This is very interesting.

Good. Point your friends over here, or to the sites that are linked within the article. Thanks for reading my long-winded thing.

Yep I have now fully read it and I think I will go tweet out the link to it to my over 500 Twitter followers.

well with me i know th ere is change nothing stays same. but i doubt we humans can alter it least in the drastic way one claims. i mean if it was CO2 emmisions then volcanoes would of done us in Co2 is not the problem i mean its the stuff plants trees use to make oxygen most logic says more co2 means more plant growth and food growth. monoxied is bad yes but raw co2 is not the problem. we should be stringing up clear cutter groups in other countrys AND the ones that let them do it. the science collage or what ever it is not the religion one. but if your outlook is differnt from theres even when your data beats theirs and provse them wrong they alienate you and then discredit you.

Climate change is probably the most studied issue in human history. And 97% of scientists agree it's real. That's ridiculous. To find a subject that more scientists agree is real, you'd have to look at something really basic, like gravity.

And it isn't like all these scientists started with a preconceived notion that climate change was horrible and anyone who dissented got attacked. They all, just like us, want to believe there isn't a problem and we can go on with business as usual. People who said we needed to change would have been the ones who were attacked at first, decades ago, but the opinion just kept growing as the evidence piled on and piled on.

Sure, maybe you can point to some paper that might refute one or two aspects of the evidence, but so what? So maybe we're screwed 0.1% less seriously? If you can point to anything that refutes even half the studies in the IPCC, then awesome. I'd love to think our planet isn't fucked on our current trajectory. The the IPCC studies are from all over the world with over 800 authors who aren't paid to be included. From Wikipedia regarding the 2007 IPCC report:

Thousands of scientists and other experts contribute (on a voluntary basis, without payment from the IPCC) to writing and reviewing reports, which are reviewed by representatives from all the governments, with a Summary for Policymakers being subject to line-by-line approval by all participating governments. Typically this involves the governments of more than 120 countries.

The IPCC conclusions?

* Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
* Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90%) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.
* Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized, although the likely amount of temperature and sea level rise varies greatly depending on the fossil intensity of human activity during the next century (pages 13 and 18).[51]
* The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%.
* World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century (table 3) and that:
Sea levels will probably rise by 18 to 59 centimetres (7.1–23 in) [table 3].
There is a confidence level >90% that there will be more frequent warm spells, heat waves, and heavy rainfall.
There is a confidence level >66% that there will be an increase in droughts, tropical cyclones, and extreme high tides.
* Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium.
* Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values over the past 650,000 years.

So stop listening to lies spread by the greedy, lying bastards and listen to 97% of scientists. Would oil companies be spending millions on campaigns of disinformation if they could be spending money on studies that show climate change is false or a hoax? No. They've tried doing those studies and even their own studies have found climate change is real. See http://www.businessinsider.com/koch.....-change-2012-7

The other really simple thing to keep in mind is this: Who gains most from supporting or refuting climate change? There is a theory that scientists are convinced to do biased climate research for the sake of spreading alarm so they can get more grant money to do future research. Considering that the IPCC climate reports come from all over the world from scientists getting funding from all sorts of sources, I think this is a ridiculous lie. And despite extravagant attempts to slander the methods of individual scientists, they have always come out cleared of any wrongdoing in the end. And seriously, compared to the billions in profit the oil companies make every day, who has the infinitely-greater motivation to lie here?

i mean hwo can you take 50 years of data and still have those millions of years in past . we may be in warming period of earths seasons like how we have fall winter spring summer. but its bigger scale.
pollution is bad which is what oil does. but with useing 50 years of data as what we seen algore logic does not work and is flawed. there is climate change but i dont think we humans are able to change it that drasticly. does that mean we should go back to creeks catching fire due to oils in water [no clean liveing sustainable liveing is good thign to strive for working with nature it self] but to think human race it self is the cause or the tipping point seems kinda out there. if our CO2 emmisions are the cause of all thsi then volcanos that pump tons more then what we could do in a single day or year. mother nature has a way of kicking our asses if we get to far. once we thaw fully we be more of a water planet and climates will change as a whole we would acutualy have mor eland ot live on and we will adapt or die. yet just cause we can not affect as a whole or small effect on CO@ emmissions does not mean we shoudl go back to wreckless bandon on altering stuff or polluting. some those studies go to the far extreams. just like the captainplanet cartoon.

Your volcano argument is a climate-denier talking point that was debunked years ago and is even mentioned in the movie. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/vol.....al-warming.htm

Um, sorry, gonna take this one apart, hon. CO2 is needed for plant growth, yes, but it has been proven that too much CO2 acidifies ocean waters- which kills reefs, which in turn kills off many food fish humans and other life-forms need to survive. This acidification also kills algae- which many species feed on to survive, or allows "bad" algae to take over. Yup, oceans have weeds, too. One avenue of starvation, right there- just from too much CO2.

