Whether or not global warming is happening naturally or if it's man made, it's better to be safe than sorry imo. Besides, man-made pollution affects a place's aesthetics and air/water quality anyway even if it's (debatably) not affecting global warming so it's still important to take care of our surroundings.
This really depends upon what you are talking about in terms of "safe than sorry."
There are some people proposing plans to put micronized titanium or aluminum into an orbiting cloud of dust around the Earth. This would block out something like 1-2% of the Sun's rays. I think those people are absolutely insane.
Then you have other people who want to basically force everyone to buy certain "green" technologies. I've done enough studies on solar and wind power to know that it works as a power for highly efficient residential setups. It falls apart in urban environments and when powering industry. Further, many of the countries that they use for their 'studies' into how effective it is actually import power from nearby countries and simply cite their domestic power production.
The sad reality is that it's completely unnecessary for the government to take action. Industry has been cleaning itself up since long before the EPA. America had the cleanest running power plants and industrial sector before the EPA was established. No one had to come in and hold a gun to their head to make them realize the benefits of cleaner operation and finding ways to reuse byproducts.
Take the migration toward CFLs and LED lights. No one wrote a law to make you go in and look at a light and realize: "Hey... this thing uses like half the power of the lights I normally buy... I could take a good chunk out of my electric bill with these, and they don't burn out as frequently!"
No one has to hold a gun to your head and say: "You should really think about how much it is going to cost to drive that vehicle around. Perhaps you should consider one of those newfangled hybrids, a corolla, or something." It is just inherent in the human mindset to consider costs. Generally speaking, the more waste something creates, the more it costs.
Example: I work in Dialysis. I'm a technical guy, and sit in with our administrator on a lot of the proposed building and rennovation projects on the table (we are trying to convince corporate that it is more worth their money to build a new building - the one we have now is a lemon flavored turd). When a sales rep mentioned a Reverse Osmosis system called the "Aquaboss" and went into detail about how it does not require chemical cleaning and disinfection (as well as offers nearly 80% water recovery - meaning 80% of the water that we draw for the RO can be used for Dialysis) - she immediately wanted a quote on it. She's an accountant by trade.
It's going to be about twice as expensive as our other quotes for other RO systems - but those have a lot of liability that come with them. Most of them can only run about 50-60% recovery, require us to run a series of caustic chemicals through them to remove particulate and biological contaminates, as well as a very potent cold sterilant to disinfect the whole works. It's a process done quarterly and consumes about 14 man-hours (because an RO of that size is rarely disinfected with just one person). It also introduces a huge amount of liability. What if things don't get rinsed out properly? What if disinfectant gets into the RO holding tank? What if patients get sick or hurt because of a mistake?
The argument to "go green" doesn't have to be made under force of law. It's actually ironic that the FDA and EPA often stand in the way of innovations in efficiency. There is equipment that we can't use in our water treatment system because it is not approved by the FDA for use in Dialysis (even though AAMI samples have shown the composition of the product water to be no different than or better than the standards set for patient care). The EPA and automobile regulators have combined to stagnate automobile efficiency since the early 2000s.
Now, if you want me to start telling you how to 'live green' - you're not going to like it.
First, I'm going to dig a hole, fill it with concrete walls and supports, and bury it. That is your home. The power system in your house will be a 25/0/-25V DC bus with earth ground. Most of your appliances will run straight off of the 25V DC bus (including your lighting systems) while your stove and other power-intensive devices will tap across the 25 and -25V buses to get 50V and pull 20+ amps. Power can be provided by mains power, locally derived power, or a combination thereof.
By going underground, you get rid of the lunacy of building a structure above ground that is meant to withstand 100 degree temperature swings between the seasons. The ground is at a temperature that is fairly comfortable for most in modest clothing. Risk of damage from storms and other environmental disasters is severely reduced. Since I live in the midwest and deal with a tornado every other day during the spring - I don't understand why the fools still build things above ground out here. Tornado insurance on an underground home is the fact that it's underground. They even make cool little "light tubes" that you could install on the surface and duct light down to your humble little abode. Just be sure to put a spike trap beneath it for when some 007 wanna-be tries to break in through the lighting.
