Republicans to prove evolution correct!

[zyncod]

Republicans are pursuing policies that will drastically change the global climate in the next century. (Some of) the Republicans are also the only real proponents of intelligent design. What's interesting is that, according to punctuated equilibrium, we should start seeing greatly speeded-up evolution of species very shortly as development and global warming drastically change these species' habitats. Now that's irony!

[ecoli]

source?

[Douglas]

I *just* knew it...those damn Republicans

[Sisyphus]

Well, obviously mankind's causing of massive worldwide extinctions is just part of God's intelligent plan to make those species that are still around after we've destroyed ourselves incredibly resilient to rapid climate change and urban habitats.

[Pangloss]

I reject the premise of the first post of the thread.

 

But it is amusing.

[Douglas]

Well, obviously[/i'] mankind's causing of massive worldwide extinctions is just part of God's intelligent plan to make those species that are still around after we've destroyed ourselves incredibly resilient to rapid climate change and urban habitats.

Like the cockroach?

[bascule]

Republicans are pursuing policies that will drastically change the global climate in the next century.

 

All indications are that the majority of the shift in the Earth's radiative balance is occuring as part of a natural cycle. That's not to say that there aren't anthropogenic forcings altering the Earth's climate system, but they are (probably) not responsible for the majority of changes we are seeing.

 

As a bleeding heart liberal progressive working on global warming research, I agree with Bush: more research is needed before we take action. I also believe the importance of CO₂ as a climate forcing has been greatly overembelished by the mainstream media. There are many first order climate forcings which should most likely take precedence over CO₂ (namely nitrogen compounds) but these hardly ever get attention in press coverage of global warming.

 

Climate science reporting by the mainstream media has always been full of gross distortions which generally take an alarmist position and have instilled a great deal of (potentially unwarranted) fear about the potential adverse effects of global warming. For example, we're given doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps melting, and while average summer Artic sea ice coverage has been decreasing, this is offset by an increase in Antarctic sea ice to the point that total loss of polar sea ice is essentially nil.

 

Until we have reliable multi-decadal models of the entire climate system any global warming predictions you are seeing are essentially intelligent guesswork. Also there's a prevailing, scientifically unjustified alarmist attitude that has led to a great deal of cherrypicking and fitting science to policy (rather than the other way around) which has been quite deterimental to climate science research.

 

Anyway, sorry, people not involved in climate science research spouting off about how global warming will kill us all tend to get on my nerves...

[zyncod]

Of course I did not mean to be literal in my statements. Even a nuclear holocaust would not cause evolution to speed up to the extent that new characteristics that IDers would consider to be "evolved" would appear on the human time scale. And yes, the data from global warming is not fully apparent yet, but there is every indication that anthropogenic processes are facilitating at least a gradual warming of the planet.

 

As far as the Arctic vs Antarctic ice, perhaps by Arctic you meant Greenland? Because melting of the Arctic sheet would have no significant effect on sea level and thus, climate. Even if it turns out that the CO2 loading is not responsible for the warming trend (which would be odd since we should be in a cooling trend right now, were humans absent from the planet), drastically increasing greenhouse gases cannot be helping the environment. And I fully agree that much of the research ignores nitrogenous compounds; as a non-ethical vegetarian, I believe that the impact of animal-based agriculture is being understated at present.

 

Anyway, my point was simply that Republicans are obviously the ones that are least concerned about global warming, which might in the long term, prove some of their other ideas wrong (like ID). I was being tongue-in-cheek.

[Mokele]

as a non-ethical vegetarian, I believe that the impact of animal-based agriculture is being understated at present.

 

I'm not so sure it does, though. If we were to stop using X amount of animals, and thus needed Y less space (for the animals and food), wouldn't that space simply be taken up by nature, which involves more breathing, excreting animals? Plus, if there's the animals and the plants that feed them, surely the net oxygen/co2 balances out and then some, since the animals are passing on CO2 that was originally taken up by the plants. If so, while it'd be a waste of space, it'd have no net climatological impact, yes? Or am I oversimplifying?

 

Mokele

[ecoli]

I'm not so sure it does' date=' though. If we were to stop using X amount of animals, and thus needed Y less space (for the animals and food), wouldn't that space simply be taken up by nature, which involves more breathing, excreting animals? Plus, if there's the animals and the plants that feed them, surely the net oxygen/co2 balances out and then some, since the animals are passing on CO2 that was originally taken up by the plants. If so, while it'd be a waste of space, it'd have no net climatological impact, yes? Or am I oversimplifying?

 

Mokele[/quote']

 

You're missing some factors. Animal-based agriculture uses far more energy then plant-based. The amount of land it takes to produce crops for animals would feed more humans then the animals do. (remember, only 10% of the energy gets passed down the food chain) Also, the amount of wastes produced by farm animals is much higher then other animals, especially since farm animal's waste in often piled in specific locations, not left to decompose.

 

So if nature was allowed to take back the land used for animals to live in and grow their food, the CO2/O2 balance wouldn't be too dissimilar. So, in a way, you're right about that.

 

However, you're ignoring other ecological impacts, such as Nitrogen and Phosphorus from the feces killing off rivers and lakes, and similiar stuff like that.

[bascule]

Mokele, ecoli, and zyncod: You're all hitting on something quite important here, namely that land use is likely to be the most important anthropogenic climate forcing. The ways in which land use affects the climate system are diverse and rather complex. But the way we use land has a tremendous (detrimental) impact on the Earth's radiative imbalance, much more so than "greenhouse gasses."

[Sisyphus]

Putting aside the greenhouse effect, human activity still can have a large impact on air quality, which would have serious adverse effects on the environment even if global warming were a total myth. More immediately, though, it has serious adverse effects on us, and our health. I remember seeing studies estimating the economic damage caused by health problems (and thus loss of productivity) from air pollution in different parts of the world. It's much greater than you might think. Greater even than the economic benefits of not regulating industry's air pollution. So they really don't even have that excuse...

[Pangloss]

Interesting points. I agree with Bascule, and it's interesting to see his clear objectivity on that, since he works in the field and is hardly a Bush supporter in other areas -- that says a lot about the way that issue is handled. I get really annoyed sometimes when I see Hollywood stars telling us how thoughtless and evil we are. I agree that we can improve the ecology, and we shouldn't make excuses for not cleaning up the air, etc, but that doesn't mean we should go crazy and trash our economy dealing with a large-scale problem that ultimately may not even exist.