But, I'll just address the one point in your post: "CO2 is plant food"- not only is this argument a big fail, I like to call it the "He dies, she dies, everybody dies!" argument. Here's why:

A study was done to find out just what happened to plants when exposed to higher levels and CO2 and the results were unpleasant.

-The plants grew faster, certainly, and they put on more mass, even seemed to be better "adapted" to drought-conditions... until heat is added to the mix. Then, the plant cooks. Plants have little pores in their leaves called stomata and these are used to expire water to keep the plant cool in warmer temperatures- this is their sole purpose. When you add in excess CO2, these pores reduce in size and stay closed longer, reducing the amount of water escaping the plant, meaning that the plant cannot efficiently cool itself in the next month-long heatwave. It dies.

-Adding in excess CO2 favours one type of species category over others: C3 and C4 are what these categories are called, and they refer to the way they take in the CO2 to use for photosynthesis. Plants use certain enzymes to collect CO2 from the atmosphere: C3 plants will collect both CO2 and oxygen, while C4 plants need a specific chemical in their systems in order to collect the CO2 they need. Both will be getting the same amount of CO2, but the C3 plants will benefit more from it because they don't need a specific chemical tagged just for CO2 in order to collect it and because they will take in more CO2 over the O2 they usually take in. But, most of our food-crops are C4 plants. C3 plants are often inedible, woody species like trees; pines, elms, oaks and weeds, like Chinese privet, Canadian thistle, ragweed and so on. C3 plants grow faster and seem more robust under higher concentrations of CO2 because of that one little difference in chemical makeup. So, they take over areas formerly occupied by C4 plants. C4 plants, on the other hand, do not do well under higher concentrations of CO2; they lose nutritional value and much of their defenses against insects, molds and bacterial infection. They get invaded by bugs, molds, fungi and bacterial/viral infections and they die. No food crops=we die. But, we do have some crops that are C3 plants, like cotton and some beans. But these species also need a second chemical, one that needs to be triggered in order to set up the CO2 collection process. Unfortunately, it's sensitive to heat. CO2 adds heat- heat wrecks the photosynthesis process=cannot collect CO2=no CO2 for the plant=dead plant. Again, no crops=we die.

-While CO2 might help some species of plants to survive, they are not all species WE need to survive, other than for their potential for releasing oxygen. But, people making the argument of "CO2 is plant food" forget one big thing: Climate Change also involves higher temperatures- meaning more deserts, meaning less arable land to grow crops on, meaning less water for the crops we can grow at all. It also means more moisture in the atmosphere (which is why the deserts form- no water in the land=desert) so there are more torrential rains. Torrential rains are not efficient ways of delivering water to crops. Instead, they tend to wipe crops off the farm because the water is coming down too fast for the soil to absorb it. Soil, fertilizer- and crops- get washed into the rivers, lakes or oceans. Further, heat rises, as anyone knows- well where do you think wind comes from? Rising heated air and falling colder air shifts that air around, eventually becoming weather-cells... like storms. Changes in heat and cold along those wind-paths are weather. Climate and weather are NOT the same; weather is local and short-term, climate is over huge areas, like whole countries and is long-term. Here's a scary fact: the additional heat our planet has been experiencing has moved the jet-stream. Don't know what that is? It's a very important wind-current that delivers moisture, dust (made up of soils, bacteria, spores, etc) to various parts of the world- Climate Change has altered it's usual path, meaning the precious moisture it's carrying doesn't get delivered to the right places, and gets dumped on others already too wet to take in any more. It fucks with the weather, in other words. So you get droughts, even though there is a fuck-ton of moisture in the air. Crops die for lack of water. No crops=no food. No food=famine. We die.

-Back to nutrition; rapid growth caused by CO2 unfortunately gives the plant little time to accumulate nutrients- the ones WE need to survive. Nice little irony, there; more CO2=more growth=more plants=not enough time to become nutritious because of rapid growth=less food value=we starve. Again. Sure, we can grow more wheat, but it's not as good for you. I, for one, don't want to have to become a multi-stomached ruminant in order to get enough nutrition to keep my body alive!

-Have you heard of mycorrhizae fungi? Well, go look it up. But I'll give you a simple breakdown; soils have many "root communities" of fungi and molds- some extend for miles in diameter- that serve a number of purposes- one is nitrogen fixing. Nitrogen is an element plants need in order to access nutrients from the soil. Mess with the mix of nitrogen in the soil and you can get healthier plants... or dead ones because they can't take up the nutrition they need. Another factor- not all fungi are beneficial- many are invaders that consume plants. Their purpose is to "recycle" material back into the soil so more plants can grow, so they can die, so they can be recycled into the soil- wash, rinse, repeat. Or they're just pathogens- illnesses- that are parasites on an organism. Add in excess CO2, and these fungi can become more aggressive- and the normally beneficial ones can become a disease, rather than a normal member of the soil community. Some diseases of plants are fungi as well- and these will LOVE higher concentrations of CO2. They'll attack what few crops we have left=no crop=famine=we die.

