uzibear,

with all this talk about hydrogen--it still takes electricity to product hydrogen. So even when cars aren't the ones spewing out green house gases, most of powerplants are still coal fired.

It was damn hot & humid today.........

The real problem is over population. Polutions and consumptions are all done by HUMANS. Less birth, less polution. No birth, no polution.

The planet will eventually take care of that! Just give it a few thousand years.

The good news in the short term is that scientists believe the world's population is about to peak and will then actually start falling in about 2020. As nations get richer, birth rates drop and this, it seems, is starting to have an effect, even in India and China (tho the Chinese government also helped with its one child policy).

Might not seem like big news, but I imagine it's the first time in human existance that the population on the planet will stop increasing.

Of course, no reliable figures exist for population change during the last couple ice ages, so who knows if that statement is correct or not

Population control. What a solution (sarcasm).

What are you talking about?! The world will be a better place with more Thai Jr.'s running around! Main topic of the day everyday: How SUVs can benefit your life?

The total solution is to legalize all recreational drugs.....this way no one will ever notice anything and we'll all be happy as a clam...... Though it would put me out of work on my part time job.

Here is an interesting column written by economist Robert Samuelson. Column The money shot is summarized below. In that the global warming debate has been turned into a moral crusade by some (like Al Gore) when it is really in essance an engineering problem, i.e. how to reduce green house gasses. Whether you believe the gasses are causing global warming it is still an interesting read.

The practical conclusion is that if global warming is a potential calamity, the only salvation is new technology. I once received an e-mail from an engineer. Thorium, he said. I had never heard of thorium. It is, he argued, a nuclear fuel that is more plentiful and safer than uranium without waste disposal problems. It's an exit from the global warming trap.

After reading many articles, I gave up trying to decide whether he is correct. But his larger point is correct: Only an aggressive research and development program might find ways of breaking our dependence on fossil fuels or dealing with it. Perhaps some system could purge the atmosphere of surplus greenhouse gases?

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.

Have to agree with population control, less human, less consumption, less polution ...

Very logical, WASC007.

The earth is at an all time high for human population at the same time the earth is at an all time low for percentage of rain forest/coral/natural agriculture as compared to the overall surface area of the earth. So basically what you have is the amount of waste products is increasing while the resources needed to filter out and dispose of the waste products is decreasing... so where does this waste go? It sits around and contaminates everything around it... couple this with the normal cyclical changes the earth needs to go through to renew itself and we find ourselves in the current situation.

I'm glad someone raised the problem of overpopulation for me.

I guess I will be the insensitive bastard when I say this:

Disease is nature's population control.

If we find a cure for every disease I think the fact that 10 billion people are exhaling will cause more CO2 emmisions than cars will. Not saying that I support thousands of deaths a day from the likes of diarreah and AIDS, but if you get rid of those diseases, the population of Kenya would be roughly infinite.

As for global warming, Jeff Kleb summed it up wonderfully for me in that first post of his....bravo.

I read an article recently that was about shoreline erosion near where I live and as an aside it mentioned that sea levels at certain times in the past had been hundreds of feet below where they are now and hundreds of feet above as well. The present eastern Virginia coastline used to be dozens of miles further east when the sea levels were lower and also used to be WAY under water when sea levels were higher.
This stuff has been going on forever.
That said, I think our descendants are in for some deep trouble. We may be able to slow it down with considerable effort but I don't think we can prevent it. I'm doing what I can to conserve energy and pollute less. My neighbors don't think much of my "natural" yard or my failure to mow it though.
It might be a good idea to bet on where the coastline will be in 50 years and buy some cheap future waterfront property.

Here's the bottom line: no matter what happens, humans will adapt and we will live on. it's just what we do!

That's the scariest thing I've read in a very long time!!

Tom Clancy had the right idea in "Rainbow Six". Create a virus and wipe out the lower life forms and improve the gene pool.