Talkback: Swimming Under Everest Video

While being very environmentally conscious, I cannot go along entirely with the latest 'global warming' scenario. The Earth has been through - so the scientists tell us - many massive changes in the past that have altered whole continents from 'tropical' to 'ice-age' and back again!
There must be other forces at work than a degree or so of warming (and it is an 'average' we are told) that is causing these large changes. Perhaps it is radiation from the sky that is melting these glaciers?
Also the focus always seems to be aimed at the 'evil west' to make all the changes, when it is the developing nations that are doing the most polluting, also still having too many children, which is fueling the need for more and more use of resources in these countries. India's economy is growing at about 8-10% a year, with all that means for using up resources. The West is more or less stagnant at the moment and probably likely to shrink with the money crisis.

Environmentalism tends to have a sort of 'Shangri-La' approach to life, believing that the whole population of the world deserves to live in some sort of paradise. This is understandable, commendable even, but sadly impractical and unattainable. Life on this earth has always been unfair, unequal, and very hard for the majority of people. I wish it was otherwise, and support every means of making people's life easier. I feel though that we are probably heading for very serious times ahead especially for the poor and the powerless.

While being very environmentally conscious, I cannot go along entirely with the latest 'global warming' scenario. The Earth has been through - so the scientists tell us - many massive changes in the past that have altered whole continents from 'tropical' to 'ice-age' and back again!
There must be other forces at work than a degree or so of warming (and it is an 'average' we are told) that is causing these large changes. Perhaps it is radiation from the sky that is melting these glaciers?
Also the focus always seems to be aimed at the 'evil west' to make all the changes, when it is the developing nations that are doing the most polluting, also still having too many children, which is fueling the need for more and more use of resources in these countries. India's economy is growing at about 8-10% a year, with all that means for using up resources. The West is more or less stagnant at the moment and probably likely to shrink with the money crisis.

Environmentalism tends to have a sort of 'Shangri-La' approach to life, believing that the whole population of the world deserves to live in some sort of paradise. This is understandable, commendable even, but sadly impractical and unattainable. Life on this earth has always been unfair, unequal, and very hard for the majority of people. I wish it was otherwise, and support every means of making people's life easier. I feel though that we are probably heading for very serious times ahead especially for the poor and the powerless.

Sorry about the double post.

Does nobody have any opinions about this story?

Peter Collins 2 wrote (see)

Does nobody have any opinions about this story?

Oh dear. If you only knew

Well, it's a huge subject and no one knows the answers even the very elite scientists. So any opinions on this forum are likely to be pure speculation, opinion and utter blox.

However, these are the facts as I see them.

Green house gasses do cause global warming and man produces greenhouse gasses, but because the earth is warming naturally after an ice age, no one knows what effect man has.

Natural events like volcanic eruptions or rotting tundra becoming unfrozen can cause massive amounts of greenhouse gasses. Add into that, sunspots and all host of chaotic forces and who knows what effect nature has (nature wiped out the dinasours quite easily afterall)?

On the other side of the coin - Western countries had the industrial revolution and polluted and prospered, is it fair to look down our nose's at larger developing countries whose economies are growing (and who up till now have lead very non-polluting lives) and dictate to them?

India and China have a bigger populous than Europe and America. Maybe it is them that should live in Shangrila and we should be part of that world that is "unfair, unequal, and very hard for the majority of people".

Ho hum, makes you think.

What Rocky said ...........

Dont forget to feed the starving millions without birth control and "Hay ho" double the amount of mouths to feed next Live Aid.......

Rocky wrote (see)

because the earth is warming naturally after an ice age, no one knows what effect man has.

Not true, I'm afraid. Warming after the last ice age reached a maximum about 5000 years ago, due to the Milankovich effect. Since then we should have been in a general cooling trend that would lead to a new ice age in about 5000 years from now. That cooling now seems to have been reversed due to the amount of CO2 we've put into the atmosphere.

 One of the major complications seems to be the effect of solar activity. Low activity seems to cause cool periods, but only in northern Europe. Examples are the little ice age of the 19th century that was probably caused by the lack of sunspots at that time. But the little ice age didn't affect the southern hemisphere, southern Asia or the Pacifi.

"Last weekend, environmental campaigner Lewis Gordon Pugh swam 1km across Lake Pumori which sits at around 5,400 metres adjacent to the Khumbu Glacier in the shadow of Mount Everest"

<cynic>
I suppose Lewis walked to Everest; I'm certain he wouldn't have flown there, using how ever many kg of fossil fuels to do so...
</cynic>

Jim, unless you're the Messiah your basing your evidence on pretty thin evidence.

I whole heartedly agree that man should keep his dick in his pants and stop burning fossil fuels... but what do you suggest?

Edit - It's you're not your.