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Is Global Warming a Myth?

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Found these sources that support that youtuber's argument about global warming being a sham.

You may have found a bunch of sources, but none of them are convincing at all. All of those links just provide us with a bunch of people saying things with no data presented to back it up. Just as I could tell you I'm an alien whose here to research human social interaction, you wouldn't believe me unless I actually gave you proof. (I'm not an alien, by the way)

The one source you linked to that has data is this one. But that one alone has it's own set of problems. The article is clearly written by someone who is biased, so of course they are only going to show you stuff to deny climate change. The charts themselves are clearly listed as being from 2003-2008. Where is the info from 2008-2016?

Last but not least, the temperature of the poles does not reflect the average temperature of the whole globe. It would make sense that the heat would stick around in the places where carbon dioxide levels are at there highest. Meaning places where there are a lot of people, or places where natural carbon dioxide emissions occur, like volcanoes and such. There is an abundance of neither in Antarctica.

I might be able to change my opinion if you can provide me with a large amount of believable sources. But so far, the only believable sources I have seen about climate change are saying that the Earth is definitely getting hotter faster than it should.
 

Ivysaur

Grass dinosaur extraordinaire
21,082
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17
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I have to warn you, using the Daily Express as a source for anything, including the date, is a tremendous mistake. Wikipedia is 1000x more trustworthy than the Daily Express. If you are going to check for info in any British tabloid, my only advice is: don't.

The images of skeptics being hounded by green activists also feed conservative arguments that their critics are afraid of debate. The citizens' activist group Avaaz posted more than a thousand "Wanted" posters across the city featuring the images and names of climate skeptics opposed to a global accord, accusing them of responsibility "for destruction of our future".
Heartland spokesman James Taylor said it showed intolerance.
"The environmental movement doesn't want to have a debate; they just want to put forward a single message that everyone must adhere to," he said.
"When you try to smother different points of view, you disrespect science, and basic human rights."

Science is not a matter of opinion. You aren't allowed to "debate" whether the Law of Gravity or the Germ Theory are right or wrong. You either show evidence that refutes the tons of existing studies and experiments and gives a new explanation to the observable facts, or you go away. You don't get to "debate" about the speed of light. There is a "single message" about the Theory of Plate Tectonics because observation and research have shown that it works that way and only that way.

Science is not a point of view.

Look, I understand the confusion. Politics is built on opinion. Should we increase taxes or cut spending? Who should be allowed to marry? What is the right balance between privacy and security? How much should we invest in defence? Those questions all depend on your point of view. Economics is an unreliable science despite having really precise models simply because those models require hundreds of conditions to happen at once, and they almost never do in reality, so all we can aspire to is having rough approximations.

But natural sciences aren't anything like that. You see phenomena, study how it happens, find the cause through experiments and use your findings to make a full explanation which predicts future instances of that phenomena. Natural sciences aren't something you debate in the pages of a newspaper, but in peer-reviewed scientific journals where you don't share "opinions" but actual experiment data. Nobody cares what I think about why X happens, what only matters is what my studies have found and whether my experiments hold. And, so far, current research about climate change is extremely solid.

Of course, you can choose whether you want to "believe" it or not, but your opinion won't change the facts about how reality is. Of course, people who have an agenda in promoting polluting activities will try to take the discussion away from scientific research (since they can't fight reality) and into newspaper articles, where they can pretend science is like politics and your point of view matters. But that isn't doing anybody a favour.

Look, as the scientist/youtuber I linked you to in my first post says, there are three possibilities:
a) There is a mass conspiration of all scientists to lie to everybody.
b) All scientists are dumb and are missing a pretty obvious fact only I can see.
c) Scientists know something I don't and perhaps I should look into their research (or ask someone who has) instead of assuming a) or b) as the default answer.
 
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Elysieum

Requiescat en pace.
258
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It's unfortunate that the places on earth that carry some of the most threatening signs of climate change (i.e. the polar caps) are also the least populated. That the ice is melting each year at a faster rate than it forms again should be reported more widely. Or maybe it's just that it falls on deaf ears; people don't care about the state of regions that are not immediately adjacent to their own.
 
