How real is our threat to the Environment?

Great Debates
21

It seems to me that to believe that we’re ‘damaging’ the environment irreparbly, we have to believe that all the things we do cause negative changes, which ultimately requires a leap of faith, IMO.

We’re a part of the environment, we exist in nature and not above it, and everything we do has impact on our ecosystem. Of course, every other plant and animal on earth affects its ecosystem too, so it’d be hard to say we’re alone in causing change.

I am not entirely sure why humans decided that extinction due to us (if we can prove that it was due to humans) is a bad thing, as we’re all part of the environment and things that do not adapt to their environment die. Species have been reaching extinction because they did not adapt as prey to survive a predator, or as a predator because they did not adapt to the defenses their prey built up over time. There are millions of examples of extinction throughout history, and it seems that no matter what our efforts we cannot ‘save everything’.

But is it damage?

Philosophically I’m not sure I could say it is, even with data to prove that the human species is causing the changes that have been attributed to us. For things that don’t adapt, there will be something else that does, some other kind of life that thrives.

Oxygen and CO2 levels in the air have changed over earth’s history, varying in the percentages in the atmosphere, and there has been ‘greenhouse’ effect for a long time. Some life does better with more oxygen (like humans) and some life does better with less. I’m not sure whether overall either one is ‘right’ for the planet.

As a human, I’m pretty human-centric, so I guess it makes sense to be concerned about too much CO2 and global warming and all of that, but if I’m trying to look beyond the survival of my own species, it’s a great big question mark.

I know I’ll probably get hammered for this post being entirely philosophical and not containing scientific evidence at all, but sometimes I think that our ideas of ‘damaging’ the environment or the planet and what we think of as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ecologically are a human response to the fact that we’re the only species we know of who have any cognizant idea at all that some day we may be extinct.

Humans certainly seem to be able to make the planet inhospitable to us, so we may one day be the instrument of our own extinction. I still have to wonder, what then? What will the planet do when we’re gone? It did, after all, manage for billions of years before we got here and probably will manage for billions of years after we’re gone.

I’d like to not be extinct, so I’m all for trying to keep this a liveable planet for us, but in terms of earth itself I’m not sure we can do anything to damage it. The earth is going to change, because of or in spite of us, and we’re going to adapt or die.

To borrow from Frederick Jackson Turner, ‘The wilderness masters the colonist.’ So I guess I think that no matter how bad we make it for human beings, once we’re extinct, earth’s going to go on and we’ll be just a fossil for some other species to dig up and wonder about. For some reason, that doesn’t seem like a negative to me.

22

As I understand it, everyone seems agreed that the very survival of humanity is * not * at stake (although I have heard some rather hysterical-sounding comparisons to the planet Venus knocking about). What appears to be the consensus is that unless significant global action is taken, Earth will simply become a gradually more drab and grotty place. Cockroaches will replace the more interesting insects, rats will replace the more interesting mammals, crows the more interesting birds, and so on. Even the worst-case scenario of a complete melting of the southern ice cap merely wipes out most coastal cities rather than entire landmasses.

To simply shrug and write off human-caused extinctions as merely another example of a species not adapting to its environment is at best a little myopic. (If humans destroy a vast tract of rainforest, it seems harsh to suggest that a tree-dwelling creature might “adapt” to not having a tree to live in.) Every year new medicines are derived from natural sources, and we’re disposing of more of these assets every day.

I guess, ultimately, that if you keep asking “so what?” you’ll eventually get someone to admit that it is fundamentally just a gut feeling that it is * wrong * to treat the planet like a privy, and that causing extinctions deprives us of not much more than simple diversity itself. I want to live in a colourful world full of the most interesting things possible. When I see yet another coastline fouled beyond belief, I feel as much regret and empathy as if I were to see a human being suffering.

23

SentientMeat, hear, hear. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

24

I haven’t heard anything about the “acid rain” phenomena in the past few years, did it turn out to be an exaggeration? Did we reduce sulphur emissions and actually fix the problem? Or is the damage to Northern lakes ongoing but unreported?

25

Oh, I agree. Its just a fact of life. In any event, the end of those species would hardly be melodramatic. The fact is, most species on the planet will never be seen by you, me, or much of anyone.

But I do agree, i’d rather keep them. Who knows when the alien viral overlords show up and we need the South American Eukalyptan Nic-Nik Bug’s chemical glowing agent to defeat them? :slight_smile:

26

A fact of life? You make it sound like enviornmental devastation is unavoidable.

27

http://capita.wustl.edu/NEARDAT/Activities/neg_ecp/ecosense.htm

In both the United States and Europe, laws were passed mandating that filters be used to reduce emissions of sulfuric compounds. The restrictions worked as planned, acid rain is no longer a threat. Oh, and did I mention that the economic catastrophe that was supposed to occur if we allowed the government to meddle with industry has somehow failed to materialize?

28

Wait are you saying that it can be reversed?!?! That we can change things. Environmental damage doesn’t have to be a fact of life?

Gee and I was just going to shrug my shoulders and hope somehow if I ignore it it will fix itself.

