Genghis Khan, History's Greenest Conqueror

New research suggests that in addition to being one of history's cruelest conquerors, Genghis Khan may have been the greenest. It is estimated that the Mongol leader's invasions unintentionally scrubbed almost 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere. From the article: "Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world's total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests. In other words, one effect of Genghis Khan's unrelenting invasion was widespread reforestation, and the re-growth of those forests meant that more carbon could be absorbed from the atmosphere." I guess everyone has their good points.

Comments

What? Outrageous!

[somersault]

Someone should do something about these trees stealing all our carbon dioxides.

Genghis was a greenie?!

[jollyreaper]

Glen Beck glares up at the sky. "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!"

Kahn?

[D Ninja]

Genghis Kahn? Huh...I tried to look him up, but couldn't find anything out about him. Lots of information about another guy called Genghis Khan, though. But...that's probably just a coincidence.

Re:Kahn?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Genghis Kahn? Huh...I tried to look him up, but couldn't find anything out about him.

He worked at Borland. He was Phillipe's brother.

yep...

[Charliemopps]

I'm sure Al Gore will start up a pay-as-you-go Mongol Horde you can join if you really care about the environment any day now. Kill your neighbors, save a tree!

Re:yep...

[I8TheWorm]

Careful, anytime I post something negative about Al Gore I get modded into oblivion and receive eleventymillion "just because he's a hypocrite doesn't mean he's a bad guy" comments.

Re:yep...

[roman_mir]

Kill your neighbors, save a tree!

- hhmmmmm. I like the way you think.

Hold on, I have a park to save.

Re:yep...

[I8TheWorm]

Did you go look them up?

Re:yep...

[srmalloy]

Reminds me of the old "/earth is 97% full. Please delete anyone you can" fortune...

Re:yep...

[uigrad_2000]

I'm sure Al Gore will start up a pay-as-you-go Mongol Horde you can join if you really care about the environment any day now. Kill your neighbors, save a tree!

Al Gore has suggested approaches that are much more sensible. You can either:

1) Bury your car

2) Send him money to offset your carbon footprint

Sure, the guy has made millions off America's guilt, but I'm sure he has our best interests at heart.

Re:yep...

[BluBrick]

Imminent? Perhaps you mean ominous?

Re:yep...

[TimSSG]

This is the perfect place to ask if the Carbon Trading happens in the USA; then, will murders get money for reducing the carbon footprint of the people they kill. It seems almost what some people want; they keep saying there is too many people on the planet. I am against Carbon Trading because some of the companies for it seem to be do all the evil type outfits. Tim S.

Re:yep...

[Xyrus]

I think Glenn Beck's Socialist Murder-a-thon might have a higher kill rate though. After all, he's got that chick with machine guns mounted on helicopters on his side.

I mean Al Gore's chastisements are a slower more painful death, but nothing beats a helicopter mounted machine gun. In the name of Jesus of course.

Re:yep...

[hesiod]

No, "hold on" suggests he was going to do it right then: imminent.

Some would like to do it again

[C_amiga_fan]

The nutjobs of course.

Re:Some would like to do it again

[ackthpt]

The nutjobs of course.

A certain "Austrian Corporal" tried, but his war machine was too dependent upon petroleum, right up to the end, so that eliminates him.

How about the Black Plague? Shouldn't it be called the Green Plague?

Environmentalism = genocide?

[mschaffer]

So, how long until environmentalists call for mass execution to reduce humanity's carbon footprint?

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

They already do. Just not on the shows non-environmentalists watch, for the most part.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps these stones were placed by environmentalists?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[MSTCrow5429]

There is a book titled "Green Power, Black Death."

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[flaming error]

Citation needed

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[camperdave]

Life after people?

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[Anonymous Coward]

Environmentalists tend to call for something a little less drastic: reducing the birth rate. One of the most effective, non-authoritarian means to do so is to improve a society's economy, but that has the side-effect of increasing resource consumption which tends to have a negative environmental impact.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[sourcerror]

Here you are!

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[BlackSabbath]

We don't need anyone to call for a mass execution. People forget that most systems self-regulate. Like the bacteria in the petri dish we will - at some point - get to the edge of the dish and find there's no more resources left. At which point there will be a massive die off. There may well be some of us left over to start again. Or not. Who knows?

And to those of you that think we can terraform Mars or something and just ship out there - I call BS. We can't do the basics on THIS planet economically. What makes it likely that we'll be able to do so on another planet where everything is X (where X>1) times harder?

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[Bemopolis]

My approach is to suggest to anti-environmentalists a program to reduce population growth. It goes something like this...


Go fuck yourself.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[The Grim Reefer2]

At least this one is funny.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[lythander]

They already do call for depopulation. While most of the world has decried the huge unjust deprivation of China's population to procreate ad infinitum, radical environmentalists have long hailed the policy as green, and in need of spreading.

The planet is a tool, and a resource. As it is also our primary residence, it should be kept pristine for our habitation. But it has no purpose beyond our sustinance, and without human life is meaningless (at least insofar as "meaning" is something humans provide.) People, please get a life.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[rapierian]

Easily done

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[tmosley]

You have obviously never read Malthus.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[tmosley]

You should learn about bacterial behavior before you spout off. When bacteria run low on nutrients they form biofilms. Biofilms are basically bacterial cities where individual cells consume far less than planktonic bacteria. If kept moist, bacteria will survive in this manner for a very, very long time. If they didn't, Earth would have long ago become barren and dead.

The real solution to limited resources is specialization and urbanization. Development of capital resources wouldn't hurt, either.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[fbartho]

You're right that if we can't do it here economically, it seems less plausible that we'll succeed if we go elsewhere, but what it does do is let us move out of our first petri dish into the rest of the fridge. We'll go from dish to dish, until we find a penicillin, or we find we can't leave the fridge...

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[Luckyo]

Consider that the moment you remove "must make short term profit" from equation, many major projects become very viable.

Terraforming Mars would be extremely difficult and costly, but the potential profit to humans as a race from lessons learned doing it, are simply astronomical. This is somewhat similar to industrial revolution - the cost of inventing and implementing many early inventions, as well as building necessary infrastructure was astronomical. The profit gained by both our race and individuals has far eclipsed the losses since then however. Same thing could be said about things like "terraforming other planets".

Considering how, in current real world economy Chinese are playing the long term profit at cost of short term one, and now tens of years after starting the fight they are emerging clear victors, I'd say long term approach is very viable as far as history is concerned. I do concede that it will not work in current capitalist system that governs the West at the moment without a major reform on our leaders' way of thinking back to what it was during industrial revolution era.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[mqduck]

Well, anarcho-primtivism is a fringe environmentalist movement that calls for an end to civilization and returning humanity to a primitive state. Doing so would entail drastically reducing the number of humans on Earth.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[uigrad_2000]

Citation needed

I'm not sure about plans for mass genocide to solve environmental issues, but here's a story about a couple that murdered their children and then committed suicide themselves to help solve global warming.

Their 2-yr old toddler died instantly, but the 7-month old baby survived. She was in a pool of blood before she was found, but was taken to the hospital. The bullet was removed from her chest, and she survived. Yay nature!

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[BluBrick]

Their 2-yr old toddler died instantly, but the 7-month old baby survived. She was in a pool of blood before she was found, but was taken to the hospital. The bullet was removed from her chest, and she survived. Yay nature!

Hopefully the parents did not pass on their homicidal stupidity gene to the child. Keep an eye on the news out of Argentina around 20-30 years from now (hmm, Unix date rollover, anyone?)

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[56ker]

How about the moon?

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[Luckyo]

Lack of atmosphere presents a significant extra challenge but sure, the moon is also a viable source if we can establish that it's bedrock contains valuable minerals.

