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Product designers should be dragged out and whipped in public!

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Numsgil:

--- Quote from: Peter ---Co2 levels : What is the enviromental damage of a higher CO2 level
--- End quote ---

Increases in global ambient temperature through the well understood greenhouse effect.


--- Quote ---Average temperatures : There have been many temperature shifts in time. What does a rise in temperature actual mean. In the 50er years there where also scientists who said there was going to be an icetime. Another thing is that the temperature of mars has also been measured form out the 70s. Mars seems to have globally desame temperature rising as on earth.
--- End quote ---

Average temperatures usually change extremely slowly, and even then have dramatic effects on the planet.  A hotter planet means more extreme weather (to put it simply there's more energy in the system).  Places that were once wet become dry, and vice versa.  Which means floods and droughts.  Many plant and animal species, already on the brink of extinction, could be pushed to the extinction.  This would decrease the global biodiversity.  Most of humanity is surviving on the brink of death themselves.  Consider the little ice age which had profound effects on Europe.  A hotter planet means a wetter tropic and a drier temperate zone.

On the other hand, a warming planet could have profound positive effects as well.  Changes to global temperature could make the planet more hospitable to human life.  For example extending growing seasons in various agricultural areas, or opening up arable land in the subarctic.  The problem is that the effects and magnitudes are way beyond our ability to properly predict or control.  It's like rolling the dice with billions of lives.

Also, while the evidence is irrefutable that humans are warming the planet, we don't know how much of the observed warming is human influenced.  It's possible that the sun is going through a period of increased activity, which in theory could be causing the vast majority of the obsesrved warming.  The little ice age is believed to have been caused by the reverse: a solar cooldown.  So not only are the effects indeterminable, but we might not even have the ability to stop or reverse it.


--- Quote ---percent forest land converted to mono-specie human crops: your point is. There is a bigger chance of crop-deseases if that is what you mean. But I gues the farmers are taking that into account.
--- End quote ---

Monocrops are huge profit makers in the short term.  But most species are not hardy at all.  They're grown for their ability to produce money, not survive.  They grow on a razor thin margin that can easily be upset.  Witness the Irish potato famine.


--- Quote ---What is the enviromental loss on big scale on the world when destroying the rain forest. I know the animals that use to live there aren't very happy.
--- End quote ---

A loss of biodiversity and soil quality.  That land doesn't suddenly become farmland.  After a few years it becomes unarable, and is left fallow.  Left unchecked, eventually the entire amazon basin could look like the sahara.


--- Quote ---PCB and lead : PCB is forbidden and lead forbidden or allowed in low concentrations. New products of today are thoughrough checked before letting them use.
--- End quote ---

Forbidden or not, they've had and are having strong effects on the environment.  Consider your computer monitor.  It has roughly a pound of lead in it, if I remember correctly.  All sorts of volatile and toxic chemicals exist in all sorts of household products.  And they're routinely disposed of improperly.


--- Quote ---oceanic fish sizes and fishery depletions : As far I know there are in the Netherlands strict regulations about fishery. In the rest of Europe there are also regulations about fishery(altrough less regulated). My gues that desame is in america and the rest of the world, atleast the ones with big fisherships.
--- End quote ---

Those requlations go against the natural tendancy of the fishing industries, and are largely a consequence of the environmental movement in the 60s and 70s.  When environmentalism goes out of vogue, so will those regulations.


--- Quote ---Number of endangered or extinct species world wide : Well, true there are many endangered species. That probably mostly becouse their habitat is taken over by humans and the increasing of the habitat of other species created by human, I don't see a way to stop humans from growing further and decreasing their habitat and the increasing of the habitat of other species. There are much species that are endangered.
--- End quote ---

Actually, human growth does seem to have a natural sense of carrying capacity, at least in industrialized areas with ample supply of birth control and a social acceptance.  Europe's birth rate, I believe, is in strong decline.  Apparently economic pressures might actually be sufficient to limit human growth, when birth control allows parents to choose to conceive or not.  But it remains to be seen if this birth rate decline is just a short term fad or a long term trend, and wether this self-limiting growth is universal to humanity or a side-effect of the rather liberal European culture.


