Ludricous gibs!

[Phallacy]

Be green or you'll become a pile of red goop. No pressure!

[Jesse]

I bet you immit more carbon than a whole herd of fucking cows

[earthboundmisfit]

What the fuck. Greenies are as bad as the PETA assholes.

[Jesse]

ELF, PETA and Eniviromentalist can all go to hell. the planet is going to be destroyed anyways one way or another! its unsavable

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

Funny thing is that, reducing emission on the residential end will achieve fuck all. Industrial sectors need to upgrade their infrastructure to be more efficient for any real effect. From what I heard, if the US repaired and upgraded it's power grid, that would save at least 30% of the total energy supplied to the grid. That's a lot of energy saved without forcing anyone to do anything at home. It'd cost billions sure, but it would create a lot of jobs to build this improved infrastructure and possibly jump start the economy into a healthier state. Solve two problems with one solution.

The real ideas should be innovative with technologies, not improving our own efficiency as the former leads to the latter anyway.

[Jesse]

I think even if europe and america cleaned up thier act china, india and russia defintley wont. china is a huge pollutor, i saw this shit on tv where they were practicly bathing in mercury in the streets. fucking savages, soon everyone over there is gonna start glowing bright green or red

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

The biggest problem is initiative. But I'll bet, if countries like China start seeing a strategic advantage over rival superpowers by cleaning up their act, they would do it rather quickly.

[Phallacy]

This whole environmentalism thing is nothing but a huge scam, an endeavor by the powers that be to transform the world into a prison planet, by guilt tripping and manipulating the masses, and systematically destroying nations from within.

Oh, and before anyone asks "where's the profit in that"? This is NOT about monetary gain. The elites can print as much paper as they want to. This is about control-freak psychopaths playing with the human race as if they were toys.

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

This whole environmentalism thing is nothing but a huge scam, an endeavor by the powers that be to transform the world into a prison planet, by guilt tripping and manipulating the masses, and systematically destroying nations from within.

Oh, and before anyone asks "where's the profit in that"? This is NOT about monetary gain. The elites can print as much paper as they want to. This is about control-freak psychopaths playing with the human race as if they were toys.

The modern concept of going green is financially motivated and fails to achieve any real environmental achievement, I'll give you that. But the basic tenets of environmentalism played a big role in determining the nuclear test ban treaties, clean air act, and saving significant ecologies of the planet from slash and burn farming or becoming dumping grounds. Without any of those accomplishments we would have destroyed ourselves and most of the biosphere much sooner than our current path. Unfortunately it's only delayed the inevitable from what I see. So I wouldn't be so quick to say that all of it is a scam. If anything I would say it's opportunistic powers exploiting real problems to favour their own interests, just like how they would exploit wars.

By speaking of your scenario, I'd worry a lot more about Israel intentions to attack Iran and provoke a confrontation between multiple superpowers as a result of it. A world war would provide a greater opportunity to make the 'prison planet' scenario you mention a greater reality, than climate change green movement. Making certain people the enemy will more likely allow the population to sacrifice freedom for security, giving government to easily impose the ideal technologies to monitor and control the population. In fact it's already happening right now, without any need for the green movement at all, thanks to 9-11. Besides with the green revolution, it'd look way too suspicious to install cameras, microphones, loudspeakers everywhere as well as use military equipped drones to fly overhead/APCs patrolling streets to claim it's for that reason. The only way it would work is if they claim climate change resulted in a massive crop failure and had to declare martial law to avert mass panic.

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

But there's interesting implications for green technologies though that would interest military scientists. The green revolution could lead to improved military technologies that would allow a superpower to gain superiority over others. If someone were to conjure up a green or even nuclear energy technology that's nearly as cheap(er) and safe(r) as oil to produce and is renewable; they wouldn't have the same logistical problems as a military depending on oil would. There's still the issue of munitions but without fuel demand, you could dedicate all logistics to essential supplies and munitions instead.

But if you want to go into future tech, developing a working re-usable rail gun would allow a unit to just carry coin sized objects to fire at a target at hypersonic velocities, eliminating the need for specific munitions, all you'd need is conductive metal. Then if you want to go to very far future tech, developing a weapon capable of ionizing air into a deployable plasma projectile well as remote controlled units (or primitive AI), you could eliminate the need for supplies altogether, and even not have soldiers on the field at all. Those aren't green technology related, but green technology with all those combined would create an almost unstoppable army.

I'm surprised that the military isn't at least very interested in developing green technologies that I'm aware of.

[Frolic_Fun]

I don't think the Earth can be pushed about so easily. Half of the "problems" to me is due to the magnetic poles currently switching, which puts the air currents into chaos and thus "global warming". There has been a few studies that shown that this goes in cycles, ie. the Ice Age.

I don't believe what we're doing is a major impact to the planet at this moment, although I do believe pollution etc. can cause effects. However, pollution would probably have to be miles worse than it is now for any sort of effect to the climate. That said, before that even happens it'll seriously harm us through toxic gasses first.

With current technology there is only really one way that we can fuck up the planet: Nuclear warfare. There is a possibility with the LHC too but no one can really confirm that.

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

I see deforestation as likely the largest threat to the biosphere though, mainly because desertification often results due to either nutrient exhaustion or salinity build up in the water table by farming/irrigation of cleared land. Another effect is loss of biodiversity leading to the collapse of several food chains if migratory species relied on/supplied food sources from the region. Then there's the problem that it allows CO2 to accumulate because there's less plant ecology available to photosynthesis CO2 into oxygen.

I'm at odds whenever or not radiation would really destroy the entire ecology. Chernobyl's ecology while suffering from the effects of radiation, isn't entirely barren, so there's some hope enough ecology would survive. In fact it's speculated that around 400 million years ago, that mass extinction was caused by a gamma ray burst, and yet ecology survived. The bigger concern would be the raging wildfires and industrial chemical fires that nuclear war would cause. It would definitely darken the skies in ash and toxic clouds and that's when the ecology would really suffer.

[Al Swearegen]

In Australia all the energy companies are pushing for Green Energy alternatives. What this means is that the consumers can elect to pay more for Green Energy to be produced. Hell I do it because my discount on my electricity reduces the overall cost. Many don't get this benefit and are not prepared to pay for it. The truth is that without the infrastructure in place people are not prepared to build the alternatives and as long as the coal fired electricity option is cheaper, they will continue to use fossil fuel.

That said and done the bigger issue globally is that the countries like India and China, prepared to cut corners in carbon emissions, will pick up the slack here and the "cleaner' and "greener" the first world countries get teh greater the demand the other countries to produce uncleaner carbon emission heavy industries, will get.

It will be the same as sweatshops. The balance will remain the same it will just be redistributed.

[midlifeaspie]

Penty Think:

This whole [fill in the blank] thing is nothing but a huge scam, an endeavor by the powers that be to transform the world into a prison planet, by guilt tripping and manipulating the masses, and systematically destroying nations from within.

[Phallacy]

Penty Think:

This whole [fill in the blank] thing is nothing but a huge scam, an endeavor by the powers that be to transform the world into a prison planet, by guilt tripping and manipulating the masses, and systematically destroying nations from within.

Why, I could fill in the blank with "Intensity Squared" and I'd be taken just as seriously by you.