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Pinkie-Dawn

Vampire Waifu
9,528
Posts
11
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You may have found a bunch of sources, but none of them are convincing at all. All of those links just provide us with a bunch of people saying things with no data presented to back it up. Just as I could tell you I'm an alien whose here to research human social interaction, you wouldn't believe me unless I actually gave you proof. (I'm not an alien, by the way)

The one source you linked to that has data is this one. But that one alone has it's own set of problems. The article is clearly written by someone who is biased, so of course they are only going to show you stuff to deny climate change. The charts themselves are clearly listed as being from 2003-2008. Where is the info from 2008-2016?

Last but not least, the temperature of the poles does not reflect the average temperature of the whole globe. It would make sense that the heat would stick around in the places where carbon dioxide levels are at there highest. Meaning places where there are a lot of people, or places where natural carbon dioxide emissions occur, like volcanoes and such. There is an abundance of neither in Antarctica.

I might be able to change my opinion if you can provide me with a large amount of believable sources. But so far, the only believable sources I have seen about climate change are saying that the Earth is definitely getting hotter faster than it should.

The charts you're looking for can be found in Lisalomb's thread, which I have already linked for you to read:

Politicians push "anthropogenic global warming" which is 100% humans are responsible for the changing climate and the Earth would be a total constant if humans weren't here.
Actual science shows the Earth has always gone through climate cycles and we're actually coming out of a recent ice age, so comparatively temperatures are low and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is low overall but are beginning to rise again.
I like to use this graph:

800px-All_palaeotemps.png


Might wanna open it in its own tab.
Only about 20-12,000 years ago did temperatures start to rise from some of the lowest this planet has seen, which is due to the period of ice ages and mini-ice ages in the Pleistocene. Those red dots at the end are the IPCC apocalypse estimates.
What the IPCC models did is look at the last ~200 years of rising temperatures and said "the temperature is rising at this constant rate so we're going to see NINE WHOLE DEGREES OF CHANGE in the next ~100 years". That would be catastrophic indeed, but as we collect more actual observational data we see that the temperature is not rising at a constant rate.
200 years is a very short amount of time for the Earth. Now for the last 20 years we've seen the rise suddenly level out and seemingly "stop". It's not stopping, we're just looking at a EXTREMELY small section of that ^ overall temperature graph.
Their models are like looking at the temperature from January to August and predicting that it will be 300 degrees by December. That's the best way to explain it.

The show has begun, everyone, I will now be posting relevant updates from the climate talks in Paris in addition to answering basic ecology questions.
{ Negotiators at key UN climate talks in Paris that open next week are being told by the French government they must iron out their main differences six days before the end of the talks, according to the foreign minister, Laurent Fabius.
The highly unusual demand by the French hosts is a sign of their confidence that they believe a deal is within sight and that the huge diplomatic push they have made to ensure the talks succeed has not been knocked off course by the terrorist attacks two weeks ago.
But Fabius's request to have the final version of the negotiating text signed off by next Saturday will be met with scepticism among some observers of the talks. Frequently, previous incarnations of the UN talks have finished one or even two days after deadline. }
We have also been given our first solid example of media propaganda, which you know I will be calling out throughout this process.
{ Scientists estimate that if the world warms by more than 2C on average above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century, the effects of climate change will become catastrophic and irreversible. }
By "scientists", The Guardian here means "people hired by the government who are held to no level of accountability or peer review at all".
As for that stat, well, pictures are worth 1k words right?

[same chart from above quote, but with more details such as the period gap]

Has anybody ever asked themselves why we're comparing everything to extremely recent history? We even call the brief period of time between the last little ice age and the industrial revolution the "Holocene optimum". Optimum for who? The history of the Earth and science today tells us life in general thrives in a warmer climate and biological diversity has always been greatest during warm periods. When we look at the big picture (the span of 500 million years) it looks like the planet's climate is, over millions of years, becoming less sporadic and coming to its own "optimum" that is in fact those few degrees warmer than their so called Holocene optimum.
Can I just put this in perspective for us?

