Peak oil or global warming, which is most serious?

For every opinion saying one thing, there is another saying the opposite. I'm not going to post any. If any one wants t read them they are as easy to find as the others listed above. However, if you lean drastically towards one opinion or the other, the "opposing view" becomes harder to find, and thay are strangely overlooked (ignored?).

Yes, I agree with all the sources you cited as far as the evidence is concerned. This IS probably the hottest year in over a thousand years. I won't, and can't, dispute that. HOWEVER, this is a far shorter time perios than the average climactic shift happens in. These things are 10-20 thousand years or more in duration. The ice ages lasted for that long, and took almost as long to start and finish.

Is global warming real?
...maybe.

Is it the cause of all the hurricanes?
...maybe.

Is it caused by us?
...maybe.

Folks, that's the best answer anyone can reasonably give. WE JUST DON'T KNOW!!! We will in a couple of thousand years, though. Unfortunately I probably won't be there (unless I can perfect the mind transfer into my new cybernetic body) to find out. Right now we have but one piece of the puzzle. It's impossible to tell what the finished puzzle will look like (and no we don't have the box with the picture!).

Am I saying that we disregard the warnings as simply being potentially false? No, that would be foolish. But also don't take it as gospel. Will reduced emissions help to stop global warming, or are we simply accelerating aprocess that was happening (and will continue to happen) anyway? The answer is that we simply don't know. Even those who spend their entire lives studying this can only guess right now because of the extremely limited timeline of information.

Is Chicken Little telling the truth this time? Only time will tell.

 

DocVijay,

Sorry about the double post, but you overlooked some critical information.

Several of the links I posted mention that not only is it warmer, but the RATE of warming is greater than has ever been observed, and by a significant extent. You choose to overlook that, which is the key point a couple of those posts make. It is important, because we have many thousands of years of ice core and geologic records, and we have never seen anything approaching the RATE at which the earth is currently warming. And the scientists do not believe the rate can be explained by natural processes.

Your post also disagrees with the positions of NASA and NOAA, and I don't think you are qualified to do that, nor am I. Your saying "maybe" in resposne to all your questions, while "maybe" technically correct, is a bit disingenuos. To characterize things that are believed by the vast majority of scientists, supported by extensive research, and are the stated opinions of agencies like NASA as "maybes" isn't a very fair characterization.

If the only answer choices are yes, no or maybe, then you are right. But a better way to like at things like this (which may never qualify for a firm yes or no) would be to characterize them as highly improbable, somewhat improbable, somewhat probable, or highly probable. Do some reaserch and answer the questions now. If you rely on the most recent and widely accepted information, I don't think you will like the answers you find.

 

It's not an either/or situation. It's not "Which one is worse?" There's not going to be one specific day when there's suddenly not enough oil, and there's certainly not going to be a "Day After Tomorrow" type sudden weather catastrophy.

Rather, energy is going to get gradually more expensive as supplies become gradually more expensive to exploit and demand grows; weather patterns are going to continue getting more erratic, and that will cause loss of property. Both trends will erode spending power, affecting the poor disproportionately, and leading to a rise in social unrest and street crime as people struggle to survive.

Neither issue can be addressed in a vacuum. If we've learned anything about the environment in the second half of the 20th century, it's that systems are interconnected, and that the challenges we face cannot be disentangled one from the other. We need a wholistic approach if we don't want our world to evolve into something a lot less fun to live in than the present. We need a grand paradigm shift.

Problem is, a democracy ruled by demagogues is probably politically incapable of making the necessary shifts. We have the technology. We lack the political honesty. So we are doomed to go to hell in a handbasket.

P.S.: Beware the "Helen Caldicot syndrome": When you give a (generally arbitrary) date after which "it will be too late" you undermine your own credibility, because all too soon the date arrives, and to be consistent you'd have to say, "Okay, it's too late now, let's all just forget it and party."

 

The statement is pointless. We should consider the opinion of experts in the field; not every Tom, Dick, and Harry. And there, the opinion is > 99:1, that anthropogenic global warming is a fact of life.

Time to grow up, accept reality, and get with the program.

 

I think that we're headed in that general direction. Programs like the 60 minutes one help to get this stuff on peoples' minds. Couple that with the increasing awareness of oil dependency and you get a nice synergy.

