Originally Posted by Wol

Thank God for that then - we can all rest assured.

I am as far as it's possible to get from the treehugging, bearded besandalled environmentalists. But I have been convinced by the overwhelming factual evidence - OK, second hand, because I'm not privy to the data - from many sources. There are a few sceptics out there who, on investigation, appear to have "connections" and "funding" who quote apparently large numbers of authorities to further their cause. But when these authorities are themselves investigated it appears that either they have been misquoted or have retracted in many cases.

Recently some 10,000 scientists have signed an open letter deploring the anti-science attitude of the Bush administration, which is to a large extent the backer of the sceptical minority. They can't all be rabid commies or idiots.

The billions of tonnes of methane - which is many times as powerful a greenhouse gas as is CO2 - locked up in permafrost is probably going to be the final nail in the coffin when it's released. And it *is* being released in rapidly increasing quantities.

Originally Posted by arkon

It'll be just like 'Mad Max' out here then.

Originally Posted by BadgeIsBack

Indeed. Something needs to be done. Incidentally bickering about Kyoto (which was the talk today) is a non starter. I couln't care who signs it or ratifies it as long as money is spent on the issues.

Originally Posted by Wol

No, I don't think Kyoto has much to do with it - the targets are far too conservative and in any case are not being met or even approached. As a paper exercise I suppose the politicians can say they're doing something but in practical terms it's a dead duck.

It's rather interesting to conjecture why SETI hasn't returned any positive results over several decades of listening. There must be billions of inhabitable planets out there, so why haven't we caught their leaked transmissions? Perhaps over billions of years intelligent species have evolved, have developed technology - and radio/TV etc - and have, within a couple of hundred years, destroyed their planets and died out. Their detectable "bubbles" of radio energy, just a couple of hundred light years thick would have a vanishingly small chance of passing us during our own brief existence and being detected. To me it does provide circumstantial evidence that intelligent life destroys itself PDQ!

I'm getting too deep!

Originally Posted by Wol

Thank God for that then - we can all rest assured.

I am as far as it's possible to get from the treehugging, bearded besandalled environmentalists. But I have been convinced by the overwhelming factual evidence - OK, second hand, because I'm not privy to the data - from many sources. There are a few sceptics out there who, on investigation, appear to have "connections" and "funding" who quote apparently large numbers of authorities to further their cause. But when these authorities are themselves investigated it appears that either they have been misquoted or have retracted in many cases.

Recently some 10,000 scientists have signed an open letter deploring the anti-science attitude of the Bush administration, which is to a large extent the backer of the sceptical minority. They can't all be rabid commies or idiots.

The billions of tonnes of methane - which is many times as powerful a greenhouse gas as is CO2 - locked up in permafrost is probably going to be the final nail in the coffin when it's released. And it *is* being released in rapidly increasing quantities.

Originally Posted by Wol

I used to be agnostic on the cause(s) of global warming ad indeed on the actuality of it, given the rather complicated natural cycles upon cycles.

However, the evidence from many sources over the last couple of years has convinced me beyond any reasonable doubt that (a) Global warming is very real, (b) that we as a species are responsible for the majority of what we see happening and 9more recently) (c) the warming trend is rapidly increasing and there are quite a few positive feedback mechanisms that will almost certainly take us through the tipping point within the next ten years or so. After that, it won't matter *what* is done, the acceleration of warming through feedback will keep increasing.

I won't be around in 20 or 30 years but I don't think those under the age of about 20 now have much future to look forward to.

Originally Posted by Wol

...
It's rather interesting to conjecture why SETI hasn't returned any positive results over several decades of listening. There must be billions of inhabitable planets out there, so why haven't we caught their leaked transmissions? Perhaps over billions of years intelligent species have evolved, have developed technology - and radio/TV etc - and have, within a couple of hundred years, destroyed their planets and died out. Their detectable "bubbles" of radio energy, just a couple of hundred light years thick would have a vanishingly small chance of passing us during our own brief existence and being detected. To me it does provide circumstantial evidence that intelligent life destroys itself PDQ!

