Which environmental issue do you think is the most pressing problem the enviroment faces today?

The bloviation factor emanating from the hypocrite zone - Washington DC. All that hot air means trouble for the rest of us.Which environmental issue do you think is the most pressing problem the enviroment faces today?As a PhD ecologist, I believe that global warming presents the greatest threat of all those we face today. All our food, commerce, and habitation depend on the climate under which our civilization evolved. For ten thousand years, natural cycles and events controlled the climate and the weather. The average earth surface temperature was stable, because the atmospheric absorption of infrared was stable. Ice ages proceeded due to orbital geometry, axial tilt and wobble, and solar output variations.

Were it not for atmospheric CO2, the earth would be the same temperature as the moon, too cold for liquid water much of the time. The primordial atmosphere was much richer in CO2, so the temperature was higher. Prior to the formation of coal, seven hundred million years ago, there was no land ice anywhere on earth, sea level was twenty meters higher, and the dominant terrestrial life were ferns the size of trees and amphibians the size of dining room tables. There were insufficient animals to eat the tree ferns, and there were shallow seas everywhere, so the dead wood fell in and did not rot, entombing the cellulose which eventually was converted to mineral carbon by geologic process. The orbital geometry caused periods of warming and cooling, which corresponded to periods of coal formation. After a dozen or so coal forming periods, enough carbon was buried in the coal to lower the atmospheric absorption below the the threshold for land ice to remain for successive winters, and glaciers began to form. CO2 levels stabilized at about one third the primordial level, with occasional rises and drops due to volcanic activity and meteorite impacts, and humanity developed under glacial/interglacial conditions. Human ecology is heavily dependent upon the conditions that have prevailed for the last ten million years.

However, in the 1700s, mankind discovered that coal could be mined and burned in replacement and supplement to wood. It was the age of science, so lots of measurements were taken to try to understand the earth better, one of them the Average Earth Surface Temperature, developed by the Royal Society (of England) compiled from data all over the world that has been taken the same way at the same intervals since. For the first century, AEST wobbled up and down, up and down, but around 1850 it appeared that a rising trend had developed. In the 1920s, it was shown that if the trend was real, it was possible that atmospheric absorption of heat by CO2 could be the cause. By 1990, we had enough data and powerful enough computers to prove that the trend was real, that it was not the result of any natural cycle, and that it correlates very strongly with the parallel increase in atmospheric CO2 due to fossil fuel consumption. If the trend continues to the end, and we burn all the coal and oil we can extract, the pre-coal climate will return, much of the earth will be inundated, and our civilization will be destroyed. An inconvenient truth, for sure.

The weather we are used to depends on the balance between summer heating and winter cooling of the earth. The warming of the atmosphere as a whole decreases the difference between polar winter and summer, reduces the strength of the polar cold air cap, and results in greater latitude variations in the jet streams that follow the boundary between polar and subtropical air belts. The increased slope of the boundary causes storms crossing it to be more erratic and violent. Warming of the south temperate waters below the boundary makes tropical storms more fierce, though not more numerous. The damage caused by storms and floods increases while agricultural productivity is decreased. Subtropical deserts become drier as temperate zones become wetter. Crops are no longer adapted to the same latitudes and growing seasons as when they were developed, because the growing seasons at those latitudes change. The population is already close to carrying capacity, so a decrease in food production will increase famine. As matters worsen, coastal lands are inundated, harbors and coastal real estate damaged, and coastal populations forced to move. If we do not act to forestall global warming, our very civilization will be altered beyond recognition.

Species extinction will accelerate, fresh water shortages will worsen, and air quality will decline as more fossil fuel is burned and more trace elements are released into the air. All lesser environmental threats are potentiated. The "ozone hole" problem is a spit in the wind by comparison. Even the nuclear threat becomes worse, for one of the few alternatives to coal is nuclear power, and our present methods for generating power from radioactive materials are inherently unsafe.

I hope you are all as frightened by this as I am.Which environmental issue do you think is the most pressing problem the enviroment faces today?
To me the biggest problem is the production of trash and the peoples' lacking a right to stop it. In particular I found that people basically do not have a legal right to tell businesses not to mail them garbage made from destroyed trees because that is supposed to help the post office make money. Garbage is made everywhere-excessive packaging is one place but also excessive advertising and loyalty programs and such that complicate our lives and waste paper are another thing. For some reason ink for my personal printer costs 4,000 dollars a gallon but it costs them a penny to print up garbage to be mailed out.

Another environmental issue that does not get its due is what I would call mental pollution. I am old enough to remember a time when I could look at a bus and see...a bus. Now I see ugly ads from greedy sellers. I drive on freeways and see ugly stupid signs blocking nice green fields and trees. I often wonder why a speeding cop hides behind one supposedly trying to make the roads safe from straight-moving fast cars who take their eyes off driving safely to read the ads. Surely these ugly signs cause accidents but nobody seems to care. But everywhere you go, ugly mindless advertisements foul up the environment and seek to dumb down the people. On TV, in print, radio, and on the roads.Which environmental issue do you think is the most pressing problem the enviroment faces today?Bad weather conditions! around the whole world.

earthquakes, Tornadoes, Blizzards, it used to be

Hurricanes so far they pose no real problems.

The extreme heat and extreme cold are clashing

to cause disasters just about everywhere, breaking

up the earth's crust too.



Nature takes it's toll at some point. We just need

to prepare for the worst at all times. Pray! for safety.

Send it out in the Universe, for the benefit of all.Which environmental issue do you think is the most pressing problem the enviroment faces today?
genetically modified crops and how many people think they're necessary: http://fourgreensteps.com/infozone/busin鈥?/a>Which environmental issue do you think is the most pressing problem the enviroment faces today?The American People realizing that most environmentalist are fruit cakes.
Butterbeans.Which environmental issue do you think is the most pressing problem the enviroment faces today?
misdirection by big business and the idiots on talk radio
Al Gore's expanding waistlineWhich environmental issue do you think is the most pressing problem the enviroment faces today?
Too many people.
our fresh water supply