-Many plants, over 60% are known as "Cyanogenic" species, meaning that they produce tiny amounts of cyanide to ward off pests. Many of these plants are our food-crops. Yes, we eat cyanide... in extremely small doses, like in parts per million. Add in CO2 and see what happens. The plants produce more cyanide,meaning more allergic or poison-reactions in humans and livestock. Too much CO2=more cyanide in plants=bad digestion or illness=well, guess we can't eat that anymore=famine=we die.

-Ecosystem change and plant migration; because some plants will be growing more than others- loving that CO2!- it means they take over an area. This can mean a BIG change in ecologies. For example,we're already seeing conifers (pine trees) moving up mountain slopes because they prefer cooler temperatures. Unfortunately, they will will run out of mountain to climb and eventually be killed off by heat. Also, these migrations head to the poles, again because these species prefer cooler temps. On the way, they crowd out the original species (which are probably migrating, too) or plants and animals, and some arctic species will have nowhere to go- they die in favour of pines and deciduous forests and the critters that move with them. Some bugs need certain kinds of plants to forage on, as do many animals, like rodents and birds, who spread the seeds of their usual dietary content as they travel. Remove their food-sources and the animals will starve, or move- see plant migration. It can also mean that an invasion of weeds can deplete soils of nutrients (they're very efficient at that, by the way), making fertilizer more of a necessity in order to grow anything. We use too much fertilizers, chemicals and pesticides already and it's poisoning our soils. Too much CO2=ecosystem change=harder to grow crops on nutrient-depleted soil=need for more fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc=poisoned soil already stressed by the eco-change=no crops=famine=we die.

-Ozone; we're pumping that into the atmosphere, too, along with the CO2. O3 (ozone) is toxic to plants, it messes with their photosynthesis processes and fucks up their structural integrity- meaning the overall plant is weaker. Being bigger won't help it be stronger. O3 also increase a plants' susceptibility to pests, like aphids. So, along with CO2, O3 hurts plants=can't stand up=cant' get at nutrients=bugs are eating me!=no crop=famine=we die.

Getting the picture, yet? Too much CO2 will kill much of the existing life on this planet, and what's left will adapt, sure, but it's unlikely to be us, since we depend too much on life-forms that extra CO2 will destroy. Excess CO2=death, period. It's a good element, one we need, but it can also wreck things when the balance is out of whack. Sadly, we are the reason the balance is falling out of whack. I know it's not a comfortable realization, but we NEED to face it, and work to stop our poisoning the atmosphere and the soils we live on. Greed is the cause. Laziness is the cause. Stupidity is the cause. All things humanity is known for. but we are also known for creativity, perseverance, strength and our amazing ability to solve problems. We just have to roll up our sleeves and get on it, NOW.

We sit at 390 parts per million CO2 to O2 right now. Climate scientists have said that the ceiling was 350 parts per million. any more than that, and temperatures will rises, causing the things I mention. It's already happening, look around you, and stop listening to the assholes who are feeding you lies paid for by the Fossil-Fuel industry.

Someone once said something to the effect that "the cost of doing something to fend off a disaster and having nothing happen is cheap compared to doing nothing to fend off that disaster and having it occur." I'd rather prepare, thanks.

actualy research the large ships that transport from china nd stuff those huge things use bunker fuel and make Us navy ships look like tug boats. if were to retrofit one with cannons and armor you would ahve world biggest battle ship. those in one trip pump toxins monoxide so on then all cars in the world. luckly they are making a bigger one but useing nuclear like war ships and trying to cut back on bunkerfuel. and frankly america has been clean as possible with out thowing our economy in the gutter. its china that needs to cool it. So can preach co2 global warming but till china cleans up its act its not goign to get better. and till we string up clear cutters. again i cant see us humans as soul factor of warming as most claim. or the straw that breaks the camels back. do i think we should clean up yes think we should live sustainably hell yea but till we throw out lobbyist and stuff for oil or big corps then it wont really help yet.

I feel like I'm talking to a wall. Fine, I'll keep it simple. I did not say that humans were the ONLY cause of CO2 rise. What I did say is that humans are the MAJORITY cause of CO2 rise, from our farming methods, our machines, burning fossil fuels and so on. Those ships you're talking about? Yes, they pump ouT CO2. Who made them? HUMANS did. Humans, silly critter, not NATURE.

Actually, do some research of your own, son, and you might find out that our machines pump out far more CO2 than any volcano (another of your arguments), for example. One of those mega-ships you're referring to will not pump out more CO2 than all the cars in the world, frankly, because there are so many fucking cars on this planet.