I'm getting too deep!

Originally Posted by MartinLuther

One reason may be that the amount of radio traffic being transmitted out into open space diminished as technology advanced. It's happening here, so one can assume it would happen on other planets. For SETI to work, there'd have to be a planet relatively nearby at roughly the same stage of development as ourselves - not very likely.

Originally Posted by BadgeIsBack

Atlantis.....ring any bells.

Originally Posted by Amazulu

I'm not sure which way to go on this issue although I tend towards the 'natural' causes side of the arguement. I don't have a Phd in science or environmental studies etc so cannot draw a conclusion myself. Who knows what is going to happen. Too many things have been 'predicted' & have never happened or the complete opposite has happened. I still reckon there are too many people on both sides if the arguement pushing their own agenda. One thing is for sure, cleaning up our act is going to do no harm to the environment that's for sure but it could do a whole lot of damage to our economy.

Originally Posted by MartinLuther

I was wondering if it might be causing the large number of men with man-boobs

(As they can't filter out the high levels of oestrogen in the piss water caused by The Pill.)

Originally Posted by Jimclevs

Hi

We're currently on Level 4 restrictions - with 15.4% in our 3 local dams - all too far inland to be of any real use. We expect to go to Level 5 within 6 months.

Here on the coast we have had good rainfall over the past 3 months or so but its all run off to sea.

The 2 local councils have joined together now to build a pipeline from the Hunter area to top up our supply when it gets down to 10%. Now the State government want to introduce a new water board for the area and the councils have reverted to type - and are concerned that (some of their) jobs will be lost.

There seems to be a great aversion to recycled water here which I think we were drinking in UK for years and it hasn't done us any harm - as far as I can tell That really has to be the way to go - desalination is too costly and too minimal and can only be a hole-plugger.

This, of course, is all part of the great global warming debate - we are probably only now seeing the start of the catastrophe. I am not hopeful that my grandchildren's children will have much of a world to live in unless all of the major governments release the money and encourage any initiatives which will start to reverse the current warming process.

OK - that's my two-penneth

Jim

Originally Posted by annqldau

The dinosaurs did something wrong and don't think it was to do with chimneys. We are just as likely to all get killed off by some natural catastrophe but that is not to say we aren't speeding up the likely hood of that happening sooner rather than later.

Originally Posted by ozzieeagle

Personally I vote for Turning lake Eyre into an inland sea

How about one of these little beauties then Ann.... could do the trick... I present to you the Large Hadron collider. It will be something like the following that eventually "does us in" chasing the carrot of Arkon Entanglement.


Safety concerns

As with RHIC, people both inside and outside of the physics community have voiced concern that the LHC might trigger one of several theoretical disasters capable of destroying the Earth or even the entire universe. These include:

* Creation of a stable black hole[7]
* Creation of strange matter that is more stable than ordinary matter
* Creation of magnetic monopoles that could catalyze proton decay
* Triggering a transition into a different quantum mechanical vacuum (see False vacuum)

CERN performed a study to investigate whether such dangerous events as micro black holes, strangelets, or magnetic monopoles could occur.[8] The report concluded, "We find no basis for any conceivable threat." For instance, it is not possible to produce microscopic black holes unless certain untested theories are correct. Even if they are produced, they are expected to be harmless due to the Hawking radiation process. Perhaps the strongest argument for the safety of colliders such as the LHC comes from the simple fact that cosmic rays of much higher energies than the LHC can produce have been bombarding the Earth, Moon and other objects in the solar system for billions of years with no such effects.

However, some people remain concerned about the safety of the LHC. As with any new and untested experiment, it is not possible to say with utter certainty what will happen. John Nelson at Birmingham University stated of RHIC that "it is astonishingly unlikely that there is any risk - but I could not prove it."[9] In academia there is some question of whether Hawking radiation is correct.[10]

RHIC has been running since 2000 and has generated no hint of Earth-destroying effects.




You just never know

Originally Posted by Swerv-o

Maybe the Dinosaurs built one of these!

S