Gore says that Global Warming can be reversed and the damage repaired...
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/09/05/environment.gore.reut/
And it is likely possible, although it would require international cooperation and corporations to shut down.

It is good that Gore is trying to fight the good fight, and I support it. The problem is, he may not be in a powerful enough position to truly make signifigant changes for America's disposition on it. However, he is making a great stride in public awareness, although I'm not sure that that will be enoughto change how the government acts around it. Hopefully he will, in fact, make a change. Support it!
-Maxfield Gordon

In response to Max, we are doing something, at least in California. The law is based on gradual change, but have you noticed that in the last six months, public opinion has changed from perceiving global warming as a minor detail that environmentalists get overagitated about into a serious threat? Progress is happening. Methinks we have Al Gore to thank for it more than anyone, but our elected representatives have made their contribution also.

http://www.theacorn.com/news/2006/0907/Community/019.html

Yeah, that's how we do on the west side. Gettin' hyphy on pollution. Show them what you talkin' about, Nnez!

-Casey.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090800465.html
If you're looking for truth, you've found the right article.

-Sam King

Yo homies, want some good news? If you don't, then don't read this post. While this may not be news to a lot of people it definately is not depressing. I will now go into what can help stop...slow global warming.

So as it were, there's the whole depressing we're all gonna die side to global warming but there are plenty of good things about our good friend global warming...not really, but there are many good side effects involved in the steps to stop/slow global warming.

What these positive changes are mainly have to do with the need for more localized economies, now I have no idea how the specifics of it work so I won't go in depth about it.

As for localized economies, an example is entire communities to do grocery shopping almost exclusively at Farmer's Markets.

The reasoning behind this is that the fuel burned to transport food from across the country, or world, makes a lot of CO2 (that bad stuff from the first post.) Thats bad. Anyway, you can easily get enough food from a Farmer's Market to live healthily, it's cheaper than eating out, and perhaps the best is that you meet many new members of your community.

Also windmills for each City block, just an idea that was presented in 'A Deeper Shade of Green.'

-Peace,
Lazlo

Some sort of news article:

"9/08/06
Washington, D.C.

New research shows that global warming might be worse than expected because of melting permafrost, permanently frozen soil, which can release the "greenhouse" gas, carbon dioxide. Computer models predict higher future temperatures when these gases are taken into consideration.

Scientists say the Earth's rising atmospheric temperatures are largely caused by human-generated emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly carbon dioxide. But recent findings suggest that the Earth is also a culprit. It, too, gives off carbon dioxide.

That is because vast amounts of carbon are trapped in permafrost. Over the ages, this frozen ground has accumulated layers of windblown dust, roots, and other organic, or carbon-containing, matter as glaciers advanced and retreated.

As long as the permafrost remains frozen, the carbon stays in the soil. But botanist Ted Schurr of the University of Florida says higher temperatures will melt the soil, releasing greenhouse gases, which would boost temperatures even more. Schurr traveled to Siberia to collect samples of permafrost up to three meters below the surface. He reports in the journal Science that when the permafrost melted in the laboratory, microbes digested the carbon and converted it to carbon dioxide.

"It's like food in your freezer," explained Schurr. "If It's really cold, those bacteria and fungi can't do their thing. Now if you warm this soil organic matter up from below there, you unfreeze it, then they can metabolize it and convert it to carbon dioxide. This gas then goes into the atmosphere and contributes to the carbon there."

Scientists know how much carbon dioxide people put into the air each year, but until now it was not clear how much greenhouse gas the Earth could give off. Schurr found that the deposits deep in the Siberian permafrost were much greater than previously thought and could potentially double current carbon dioxide concentrations if released.

"We describe a really large pool of about 500 billion tons of carbon," said Schurr. "In comparison, the atmosphere right now has about 730 billion tons. So we are talking about almost as much carbon stored in permafrost in Siberia as there is in the atmosphere now."
In another study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Margaret Torn at the University of California at Berkeley shows the climate impact of this additional greenhouse factor. "We found a significant amount of warming coming back from these feedbacks that we're not yet estimating," said Torn. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, currently estimates that we could have warming by as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century. But if Earth responds as it has in the past, we would actually be committed to 7.7 degrees Celsius warming."

