Slashdot Mirror
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.""
First off, the "climate centres" around the world aren't the equivalent to a pathology lab. This is a bad analogy. Pathology is a science that is fairly solid. There is a pathogen or there isn't, we may miss it but we sure are good at diagnosing it if you have it. More importantly, pathologists can agree with each other.
With the status of the environment, no one agrees with anyone else. The world is ending on one end while the U.S. government isn't too concerned with it at the time. James Lovelock is certain we're doomed while Michael Chrichton is giving speeches detailing environmentalism as a religion.
Who do we believe? The physician or the author? I don't think either are adequately qualified to make the call.
I can understand articles urging us to cut back on emissions or asking everyone to support the Kyoto Treaty. What I don't understand is how this article can be constructive. I read it and it tells me to drive to Wal-Mart as fast as possible and buy a gun and five shells so that I can rob said Wal-Mart of all guns and shells for my basement armory.
I'm not sure whether to read this as honest opinion or a hilarious satire reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Can anyone please tell me what Mr. Lovelock hoped to gain from this article other than creating hysteria among his fans and receiving "nut job" status from those who disagree with him? Oh, I'm sure that will be a fair and unbiased scientific look at the state of the environment that everyone will love. Why must people make such polarizing comments? Can't they see how many people they alienate with one fell swoop? He could have gotten the same message across without the drama.
My work here is dung.
And people think us Christ followers are bonkers.
This Revenge of Gaia stuff is pure fiction -- but it does sell books. I've been called a doomer-and-gloomer for my opinions over the past 10 years. I'm an avid gold bug, I hate the idea of working as a salaried employee, and I believe in owning land both in urban areas as well as rural areas. You can buy 100 acres of land dirt cheap still in many parts of the U.S.
I don't believe we'll see a Mad Max style world. There is so much land available in the entire globe that I don't see how warlords can use the strength of weapons to take over. The reason we see "chaos" in Somalia is because there is an existing infrastructure that people want to utilize. In this Gaia-chaos vision, there wouldn't be. People who survive would not be anywhere near the billions we have today, and a family of 10 can easily survive even on a near-desert piece of property.
I don't believe we'll see the water of the world undrinkable, I don't believe we'll see the air of the world unbreathable. Humans are a minor part of the balance -- if we do something so bad that billions will perish, we won't be able to continue doing "harm" and the planet will recuperate itself -- quickly, too. The worst catastrophes that could happen would not necessarily be environmental ones but ones dealing with war. Anything we do slowly to the environment will be quickly absorbed and returned to normal -- the so called circle of life. It is the things we can do quickly that would be the most devastating. Nuclear wars come to mind as one possible catastrophe that we couldn't resolve in less than a century.
Even if we did collapse into an chaotic anarchy (opposite of the capitalist anarchy that I promote), weapons wouldn't last without an infrastructure to maintain them. Once all the bullets are expelled or all the maintenance fluids are used up, most weapons are useless. You can't fight a global war with knives, and you can defend yourself much easier in communities against warlords if you take the machine guns and flamethrowers out of the equation. War is one of the most inefficient ways to gain wealth -- it requires millions of people deciding to give up their wealth in exchange for no profitable gain. In fact, I believe war requires democracy.
I wish Julian Simon was still kicking. That guy would offer Lovelock a great debate (and likely win it, too). Simon showed that more people means more wealth, more innovation and long lives for everyone. Look at China. They were on the verge of overpopulation, but it wasn't the mass numbers that was killing them -- it was government and communism. The freer they get, the longer they live, the happier they live, and this lets them live long enough to get Parkinson's, cancers and other diseases that keep us from living forever. Communism offered them shortened lives with no reason to want to live -- freedom gives everyone a reason to work together to try to live longer together.
In the end, I see the only doomsday here being empire and government. Nuclear war won't happen any other way. I don't believe we'll ever get to the Mad Max scenario unless we allow ourselves to continue to arm the elite with weapons of mass destruction. We should work at arming our own households, investing in bountiful properties, creating communities of people who love one another but are no adverse to profit or personal gain.
The environment continues to fix itself -- yesterday's doomsdayers are silent because they were wrong. Today's will be silent tomorrow -- they'll be wrong, too.
