I can tell you that you don't have to be afraid of that... it's technologically trivial to capture carbon by dozens of potential methods, just as much as it is technologically trivial to deploy mylar mirrors on satellites to reflect incoming solar radiation back into space (obviously the latter solution is stupid because it reduces the power the Earth receives, but it's an option).  We could burn every drop of hydrocarbons we can access on this planet, and we'd still be on a livable world given the right infrastructure.

If all Carbon and oxygen in the surface of our crust was combusted and released into the atmosphere, our planet probably would turn into Venus- but it's important to note that Venus is the second most livable planet in our solar system, and a prime candidate for colonization.  So, really, it'd be pretty hard, if not impossible, to make the Earth genuinely unlivable given the right infrastructure.

The problem is in migrating the large and under-developer populations onto that appropriate infrastructure fast enough to prevent mass poverty, disease, and potentially outbreak of war.  Disease actually being the most worrying thing in the list.

rather than discussing the climate issue specifically. You'd have to agree that the act of making a framework for research shapes the findings of that research - though I agree it has absolutely no impact whatever on the truth of the data gathered it has an impact on the sort of data gathered and the way the data might be deciphered. Peer review and triple blind sounds good to me.   

I'm sure in the case of climate change the data is widely available and everything I have read suggests it is compelling. Climate change and our responsibility to resolve it seems obvious to me, too. But there are still people who refuse to accept our impact on planetary systems. I have friends - well educated people - who simply think climate science is bunk or that researchers present it in such a way as to bolster their job prospects or something.

I can only assume people think this way because they see no big change in their lives. Something bigger will have to happen to convince everyone. People are just flat out stupid, obtuse, or both.

       Well,I really hate to be a party pooper,but "That's All Folks" . I had hope for so long,but since lisnting to manny of the world's top scientist,and watching the business world in the paper's since around 1998 and mostly it's been business as usual.Here are some links that go back to 5-18-2007 with the release of "Heat:How To Stop the Planet from Burning"    ,  www.democracynow.org/2007/5/18/george_monbiot_if_we_dont_deal    and then there's Jim Hansen he was NASA top climate scientist    www.democracynow.org/2008/3/21/censoring_science also for my friend's from Australia,Australia's leading scientist Tim Flannery    say's "we are living in the "Danger Zone"   that was in 2007, and still WTF    www.democracynow.org/2007/11/23/we_are_in_the_danger    "The Weather Makers" I think that our specie's has a death wish.           Well,that last link was wrong ! but this is his new book   www.nybooks.com/contributers/tim-flannery-2/   -  O'well ,page not found,just google Tim Flannery, you'll find that he is worth listining to. Ps. I believe that we have hit the mark of climate-running away,well it just goes to show we're pretty F<>King dumb,the Neaderthal man was around for about 2 hundred thousand year's and us modern-man a mere 50,000 we have ruined our land-base "the jig is up." Yep Real Smart ???????

H1N1 is not very dangerous, and HIV is not very contagious (and neither is it very dangerous anymore, now that we finally have treatments).

You're using bad examples.

Those economic and sociological circumstances produce fertile ground for the politics and personal indoctrination.  You seem to be unable to see the forest through the trees here.

This is true, if the developed world stays out of the civil wars and avoids stirring up ideological hornets' nests.

Though, like I said, in practice suicide bombers aren't really very dangerous- it's mostly psychological.  The numbers they kill are small, and the chances of encountering one are trivial.  Most of them are too low-tech to be able to threaten the developed world, and being creationists, the chances of them being able to effectively wield biological weapons are slim.

If these wars isolate and kill enough people, the risk of naturally proliferated disease might also be reduced.

Solanum.

Purely speculative + the 3rd world has been a breeding ground for poverty and disease for at least a century, and half that time commercial air travel was available. Nothing except HIV came from it, and only because of bushmeat consumption plus the local prevalence of immunodeficiency viruses.

Irrelevant comment.

We have had one extremely serious 'flu outbreak within the last century, in 1918, before wide-spread air travel.

We don't know for sure where it originated, but its spread was probably associated with the movement of troops during WW1.

