Comments on: Global Warming: It's All In Your Head

It's Not A Question Of Facts, But Perceptions, Says CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer

[zykracosmos]

Perhaps one need look no farther than the endemic habit of cigarette smoking in the West to see that we have a poor danger alert system for anything that doesn't seem to pose an immediate threat, even though we clearly understand the long-term lethal implications. Despite the proof that smoking will absolutely kill you in one of several nasty ways, 22 million people still do it in the US. Time to rewire the brain? Unlike the movie "Crank," people can't stay on alert about anything for very long. They either address the problem and solve it immediately, or regress to a state of gloomy acceptance.

[zykracosmos]

Nowhere does the human population%u2019s propensity for ignoring a dire threat to common life support systems show up as brutally as the lack of will to address the global population explosion. The population has doubled in 30 years and the planet is already beyond its human carrying capacity, and yet no lawmaker in the free world would dare propose any strategy aimed at reducing our numbers. Individual social freedoms outflank the survival of the whole. Isn't it ironic that the only country in the world that has tried to limit population growth (China) is a totalitarian regime? Is that what it takes? The poorest countries have the highest growth rate. Ironically when Kenya had the highest infant mortality rate, they still had the highest population growth rate. THEY INCREASED THE BIRTHRATE TO INSURE A GREATER CHANCE THAT 1 OR 2 OFFSPRING WOULD SURVIVE, illustrating the paradox that befalls all of humankind.

[montraville]

Some crank groups allied with Focus on the Family say that the earth is actually UNDERPOPULATED. It's the perfect kind of organization to start if you're a *** addict, I guess...

[zykracosmos]

*** this was one of your more thoughtful and interesting columns of the past several months. I have often referred to humans as "frogs in the pot" in reference to a frog's tendency to sit in water that slowly heats to a boiling point until the he dies, although he would instinctively jump out if dropped in a pan of even moderately hot water. We don't have the instincts as humans to deal with long term threats, and it's our Achilles heel as a species. Our collective will to restrict ozone-depleting aerosols may be a blip on the screen when it comes to international cooperation in solving threats to our common life-support systems.

[grumpas]

Most of the one's who don't think we have global warming are the same one's who don't see the hazards of over-population! Who want to eliminate birth control, abortion and any form of contraception because it goes against their religious belief's! We are populating ourselves into oblivion! In another 50 years it's going to reach the critical stage where it's irreverable. And what is worse no one seems to see the hazards of unchecked population growth!

[gaye5]

We all know that trees are the lungs of the earth so it stands to reason that as we are making CO2 far more than before plus we are cutting down trees that absorb the CO2's at an alarming rate that we are going to have an imbalance. It would be logical for governments to order the replanting of forests or plant trees in deserts like Israel did, or where land is useless we can plant more trees. .
However in having said this, we have to realise that scientists also say that the sun is heating up, along with Satellite data since 1998 indicates the bulge in the Earth's gravity field at the equator is growing, and scientists think that the ocean may hold the answer to the mystery of how the changes in the trend of Earth's gravity are occurring.
Before 1998, Earth's equatorial bulge in the gravity field was getting smaller because of the post-glacial rebound, or PGR, that occurred as a result of the melting of the ice sheets after the last Ice Age. When the ice sheets melted, land that was underneath the ice started rising. As the ground rebounded in this fashion, the gravity field changed.

"The Earth behaved much like putting your finger into a sponge ball and watching it slowly bounce back," said Christopher Cox, a research scientist supporting the Space Geodesy Branch at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. this is from the Goddard space flight center.
August 01, 2002 - (date of web publication)

[adventurepa]

"So what is it that makes some human brains dismiss or ignore global warming and others, far fewer, feel worried, threatened and called to action?" Quoted from above. The real reason.

Dismiss or ignore = MONEY or ME, me, me, me, me!

Worried or Threatened = educated, fact based discerning of information and being able to see past the problem, seeing the bigger picture, to a solution.

Yes the climate changes all the time!
Ice ages come and go!
Warming comes and goes.
But,
Doing nothing about accelerating these events and contributing to warming.
Stupid!

[gaye5]

- London Telegraph: The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

The simple fact is that throughout the ages the earth has swung wildly between a warm, wet, stable climate, to a cold, dry and windy one - long before the first fossil fuel was burned. The changes we are now witnessing are a walk in the park compared to the battering that our planet has taken in the past.

Even the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, Mr. Stern sees increasing hurricane damage in the U.S. as a powerful argument for carbon controls. However, hurricane damage is increasing predominantly because there are more people with more goods to be damaged.

[victor_2-1]

Global warming is a serious looming problem that will sneak up on Humanity probably within the next 15 years. There is another serious problem that nobody is discussing. What happens when there is no more crude oil? If humanity doesn't think of something that can effectively replace oil in the next 10 to 20 years we are not going to be able to maintain the scale of agriculture and land transportation that we now have when the Earth runs out of oil. Basically what I'm saying is there will not be enough food to feed most of the people on Earth if we burn all the oil and don't have an energy source to replace it.

[r9119111]

Those who think global warming isn't happening are like drug adicts or alcoholics denying they have a problem. They will remain ignorant until they die or until they can admit what everyone else knew all along.

GLAC