"We're killing our planet"

[Grimbold21]

The planet will survive, the atmosphere will not. I think someone takes stuff too literal. Carbon emissions and green house gases are slowly deteriorating our atmosphere, and without an atmosphere lifeforms that breathe oxygen will not survive. Al Gore would like to have a talk with you.

Al gore? Lol

Or because they were wiped out

[Deleted]

It's like they portray all highly civilised nations in the fantasy genre - their carelessness and ignorance results in their own downfall.
Feels like that's the path our civilisation has chosen...

[Torne]

The planet will survive, the atmosphere will not. I think someone takes stuff too literal. Carbon emissions and green house gases are slowly deteriorating our atmosphere, and without an atmosphere lifeforms that breathe oxygen will not survive. Al Gore would like to have a talk with you.

Greenhouse gases do not destroy the atmosphere, only the O3 layer.

[Alex86el]

join the scientific comunity and the thousands of scientists that sues al gor for talking lies to the common people.
no we are not responsible for the climate change.
but lets not pollute the earth any more, shall we? cause thats a different thing, but very important.

to the smart guy talking about carbon emissions...
human technology and live stock emmit 3% of the total carbon release that happens on the planet.
the sea emmits more that 95% of it, and other wild animals the rest.
and thetemperature of the earth going up and down is totally normal, since the sun has flactuations on his heat.
and thats why the scientific community has sued this scammer, al gore.

all the propaganda 24/7 on tv, where they get all that money? srsly.

enjoy your soon-to-come green taxes and your must-have green homes.

ps: sry for my english.

[muto]

join the scientific comunity and the thousands of scientists that sues al gor for talking lies to the common people.
no we are not responsible for the climate change. (well, humans are around 3% responsible tbh)
but lets not pollute the earth any more, shall we? cause thats a different thing, but very important.

Yes Al Gore is a liar. Liar's win the Noble Peace Prize.

[Kouki]

How did you put the video in your comment?

[muto]

How did you put the video in your comment?

just copy the youtube link and put it in your box, and hit post reply.

[Deleted]

isn't anyone wondering why this is even on MMO champion? :P

[Kouki]

isn't anyone wondering why this is even on MMO champion? :P

A whole host of off topic stuff is all this site seems to spew now.

[Histidine]

The lack of scientific and factual education in this thread should surprise me, but it doesn't.

If you think our carbon emissions and junk food wrappers are doing anything to "hurt" the Earth you are seriously delusional.

What?! Have you seen Venus recently? That planet has a greenhouse-gas runaway effect in its atmosphere and the surface temperature is over 400 degrees celcius. Not much can survive that.

Meteors with more energy than a million nuclear warheads detonating simultaneously have impacted Earth.

And you believe human civilisation would survive another? I hate to break it to you. We would not. Algae in the seas might, rodent-like creatures might, but certainly nothing remotely like a human country would remain intact.

No, we cannot "kill" our planet, nor every life on it.

While physically tearing the Earth apart into pieces is slightly beyond our current destructive power, if every single nuclear weapon in the world were to simultaneously detonate there is not only a chance that a significant hole would be blasted into the Earth's crust, but that the rotational momentum of the Earth would be affected. This would be (forgive me) cataclysmic. Collectively humanity has about 30,000 nuclear bombs, and it is unlikely that they would all go off at once, but it is easily, easily possible to annihilate all life if you were to try to.

Greenhouse gases do not destroy the atmosphere, only the O3 layer.

You are both wrong. Greenhouse gases form a layer in the atmosphere that traps reflected heat. The ozone layer was being destroyed by the release of chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, and other related chemicals, but they are now out of use globally and the ozone layer remains mostly intact. Greenhouse gases have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the ozone layer.

I am not even going to bother responding to the people who claim that climate change is not happening or that humanity are not directly responsible through our carbon emissions, as that has about as much scientific basis in fact as Genesis.

EDIT- spelling error

[Deleted]

eventually our the entire solar system will be destroyed (as we know it, the matter itself wont really mind), and the universe will undergo ''Heat death'' due to entropy.

the entire galaxy will be an equal temperature lifeless void. science ftw ^ ^ our worries are so insignificant to the cosmos as to be meaningless.

to the orignal thread i agree, but it doesnt mean we should let corporations shit on everyone and ruin the place for our children.

[mftaylordet]

Of course we cannot kill the planet. Well, possibly if we make the Vorlons angry...

[Rooflesstoofless]

You know....somewhere out there...there's an indian standing by the roadside with a tear running down his cheek.

[Ais]

This might be a disappointment to all of the tree-huggers out there, but the fact is that we cannot possibly kill or destroy our planet in any sense of the words. Not even the moon crashing into the Earth would destroy it. Most likely what would happen would be that the two bodies would coalesce. Meteors with more energy than a million nuclear warheads detonating simultaneously have impacted Earth. If you think our carbon emissions and junk food wrappers are doing anything to "hurt" the Earth you are seriously delusional.

There is no life force or whatever that cares if you cut down a tree. It's only us as humans that care. Animals aren't intelligent enough to realize what pollution is. They don't care either. The fact of the matter is that we have to do what is right for us as a species, not what will keep the environment pretty. If this means going through an industrial era and turning the sky brown, then we have to do it until we can find alternative sources of energy. I like green stuff, but I'm not going to sacrifice my well being for the sake of something that isn't even consciously aware.

You didn't get the point. It will seriously hurt us.

---------- Post added 2011-01-15 at 12:03 PM ----------

Right. So when we pollute we're not killing the planet, we're killing ourselves. Like I said though, if you have some alternate type of energy that's more efficient than what we currently have then please share

Efficient than what? Fossile fuel?
Wind, solar and nuclear.

