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Post by onlymark on Sept 13, 2010 21:01:40 GMT
Don't try to save the world because it's not really bothered what you do - "What humans do to, and ostensibly for, the earth does not matter in the long run, and the long run is what matters to the earth."People can cause climate change, but major glacial episodes have occurred “at regular intervals of 100,000 yearsAt last, someone who is talking sense instead of the scaremongers stirring it based on spurious, unconfirmed and wrongly interpreted so called 'computer modeling' that serves no useful purpose and seems to conveniently forget all the climactic changes that have occurred since to world was formed without human influence. www.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/george-will-earth-doesn-t-care-what-is-done-to-it.html?from=rss#I'm just off to buy a bigger car.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2010 21:20:24 GMT
Obviously we can't save the world, but we can try to save ourselves. A few details have come to light such as tobacco and alcohol abuse over the years, or a proper diet, which will apparently affect our own outcome. And of course you have heard of the butterfly effect...
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 13, 2010 22:31:07 GMT
He's back, he's bad, and he's got a really big car! Even though I don't use hair spray anyway, I doubt its use makes any real impact on the environment. However, overall awareness makes life more pleasant for everyone and can certainly help to avoid problems down the road. For instance, people innocently buying houses in the Love Canal area wound up paying with their health for imprudent disposal of toxic waste. Ten years after the incident, New York State Health Department Commissioner David Axelrod stated that Love Canal would long be remembered as a "national symbol of a failure to exercise a sense of concern for future generations." <-- from the wiki articleI was outside earlier today potting up plants. The birds were singing, the climate was perfect, and some jerk neighbor was burning garbage with plastic in it. The earth may abide forever, but my pleasure in the afternoon was greatly lessened. So, what kinda car didja get?
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Post by Jazz on Sept 14, 2010 2:31:27 GMT
Excellent article. I find his comments pragmatic and devoid of ego. If you paid attention to the glut of unsubstantiated fear mongering now available, you would never leave your home again and exist at the level of a cockroach. Mind you, cockroaches have been remarkably resilient in the history of the world. I liked these comments,
...' Laughlin acknowledges that “a lot of responsible people” are worried about atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. This has, he says, “the potential” to modify the weather by raising average temperatures several degrees centigrade and that governments have taken “significant, although ineffective,” steps to slow the warming. “On the scales of time relevant to itself, the earth doesn’t care about any of these governments or their legislation.”
...Laughlin believes that humans can “do damage persisting for geologic time” by “biodiversity loss”—extinctions that are, unlike carbon dioxide excesses, permanent. The earth did not reverse the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today extinctions result mostly from human population pressures—habitat destruction, pesticides, etc.—but “slowing man-made extinctions in a meaningful way would require drastically reducing the world’s human population.” Which will not happen.
...Climate change over geologic time is, Laughlin says, something the earth has done “on its own without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself.” People can cause climate change, but major glacial episodes have occurred “at regular intervals of 100,000 years,” always “a slow, steady cooling followed by abrupt warming back to conditions similar to today’s.”
Six million years ago the Mediterranean dried up. Ninety million years ago there were alligators in the Arctic. Three hundred million years ago Northern Europe was a desert and coal formed in Antarctica. “One thing we know for sure,” Laughlin says about these convulsions, “is that people weren’t involved.”
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Post by onlymark on Sept 15, 2010 20:30:19 GMT
I didn't buy a new bigger car. I just bought a coal fired power plant instead to run my iron foundry, tyre burning factory and cement works.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 15, 2010 22:08:34 GMT
You tricked us with some of that there dry Brit wit in the OP, didn't you?
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Post by lagatta on Sept 16, 2010 1:51:21 GMT
Think so. Have no idea what Jazz is on about. Nobody is advocating cockroach lifestyles or misery, just a bit of awareness.
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Post by Jazz on Sept 16, 2010 5:26:01 GMT
I am ‘on about’ what Robert Laughlin, co-winner of the 1998 Nobel prize in physics, is ‘on about’. Read the article and read some of his writings. Actually, read far beyond this. The life of the cowering cockroach was yet another of my failed attempts at online humor. Of course, one should be aware and do what you can do and think is important….highly individual and totally relative.
Stop smoking (or don’t), cut down on alcohol (or don’t), choose a particular diet (there are thousands of THE BEST AND ONLY diets available), drive automobiles (or don’t), use nuclear power (or don’t) ad infinitum. Do what you think is best according to your individual belief system.