Anyway - my point is that we spend a lot of energy in our society on doing silly things that you take for granted. Windows are an absolute no-no in terms of energy efficiency. Anything above ground is horribly, horribly inefficient because we spend huge amounts of energy just making it feel the right temperature. Very little of our residential and commercial energy consumption goes toward the functions of living/commerce, respectively. Most of it goes towards making air the right temperature.
But it requires a huge shift in thinking and lifestyle to embrace a more energy efficient style of building and construction.
We, in the West, are already running at the forefront of clean energy.
The war against fossil fuels is largely to free up oil and coal used in our market and to sell it overseas - where those countries have to purchase our treasury notes to obtain those resources. This is why the Federal Reserve has begun to pursue the "green agenda" -
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The more oil is bought up by China, the more China must invest in our failing economic system if they want to keep their economy going. Same with India.
Make no mistake - the environmental agenda is about the money and power. It's not about actually protecting the environment or being better stewards. There are some who actually believe that - but they are being used by those who recognize the monetary potential in it all.
global warming is occurring right now, it doesn't matter if you believe in it or not (just because you deny reality doesn't mean it still not occurring) and I honestly believe that it's to late for mankind to do anything about it (in theory we could, but we would have to abandon all pollutive ways to get energy, slaughter almost all the cows and chicken (to change died to decrease the Co2 that is a byproduct, from the meat production) as in change away from a diet that is so heavily based on meat, abandon all type of space programs (this also means sending up satellites)
The problem is that the satellite data used to establish a warming trend doesn't show a warming trend until they 'calibrated' the data based off of surface station data. The problem is that the surface station data is complete junk and has, itself, been 'calibrated' and 'adjusted' for countless effects using methods with no peer reviewed evidence for those methods being effective at their stated purpose.
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Bluntly - the raw data does not support the claims of climate change/climate disruption advocates.
The sad thing is that a number of the scientists actually believed their satellite instruments were wrong and that they had to 'compensate' for some unknown factor that was not showing the warming they knew was scientific fact. They weren't trying to deceive - they legitimately believed their satellites were wrong and needed to be corrected for. Because, you know, the temperature monitoring station parked right next to a heat exchanger for a commercial building is giving more accurate data about how the planet is warming up.
If there is any warming at all, it is due to increased urbanization and deforestation as opposed to increased CO2.
if we did all that we could avoid a new ice age in the near future (200-500'ish years) but honestly we won't we would have to sacrifice so much, million of people would die, trillion of dollars would be lost, so we will keep polluting to earn money and **** up everything in the process.
We really aren't polluting all that much. There was a time when you went to work with two white shirts. You wore one to work and took it off, because it was black by time you got to work. That was back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Then you compare our industry to what is going on in China. I've seen the Yellow Fog/Haze drift across to hang in the mountains of Korea.
But even that stage will pass. People over there don't want to live under those conditions, and will correct them as they obtain the resources to do so. Just as we did (before the EPA).
But for right now - they are an expanding and developing economy. They need the resources and don't really have the funds, infrastructure, etc to use the latest and greatest in manufacturing and power production (heck, they don't really have the experience, either).
Quite plainly, the "crisis" of global warming is all an exaggerated and manufactured guilt-trip. Notice how the solutions to this problem are all "out of your hands" - but government officials always insist that they are doing something about it?
Always a red flag. "You are powerless to solve this problem unless you support me!"
It's like recycling programs. Just about all of them actually consume more resources than they save. More oil is used to collect and process plastics than oil saved from processing the plastics. Simply using bio-degradable plastics and throwing them away would be a better recommendation so that recycling of other materials could be more focused. But, you know, then we wouldn't be required to pay the city a fee for recycling things that they can funnel into other little pet projects of theirs illegally (but who actually looks at what any government does with its budget?).
I remember a statement I made to a friend in Montenegro:
"Seriously, our government has nothing better to do than to try and regulate cow farts! We seriously are so complacent and privileged that we are concerned about how much our food farts. You can't make this up!"
That is yet more legislation that is going to drive the family farm out of business and force it all into large corporate conglomerates that can afford whatever anti-fart measures the EPA decides need to be in place.
Our country has become absolutely insane, not to mention an insult to the notion of freedom.
