Quote Originally Posted by Dobe Mejuwa View Post
Almost sounds like you all are in violent agreement.

1. Man effects the environment.
2. Environment effects man.
3. Short term impacts can be reversed
4. Un-reversed short term effects can impact long term natural cycles.
5. And there are natural long term cycles beyond man's control.

Volcanoes man can't control. Volcanoes can dramatically add dust to the atmosphere that impacts significant areas solar light penetration. Shift of tectonic plates are not on man's "I need fix that" list, but the resulting expulsion of super heated lava impacts ocean temperatures in localized regions.

What if we just agreed to no add to our natural problems? We can call it global warming prevention, or we can just call it "Protecting our environment", by acting responsible regarding all forms of unnatural emissions.

And of course, we have to be able to recognize those things that are beyond us to control and learn to thru adaption live around them.

Give me grace to accept with serenitythe things that cannot be changed,Courage to change the thingswhich should be changed,and the Wisdom to distinguishthe one from the other.
Having worked for the EPA in the air pollution department gave me a lot of experience calculating the emissions from various man made sources of air pollution. From the automobile to the Giant Factories like ALCOA and GE I've visited them all over the past 40 years of my career as an EPA official and as a consultant for private industry.

I live to fish and hunt and it was my goal to try to preserve the earth for the next generation as much as humanly possible. So while I can't control the inner working of the Earth and the forces that move continent around on the surface of the earth I can try to limit the burning of the dirties fossil fuels around a little bit. We won't be able to get completely off coal or oil or even natural gas until we learn to capture solar energy much more efficiently. You see we are using solar energy right now but its the one that nature captured in the Earth's Plants and animals over the past zillion years. Those plants lived and died on the earth many millions of years ago, died and became buried in the earth. Covered up with more and more sediment caused by the hydrologic cycle these remains were put under intense pressure and heat and turned into the fossil fuels that we know today. They were once green plants capturing the sunlight years ago using Chlorophyll in their leaves. What if we could figure out how Chlorophyll captures the sunlight and turns it from Air and Water into Sugar and Starches and other fibers? Just think about how many trees and other plants have died and been buried in the ground over the past 4 or 5 billion or more years.

Look at the Earth today and we are burning more and more trees to make land for growing crops for our own food. Trees gather up CO2 and make sugar from it using water and other minerals in the soils. They produce lots of Oxygen. But the most Oxygen is produced in the World's Oceans that are full of small one cells plant cells. These are the plants that produce lots of new Oxygen and take up the CO2 in the atmosphere. The Oceans and the Trees are the CO2 sinks so to speak. So it would be best for mankind if we protect the oceans and the trees to some extent. But the more humans we have on this earth the more resources they require and the more pollution they put out.

So basically we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the Earth in some places and using up the resource at a faster rate. Now some of these resources are renewable. We can regrow trees over time. But time is the key. It takes 100 years to regrow and hard wood forest. So timing and rate of use are two keys that we have to manage.