beckygardener said:... I used to laugh at those sci-fi movies, but not anymore. What I thought was a wild imagination by a writer and movie producer, may in fact become more fact than fiction.
I agree with that completely.
I agree with Ken that "resource depletion" is taking longer to kill us than was first predicted.
Using the analogy of a petri dish or flask with bacteria, we will poison ourselves before we've used up all the food.
I also remember past issues where fun was made of the doom-and-gloom-sayers.
"It will be too expensive to replace ozone-destroying fluorocarbons with less efficient coolant fluids".
"DDT isn't THAT harmful."
"Detroit can't compete globally if we try to prevent smog."
There will always be resistance to change even when the change is away from poisons and an atmosphere SO toxic that bicycle tires dissolve (smog in CA cities).
I think the key point where we disagree, Ken, is about where the burden of proof lies. I think the Keeling Curve and high school physics are obvious enough that the burden of proof is on those who think that unlimited rise in CO2 levels, forever, will never cause serious harm.
The way the counter-argument SOUNDS to me is: "We should keep on polluting the Earth at 9 billion tons per year and more until someone can PROVE with HIGH confidence (90%? 99%) that it WILL have the consequences that 97% of climatologists agree it WILL have".
My answer would be:
"No, we should start taking precautions as soon as the danger is plausible (1985)."
"We should take serious actions, even expensive actions, as soon as scientific consensus is that we will PROBABLY have severe consequences even if that might take 200 or 500 years (somewhere between 1990 and 2010)"
"We should be in full-blown panic and have this at the TOP of our priorities when the atmosphere is so damaged that the affect on weather is already grossly obvious (a few years ago to now)"
"For racial survival, we should start doing whatever it takes BEFORE it is too late. (1980s? 2000? We don;t know."
"When we don't know, take precautions to reduce the danger."
I have to respectfully disagree with the position that we should NOT take actions until the unprovable is proven. The only "proof" I can imagine is a total, accurate, reliable model of the planetary ecosystem ... I would bet on long odds that such a goal is hundreds of years away even if it ever becomes possible.
Instead of proof, we will eventually have the consequences SO bad that we'll take action even while some are preaching from their sand dunes that we don't KNOW the global desert was CAUSED by CO2 ...