Personally, I suspect the first thing we will be learning is how to mine the asteroid belt, as that won't require messing around with planetary levels of gravity.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[56ker]

An atmosphere can be generated from what's there at the moon with the appropriate equipment. It's also far quicker to get to the moon than Mars. Mars doesn't have a breathable atmosphere either, although given enough time it could be terraformed. Mars is 95% CO2, 3% Nitrogen, 2% Argon + traces of Oxygen, Carbon Monoxide and water. Humans need it to be about (we can tolerate slight variations) 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% Argon and traces of others.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[argStyopa]

-4 years.

2006: http://news.iskcon.org/node/509

In late 2006, the Texas Academy of Science chose to honor one Professor Eric R. Pianka, an eminent ecologist who studies desert ecologies, with its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award. Professor Pianka used the occasion to champion the notion, apparently without sanction of the Academy, that the Earth can only be saved if ninety percent of the human beings alive today are purged from the planet. He championed airborne Ebola as the most efficient virus to accomplish this. And while he stopped short of calling for terrorist action to bring this result about, he clearly implied that this was a right and proper future for our species and our planet.

(boldface mine)

I propose we start with Dr. Planka, and then see where it goes.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[Muad'Dave]

Planktonic relationships are impossible to maintain for very long. Sooner or later someone wants more.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[Muad'Dave]

Humans need it to be about (we can tolerate slight variations) 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% Argon and traces of others.

Actually we only need O2 at a partial pressure of about 3 psi. The absolute lower limit is around 2.32 psi, and spacesuits operate around 4.3 psi with elevated O2 content. There are plenty of other gases available if you must dilute pure O2 to prevent O2 toxicity. Many have more issues that nitrogen at elevated pressure, but probably fewer/none at reduced pressure.

Re:Environmentalism = genocide?

[56ker]

You also have to take into account gravity though if you want a breathable atmosphere. At low gravities any lighter gases will merely rise (hence the lack of atmosphere at the moon). By tolerate slight variations, certain amounts (even in small quantities) of gases like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or other things we find toxic would quickly make a breathable atmosphere unbreathable. The pressures and oxygen quantites you refer to are only for short term use. If people were to live and colonise these places, it'd have to be with a broadly similar atmosphere to that which we have on Earth as breathing for example 100% oxygen is eventually damaging.

Smooth Move

[Sponge Bath]

Way to go Mother Nature Network (MNN), you have tied Genghis Khan to environmentalism. Expect to see this quoted out of context on Fox.

Re:Smooth Move

[Solandri]

Way to go Mother Nature Network (MNN), you have tied Genghis Khan to environmentalism.

On the contrary, I think it's a connection which is both telling and needs to be made more public. The modern environmental movement and most people who are concerned about the environment have the same goal - preservation and conservation of the natural world. But they have very different opinions on the means to achieve those goals. Most people would prefer that preservation and conservation be achieved with as little inconvenience to our modern way of life as possible. Most hardcore environmentalists OTOH view controlling human population and consumption as the most effective means of achieving that goal. (Which is precisely what Ghengis Khan did through different means.)

The divergence is most telling with nuclear power. The only reason CO2 emissions are a tough problem is because of energy. CO2 is a byproduct of processes we use to extract energy. That puts the CO2 at a low energy state, and getting rid of it involves putting energy back into it. But putting energy back into CO2 defeats the purpose of burning the fuel which produced it in the first place. You'd be producing CO2 to extract energy which you then use to decompose CO2.

Nuclear doesn't have that problem. With a relatively cheap and nearly unlimited power source like nuclear, CO2 ceases to become a problem. We can build plants which do nothing but scrub CO2 from the atmosphere, pumping energy in to convert it back into oxygen and residual carbon (soot, which is a heckuva lot easier to sequester than gaseous CO2). The same thing for dangerous toxins like dioxin. They're only a problem because they're at a low energy state so natural processes (which generally don't have access to high energy levels) have a very difficult time breaking them down. With cheap energy, you can afford to run incinerators which atomize those compounds back into their constituent elements. These problems either go away or are greatly diminished with cheap energy, yet cheap energy seems to be one of the things the environmental movement vehemently opposes.

The same goes for population. Most of the developed world is close to zero population growth or even experiencing negative growth (families on average have only 2 or fewer kids). Nearly all of the world's exploding population growth is happening in undeveloped countries. Yet nearly every time you hear an environmentalist talk about overpopulation, they point to solutions involving changing what people in industrialized nations do, not changing developing nations where nearly all the population growth is happening.

We should be concentrating R&D on cheap energy sources for the future, not on cleaner but considerably more expensive "green" energy sources. It's only because productivity per person has vastly increased over the pre-industrialized era that we have the luxury to be spending time and effort doing things like worrying about the environment. But that increased productivity came about directly because of cheap energy. Make energy more expensive and our productivity goes down, meaning we can't afford some of our modern conveniences and/or we can't spend as much time and effort worrying about the environment. And we should be concentrating on modernizing and industrializing (and making contraceptives available to) undeveloped nations to arrest their population growth, not trying to get people in developed nations to adopt "low footprint" lifestyles similar to those in undeveloped nations.

Re:Smooth Move

[kindbud]

These problems either go away or are greatly diminished with cheap energy, yet cheap energy seems to be one of the things the environmental movement vehemently opposes.

Damnit, you were doing great until this. Oil is the only cheap energy source we have. As you correctly pointed out, a byproduct of extracting energy from oil is the production of CO2, a substance with high stability due to low energy content. So it is difficult to get rid of without applying more energy to it to change its state to something more easily disposable, a task which is counterproductive. So of course, environmentalists are opposed to cheap energy, because there is only one source of it, and it is the source that causes the environmental problems.

Nuclear energy isn't cheap, and if it were, it wouldn't be clean. Cheap nuclear energy would likely be more immediately dangerous to human health and the environment than burning oil is. Also, whatever cheap energy source is discovered or invented in the future had better be very, very clean, because cheap energy will find lots and lots of new ways to be used, and used with abandon, because it's cheap.

Re:Smooth Move

[DanielRavenNest]

@ Solandri - "We can build plants which do nothing but scrub CO2 from the atmosphere, pumping energy in to convert it back into oxygen and residual carbon (soot, which is a heckuva lot easier to sequester than gaseous CO2)."

That should have been written we can *grow* plants which do nothing but scrub CO2.....and then use pyrolisis to convert it to biochar (basically charcoal), which can be sequestered in the soil for on the order of centuries, and improves the ability of the soil to grow stuff. Alternatively, if you grow trees, they temporarily will store quite a bit of carbon. Then harvest the trees to store the carbon as useful objects made of wood, and then grow more trees. A nuclear powered CO2 scrubber might be cool and all, but when I owned a tree farm, I was removing 150 tons of it per year from the atmosphere simply by not cutting the trees down and letting them grow.

Fertilizer

[rjstanford]

Don't forget that battlegrounds tend to grow really well a couple of years after the bloodletting and mass burials. All those nutrients, don't'cha know.

Also had the first plastic bag tax

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, anyone caught with a plastic bag was burned as a witch as plastic hadn't been invented yet.

Re:Also had the first plastic bag tax

[Dachannien]

In fact, anyone caught with a plastic bag was burned as a witch as plastic hadn't been invented yet.

Pics or it didn't happen.

Genghis Khan == a polluter

[JonySuede]

the CO2 in Genghis Khan time's was not a pollutant but the methane that the 40 millions rotting corpses generated was.

Re: Genghis Khan == a polluter

[operagost]

Yeah... I wonder if they brought those into account.

I really hope that tax dollars weren't used for this useless study. I mean, what useful insights can we glean from this study? That we should bring back the eugenics movement?

Re: Genghis Khan == a polluter

[JonySuede]

I really hope that tax dollars weren't used for this useless study.

I am usually enthusiastic about funding seemingly useless studies (I use to be a researcher so I am biased) but at least they have to answer to an hypothesis or at least a question, here there seems to be none...