[Deleted]

A whole host of off topic stuff is all this site seems to spew now.

MMO-champion is the future!

And back to topic, Al Gore's film is just a joke like himself, more of a portrayal of his presidental campaign and his own personal life than the global issue in my opinion. It is hard to make claims that the humans are responsible for the climate change to a 100% since one cannot distinguish between the natural impact and the one caused by humans. But generally speaking, the world is heating up and the CO2 emissions are rising.

Just the fact that scientists are divided on this topic proves the insecurity - HOWEVER, it does not mean that we should continue poluting the planet. It is just that I've been writing an essay in this question about how much we actually "know" about global warming. But what is certain, that we do face a threat that humanity hasn't encountered in such a scale before.
It is sooo easy to corrupt data...

[Zaquel]

Whilst not entirely clear this is reasonably close to the how it works, people forget the earth is an eco system and has it's own natural processes, global warming is one of them. Ice cores show the natural cycle of warming and cooling resulting in melting the ice caps and then reforming. the dilution and rising sea water this causes results in natural cycles such as the gulf stream (which depends on the concentration of salt water) stalling. This is but one of the processes which allows a "mini ice age" to occur and the polar caps to reform some reasonable mass, once they reform the concentration of salt in the water increases, the gulf stream resumes and the climate begins to warm.

There are so many different processes like this occuring in our planet, it's how it maintains. Now please dont get me wrong, im not saying humans do not contribute to global warming we do. However, the issue i have is people are always "save the world" not realising whatver we do regardless this is going to happen because it's how our planets eco system works.

I love you - this explained a lot of "loose endes" i know i had - and expected flame of, from my post.

Glad to see im not the only one, realizing the world accualy does this to them self.

And as you say - the humans contribute. But more then around .2%

[Powell]

We are not destroying our planet, we are destroying the living enviorment and our humanity.
Humans are a parasite to this planet, sooner or later our species will be in trouble. So much can go wrong - the enviorment, overpopulating, a meteor, an iceage, starvation, virus outbreak, global warming.. doesn't matter what it is.

[Harith]

what i find funny is that the human race only stands for about 5% of the global CO^2 relase the rest is from the oceans and marsh lands so this is normal, have we speed up the process? Hell Yeah we have but not as much as ppl think. to think we are this big part of the world is just an inflated ego. it is more likely that we will run out of fossil fuel before any long term dmg has happend. i'd be more worried about us runing out of fuel if i where you

hey i am all for tech that makes stuff more efficient sens i will save cash on that

[Calaba]

As just about everyone pointed out, when they say we're "destroying / killing the planet", what they REALLY mean is that we'll be killing the soft, squidgy, oxygen-breathing, carbon-based life forms that inhabit the planet. In other words, what they really mean is "WE'RE GONNA DIE!!!!". Not "hey this will cause the planet to split in half".

The reason that it becomes "killing the planet" is that these things tend to be seen on the global scale. If they were more localized they'd just be seen as "killing", or "destroying" just 1 town or country.

Of course, there's more than 1 way to boil an egg.
Super volcano erupting = end of mankind as we know it.
Large enough rock falls from space = mass extinction event.
Someone fires off a nuke = nuclear war / winter.
Suddenly run short on oil (NOT the same as "no oil left", just a few shortages at the petrol pumps) = end of civilization as we know it. Prepare for Mad Max style of existence.
Sudden Ice Age = a huge portion of people freeze to death, end of civilization.
Runaway greenhouse effect = everything dies.

Note that not all of these are man-made issues. Even so, world leaders really ought to be aware of all of these issues as it's the very basics of their jobs, and (you'd hope) they have some sort of plan (although it generally involves hiding in nuclear bunkers and hoping they aren't hit!)

[Admuntour]

I think the original poster miss interpreted "We are killing our planet" for "We are destroying our planet", I assure you there is a difference.

It is probably indeed impossible for us to destroy our own planet in the sense of blasting it apart into millions of tiny asteroids. It is not however impossible for us to alter or completely mess with the ecosystem of our planet to such an extent that the effects become irreversible.
We are doing it right now, all the millions of cars that pump CO2 into the atmosphere, all the thousands of factories that burn coal and oil to produce electricity, all the millions of cows that emit methane. They are all contributing to producing a green house effect so strong that it threatens to tip the balance of our planet.

Add to this the fact that we are also cutting down hundreds of hectares of forests each year, killing of hundreds of species, polluting our seas, soils and sky and you have a recipe for disaster. I don't think the effects are yet irreversible. You could shut down all the electric power plants that burn coal, natural gas and oil and replace them with hydro electrics, tide plants, solar panels and geothermals. You could replace all our petrol cars with electric ones, and switch all airplanes on biofuels. Stop cutting down the forests, stop polluting (which is 99% caused by waste from factories). Yes this would require a massive shift in the infrastructure, yes it would be expensive, but if all the nations of the world stopped pumping billions of dollars into the military and into weapons, then it would be possible.

Sad truth though, its far too profitable to continue the way we are now, to waste billions on silly weapon systems and armies, to burn coal, oil and gas, to cut forests. And as such we will continue to kill the ecosystem of our planet until it is really no longer able to sustain human life.
All big animals will die out, only tiny creatures like small lizards, birds, fish and maybe mice will survive and thrive as all the big creatures (including humans) die out. After things settle down the small creatures will evolve back into big creatures and the cycle begins anew.

There is however the possibility that we indeed wrack the weather and the ecosystem so much out of balance that it makes the planet totally barren and inhospitable to life. Either way, its slowly happening as we speak.