Yes, go after the clear-cutters; we need those trees to sequester the CO2 we release into the atmosphere. But, at the same time, go to alternative energy instead of burning coal oil and gas... There's a cool article written by Bill Mckibben called "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math"- go find it, read it, get an education, because it's very frustrating to give someone factual material from a scientific, peer-reviewed info page, and be "countered" poorly by conspiracy-theories, "it can't happen here" bullshit and "the United States is better than everyone else" patriotic flag-waving.

You do not counter with facts- you throw your opinions of poorly-understood Climate-Denier fluff at me where the science has been so dumbed-down, it's almost incomprehensible, not to mention debunked years ago. America has NOT been "as clean as possible" and I could prove it, but I've already wasted too much time on this that I could be using to work on my novel, so I'll hope that you will at least have some curiosity and look for other views than the ones you currently seem to believe. Look up the bad behaviour of Shell, Exxon-Mobile and others, hell, look up the Koch brothers, especially as relates to how they poison the areas around Native American Reserves and poor neighbourhoods with a high population of people of colour. You want conspiracy theories? I have one for you- these companies dump their poisons in areas that White-Bread "perfect" Americans rarely see, so they have clean air and clean water where they are, but fuck the rest of the country: black neighbourhoods, Hispanic ones, Indian reserves, wildlife preserves where their boundaries are under dispute... That way, it's easy to make these people believe we're "clean" when we really aren't. Media-campaigns, paid for by the fossil-fuel industry to confuse and baffle the public with lies, bad science, and made up fairy tales about "clean coal". WTF? Look up mountain-top removal; this is the process for mining coal. Their runoff and wastes poison everything around them, literally destroying and removing entire MOUNTAINS, and the people who work these mines have nowhere else to work, and their job is killing them. You think clear-cutting forests is bad? Imagine not only taking out the forest, but the land it sits on, then throwing it's dead remains into the local streams and waterways. Find images of this as seen from the air- it's heart-wrenching and repulsive. THAT'S mountain-top removal, and that powers most of our cities. We are FAR from fucking clean, man. Go look around, I guarantee, the stuff you'll find will chill your blood.

China can go to Hades, for all I care, but yes, they need to clean up their act, too. BUT SO DO WE. SO DOES THE REST OF THE PLANET. It's not just "them", it's everyone, who has to do the work. By the way, China has one of the fastest growing installations of solar-panels and wind-turbines going. They are BEATING us for going green, bizarrely enough. Don't think alternative power will keep a country running? Don't think it's feasible? Look at Germany- they get more than half of their electricity from solar, wind and geothermal, and more units coming online every day. it can be done, and we do NOT need oil. We can wean ourselves of that shit. We NEED to.

yea learned this stuff in class. the ships im talking about have been proven to do such a thing. and where is your proof of our cars pump more co2 then a volcano? when one erupts they put out millions tons of co2 at most doubt all our machines at once do that. if anything it probly focuse on china as they refuse to place scrubbers or least clean up their act.

*eyeroll* Please point to where I said the the total cars on the planet put out more CO2 than a volcano. I said MACHINES; we have FAR more MACHINES than cars: construction vehicles, farming equipment, ships, aircraft and power-plants.

First, our CO2 output is in the BILLIONS of tons per year, not millions. Yes one volcano can put out millions of tons, over a short span pf time- that is, during the actual eruption. Volcanoes are big, loud and spectacular, so we think of them almost as a godlike force. But most volcanoes are dormant, only a few erupt every year, and even fewer are constantly fuming, like Pele in Hawaii. Further, our CO2 emissions DON'T STOP; we put out crap 24/7, versus a volcano, which might only be erupting for a few hours to a few days.

Jet-liners and small aircraft (I found this info on a simple web-search):

Domestic, short distance of less than 463 km (288 mi): 257 g/km CO2 or 259 g/km (5.6 oz/mile) CO2e
Domestic, long distance of greater than 463 km (288 mi): 177 g/km CO2 or 178 g/km (3.7 oz/mile) CO2e
Long distance flights: 113 g/km CO2 or 114 g/km (2.5 oz/mile) CO2e
Burning 1 pound of jet-a makes from 2.9 to 3.1 pounds of CO2.

One gallon is 6.6 pounds.

A 747 burns about a gallon every second- about 5 gallons every mile.

There are many other variables to figure the fuel required to take off, fly and land, but a rough calculation would be

5g/m x 400m = 2000gal
2000gal x 6.6 lbs/gal = 13200lbs
13200lbs x 3 lbs of co2/lbs of fuel = 39,600 lbs of co2

For perspective, per passenger a typical economy-class New York to Los Angeles round trip produces about 715 kg (1574 lb) of CO2, but is equivalent to 1,917 kg (4,230 lb) of CO2 when the high altitude “climatic forcing” effect is taken into account (gases spread wider at higher altitudes). The emissions above are similar to a four-seat car with one person on board; however, flying trips often cover longer distances than would be undertaken by car, so the total emissions are much higher. About 60% of aviation emissions arise from international flights, and these flights are not covered by the Kyoto Protocol and its emissions reduction targets.