Re: Genghis Khan == a polluter

[Peeteriz]

The 40 million corpses were recycled as fertilizer in an ecologically friendly manner. The nutrients they had robbed from Mother Earth and defenseless plants have been returned to nature.

Re: Genghis Khan == a polluter

[demonbug]

Well, according to one estimate the world population in 1200 AD was about 400 million, so 40 million represents about 10% of the world's population. Assuming they otherwise would have reproduced at the same rate as other people in the world, we could say that there would be about 10% more people living today without the Mongol invasion (super simplistic, whatever). So, current population would be about 7.6 billion instead of 6.9 billion. Assuming pollution scales directly with population (it probably doesn't), this means that Genghis Khan's actions back in the 13th century are currently saving approximately 3 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year (based on a total of ~30 billion tons from ye olde random website, no idea about the accuracy of the number).

Totally true (within an order of magnitude or two, anyway), but really pretty meaningless. Nobody is suggesting we should execute people in order to reduce emissions, but at the same time you can't really argue against the fact that killing off 10% of the planet's population would significantly reduce emissions (especially if you choose the correct 10%, but I'm pretty sure McDonalds et al have that covered). If you kill off 100% of the population, there would be absolutely no anthropogenic global warming (beyond what is already in motion). Genghis and the rest of the Mongols were just more successful at making a statistically significant dent in world population than anyone before or since (that I know of), so his "accomplishments" in that respect offer the most interesting (meaning most significant results) case study.

Re: Genghis Khan == a polluter

[owlstead]

What the heck would you have done with the corpses? Shoot them into space? Store them in used gas fields? I mean, he did not kill anyone that wasn't going to die anyway, now did he?

Re: Genghis Khan == a polluter

[tmosley]

Not to mention all those horse farts.

probably too many Star Trek references on Google

[mschaffer]

So, did Genghis or Genghis or any other Mongol contemporary use the Roman alphabet?

Proof

[oldhack]

It's a proof that the carbon craze has gone insane.

Re:Proof

[outsider007]

No, it's proof that the terrorists have won.

Re:Proof

[flaming error]

Maybe, but more likely it's just a phemomenon where every degree of separation from the original research brings a more sensational (and less accurate) headline.

In this case, you have a Slashdot post about an MSN article citing a "mongabay" article citing a press release announcing the research. I see no evidence anybody in that chain actually looked at the research paper.

Green? Really?

[metrometro]

Umm, thanks for playing, but your concept of "green" sucks. Sustainability, permaculture, whatever green -ism you care to mention all have a concept of utility at their core, where we are in fact trying to create good outcomes for people. We want more planetary goodness because it makes for a nice place to live. There are outliers, of course, but pretty much all sustainability thinking boils down to managing our lump of rock so it is interesting and safe and pleasant.

Killing everyone you find is not a useful route to "nice place to live".

Re:Green? Really?

[Peeteriz]

Well, I could argue that an earth with only 600 million inhabitants would be a nicer place to live in most ways.

It would require to eliminate 90% of population, and that wouldn't be a nice process nor a nice time to live in, but afterwards.... pretty much any sustainable process that can support 6 billion bodies in a nice way can also support 600 million bodies in a much, much nicer way.

Re:Green? Really?

[metrometro]

Nicer for who?

Re:Green? Really?

[Peeteriz]

For the living. Who else?

Re:Green? Really?

[liquid_shadow]

The "chosen" few, I presume...Sounds a lot like Lebensraum. No wonder those ideas were so popular with the "elite" back the day, in both sides of the Atlantic.

Re:Green? Really?

[Peeteriz]

Invoking Godwins law is not an argument for or against it. As I said earlier, I don't know any nice way of achieving it - the nicest way seems to be a millenium of regulated/reduced/taxed population growth, as China has attempted, and that has a load of ethical drawbacks as well.

I do feel however that the natural evolved tendency of hairless apes would be to multiply until growth becomes limited by sustenance - i.e., until the average family doesn't grow because it can barely feed itself and can't feed extra mouths - not speaking about luxuries such as healthy food or consumer goods. Now THAT is a complete dystopia that we must avoid.
Optimistic technology scenarios avoid that automagically, but pessimistic scenarios state that after 100-200 years when oil has completely run out, and we can't sustain fertilizer-heavy agriculture, then sustainable food limit will be much lower than current population, forcing population reduction by starvation and/or resource wars.

Re:Green? Really?

[liquid_shadow]

A planetary "Lebensraum" for those with the chosen genetic profile, of course. Couldn't allow untermenschen to inherit the future. I for one welcome that.

WTF? So lets bulldoze the world?

[gblackwo]

That would be the greenest move right?

Re:WTF? So lets bulldoze the world?

[fishexe]

That would be the greenest move right?

A strange game. The only green move is not to play.

Any relation

[otis wildflower]

to the late, great Madeline Kahn?

I wish he was here now.

[Anonymous Coward]

If he were here, he could march into the Middle East, tell those people what the deal is, exterminate those who didn't like it, and we'd have World Peace.

Yes, I firmly believe that.

Kids, that's how fascism starts.

Just say'in.

Exterminate the Middle East and we'd have World Peace.

Re:I wish he was here now.

[cowboy76Spain]

Now, you are forgetting about China, Russia, those pesky African and South American that are in constant risk of revolution/inestability, and so on.

Sad thing, you won't be able to get their oil, labour, minerals that you consume so cheaply (compared to your own labour) today.

Also, when you are alone in the world with Canada, you'll find that they are also the most different people from you and you'll want to exterminate them as well.

Retard

This "humor" brought to you...

[SuperKendall]

...by the same people who brought you the "hilarious" No Pressure video advocating a more personal approach to elimination of the un-believing infidel swine who don't ascribe to your exact brand of environmentalism.

Because it's just such a pleasant feeling to think of 40 million people hacked to death and then serving to fertilize our masters, the Trees.

I, for one, welcome our new Tree Overlords!

Riiiiiight....

[Locke2005]

This sounds like an ad for (and makes about as much sense as) the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

Re:Riiiiiight....

[ScentCone]

This sounds like an ad for (and makes about as much sense as) the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement [vhemt.org].

No, this sounds like a stealthy ad for Neil Stepheson's latest project .

Re:Riiiiiight....

[turing_m]

This sounds like an ad for (and makes about as much sense as) the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement [vhemt.org].

Yes. All that VHEMT is going to achieve by their current modus operandi is to leave more non-environmentalists on the earth, by removing themselves from the gene pool. For their plans to be effective in the long term they need to reduce human numbers across the board (which would need lots of money or at least widespread buy-in by lots of people), or if they want to continue to use grassroots methods, eliminating or sterilizing those who would pollute the most.

Re:Riiiiiight....

[l00sr]

Well, more like the IVHEMT...

What would you consider out of context?

[SuperKendall]

I think you can accurately say that it was a really bad comparison to draw to begin with, to help people think more environmentally.

But how can you worry about a quote based on this being taken "out of context" when the whole of the context is in such poor taste? What honestly could Fox say that is really worse than what is being said?

I don't think it's fair to claim Fox is doing anything "out of context" when they simply report on a really bad idea someone had.

Re:What would you consider out of context?

[Sponge Bath]

What honestly could Fox say that is really worse than what is being said?

Here you go.

Re:probably too many Star Trek references on Googl

[BZ]

Hard to say for other Mongols. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_writing_systems the first time Mongolian had an "official" writing system of its own was when Genghis was about 42. And that was because Genghis conquered some neighbors and took a scribe prisoner....

There's no evidence that I can see that Genghis himself was literate. I'd suspect he wasn't. So I'd wager money that he did not use the Roman alphabet. ;)

Re:probably too many Star Trek references on Googl

[Hope Thelps]

So, did Genghis or Genghis or any other Mongol contemporary use the Roman alphabet?