[close-up of same chart showcasing where we are]

The climate has always been like a bouncing ball coming to a stop, we happen to be here at this level of intelligence and ability just after the ball bounced, temps are going back up, and our great government minds genuinely believe the planet is meant to be at a constant standstill of this exact climate and if it's not completely unchanging it's due to dirty humans killing the environment.
That's the story you're supposed to buy.

{ The blue line is a best-fit prediction of observations. }
The blue line all the way at the bottom is actual observations (the dots, the first 20 years) and an average for the future calculated based on the temperature rising at a consistent rate, which we do not see happening at all, and that's where the models fail. The early models predicted a rise in temperature correlated directly to a rise in CO2, but while we have seen an exponential rise in CO2 (especially as nations like India and China develop) we have not seen the temperature follow.
{ The difference between 1.2 and 1.8 degrees over 80 years is meaningless, both are enormous changes in such a short time period. }
Neither is anywhere near happening. Actual scientists attribute an overall net gain of ~1C per century to natural change, as gone over previously in this thread. The IPCC doesn't consider that the temperature naturally rises and falls, they looked at a hundreth degree of change over 20 years and said IF THIS CONTINUES WE'LL BE ****ED and made a bunch of models that showed how ****ed we'd be if the temperature continued at that rate. Then the temperature stopped rising at that rate and the temp-CO2 graphs stopped correlating so nicely so NOAA had to redo the math and make the pause disappear. Like I said earlier in this thread, their alarmist models are like observing the temperature from January to June and predicting it will be 300 degrees by December.

[annual temperature change chart]

That's a grab from an IPCC vid being distributed right now to the media to report on just before the climate talks formally begin tomorrow.
What are they using as their baseline? It's the 1960-1990 average again. Why are we using that as the standard? If we look at the temperature 1000 years ago, what is the annual rate of change as compared to now? You'd see it was a hell of a lot colder than it is now, and that's been changing since way before humans started burning coal.
{ The vast majority of those who do stake positions say that anthropogenic climate change is real. }
lol okay we will have literally the same exact conversation over again because you're too smart to read what's already been posted.
Go ahead and source your claim, you can forget about responding to the rest of this post if you want, go find your "97% of scientists globally" link so we can get this over with.
Do you know why nobody sources from John Cook? Because he has been caught over and over again misrepresenting information, fiddling with graphs and data, and causing ethical outrage throughout the global science community in general. We already went over him in this thread, but again, you're too smart to read what's been posted already.
In any case, you're posting this graph in a misleading way because you don't understand that method used to generate it. Ignore the red line and look at the "model predictions". These models are based on algorithms that say any CO2 added to the modern atmosphere is 100% anthropogenic. The "natural" model is generated by a computer that says "CO2 makes the temperature rise. Additional CO2 is not natural. Remove all effects of CO2 completely and calculate temperature. Temperature will not rise when no CO2 is present." except we know that's not the case, because the temperature has ceased rising despite an even greater amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The temperature is not rising in correlation with the rising amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but accepting that means the governments of the world lose their main excuse for green taxing because the lobbying industry has made global warming its champion cause, instead of the totally anthropogenic pollution which we can see is dramatically effecting the environment.
edit: I made you guys a picture to explain.
The red line is the actual, pretend it's exactly the same in each example.