Air travel today would vastly assist the spread of any new version.

As was apparent in the response to H1N1, even today we could not be confident we could contain it. We were just lucky that H1N1 wasn't 'the big one'.

"Breeding ground for poverty" - WTF is that supposed to mean?

If the 'developed' nations make it so apparent that we don't care about the state of other parts of the world, and display such open refusal to help them as you seem to be suggesting, the most likely result is more 9/11 style responses, even before any pandemic.

The cost of a decent effort to assist them would be a fraction of what is spent on arms and war.

We should be encouraging cooperation, not just blindly and wilfully carrying on an unsustainable "business-as-usual" policy.

OK, how about Hanta Virus.

You can get it anywhere that there are large rodent populations, although thus far it has not yet had a major outbreak. Still, if it gets imported into any large city, the rats are going to be a huge disease vector.

Speaking of rats, let's not forget the plague. Or Ebola. Or some disease that we have not yet discovered.

Profit from Global Warming: Invest in Greenland(finally living up to it's name).

 OK, let me put some perspective on this.

What will be on this planet in ten million years?

Well, nobody can say with certainty but it is sure that it will not be human. If everything works out well for us, we will continue to evolve. That is something that we probably can't change no matter what (and I would question those who argue that we should if the tools become available).

Heck but it might even fit our current definition of intelligent. Or not.

Intelligence is something that serves us well under the current conditions. However, I really don't see that it is a required thing. Perhaps in the distant future, we will be as smart as any other animal currently around. Perhaps some species that is currently around will become smart and will dominate the planet. If they are any good, they will find the evidence that we were around and they will try to do a bit better than we managed to do.

Alternatively, we could wipe ourselves out. I suppose that on some level that would really suck. Yet it might just be the way that we have to go. Really, we don't get to choose how we check out as a species but it is certain that we will check out one day.

Right now, we are watching an asteroid that is a potential dinosaur killer. A few years from now, it will pass between the earth and the moon. When it does, if it goes through a certain window (google for “keyhole resonance&rdquo, then we will all die some time about twenty years from now.

Shit all that we can do about that. It is too damn big to even think about nuking. If it hits the earth, it is just going to fuck out shit up. All the talk about mediating our carbon will simply not matter. We know what happened last time this happened. There were a couple of million years where nothing but ferns were viable plants. Can we support a population of several billion people with nothing but ferns for food?

 So shall we do those things that will prevent global warming?

Wind power where wind works? Solar where solar works? Geothermal where that works?

Such are not things that we are going to run out of.

Will they support a total world population of several billion people? Probably not but I fail to see why we need to do that. If we run out of oil, then that is what we are going to have to do one way or another. If we don't run out of oil, then we have to deal with the other problem known as global warming. Either way, we are going to do those things that are going to get us managing the planet in a responsible manner.

Edit: Right now, the global economy is as rich as Croseus. We can do what we need to do now for far less that we will need to spend if we wait until we have no choice.

Also, we need to think about nuclear power here. At current economic level, we have enough uranium and thorium to last several thousand years. At the economic level that we will probably be at in a century or so, that much longer.

I suppose that in a million years from now, we may have to mine out the solar system to keep nuclear power going. However, that much speculation is just so far out that it is not even worth guessing on.

Me?  Silly?  Never...

There are two kinds of people in the world:  Those who are prepared for the zombie apocalypse, and zombie fodder.  It's obvious which one you are.

I did not say that DFTD would affect humans.  Please read more carefully.  "HSTD" or something of that nature would affect humans.  It's probably not something you have to worry about too much, since you would have easy access to surgery and chemo therapy (as long as you caught it quickly).  It would depend on your genetics, though, and the particular strain you caught.  Cancer vaccinations may soon eliminate a threat like this, but we're not quite there yet.

What concerns me most of all is that you don't seem to understand the underlying concept of evolution- wherein a pathogen is *possible* and it has a suitable environment to be evolved in, its eventual existence is essentially assured.  When I point to historical pathogens, or pathogens in other species which are highly contagious and lethal, that IS proof that the same kinds of pathogens are possible in humans, or could re-emerge/re-evolve.