Now, compared to one car:

One estimate I found said that the carbon emitted per vehicle mile is between 0.88 (about 14 oz) lb. CO2/mi. – 1.06 (roughly 17 oz) lb. CO2/mi. Thus, a car driven 26,000 miles will emit between 22,880 lbs CO2 and 27,647 lbs. CO2.

Unfortunately, while one car emits more CO2 per mile than a plane does, the aircraft still puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than one car, considering that their engines have to "run-up" to operating speed before takeoff- they never turn the engines off, except for maintenance- taxi on the runways, and cover much greater distances in each day. One aircraft easily outstrips one car, say, in yearly emissions, simply because the plane must travel more distance in a week than one car ever could in one year. In addition, the plane also emits NO3 (nitrous oxide)- which contributes to the buildup of ozone, another "greenhouse" gas.

Now compare this to one acre of trees that can absorb roughly 2.6 tons of carbon per year (equivalent to one tree taking in 13 pounds per year). One car beats one tree in terms of how much carbon is left over after the tree has taken in all it could. One acre of trees still leaves over 50lbs of CO2 in the air after 'eating' the emissions of one car's yearly output.

Container-ships:

I did find a reference to your comment that container ships pump out more CO2 than all the cars in the world- no worries, I can admit when I'm wrong- the article claimed just 16 of these things can do that. But the references I found date back to 2009, and apparently, some of the container-ship companies are changing their practices. They normally burn this high-sulfur crap because it's super-cheap, and it's the fuel that folks on land aren't allowed to use. The vessels also have internal scrubbers (like the ones you mention) that are used to keep a lot of the left-over sludge out of the air. I don't know what they do with it, though- one commenter on the article I found said they dumped it at sea. *shudders*

But, the shipping-companies are feeling the environmental pressure, and are finding ways to ship the same amount of material on less fuel, certainly on less dirty fuel. An article that dates the same year as the ref for for CO2-emissions: http://inhabitat.com/auriga-leader-.....-solar-panels/ describes a cargo-vessel where 10% of it's power needs are provided by solar panels. Now, that doesn't seem like much, but when a ship of that size needs power, it needs power. A LOT of power. And, this one has the solar panels connected to its main power-grid, which runs its engines as well as things like lighting, stoves and heating- something that hadn't been done before (at the time) with a cargo-ship. Okay, that said, this is a small cargo-ship- maybe half the size or less of the super-cargoes, but its a fucking start! Now, how about this (dated 2010): http://inhabitat.com/new-jerseys-ne.....y-by-the-wind/ <---one of many projects on the go to make shipping less polluting. Good on them, I say!

Back to volcanoes: http://www.skepticalscience.com/vol.....al-warming.htm

The world-wide total burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use results in the emission into the atmosphere of approximately 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year worldwide, 100 times greater than the maximum estimate of world-wide volcano output.

Another bit from the same article: Volcanoes can--and do--influence the global climate over time periods of a few years but this is achieved through the injection of sulfate aerosols into the high reaches of the atmosphere during the very large volcanic eruptions that occur sporadically each century. On the same page is an illustration giving the actual numbers.

Now, since the Skeptical Science page might annoy you, here's the same info from another science page: http://news.discovery.com/earth/wea.....ate-110627.htm

A quote from the article- from a vulcanologist (I use the British spelling, but the U.S spells it 'volcanologist'):

"Pakistan or Kazakhstan each produce about the amount of CO2 as volcanoes do each year, Gerlach noted in the article.

In yet another comparison, Gerlach reported that in order for volcanic emissions to match those made by humans, the May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens eruption would need to happen every 2.5 hours. The June 15, 1991, Mount Pinatubo eruption would need to occur every 12.5 hours."

Is there anything else you'd like me to debunk?

wait wait wait. *distracted by first sentence* your mate owns draconic.com? I've been a member of that site for a million years x_x;; small world!!

Yes, I created Draconic, now go see the film. =)

Already planning getting all my friends to watch it, I got this info directly in my e-mail :3

*giggle* Yeah- it's how we met, actually. I was all "Hey, the guy who owns the site came by to say hello! Cool!" I thought it was a "standard" welcome-to-the-site sort of thing- turned out, it wasn't. Apparently, I was raising a ruckus somewhere, and he'd emailed me to find out WTH I was up to. I don't even recall what it had been over anymore. We ended up having an enjoyable conversation via email, then chats and well, he up and sez he wants to meet me. Problem was, I was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and he was in Valley Village, California. I was also living on a crazy low income- min wage job only four days a week- not enough to travel. He sez "I'll pay for it". I say "yer crazy, and I don't have a passport". He sez "get a passport". I'm telling him that "I'm going to have a hell of a time getting all the damned documents together, not to mention getting people with valid passports to sign my pix and stuff" I knew no one who traveled much, and I hated asking my friends for things like this- I'd been disappointed too many times on other things.

