This a topic to discuss about climate change. Currently, the New York summit is taking place & in December the big one is out there -the Copenhagen Conference.
Personally, I don't feel anything significant would be achieved, but there is hope.

Also, you can share videos relating to nature, the conferences etc.

Of course not. Why sacrifice a bit of money now to avoid catastrophic economic damage in a few decades? Live for the present!

He makes a good point; the panda is not ecologically speaking an especially "important" animal, and vast amounts of money are poured into panda conservation schemes to keep the species (which is notoriously hard to breed successfully in captivity) alive. How much good could that money do spent fighting battles which aren't already lost?
It won't happen, though. The panda is too fluffy.

I agree with him; screw pandas!

Also, this:

British Conservationist wrote:He said the last large mammal to go extinct was the Chinese pink dolphin - allowed to disappear "because it was pig-ugly and swam around in a river where no one saw it", unlike the "fluffy" panda.

Priceless.

It doesn't look any uglier than Flipper to me.

I thought this thread was about Green Earth the store, which by the way, is selling Gargoyle paperweights and book ends that look a lot like the ones on the Aos cover

So, basically, lots of talk, and nothing more concrete than Kyoto actually agreed to, and we can all see just how far that got us.

Hope you like flooding, folks...

Sentynel wrote:So, basically, lots of talk, and nothing more concrete than Kyoto actually agreed to, and we can all see just how far that got us.

Hope you like flooding, folks...

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 948AAtpODa

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While the "best answer" is rather amusing, the worst response has got to be:

"I've yet to see solid proof of global warming"

1) Go to the Arctic. Unless you're too busy littering when there's a garbage can ten feet away or driving somewhere 5 minutes walking distance away.

2) When you do see 'solid' proof, it'll kinda be too late to do cabbage about it...

Ah Yahoo Answers, a great place to get a good dose of bad judgement and unintended hilarity.

wrote:Whenever there is a shift in climate, whether it is to the warm side, or the cold side, ecosystems are in danger of collapse.
Plants can't pick up and move to a cooler or warmer clime. All the animals depend on plants, so there is a huge ripple effect in the ecosystem until a new set point is reached. Global warming will have winners, but mostly losers. We'll have a poorer world because many species of plants and animals will disappear forever.

This seems like the best answer by far.

wrote:Negatives? Well since CO2 levels and temperature levels might get near to levels as to those in the Jurassic age you can imagine that with more food animals start growing huge! Humans might gets knocked further down the food chain. Think carnivorous giant rabbits the size of minivans!

This one I'm not even going to talk about... :blink:

Personally I think some people are overreacting. Rising global warming levels in the next decades aren't going to spell doom for us all.

But it's still a problem that needs dealing with. Nobody seems to be doing a very good job so far, not even so called activists. From my personal experience (I was once heavily involved with all sorts of enviro stuff, wanted to be an environmentalist) those without science degrees (and even quite a few of those with) were pretty ineffective. They spend all their time condemning corporations and governments (of course they are at fault to a certain extent, but the big issue is the lifestyle so many of us have grown accustomed to), and fail to really bother accomplishing anything. Public awareness has increased by a lot in the last few years, however.

FuzzyLobster wrote:Personally I think some people are overreacting. Rising global warming levels in the next decades aren't going to spell doom for us all.

But it's still a problem that needs dealing with. Nobody seems to be doing a very good job so far, not even so called activists. From my personal experience (I was once heavily involved with all sorts of enviro stuff, wanted to be an environmentalist) those without science degrees (and even quite a few of those with) were pretty ineffective. They spend all their time condemning corporations and governments (of course they are at fault to a certain extent, but the big issue is the lifestyle so many of us have grown accustomed to), and fail to really bother accomplishing anything. Public awareness has increased by a lot in the last few years, however.

Yeah, it won't be us it really hits, it'll be our (theoretical) kids and our kids' kids.

The problem is it's such a fantastically complicated system with so much evidence involved that you have to be an expert in the field to really understand it. Drives me insane how many uninformed people think they know all about it (whether they think it exists or not) when they don't understand the science involved in the slightest. Hell, I don't understand a lot of it.

I agree, there's really too many factors for anyone to truly understand it, not with the technologies we have now. Of course, global warming or not, reducing emissions can help in more ways than one. Our oil isn't going to last forever, people need to learn that they don't really need to drive everywhere, etc.

And there's definitely a lot of ignorance where it comes to most environmental issues. Recycling f'rinstance.

You guys have heard about the recent global warming scientist email scandal thing, right? Not that it's relevant to the actual threat, but I thought it was interesting.

This.

Yeah, I read it before.

Apollo wrote:You guys have heard about the recent global warming scientist email scandal thing, right? Not that it's relevant to the actual threat, but I thought it was interesting.

It's not a scandal. The "final nail in the coffin of anthropogenic global warming" is a bloke talking about not plotting the data from a small cluster of Siberian trees because it's known to diverge from other sources after about 1960. Shocking.

Sentynel wrote:

Apollo wrote:You guys have heard about the recent global warming scientist email scandal thing, right? Not that it's relevant to the actual threat, but I thought it was interesting.

It's not a scandal. The "final nail in the coffin of anthropogenic global warming" is a bloke talking about not plotting the data from a small cluster of Siberian trees because it's known to diverge from other sources after about 1960. Shocking.

*gasp* Oh no! Those damn Siberian trees.

And people are stupidly jumping on the bandwagon. Even if data was falsified about global warming, humans are still screwing the environment in tons of other ways, and just because climate change is not absolute, doesn't mean one can continue with gigantic ecological footprints.

Copenhagen talks start today...

And ends today.

Going on now. As far as I can see, all countries have kept to their stands & there is nothing new they have promised. Pretty much the same thing that I typed out earlier(plus the monetary fund the US announced yesterday). And every leader who took the stage admitted that there has been no real deal & there are still vast differences. Chances of securing an agreement are "not great" (zilch in my opinion), they are "frustrated" (really?), and that they can reach a "binding agreement in 2010" (like they will all develop a conscience then).

Rubbish really. Wasting taxpayer's money going to Denmark & telling us stuffs we already know & promising the same things they have done in their respective countries. Plus let's not forget how much more damage they have done to the environment by traveling there with all their posse of ministers, officials, NGO's etc.

Live results here- http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/b ... t-liveblog.

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Edit- Yeah, I might as well let it be known, but I am damn frustrated with Obama. I found his speech very callous (you ought to read it- the usual boring stuff about how the earth ought to work together & saying everyone needs to do more but offering nothing in return). He could have promised so much more! He just offered a 4% cut from 1990 levels till 2020 (well he said 17% from 2005-but its the same). But then again, every damn head of state there is equally responsible.

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Gordon Brown is the only one who seems to care. At least a little. Seriously.

Well put. You can send emails to them(obviously it won't have any effect).

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It's official: the talks will go into the weekend. The United Nations has asked world leaders to plan to stay overnight.
"The secretary-general of the UN has asked people not to leave tonight," European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dima told Reuters.
"I cannot imagine 120 leaders going back to their countries with empty hands. Everyone expressed commitment to fight climate change. OK, do it," he said.

No hopes though.

n&b wrote:Rubbish really. Wasting taxpayer's money going to Denmark & telling us stuffs we already know & promising the same things they have done in their respective countries. Plus let's not forget how much more damage they have done to the environment by traveling there with all their posse of ministers, officials, NGO's etc.

Not much of a surprise it's the government; it's what they do (the really disenheartening thing is that pretty much everyone else would do the same in those circumstances).