[chart Lisalombs drew to showcase IPCC's predictions vs. non-government scientists predictions]

In the top pic we see the IPCC's apocalypse CO2 prediction vs the actual temps. It's apocalyptic. If it were actually happening we would see a more exact/at the very least much closer correlation on the graphs and we would also be watching the planet turn into a ****ing fireball literally before our eyes.
In the middle pic is what the IPCC thinks would happen if humans stopped existing. The temperature would be totally constant and nothing would change and the planet would be pristine and preserved in this exact state until the end of time because humans aren't around to expel CO2 and ruin everything, and we are ignoring the fact that the climate has never been stable once in this planet's history, that is very important to ignore to make this graph work.
The bottom graph is how scientists that are called "skeptics" predict the climate's change naturally vs CO2. The temperature is slowly rising of its own accord, and the actual temps are slightly higher because anthropogenic CO2 has some effect in increasing the rate of climate change, but it's so insignificant it really doesn't matter and isn't worth hundreds of billions of dollars to slow down the increase a hundredth of a degree over a century.

Unfortunately, almost all the charts she posted were uploaded from tinypic.com, which PC does not allow, so I had to summarize what the charts look like. I'll see if I could find its built-in attachment feature to upload them here.

I have to warn you, using the Daily Express as a source for anything, including the date, is a tremendous mistake. Wikipedia is 1000x more trustworthy than the Daily Express. If you are going to check for info in any British tabloid, my only advice is: don't.
Yet public schools and universities forbid students from using Wikipedia as a source for their essays, so it's better to use different sources.

It's unfortunate that the places on earth that carry some of the most threatening signs of climate change (i.e. the polar caps) are also the least populated. That the ice is melting each year at a faster rate than it forms again should be reported more widely. Or maybe it's just that it falls on deaf ears; people don't care about the state of regions that are not immediately adjacent to their own.
According to one of the articles Lisalombs provided, we're going to see a cool down by 2017 and see a mini-ice age by 2030. This is news is actually recent.
 
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399
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Personally, I agree with Pinkie-Dawn here to some degree. Not all of the climate change that we are seeing is caused directly or indirectly by humans, but there is a definite fact that climate is indeed changing. I find it almost comical that thirty years ago, scientists were predicting a mini ice age. For the past ten years, global warming has been a huge thing. Now some scientists are switching back and claiming another mini ice age? It sure seems like we don't understand our planet as well as we think we do.

Regardless of whether the world increases by a few degrees Celsius or not, I don't think that should change what we need to do. It is true that actions that we as humans are taking are indeed harmful to the planet. I don't think that changing a few degrees is going to kill of humanity or the world as a whole, the earth is a much more durable ecosystem than some believe. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to take care of it. I'm all for trying to clean up the earth, use less oil, reduce on harmful substances, cleaning up the air, etc. I just don't think that we need a "solution" to climate change. The climate changes, regardless of what humanity does.
 

Ivysaur

Grass dinosaur extraordinaire
21,082
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Yet public schools and universities forbid students from using Wikipedia as a source for their essays, so it's better to use different sources.

No, no, you don't understand what I mean. I mean that, as a journalist with knowledge about British press, I can tell you that not a single word printed in the Daily Express has ever been true- except perhaps that time when they endorsed Hitler in the 30s, they certainly meant it. The Express is a local laughingstock, with a tendency to finding cures for dementia every three days, owned by a porn baron who plugs himself constantly, with no interest in objectivity (like every other tabloid) and whose writers haven't received a pay rise in almost a decade. When I say that the Wikipedia is a far more reliable source, I know very well that is not allowed in schools and universities; that should make you understand how credible the Express is.

In short: everything printed in the Express is an outright lie, or a PR advertisement, or a piece of political puffery that no serious newspaper would ever print. "Different sources" are okay unless your idea of "source" is the racist, rambling, paranoid drunkard at the pub; which is exactly what this thing is.

Incidentally, the only source you can use for scientific research is peer-reviewed scientific journals, not newspapers. Or whatever the Express is- I don't want to put it at the same level as the industry where I work.
 
169
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The charts you're looking for can be found in Lisalomb's thread, which I have already linked for you to read

The graph you are showing is on such a massive scale that no one can see what's happened in recent years. And that's what we are talking about now. That chart is useless for what we are trying to find out.

As for that thread you linked? It's the same as what you are doing here. Trying to convince us with quotes alone. I need actual evidence. Something more along the lines of a change in recent global temperature, or rise of carbon dioxide, of the past 100 years or so.