Then there were all the "OMG! You can't go to a city you don't know to meet a guy you've never met! What if he's crazy? what if he's abusive? What if he gets tired of you and abandons you in the middle of a massive, multi-million people metropolis and you have to somehow get back to Canada?"

My answer; "Not getting any dates here- The 'Peg doesn't have the kind of guy I need, unless beer-swilling, crotch-scratching, country-music-listening, 'make me a sammich' kind of males with questionable hygiene and even lamer social-skills were what I wanted and I'm not getting any younger, and this sounds like fun... as well as terrifying. I'm cool with terrifying." "He can't be any crazier than me." "He hurts me, he learns what a life of being human-origami is like." "I'll hitch-hike or walk home- it's not like I couldn't use the exercise."

Although, I do admit to being terrified that I would be abandoned... It's happened before, though not in a big city and I had no trouble getting home.

Anyway, long story short, I got the papers together, got my passport, and took my first plane-trip. The stews must've thought I was some odd little mentally-challenged person 'cuz I was chirpy and glued to the window so I could watch the ground 'go away'- I almost couldn't believe I was actually inside a huge machine that could fly... I gotta wonder what went through their minds when I squealed 'weeeeee' on take-off.

So, I spent two weeks in LA with Kani- we did all the romantic nonsense; dinners, visited his parents, went to a movie, walks on the beach (I'm sure I revealed my Northerner origins when I was paddling about in the surf in bare feet and rolled up pants... In January), made out, etc. I called it "My Longest First Date Evar". We were married a year later. >^___^<

omg that's so ridiculously adorable I'm gonna cry ;0; *snugs!* I used to travel all over to meet internet friends, and stopped because every single one turned out to be waaaay younger than they said and it made me feel uncomfortable. My trip to Canada ended with me losing my religion, so I'm back in Cali and very happily settled for a while :3 Now if only I could meet such a man as well!!! I wish you two the absolute best, and now I'm gonna have a blushy smile every time I'm on Draconic XD <3 <3 <3

*giggles* Awesome. Yeah, it can be scary when you find out that someone was claiming to an adult and they're NOT- eep, accusations of nasty things time. *shudders* I'm curious about the 'losing my religion' thing, now, other than the REM song, that is. LOL

The main reason I went to Canada was to see the pope (the one that passed away) as a sort of... "this is it, either I believe or I don't" pilgrimage.

I hosted a raffle at my church, and the tickets everyone purchased for the raffle paid for my entire trip, and I left with the church's blessings (and a bit of envy from the parishioners). I trekked all over Canada, stayed with families that could only speak French, and walked miles and miles next to people from every country in the world, never deciphering their speech but always somehow understanding each other and connecting on our common ground.

The final day, the pope spoke, I was standing in a crowd of believers that was so massive it stretched across multiple area codes. I thought, this huge sea of faith, these beautiful people from all over crying in joy, this has GOT to help me decide. And it did! I realized I did not believe in the god everyone was praying to. So, I packed my things, reflected on the wonderful honor it was to get the chance at the whole experience and meet so many people, and went home.

I told my youth leader and a couple others I didn't believe, no matter how much I wanted to. I told my parents as well. They told me I couldn't live in the house if I didn't believe and keep going to church despite how dishonest it would feel, so I ran away from home. And here I am all these years later, drawing dragons every day and feeling happier than ever :3

Forgive my taking so long to reply, Rien!

Sounds like a pretty awesome experience, whether or not you ended being a believer (and despite your parents being fools about it)! Pope John II (the fellow before Pope Palpetine- sorry, Benedict bothered the heck out of me- he was creepy beyond belief. We'll see how the new Pope shakes out) came by Winnipeg several years ago, and I remember the huge deal that was. I didn't go because I was a Pagan. Now, I wouldn't go 'cuz I'm an atheist. LOL

there are many reasons why I haven't been anything resembling a Christian for over thirty years- the following is just one:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?.....mp;amp;theater

http://www.examiner.com/article/pop.....hild-sex-abuse

Sorry broken link to the Examiner article. If this one doesn't work, just go to the Facebook image- an operational link is there, too. http://www.examiner.com/article/pop.....hild-sex-abuse

Yeah.

Truly, the more time I spend outside of organized religion, the more I find how each person's individual version of spirituality and belief can be so uniquely beautiful and genuine. Dragons especially :3

I tend to identify now as "atheist but spiritual" since, while I don't believe in gods, I do still have some deep feeling of intangible belief in SOMEthing, I just don't know what. Energy? Can't say for sure.

A neurosurgeon once scolded me for saying that and said everyone has a part of their brain that desires precisely such faith, so of course I'd want to feel this way to satisfy my brain. But, I don't think that means I should necessarily just take his educated word as law and never think or question that part of myself... So I'm always up for talking about anyone's beliefs, as long as they too have taken the time to question themselves at least once!