Nope. But they were still Mongols, not Mognols. Many many people, peoples and places have English names, even if they don't use them themselves. That goes double for the historical ones.

Khaan

[nsaspook]

http://www.khaaan.com/

I've never heard such positive spin as this!

[erroneus]

Well, sounds like we have should have the environment in mind when we go about killing everyone else. Let's not do it for god, country or "freedom" any longer. Let's do it for the environment.

Re:I've never heard such positive spin as this!

[fiannaFailMan]

Well, sounds like we have should have the environment in mind when we go about killing everyone else. Let's not do it for god, country or "freedom" any longer. Let's do it for the environment.

I highly recommend Conn Iggulden's historical fictional Genghis series. Starts off in at birth and shows you the tough conditions he was brought up in. When his family was left for dead on the steppe they did what they had to do to survive. There were no cops in those days, no rule of law. If you saw some people appearing on the horizon riding towards you, you had to make sure your bows were drawn and your aim was good, because there's a chance they were coming to take your food sources in a bid to survive and were gonna kill you in the process. Oftentimes it was a case of "kill or be killed". The most 'positive' thing you can say about the story is the fact that Genghis united previously warring tribes of Mongols and brought some semblance of order to the steppes. He cut out a lot of in-fighting, mostly by conquest or threatened annihilation. Where people didn't submit to his will, he massacred them. He even put manners on the Chin (Chinese) and stopped their political manipulations that were keeping the Mongols weak, divided, and at each others' throats. The account of the siege of Yenking (Peking) was pretty epic. He managed to extract tribute from them after a long siege, and they got away with not being slaughtered.

The thing about Genghis is people tend to apply modern standards of morality to him. But in his early career it's far to say that every life he took had a self defence or greater good attached to it. It's in his later years, like the destruction of the Tanguk kingdom, where you start thinking "Okay mate, you're getting a bit out of hand here. You could have spared the civilians in this case, or at least the women and children."

So yeah, Conn Iggulden's Genghis series. Great reading. It is historical fiction but he actually includes clarifications about where he took some liberties with the story (like combining characters or events) for the sake of brevity or fleshing out certain people, so if you read all that and do a bit of reading on wiki you can build up a reasonably clear picture of where the guy was coming from.

Genghis Khan...

[ChinggisK]

What a jerk. Never did like that guy.

Seriously??!!??

[isotope23]

So according to this logic here are some of the greenest individuals of all time -

1 Genghis Khan 40 million
2 Stalin - 20 million-30 Million
3 - Adolf Hitler - ~ 15 Million
4 Pol Pot - ~ 1.75 million
???

Even Better, we can now rename the "Military Industrial Complex" as the "Carbon Sequestering De-Industrial Complex" or the "Green Clean Machine".
Next time you hear about how much money is being spent on the MIC, tell your congressman to double it! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!

Re:Seriously??!!??

[Steauengeglase]

In his deference, those numbers were probably off a bit. Head counts are seldom proper in time of war. Just look at the numbers of dead VC during Viet Nam. I'd imagine Genghis' conscripts were killing thousands, maybe millions every day, perhaps every second and ol GK was more than happy to hear that and keep the story going.

It wasn't quite like Stalin's Gulag or Hitler's Concentration Camps where records of X number were killed at location Y.

Either way I think I'd have preferred vassalage, open trade routes and constant fear under a Khan than "normal" life under anyone else on that list.

Re:Seriously??!!??

[RebelWithoutAClue]

The honor of being #2, and perhaps #1 goes to Mao's Great Leap Forward which killed 20-43million.

Hitler was GREEN

[iamhassi]

FTFA: "When the Mongol hordes invaded Asia, the Middle East, and Europe they left behind a massive body count, depopulating many regions. With less people, large swathes of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. "

Article on how Hitler was History's Second Greenest Conqueror for killing 11+ million people in 3... 2... 1...

Oh? Not awards for Hitler today? But 11 to 17 million less people means less fields needed and more forests, right? Surely with entire towns wiped out they returned to nature and helped the environment, right?

Re:Hitler was GREEN

[demonbug]

FTFA:
"When the Mongol hordes invaded Asia, the Middle East, and Europe they left behind a massive body count, depopulating many regions. With less people, large swathes of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. "

Article on how Hitler was History's Second Greenest Conqueror for killing 11+ million people in 3... 2... 1...

Oh? Not awards for Hitler today? But 11 to 17 million less people means less fields needed and more forests, right? Surely with entire towns wiped out they returned to nature and helped the environment, right?

No, because Hitler only picked out specific members of towns for execution, generally just slightly reducing the population of lots of places but not really impacting overall land use (also, he introduced us to the Autobahn, and just look at what that has resulted in). Genghis was much more of a progressive, killing everyone equally, resulting in large swathes of uninhabited land where resisting cities used to be. Stalin gets negative points because while he did kill lots of people, he also re-populated a whole bunch of the areas that Ghengis had gone to the trouble of de-populating in the first place.

Re:Hitler was GREEN

[Swampash]

When you gas people with the exhaust from a running internal combustion engine and then burn the bodies, you release a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Re:Hitler was GREEN

[shutdown -p now]

Hitler doesn't get a cookie because he used highly polluting methods of disposing with all those pesky humans, disposing high amounts of harmful chemicals such as carbon monoxide and lead into the environment.

In contrast, Genghis Khan responsibly used materials that are generally harmless, and either naturally compostable (e.g. wood), or easily recyclable (i.e. iron).

Re:Hitler was GREEN

[will_die]

Except hitler used vehicles and other polluting devices.
Besides Pol Pot is already considered by alot of theses groups to be a hero and the person to immitate. After all he did implement the lifestyle they want.

So how about Hilter, Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin?

[darkmeridian]

Each of those dictators caused tens of millions of deaths ... why aren't they less "green" than Genghis Kahn? Did the article take into account the method of death used? I guess the Nazis used a lot of gas running the trains to the concentration camps, but what about Pol Pot or Stalin, who just starved tens of millions of people to death?

A better explanation is that this is a stupid article that makes no freaking sense.

Re:So how about Hilter, Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin?

[glwtta]

About 60 million, give or take, mostly from the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Poland, Japan, and India.

Re:So how about Hilter, Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin?

[adavies42]

WWII is estimated at over 73 million dead, all told (both sides, military and civilian, presumably including the Holocaust in the Allied civilian numbers).

Re:So how about Hilter, Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin?

[tepples]

I think shutdown gave a good answer as to why Genghis Khan out-greened infamous dictators of the past century.

Come on, I know you can do it!

[CODiNE]

Somebody hurry up and say it so I can go "Godwin!"

Yep, you can verify the story yourself in simulat.

[Ecuador]

I just finished the Civ 5 Mongol Scenario a few hours ago, which, as some of you know, is as accurate a simulation of the Genghis Khan conquests as a civ-based strategy game can be, which is damn more accurate than, say, any platform game I can think of.
So, I can verify, re-enacting the whole Khan campaign, I did get the feeling of bliss after my efforts for intensive de-population and re-forestation were on their way. As I was reducing large cities to rumble and burning the population (to avoid their long term unhappiness - I told you Civ 5 is accurate), I would find real pleasure in contemplating the good I was doing for the planet, by replenishing its oxygen reserves, and exterminating the humans (at least the AI controlled ones) that is plaguing the earth...

What about Colonel Green?

[Maltheus]

Granted, he killed slightly less than Khan, but now that he has Lincoln and Surak to back him up...

Re:What about Colonel Green?

[Foobar of Borg]

Granted, he killed slightly less than Khan, but now that he has Lincoln and Surak to back him up...

What? Lincoln and Surak fought against Colonel Green. Hand in your geek card, now!

Stupid article

[Geoffrey.landis]

The article is, of course, being stupid-- deliberately stupid, I expect, but still stupid.