He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper...
Won't creating more paper just hasten the coming apocalypse? Hopefully it's at least post-consumer chlorine-free recycled paper printed with soy-based ink.
Bradley Holt
I can't wait! (Omits comment re: warlord overlords)
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
People have been predicting the end of the world due to environment destruction for years. What gets me is that most 'intellectuals' will scoff at christians but listen seriously to these people.
My blog
I realize it's Monday, but it must be one hell of a slow news day...
It's really too bad that James Lovelock is perceived as a bit of a nutball in the scientific community...global climate change is a real and accelerating problem (the duplicitious yammerings of the naysayers and industrial apologists notwithstanding), and it needs to have more serious attention focused upon it. I fear that all Lovelock's doomsaying will accomplish is the opposite.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
After doomsday strikes, who do you want to be?
- Water pirates ****
- Mad Max ***********
- The kids beyond Thunderdome *
- CowboyNeal ***
Billions of years ago, when the day was 23 hours long, there was no oxygen in the air and hence no ozone. The surface of the earth would have killed any land based animals pretty quickly.
Over time, life transformed the atmosphere and soon after plants and animals started to come out of the sea and started to prosper on land. Billions of years past and today we're sat here with laptop's contemplating what to do about climate change. I personally think that a large chunk of climate change has been caused by humans. I also agree with the scientist that we've already past the point of no return - so the question is not how we can stop climate change but how we can cope with it.
Personally, I think the climate disaster will be very bad for bio-diversity but have a negligable effect on humanity. I often go to Florida on my holiday from the foggy and cold waste lands of the UK :). The heat in Florida is at times unbearable but it
matters not because air conditioning is in nearly every building. If I get too hot, I just go inside.
As the oceans expand and the sea level rises, people will simply move further up the shore. When islands disappear, people will be unhappy but they quickly build new lives in new countries. When crops fail to grow in some countries they will replace the crops with others that grow in those climates. If they've really got money to burn they'll genetically engineer plants that are resistant to the heat. When oil prices start their long climb to unaffordability other technologies will take up the batton. Suddenly the economy will start to allocate resources to bypass the damage that the price-hike induces. Life will go on as normal.
I think we're heading for a mass extinction event - of that I am certain - but is highly unlikely we will feel the pinch. These are interesting times to be alive.
Simon
world with limited resources ruled by violent warlords.
We're already there...
Trolling is a art,
communities plan for survival in a Mad Max type world with limited resources ruled by violent warlords.
We're already pwned by violent warlords!-
One Bush President
- Two Bush Governors
- A Governator
Ack!He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing "the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity."
So he means like my physics, math, and biology textbooks?
My books will last forever...
They are extremely heavy, have never / wont ever get used. They practically re-sealed themselves after I purchesed them from the bookstore!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing "the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity
Why don't we stamp it into something a bit tougher like tungsten or titanum....or the back of Dubya's head
Calling for printing out a few dozen pages from Wikipedia, some medical history book, and a lifetime's amount of porn? (It'd make good bartering fodder for the Thunderdome wannabes!
And they said zombies weren't real!
welcome our new road warriors overlords...
He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing "the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity."
Send a bunch of scientists off to a deserted island and have them write the Encyclopedia Tera?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Our country really is balanced on a delicate edge. Since we have recently completely lost any semblance of morals (witness the implicit approval of torture in Gitmo and Iraq, as well as the use of nuclear weapons against other countries; have you heard anyone on the news saying nukes are definitely never going to be used? look back a decade or two and the tone is completely different). I feel that many people in our country have become so demonic that if they were given the opportunity they would run wild.
Another thing: war and combat does not require projectile weapons. Baseball bats and knives are just as effective against defenseless targets. Sure, maybe you have a handgun or two, but what good is that going to do against 50 armed hoodlums?
All I'm asking for is that it ends before tomorrow's deadline.
Or do you subscribe to Heinlein and his survivor stories like Farnham's Freehold?
