Fossil fuel companies are going to destroy the world.

I really can't take this shit. Fossil fuel companies are putting money way before the planet, and destroying it, no where on earth is sacred, they dump toxic chemicals into rivers that contaminate our drinking water. This shit is getting out of control, and has to be stopped before climate change kills all life on earth. And if the TPP is approved, it's all over.

Climate change won't kill all life on Earth. Earth has been through worse calamities than humans could hope to throw at it. Give the planet a 100,000 years, which is a blink of an eye in cosmic terms, and the Earth will have removed any trace, outside of fossil records, that we ever existed.

I biked to work today. I'm doing my part. I also turned my thermostat up 5 degrees when i was gone.

Krakatoa alone was way worse. Ya fossil fuels is bad but frankly there's way worse stuff going on right now. Humans treating eachother like shit is nothing old or new either. So anyways apparently sol(the sun) has a twin star called nemisis, and every 60 or so million years it swings in close causing asteroids from the keplar field to go flying all over the place. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was likely one such rock and many mass extinction evens follow this regular pattern. And as it happens were due for another "visit." Have fun with that one OP.

That's the beauty of Republican Ideals.

As long as I get mine, phuck you

@Nuck81: Exactly. Plus if they're not going to be around when it all goes to hell then why should they care. It's quite sad really and unfortunately people won't get serious about it until it's too late.

@Nuck81:

Trump is very much opposed to TPP.

Hillary? Not so much.

But go ahead, and vote for her anyway because of feeelz.

Destroying them won't change a thing, but conditioning ourselves to not support them can.

Destroy the world? nah? The ecosystem we live in? Yeah. The Earth will shrug our dumbasses off.

Well then stop using fossil fuels and the products that consume them during production this winter and freeze or starve to death. They only make money if you provide a market for their product.

This... won't destroy the Earth, but will destroy our way of life.

If we screw up the paradise we were chanced to evolve in, this Earth, we do not deserve it in the first place.

Yeah, but I like air conditioning and milk. See you on the other side.

Then stop using your computer, smartphone or tablet and get off the internet because it's all made out of fossil fuels you hypocrites.

LOL, so let's blame the Republican boogeyman for the destruction of Earth!

Not only that, but rare-earth metal mining is incredibly destructive to the environment.

@hillelslovak: I agree. But that's humanity for you... we're the most selfish, greedy animals that have ever existed on this planet.

I turn off the light in rooms I'm not in, I'm doing my part.

If we all switched to electric cars, it would take the same amount of fossil fuels to produce the electricity to run them.

Therefore, no switch.

Doesn't have to be. There are alternatives to almost everything derived from fossil fuels.

At the risk of coming off as a hippie, hemp can seriously replace about 60% of fossil fuel products. Corn can do a lot as well.

We can pretty much replace fossil fuel and fossil fuel derived products with 100% renewable sources if we wanted/had to. I hope we don't wait until we have to, and can introduce these things gradually and over time. If we allowed these companies time to transition, it would keep a lot of people employed and would make things easier.

I would prefer it not come to a point where we are a disaster. I don't want people panicking and being like "WHY!?! Why didn't we know this was going to happen!?" and every person with two cents is like "Really, dude?"

Don't worry, the supply and demand side of oil and gas will basically render half the remaining reserves of either unaffordable to extract in coming decades. Life on this planet will survive, I don't know if human civilization can, nor modern animal species, something will and it'll thrive in the new environment. Oil and gas and energy are the crux of our modern economies, without that the foundations of global economics, society, the growth of technology, it all comes to a screeching hault. Social and economic collapse are imminent, it'll be a dog eat dog world. And from the ashes, life will survive again, thrive, reach each corner of the planet, super-volcanoes will erupt, comets will hit, epidemics will wipe out life, super-predators will eat up the food supply, this has all happened in past, it will happen again and again until billions of years from now the sun's shedding it's layers of hydrogen and helium due to its diminished mass will swallow the earth with it. We of course will be long dead before any of that happens so thankfully we got to be there at the end when it was somewhat good. We like to think some economic boogie man is the reason for this, but it's really all of us, our inability to work toward something important for mankind, to solve our differences and fight for our place in the universe.

