[quote]Wimpy wrote:
That’s interesting but if anything it only highlights my primary fear. I suppose that about two billion people in India and China are going to attempt to industrialize and “modernize” in the next fifty years or so. That’s not including the nearly 1 billion inhabitants of Africa that may want to follow. That could take an awful toll on the Earth. [/quote]
Why does it have to? As nations modernize, they actually do get cleaner. Mostly because they can afford it. China is already starting to take some efforts to reduce their pollution. Not to mention that they are going to have easier access to the more modern equipment available today, as opposed to the stuff we had to use 50 years ago.[quote]
It’s good that air has been clearing locally but even that article you linked admitted that the “brightening” has not occurred over India or China neither of which have likely hit their maximum level of pollution. There are also other issues to consider. For instance, the last I’ve heard, based on examination of large heterotrophs (primarily large whales) marine pollution is continuing to worsen (feel free to correct me on this, I was unable to find much data on it) thanks largely to waste water and other runoff contamination coming from Asia.[/quote]
Yes, the problem is currently Asia. But the finger is still being pointed squarely at America.
I have no problem with reduction of pollution. I want a clean environment. My problem is with the people who act like they care when they actually don’t. If things like Kyoto are so important, why were the countries you just mentioned exempt? The worst polluters on Earth, and they are not to be held to the same high standards as us.
There is one reason, and even the guy who started Greenpeace complained about it. He said that when socialism failed, all the socialists suddenly found a home in environmentalism, and are pushing the exact same issues, but only hidden under the guise of environmentalism.
We just had a whole bunch of people up in arms over a plan to spend 420 some million to protect a beetle. One person did the math and found it was $88,000 per beetle. Some of this stuff is just getting ridiculous.
I still find it funny that I changed to compact fluorescent lights a full year before Al Gore did.
The problem is you are only getting part of the story, or sometime complete lies. Ozone has a natural fluctuation that is ridiculously varied. I am talking about 50% changes in a day, due to natural causes.
When people talk about forests, they talk about “Virgin” forests. America has the only growing rain forest on Earth. Who is cutting down the rain forests? Mostly small farmers trying to gain more land for their animals to graze. Many knowing they are violating the laws of their country. (I believe there was a South American country that actually was trying to eliminate their forests.)
And where did you hear that the north pole was going to melt completely? It looks like we have entered a colling phase. The peak warming occurred in the 90’s. (When unpublished corrections were made.)
Actually they have worked on plans to terraform Mars. Won’t take too long to get there.
Anyway, my problem is that the whole thing is being blown way out of proportion to reality.
Kind of like what happened with Three Mile Island. They had a problem, but the safety equipment worked perfectly. There was no disaster.
But the public was led to believe there was. And what is the result? Coal burning plants being built instead of much more efficient, and much cleaner nuke plants.
This should be interesting:
So environmentalists have probably caused more environmental damage then anyone else, simply by blocking nuke power plants.
Exactly the same with their blocking of the building of new oil refineries. New, more updated, cleaner facilities.
They are also currently blocking one company that jumped on the carbon credit bandwagon. The plan was to seed the ocean with iron in a low iron area. This has been proven to work, although they have not proven that enough of the carbon will fall to the ocean bottom.
Now why would environmentalists block what may be an extremely powerful way to eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere? The only reason I can think of is that they don’t actually want an easy solution. It prevents their actual “ulterior” motives.