29

maybe this piece of anecdotal evidence could be analyzed by someone w/ more info in this field, but i like to look at it like this…

plant life originated before animal life. during the time that plant life existed by itself, it converted atmospheric CO2 into oxygen, possibly keeping carbon for itself during this metabolic cycle.

after several hundred million yrs, after this plant life settled in sediment & formed oil deposits, we now burn this back into the atmosphere.

i think it might be possible that the amount of CO2 released as a result of burning hydrocarbons finally results in an atmospheric CO2 level close to what the earth had before the wide-scale proliferation of animals or possibly plants.

30

So this suggests that if the level of environmental damage is not as great as was predicted decades ago, it could be attributed in part to measures that were undertaken to actually address the problem.

31

Natural air pollutants make up a substantial part of air pollution. This Site says they may provide up to 288 million tonnes of air pollution compared to humans, 69 tonnes. That accounts for almost 81% of all air pollution. I’ve even heard this figure be as high as 90%.

32

“Global warming” might well be a Hobgoblin. Note that CO2 is not the only- nor even the main- “greenhouse gas” (as Go Alien pointed out), and thus overall- mankind produces around 1% of all greenhouse gases. If we cut our CO2 emissions by 10%, the reduction would likely not be significant- since if we all stopped existing we’d only reduce overall Greenhouse emissions by some 1%.

33

http://www.science.org.au/nova/016/016box01.htm

In 2000, Australia produced:
CO[sub]2[/sub] 379.9 megaton CO[sub]2[/sub]
CH[sub]4[/sub] 121.1 megaton CO[sub]2[/sub] equivalent
From Table 3
CO[sub]2[/sub] is the main greenhouse gas, at least down under.

Not sure why anyone would call global warming a “hobgoblin” unless they wanted to discredit the whole idea without bothering to look at the data. Perhaps you could enlighten us ?

34

Note that word “emissions”. They aren’t counting water vapour as an “emission”, clearly. Which, I guess it isn’t- an “emission”- technically. But “emissions” are not the primary portion of greenhouse gases. Thus, they are “counting only oranges” in an “apples & oranges” arguement. And of course- most CO2 is not “produced” by human “pollution”. Other animals breathe it out, you know. What they are doing here is lying by selectively including & not including data that fits their viewpoint. To be fair, we’d have to look at the human pollution emission contibution to the overall % of greenhouse gasses- which is something like 1%. Personally, I’d also exclude the amount humans breathe out- unless we go for PolPot’s solution, that is hard to do anything about.

35

No one with even half a lick of sense counts water vapor as an emission, “technically” or otherwise.
Rather than them “lying” I think it’s more likely that you are misunderstanding, and drawing conclusions on the basis of your ignorant suppositions about how things “should” be measured.
Your plea for “fairness” is a perfect example. We don’t have to be fair about this at all. Fairness is a human concept that has no bearing on the physical processes that drive climate change. To understand a process, we need to select those things which a)we can measure and b) are relevant to the the process. If you think that human breath is more important to CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions than, e.g. power plants, do the calculation and tell us your results. Don’t go whining about how the big bad climatologists lie by ignoring your pet theory.
Likewise your repeated assertion that humans only produce “something like 1%” of greenhouse gases is totally irrelevant. If you were to use the same sort of argument about the sanity of lighting a fire under a propane storage tank: (Well, this fire will only subject the tank to 1% of the total heat it receives from the sun each day, so…) you would end up killing yourself, and all your friends as well.

36

Well, Hydrogen fuels do indeed have “water as an emission”, and they have to count it as such, so I guess … The point is not that “specify emission you want to characterize as bad or too much here” is such & such a % of “whatever small % of something meaningless you want to copmpare it to”. The point is that “can a practical reduction in human CO2 emissions result in a significant reduction in overall greenhouse gasses”? And- since humnas overal produce only about 1% of greenhouse gases overall- the answer seems to be “NO!”. That it doesn’t matter whether or not a certain control on automobile CO2 emissions would reduce AUTOMOBILE CO2 emmisions by “X”%, unless you can show that that reduction would have some possible effect on greenhouse gasses overall. When dudes spout such statistical lying, they forget to mention that CO2 is only a portion of overall greenhouse gasses, and that humans emit only a small % of CO2.

If humans produce only about 1% of ALL greenhouse gasses- how can a small reduction in one small portion of one gas have any possible SIGNIFICANT overall effect? Sure, maybe a reduction of 0NE percent could make a difference, or even a tenth of one percent. But no sane person is suggesting a reduction of 100% of all human caused greenhouse emissions- or even a tenth of that. The proposals I have seen do things like reduce maybe 1 tenth of CO2 emissions from one source only- ignoring the fact that CO2 is not the biggest source of greenhouse gasses. Do the math- they propose stuff like reducing the emissions of 1/10 the production of ONE source of a gas- that source overall is maybe 1/4 of the overall production of human production. BUT humans are not the major producer of CO2, nor is CO2 the biggest source of greenhouse gasses. So they are talking about a reduction of less than 1/100000 of greenhouse gasses overall.

Nor have I whined about “how …climatologists lie by ignoring my pet theory”. First- not all climatologists agree on global warming- and even fewer on human causes of it. Next- it’s not MY “pet theory”, it’s pretty common out there.