There are possible pathogens that could cause serious trouble- I listed several of them, this is not contested by any educated individual.  Right now, there is not adequate environment to see the probability of them evolving at any very threatening rate- we need to keep it that way.  If these things crop up more quickly than we can deal with them, we will be in trouble.

Yes, we are talking reality.  Prions can be spread through bodily fluid and saliva; they're smaller than viruses, so being air-borne inside droplets of saliva is just a given; it is only a matter contingent on the right protein being affected in sufficient quantities (e.g. a prion that affects the mucus membranes strongly, and spreads from there to kill; probably by liver or kidney failure).  I *did* say that it would take a long time to kill somebody.  The matter is the time it would take something like that to build up.  We're talking upwards of a decade... so, that might be a lesser threat with the exception of those who are predisposed to it (in which case it could go faster). 

We *might* even develop enzymes in that time to break down the proteins and remove them from the body (an effective cure), but short of that, we would be talking about the most contagious and asymptomatic pathogen (unless it caused swelling in the mucus membranes, which might give it away)- and most guaranteed lethal- ever known.  Once something like that began to spread, the CDC probably wouldn't even realize it until millions of people began dropping dead a decade later (too late to develop an enzymatic cure). 

We aught to be putting more funding into developing enzymatic treatments for amyloidosis so we'll actually be ready when something like this happens.  We need to have the framework prepared to deal with any possible pathogen, so when it does evolve (not "if&quot we are ready for it and can stop its spread.

Sidenote- why would anyone except an Abrahamic theist *want* to stay in human form, if they had a choice?

Not yet, but that isn't cause not to worry about it.  I don't seem to have cancer at the moment, but I could acquire it, and it doesn't make much sense to increase my risk of doing so.

Sometimes I wonder if you understand logic very selectively; you throw out plenty of red herrings and straw men arguments.  We don't have any control over what the sun will do tomorrow, but we can raise or lower the odds that a dangerous pathogen will evolve by providing it a larger or smaller environment to do so in.

Not even close to a valid argument.

If global warming would exponentially increase the chance of the sun going nova in the way it increases the changes of dangerous pathogens evolving, it would seem prudent to consider that.

I have already.  That you are unwilling to accept damning evidence for what it is seems to be a problem on your end.  You are very selective when it comes to comprehension and reasoning.

You have not refuted any of my arguments, but rather have presented a straw man and requested proof that the diseases I am saying may emerge have already done so and are already wreaking havoc on the world population (something I have not claimed).

You're only talking about one kind of prion disease.  Prions don't have to affect only the brain, and could cause organ failure of any major organ by building up in the system as insoluble amyloids, or by otherwise disrupting normal function.

WTF?^2

1. Prions are aberrant forms of proteins which themselves catalyze the conversion of normal bodily proteins into more of the same aberrant form (by building a chain from them and then breaking).  It has nothing to do with a failure of the body to bend proteins correctly; the prions are stepping in to f*ck things up to convert correctly folded proteins into more prions.  It does have to do with the body's failure to garbage collect, however, but this is an understandable failure given the statistical unlikelihood of a prion spontaneously forming or being ingested in a natural evolutionary context.

2. The primary infectious route is through ingestion- yes.  What the blazes do you think air borne transmission is?  Transdermal?  Intra-f*cking-venous?  No.  Air borne substances, when successfully transmitted, are trapped in mucus and effectively ingested- with the possible exception of habitual spitters, perhaps (China might be immune).  The limitation of Air borne transmission is not on the part of the receiver *unless* the substance needs to enter directly into the blood to be received- the limitation is on the carrier and the nature of the pathogen.  Air borne pathogens must be small enough to be suspended in the air on dust particles or microscopic droplets of bodily fluids (prion win), stable enough to survive the journey (another prion win), and present in saliva or mucus such that they may be expelled upon coughing or sneezing (yet again, another win for prions).

Not all Amyloids are prions, I never said that, but all known prions are Amyloids.  Genetic propensity is one way of spreading Amyloid diseases, and prions are another.

