot pf problems because there was nearly no rain at all!! I would love to get your opinions on global warming. Does it effect the way you live?

WHY...my big questions is...."WHY is it difficult to understand....that it is indeed us humans who have accelerated the global warming....and still contributing to it?" One of the threads asked for a scientific opinion..so being a budding environmental scientist...let me just try explaining. There are several ways in which we humans have (and are still) contributing to the global climate change (a.k.a global warming). But...lemme just explain one... Now I hope all here accept the fact that Carbon...in most of its form..is a greenhouse gas...and that the more it is in the atmosphere...greater will be the warming. Nature has been, over a period of severa…

I just watched An Inconvenient Truth. That's a scary movie. I had believed in Al Gore's "misconception #1" - that we're not sure if global warming is a real thing, and if it is, how much we're contributing to it. From the data he shows us, we are clear causing global warming every since middle of the 20th century. The sharp increase in CO2 imissions since the 60s/70s is so strongly correlating with the sharp increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere. And it's increased to about 3 times the temperature it's ever been in hundreds of thousands of years. That ain't no natural occurence. He keeps refering to the "scientists". "The scientists say..." he …

Well, at the behest of Pangloss I'm making a new thread for this. He disagreed that the key points of Al Gore's crazy new global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth, are valid. Actually, there's a few things I do want to address whose validity I dispute (well, not so much validity as scientific knowledge). But I'll try to summarize them here: 1. Global warming is real The general nature of the Earth's radiative imbalanche has been well-understood for over a decade. We know the Earth absorbs more energy than it radiates, so there can be no question of this, really. 2. Anthropogenic forcings are the primary cause Again, there's been little scientific…

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html Well, not really... but Michael Crichton has attempted to relate the Drake Equation to the mathematics underlying climate science, specifically in regard to making outrageous predictions about the future...

Gaia Hypothesis, in short that the earth is in some kind of self-balancing system. Proposed by late James Lovelock and promoted by Lynn Margulis in the 1970s. This hypothesis gained some notoriety because of novelty, but lacked scientific evidence; in fact some scientists have claimed that in most ecosystems, imbalance is the norm. I offer below 2 chemical reactions for review by members: 1. Carbon dioxide + Water -> Sunlight -> Glucose + Oxygen [Green Plants] 2. Oxygen + Glucose -> Energy + Carbon dioxide + Water [Plants + Animals] These are converse reactions in that one is the reversal of the other. From the chemis…

Is Al Gore right about the effects of global warming? A lot of scientists think that Gore is wrong, but his data seems pretty solid to me. Any thoughts, opinions, facts?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html Has anyone here read "Heaven and Hell"? I know this is a very non-skeptical crowd hear but was wondering is any of the non-skeptics have lowered themselves to read this book? Also, if consensus shifts to a more skeptic view, will you still support CO2 limiting policy? If so, why?

In Bjorn Lomborg's book : "The Skeptical Environmentalist", he makes the statement that loss of natural habitat is a minor cause of extinctions. Two examples are given of places where massive natural habitat loss occurred with very little in the ways of extinction of species. 1. Puerto Rico. 2. Atlantic coast of Brazil. Yet in environmentalist literature, habitat loss is almost invariably described as a major cause of extinctions. Does anyone have any unambiguous examples of cases where habitat loss has caused substantial extinctions? Please try to use examples where other causes are unlikely.

I was surfing the net on some unrelated topics, when i stuck on a picture that led me to this horrible crime: http://raw-outdoors.com/?page_id=71 My initial ingenus thought was as the picture was minimized some conservationist showing some drugged awesome felidae in an eco work. But that red spot called my attention and on maximizing i remembered once more, that sometimes the death of a human is something to celebrate as the world becomes a better place for us all (us includes all living beings). Well i wanted to show the embarrassment i feel now for any uneducated country to allow this. And to tell you that if you think this is right, or normal, i can te…

Global warming is a natural cycle of this planet. The real problem is how can we expect to survive in the future with an expanding population of humans. We cannot solve any other problem without dealing with this one first.

They are not smarter, and that is why the majority of people like dogs more than cats, because dogs are more spiritual. Wouldn't we all love it if everyone were so unconditionally loving as some dogs? I had a very loving dog, who was abused I have been told before we received him. Although he was stubborn, he was more likely to turn back to humans for love and attention, and loved the relationship and love of other people. As such, this is essentially domestication, and its driven largely in part of the spirit. If fact, this is what people are. If one were to follow in the footsteps of, say, Jesus Christ, he would be domesticating himself by listening to a wiser pet. …

Most of Human Evolution happened in Africa and Eurasia where we evolved and adapted to our surroundings. Now we have only been living in North America for a few hundred years. (unless your native American)... My questions being.. Are we adapted to the climate, vegetation, air quality, etc. the same way we would be to the other continents? I am finish, French Canadian, german, and everyone somewhere long down the line is African. etc... But now my body is in North America. Am I just as healthy?

