The Town of Odyssey

Whitty Whit wrote:If it costs money to recycle in my town, I don't. If it's "free/pre-paid by the city", I recycle. Does that count for something? green brownie points for me?

Hmmph. Greedy selfish Scrooge.

Ok. I gotta remember that I always have to put in the word "some" so people don't think I mean "all". Sorry about that. Also, I took your post as an attack on my view which to me seemed juvenile, so I responded with caps. If you disagree with me fine. I have no problem with that, but I'm getting really tired of the pc sensitivity that's used today. I respect everyone's views no matter how much I disagree with them. It's their right to have those views. But as soon as I say something that upsets someone I get words like "offended", "insulted" and the like. To me that's juvenile. Tell me you disagree and explain why. Your second post was much more civil than the first.

And now that we've got all that civility/hostility thing worked out, back to the regular scheduled debate.

I love this video, Hank Green is awesome. So many of the people in this thread are like "Yeah I'm an environmentalist, I don't litter and I recycle, if it's free." Not littering is just not being a jerk, seriously that has nothing to do with being an environmentalist. Recycling is a step in the right direction and something that everyone should do but what we all really need to do is acknowledge that global warming is a thing, we are responsible for it, and it is not a cycle because humans have not been burning fossil fuel like this before so there's no way it can be a cycle. What we do with that information is where we need to have a debate. Because we clearly need to do something about global warming. And it's probably going to necessitate a large change for our society, we can't keep doing what we do and the change is going to be expensive, both personally and as a nation. It's not going to be easy, but if we want to be good stewards of this planet we need to suck it up. When we stand before God and we are asked how we were better stewards of the planets the excuse that it cost money or was too hard to not destroy the planet He made and gave us isn't going to fly. We will be like the servant who was given the talent and buried it, or worse spent it without caring about the consequences.

John Chrysostom wrote:When we stand before God and we are asked how we were better stewards of the planets the excuse that it cost money or was too hard to not destroy the planet He made and gave us isn't going to fly. We will be like the servant who was given the talent and buried it, or worse spent it without caring about the consequences.

This right here. I think as Christians, we're called to take care of the world. Sure, we should have faith that God will provide, but that doesn't mean we get to exploit it in the meantime. We don't know how long we've been given to take care of the Earth, so we should probably do our best to make it last.

As far as atheists go, speaking as a former atheist, I think there are two general end points of thought. The optimistic view is that of personal responsibility to honor the Earth and take care of it as it takes care of us. This can further evolve into a more substantial "Earth Mother" idol worship, but not for all. The other end of the spectrum, the more pessimistic view, would generally be that it doesn't matter what we do because there's no point to being. Without a God in which to derive a sense of meaning and purpose, it can be difficult to see a reasoning behind caring for the world in which we live. Again, these are highly generalized points of view, more a line with many different points. So saying atheists are for one thing or another is like lumping all women or all people from this continent to the same beliefs.

Glad I finally see a few people like me are out there...semi-hippie tree-hugger recycling freaks...lol. It drives me nuts that people don't look into the long-term future for us. They preach about voting for Christian leaders so that future generations will have a better country, but neglect caring about the environment, not thinking about how we are ruining the world for future generations. How can you think of a better country if you don't care about a better planet? What use is a better country if the whole planet dies? I wish we could get the message out to more people and find a way to make people care about the future. So many people I hear only recycle when it is convenient and otherwise don't care what they use up. We can do a lot to preserve and protect what God has given us, but it needs to be a mass effort, not just a person here and there. It's such a slow change of mentality...I'm going nuts and yes, I'm somewhat impatient. I try to reuse things as much as possible, always recycle (take my recyclables down the street to the center, since my apt complex doesn't have curbside pickup), try not to put too many chemicals in the water system by using some natural cleaning agents, and don't buy things that are difficult to recycle (i.e. Styrofoam). Whenever I get a house, I want to make sure it is a location where I can put groundcover down or something instead of grass that needs so much upkeep and uses up tons and tons of water, not to mention the fertilizer that typically gets used to make it grow. Someday I want to get a hybrid vehicle, but until then I drive a fuel efficient car. If we could get the majority to do little things like this, we'd be a lot better off as a planet...but people don't like being forced to think outside of the box, or do anything that might use a slight amount of money. Besides, fuel efficient cars aren't "cool", and a yard filled with trees and plants doesn't match the rest of society that demands a pretty lawn and perhaps one delicate tree. {sigh} idk what to do, it frustrates me.

