Welcome to Gaia! ::

Your first graph isn't showing up (but I have a pretty good guess as to what it says; after all the US is #1 in carbon emissions, followed by China I think (although China is expected to pass us up at some point)).

According to some of my classes, the overall temperature of the earth is no higher when compared with past cycles. This is based on measurements taken from a glacier (don't recall the name off the top of my head). However, the temperature is increasing at a faster rate than normal, which is a cause for concern. The fact that the earth's temperature goes in cycles is not BS, but the fact that it is increasing more quickly than ever does indicate the probabilty of global warming.

I am not entirely sure how hot temperatures mean less rain for crops, or less rain period. The rainforest has a fairly high constant temperature, after all. If you mean the creation of more deserts, a lot of that comes from deforestation and growing crops like soybeans (which are crap for the soil), as well as erosion.

Hyperventiliation means you are breathing too quickly or taking in too much oxygen. This has nothing to do with global warming; I think you mean dehydration. And as far as I know, there has not been an increase or decrease in the amount of water on the planet. We need to conserve water if the population continues increasing, but I also don't consider that related to global warming for the most part.

I won't argue that low lying areas are at risk; also hurricanes have the potential to become worse (since they occur in areas of warm water). If water levels rise there is definitely a risk for some places like New Orleans.

Your statement about mosquitos contradicts what you said about less water. If there is less water, there would be fewer mosquitoes because they depend on water in the larval stage. Like I said before, I don't agree with the less water.

I do agree that warmer temperatures are preferred by mosquitoes, however, global warming is not the only culprit if you are talking about disease. The species that commonly carries malaria (pretty sure it is Ades aegypti) is sure to spread with warmer temperatures since they like the tropics. This could increase the number of malaria cases. However, some diseases become a problem because the disease itself travels, not the mosquitoes. West nile virus is a concern in California in particular, because it traveled here and it just so happened that a few of our native species have an extremely high transfer rate for the virus. So I agree that some diseases could become more of a problem; yet some increases in disease (even mosquito related) have nothing to do with global warming.

I am not disagreeing with global warming, I believe it will become a problem in the near future; I am simply pointing out flaws in your arguements.

Part of the problem is related to money. Hybrid cars are often expensive (my boss wanted to buy a hybrid vehicle, and it turned out to be about $10,000 more than a similar non hybrid). Sure, she would save gas money...eventually. In the US, people are too attached to cars and public transportation in some places is not good enough to justify not driving. And its not only the US. In the 60s, China had a policy telling all their citizens to cut down their local forests to fuel the coal industry. Economy is always before environment there, unfortunately, and if you think the US has some shitty environmental laws (yeah it does), check out China's record.

The tips you posted are a good place to start (and you actually forgot to mention buying energy efficient appliances), but until someone comes up with a widescale solution that is also economically feasible, it won't do much.

If any of that didn't make sense....sorry. Heh, My bosses are working me like crazy lately.

While I originally thought I had something constructive to add, I realized that I don't. So, here's what I do know: I'm sick of 107F heat. I'm sick of monsoon-like rainstorms during the winters. I'm sick of completely skipping spring and autumn.

Though this post is in the wrong place, I have something really important to add:

Stop building neighborhoods far, far away from the city!

Seriously, these places are a great cause for pollution, because if you live inside the urban sprawl, you can take the bus to move around the town. Yeah, of course, going for some booze usually means staying at a friend's house until morning, but you can usually use the public transportation to move around.

On the other hand, if you live far away from the city, you HAVE TO use the car just to be able to leave your neighborhood, because there ain't no bus. I shoud know, because I live 7 km within a 1000 feet high hilltop, and my Pontiac Sunfire burns about 1 or 2 gallons of gasoline on the way home. And I must go from home to school 5 times a week. The result? My 50 liter gas tank lasts for 2 weeks, if and only if I use it once, to go from home to school and vice-versa.

As you can guess, the gas bills are sky-high. I'm already used to that, because in Mexico, the gas prices are comparable to the ones in the USA shortly after Katrina, but constant and slowly increasing. But please, do yourself a favor, and go get your house within the town, not in the middle of nowhere! I'm sick of seeing so much people fleeing the town looking for "calm and peace", when the only thing they get is a lot of stress from having to drive 40 miles each day!

Partly. I've read something about that, and it also has something to do. Carbon dioxide is still the largest player, but that's because of the sheer amounts that we create, because carbon dioxide itself is a really weak greenhouse gas: most of it returns to the nature, or dissolves into the ocean, becomes carbolic acid, and sinks towards the bottom. Methane is, by far, the most dangerous gas, because it stays there, and traps the infrared radiation from the sun. That's why the UN actually pays you money for just burning your methane and converting it into CO2: because it becomes less harmful.