The anthropogenic greenhouse effect was not a problem in the 13th century, and the the total amount of carbon dioxide that had been emitted by the entire human race at that point was trivial. To the extend that his conquests removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it was addressing a problem that didn't exist.

I will also point out that current carbon dioxide emission is about 30 billion tons per year. If the Mongols removed "700 million tons" of carbon from the atmosphere, then in the course of a century and a half of Mongol rule they accomplished the removal of an amount of carbon dioxide equal to about one week of modern emission.

Re:Stupid article

[Moryath]

Well, no, but it raises an important point.

China is the world's worst polluter. Maybe we should be following the Great Khan's example?

(warning: the aforementioned is only slightly tongue-in-cheek; after all, China is home to some of the world's worst human rights abusers, a regime which runs on slave labor, zero environmental protection, and outright theft of IP from anyone stupid enough to do business with them).

Re:Stupid article

[nospam007]

Khan? The Spanish Flu bested him on all fronts.

Re:Stupid article

[Low Ranked Craig]

If he were around today he might kill a bunch of carbon based life forms, but he'd do it with petroleum and Twinkies.

Re:Stupid article

[d3ac0n]

I think it raises an even more important point than you have touched on:

The inherent genocidal madness of the modern "environmentalist" movement.

Think about it; This article actually tries to put a POSITIVE SPIN on GENOCIDE. I see this all the time from "greenies", who basically view all of humanity as somehow "unnatural" and a pox upon Mother Earth. They view humans as utterly expendable and particularly those humans who happen to disagree with their eco-religion. See the "No Pressure" videos created by the eco-militant 10:10 group as a fairly recent example. It's a twisted and evil worldview and any sane reason-based person should reject it utterly.

Or, at the very least, demand that they avoid hypocrisy and off themselves first as an example to the rest of us.

Re:Stupid article

[icebraining]

China is the world's worst polluter

Not per capita, it isn't.

Killing 40 millions 'westerners' would be much more effective than 40 million Chinese.

Re:Stupid article

[icebraining]

I would say this article is actually a good satire of those extreme positions.

Re:Stupid article

[Geoffrey.landis]

So, uh, you are taking one article that is apparently written somewhat tongue in cheek, plus one (1) video, which has been disowned by pretty much every environmental group on the planet, as evidence that "greenies" "view humans as utterly expendable."

I think you could apply Niven's law to this. ("No cause is so noble that it won't attract its share of fuggheads"), not to mention Pournelle's corrolary ("...who will inevitably be the ones interviewed by the press.")

Re:Stupid article

[Stargoat]

FLU!!!!! just doesn't have the same Shatnerian quality to it.

Re:Stupid article

[Solandri]

The anthropogenic greenhouse effect was not a problem in the 13th century, and the the total amount of carbon dioxide that had been emitted by the entire human race at that point was trivial. To the extend that his conquests removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it was addressing a problem that didn't exist.

I will also point out that current carbon dioxide emission is about 30 billion tons per year. If the Mongols removed "700 million tons" of carbon from the atmosphere, then in the course of a century and a half of Mongol rule they accomplished the removal of an amount of carbon dioxide equal to about one week of modern emission.

You're forgetting consequential effects. If he culled 40 million people from the population during the 13th century, he didn't just remove those 40 million people. He also removed all their potential descendants. Given that the estimated population of the world at the time was about 400 million, a 40 million reduction works out to about 10%.

Since percentages aren't distorted by exponential growth, that means he's responsible for a 10% reduction in the world's current population. There are nearly 700 million fewer people alive today because of him. If we go with your 30 billion tons of CO2 globally figure, he's responsible for a 3 billion tons of CO2 annual reduction here and now.

Re:Stupid article

[fuliginous]

I tend to find that as soon as you mention population management people start leaping around and accusing you of talking about genocide. Actually my plan is always to advocate equal (or superior) education of women and equal rights. Wherever that happens the birth rate drops below death rate and you have a suitable planet saving decline in humans.

The genocide fear just shows the small minds of those who squeal about it.

Re:Stupid article

[TapeCutter]

"I see this all the time from "greenies"

You see it "all the time" because you are looking for a way to demonise your ideological enemy, expressing the opinion that the world is over populated has nothing to do with advocating genocide. The 10:10 ads was a monty python style joke, people such as yourself simply jumped on it as proof that jews^H^H^H, blacks^H^H^H, socialists^H^H^H, muslims^H^H^H^H greenies are a sub human blight on society.

Re:Stupid article

[Moryath]

I'm reminded of the old "A Modest Proposal" here.

Overpopulation is a real concern in many nations. It continues to be a real global worry; past issues with overpopulation were solved by certain technical changes (sewers and flush toilets replaced tossing shit in the streets, automobiles replaced horse and buggy, air conditioning and pipe-delivered or electrical heating systems replaced sweltering and siestas and wood-burning stoves) that we can't rely on for the future.

At some point, something radical has to change. Either a population limitation will happen from within, or it'll happen because of some hurdle we can't overcome. The scare of SARS, avian flu, etc were overblown, but the possibility of something actually nasty that's airborne and able to take out, say, 20% of the population is pretty real even in the age of modern medicine as long as it's pernicious enough.

With AIDS we actually got lucky that it's a body-fluid transmitted pathogen. Imagine a variant that travels by cough and doesn't get diagnosed till someone's been a carrier for a couple years.

Re:Stupid article

[HungryHobo]

The 10:10 ads was a monty python style joke

no.... no it's not.
for one thing monty python is actually funny.
That's just deeply creepy and threatening.

Re:Stupid article

[bunratty]

No, the article does not put try to put a positive spin on genocide. You're reading that into the article. The article says that Khan committed genocide, and as a result, forests grew and we can measure the amount of carbon dioxide that they absorbed.

I see this type of thinking all the time. When I point out a positive about X, all people seem to read is that I said X is good. When I point out a negative about X, all people seem to read is that X is bad. Similarly, you're reading into the article the statement "Khan's actions were good."

I don't know about these so-called greenies who think humanity is a pox on earth. I think probably an environmentalist mentioned a negative effect humans have on the planet, and you read that into the statement.

Re:Stupid article

[Luckyo]

The article is, of course, being stupid-- deliberately stupid, I expect, but still stupid.

Actually, it's very smart, you just have to be able to see through the obvious in-your-face shock effect to see the real message. It's something that anyone with a keen analytical mind has known for a long time now.

The biggest, most powerful cause of pollution is overpopulation. The more people, and the higher their level of life, the worse we have to pollute the planet to sustain it. This is largely caused by our "prime directive" as an organic DNA-based life form, we are driven to push the population up to as high as the ecosystem will sustain. This isn't a feature unique to humans by any stretch - essentially all DNA-based life forms are bound by this rule. Just look at any large predator mammal for an example: As long as there is enough food to sustain the large population, they will reproduce at high rate. Eventually there are too many predators and too few prey, and predator population is naturally culled by lack of food. Lack of predators causes less deaths to predators in prey species, causing their population to grow large enough to again cause over-abundance starting the cycle again. Problem with us is, we learned how to overstress the ecosystem to the level where we essentially strip-mine it by polluting it to get our population and level of life up - meaning when we hit the true upper level of the sinus curve, we may be looking at a fall from which we will simply be unable to recover, as there will not be enough functional ecosystem left to sustain our species at all. Greenhouse gas emissions are just a small part of a big picture where we, as a race, are essentially depleting the planet's capability to sustain our population at the rate where we are not only depleting the "prey species" like predators do, but also inhibit ecosystem from repopulating the "prey" as well.

And in the end, we will suffer the same fate of all other species that have become too numerous for ecosystem to sustain them. Unless we control our reproduction rate on our own. We are already seeing this in North Africa, where land has been strip-mined of resources needed to sustain farmland, causing desert's essentially irreversible (the costs of pushing it back are enormous) growth. But all signs are pointing to the fact that those are minor problems in comparison to what we are potentially causing.

