French scientist calls Gore a 'crook' and...

[maycocksean]

I'm not necessarily skeptical about global warming but I am skeptical about whether we are willing to make the kind of truly drastic changes that would mitigate the effect of humanity on our climate.

I tend to think that the modern lifestyle is not compatible with preserving the earth as we know it. A modern lifestyle for a select few might be sustainable, but for the earth's entire population to enjoy what we consider a comfortable, modern lifestyle--I'm not certain the planet could sustain that.

Thoughts? Research on the issue?

 

[Vincent Vega]

That's indeed a great challenge we are facing and something I would like to work in later, linking economic development with environmental economics trying to figure out ways how we can develop nations so that the people there gain a decent standard of life while at the same time not having to go through the stages western economies had to go through, but kind of starting green.
If those countries of the third world were to use the same wasteful and polluting machinery and plants we used to use it would eventually repulse and make things actually worse, not better, for them.
But as the regions of the third world are the hardest hit it's even more important to develop them to a point where they can protect themselves and at the same time compete with the rest of the world.
I think that's a huge and interesting field to work in, and it's one of the great challenges of the next decades. But I also think many lives will be lost along the way simply because we can't get things done so fast, and we have so many hurdles to overcome that are constantly slowing us both in the countries itself and in the industrialised world.
Personally, I'm fed up with talking about some if's and when's and maybe global warming isn't happening, or isn't caused by what we do, because I don't care honestly, and I certainly don't want to wait to find out some day, but having nothing done before.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Emission reduction demands a long time frame, if we can buy time with measures like a shade satellite, particulate chocked atmosphere or dropping giant ice cubes into the sea it may be possible; acidic anoxic oceans are far more worrying.