Just finished reading an editorial in New Scientist, in which the author suggests that towns like Galviston on the hurricane prone sea coast, should be abandoned rather than rebuilt. This struck me as rather a weird suggestion, since I think we can build protections that would keep up with any reasonably predictable increased sea level and hurricane risk. This led me to the question as to whether hurricane risk is actually increasing that much. While hurricanes have been a little more frequent and a little more severe in the last decade or so, there is no way to tell for sure whether this is due to anthopogenic global warming, or just a natural cycle. It seems …

This thread is primarily in response to those who insist that homosexuality is an abomination, or that it harms peoples morals, or any of the other stupid nonsense people say after they've been poisoned by religious teachings. Also, it's just an interesting topic of conversation. http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php Male big horn sheep live in what are often called "homosexual societies." They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males "effeminate." Giraffes have …

Just some confirmation, but I believe humans are the only animals that can/do commit suicide? I dont believe any other animal or plant for that matter kills it self?

Over the past 20 years while living in American cities like Citrus Heights, California, Boise, Idaho and Lawton/Fort Sill, Oklahoma, I have noticed a disturbing amount of trash covering residential streets, residential front yards, highways and parking lots. People pollute this way because they don't care, they are are lazy, they have no appreciation for cleanliness, there are no incentives to control litter and/or there are no consequences for littering. I don't think many parents teach children the value of good stewardship of the land. Litter is much more prevalent in low income areas than in rich communities. Do schools even teach children the value of not littering? …

The Earth is swarming with all kinds of animals. Most of these don't seem to help human survival. Why do we want them hanging around? Recently I found a leaflet in my weekly Science magazine. The leaflet was about the Siberian tiger, or some kind of tiger. These tigers are apparently getting scarce. Only 700 left, or something like that. The leaflet exhorted me to pay some money to "sponsor" one of these things, so they wouldn't die out. Well, frankly I don't really care whether they die out or not. They don't seem to be contributing anything to my life. Or human life in general. Who'd miss them? The only animals we'd miss, are the ones we eat. Lik…

Hello As a city kid, I have zero knowledge about agriculture. To learn a bit about this, I will spend a few days on a farm at the end of the month to talk with farmers who went from "conventional" agriculture to organic. In the meantime, I'm reading a bunch of books about agriculture, both conventional and organic, but am having a hard time finding sound, non-biased, scientific information about... 1. what problems organic agriculture is supposed to solve (too much, too strong pesticides/fertilizer? lower nutrition in food?) 2. whether these solutions really work, and if they have any drawbacks For instance, some organic farmers refer to BS like homeopathy or biodyn…

In "Faking Nature", Eric Katz argues that a restored ecosystem is an artifact created by people to fufills their wants and needs. Because of its "unnaturalness", he argues that restored ecosystems have less integral value than the original, the value stemming from the historical continuity within an ecosystem. Therefore, projects such as restoration and mitigation are useless in trying to restore value to a lanscape. He says that we are "in fact, faking nature". Please, discuss. I have been wanting to have a conversation about this with someone for a while now. Draba v. ....a postscript to a hope of spring.

http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhouse+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article10973.htm According to one physicist/ climate modeler, there was a grievous error made some time back that propagated throughout modern global warming models. Is this story accurate? What's the deal? Hopefully some physics people can take a look and explain it to the rest of us.

Global warming is total bunk, seriously I don't know why people and many scientists buy into it. First of all, the Earth has been much warmer millions of years into the past, in fact it has been a little warmer in the recent past. The climate models that are used are not very good at all. There are thousands upon thousands of variables and new ones are being added every once in a while. There is no possible way that you can possibly predict the climate, because of the chaotic nature of the climate. Didn't anyone ever hear of the butterfly affect? Also, many predictions were wrong. And it has been shown that it is solar irradiance is the cause of the warming, as i…

Is there anything to the sunspot theory of global warming.

Vote now. I think that religious people are more likely to believe the whole world is for humans. That human life is good and the more people, the better. But I think that is a very anthropocentric position. I believe the world is very much overpopulated with people. If you fly over the northeastern US, from Boston to New York and beyond you see dense cities that then give way to suburbs but no wilderness, then more dense cities. Flying over the Midwest you see a grid-like pattern of farmlands. All the fertile land is used to feed humans. In the west there is more rocky terrain that can't be farmed. While we can't farm mountainous, rocky terrain we can farm dry area…