These latest studies are only steps toward a complete understanding of the atmosphere's complex nature. Scientists are still struggling to incorporate other greenhouse factors such as clouds, dust, and pollutants into their analysis. Torn says as more is known about them, they will be used to refine current climate models."
-The Alaska Report

-Peace,
Lazlo

Global warming is a product of nearly ever inudstrial and convienence that us first world countries have and use to our content. In order to stop global warming, nations around the world would have to cooperatively stop using most cars, appliances, factories and other technologies and start spending money reasearching and implementing new ways to prevent what's soon to happen and fix what we've already done.

Now, if I know our government, then we would probably rather spend our funds researching newer and better lasers to put onto our war sharks in Iraq. As well as the government not wanting to stop it, I doubt that most of our culture would work well without our luxuries and, more importantly, without all the food we want. Stopping global warming is possible, but is America really ready to step up to the plate?

-Maxfield Gordon

We have now reached the point where global warming skepticism is as absurd and dangerous a philosophy as Holocaust denial. The problem is manifest, and most people who are paying attention have recognized that the earth's climate is radically changing. Even the Bush administration has accepted this as an indisputable truth. Unfortunately, far fewer people have come to the realization that it will affect humanity.

This is partly the fault of environmentalists. To a Sierra Club member, a statement that the ecosystem is being destroyed has harrowing connotations. But, to many people, it simply means that a few species of animals they don't eat anyways are going to die off. We humans, they might say, have developed civilization and transcended the ecosystems we evolved into. We have cities, supermarkets, and cars. How can a few degrees of global temperature change affect us? A few feet rise in sea level? A handful of bigger storms?

Certainly on of the most obvious dangers is the rising water level. It is important to understand that many of the world's biggest and most populous cities are built on coasts and rivers. A global water level rise of twenty feet would sink all of Alameda, for example, and a good portion of Manhattan. In Asia, it would mean the displacement of millions of people. Remember the scene from "Gandhi" on the India-Pakistan border in 1947. It wouldn't be that bad. It would be worse. People would lose everything they owned.

It's not—quite—all bad, though. Global warming could open up a sea route that's been unusable for almost a millennium: the Northwest Passage through the (formerly) permanent Arctic ice shelf. This would make it far easier for supertankers, too big for the Panama Canal, to reach the west coast. That's right; supertankers carrying the crude oil that causes global warming have the most to gain from allowing it to continue.

Besides the world's most severe refugee problem, though, there are several more socioeconomic dangers. The spread of disease, for instance, could wreak havoc in countries where the populations have developed no immunity to illnesses that had not existed in the region before. Think of the smallpox plague that decimated Native American populations in the seventeenth century. Not good.

Of course, worsening storms will cause billions of dollars of damage, in addition to contributing to the refugee problem and killing countless people. In fact, the Association of British Insurers has estimated that by the 2080s, reducing carbon emissions could save 80% of the damage done by hurricanes and tropical storms. This is a very reliable source; they have a corporate interest in understanding disaster.

So, as I've heard several people eloquently put it, "global warming is bad." Need I say more?

Global Warming. Fact or Fiction? its real, and its a kill bill waiting to happen. When Global Warming comes around, world politics will fall apart. The major countries will be fighting for fresh water, food, etc. We have many countries armed with nuclear warheads, which could be fired at any moment. It would become World War 3 (the last war). Small countries would be stuck without anything, destroying the economy. There is no real bright-side if this does happen.

