[JMvS]

Originally Posted by Kusa-San

@JMvS : You're a student in Earth Science ? So what do you think of people who think that this global warming is normal and that trying to limit our impact on it will change nothing ?

Well a big part of global warming is a natural phenomenon: as we are still getting out of the Little Ice Age of the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries.
Temperatures were higher during past Climatic Optimum periods: most notably the Holocene climatic Optimum when Sahara was a prairie (and midwest a desert...), or the climatic optimum of the roman empire and during the medieval climatic optimum, when there were vineyards in Britain and thriving viking communities in Greenland.

About human responsability in global warming, feedback mechanism are still poorly understood and quantified. And talks about stopping or reversing it is just propaganda or science-fiction.

If the global scale is poorly understood, on the local scale human environment degradation is clear: from topsoil and water depletion to oversized megalopolis churning arable lands and exhaustion of halieutic resources. But alas this is not that new, as hinted by all the ruins of gone civilizations, but the scale of it is unprecented.

Another thing about global warming: climate is unfair; as some parts will become deserts, other will become more liveable (as expected by Greenland and all those on the Arctic Ocean).

But I think the most important point of the movie (with our over dependency on Oil), is that people must understand that the world is changing: it has ever been, and will ever be changing: we have to adapt. In our civilization of the instant, people have forgotten that the world is always changing.

About the movie, it's a shame that they don't talk about the pollution from High Tech Equipement (but not in the Book ). People tend to forget that when it's also an important part of pollution. The IEA said that if nothing is done then the fight against global warming will be useless !

Yes, the amount of power churned by the internet is considerable. And people must realize that the copper of all their electric and electronic applications involve arasing whole mountains...