I'll say it again, then.  You look out of your element.  Biology isn't my main interest, but you're making some bizarre arguments here.  If you do have expertise in this area, you're doing a poor job of being objective and considering what I'm saying.  Even if your description of Prions was a bit weak, I'm particularly baffled by your Amyloid comment.

I haven't been able to find anything suggesting that an air-borne prion disease that kills by way of amyloidosis of vital organs is impossible or even highly improbable.  Any one of those suggestions I made might be off for some reason I haven't yet encountered, but without any such reason it wouldn't happen, it is something to be expected and prepared for given sufficient breeding ground for pathogens.  What may work to prevent its evolution and propagation, arguably, is people in these refugee regions ultimately wearing face masks due to other more immediate disease concerns (as we saw in Mexico during the H1N1 scare).

If you have any legitimate arguments, though, or any credible references to back up your claims that such a pathogen wouldn't work, I'd be glad to read them.

EVIDENCE, Kapkao, not more futile and hollow assertions. Facts, not theories.

ok, allow me to specify: cited evidence, blake, not more useless assertions.

And now you're intentionally miswording what I've said. What exactly was I claiming again?

Name one that doesn't effect the brain, then. Oh, right... you can't.

edit;Name one that isn't encephalopathy.

I'll admit I was wrong on that count.

I wasn't trying to make a valid argument, aside from pure sarcasm, as well as a (vague) statement that I'm not interested in possibilities, only what we know for certain.

And when, if ever, has this actually happened? (Again, cites please!)

You haven't found any examples or cited any evidence in favor of it, either.

You've yet to state any in favor of your argument of "global warming epidemics". You've yet to name any real-world examples of anything you've continually asserted here, in this thread.

I'm still safe here, in the western world.

Kapkao,

we know very little 'for certain', and very little or nothing about the emergence of the next major pandemic, as history has shown.

So your approach is already doomed to ignorance and disaster.

Many of these possibilities take time to reach detectable stage, at which time it may well be too late to avoid major impact.

Many also would have intrinsically global effects, like GW. You wanna foot the bill for relocating NYC??

Even if we put up sun shields, the oceans are f**ked by the extra CO₂.

The US has shown itself barely able to handle the wars in two undeveloped countries, from a military aspect, and a total fail in every other way.  WTF if you piss off a whole bunch of them at once, including ones with more resources, some with nukes and rockets, who are quite prepared to make them suicide missions? How many versions of 9/11 can you handle??

I would ask the same of you.  I've provided far more evidence- what, you want me to find citations to prove already well known diseases like DFTD?  You want me to find citation to back common knowledge that human cancers can also be transmissible?

How about you give me some citations to prove that there's a sun?  This *hypothetical* useless assertion you keep making.

Give me a f*cking break.  You're almost as bad as a creationist asking for infinitely more evidence of the fossil record when the case is already solid.

You're claiming that it's not your problem because it's as on the order of as likely as the sun going nova tomorrow- you're claiming that it's astronomically improbable for any of those pathogens to emerge.  Show me anything that makes them unlikely.

There are a number of amyloid diseases that could be caused by prion transmission rather than a genesis through misfolding of proteins in the host body.  Much like life on Earth could have easily arisen on another planet and traveled here on some stray asteroid- but a bit more well established in possibility via other proven transmissible prion diseases.

And, of course, that whether life originated on Earth or arrived here from another body is irrelevant, but that prions can spread amyloid diseases between people is very much NOT irrelevant.

All evidence points to the possibility, and the only things you've presented are a misunderstanding of what prions are, and a profound misunderstanding of astrophysics, as counter-arguments.

Look at what I'm saying:

Prions can be spread between people.

Prions are small stable particles that exist in bodily fluids such as saliva and mucus.

Pathogens existing in saliva and mucus that are small and air stable can be spread via air borne particulates.

Prions are a form of amyloid protein.

Amyloid proteins can cause incurable and lethal amyloid diseases in any part of the body by building up to the point of affecting normal function (the brain is most vulnerable, but all vital organs are susceptible).