-Brian VerDuin

Global Warming. Many scientists say its already to late to do anything about it. Other, less depressing, scientists say we've got 10 years, tops. Now really, is that any better? Can anything be done in 10 years? I am thinking no, without massively polluting industry, not only will the economy fail thereby wrecking things for all the rich people who run politics, but there will also be some serious problems with feeding the world. The human population is way over what's sustainable. If not for manjor scientific advancement and inudstrialization, we'd have all starved back down to a population level we could live at. As it is, people are probably not going to want to do that (starve to death, I mean). So maybe we're screwed. Oh well, it'll be an interesting death anyway. A lot cooler than dying in bed. I say look on the bright side: Even without Global Warming, the world's getting worse all the time. This way, we don't need to worry about terrorism or bird flu or even the horrible onset of awful, boring grayness that is suburban life. All we need to worry about is learning how to swim.

-Sam King

Global Warming does not exist, it is hick voodoo magic! Not really, it's pretty much existing...yeah. Anyway, hick voodoo magic aside, global warming is a serious problem with serious consequences and serious misspelings. Basically global warming (hereby reffered to as Hick Voodoo Magic) is where the sun's light, carrying infrared beams, gets caught in the earth's ATMOSPHEREEEEE!!! Thusly making everybody sad.

Anyway, sad people aside, I will now go into the actual science of Hick Voodoo Magic (Hereby reffered to as Global Warming). Normally when the sun shines on our dear planet earth the infrared rays come in and visit.



See how they keep the planet nice and warm and then leave. Well carbon dioxide, CO2, builds up in the atmosphere and make a thick sheild around the earth that traps the sun's rays, making them stay longer.

Now this makes the planet a lot warmer which makes the icecaps melt. That is a bad thing. Now for a sec lemme get serious, the following is a quote from an essay by one Mr. Bill McKibben:

"This is the year when we finally started to understand what we are in for. Exactly 12 months ago, an MIT professor named Kerry Emanuel published a paper in Nature showing that hurricanes had slowly but steadily been gaining in strength and duration for a generation. It didn't attract widespread attention for a few weeks—not until Katrina roared across the Gulf of Mexico and rendered half a million people refugees. The scenario kept repeating: Rita choking highways with fleeing Texans; Wilma setting an Atlantic Ocean record for barometric lows; Zeta spinning on New Year's Day. Meanwhile, other data kept pouring in from around the planet: Arctic sea ice melting past an irrevocable tipping point; thawing permafrost in northeastern Siberia creating so much methane that lakes didn't freeze even in the depths of boreal winter; the NASA calculation that 2005 had been the warmest year on record.

In January, a trinity of announcements sealed the mood. First, British scientist James Lovelock, who invented the instrument that allowed us to detect our eroding ozone layer, published an essay predicting that we'd already added too much CO2 to the atmosphere and that runaway global warming was inevitable. He predicted that billions will die this century. A few days later came a less dramatic but equally alarming announcement. The steady and long-serving NASA climatologist James Hansen defied federal attempts to gag him and told reporters that new calculations about, among other things, the instability of Greenland's ice shelf showed "we can't let it go on another ten years like this." If we did? Over time, the buildup of CO2 emissions would "imply changes that constitute practically a different planet." Less than ten years to reverse course. Not our kids' lifetimes, or our grandkids'. Ours. "

You can view the full essay at http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0608/voices.html

So with all this heat rising, things are bound to happen. The worst being the melting of our ice-caps. That makes sealevels rise at an alarming rate. Another thing that happens is that certain areas of our oceans get warmer, causing more, and stronger, tropical storms.

2005 was the warmest year on record, and also had the most and strongest tropical storms of late.

"These three monster storms were part of an unmatched run of Atlantic hurricanes—15 in all. With a total of 27 named tropical storms, 2005 was the first year meteorologists exhausted their preseason list of 21 Atlantic cyclone names and had to dip into the Greek alphabet for the latecomers. "

Sounds like one of those apocalypse scenarios, huh? Well, so far as the records show it is not just a possibility, so then why the scientific dispute? Well, contrary to what you may believe, there is a very clear cut answer to this question. There is little to no scientific dispute that global exists and is a problem.

So then, why don't we hear about it. That is less answerable and may very well not have an answer, and definately not one that I know. However much I would like to discuss this further, I have a third period class and this post is about jump topics.

-Peace,
Lazlo