Scientists Warn: Earth pushed beyond four of nine ‘planetary boundaries’

a reply to: TinfoilTP

Man didn't create the oil, it was here before we were.
Hydrocarbons escape from the earth and oceans all the time, far more over time then we have ever burned.

I got news for you, Oil was buried away before we dug it up, spread it around on millions of miles of ocean, roads and atmosphere.

Way to speak truth with no context.

The earth will keep on revolving, with or without, the life form called Human. That issue is up to humans.

a reply to: TinfoilTP

Amen!

Oddly, man is blamed for the increase in co2, and yet man's contribution to the greenhouse effect is a whopping 0.25%. Yes, one quarter of one percent. Man is blamed for "global warming" and yet that is exactly what happens during EVERY interglacial period ever. At least until global cooling kicks in.

Co2 levels are currently at 400ppm, and yet one of the most life-diverse successful periods in the history of the world saw co2 levels at 4800ppm (sorry, man was not around) and during that 4800ppm co2 level period an ice age began.

Nature contributes 770 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere every year. Man contributes but 40 million tons. 95% of the greenhouse effect is water vapor....the remaining 5% are all the rest of the greenhouse gases including co2.

Often man's contribution is misrepresented by excluding the effect of water vapor. Then man's contribution to co2 is roughly 5%. By misrepresenting co2 as the major contributor (excluding water vapor) one could very well develop the impression that man is driving global warming....specially if you leave out the FACT that global warming is exactly what is supposed to be happening right now. Correlation does not equal causation. Faulty and misrepresented science is still faulty.

Now that I have jumped off of that soap box, I will jump on another:

Man has to be (HAS to) a good steward of his home. Right now it is the only one we have. What sense does it make to pollute our home? I dont know about y'all, but I choose the toilet for my waste....I dont just drop it all over the place in my home....

While I can argue a very strong case against the profit driven agenda that is referred often to as "green", I agree with the premise. If you actually look at a lot of the green garbage the gov and business are pushing you find that there is absolutely nothing green about it but the perception and the name.

Electric hand dryers in bathrooms really piss me off. There is more energy used to dry your hands (energy likely coming primarily from carbon) than what would take to make paper. Save a tree? how ignorant....trees are renewable resources and should be viewed as such. WTF when you burn oil to save a tree...that is just plain effing stupidity.

Much recycling (all the rage, you know) uses more chemicals, more energy to recycle than it does to create the original material from virgin stock. We should only recycle where it makes sense and not cause it "looks good".

Oh...and co2 is not a freaking pollutant. It is a necessity of life. It's the other crap we spew that is problematic... "Watch what this hand does! Pay no attention to my other hand." Seriously?

Carbon tax my a$$. It's nothing more than something to keep the ignorant monkeys busy with and totally meaningless other than creating more income for the gov.

Well, as far as we know, there's unlimited stock of planets and the production is faster than our rate of destruction. So, if we find a way for a FTL travel, I see no problem. If not, we're screwed

originally posted by: jrod
a reply to: charlyv


George Carlin was no scientist and that skit was for comedy.

Really? Thanks for the correction.

Unless we collectively have a paradigm shift ....

Just another cute word and if you look around, we are way beyond anything "Collective" on this planet. There is no solidarity for anything that would save the lives of people like feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and just plain not killing them for political powers.

Please do not try and talk Science to me. I live it every day. It is the governments in this world that can help save this planet. And so far, they are not on that agenda.

a reply to: mc_squared

It will take a massive die off of humans for the human race to reject capitalism. There is no way this culture will make a voluntary change to a sustainable zero-growth way of life.

I knew this thread would draw the predictable rage of denialists about them durn gubbermint scientists telling us all how to live, but man, all those extremists pronouncing it “hubris” to think man could possibly even make an impact (I still can’t get over that ant comment lol).

Honestly – what planet do you live on?

