Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Global Warming Is A HOAX

Yes, one fine mess. How is our infant mortality compared to primitive cultures? How is our life expectancy compared to primitive cultures? How about the proportion of the global population that goes hungry or is poor?

Everything is not as bad as some would think. Do we have work to do, sure as hell. But we're on the road.

People tend to have a very romantic notion of "primitive cultures" and how they were "one with nature". This is bull$hit. Primitive cultures were just as exploitative as us. They just didn't have as much of an impact because too many of them died before having more kids.

Ellis - I was responding to red's comment that it was a "verifiable observation that contributes to the scientific evidence"

He's quite right Ellis. The guy with the thermometer wasn't there, only someone's 'Pappy'

But I still think these climate change events are most likely "anthro-initiated". Well, i'll leave you guys to get on with throwing rocks at each other...

I've had enough too. I just hope we ARE wrong in thinking that the climate is changing. --Oh- and we have just had the warmest winter (the last 3 months) on record in spite of record cold and heavy snowfalls earlier in July, (not just anecdotal, that's the weather bureau's calculations).

Canuck wrote:

"Primitive cultures ... didn't have as much of an impact because too many of them died before having more kids."

Not true. Research in NZ has shown that the first settlers here (Polynesians) were easily as destructive as the later European arrivals. And the population grew rapidly for a start and then crashed. By the time Europeans got here the earlier inhabitants had been forced to adopt a more conservation based strategy through necessity. They would have died out otherwise. The same has been shown to be true in Australia although they had more time to adapt there. And for the country to adapt to their presence. I would assume the same is true for North America although there seems to be extreme opposition there to accepting this possibility.

Ellis. We've had a fairly mild winter here too.

Hi Terry - I meant that primitive cultures simply did not have the wherewithal to cause large-scale destruction like modern man has. We're saying the same thing, that both primitive cultures and modern man are just as exploitative - I'm just making the statement that we are much better at it.
You're absolutely right about Native Americans, although you might get lynched for saying so in NA (there's that extreme opposition you hinted at). There is a real feeling upon North Americans that Native Americans were one with nature, and would never do something to overexploit it. Truth of the matter is, most of the Native American societies where semi-nomadic, and would completely exhaust the local resources before moving onto the next locale.



As far as weather goes - Summer here in southern Ontario has been cooler than in recent years. Only had a couple real heat waves where I had to put the AC on.
Alternatively, we could just stop guessing and look at the satellite data for this summer(or winter, depending on your hemisphere;) )
http://www.remss.com/data/msu/monthly_ti...Ocean_v03_0.txt

Canuck, I think you might under-estimate the influence of "primitive" cultures. Let's say the Maori have been in NZ for one thousand years, probably an over-estimation. Europeans have been here two hundred years. I can't put my finger on the figures but the rate of bird extinctions for the first 800 years of human habitaion is exactly the same as the last 200 years, something like forty species compared to ten species. But we shouldn't get too carried away just with humans. The ecology changes with the arrival of any new species. As I've said elsewhere it is ecology change that causes extinctions.

I prefer to stay out of the climate debate except to point out climate is constantly changing. And why should it not? There's absolutely no reason why it should be constant. Of course the real debate is whether human activity alters it. I'd presume it does, just as the activity of all forms of life on the planet do.

"Oh- and we have just had the warmest winter (the last 3 months)"

"Ellis. We've had a fairly mild winter here too"

"As far as weather goes - Summer here in southern Ontario has been cooler than in recent years"

And in the UK : Summer has been cooler than average - and the wettest on record.

Maybe on average this shows there is no global warming. Shame though - the UK could have done with a temperature boost.