Dafuq

We have the ability to observe and control our surroundings to enough of an extent where we can reasonably prevent many things that may lead to our extinction, we just have to get past a large portion of our greed and self-centeredness to do so.

i don't think people fully appreciate how good something like gasoline is at storing energy and why it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

you can put a gallon of it in an automobile, waste a full ~75% of the energy gained from burning it, and still have enough energy left over to move a 3000lb hunk of steel 30 miles down the road.

all on a bucket of liquid that weighs ~ 6lbs. that is incredible

while there are shitbag companies out there run by terrible people, lets not pretend alternatives can magically step in today and replace ff completely

and the earth will do just fine whatever we do. "save the earth" is simply code for "look, we have a shitload of people on the planet with more coming on-board each day and the planet needs to have the resources to support them, lets not do something shortsighted to **** it all up for everyone"

Im just f'ing around.

This is the kind of idealistic doublespeak I find funny. We "just" have to get past our greed and self-centeredness! It's not like it's in our nature or anything.

That's like saying "Oh you're drowning? Well, just grow gills, what's the big deal?".

@FireEmblem_Man: yes cis white men are all to blame for this.

@N30F3N1X: That's really a very silly analogy. It's not idealistic doublespeak, many people are most capable of putting greed and selfishness aside and show it all the time. Unfortunately there are still those who don't but hopefully they are a dying breed.

This is a pointless debate you can quite using all fossil fuels, destroy capitalism, only read and work when the sun is out, every one live in temperate climates, eat raw fish and vegetables and not one thing will have changed. The climate and temperatures will do as they have always done on their own schedule. A question for you "Why is the left hell bent on climate change? I don't think it is about the climate.

I totally agree with this !!

Not to mention the fact that the history of man's use of fossil fuels is a story of increased efficiency, increased safety, and decreased pollution in how we harvest, refine, transport and consume those fuels.

Well this is a massively uneducated opinion. The orogenic systems that drive plate tectonics go by hundreds of millions/billions of years. Humans effect the surface and subsurface chemical and mineral compositions. Our mark will be left for hundreds of millions years depending on how far we go with it. Metal structures will survive a long time, stone pyramids have stood for 5000 years. How about giant metal fortresses with walls meters thick? Massive relocation of minerals can change the gravitational and magnetic fields as well. Radioactive material may take unforeseen ages to decay. We can see magnetic records in rocks just meters below the ground that go back billions of years. The cycles of the Earth go by the billions of years.

They don't have to replace fossil fuels for everything. They will replace fossil fuels for electricity generation and light duty transportation which covers the majority of the issue. Once those occur the infrastructure to replace fossil fuels for heating will be in-place.

Even now the US could substitute lower emission higher efficiency natural gas power for coal and make a significant impact for modest investment. NG is also a perfect enabler of renewables due to its high dispatch capability.

Moreover, the cost curve for renewable has already been bent. For instance, large scale solar has dropped 99% in cost since the 70s, and 85% in the past decade. The massive subsidies required to make this investment attractive are now falling to moderate subsidies and soon to be modest subsidies. The cost leap then to eliminating coal will be much, much less than in the past.

And if one looks at light duty vehicles, there is already a massive sea change happening. We are 5 years out from dozens upon dozens of hybrid electric and all electric vehicles hitting the market as every manufacturer is aggressively pursuing them, which is a completely different reality than a few specialty products that few want or can afford.

I live in Canada. Electricity generation from all types of fossil fuels is now less than 20% of all generation and that is expected to drop to less than 10% within a decade. Of course, we also have a lot of hydro which the US lacks (proportionately). Nevertheless, the US could eliminate coal within a decade (40% of current US electric generation). It is coming faster than people realize.

Also, the arguments about plastics, computers, etc are red herrings as the amount of fossil fuel input is trivial compared to electricity, transportation, and heating and those products are not the problem so it doesn't matter if we replace those uses or not.

@Nuck81:

I don't know why you're choosing to throw insults at me, disguised as words, or what you're trying to say with that incomprehensible sentence.

Well said. I dont get why some people strawman our arguments into saying that we should replace our fossile fuels for everything.

Its not about completely halting, that is unrealistic, but what isnt unrealistic is gradually phasing them out, in fields where we have alternatives. Nuclear power for instance is cheaper and more efficient and a hell lot cleaner too.

I live in sweden and oil accounts for roughly 20% of our power consumption. And much like in Canada, that figure is dropping.

I figured it would go over your head

@Nuck81:

Like a missile over its target. But hey, you proved...something.

You clearly don't understand gravity nor how earth's magnetic fields are generated. The rest of what you typed...seriously, you think metal structures will still stand after 100,00 years...is nonsense and has no affect on life's ability to thrive on earth.

Man this is a shit thread. Our planet has bern hit by asteroids and all kinds of comsic shit and you're worried about fossil fuels?!

lol get the **** outta here