Maybe take a step outside your little bubbles and go for a quick google voyage around Earth:


The Aral Sea was once one of the largest lakes in the world. Here’s what it looked like in 1989 versus 2008:


Here’s deforestation as seen from space:



Here’s what the Great Lakes look like when too much nitrogen and phosphorus run off from human activities ends up in them:


Here’s what trophy fishing in Florida looks like 60 years ago versus 30 years ago versus today:




Here’s how much glaciers have melted from climate change:



Here’s what Appalachia looks like when we remove entire mountain tops for precious coal:


Here’s what Northern Alberta looks like when we remove half of it for oil:




Here’s air pollution across China:




It's hubris to think man can make an impact? It's total assinine stupidity to think he can't.

a reply to: th3dudeabides

A sustainable zero growth way of life will only work if our population is at zero growth. Not happening currently and I do not see any indication that things are about to change.

Unfortunately, it seems that the ignorant and mentally challenged tend to reproduce at higher rates than the intellectual and educated. This, in and of itself, does not bode well for our future.

a reply to: mc_squared

You make some good points as well as invalid ones.

Have lakes (and oceans for that matter) ever disappeared pre-man? Yup.

Deforestation has as well, by natural means.....doesn't mean that it's ok for us to chop down whole forests willy nilly though. Forests are the easiest thing for us to maintain...many of our lumber and paper companies plant more trees than the cut. There is no reason that the world cannot take that approach.

All that grey crap is pollution? No doubt most of that statement is true, but I am willing to betcha that quite a bit of it is water vapor..... Mind you, I am not excusing the polluting that China is committing. I am just trying to maintain a bit of objectivity here. China and India are rapidly moving into first world countries and they are experiencing the same issues most fully industrialized nations have already experienced. Seems like man would learn from past mistakes, but hey! No one ever said man was a logical beast.

Regarding the glaciers: You know that during an interglacial period that what marks the interglacial period is global warming and the shrinking of glaciers, right? It is absolutely disengenuous to point at global warming and the shrinking of arctic ice as indications of man's involvement instead of natural processes. This is one of the great lies perpetrated. We have not yet reached the global temperature highs experienced during the last 4 out of 5 interglacial periods.

To pursue that point just a bit farther: Are you aware that nature produces 770 million tons of co2 a year? I am fairly certain you are aware that man produces approx 40 million tons. I am also pretty certain that most of you out there buy off on the number of 5% regarding man's contribution to global warming.

The problem is (and think about why data is presented thusly) co2 is roughly only 5% of the greenhouse effect. So, man's contribution to "global warming" is 5% of 5%. You do the math but you should arrive at one quarter of one percent as man's contribution.

Problem number 2 is: Astronomic cycles trump greenhouse effect every time and not just slightly. An ice age began with co2 levels at 4800ppm. Not only that but life was much more diverse than today and extremely successful....so much for rising co2 levels are going to exterminate us... ROFL.
Co2 is not a pollutant: it is a requisite for life.

The rest of the crap we spew: pollutants. Why are we focusing on co2 when we should be focusing on the rest of the crappola? Why is man's contribution to global warming not represented in a true form, but rather in a distorted form that obviously promotes the perception that man is responsible? Think about these for a moment and ask yourself a few questions. Then come back as we can have a nice discussion lol

a reply to: bbracken677

Please stop spreading climate denier nonsense on my thread. I've seen you posting the same dishonest talking points on numerous other climate change threads, and frankly I've had enough of these pro-pollution sock puppet memes, so I'm not going to hold back on this stuff here.

Here's how you're either totally misinformed or being deliberately dishonest on everything you just wrote:

Oddly, man is blamed for the increase in co2, and yet man's contribution to the greenhouse effect is a whopping 0.25%. Yes, one quarter of one percent.

