"We Are at the Limits of Suicide"

[orphanedhawk]

Pope Francis has warned that the world is heading toward suicide if more is not done to combat climate change. His message was directed at nearly 150 heads of state gathered in Paris for the U.N. Climate Summit to finalize pledges to make voluntary greenhouse gas emission cuts. On Monday, France and India launched an international alliance to deliver solar energy to some of the planet’s poorest even as India continues to heavily promote coal power. India is expected to open a new coal plant every single month until 2020 as the country plans to double its coal production. Chinese President Xi Jinping called on the world’s wealthiest nations to help the developing world adapt to a changing climate, as smog in Beijing climbed to more than 35 times safety levels set by the World Health Organization and the country ordered thousands of factories to be temporarily shut down.

cont.
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/1/pope_francis_to_world_leaders_at

[specialmom]

Hm.  Well, I'm not sure if it is egotistical to admit that our actions do have some consequences.  Corporations for eons have polluted the environment knowingly.  Doesn't things like that factor into what happens to Earth?  I'm not saying that man is 'bad' or anything like that.  I just think this IS a side effect of the lifestyles we have grown accustomed to.  I don't think it is the whole story.  But there are consequences and someday, those may bite mankind.  

There is a lot of conflicting evidence with global warming.  So, I'm not even talking about that.  I'm just talking about the common sense of doing harm to the environment eventually having a big effect on it.  

[ajadamama]

When I was a kid (many many moons ago), and lived in Ohio, we used to fish and eat the fish, swim in the river and it was safe. No longer. Same in Michigan, and the gulf has a nickname called floridas sewer. I do not think that is due to normal cycles of the earth. Is it? More like a sign of the times from the bible maybe but either way it effects our resources that we and our children rely on to survive.

[Vance2335]

It's really egotistical to think that man kind can effect the earth that much.

[specialmom]

I do agree with you Vance that Earth goes through changes without any help from human kind.  I do have to wonder if we don't 'add' to it.  Kind of like the theories of creation and evolution.  Some  say that  both theories can be true and work together.  I feel that way about this.  Earth and climate is changing as it always does over time and we are adding to it so it may be happening a little faster than it would have.    

[desrt]

It's happening more than " a little faster than it would have". 400 years since the Industrial Revolution started burning coal is a blink of the eye in these things. If we some how were able to stop burning all oil and coal tomorrow, best guess is it would take centuries for things to right themselves. If at all.

[Vance2335]

How many "Ice Ages" has the earth gone through without this "man made climate change"?

[desrt]

Good for the Pope for being a man of the cloth and a man of science. There's more carbon dioxide in the air than there has been before there were primates. Good luck adapting.

[specialmom]

You know what I've never understood?  How does Global warming become so political?  Is it big business who wants to not have any constraints on them due to pollution and such verses the environmentalists?  When I was a YOUNG professional (LONG time ago for the young part)--  in my early and  mid twenties, I volunteered for a group that would go after companies for the sake for the sake of the environment.  By going after, I mean, work on policies that would limit pollution.  Then they targeted my dad's company and I felt it was a conflict of interest so dropped out of the group.   I realized that it was political and companies like my dad's fought these environmentalists with their own studies on impact they may or may not be having.  So believing in global warming or not is about whose info you buy into more with no one fully knowing because each side has an agenda.  

I personally think that 'global warming' is real.  Earth has undergone change since its existence, why wouldn't it now? And with us helping it along . . .  who knows if it is accelerated or not.  

But it is interesting how it is a polarizing topic.  Big resistance to seeing any validity to either side for some reason.    

[ajadamama]

There is a program coming to discovery called extinction. Says about 30 percent of all our animals are either extinct or in severe danger of doing so. Im interested in viewing it when it comes out. I think its worth a look see. But in the meantime, did anyone else see the smog in china and other countries so bad that the people cover their faces to go outside?

[Barb135]

"German Scientist Accused NASA of ‘Massive’ Temperature Alterations
By Barbara Hollingsworth | November 30, 2015 | 4:18 PM EST

(CNSNews.com) – A German scientist has accused the National Aeronautics and Space Agency’s (NASA) Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) of altering temperature records between 2010 and 2012 to produce the illusion that the Earth has been warming since 1950.

GISS datasets are used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to document global warming.

In a presentation at the 2012 EIKE Climate Conference in Germany, Professor Friedrich-Karl Ewert, a retired geologist and data expert from the University of Paderborn, said that he examined publicly available archived temperature records from 1,153 weather stations around the globe going back to 1881 and found evidence of “massive” tampering by GISS between 2010 and 2012.

Ewert noticed that “the temperature data of Reykjavik [Iceland] and Nuuk Nuur [Greenland] had been changed retroactively,” veteran German television journalist Gunter Ederer writes. The 2012 data was higher than the temperatures recorded before 2010.

The German scientist then randomly selected 120 weather stations around the world and manually compared the archived data to GISS’ 2012 temperature records.

“He always came to the same conclusion: The temperature supplied from 2012 showed a higher warming than the published [archived data] in 2010,” Ederer writes.

Ewert also found that since 1881, four distinct cooling stages have alternated with three warming phases. He says the Earth is currently in a cooling phase.

And since a stronger warming cycle occurred before carbon dioxide emissions began to rise, Ewert concluded that  “an influence of our CO2 emissions [on] temperatures can not be seen.”

“Mankind always knew that constantly there are climate changes,” according to a translation of Ewert’s EIKE article. “The parable of the seven fat and seven lean years [is] an indication.”

Ewert also claims to have found 10 different statistical methods used by NASA-GISS to change the overall trend from cooling to warming.

“Between the years 2010 and 2012 the data measured since 1881 were altered so that they showed a significant warming, especially after 1950…. A comparison of the data from 2010 with the data of 2012 shows that NASA-GISS had altered its own datasets so that especially after WWII, a clear warming appears – although it never existed,” Ederer writes.

“Using the NASA data from 2010 the surface temperature globally from 1940 until today has fallen by 1.110°C, and since 2000 it has fallen 0.4223°C. … The cooling has hit every continent except for Australia, which warmed by 0.6339°C since 2000. The figures for Europe: From 1940 to 2010, using the data from 2010, there was a cooling of 0.5465°C and a cooling of 0.3739°C since 2000.”

Noting that “an entire industry of air rescuers and the resulting trillions of dollars that are so invested [in deindustrialization] are at stake,” Ederer adds that “the thesis of man-made global warming has taken on a whole new meaning: Yes, it is always made by people when the data are adjusted to fit the theory.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/german-scientist-accuses-nasa-massive-alteration-temperature

[orphanedhawk]

Not sure I follow you but global warming is no myth.

[Vance2335]

Even though temps don't reflect global warming and the ice caps don't reflect global warming? Of right it's "climate change" because global warming was a myth.