[Documentary Movie] Home

[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...

[Kusa-San]

Originally Posted by JMvS

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.

I agree with that. But we can at least trying to limit our impact on it no ? I mean as the IPCC said, human have a responsability for this global warming.

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.

I agree. We need to live with our Earth and not to force our Earth to live with us. I think human and the environnement have a link but these days this link has pratically disappeared.

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...

Yep. The main problem is that we don't talk enough about this in Network and Telecommunication. It's not a problem which is adressed in the training.

[risingstar3110]

Originally Posted by JMvS

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).

Haha, if you study the same course here ( Environment Science or Environment Eng..... well close enough...) and say something like:
"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."

I bet other students will looks at you like "What? Is this guy serious....? "

Image this: It probably will amaze us as much seeing someone who believe we can't reverse global warming, as when you see a whole school totally believe the human responsibility in global warming....

[Kusa-San]

As you can see, there is a poll now ^^

And I would like to have the thought of the people who voted "I don't care" or "No".

[Bad wolf]

Oh My friend showed me a link to this a week or too ago.
Totally loved it. Even though it was just the Youtube vid amazing pictures and really great showing of the state this world is in and why we need to do something about it.

[JMvS]

Originally Posted by risingstar3110

Haha, if you study the same course here ( Environment Science or Environment Eng..... well close enough...) and say something like:
"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."

I bet other students will looks at you like "What? Is this guy serious....? "

Image this: It probably will amaze us as much seeing someone who believe we can't reverse global warming, as when you see a whole school totally believe the human responsibility in global warming....

Wow? Are you seriously taught that??? Or do they present you geoengineering as the solutions (well thats mostly science fiction isn't it)?

I don't know what are the focus of environmental research in Australia, but here in Switzerland, for the theory part we focus a lot on glacier evolution (capital as we are the water tower of Europe) and flora and isotopes variations during the ice ages. On the practical part we do a lot of risk management, mostly about mudslides and rockfalls in the mountains, and on the consequences of permafrost thawing (for us it stabilizes rocks in altitude).

The big problems about the carbon issue are:
-we don't know exactly to what extent atmospheric CO2 rise is involved in temperature rise.
-we don't know what part exactly of this CO2 increase is related to human activities (of course it's not an excuse to continue riding in gas guzzling Hummer...).

Trying to reverse or stop GW is pointless, because even without any human activity the actual trend in our cycle of glaciation is toward warming (unless you try geoengineering to cool the Earth...).
What we have to do is properly manage our resources, not because releasing CO2 in the atmosphere is evil, but because local resources are getting more and more stressed ( topsoil and water).
And anyway, for all we know the carbon cycle takes decades.

I really liked the movie mentioning the disparition of thousands of agricultural varieties, because for me those are the most precious inheritance of humanity, developped during the past 10000 years by thousands of generations of patient farmers.

As stressed in the movie, agriculture nowaday is over-reliant on oil: not only to power the tractors and ship the grain worldwide; but also to produce fertilizer (that also require mining other minerals, notably potassium which is very unevenly distributed in the world).
A big part of humanity today is directly feeding on oil: solar energy buried millions years ago, and not solely on the part that plants are capturing today.

[rave]

No.The earth cannot be saved and we have all our hands tainted in that.Only thing we can do,is enjoy our days that last,because earth has taken the highway to hell and nothing can happen.The movie was pathetic btw

[Kusa-San]

Originally Posted by JMvS

The big problems about the carbon issue are:
-we don't know exactly to what extent atmospheric CO2 rise is involved in temperature rise.

Oh yes about that, there is a scientist (Damon Matthews) who explains that with his new method it's really easy. You just need to multiply a single ratio by x and you obtains the Global Warming in Celcius.

Here the link (it's in french) :

http://www.futura-sciences.com/fr/ne...72/#xtor=RSS-8

I really liked the movie mentioning the disparition of thousands of agricultural varieties, because for me those are the most precious inheritance of humanity, developped during the past 10000 years by thousands of generations of patient farmers.

As stressed in the movie, agriculture nowaday is over-reliant on oil: not only to power the tractors and ship the grain worldwide; but also to produce fertilizer (that also require mining other minerals, notably potassium which is very unevenly distributed in the world).
A big part of humanity today is directly feeding on oil: solar energy buried millions years ago, and not solely on the part that plants are capturing today.

Yep it's a good point that the movie talk about that because it's not something really known

About geoengineering, it's not only science fiction but we don't even know how dangerous it can be and futhermore it's just astronomically expensive.

[LeoXiao]

It's not a question of if the world can be saved, it's if humans can keep themselves from dying off in the next few thousand years. The planet is being affected greatly by human behavior, yes, but once humans are gone or marginalized it will start regenerating itself.

[JMvS]

Originally Posted by Kusa-San

Oh yes about that, there is a scientist (Damon Matthews) who explains that with his new method it's really easy. You just need to multiply a single ratio by x and you obtains the Global Warming in Celcius.