But of course, they would have to be from a reliable source.
 
1,824
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All I know for sure is Al Gore is the biggest damn hypocrite of our generation and no one should take anything he says seriously, especially about environmental topics.

For the most part, almost every news I hear on global warming sounds like pure sensationalism to me.
 
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twocows

The not-so-black cat of ill omen
4,307
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I don't think it's a myth. I think that the core suggestion that some of our actions are causing some degree of undesirable climate change and maybe some other environmental problems is most likely correct.

However, I also think that the degree to which this is the case is being exaggerated and I think that people turning scientific consensus into a sort of dogma poisons the well and makes it harder for ordinary people to determine what is or isn't true about the topic.
 
1,824
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No, global warming is not a myth, and anyone who does think it's a myth is misguided and needs to be educated on the topic.

There's no proof against or for it, actually.

Don't criticize someone who differs in opinion as you as stupid simply because you feel they're wrong. That only makes you look stupid.
 

Vragon2.0

Say it with me (Vray-gun)
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the ice caps melting fam

Cool, do you have anything else regarding it or perhaps it's rate of melting, besides your basic discovery channel documentary? Like, I'm willing to look at the stuff, but you'd have to show the rate is,
1) Caused by the temperatures are a proper amount that can be attributed to global warming
2) There is some icy temperatures being formed somewhere else and thus merely shifting weather or things. I dunno, it's just speculation.
 

Savashy

headsplitter
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Cool, do you have anything else regarding it or perhaps it's rate of melting, besides your basic discovery channel documentary? Like, I'm willing to look at the stuff, but you'd have to show the rate is,
1) Caused by the temperatures are a proper amount that can be attributed to global warming
2) There is some icy temperatures being formed somewhere else and thus merely shifting weather or things. I dunno, it's just speculation.

it takes like 5 minutes to just look it up lmao.
 

Vragon2.0

Say it with me (Vray-gun)
420
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6
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it takes like 5 minutes to just look it up lmao.

Dude this is a debate place, telling me to look it up, doesn't help your argument. You are the one making the assertion by countering with "Ice caps melting fam" so it's up to you to prove it, else why are you here save for a moment of "Nu-uh".


Also,
snip snip

thanks for supplying something. I'll look into it a little and around in regards to other things to be fair.
 

Bidoof FTW

[cd=font-family:carter one; font-size:13pt; color:
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For the most part, almost every news I hear on global warming sounds like pure sensationalism to me.

I'm sure to some degree you're correct on this. The media as a whole is filled with sensationalism because it gets them views. However, there are some facts on the subject that might help you understand other than "gotdamn icecaps be turnin to liquid n ****. On my mama florida bouta sink".

The following is a really big wall of text, but if there's one giant post you'd have to read in this thread I really hope it's mine because I am hoping to focus on spreading facts instead of telling you to "do research" or make attacks on your intellect.

Climate change is a natural process. This is a fact. What people are worried about however, is the human effect on the natural climate change.

It is a fact that human activities relating to industrialization such as the combustion (burning) of fossil fuels, clearing of forests for agriculture, and deforestation or land degradation result in an increase of carbon in the atmosphere, through different processes and different forms, albeit mostly carbon dioxide. Point here being: carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing.

Here is an image to show increasing atmospheric carbon levels:
Spoiler:


Ok so, we now know that carbon levels are increasing in our atmosphere, but isn't that a good thing? Carbon in the atmosphere traps infrared radiation (heat), which means we don't freeze to death on the daily. But like a lot of things in life, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Raising the global temperature by even a couple degrees Celsius can have really negative effects on the Earth (as we know it, the planet isn't going to implode or anything like that) because the Earth has a LOT of really really fragile ecosystems.