Re:Stupid article

[bunratty]

I don't think the article is stupid at all. It's about measuring the effects of Khan's actions on the atmosphere. The point, as the article states, is to help understand the effects of land usage on the atmosphere and environment. Of course, we can stop deforestation and reforest deforested areas without killing anyone as Khan did. No one is saying that Khan's genocide was good -- many seem to be reading that into the article.

Re:Stupid article

[_Sharp'r_]

Since percentages aren't distorted by exponential growth ...

Of course, population isn't consistently exponential over time, but based more on environmental and technological factors, so he probably actually had a minimal impact on total world population over time.

Still, it's worth remembering that the ultimate goal of radical environmentalists seems to be to have less people, or at least have people be poorer than they otherwise would be...

Re:Stupid article

[WinstonWolfIT]

Sorry that's a terribly unsubstantiated conclusion. The birth rate is tied directly to population density, economic and biological factors. Unkill those millions and you simply trigger an earlier birth rate decrease. The actual population would be somewhere between now and 10% more than now, closer to now than 10%.

Re:Stupid article

[antifoidulus]

Especially if you consider the fact that conquerers like that mainly killed men and the elderly. The fertile women were usually raped, married off, and/or sold as slaves for above purposes. So the overall effect on the population would be limited, he was just replacing one set of sperm with another.

Re:Stupid article

[Mashiki]

No the article is indirectly implying that genocide = good. Because people weren't there. There's plenty of greenies that believe humanity is a blight, they're the atypical left-wing fringe of the environmental movement.

Re:Stupid article

[Unkyjar]

By your logic, any article that states that war stimulates the economy is also inferring that war is good.

Re:Stupid article

[Unkyjar]

Yeah but that's also the goal of radical conservatives, radical muslims and radical jews.

Actually, that's pretty much the goal of radical everyone.

See, I can draw generalities too!

Re:Stupid article

[Damek]

What the hell are you talking about? You sound like a conservative talking point from 1992, if that.

I can raise your anecdotal crap with an empirical observation: it's the modern Glenn Beck-infused conservatives who are always talking about taking up arms. Green politics is all free-market and eco- (as in economics) -friendly nowadays.

Gotta update your fear tactics.

Re:Stupid article

[Exclamation mark!]

From the link: ”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ...”

I agree. especially with a bit of basil.

Re:Stupid article

[bunratty]

No, you're reading that into the article exactly as I described. They mention an effect of a genocide that we can study to our benefit, and you have concluded that they are saying that genocide is good.

Re:Stupid article

[TapeCutter]

In your opinion.

Re:Stupid article

[guyminuslife]

Step 1) Scientists perform a massive study of historical interest, demonstrating the effect that humans have had on the Earth's climate, even prior to the Industrial Revolution
Step 2) Journalist writes a tongue-in-cheek headline about Genghis Khan as history's "greenest" conqueror.
Step 3) Slashdot editors file this tidbit of knowledge under "Idle."
Step 4) Self-righteous jackass on Internet claims that this proves environmentalists are genocidal maniacs.

Step 5) ???
Step 6) Profit?

Re:Stupid article

[Junior J. Junior III]

This is true, but it is offset by the number of people who are descended from Ghengis Khan. That man literally was one of history's biggest motherfuckers.

Re:Stupid article

[cusco]

No, the Mongol hordes actually slaughtered everyone in their path, they weren't namby-pambies like Hitler or Stalin. There were wide swathes of eastern Europe that were completely depopulated for centuries after.

Re:Stupid article

[IICV]

They view humans as utterly expendable and particularly those humans who happen to disagree with their eco-religion. See the "No Pressure" videos created by the eco-militant 10:10 group as a fairly recent example. It's a twisted and evil worldview and any sane reason-based person should reject it utterly.

Or, at the very least, demand that they avoid hypocrisy and off themselves first as an example to the rest of us.

Umm... I just wanted to point out that you're misinterpreting those videos, which isn't that surprising given how easy they make it.

See, what's going to happen is this: as of right now, something on the order of several million people are probably going to die due to the side-effects of global warming (their villages will flood, higher-energy hurricanes will blow away their villages, mosquitos and other parasites will suddenly find their lands hospitable...). If we start reducing carbon emissions right now, we might be able to limit the number of future deaths, but at this point a serious number is all but guaranteed.

The thing is, almost all of the people who kick the bucket due to global warming side-effects are going to be brown or yellow. So we white people don't really give a shit - it's going to be some poor Ethiopian farmer who gets poleaxed by a hurricane-driven motorbike, not some English or American dude. What those videos are saying is, well, if you don't start cutting back, you're going to be causing deaths - and they represent this by blowing up the person who doesn't cut back. It's a poorly made video, I agree, because it implies that "we will kill you if you don't cut back" - not "you will cause deaths if you don't cut back", which is the message they should have been trying to get across.

The thing is, though, fundamentally it is people like you who take this attitude - that humans are utterly expendable. By saying "you know what? I'm gonna keep on doing these things that really screw third-world countries", you are literally saying "The lives of a thousand Ethiopian villagers are meaningless in the face of my burning need to drive a gigantic car".

Re:Stupid article

[cowboy76Spain]

That's simply for people who is so dumb (or intentionally plays dumb in order to express his views), that ignores that most things in this complex world are complex enough to have multiple facets.

As you seem to have trouble with that simple idea, let's demonstrate:

• World War II and the arms race previous to it caused an increase in military R+D, from which some became latter available for civilian user (from microwaves to civilian jet aircraft, and advances in medicine). Now go and tell who I support the death of millions in WWII.
• After the World Trade Center attack, the closing of the USA airspace allowed to research the impact of airplanes in climate. Now go and claim that this post shows that I am an Al-Qaeda militant.

Need more examples?

Re:Stupid article

[Weirsbaski]

Since percentages aren't distorted by exponential growth, that means he's responsible for a 10% reduction in the world's current population.

Not necessarily.

Suppose for a minute 2 parallel timelines- one where Khan killed lots of people, a second where he didn't. You can't assume that timeline-1's (relatively uncrowded) population would would increase at exactly the same rate as timeline-2's (relatively crowded) population. Maybe timeline 2 would produce more children (people closer together plus a safer societal environment equals more couples having children). Or maybe the higher population density would subtly discourage having children (causing a leveling of population growth, as we're seeing in some places today).

Re:Stupid article

[cowboy76Spain]

I know you are a troll but I will feed you a little...

Cap and Trade IS free market. If it was not, an enterprise would apply for its cap and would not be allowed to do anything to it except to use it or return back what it has not used.

Cap and Trade is also about externalities. As Earth is finite, there is a limit to the crap you can put in it before it comes back / affects someone else. Cap and Trade means that you have to invest in order to keep these emissions low.

If you are so worried about free trade, go press your city hall to allow a dumpster next to your house... after all, the owner of the terrain should be able to do what he wants with his possessions, isn't it?.

Re:Stupid article

[HungryHobo]

right... on a related note the sky is only blue... in my opinion.

Re:Stupid article

[dargaud]

Think about it; This article actually tries to put a POSITIVE SPIN on GENOCIDE. I see this all the time from "greenies", who basically view all of humanity as somehow "unnatural" and a pox upon Mother Earth. They view humans as utterly expendable and particularly those humans who happen to disagree with their eco-religion. See the "No Pressure" [youtube.com] videos created by the eco-militant 10:10 group as a fairly recent example. It's a twisted and evil worldview and any sane reason-based person should reject it utterly.

It's certainly twisted, but not as much as the religious freaks who have 12 kids or more. Now those people make me want to puke. Their absolute egoism at wanting to propagate their genes and religion at the long-run cost of the entire human race is beyond words. What's so hard in understanding that only some many humans fit in the enclosed system called Earth. If we don't limit our numbers ourselves, tried and true methods like famine, wars and epidemics will.