Any sufficiently complex protein potentially has a prion counterpart, and so known prions do not represent the full range of prions.

Prions will arise and evolve in accordance with the statistical chances of misfolding and the laws of natural selection.

A larger pool of protein folds corresponds to a higher chance of the genesis of any kind of prion.

A more dense population corresponds to a higher chance of the proliferation and evolution communicable prions.

Increasing population density is a risk factor in the evolution of lethal and highly communicable prion diseases.

You know nothing empirical for certain.  You might as blindfold yourself and run around in the street, since it's only *possible* that you'll be hit by a car.  If you supposedly don't care for mitigating increased risk factors, you have no justification for any risk averse behavior that you display.

The common cold is a good example of an air borne pathogen.  I'm not going to f*cking cite that.  The way you're going, you evidently wouldn't accept a medical journal demonstrating an extended study on the air borne communicability of anything.  After all, you don't accept anything that's not certain, do you?  And no empirical study is certain.

Yes, I have.  You just don't like evidence unless it is certain beyond possibility and has been handed down by some omniscient force, apparently.

If you want to make an argument against it, you'll have to show something - anything - that suggests it is unlikely.

 According to the current Scientific possibility's "God" is not needed to start a Universe. So I guess that he or she is not possible.And a "God" is supposed to be Omniscence,and A.Einstein proved that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,and Omniscence means that "God" knows everthing that happens in the Universe which is not possible,you would have to send information faster than light.   

   Under a haze is currently the only way that keep's me going,I'm still in pain !

"Fear the gnostic atheist" is lost on Blake. Nothing new to see here.

I'm indifferent to GW because it isn't causing me problems. It isn't, and likely won't within my lifetime. A sudden nova of the Sun isn't one of my problems, either. 'God' is an inefficient concept, and becoming obsolete.

In the confines of your often linear and pedantic thoughts, yes, I've no doubt you could. Social dynamics do not function in such a linear, absolute manner as you often insist it does, though. You have no knowledge regarding the divine any more so than Pat Robertson. You can't know anything about a person's invisible friends except merely that they are invisible. You can reason that they probably aren't real.

The problem of 'certainty' cuts both ways. At that, Bob Spence had the foresight to realize this in most of my meager attempts to provoke him in the past, and his response was along the lines of the possibility of God/Gods being 'too unimportant and minuscule to bother with'. And he is correct about that; the chance of an Omnipotent being approaches the infinitesimal, and becomes smaller the more we explore the natural sciences.

Well, it took you long enough. Agnostic about everything? Not really.

GW is a threat, high density population centers do tend to be major disease vectors. It's just that neither is problematic for me.

More petty insults and ad homs...

Nor did I actually attempt to provide any.

Am I actually attempting to? No.

What I did do was ask for you to name some form of written or typed material to back up some of these possibilities you've been asserting for this entire. No, not airborne pathogens like the common cold, airborne proteins causing organ failure. Surely there should be some relevant media investigating such outcomes, correct?

Instead, you resort to a vicious barrage of insults and ad hominem attacks, and (repeatedly) misword quite a bit of what I have said.  It's almost as if you believe you are above citing your claims.

Of course it won't, because assertive policies will prevent it from happening at a rate sufficient to cause problems.  I'm glad you can finally appreciate the measures being enacted to halt global warming.

I have knowledge of logic; Pat Robertson either doesn't, or disregards it.  As such, given the nature of the divine being logically false, I do certainly have more knowledge of it than he does.

Put that generally, maybe not, but the very notion of a deity (rather than any random invisible friend) is usually more explicitly lain out for us.  We can know quite a bit about the claims being made of people's imaginary friends when they claim those friends are omni-something with a certain set of qualities they possess by definition.

No, it doesn't.  One side is too dull to cut hot butter.  Bob can be more cautious than he needs to be sometimes.

The chances of such a being were zero from the moment of its inception due to its inherent impossibility.  That people were and have been since largely ignorant of the fact that it was impossible (as you seem to be) doesn't change objective reality.  The apparent chance, as far as one can determine, varies greatly from person to person, depending on how informed or ignorant that person is, diminishing to zero as the person obtains a grasp of basic logic.