Is that "rapid response" thing only in America?

I'm not sure. Looking at the page, it sort of sounds U.S. only. But try putting in your zip code or equivalent and see what it says. One bit of the quote I cut from McKibben's original email to shorten it slightly:

I should also say that with our global network, both President Obama and Secretary Kerry can expect to hear from folks when they head abroad as well.

So maybe they have similar systems set up in at least some other countries. If your zip code isn't accepted, I recommend simply signing up to get 350.org's emails and you'll get stuff tailored to your region of the world.

Rey's in Scotland, so I don't know if the rapid-response widget will work for him. I'll go have a nose at the site myself- I'm curious what that's about. *is mildly shamed- hasn't checked some of Kani's links. Bad dragoness..*

Yeah, I think so- unless the Prez and Kerry decide to make a trip across the pond, mounting a rally might not be worth the time. Mind you, there are definitely a fuck-ton of other things you can do or get involved in. the links can lead you to some ideas.

Well if there are any groups in Scotland looking for tech support, feel free to send them in my general direction.
Bunny Technomancer on standby here, hehe

Not even available yet here in NZ, sadly, I'll have to wait until I can pirate it. Many small films like that either don't make it here, are shown a year later in really small theaters, or just don't get shown at all.

While I completely agree that humanity and our technology has been having a marked effect on the planets ecological ecosystem, I wonder what the film says about the sun and it's cycles of output? It's a very well documented fact that the sun's output is /not/ steady and goes though hundredths of a percent shifts in thermal/radiative releases over a few hundred years, vastly effecting out climate. (When it comes to the sun, even a hundredth of a percent is a big deal.) These kinds of things also need to be taken into account when figuring climate change.

The problem really, to put into simpler terms, is trying to figure out just how fast one is traveling.

While running down the length of a train.
While the train is moving.
While it's moving in a mostly westerly direction, at 10 degrees above the equator.
While the Earth is spinning.
While the Earth is orbiting the Sun.
While the Sun is orbiting the spiral arm.
While the milky way is moving through the galaxy.
While the ....???

With each question, we get further from our perspective ability to see and understand, requiring more and more advanced levels of technology to measure. The further away and the more grand the perspective we take, the less it seems relevant - but when it comes to understanding just how fast one is traveling, each variable is as important as the former, and they all need to be taken into account to truly arrive at a quantifiable number.

The same goes with climate change, we do understand some, if not most of the variables, but I'm fairly certain we don't know them all, and it's the ones we don't know which I worry are having the largest impact.

At any rate, I am looking forward to seeing this, as I've seen quite a few docu's about all kinds of various things. (I just watched 'an inside job' last night, quite provocative.)

Oh, by no means do the Climate scientists themselves claim to know everything about how Climate Change works. What they do is offer the data they've compiled, and frankly, the sunspots theory got tossed rather hard long ago- several years of the fastest rise in overall global temperature-readings (definite warming trend, but not just temperatures, but things like ice-sheet and glacier loss, which can only take place over years. It's usually centuries, but we've been seeing ice-sheet loss in literally a single decade.) all occurred during a sun out-put low period. There were no decreases in overall temperatures during any sun-spot highs, either. Plus, the gains in temperature are still occurring, with more records being beaten every day. Last year, for example, was the hottest mean temp worldwide ever recorded. The sun is still in a low phase. Light takes only eight minutes (I think, I'll have to check) to reach us, so I'd think that any other effect- including potentially dangerous ones- would reach us an equally short span. I do understand that our star is an M-class variable, even though that variability is rather small in comparison to others.

No one is claiming they know everything about Climate Change, what they are claiming is, these changes, which usually occur over centuries or even thousands of years, have all happened within one very short span of time:- since the Industrial Revolution. Oh, and by the way, I just found this out; the term Climate Change is actually not a new 'buzzword'- it's been around since 1937. A film on the climactic effects of anthropomorphic causes of CO2 rise was made in the mid-fifties. Many of the changes and effects predicted back then are happening now.

Scientists have this bad habit; they are patient, they are very methodical and they tend to understate things rather than go for alarmism. Note that, please. Understatement is their norm. They give us the data- the measurements of temperature increases, the ice-losses, the over-all changes from ice-cores, soil-cores and other researches into world-climate, they compile it, graph it so they can present it to us. We either don't understand things like weather and climate are not the same, and a cooling period of a year or two because of a large volcano, say, is not the same as changes slowly increasing temps world-wide over a period of a century, or get pissy because they aren't giving us the answers we wanted to fit our own agendas. So, they get frustrated. They keep trying. They keep doing their best to get us to look at the data, to find ways to present it so we fucking GET it, and we aren't listening. Now, the damage has gotten to the point where the scientists are getting um... upset. We aren't listening, and they have been arguing amongst themselves on how to get the average Joe to pay some fucking attention because their findings are starting to scare them and they're realizing that they need to scare us into getting our fat, complacent asses moving.