Re:Stupid article

[mcvos]

TFA is not about preventing human carbon emissions, it's about people not using their land anymore on account of being dead, thereby giving forests the opportunity to take it back. And forests need CO2 to grow, which they get from the atmosphere.

Re:Stupid article

[mcvos]

No the article is indirectly implying that genocide = good.

No. The article is saying that genocide = good for forests, in some circumstances. A generic "good" is a lot more complex, and the article take it for granted that genocide is not good. The fact that you're reading something else into it says more about you than about the article.

Re:Stupid article

[mcvos]

You're forgetting consequential effects. If he culled 40 million people from the population during the 13th century, he didn't just remove those 40 million people. He also removed all their potential descendants. Given that the estimated population of the world at the time was about 400 million, a 40 million reduction works out to about 10%.

Since percentages aren't distorted by exponential growth, that means he's responsible for a 10% reduction in the world's current population.

The weirdest stuff gets modded up in this discussion. Population growth is not exponential. There are very real limits to population growth, like food, and the space needed to grow it. Population density brings a lot of problems with it.

It's impossible to tell how large the world population would have been had those 40 million people not been killed. It's likely that Russia would have been a lot less fucked-up, however. Kiev and Novgorod were reasonably democratic during the early middle ages, right until the Mongols invaded and moved the center of (much more autocratic) authority to Moscow.

Re:Stupid article

[hesiod]

We're a failure in evolution. A product of our own success.

Self-contradict much?

Re:Stupid article

[Muad'Dave]

I'd say sage goes better with the "Other, Other White Meat".

A restaurant near me has 'Child Spaghetti' on the menu, so tomato sauce must go well with child.

Re:Stupid article

[Muad'Dave]

What's a "j, bla, sociali, mus"?

Re:Stupid article

[Muad'Dave]

Talk to an engineer - they could develop non-flashing LED bulbs for you when you're in your home. Also, ask your doctor about whether having DC-driven, moderately bright white LEDs on glasses shining into your eyes to swamp the 120 Hz flicker around you would help. If they were really high-tech they could sense the external flicker and only pulse in the gaps (out of phase), so to speak. You might also test if a particular LED color better dampens the flicker.

Good luck - it sounds like a very unpleasant condition to have.

Re:Stupid article

[Hognoxious]

We're a failure in evolution. A product of our own success.

Self-contradict much?

Understand the difference between long term and short term even a tiny bit?

Do you work on Wall Street, by any chance?

Re:Stupid article

[Hognoxious]

What's a "j, bla, sociali, mus"?

it's the result of a method to test for assburger's syndrome. It works by tricking the subject into actually counting the occurrences of ^H rather than grokking the meaning of the joke like a "normal" nerd would.

P.S. Congratulations!

Re:Stupid article

[hesiod]

Our successful evolution contradicts "failure in evolution". In fact, given that evolution is a process and not steps toward a goal, "failure in evolution" is inherently nonsensical. It doesn't fail, it just happens.

Re:Stupid article

[TapeCutter]

No, "the sky is blue" is a fact, or are you one of those vacuous morons who believes all knowledge is mearly opinion?

Re:Stupid article

[HungryHobo]

And
"that ad is not funny"

is also a fairly straightforwrd fact.

on the scale of hilarity it falls somewhere in the thin section between rape and knifepoint and knock knock jokes.

Looking on the bright side of life...

[khr]

I'll bet many of his victims sang the song while dying... "Look on the bright side of life" about the good they were doing to the environment...

Bob Genghis Khan

[DudemanX]

Was this before or after he totally ravaged Oshman's Sporting Goods?

Re:Bob Genghis Khan

[Xyrus]

After. He needed the twinkies for the excellent sugar rush first.

Green in the Orwellian doublespeak sense

[ehj666]

What a load of crap. CO2 is plant food. More CO2 makes it greener, less would obviously make it less so. Funny how the supposed Greens get this so backwards. See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/ Of course seeing Greens take the side of a murderous tyrant would come as no surprise at all. :)

Re:Green in the Orwellian doublespeak sense

[cowboy76Spain]

Just one question:

Are you human or a plant? Do you enjoy CO2?

Maybe it is you who is getting it backwards...

Are you saying

[Provocateur]

All those people couldn't get in their cars fast enough to elude the invading horde?

cruelest conqueror?

[lostros]

I've always felt Genghis got a bad rap as a cruel conqueror. Did he commit acts of intense barbarity? Yes. But considering the amount of land slaughtered, the number of people killed by him was surprisingly low, the fear enticed many people to surrender without a fight, and life in the horde was almost always an improvement over the old ways. He was tolerant of any religion, made trade flow, and implemented fair laws. Killing everyone taller than the handle of an ox cart is certainly shocking, but for some reason killing more people in the traditional way, and then oppressing them is merciful and just.

Told ya so!

[Kazymyr]

Yet when I presented my "Bring Genghis Khan Back" idea at Kyoto, they threw me out of the building.

Who's laughing now, huh?

that is nothing

[z-j-y]

compared to Hitler Stalin Mao Che and the like.

Left are ecstatic about a strong man on the top. Now these dear leaders are also green! Oh My Fucking God.

Re:that is nothing

[shutdown -p now]

From the people on your list, only Mao may rival Genghis Khan on body count.

Green Movement == Kill Yourself

[RJBeery]

Nothing illustrates the connection between being "anti-human" and being "green" more than this story. No matter what thoughtful precautions you can take to preserve Nature, the better alternative is that you never existed at all. In other words, kill yourself so that the world may remain a pleasant place for the animals. :)

Re:Green Movement == Kill Yourself

[Jason Levine]

I don't think being green has to be the same thing as being anti-human. Just respecting that the planet's resources aren't infinite and there isn't some great cosmic garbage collector who will turn the trash you dump into gold. Reducing how much waste we produce is a "green" action, yet I don't think my use of a reusable Nalgene water bottle over thousands of disposable plastic bottles is in any way anti-human. I do agree that some people take it to the extreme and would slice humanity off the planet if they could, but not everyone who tries to be "green" is a "green fundamentalist."

Re:Green Movement == Kill Yourself

[DigiShaman]

Funny. I saw it as a Green Peace balloon-trial movement for War. Maybe even nuclear.

Re:Green Movement == Kill Yourself

[cowboy76Spain]

I'll have to repeat this posts because looks like "not so bright" people get extra excited with environmental issues...

I do not know why with environmental posts, the IQ shown in some posts drops so sharply...

So, someone does that video and you automatically asume that "this exposes the environmental mindset".

Let me play it too... all the people in the USA are mass murderers and rapist. That's right because I know of someone in the USA who was a rapist and murderer.

Do you get to understand it? If not, I think you should show your post to your boss in order to show him/her how smart you are...

And now, LISTEN AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND: The resources we use are finite and have to be managed (in the same way you manage how you spend your finite amount of money). If we do not manage them, we will end wihtout them. Life will continue after that (as you'd be still alive if you are out of money), but it might now be so pleasant to you.

Now you can close your ears again and continue trolling...

except....

[MoFoQ]

except that his armies would also release additional CO2 into the atmosphere...from you know...exerting themselves from all that killing...not to mention horses do eat grass, though they probably don't release as much CO2 and methane as a cow...I'm sure it's not 0%.
they probably cut down plenty of trees for firewood along the way too.

Re:probably too many Star Trek references on Googl

[Foobar of Borg]

So, did Genghis or Genghis or any other Mongol contemporary use the Roman alphabet?

Omniglot is your friend.

Yeah, pretty much

[HeckRuler]

This is funny, but it focuses on a revelation I've had about this whole "green" thing going on. By and far, it's a marketing term. It's something to slap on a product to help it sell. Maybe it didn't start that way. Maybe it has true roots and it's merely been co-opted by the marketing weasels. That's their job after all.