37

Dr Deth:

Before you go spouting out about things that you seem to know nothing about, you really ought to read up on the issue a bit. Your arguments are so ludicrous that even the so-called global warming skeptics like Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer, and Richard Linzgren (what Donald Kennedy, the editor-in-chief of Science…which along with Nature are the two premier multidisciplinary scientific journals in the world…called “a shrinking catorie of scientific skeptics” [editorial “An Unfortunate U-Turn on Carbon” in Vol 291, p. 2515 (March 30, 2001)]) wouldn’t agree with you.

It is a testament to your current state of knowledge that your views are not are not just a tiny minority of the scientific community (particularly tiny when you look at their contribution to the peer-reviewed literature), but are actually even way outside of there!!!

By the way, ITR champion already linked to one previous thread on this subject, here is another where I invested a considerable amount of time in trying to educate. Science is not resolved by debating on a discussion board. I don’t have the time to do that again…But hopefully the discussion and references contained therein can be useful to you.

Oh, yes, it must be that the Australian Academy of Science is lying because they don’t agree with what Dr Deth knows to be true. :eek:

38

But, in the case of global warming for example, it is not just the Paul Erlichs of the world who consider it a serious threat, but rather the consensus of the scientific community.

I also think you folks get a lot more mileage out of the Erlich vs. Simon thing than it warrants. Sure, there will always be people who predict more gloom-and-doom than actually occurs but there will also be those who predict less. By focussing on those scientists who made the most extreme predictions, you are trying to discredit a much larger community of scientists.

To give an analogy, when I lived in Vancouver, it was once claimed to me that one could do better than the weather forecasters there simply by predicting that tomorrow’s weather would be like today’s. This may have been a bit of hyperbole…but perhaps not that much. The reason is that the weather there tends to get stuck in patterns and it is sometimes hard to predict when a pattern-break will occur. So, sometimes the forecasters would forecast the break for several days in a row before it finally happened. However, even if the forecasters predict the break for three days in a row and it doesn’t happen, one should not conclude from this that the weather is never going to change. Likewise, the fact that a few scientists predict we should have already been hitting up against the carrying-capacity of the earth and then we haven’t does not mean that there are simply no limits that we have to worry about!

39

Geez I am always torn by this dilemna of thinking this is not the appropriate venue to have a scientific debate (and I, not being a climate scientist, am not the one to be doing the debating anyway) versus the urge to try to set straight what I can.

So, just to try to give an answer to the gist of what Dr Deth brings up, with the disclaimer that this is based on the limited knowledge and educated guessing of a theoretical physicist, not a climate scientist, here goes: The issue with the greenhouse gases is one of upsetting an equilibrium. Thus, while it is true that there are large emissions (and reuptakes) of CO2 from natural sources, the point is that before the industrial age, these emissions and reuptakes were substantially in balance so that the CO2 level was quite constant (over the time scales up to, say, centuries). However, now with the extra emission of CO2 due to humans, it has gone out of balance and CO2 levels have risen something like 30% above the pre-industrial baseline (a fact that is not seriously disputed by anyone in the scientific community).

The second issue to consider is timescales. The reason why the CO2 levels have risen is the timescales for the equilibrium in CO2 levels are very long compared, for example, to the timescales for the equilibrium of water vapor levels. To put this another way: You put more water vapor into the air and it quickly rains out…But, this isn’t true with CO2. (I believe there are in fact some effects associated with water vapor but they are on shorter time scales and distance scales…e.g., they can alter the climate somewhat near cities.) Unfortunately, the timescales to readjust the balance in CO2 are on the order of centuries to millenia.

By the way, the fact that water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas does figure into the whole climate change scenario. Namely, there is a feedback effect whereby the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere causing the warming will cause an increase in the equilibrium value for water vapor which, being a potent greenhouse gas, will lead to further warming (at least I think this is the proposed mechanism). It all gets a bit complicated because increase in water vapor could also increase cloud cover which can potentially have a partly counteracting cooling effect (although this is no means completely clear since clouds can both block sunlight and act as a blanket to keep heat in…hence you get the coldest temperatures on clear winter nights). I believe that uncertainty in the magnitude in this water vapor feedback mechanism is currently one of the larger sources of uncertainty contributing to the uncertainty in the IPCC prediction for human-induced greenhouse warming by 2100 (of ~2.5-10 deg F [1.4-5.8 deg C]).

40

In general, the state of the environment is much worse than the most dire predictions of a few decades ago.

The rate of species extinction is 100-1000 times greater than normal. Global warming is accelerating, and the trend may be impossible to stop without very drastic actions. Deforestation is wiping out ecosystems. Toxic sludge is destroying habitats.

Environmental scientists have warned, in the strongest terms possible, of the damage we are doing to the environment. Yet, these calls go unheeded. Any society that is based upon immediate material gain is bound to destroy itself.

We are destroying the very environment that sustains us. I only wish that those who are unconcerned about environmental degradation could move to their own planet and ruin that. The tragedy is that the rest of us, and our children, will have to suffer for your stupidity.