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Forecasting Doomsday
Boccaccio writes "James Lovelock, the planetary scientist famous for his Gaia Theory, writes in today's Independent of his belief that it is already too late to divert an environmental catastrophe which will see much of human civilisation destroyed. Fearing it too late to be green, he instead suggests communities plan for survival in a Mad Max type world with limited resources ruled by violent warlords. "We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can." He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing "the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity.""
Melodrama, alarmist, nut-job, wacko..
Is he, in fact, a melodramatic alarmist, or are his simple words simply effective in raising your own alarms?
Is he intimidating, or is it that are you intimidated?
He doesn't know you, nor does he calculate your reaction, just like the guy who farts on the subway. He just is what he is.
You define things by your reaction, but that doesn't make it any more true/right/correct than your own personal, private reaction.
My point is still there; that he's doing it on purpose just as much as he's not, simply because the judgement depends on your own personal reaction.
If people rush to buy, it's a result of their reaction.
If they rush to accuse, it's a result of their reaction.
He just is.
The point is that "actions just are".
The determination of what intent the actions carry is your "reality".
Reality itself is illusory, my friend. That's the point - it's open for interpretation.
If you're the President of the United States of America, your reality is different from mine. The difference is in your personal interpretation, and the values you attribute to factors of that reality. "Reality" just is.
If you define my "reality" by "your personal interpretation", you're screwing both of us out of a meaningful existance.
Now if you want to argue that the motivitaion behind actions are actually "reality", we're talking about personal interaction with other personal interations, and we're into sociology.
Is is. The minute you attribute meaning to it, you're going to be partial no matter what.
.....It could mean the end of modern civilization and the death of billions.....
It is much more likely that the modern weapons of war, the WMD's mankind has developed, will do humanity in. Historically, human actions through wars, hatred and murders have killed far more people than all natural catastrophes. Just in the century past, the skills of humans at mass exterminations have risen dramatically and have caused orders of magnitude more misery than anything nature dished out. At one point there were over 80,000 nuclear devices distributed around the world. I don't know how many of them are still useable right now, but even if ony 10% of these are ever used in anger, by terrorists or terrorist nations, the danger to our survival as a species is greater than anything nature might do. Even a large asteroid hitting the earth wouldn't leave long lasting radioactivity behind. In addition to the nuclear threat there are the biological and chemical weapons that could kill additional vast numbers of people. Man's worst enemy has always been man and not nature and this is increasingly true.
Jesus Christ predicted that terrible times will come in connection with a one world government, such that if God Himself did not personally intervene, no life would survive on this planet. Whether He is believed or not, the fact is that mankind presently has the ability to fulfill this prophecy.
All theory is gray