This is absolute bunk. Man's contribution is essentially 100% of rising greenhouse emissions. You are using the dishonest denier tactic of quantifying man's contribution against the overall carbon cycle to try and diminish anthropogenic impact, but what you conveniently leave out is the fact that natural emissions are in balance with their own sinks, while human concentrations are causing the overall amount to rise. By your logic, you apparently think this is just a coincidence then:

Co2 levels are currently at 400ppm, and yet one of the most life-diverse successful periods in the history of the world saw co2 levels at 4800ppm (sorry, man was not around) and during that 4800ppm co2 level period an ice age began.

Again - intellectually dishonest. You leave out the part about solar output being much lower when CO2 was at 4800ppm.

When CO2 levels were higher in the past, solar levels were also lower. The combined effect of sun and CO2 matches well with climate.

Past CO2 levels explained in FULL context

Nature contributes 770 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere every year. Man contributes but 40 million tons. 95% of the greenhouse effect is water vapor....the remaining 5% are all the rest of the greenhouse gases including co2.

Often man's contribution is misrepresented by excluding the effect of water vapor. Then man's contribution to co2 is roughly 5%. By misrepresenting co2 as the major contributor (excluding water vapor) one could very well develop the impression that man is driving global warming....specially if you leave out the FACT that global warming is exactly what is supposed to be happening right now. Correlation does not equal causation. Faulty and misrepresented science is still faulty.

This is basically rinse, lather, repeat of your first meme above, just with more disinformation peppered in. First off CO2's contribution versus water vapor is not 5% - it's somewhere between 9-26% (Source). Secondly - even though water vapor is a more dominant GHG no doubt, it is a feedback and not a driver in this equation. It's own concentration is dependent on other drivers such as CO2. This is why CO2 has been declared by scientists like so:

Ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere. This is because CO2, like ozone, N2O, CH4, and chlorofluorocarbons, does not condense and precipitate from the atmosphere at current climate temperatures, whereas water vapor can, and does. Non-condensing greenhouse gases, which account for 25% of the total terrestrial greenhouse effect, thus serve to provide the stable temperature structure that sustains the current levels of atmospheric water vapor and clouds via feedback processes that account for the remaining 75% of the greenhouse effect. Without the radiative forcing supplied by CO2 and the other non-condensing greenhouse gases, the terrestrial greenhouse would collapse, plunging the global climate into an icebound Earth state.

Atmospheric CO2: Principal control knob governing Earth's temperature.


So don't bring these lies here. The semantics you use, even in talking about being "good stewards" of the environment is extremely suspicious - it is literally word-for-word in line with the infamous Frank Luntz "language strategy" on how to downplay climate change while pretending you give a crap about the environment.


I don't know if you're doing this with a deliberate agenda in mind, or you're just another haphazard victim of all the propaganda, but in either case I suggest you watch the video below and observe how you are being deliberately exploited and misled:

If people are really all so fired concerned with mankind's future ?

Stop pushing junk science, and political agenda's.

And start pushing rocket engineering.

To get us off this rock, and in to the stars.

To Boldly Go Where No Man has gone before, and take our rightful place among the stars.

Of all the creatures that have inhabited this planet. Mankind is the only one that is capability of doing so, and secure his future without doubt.

Planets change.

They are in a constant state of motion.

What mankind needs to do is cowboy the hell up, and GIT R DONE.

Man another brilliant environmental debate on ATS.

On one side: Science, common sense, facts and photographic evidence.
On the other: Dishonest climate memes, scientific conspiracies, absurd comparisons between humans and ants, and the suggestion that we all just build a rocketship already and go find a brand new planet to exploit.

At least yours was the most honest neo, I’ll give you that lol.

a reply to: mc_squared

Please stop spreading climate denier nonsense on YOUR thread? Funny, but I thought free speech prevailed here at ATS as long as one does not violate the TOS. Typical...silence the opposition! Typical...personal attacks instead of conducting a debate using science and current theory. I do not "deny climate" as you so erroneously put it. I just show how man's involvement is often displayed with bias at best, or absolutely falsely at worst.