 

Well said. The "anti-warming" crowd keep dragging up old arguments, that 2 to 5 years ago may have had some validity, but don't hold up in the light of recent data/evidence.

 

Somebody needs to inform these guys that global warming isn't real.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11951694/

...yeah, a +60 degree F shift from the norm...aww, don't worry about it, just wait about billion more years until we can collect more data to see if those worries are justified. I'm wrong, then a billion years from now you can say I told you so.


Let's see dubious evidence for WMD in Iraq and you get, saddle up let's go to war cause we can't take the slightest chance. And at the same time, tons of scientific evidence for global warming which could have catastophic effects the world over if left unaddressed, and we get "not convinced, still need MORE proof before we'll do anything." Wacky-sad.

 

That is SOOO spot on.

 

For someone who believes the earth is only 15 million years old, what kind of "evidence" would be required to convince you that greenhouse gases are causing global warming?

 

The situation is even more complicated then we think. We have the oil issue, we have global warming and we have nuclear proliferation and preemptive strikes. The current political "climate" lends itself to the intiation of what has heretofore been affectionately known as "nuclear winter". This will have the dual effect of eliminating much of the need and usage of oil, by drastically reducing the population. It will also off-set the global warming due to greenhouse emissions by eliminating the heating effect of sun, thus inducing an 'artificial" ice age. Regardless, I agree with the poster who indicated that we do something, rather than rub our hands together saying that "the data are inconclusive". I also agree that we have more data implicating greenhouse gases and global warming then that WMDs existed in Iraq!...

 

Isn't the problem that too much time is spent arguing over who is right? Why not just weigh the options and the possible outcomes of each situation.

A ) The earth is warming. We have 2 options:
1. We can ignore the warnings and continue to burn oil at our current rate. Basically this will likely result in catastrophic weather events, maybe wipe us out or close to it.
2. We can clean up our act. Find and develop alternative/cleaner fuels. Thus, we avoid the natural disasters and the possible hardships that they bring.

B ) The earth isn't warming.
1. We continue to burn fuel at our current rate. Eventually the oil will dry up and we'll be forced to switch to another source. Energy crisis possible?
2. We develop alternative energy sources anyway. Keep the environment clean and don't have to worry about fuels drying up or mother nature striking us down.


Seems to me we should develop alternative fuels, we win either way. Then again, I'm not OPEC or any other company with unfathomable amounts of money invested in oil. To me it doesn't matter who is right, argue all you want on that. I care about the possible consequences of our actions should either side be correct.

 

If the worst case scenario happened like "waterworld" or the "day after tomorrow", objectively, wouldn't the human race finally be receiving its just desserts after all these eons?

 

From my reading, I too conclude that global warming is a far greater threat. We will reach CO2 saturation/irreversibility long before we run out of oil.

 

We're there. We're on a car going towards the cliff at 80 miles and hour. We're about 1 mile away. If we slammed on the brakes we could stop in time, but if you think that's going to happen, the US is too busy looking in the rearview mirror putting on its lipstick. It's going to be fun ride to the bottom.

 

Too bad the US will damage the entire Earth.

 

Sounds like we could just put it in 'B' and be fine.

 

Doing it and having the leadership smart enough to do it are 2 different things.

 

The Earth will be fine. It will just evolve into a place that's not very hospitable for humans, and many other animals, to live on. But other stuff will evolve, which will thrive in the new conditions.

Part of me says we'd be doing the universe a great favor if we eliminated ourselves before we developed the technology to colonize other planets around other stars.

 

I think that might be your frustration speaking because you are anthropomorphizing the universe and saying a part of you feels that annihilation of the entire human race might be a good thing. :blink: I don't think the universe cares one way or another how its particles are arranged...whether it be into clumps of what we define as pollution or clean air or anything else.
The point to me is always about humans and trying to maximize happiness for as long as possible, which extends to maximizing human health, which extends to having a clean planet hospitable to humans. If we did have the technology to easily colonize other planets and thereby had unlimited resources that would lay many of these conservation, pollution, and global warming issues to rest. Not reality though, and I think the potential for big problems to arise for us on Earth due to those things will come about before we have the technology to travel to other human-friendly planets in the universe. Let's deal with it now so we can be all the happier for it later.