With the various governments' movements to ban guns and such I'm beginning to smell a conspiracy theory here somewhere :)
Me? I'll probably be one of the first ones to die when I can't get the drugs that keep me alive - of course Darwin is at work there too. "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and "go lemmings!" are my two favourite catch-phrases.
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
"Who are you gonna believe? Me, or your lying eyes?"
Just getting off a week of +5-10C weather, in January, in Toronto. (40-50F for the Americans.) That is really, really atypical.
So is the 28 days of rain the west coast just received.
So is the 13 feet of snow in Japan.
Its unsettling.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
You know the anthropic universe principle? That the universe seems fine tuned for life? Well I have another theory that is that yes, the universe is fine-tuned for life, but its also fine-tuned so that life has a remote chance of making it off the planet and colonising the universe as seen in science fiction. The universe is in fact fine tuned just so that it can create sentient life that can consider its mortality, dream of conquering the cosmos, but then not being able to because fundamental physics just gets in the way...
I call this the misanthropic universe principle...
...uh...nevermind...I forgot where I was going with this joke anyways
A goal is a dream with a deadline
This is interesting:
"It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma."
So he's saying that the output of the sun is one part of the global warming phenomenon, and that human-caused pollution is another. I partially agree with this, though I think the sun has a bigger part of it than he might.
But then he says:
"By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the Earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would soon find impossible - and something before we treated Gaia so badly, she had freely done for us." (emphasis added)
Wait, if it's "impossible" for us to regulate the environment, doesn't it logically follow it is equally impossible for us to change it?? He seems to be saying "We've destroyed it, but we don't have the power to fix it." That's completely inconsistent.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
It seems to me that humanity has a tendency to fall into two intellectual traps:
I do believe both attitudes are just wrong. The future holds a lot of promises, but also a lot of challenges. There are international mechanisms in place to deal with global warming, for instance: that's what the Kyoto Protocol is all about.
Peak Oil may be very bad -- I do expect a lot of economic suffering ahead -- but it may also be our best chance to get rid of polluting hydrocarbons, and turn to ultra-efficiency and renewable energies. These, in turn, will have the added effect of lowering global warming and overall pollution.
Another example of this is nuclear war and MAD: it did not happen, probably because intelligent people on both sides understood the terrifying consequences. That also means we are stuck with thousands and thousands of nukes that need to be decommissioned and possibilities of proliferation, but that, too, can be taken care of.
So: ignoring problems is just as bad as putting your head in the sand and pretending everything is A-OK. What Winston Churchill used to say about Americans really apply to the whole human race: "They will always choose the right solution... but only after trying every other one". We may suffer in the short run, but the nimbleness, adaptability and intelligence of human beings mean they will come out all right in the end. Our problem is that we always take the short view and the easy solution first, instead of the long-term view and making the necessary sacrifices right now, instead of tomorrow.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing "the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity."
So, he's saying we need to set up a Foundation to start work on the Encyclopedia Galactica?
Perhaps he's a psychohistorian. Perhaps just an historical psycho.
Either way, he reads too much Clarke.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Your comments are, for the most part, spot-on.
"Gaia" is the "goddess earth". It is nothing more than blatant superstitious garbage with an enviro-friendly sheen.
The term "Gaia" was borrowed from the ancient Greek gods, but no more so than Pluto or Mars. The concept is, that as cells make up an organism, and many organisms an ecosystem, many ecosystems make up a still larger system. "Gaia" sounds all new-agey, but in reality, it is nothing more than the extent of all life on earth.
It's not superstitious garbage; it is quite valid to think that destroying the rain forest in Southeast Alaska will have profound effects on New York City, or Moscow for that matter. Then to imagine that the total biosphere can heal itself after a catastrophe is also valid. That is, the environment affects not only the evolution of species, but evolution of species also affects the environment.
Gaia was, perhaps, a poor choice of terms. But "superecosystem" sounds stupid, and isn't as catchy, and doesn't intimate the self-regulating nature of the total biosphere.
The thought that all life on earth is a single organism with conscious thought is a little silly. Not many people truly believe that, though. In my experience, most people believe in some weaker form of the Gaia hypothesis-- that even if we humans fuck up so badly we destroy our environment and kill off tens of thousands of species (including humanity), the earth will go on, heal itself, and new species will crop up to replace the old ones.
