Welcome to Gaia! ::

I do have a few related questions for anyone interested in sharing their thoughts . . . .

With the exception of a few stubborn, misinformed people, there seems to be a general consensus here that, although humans did not initiate global warming, our contributions in the form of greenhouse gases post-industrial revolution have likely exacerbated the problem.

Given that it is neither practical nor feasible to cease energy consumption altogether:
1) What do you believe is the solution to the problem of global warming?
2) What steps are you willing to take toward energy conservation?
3) What efforts will you make toward supporting the use of alternative energy sources (alternative to fossil fuels)?
4) What alternative energy source, if any, do you think is most likely to meet the majority of our needs?
5) Should we even bother? Why or why not?

Maybe these are too many questions, so don't feel you have to answer everything. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

1.) i think its very complicated and will need lots of small solutions

my best single solution so far;

My old school and lots of others did a model united nations, my resolution got throught to the main discussion and it got passed.

Basically nowadays money controls everything, so my plan is uncomfortable, but worth it in the end. It's normally the poorer people in the world who pollute less and suffer the worst of the effects, so they shouldn't have to pay for the environmental damage. My plan is to put an UN environmental tax on everything depending on how damaging it is. This money wouldn't go into the individual gov.s to be spent on weapons or whatever, it would go to a central UN fund. This fund would spend the money on planting / saving trees etc. and developing renewable energy etc.

2.) i'm 16 and still live at home, so i don't get to make much of the decisions, i still turn the heating down or off, sort recycling, reuse things, get my parents to buy energy saving light bulbs and i got my family to offset the carbon used from the flights of our last holiday (we don't normally go anywhere by plane). i use public transport to get to college, and whenever else i can instead of getting lifts, or walk.
i'm not sure what i would do when i leave home, but living at home is environmentally friendly as the house would still use the same heating etc. whether i was here or not.
i would like to do more at home to help the environment, but i haven't had time/resources to do anything major


3.) i would like to get alternative resource power, but my parents don't want to get something like a solar panel or wind turbine on the house. we might pay extra for green energy from the power company soon, but i'm waiting for the new laws to come in. at the moment, the power companies have to get a certain % of their energy from renewable resources by law, they offer a green service for extra money, but they 'allocate' the green energy they already have to those people, so they pay extra and it makes no difference. i think this is terrible, but when the new laws stop this happening, i hope to get real green energy for the house.

4.) i think solar power is the best option for the future.
wind power - needs a minimum amount of wind to work, only a few suitable sites
hydroelectric - floods valleys, only a few suitable sites, expensive / hard to install
wave / tide power - only a few suitable sites, difficult to maintain
geothermal - really great but only in volcanic areas
nuclear power - non renwable, potentially dangerous, difficult to mine, transport, refine, and use, power plants are very expensive and difficult to build / mantain

solar power - it is expensive, but will get cheaper in time
- panels can be made to any size (right down to the small strip on a calculator)
- mainly made of silicon, the most abundant element on earth
- every where has sun at some time
- they still work on cloudy days
- everyone can have their own
- technology is improving everyday, they will continue to get better and cheaper

i think bio-ethanol is the future for cars
it is made by plants, it runs a car like oil, but it doesn't release carbon from long term storage because the plants absorb co2 during their life even though they release it when they die.

5.) i think we should bother to prevent global warming as this will have a lot of bad consequences, a list of some;
melting ice caps
sea level rise
desertification
drought
famine
heat waves
tropical storms
ocean currents disrupted
weather patterns disrupted
forest fires
economic crash
species extinction
loss of plants
human displacement and death

even if you don't believe global warming is a threat, we still need to worry about fossil fuels
- we should plan for the future, we don't want to run out of fossil fuels and suddenly have no electricity and transport.
- we shouldn't be burning away our current oil supplies in cars, need it for plastic, we use plastic for everything, in the future i don't think we will be able to develop without it.
- the prices of energy will increase, if there is no renewable supply, people won't be able to afford to do anything, there may be an econmic crash here too.

There is no doubt in my mind that Global Warming is happening and is a phenomenon that we have to be worried about now as well as in the future. Furthermore, I believe Global Warming is an occurrence that is both naturally caused as well as caused by the actions of mankind.

carbon dioxide concentrations are incredibly high right now because of human output. What other output would cause such a huge increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (by the way, the amount of carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere years ago is much more directly determined by scientists than temperature - see the movie by Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth," which shows extensively how concentrations are determined) other than human output? Exactly, nothing. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere right now is higher than it has been for the past 400,000 years. Why? Because of human output. This increasing Carbon Dioxide concentration is not good. As you can see temperature and Carbon dioxide concentration have a direct relationship and if we'd all remember, what is the must plausible explanation for the Permian/Triassic Mass Extinction that happened 250 million years ago? Increased Carbon Dioxide concentrations and therefore higher temperatures --- that's what. Those increases were most probably caused by thousands of continuous volcanic eruptions and other geological entropy, but you don't see too much geological entropy today, now do you?

mabey you should define it so that people can pick at it

Global warming is a lie.
Yes, the worldwide temperature IS increasing, but the idea that we are causing it is bogus. The world has gone through many temperature phases, and worldwide temperature HAS been higher before.

Global warming is a lie.
Yes, the worldwide temperature IS increasing, but the idea that we are causing it is bogus. The world has gone through many temperature phases, and worldwide temperature HAS been higher before. We just HAPPEN to be in an incline in the past century or so.