Here the link (it's in french) :

http://www.futura-sciences.com/fr/ne...72/#xtor=RSS-8

I won't deny the correlation between CO2 concentration and global temperature, as shown by our isotopes and gaseous records.
But the thing is that this is not a one sided relation: warming can have a rise in CO2 as a consequence (hence the fears about "runaway greenhouse effect will transform our planet into another Venus", but we are far from that, as during the Mesozoic (dinosaur time), atmospheric CO2 was way higher (the Sun was also a little dimmer but not that much)).
To put it short CO2 variations are a good marker of temperature variations, but (considering past records), there are some instances where warming is triggered by other factors, and results in a rise of CO2.

Anyway I'll go read this Nature issue at my Faculty's library to check it.

Poll: I voted no, because:
-this is not "our" Earth: we are just one specie that has been inhabiting it for about 200000 years, and won't last much more.
-the Earth is not in any danger to be "saved" from: along with it's biosphere, it has withstood several crisis of considerably higher magnitude, and anyway geologic cycles don't bother with it.

Now if we were to survive and prosper for a longer period, with our technology progressing without major dark age, I'd vote yes to prevent anyone who would want to export the atmosphere and hydrosphere, or dismantle the whole Earth.

What we can at least try to preserve or adapt, are our environments, because we are closely depending on them to ensure our survival.
We won't be able to "save" them all in a fixed state, because they are inherently evolving, but we can reduce the damage and adapt our pressure on them.

Another point of the movie I haven't commented yet (a bit negative): it presents the pre-industrial age as a time when mankind was living in equilibrium with it's environment. But that's akin to a fairy tale, considering the extinction of the megafauna in all the continents colonised by mankind (apart of Africa where the fauna evolved along us), the fact that environments such as savanna are to some extent manmade, and all the ruins of defunct civilizations (well that as least was commented).

[Kusa-San]

By "our Earth" I mean the Earth tha we know now. Not the Earth of human. So for me, the actual biodiversity is in danger.

[slayer545-sama]

Honestly earth is DOOMED! Wake up man! The Ozone layer is NOT FIXABLE! It was said so. 2012 is coming with a planet to smash into earth. As if that is enough Mars is to crash in the future as well as 10% sea level to rise.

Enough for you? Think something can be done? DREAM ON DUDE!

[KimmyChan]

This movie looks really interesting, I'll be wanting to check it out for sure

[2H-Dragon]

I'm not into those environmental movies(I don't think these help making the situation better), but dang this movie is made pretty well. Every scene could be made into a wallpaper, mad props to the people who made this.

[Tiberium Wolf]

It's no possible to save unless you cull like 90% of total human population right now plus it's activities too.

[LeoXiao]

Originally Posted by Tiberium Wolf

It's no possible to save unless you cull like 90% of total human population right now plus it's activities too.

lol 90% of the industrialized world's population maybe. It's not humans themselves that are doing to damage, it's our machines.

[JMvS]

Originally Posted by LeoXiao

lol 90% of the industrialized world's population maybe. It's not humans themselves that are doing to damage, it's our machines.

Ermm no, we don't need modern techonology to harm environment. Basic technology is plenty enough ( bow, plow and fire); erode, turn arid and salty large floodplains, burn down forests and turn them into savanna's or barren rocky badlands (the romans were even skillfull enough to use water to erode whole mountains in order to mine gold).

What modern technology changes is the scale and the speed at which degradation is happening, and that more environments get exposed to degradation.

Actually, modern technology helped us to preserve some of our environment, as at the beginning of the industrial revolution, most western european countries had their forests overexploited for timber, coal and fertilizer; and extensive farming was barely feeding a population that was a third of the present one (with a diet of potatoes, rye and similar stuff).
Using plants dead for millions of years as a new basis for industry, transportation, building and food, allowed to relieve the extreme pressure on the living ones: that's why since the XIXth century, european forests have not ceased to expand. Outsourcing the pressure allows to relieve local environment (well now we are nearing the limit for the global scale, time to outsource to the solar system!!).

The big problem (aside from the gobbling USA) is that we have a very large bunch of countries that went or are going trough demographic transition at a much higher pace and scale than us, generally without according infrastructure and administration evolution, and with over increasing pressure on their environments which can be also much more fragile than ours (tropical and mediterranean-type topsoils are much more fragile and long to regenerate than temperate soils for example, water is also more scarce and less renewable). And at the same they are aiming for a lifestyle that took us over 200 years to develop (with a history of extreme poverty, wars and social revolutions).

[Tiberium Wolf]

Originally Posted by LeoXiao

lol 90% of the industrialized world's population maybe. It's not humans themselves that are doing to damage, it's our machines.

It's actually humans. We consume a lot of resources and multiply like flies. We are what? 4B ? Can you figure out the food needed to feed all those ppl and the waste they would produce? Earth doesn't have enough space to house that many ppl unless humans take out nature like they have been doing. I think earth before humans came into action was pretty balanced. Right now it's completely unbalanced. We take more than what the earth can replenish.