Other than that: yeah, I think Sir Lovelock is being a bit extremist in his fears. It's kind of like during the five years leading up to 2000; too damned many people thought civilisation was going to collapse, when most of us in the IT trenches knew everything was going to be fine. The didn't stop Edward Yourdon from shooting off his mouth and selling some books, but there will always be people who expect the worst.
The people who scare me, though, are those who want the worst to happen.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Jeez I'm old.
I remember this same meme being around in the early 60's --- it was nuclear war then --- and in the mid-70's, with The Limits to Growth. Oh, and don't forget The Population Bomb. The expected date is always in the potential lifetime of younger readers, but comfortably in the future for older ones, and so far (note that you're reading this) it always fails to happen.
Oh, and one other thing: the person pushing the theory is always selling something. A book, money for "further research," something.
Hands on your wallets, kids.
The pentagon commissioned this study entitled An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security
"but isn't he being a little melodramatic? "
No, he's beyond melodramatic well into neurosis and with a little nudge he could easily pass right into full-on crazy.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
On a side note, I think it would have been a more interesting read if he'd mixed in the plots of Army of Darkness and Debbie Does Dallas.
Err. He did. It's called "Dallas does Darkness".
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
His comments need to be taken seriously. Ignore him at your peril.
Lovelock is no witless crank, and the description in the editorial blurb, er excerpt, is so far off, it's maddening. (Hint: look up 'photomultiplier tube').
Laugh while you can. While I understand no one wants to take their medicine when yummy candy is all around, it'll be time to pay the piper soon enough.
I look forward to skinning and gutting the brainless doughboys who think he's 'an ecoterrorist' sometime in the near future. I shall decorate the bounds of my territory with your spines.
Just ask any geologist. . . The Earth is in an Ice Age. Actually we're in an "interglacial period", which is what we call it when an ice age pauses and the ice sheets retreat for 10 or 20 thousand years, then they advance again. In the 1970s several climatologists looked at the available data -- solar cycles and records, precession of Earth's orbit, etc. -- and concluded that the interglacial period was about to end, and the ice was going to come back Real Soon Now. They started warning their governments about the need to prepare for a colder climate, shorter growing seasons, dropping ocean levels, etc.
That was before all the talk about global warming began, of course.
And yet, their data didn't lie. What some climatologists are beginning to figure out is that global warming -- from greenhouse gases emitted as a by-product of human industry -- came along just in time to hold back the ice sheets. It began with clearing forests for farmland (which released carbon), and raising livestock which produce methane. It accelerated with the industrial revolution, and all the coal that was burned. Up to that point the greenhouse gases were roughly staving off the natural cooling trend.
Then, in the 20th Century, we saw an explosion in the burning of oil and gas for power. That's when the global warming effect began to outstrip and overwhelm the natural cooling trends. Today we have a climate that is definitely growing warmer, alarmingly so. And yet. . .
If we were to cut off greenhouse gas emissions today -- either on purpose, or as a result of our industrial civilization's collapse -- it seems likely that it wouldn't take long for the current situation to reverse. It certainly ought not take 100,000 years for the global climate to recover from our CO2 emissions. Like it or not, we are still in that ice age, and we'd soon feel it.
Most of europe is in population decline. When you look at the white norther europeans, it is even worse. The arabs and africans are breeding very fast. So when the weather does heat up, they are genetically ready for it. The pale skinned types are set for extinction. Humanity will survive, but it won't look like most slashdotters.
The tragedy of this debate is that there seems to be no one to voice a rational position. There are The Ostriches who's greatest desire is to believe that they are safe and scoff at anything that suggest otherwise. There are the Industrial Interest who are more than willing to tell the Ostriches what they want to hear so that they can continue business as usual. There are the Chicken Littles who run screaming "The sky is falling" every time there is an extra inch of rain. Let me suggest a different position: We live in a complex system. Rational estimates say it is Very very old relative to our own lifespans. We are only reasonably aware of the last couple of thousand years of its operation. Everything else is speculation. We are aware (those of us who don't fall into the Ostrich category) that we are able to effect some changes to the system through our activities. We really have no idea how much of an impact we have had, or will have. It might be that everything is fine. It might be that all the bizarre weather from the last year means something is seriously wrong. I don't think anyone REALLY knows. While I don't think that "It's the end of the world", It seems to me that since we have access to only one "experiment", that maybe some extra caution is warranted. The old "better safe than sorry" position may be the smartest choice for anyone with a long view.