I am quite capable of said debate. I am a geologist and I am fully informed regarding the history of this world as we understand it. I am also pretty up on current and recent research and do not need to rely on parroting faulty science from agenda driven websites.

You post a link to skepticalscience which is a known agenda driven website. I will answer your agenda driven website with research papers no later than tomorrow.

You have not disproven a single point I have made. Not one.

Your remark regarding the balance between natural sources of co2 being in balance with their own sinks is bunk. They, much like our climate, have NEVER been in balance, which is why there is a constant up and down cycle coupled with periodic net increases and decreases that, at times, exceed the previous comparable period. How do you explain that? If they were in balance then how does our co2 levels manage to reach levels of 4800ppm (without man's help, I might add) and higher or drop to levels of less than 150ppm which they have done?

Correlation does not equal causation. Since the beginning of the industrial age, co2 levels have risen. Funny but if you use the IPCC's own numbers regarding man's contribution to co2 levels, the totals just do not add up...for some very odd reason. Why do you suppose that is?

You claim balance, and yet you leave out the important fact that the ocean releases stored co2 as it warms. Your own graph shows warming and co2 levels rising concurrently. How much of that increase is due to the ocean releasing co2? To attribute the total increase to man is disengenuous at best.

To dismiss water vapor's effect in the greenhouse spectrum is rather facile as well. You can just state it is as a result of feedback and then move on. Wrong...like it or not, it plays a part, and even more of a significant part than co2. You cannot, as much as you would like, dismiss it.

You seem to be harboring some serious pissedoffedness there, bud. Well...guess I am going to have to piss you off some more.

Because the greenhouse effect is nonlinear one cannot rely upon simply global averages. The effects of increased CO2 depend upon local conditions. In the cold deserts there is almost no water vapor content to the atmosphere. In these regions if the CO2 content doubles then there is a doubling of the greenhouse effect and a significant impact on local temperatures. On the other hand in the warm, moist tropics the CO2 content is so small compared to the water vapor content that a doubling of the CO2 has almost no effect on the greenhouse effect and thus no effect on local temperatures. The actual increase in temperatures has been concentrated in central Siberia and Northwest Canada in the coldest period, namely at night in the winter.

Now...let's discuss where most of the AGW information comes from: Climatologists, no? Climatologists using models to make predictions based on recorded data, right? Then they make predictions using their models, correct?

The scientific method is just that. One forms an hypothesis, tests it against observable phenomena and if the predicted phenomena matches observed then the hypothesis is correct and we can move on to theory. If the predicted phenomena does not match obeservations then ... ooops.. hypothesis is wrong. In the case of current climate models, they have all failed. They have failed to predict the reduction in the rate of the global warming trend, they have failed to predict the 18% growth of Antactic sea ice, failed to predict the growth of Arctic sea ice 2013-2014, failed to predict the growth of Greenland glacial ice. Failed hypothesis. THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE TELLING US. Yet it is fed to us as factual.

Perhaps you could, at least, explain why gas law accounts for the major portion of sea level temperature, what is supposed to be and normally is claimed by the greenhouse effect?

Again, I do not have the time now, but I will be posting research papers as soon as I possibly can.

You claim I am presenting memes, junk science and lies. lol

You sir, are just parroting crappola you are being fed.

a reply to: MALBOSIA

Here we go....it's sorta different
Scripture says the earth is wearing out like a garmet....I know...

a reply to: mc_squared

Thank you for your post about the destruction of the environment.

IMHO the earth and her resources belong to an aggressive intergalactic group.
Humans are bioengineered to be the perfect slave species. Earth is
A subdued zone.

One of the symptoms if you are raised a slave is self loathing and derogatory name calling.
Humans constantly call themselves the worst names and degrade themselves as
A species. Why?
Why do humans hate themselves as a species? This is slave behavior.