--- Quote ---So is that really bad, is it. We could put them in zoo's.
--- End quote ---

Like we did with the Tasmanian tiger?  Zoos are only barely beginning to reach a break even point with animal breeding.  It wasn't all that long ago that most zoo specimens were hunted from the wild.  Go to your local zoo and find out how many of the animals were born in captivity.  I'll bet you anything that it's in the far minority.  Plus, populations need a large gene pool to remain stable.  Zoos have to spend a lot of money to get breeding pairs together.  It's just not economically viable as a long term solution.  Zoos are not the way to ensure long term species survival.


--- Quote ---Coral reef destruction : True, there is much coral reef destruction. On the other side, there are (mostly for tourism) projects set up to recreate the coral reef at some places.
--- End quote ---

Proper coral reefs are centuries in the making.  It might be possible to create faux coral reefs, but I doubt they'll be effective on a large, hundreds of miles scale.


--- Quote ---But yes, I am pretty sceptic about global warming.
--- End quote ---

Sounds to me like your skepticism is confused.  Ask yourself these five questions:

1.  Is global warming hapening?
2.  Is it humanity's fault
3.  Can humanity fix it
4.  Should humanity fix it (that is, is global warming a net positive for humanity?)
5.  Do other co-inhabitors of our planet have a right to existance (that is, do Polar Bears deserve to live?)

A lot of your reasoning seems to give conflicting answers for these three questions.  My answers: 1. Yes. 2. Probably, though it could be the sun, too.  3.  Probably, by drastically cutting emissions down to zero, the planet could recover in a century or so.  But until it's economically driven, it won't happen. 4. Probably, but there is a chance that a warmer planet would increase the carrying capacity for humanity.  But I wouldn't bet on it.  5.  Yes, absolutely.

Testlund:

--- Quote ---Our genus and the 20+ species of human within it (all but one now extinct) have been around for more than 2.5 million years.
--- End quote ---

That's what I mean with suddenly appear. It's just a fart in the earths history.
Here's a very nice site that shows how we spread on the planet:

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/

According to this my guess is that human evolution took the next step here, only 160000 years ago, starting spreading out like a plague.


--- Quote ---My point is that there is no difference between the way individual humans act and the way individuals of any other species act. They always act selfishly, locally, which is what makes evolution work in the first place. They would be selected against if they acted otherwise. (And yes, there are various examples of locally altruistic behaviour. But they are actually in the end selfish in that they still serve to maximize reproductive fitness.)
--- End quote ---

I totally agree with you here! It's just that other species selfish behavior don't get out of bounds. It always end up in balance with nature. If our way is natural than mother nature made a blunder indead and it will probably be corrected. We change our ways or we die out together with a destroyed planet.


--- Quote ---You are of course correct to say that the consequences of 6.5 billion humans all making locally optimal selfish decisions is an onslaught unlike anything the planet as seen before given the extent of our extended phenotype (which includes everything from fusion bombs to deforestation to massive CO2 emission) and that the result is likely to be global disaterious for both humans and many other species.
--- End quote ---

EXACTLY!


--- Quote ---Personally, I am incredibly pessimistic that humans will change our collective behaviour. Our biology is against it.
--- End quote ---

I don't think that would be a problem. We don't have to struggle the same way as other species for survival, as we are in total control. If you think about it, there are still tribes of people living in harmony with nature, in Africa and Amazonas for instance and the only thing that threatens them are we who don't live like they do. But I'm not saying we all have to go back to hunting and gathering, just that we need to slow down and stop raping the planet.


--- Quote ---Okay, define "understand" then. You see how hard this is? People think that terms like "self aware" or "consciousness" are obvious and self evident but they arn't, not really.
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It's hard to prove the level of self awareness in an animal that can't talk to you. You can only observe it's behavior and compare it to yourself. Well... That would be self awareness that we humans can ponder such things. Would a dog think "Why am I the only one in this flock walking on all four? I want that cap you're wearing! Give it to me!"