What will survive of our world today in 10,000 years time?
Check out the Clock of the Long Now
Also, the Rosetta project
Anyone know of other long term projects, like long term nuclear fuel storage facilities (ie that will survive into future 'barbaric' time periods) or animal/plant genetic preservation libraries?
What about long-term human knowledge preservation projects (i.e. written on 'long-lasting paper'!)? doomsday or not, data CDs are good for a few years at best, and my 10 yr old college text books are ragged (and obsolete).
Committee for Symmetric Distribution of the Future
by paper i mean a scientific, rather than a news paper. one environmentalists opinion even if he is well respected does not turn his melodramatic spiel into fact. The earth may be warming, but there is still no hard evidence that human kind is the cause. and lets not forget that we are still in an ice age!
One thing I've learned is to listen to predictions like this. Look at the long history of disasters diverted by relying on the scientists- The Hindenburg, the Plagues, and th 60's hippie movement. I remember hearing about 9/11 months before on TV, and changing my schedule. I was so close to buying into the Enron thing, when Neil Cavuto changed my mind. And other warnings kept me from going to school naked...no, wait- that was a dream.
My point is, we *never* get warnings about the big stuff. And this is no exception. Remember the coming ice-age, and the population boom of the 1970s? No ice-age. Population has actually gone DOWN by a dangerous extent. I saw both mentioned in Barey Miller, in fact. I remember hearing how acid rain would make the finish on all cars corrode as early as 1975. And by 2000 we'd all have to live underground. This being told to me, a kid in the 5th grade. I was afraid.
Yet somehow the same people who told us the Earth would be unable to support life in the 70's, still feel that way today. I suspect money is the quarry on this hunt.
I'll admit there are temperature changes- the Earth is a dynamic system with lots of history that it changes all the time (See: the 1700s mini-ice age, for example). But to think humans are the cause of it, or have the slightest chance of changing it, is just silly.
Go to Google. Zoom in on a town, find your house. Then notice the actual SCALE of our place on this planet. Now call your local HVAC technician and tell'em you want to install an A/C for the whole planet. Just try to figure out the BTUs. Imagine changing it, if we HAD to. Terraforming is a neat idea, but actually doing it someplace is at least 100 years away.
Just relax; and remember that the Earth will never go away; it might not be like it is, but it will always be here. And so will be these predictions...
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
This posting really seems below /.'s level. This has less to do with the environmental theories as it does speculating the world that follows environmental destruction. This isn't science, it's imagination.
Incidentally, how would we prepare to survive in a "Mad Max" like world? We'd need guns and cars. Both use chemicals that supposedly destroy the environment. So it sounds like he's suggesting we should use a lot of the substances that allegedly would lead to our own destruction!
Parent poster has it right - doom and gloom sells, whether the apocalypse is environmental or religious in nature. How many crackpots have declared that the Rapture is coming on such-and-such a date? The author of this book is not much different, he's just worshipping a different god/ess.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
Disclaimer: I credit SimEarth with indtroducing me to Locklock's theories. :)
Lovelock is a very smart person, and he may in fact be correct about the fate that awaits us, but the reasons for it may not be the particular concerns he's raised. For example, the most prevalent theory that I have seen regarding climate change is that "global warming" may actually have the more immediate effect of "global cooling" in the form of interruption of the thermohaline cycle in the Atlantic Ocean. It would be really helpful if we could figure out if we need to move north (as Lovelock seems to suggest), or south in the face of a cooling trend. These theories are well born out by the archaeological record.
Second of all, it really disturbs me that so-called "greenhouse gases" still receive the majority of the blame for climate change in the first place. I am firmly of the belief that heat emissions may be just as much of a concern. It's not only CO2 and other pollutants coming out my my tailpipe...there's a whole lot of heat released in the process, and it has to go *somewhere*, and even nuclear energy leads somewhere down the chain to thermal inefficiencies.