If you're agnostic about this "god" thing then you don't know any of that either- what if this magical "god" creature of yours fabricated all of that, GW isn't a threat, and high density populations actually cause the water to change into homeopathic cures for disease?  You don't know- unless you're taking that on faith?

Playing a sad, sad song for you.

What's with all of the posts arguing against the merit/usefulness of the social policies because it's only going to kill a bunch of vermin?

You're very vocal for somebody who isn't interested in persuading anybody else.  Perhaps you're just arguing for the "lolz" though, in which case I was mistaken.  If you're not trying to talk anybody out of it, then there's not really much of an argument here.

There are some fears in the UK about it, but I have never claimed that such a thing exists yet.  I'm not going to spend much time to try to cite sources for something I don't even believe exists currently, and that I have not claimed already exists.

I'm thinking maybe you should look in the mirror with regards to being "vocal", however you're correct about the latter. I don't post on the internet to change minds, because I know I can't; certainly no more than anyone else could. I'm not going to convince the resident marxists to rethink their politics, nor can I even hope to sway a number of minds here that "militant atheism" isn't necessarily the best option for activism. I'm certainly not going to convince Bobspence that altruism is a wild fantasy.

I can, however, coax (trick, rather) others into trying to convince me of their PoV. I can also vent on occasion.

There you go again, thinking in absolutes... I'm an agnostic atheist, as are most of the mods here. I also eat meat, but also oppose using bunnies for testing eyeliner.

The world doesn't operate in black and white.

You don't have the excuse they do.

I can pretty much guarantee you that humanity will survive almost anything that happens.  We're the most versatile and resourceful species to have ever livid on this planet (that we can tell).  Lesser species have survived worse.

That's not to say that most of the population won't be dramatically thinned.

The only significant threat to people in developed nations is disease- so, if you're really worried you can get a log cabin in the middle of nowhere, and survive on subsistence agriculture and canned/dried foods until it blows over.  This would require roughly a 20k investment (well within the means of most people). 

Once it does blow over, a good 10% of the population should still be around, and (crucially) all of the infrastructure.  We'd bounce back in less than a generation.

That's not to say it's not unfortunate that most people may die.  I just don't think it qualifies as completely f*cked.

Blake, have you ever watched the show “Life Without People”? Basically, a hundred years after whatever the crisis will eventually turn out to be (the series carefully never says why humans become extinct), the infrastructure is going to be fucked.

 That much being said, I am not a huge advocate of GW on a personal level.

There are a number of ways that we can fuck up the planet. Let's just let people continue to fuck like bunnies. Overpopulation will lead to overuse of natural resources. Pollution will become a huge problem. If, against the existing evidence, pollution fails to produce GW, then it will still be pollution. We are fucked either way.

Here is a big nit: all the people who are driving hybrid cars so that they can smugly assert that they are helping to make things better. Well, the fact is that the batteries that they are using are forcing us to strip mine parts of Canada and produce hundreds of tons on nickle carbonyl (one of the top five most toxic chemical ever invented) along the way.

Sure, driving a hybrid car may have some impact on GW. Yet it is also moving us into a different type of climate crisis. What we need more than simply saying “GW is bad and we should not do it” is to move in the general direction of maintaining our planet at the level that the planet can actually sustain over the long haul.

As it happens, many of the things that we should be doing to fix one potential planetary crisis are the same as what we need to do for other potential planetary issues.

The fact is that we can't maintain a global population of six billion people.

The fact is that we can't maintain an energy economy large enough to feed that population.

The fact is that we can't keep going along like we have been and claim that nothing bad will ever happen.

In fact, the reason that we think about this stuff at all is born from the fact that we have already fucked up the environment in huge ways.

In the 1920's, we saw the dust bowl. In the 60's, we lit the Cuyahoga river on fire. Times Beach. Love Canal. The underground coal seam in Pennsylvania that has been on fire for decades.

If we take nothing else from those examples, we should take the fact that we can easily fuck up the environment.