The info is out there, mostly free for the accessing, both the complex science, and the version made for the layman, but we need to pay attention to it.

Really, how easy is it to ignore the entire ice-sheet of Greenland melting at the surface? You'd expect a little bit of surface melt- that's actually normal in summer- but this was serious; there were literal rivers flowing on the glacier. Something never recorded before.

The saddest thing is, because the scientists have that habit of understating things, their projections always seemed far-off. "Nyaahhh, we have time, we can wait, it's so far ahead in the future we won't need to worry about it" or "It'll never happen". They'd hedge their bets and be cautious with their projections. Now, they're finding that the changes they expected are not only happening, but happening faster than they predicted. Think about that.

There are those who see scientists as these smug, "I'm smarter than you" eggheads when they're nothing but. They're ordinary people, with ordinary flaws and intelligence. They're just educated in rarefied fields that they found fascinating that many of us don't understand or frankly, find dull. There is nothing scary about the work they do, and I'm tired of seeing the entire set of occupations being portrayed as white-coated intellectual elitists smashing atoms while looking down on the guy with the high-school education. Some might behave that way, but most don't. I'm not saying you see scientists that way, BTW, only mentioning the common perception of them, especially by the so-called Conservative, religious Right-wing here.

Here's a few of the highlights:

Glaciers worldwide are dwindling in size- melting. There are some regions of this planet where snowfall and glacial melt are the only water-sources. Now, it's going away. Snowfalls in areas where they expect a high amount, are getting less, and areas where the climate is normally drier are getting more, screwing up whole ecologies.

Desertification is spreading, because the shifting Jet-Stream is depositing moisture in the 'wrong' places. Crop-loss and famine follow. If there is less water reaching the Boreal forests on our Pacific coast, for example, they will be tinder-dry and wild-fires will not only become more common, they will become more destructive.

If the average temperatures keep rising, more moisture is sucked from the land (evaporation) and into the atmosphere, more cloud-mass and wind-changes (cool-to-warm-to-cool) and we end up with more severe storms, monsoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. And well, just more of them.

Ice-sheet-loss, as I mentioned, has been at an all-time high in the Arctic. People have claimed, "well, there's more ice forming than usual in the Antarctic, so it balances out." Nope. The antarctic ice isn't making up for the overall loss of northern ice by volume. Arctic ice is still forming, but later in the year, melting earlier in the year, and not forming the thick ice-pans creatures like polar bears and walruses need to live on. These are not fully land mammals- they live on ice out in the open ocean. No ice, they have to swim for longer periods to find stable footing and to find food, burning more energy than they can afford, losing too much protective fat and blubber. They starve or even freeze. Polar bears are known to cannibalize each other in lean times- there have been more recorded instances of this, one event even being filmed. they obviously aren't finding the food they need if they're eating each other.

Ocean acidification; there's been a rise of calcium carbonate by 30% in the oceans and this is killing whole reefs. Reefs support huge numbers of lifeforms, and are sometimes seen as the backbone of the food chain alongside algae and krill. Many more species depend on these lifeforms for their survival- kill them off, you know the result. Jelly-fish and other 'weeds' have been on the rise. there is an overpopulation of a number of species of jellyfish because of algae-blooms. the krill can;'t get to the algae because the jellies kill them and eat them. Fewer krill=starving whales. Oceanic weeds such as that horrible 'mucus' thing that's currently overtaking the Mediterranean in places- it smothers anything it grows on. It's a normal denizen of the open ocean, but with oceanic temps rising, too, this thing went ballistic in it's growth-pattern. Beware of the Blob... Or another one that had been hybridized especially for fish-tanks... That one was released into the oceans by well-meaning, but ignorant, people and now it's killing ecosystems because it takes over an area and reduces the bio-diversity needed for an ecology to survive.

I mention species migration in a post above this one, where plant and animal species are moving north and south to find cooler climes that suit their norms. Unfortunately, this also crowds out the species already there, who now have nowhere to go because they are used to even cooler climates and now there will soon be none.

These are observable things, able to be seen by anyone who pays attention to something other than their televisions or what movie star is fucking whom (I don't mean you in that, I'm talking generally), and they are happening on a timescale we as humans can actually understand; within our own lifetimes. The bad side is, this could mean we've already hit the tipping-point and we have a lot of very fucked up things to face in the next little while... I don't call this anything like an end-of-the-world scenario, but it's not going to be pretty, either. Our industrialized societies need to wake up and find cleaner ways to get the things they now believe are 'necessary' for their lives, waste less, and conserve more. If nothing else, it's a more respectful approach to our planet, since we only have one.

Interesting read...humans are the only species I'm aware of that can deny logic.

Yup. And it drives me fucking BATS. See some of the above posts. Blargh.