If you take into account the theories surrounding the Peak Oil phenomenon, we begin to see a more complete picture of what the coming decades may hold. Many people seem to think that technology will somehow save us from ourselves. How then, can we continue to make such great technological innovations in the face of a scarcity of energy? The flip side of this is that as the effects of Peak Oil become more prominent, it is highly likely, if not assured, that we will see a massive reduction in both heat emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. It is only the availability of cheap and plentiful energy, primarily in forms which are relatively easy to transport, that has enabled the massive cancer-like growth of the human population and the resulting positive feedback loop of resource depletion in an environment of fixed bounds (barring interplanetary/interstellar colonization, an idea which is vanishingly unlikely, Earth is all we have).
There is also some evidence that a global increase in CO2 concentration is causing a global increase in vegetation, though much, if not all of this, is mitigated by our increasing resource depletion. It seems to me that the real question that Lovelock may not be able to yet answer is, "How quickly can the planet regulate itself, and exactly *where* are the "control points" beyond which the regulation fails?" I would submit that we cannot know this, even though we can look to the archaeological record for evidence of past self-regulation, the exact effect of human "intervention" in the climate remains unknown, even if we can be assured that it must inevitably have *some* negative effect.
As regards the "Max Max"-like society--remember that a man can only possess that which he can successfully defend. Community is a basic human need, though in the future we may find our communities much smaller than we once envisioned. It would not surprise me in the least to see the human population decrease over the next century by a factor of 1,000 (5-6 million people worldwide). Such a population could probably be easily sustained, even in the face of extreme climatic change. However, it is likely that we may revert to feudal, or even pre-feudal, societies in an attempt to preserve what remains of civilization. Of course, this is quite the pessimistic scenario--perhaps, with what we now know after a couple of hundred years, give or take, of technological innovation, that we can maximize the efficiency of pre-Industrial Revolution ways of life so that we can ensure the survival of many more. The real question here is, "How much have we forgotten?" The discontinuity of human history created by the Technology Revolution may mean that while we better understand things at the micro level, we have forgotten how to operate simpler forms of existence at the macro level. How many blacksmiths are there these days? Farmers? Sa
And yet....no records were set....uh..
Yep. No records. Now, I'm not advocating one side or the other here, but 2005 seems to have been a year of extremes, not one that didn't set any records. There will *always* be records in a given year, particularly local ones. It's the worldwide records like "highest average temp on record, despite the absence of El Nino" and "lowest arctic ice recorded" that matter. Not "Hottest July 3rd ever in Tempe, AZ."
Worst hurricane season on record.
200 Western US cities set heat records.
Hottest year ever, least arctic ice ever, most intense single hurricane ever, worst drought in decades.
Third worst year on record for extreme weather, hottest year on record despite the fact that the previous record had El Nino to drive it. (and in a contrast, very few tornados).
It most likely is all total BS, but regardless it is wise to be prepared for any emergency in any way reasonable. What constitutes reasonable depends on your own discretion, but as an Eagle scout, I feel comfy with some flashlights, matches, my revolver, 2 boxes ammo, my pocket knife, and some warm clothes. I have all that stuff easily accessible in my apartment, so what ever may come, stuff it in a back pack and head for the mountains.
I'm sure the day will come when there is some kind of disaster in my area, war, floods, whatever; When it does most of what we need is cool heads, and basic tools.
Everything else is just melodrama.
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
too bad you don't realize you have already lost...sad
when in doubt press enter and we'll figure it out later..
"For every 10 "the sky is falling" articles I read, I see 10 "everything is OK" articles."
Unfortunately, this is the result of equal publicity funding, not equal scientific opinion. I'm sorry I won't be providing you with a reference (but you didn't provide one either, so whatever) but I have the distinct impression that about 97% of climatologists and other scientists in related disciplines agree: we have a problem.
"I see relatively cheap gas, so I believe that gas is not running out."
