Recently in my college there was a debate between my philosophy lecturer and a guest speaker. The debate was called " Is climate change evil?"
Hideous debate, but in any case i think the important thing is that if climate change/global warming is caused or is increased by people and what we do on our planet how does one go about even attempting to prevent it?
I mean how do you say, lets go back to been cave men and let the planet “heal itself”… and what is to say the planet would do that, or that global warming/climate change would stop if there was no human interfearence.
And if humans are to blame how does each country distribute the blame for this?
You might be interested in reading Peter Singer “one atmosphere”. It discusses this topic quite well.
It’s probably not useful or accurate to think of climate change itself as evil. Nature does what it does in response to stressors that put it out of balance. For example, if there is too much CO2 emitted into the atmosphere over a long period of time, then the normally functional carbon sinks become over-saturated and cannot do their job properly to keep it in balance. That is why warming has been on an upward trend for the last several decades. Now more recently, warming is taking on another stressor, methane release due to the melting of the permafrost and ice layers that were keeping it contained. This will exacerbate warming exponentially, and it will not be good for humans.
It’s clear to me that humans are not capable of thinking or acting rationally with regard to behaviors that put nature so out of balance. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but the consequences for all large life forms are very deleterious. Extinction is on the horizon if past history is anything to go by. Nature doesn’t work mechanistically but rather holistically, as a whole organic system that is designed to balance itself and keep things in harmony and good working order. Humans are part of that system, but we think of nature as separate from us and as something that can be controlled and treated oppositionally without regard for the consequences. If this can be considered an evil, I suppose that’s only because it means that we are destroying the system that sustains us. Certainly there is no real way that humans can give up their technology and machine laden lives and just go back to nature. For one thing, they wouldn’t know how; and for another, the sheer scale of numbers … along with all that structure, steel, plastic, and concrete … would prevent it. More plausible and feasible solutions would be to think in terms of reduction: eliminating population growth, relying less on personal consumerism, using clean energy sources, recycling, and cleaning up all the toxic mess. Thinking in terms of cooperation and health for all would go a long way towards healing a system that is now careening out of control to the point of no return.
Has anyone considered how methane pockets that emits millions of tons of this gas everyday from the ocean floor affects the atmosphere? Pockets so big they reduce the ability of a jet airliner to keep their altitude because the wings can not develop lift almost to the point of crashing. Not to mention volcanic eruptions and the sand that is blown from the Sahara which evelop the earth.
Thanks, Liteninbolt. It’s good to see scholarly articles showing how human-caused warming is leading to a cascade of events that extend beyond our unconscionable CO2 production. Here are some more good links as well:
Nothing warms without the sun. But we humans are changing the atmosphere in a way that exacerbates warming and is causing great changes in climate, weather, wind current and ocean current patterns, along with sea levels. Now, if the carbon sinks are saturated, and methane is released from the permafrost, you can imagine what the next stage involves. Carpe diem.
It is reasonable to assume that methane emissions have been occuring for eons as well as volcanic and sand from desert regions. These events have been affecting weather patterns for as long as they have been around. I think deforestation has a greater impact in the South American area than exhaust emissions from man made situations.
It is inevitable that the world population will increase. This will put an onus on resources that this world has for store. Here is a map showing density levels as of 2006:
I believe this is a more immediate problem than worrying about a 1 degree increase of temperature over the next 100 years. The darker regions on the world map above are ones that contain less informed nations that need to educated about population, raw resources and finite infrastucters at their disposal. Being good stewards of this earth also involves making less knowledgeable countries aware of over population concerns.
I suppose I could do a net research concerning the sun making things warmer. Rather than that, I will offer up an opinion. I will have to say I’m not sure at this particualr time.
I live in southern Ohio. Over the past 35 years there has been a warming trend here and not as much rain.
Now in December we are having typical january weather. What the hell is going on. Are we actually causing these changes with carbon emissions? What percentage of the change is due to us?