So I think the most widely used example of this is the northern hemisphere, mainly the Polar regions (Arctic, Canada, and Alaska to name a few). Increasing temperatures impact this region for one main reason: ice. Ice is really important to the animals in the Arctic because it is essentially the land that they use to travel and hunt, if there is less of it to traverse on, then animals in this region will have less access to food, which results in a decrease in the population or migration of the species into regions with higher amounts of human habitation. Here is a really interesting page on the subject of polar bears that involves a bunch of easy to read information and is not the most boring piece of scientific journalism to ever exist, give it a read if you have the time. The melting of sea ice causes other problems too, and I will go into them in a second, but for now I'd like to move on to the next issue in the Polar regions. Other than Arctic sea ice, there is also the issue of permafrost. In certain regions in the north like Canada and Alaska, there is a thick layer of ice below the soil surface, which tends to stay frozen throughout the year. This is called permafrost and it is a key feature of this ecosystem as many plants and animals have evolved to live in a soil that is difficult to live in. Above permafrost is a layer of soil known as the "active layer", which melts and thaws annually depending on the seasons. When this layer melts it releases the carbon dioxide that plants have been storing while frozen. Permafrost is currently melting in these regions, which means that the active layer becomes deeper, which means plant roots can go deeper, which means more carbon dioxide is released yearly from the active layer thawing. Which results in a positive feedback loop of increasing global temperatures. Here is my source if you feel like reading it, I may have mentioned . Another issue is that people have actually SETTLED these areas, and melting of permafrost can have some really ****ty effects on structures in these regions, here are a couple fun pictures showcasing permafrost's effect on structures and nature:
Spoiler:


Ok, so remember when I mentioned that sea ice and glaciers in polar regions melting can have consequences affecting other regions? This is the part where I elaborate. So the melting of these icy areas results in more liquid water, which has a higher temperature than ice, and as the water temperature increases, more ice melts and turns to water, which increases the water level and ultimately raises the temperature of the ocean. This might not seem important, but water temperature actually has a surprisingly large effect on coastal regions, most notable one being sending Europe into an ice age. Here is an article that discusses it in a lot more detail, this post has already taken way longer than I'd like to admit and I have other things I need to get done, the article does a good job of putting the information I find to be important in the first couple paragraphs, it's a quick read.

Also, increasing surface temperatures can also have a dramatic effect on plant life and ocean animals, my ocean animal example will be the sea turtle, because everyone loves sea turtles, right? Temperature determines the gender of a sea turtle, as discussed here (again, quick read). And with the increasing temperatures of Earth sea turtles in some regions have a 99% chance of being born a female, and this is due to just the SLIGHTEST increase in Earth's temperature. What's the solution? Turtles have to migrate north, and they are migrating north in places like the US, it is seen that they are migrating further from Florida and moreso to places like the Carolinas, but what about plants? Plants can't just pick up their roots and walk away. As temperatures increase, any plants sensitive to temperature are very likely to be affected or just plain die out. They can't just spread their seeds north, so if the temperatures increase past the point where they can survive then they're screwed, and we may lose a lot of really beautiful and important plant species because of this increase in temperature.

My last point before switching to doing things that I've been procrastinating, rising sea levels actually are displacing TONS of people, and may wipe out entire countries. The small islands in the Pacific are incredibly vulnerable and we have already seen islands be completely evacuated and submerged by the rising ocean. A really large example of this is the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta. Jakarta is home to 9.6 MILLION people (2010) and if it really does get submerge to the point where people need to evacuate, that's such a high amount of refugees that nearby countries may have to reform their immigration policies just to allow people to exit the country without risk. Here is one of my sources and below are some images showing the changes:
Spoiler:


So, although climate change is definitely a natural process, humans are accelerating it at a rate which is pretty alarming because it affects life all over the globe, and even if it might not be stoppable, I think that we should do the best we can to slow its effects or try to reverse it in any way we can because the Earth is going to be a dramatically different place for the next couple generations of humans, and not in a good way. We have to focus on changing our selfish ways of life now so that we can secure happiness and healthiness for our kids, grandkids, and for generations to come.

EDIT: needed to fix one of my images, sorry for the double quote.
 
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