This is a fundamental problem with the global economy and markets. Markets are interesting - they provide a metric for the value which *most monies* would assign to a given resource. "Most monies" refers to people weighted by their investable wealth. Unfortunately, as many past market events should demonstrate, these metrics don't necessarily have anything to do with reality. They have everything to do with perception and popular understanding, which may or may not be actually correct.
As an analogy, consider presidential/PM elections. We elect people who are visible, or want to be elected, and who have the means and support to get elected. We don't necessarily elect the best possible leader because most of us may not know who that is, and that person may be lacking the accessories with which reaching the public is highly unlikely. On a large scale, elections have very little to do with absolute achievement in personal merit, and a lot to do with publicity. Obviously everyone would prefer to choose between the people best suited for the job, but that's not how it works. There are barriers to entry that has nothing to do with merit, qualifications, skills, or talent.
"...geophysicist. He tells me they have no idea what is going on deeper than a few miles..."
So based on this statement, the most rational course of action is to assume that one day the oil will go dry. By the same conservative logic, we should also assume that climate change is a real problem (not only future, I live in Alaska and we're seeing major effects *now*). In this way we can be prepared - maybe not for the worst, but at least for some case worse than the best. Because a large proportion of experts do agree, it's important that we take the possibilities they suggest seriously. I would say this even if the climate change people were a minority opinion and I disagreed with them.
I don't understand how people claiming to be "conservative" can possibly think that doing nothing different is a rational course of action. A truly conservative viewpoint calls for considering all the possibilities and being prepared so that we are never faced with an actual crisis, but these pretenders are calling for ignoring a major [potential] problem because it's not hurting [them] badly enough [yet].
Why in the world would you stake something as important as species survival on a best-case-scenario viewpoint? That makes no sense at all. Go read "Candide" and come back when you understand it.
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http://tinyurl.com/dlxjm/The Wind from Nowhere
http://tinyurl.com/9jtf3/The Drought
(or for counterpoint)
http://tinyurl.com/7pnh3/The Drowned World
http://tinyurl.com/akd8o/The Crystal World
polar bears drowning all over, huge chunks of ice the size of rhode island falling off antartica, hurricanes destroying entire cities in the leading developed country... it is like watching a movie already, only thing missing is the statue of liberty sticking out of a glacier...
..
as for us, we are screwing ourselves so fast it kind of hard not to notice it..
you can only piss and shit in your own house for so long before it becomes unbearable and you end up catching some sickness and making a total wreck of the place.. if you look, you will see the corporations coming back in zipping up their pants..
will it 'fully' happen in our lifetime? probably not, so who really cares.. plug your nose and let our kids clean up
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Incendiary foaming at the mouth "warnings of planetary illness" do our overall chances of mitigating the reality of human-caused global warming no good either. Extremists undercut the message for anyone more moderate, and more likely to actually effect change.
I don't have anything against him flogging his book, at least he makes it pretty obvious. Just wish I'd thought of it.
I'm also sympathetic to the view of the earth acting like a living organism, in fact you can make the same argument for the whole universe. But because it looks like that doesn't actually mean it is a living thing, although I'm not sure how you'd define it at that macro a level.
The question is whether it actually gives a shit whether or not it's hospitable to life. As a member of the Church of the Utterly Indifferent God, somehow I doubt it. It certainly will be a problem for us though.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
At the end of the Permian era, 250 million years ago, there was the biggest mass extinction the earth had ever seen. 99% of all life died out. Think about how that must have been for any one of the creatures at the time.
After the Permian came the dinosaurs, who were so successful that they ruled over the earth for 185 million years. Something bad happened at the end of the Jurassic period, some 65 million years ago, and most of the life on earth died off again, some 95% IIRC. Again, think about how extreme that must have been.
Now, some 65 million years later, a species capable of abstract thought and who known cognitive history probably extends back some 35 000 years or more or so, is worrying about extinction.