Though note the fact that not only is Global warming over exaggerated, the world periodically changes temperature. All the carbon dioxide we put out hardly even scratches how much trees and the environment put out.
Albeit I do still be believe in being careful with resources, we have too many restriction and other such things that have restricted our use of the world in ways that are very costly and yet unnecessary.

How is global warming exaggerated? The temperature charts that I've seen show an increasing temperature. Where are the carbon dioxide levels that show that trees put out just as much as industry?

Nature produces 200 billion tons of carbon dioxide while human only produce 7 billion tons. And did you know that temperature had the largest increase in 1940's when carbon dioxide was much less used than today. And temperatures where on averagee hotter than now in the 900- 1100 AD.

What are your sources for these claims? And why are there so many studies that show the exact opposite of what you are saying?

Edit: Also a note, do you know what was happening in the 1940s? Massive increase in industrialization and consumption of fossil fuels. World War Two. If anything your argument that temperature increase happened during that time shows that human activity does have an impact on the temperature.

31899 wrote:

The best way to "Go Green" is to be an ENORMOUS FAN of the Brothers Green! #HankIsAwesome

(Yes, I just hashtagged on the ToO. SUE ME. #TheSecondTooHashtag )

Studies that are presuming. The weather changes every few hundred years. Basically they are blaming something natural on humans.

~JCGJ~ just posted a video looking at a massive study by hundreds of scientist and thousands of pages of evidence that say the exact opposite of what you're claiming. Where is your evidence that the weather changes every few hundred years? This report says the exact opposite, how is it presuming?

Also what do you have to say about my point about World War Two?

My point was that we still used much less carbon dioxide then than now and it was hotter then. Did you know why the Viking were able to settle Greenland. It was green at the time indicating a much higher average hear temperature. It then began to cool down thus ending the Vikings in Greenland.
And I can't watch that video unless you would unblock youtube.

Except that we use more, the study cited in the video says that. You need to provide evidence to refute our sides evidence, your word alone is not sufficient. Also we're not blocking Youtube, that's on your end.

I know it is on my end. I have K9.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... al-warming
http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... ng-science
http://www.answersingenesis.org/content ... arming.pdf

Here are a couple of article that support me.

First article: The evidence that says the temperature rise may be a natural fluctuation is from 1995. This article in no way denies the fact that greenhouse gases and the temperature has increased. It simply says more research is needed, how much research will make them happy?

Second article: Again no denial of the increase in greenhouse gases or temperature. Their "evidence" for natural cycles is one verse in Genesis, which in no way proves that these "cycles" have actually occurred before. It says that CO2 levels do not directly correspond to temperatures, of course they don't directly there are multiple factors that affect temperature. There is a connection though even if it is not a perfect connection, because of those other factors. The article in now way denies the connection just that other factors may have more to do with temperature.

Third article: Again no denial of the increase in greenhouse gases or temperature. It again argues that increase in greenhouse gases from human activity is not the sole cause of increase in temperatures, well no duh of course it isn't the sole cause but it is a major cause. In fact in this article they claim that the causes in temperature rise are 50/50 human and natural. If we're still 50% of the problem then we need to do something. In the end the article in no way denies that there are actual changes occurring from global warming, they gloss over the extreme weather changes and get right to the issue they care most about. Money, their conclusion is that no matter the evidence it would simply cost too much to change.

As I said earlier, if we ignore climate change because of money we're going to feel pretty stupid when we stand before God and try to excuse why we destroyed His creation.

Even if this is a cycle, the articles in no way provide any evidence for this just state it as a hypothetical reason, we cannot predict when this cycle will end or how soon it will come around again. We need to start making changes now in either case, because we will have to live in this cycle for now.

Blitz wrote:Nature produces 200 billion tons of carbon dioxide while human only produce 7 billion tons.

The natural CO2 is in a cycle that does not account for what humans throw into the mix. We need to find ways to offset our CO2 production the way nature does its own.
"The natural cycle adds and removes CO2 to keep a balance; humans add extra CO2 without removing any."
http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-c ... ssions.htm

Blitz wrote:Did you know why the Viking were able to settle Greenland.

That was a marketing ploy to get more people.
" In the Icelandic sagas, it is said that the Norwegian-born Icelander Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for murder. Along with his extended family and his thralls, he set out in ships to explore icy land known to lie to the northwest. After finding a habitable area and settling there, he named it Grœnland (translated as "Greenland"), supposedly in the hope that the pleasant name would attract settlers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Etymology