--- Quote ---mammals are surprisingly good at very complex reasoning,
--- End quote ---


I agree with that. Animals that grow up among humans tend to show a learning capability beyond what they would need for survival on their own, which is quite remarkable. Dogs that can learn words for instance but...


--- Quote ---for example at understanding intentional stance (putting yourself in another's shoes) or even transitive intentional stance ("I think this is what he thinks I'm thinking").
--- End quote ---

This I highly doubt though.


--- Quote ---bout intelligence anything can be said, any scientist could say there could be an uber-intelligent dinosaur specie. Mainly it is said dinos are stupid becouse there brain is small in comparison, and I mainly tend to share that opinion. They are probably stupid.
--- End quote ---

They COULD have had the same intelligence as a rat. Rats have pretty small heads but they show increadible cunning. I've had rats myself and they show quote interesting behavior. I tried to prevent my rats from digging into my plants, and reprimand them to not go there. It had the totally opposite effect, exactly like a small child that finds it more interesting to touch things they are forbidden to touch.


--- Quote ---QUOTE(Peter @ Jan 4 2008, 12:47 PM) *

Can you explain why fusion bombs, deforestation, and massive CO2 emmion, could be disaterious to other humans and other species. Couse I don't we have that high impact on the enviroment. I think humans don't have as big of an effect on enviroment as you think.

Are you kidding? You must not get out much.
--- End quote ---

LOL

Ok, this post is going to get long so I think I'll stop here.  

Testlund:

--- Quote from: Numsgil ---1.  Is global warming hapening?
2.  Is it humanity's fault
3.  Can humanity fix it
4.  Should humanity fix it (that is, is global warming a net positive for humanity?)
5.  Do other co-inhabitors of our planet have a right to existance (that is, do Polar Bears deserve to live?)5.
--- End quote ---

1. Yes, but some scientists thinks it might start to get cooler already within a few years from now.

2. No. there are some well made explanations at Youtube to believe it's not human made. From what I've seen, the info that claims it's man made looks more like propaganda than scientific explanations, while the ones that claim it's natural shows more in depth scientific explanations, and how the scientists that came up with the theory that it's man made actually not really believe what they're saying. They manipulated the scientific results and seems more interesting in prestige and profit.

The Global Warming Swindle is a good place to start and then you can dig up the rest at Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWRqQ_iI7qQ

3. Highly unlikely.

4. No, we should adapt to it.

5. Yes, because they have evolved to be here, and just whiping them out might have catastrophic results, tipping the balance in a way we can't predict. And let them get extinct is just an unnecessary waste, because we COULD live together with them!

Peter:

--- Quote ---1. Is global warming hapening?
2. Is it humanity's fault
3. Can humanity fix it
4. Should humanity fix it (that is, is global warming a net positive for humanity?)
5. Do other co-inhabitors of our planet have a right to existance (that is, do Polar Bears deserve to live?)
--- End quote ---

First global warming is the theory of extra greenhouse effect due to extra CO2-levels. And I don't believe in that theorie

1. No, there is an increase in temperare due to the sun.

2. No, it is the sun.

3. No, they can't fix the sun.

4. The positive depends on where you live. Maybe we should, maybe we should not. I don't even think we could. But climate is conplicated and if we're powerfull enough to change stuff, we could better not do it, something may seem right but will turn out the other way, it is too complicated. We could better adept.

5. Yes, atleast until they get in our way. If there is a sudden complete food-shortage and we can eat them. And we could alos eat the fish they will not eat after becouse we just took them out. So complete anwser Yes/No. They may live but not if it could cost human-lives.

Numsgil:
Global warming simply means that the planet is warming.  If you don't want to look like a fool needlessly, I would admit that global warming is happening when you talk to other people, since it's all just semantics.

Otherwise very telling responses

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