News flash, whether we live or die, as a species, does not matter. Enromous extinctions have happened in the past and they could happen again, except that it could be us the next time around, and in some 60 million years when the rats who survived will have evolved into suv driving, complaining, frightened, superstitious fools who don't accept that life is transient and that we have no special place on this earth and that god, if he exists, does not particularly favour us over, say cockroaches, or rats.
and bad fiction at that. In it he created cardboard "environmentalists" who sought to kill off large swaths of the earth's population as part of a tempter tantrum. One of his characters does nothing after being stabbed in the arm with a needle by some strange man and then dies, and yet he was supposed to be one of the best and brightest. The ringleader of the awful plot is has a man killed in the middle of Tower Bridge (the main bridge in London) at Noon and then stands over the corpse and yet doesn't get caught.
Much has been made of his "references", and the idea that he has backed up his bad fiction. If you peruse them you will see that a) they are not exhaustive, b) they favor unjournaled papers by anti-global-warming researchers (no attempt it made to see the science only the editorializing) and c) they include odd references to books on witchcraft and papers (such as the argument that greenland was once warmer) which do not prove his case at all.
The book was commissioned, bought, and paid for by Rupert Murdoch whose FoxNews network has made much of this money denying the state of the environment. Like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter Michael Crichton has made himself a tool of Murdoch. He has a line to sell and won't let the truth stand in his way.
If you want reasonable discussion of global warming go seek real scientists not an editorial hack. If you want a spy/crime novel go read some old Ian Flemming.
I've never seen so many posts that basically consist of - la la la la la la la la la (I can't hear you) la la la..... f*king grasshoppers !
First thing we do is smash all the secret Scientology vaults -- because after emerging from a Logan's Run type complex after hundreds of years underground, the last thing people need is a Personality Test! You can spot the vaults by their special signs in deserts and parking lots.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"Shift" is a funny word. And you only welcome it I suspect because you believe that you will either a) not feel it, or b) be part of tyhe "rapture" that gets to go to heaven and watch the rest of us die horribly. Either way I don't welcome it. I don't want to die. I don't want my friends to die. I don't want there to be wars that consume starving diseased populations in endless battles. Jesus didn't speak about "shifts" the notions of the rapture came from wandering preachers in the last century.
In a world where some 2/3 of the population lives in a fe miles from sea level, our population is growing exponentially, much of our airable land is now unusable, and much of our weather has been growing increasingly unpredictable it is foolish, even egotistical to speak of "shifts" let alone to welcome them.
From TFA:
[Agent Smith Voice]We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet.
[/Agent Smith Voice]A disease on this planet??? - reminds me of a movie I saw a while ago:-) Maybe this is how the skynet starts?
Long-lasting paper will save us all. The Lovelock Plan is Pefect. Personally I would like a position among the speakers in the Second Foundation. Maybe I could make the coffee?
From the US:
To Quote A Liberal: "It's Bush's Fault."
To Quote A Conservative: "If you want it fixed vote for the green party. In the mean time enjoy having a job, low cost utilities, and the highest standard of living on Earth."
To Quote A Hippie: "IF you don't eat sand you're killing mother earth!! Because eating animals is bad because they feel pain, and eating plants deprives mother earth of important C02 gobbling plants, and you certainly can't eat rocks as they are the very skin of our dear mother! Err. wait.... NO SAND NO SAND!"
To Quote A Scientist: "We need money, we'll say whatever they (being the people that are funding them) want us to say."
The Universe: "I don't give a shit if your planet blows up. I can always use another kupier belt there!"
Change is the only constant. Change is amoral. Mar's doesn't care if there is nuclear waste all over it, neither does the moon, neither does Earth. Only the arrogance of man would allow a population to complain about climate change. We are an oddity, not the norm. Find me one other planet that even remotly resembles earth. Quite frankly perhaps we are setting the climate to what it is supposed to be, rather then what we THINK it should be. Perhaps something between Venus' and Mars' atmosphere.
We are just as much a part of nature as any other animal and all things we do ARE NATURAL. Quite frankly I think it's man's nature to coat the planet in plastic and cement and I for one have no qualms in assisting in that endevor if that in fact is our purpose in life. Humans appear to be the only creatures that question their own actions, perhaps we should question what our definition of a proper planet should look like. So far my theory is pretty sound as we have yet to find a planet like ours....
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Asimov's "Foundation".
;)
The whole beginning of the book is how someone predicting doom wanted to make an encyclopedia of all knowledge to speed up the coming of the next great civilization.
(Or so he said