No matter what wars, troubles, or times resource EXTRACTION continues on this
planet. And, how convenient to blame the slave species for everything.

Blaming humans solves nothing because the humans are not in charge. This system
Is not for humans but for the resources. Humans are born with NO genetic memories why?
Even the deer are born with genetic memories.
Humans have 5k years of written history, yet humans are a species at least 200,000 years old!
What happened to our history?

Think about it for a moment,
You are an exo planet and your environment is pristine. You have all the things you want
without the pollution.You are a type 1 or 2 or more technological planent and Earth is one of
many buffer zones and slave colonies online. Cannot this be a real possibility?

When a resource planet's atmosphere is near destruction, you put the resource planent into
"Sustainability" mode so you can continue the resource extractions under slower conditions.
The political powers on the planent are all Human Quislings. The real decisions are made
elsewhere.

The humans blame themselves and self loath. This is desirable emotional behavior because thinking
Is not involved. Nothing good ever happens to the slaves and the resource planet gets sicker and sicker.
The slaves never figure out that they are not in charge and not to blame.

Recently a comet was mined! Really! And, for who? We already have much minerals and stuff why would our scientists be interested in mining a comet? Who needs the resources? Who trades?

Thanks for listening.

originally posted by: neo96
No offense.

But i have had enough of the climatephobes.

People really do think the planet is out to get us.

Thank you, your genius, strength, and bravery make me and the rest of the humans to ever live on this planet feel safe.

originally posted by: Metallicus
So where did these imaginary 'planetary boundaries' come from exactly? There is no instruction manual for the planet with specifications and tolerances last time I checked.

Maybe they should take all that funding for this BS research and put it into something useful like free energy or desalination. Then these useless tools would be doing something helpful.

So where did these imaginary 'planetary boundaries' come from exactly?

Those were my immediate thoughts as well, what other planets they talking bout?

www.climatedepot.com... -continues/

originally posted by: ImaFungi

originally posted by: neo96
No offense.

But i have had enough of the climatephobes.

People really do think the planet is out to get us.

Thank you, your genius, strength, and bravery make me and the rest of the humans to ever live on this planet feel safe.

Well the US government sure as snip isn't going to 'save the planet'.

Hell it can't even protect people from 'terrorists'.

Our planet is doomed and we are doomed... what's new? Nobody makes it out alive, not even planets. Were you born in the time when our planet's journey comes to a close? Who knows. One thing that IS for certain is that you can make a difference in a small scope. Will this translate cleanly to the larger scale and allow us to "save" our planet? Again, who knows.

Amidst all the hype of pro-ACC (anthropogenic climate change) and anti-ACC opinions, the crucial thing that is missing is an answer to a resounding "so what?" We have evidence that certain human activities are causing the planet to heat up and nobody really knows what this will mean, except that it is probably "bad." It is assumed that if we stop the activities that the change will stop... but will it? It reminds me of Western culture's attitude toward death, when someone we love is dying and instead of gracefully accepting that death is an inevitable part of life we try everything possible in a vain attempt to keep their body alive.

Yes, you WILL die and you have NO IDEA how it is going to happen. The same is true for every individual, every animal, every species, every civilization, every planet, every star... I have yet to see a point to this whole climate / ecological change debate except to fill our limited lives with even more worry, guilt, and regret. IF there is a lesson to be learned and IF we really have doomed our planet, we will know in the end.

a reply to: hololeap

TY, this is what I believe, if you do no harm to others, sustain and be responsible for yourselves and you live happily ever after! Yaaaayyy!

This is what happens when we are dependent on(Gov't) someone else to take care of us. We totally give away our rights and knowledge and allow someone else that responsibility. Then we just easily point the finger of blame. If anyone is to blame it is Earth and all things upon it, there ya go we are all participants and we are all responsible! I will now move along to happier thoughts, enjoy life IMO its the only one you have here! Love and more LOVE to all.