With the birth of the internet and the tsunami of information today, we are overwhelmed. Most of this glut of information is contradictory, confusing and unverified. For each ‘A’, you can easily find an opposite and supportive “B’. I am most upset and enraged by the provocation of the Fear Level in every single aspect of one person’s daily life. Manipulation of fear in people does not encourage clear, intelligent and caring thinking. Most of this manipulation has nothing to do with caring for people and our Earth, but is for personal and political gain. A new day, a new manipulation and two new diametrically opposed ‘studies’...
We have much to learn from our history. Sorry for the rough quotation…‘Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat its’ mistakes. ' One glaring example: (one of thousands) The Native Peoples of the Americas have much to give us today if you read their writings and histories. Unfortunately, we chose to destroy them, steal their lands, and put them on pathetic reservations...Mayan, Incan, Aztec, and most tribes of the US and Canada... They shared a love, respect and understanding of living with the Earth that we have lost. Most of our 'new awareness' is a very late, pale and superficial echo of their deeply felt philosophies and sensibilities. They lived their entire lives, generations of their tribes' existence, according to these beliefs. We stomped on this and are only now 're-discovering'....respect for our Earth and its natural cycles.
The point is this: Earth is superior to mankind. It existed before the birth of humans and will exist after. Each generation of people appears to believe that it exists on the ‘cutting edge of history’. No. History moves on, leaving us in the dust. We each do what we can, depending on what we think is important. I think we should pay attention to history. We can never legislate or control the natural movement of Earth.
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Post by onlymark on Sept 16, 2010 10:46:52 GMT
My school report card for History once read, "Has done well in the past."
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2010 10:54:08 GMT
That doesn't bode well for the future.
I certainly agree with Jazz that the fear factor is used to control the world these days, but I can't really imagine any way to stop it.
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Post by lagatta on Sept 16, 2010 11:24:49 GMT
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Post by Jazz on Sept 16, 2010 12:01:54 GMT
The fear mongering today is toxic and useless. This could also be applied to the ‘climate denial’ issue. The point is, whether one denies it or not, changes in the world’s climate are happening and will take their inevitable course. There is no free lunch and we pay the price for all of our actions. The Earth is not paying Avid Attention to our dialogues, documentaries, books and legislation…actually, NO attention whatsoever. It never has and never will. (which is the essential thesis of Laughlin and many other people.)
I read Laughlin’s article, thought had valid points and did not consider it a waste of time. I have also read much more about this subject, discussed it with many people, and act, when it seemes to be of some use, however small, on a daily basis. This subject is well worth thinking about and taking action. I don’t quite know what is a 'better use of my time'.
There is an obvious problem here… awareness that Earth and Nature are superior to man, but wanting to change the course of events as they are unfolding. Many of our futile attempts to control nature have ultimately come to a sad and wasteful end. We are ‘a part of Nature’ and not at all in control. I think we have been led astray by recent technological ‘advances’ (the last 100 years) and somehow need to re-align ourselves with Nature. For our own survival, if nothing else. Obviously, we are resolutely going down a street with No Exit. For people, the Earth will survive.
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Post by Kimby on Sept 19, 2010 19:55:40 GMT
The earth will likely survive, but whether it remains habitable for people is yet to be determined.
In addition to fear-mongering, there's a lot of denial going on. So many are mis-led by statements that are patently untrue, but they wish to be true.
Kinda like Fox TV proclaiming itself to be "fair and balanced" and its viewers asserting that that makes it so. Without stopping to consider for themselves whether it is actually fair and balanced.
Also like George W's euphemistic naming of his intiatives to clearcut forests ("Healthy Forest Initiative") or allow polluters to increase their toxic emanations ("Clear Skies Initiative").
And our "wars" - "Desert Freedom", for example...
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Post by onlymark on Sept 20, 2010 5:03:52 GMT
Haven't they just started changing 'Global warming' to Global climate disruption as well?
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Post by Kimby on Sept 20, 2010 13:38:21 GMT
"Global climate change" is actually more accurate than "global warming" since even in a warming phase, not all areas will be warmer. Some will be wetter, some will be dryer, some will be cooler. But the climate is definitely changing.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2010 13:51:46 GMT
The best thing about the term "global climate change" is that you are right no matter what the weather is. A lot of Europe has been unseasonally cool for the last three years, so the term "global warming" was beginning to sound pretty attractive and we just wished it would start soon.
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Post by gertie on Oct 6, 2010 17:31:39 GMT
Cows make more problems for the atmosphere than do cars. Something about that is just not right somehow.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2010 17:35:28 GMT
Maybe they should become carnivores. (I'm sure there is a horror movie in there somewhere.)
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Post by tod2 on Mar 25, 2011 12:18:11 GMT
I thought I would 'wake up' this thread with this interesting video on drilling for gas: assabfn.blogspot.com/
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