Quote:
Originally posted by hudson
ok, but common sense says if you have millions of cars burning gas and factories burning coal and homes burning heating oil and electric factories creating power, etc, etc...you got to be pumping some major heat into the environment not to mention stuff like ozone depleting chemicals.
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Common sense has no place in science and your idea of what global warming holds is wrong. (it isn't about the heat we produce, it's about the CO<sub>2</sub> we release that supposedly causes a greenhouse-like effect)
Nonetheless, even though global warming is indeed probably not caused by humans, there is a risk we are taking, namely the risk of disturbing a balance of which we don't know how delicate it is or causing a chain reaction.
We are not just using immense amounts of fossile fuels, we are also rapidly destroying the rain forests and (more importantly) polluting the oceans. So, we are not only releasing loads of extra carbondioxide, we are also decreasing the amount of carbondioxide the environment can absorb.
Now, by itself this isn't even close to enough for global warming. However, add it to the existing cycle and it may well have just enough effect to tip the balance or create a chain reaction (there are several theories right now that state that a warmer earth will have an even warmer earth as an effect, among other things by causing a release of carbondioxide instead of intake of it by the oceans, I won't go into the details but it's fairly credible).
Now, the earth will survive, no matter what we do. Live will continue to exist, and humanity probably will as well. We just risk making things rather unpleasant for ourselves. The risk may be a small one, but one could argue that the possible effects outweigh it. Earth is a big thing to gamble with