But the "greenest" thing to do is to not buy the god-damned thing. Or, by an extreme extrapolation, mass genocide. My wife tries to be a "green" consumer, yet we got a giant-ass TV to replace the free big-ass CRT that a friend gave us. And we've now got this water saving thing that can half-flush. But this thing cost $30. I'm certain that spending that $30 to save a few cents on water every month isn't economical. But I'm really not sure it's even environmentally sound.

So anyway, my argument is that we need some sort of empirical measurement for how polluting a product is. If it costs money, it's polluting if you follow the money back far enough. With that we could step away from this bullshit "green" label, and focus on the efficiency of whatever it is we're getting. To get real meaningful work out of our gizmos and services, and the lowest cost, with the least pollution. But maybe I'm just daydreaming.

Re:Yeah, pretty much

[HeckRuler]

uh huh, but sinking thousands into solar power when you live in the cloudiest city on earth isn't friendly to the environment. Neither does stuffing your house full of insulation, when you live in the mystical perma-70-degree coastal areas.

It might be a legitimate product, but this half-flush thing doesn't help us a bit. We live next to a major river and over a massive aquifer.

Re:Suggestion?

[Grishnakh]

You don't need to run around on horseback slaughtering people to reduce the population (or use guns). A fairly simple method was shown in the movies "I Am Legend", "28 Days Later", and "12 Monkeys".

Personally, I think it's only a matter of time before a super-plague does come along, and probably not human-created either. Mother nature manages to come up with all kinds of amazing stuff on its own. We've already seen a few attempts at reducing our population just in the last decade or so: SARS, H1N1, etc. One of these days she's going to come up with something more contagious, and we're not going to be able to deal with it in time before it causes huge losses.

as long as you are one of the 500,000,000

[mschaffer]

Since the Georgia Guidestones call for keeping the population below 500,000,000 people, who gets to decide who lives or dies?

Re:as long as you are one of the 500,000,000

[jimrthy]

Please mod parent up. Too many people ignore this fact.

Re:as long as you are one of the 500,000,000

[bunratty]

We can easily reduce the population to 500,000,000 without killing anyone. People die naturally. Just don't have as many children. In many countries, families are already having fewer children than needed to keep the population at the current level.

Re:as long as you are one of the 500,000,000

[BluBrick]

Just don't have as many children? Go against a reproduction instinct with hundreds of millions of years of evolution behind it? I'm not sure you truly understand the meaning of "easily"!

Environmentalists are sneaky

[mschaffer]

I haven't seen any shows calling for slaughter---Kahn style. But I see your point.
Environmentalists are sneaky. For example: they start things like "corn to ethanol" for fueling cars and other things. So, everyone feels obliged to use all of the food for the cars. The governments kowtow to the pressure to supply ethanol. Then, there's no food and large populations starve. Then, the people on die off (probably the poorest are the first to go). Then, global warming solved.

Re:Environmentalists are sneaky

[mcvos]

You don't solve global warming by starving the poor. The rich pollute a lot more.

Dsching.. Dsching.. Dschingis Khan!!

[bickerdyke]

Dsching.. Dsching.. Dschingis Khan!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdcHjkYO6ro&feature=related

In other news

[Locke2005]

Recent research shows that the Bubonic Plague was the world's greenest disease!

Re: The Firebird on your dollar

[jago25_98]

...doesn't actually have to disagree with your statement

Little Ice Age

[dmcq]

If that's true then he might have been responsible at least in part for the end of the medieval warm period start of the little ice age. Same as the cooling down again after America was discovered has been attributed by some to the death by disease of so many people there and the regrowth of trees in the Amazon basic. You can have too much of a good thing as far as being green is concerned!

Re:Little Ice Age

[LaRainette]

No it's not true because he didn't kill 40 million people...
This is total bullshit.

Khan was a ruler not a petty criminal for fuck's sake the guys ruled over half of the inhabited world at the time, set up the greatest most multicultural administration ever, a post service that covered 14,000 kilometres and used 50,000 workers and 200,000 horses !
He wasn't a fucking vampire.

That's not worse

[SuperKendall]

The original article essentially stated being murdered by the millions had the cheery side of being green.

The post you linked to only noted that people should kill themselves to be really green, which is less horrific than mass slaughter.

Save the earth, kill yourself

[tekrat]

That's what I always say, if you want to save the planet, get rid of the people!

I mean, Seven Billion? What happens when we outnumber insects?

Re:Suggestion?

[JWSmythe]

    12 Monkeys had a superior method to the other two. Accidental release would rarely have the intended effect. Nearly simultaneous release at major airports in Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Kinshasa, Karachi, Bangkock, Beijing. With say a 3 day incubation period, those infected and contagious would continue to spread the virus to all other international and regional airports, and from there, it would be spread to virtually every community in the world.

In the other movies, the Krippen Virus had an incubation period of minutes to hours (if I recall correctly). The Rage Virus had an incubation period of seconds. With such such short incubation periods, it's doubtful infection would continue over any significant distance. They make for good zombie apocalypse movies though. :)

A virus that requires minimal exposure to cause infection, and a prolonged infection to symptom period would be ideal. It would also take forever to cause a profound impact. If the infected died 10 to 20 years after infection, it may be too long.

Re:Suggestion?

[Grishnakh]

In the other movies, the Krippen Virus had an incubation period of minutes to hours (if I recall correctly). The Rage Virus had an incubation period of seconds.

Yes, but what was different about the Rage virus is that it didn't kill in seconds, it took many days or maybe even > 1 week. During that time, the infected became a bloodthirsty zombie, and was able to spread the virus through fluid exchange (primarily biting people). And then, even after dead, anyone coming into contact with the corpse's fluids could contract it.

It's been a while since I saw I Am Legend, but as I recall it was very similar.

What the world (or at least the USA) really needs is a virus that spreads quickly, but only kills lawyers, and harmlessly making everyone else a carrier.

Genghis Kahn was a decent ruler

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

That the Mongols were cruel hordes that engaged in wanton slaughter of "innocents" is a Western myth. There is no evidence to suggest he was any more cruel than the Spanish Conquistadors couple of centuries later or the Crusaders. In fact Kublai Khan gave more freedom to practice religion and allowed a couple of Christian missionaries in peace.

Re:Genghis Kahn was a decent ruler

[LaRainette]

Thank you.
Gengis Khan was probably the smartest ruler of this era period.
He did most of his actual conquest by submitting the local elite and using them to rule over the people but he also offered freedom in many ways : mongols didn't care for religion which at the time was uncanny.

The bloodsucking mongols is a total myth created by Europeans who were never really confronted to them.

Re:Suggestion?

[Thansal]

So, it's fairly tangential but I feel like bringing it up:

Am I the only one that has issues with the concept of the fast spreading zombie virus a la Rage?
It shouldn't spread. With an incubation period of seconds it should wipe out a city, or at least a good section of a city. However it shouldn't spread past that. For a virus that 'deadly' (if the zombies were alive or dead, I don't remember), it would require a much longer incubation period for it to actually spread beyond a limited ground zero. I could see movie scenarios where you could have pockets of infection where an infected sample (zombie, zombie fluid, whatever) is brought to a different location, either intentionally (govn't research) or accidentally (gore splatter on a survivor). However, it should again only wipe out a small area before running out of victims (Rage zombies don't seem to roam, they mostly shambled about in a small area, only running when they had a scent).

meh

End Dork Rant

Glenn Beck is gonna need an extra blackboard

[Torodung]

This article seems an immodest proposal, to say the least.

This is trivializing over a century of wanton bloodshed and terror to make a point. Poorly. It's a point that has been made by science in far more peaceful and compelling terms.

I couldn't find it funny. I tried. This is, IMHO, simply tasteless. Perhaps this will endure, as Swift above, but I doubt it.

Right now, all I can say is thanks for your small contribution to the death of rational, purposeful discourse. Good luck.

How can you even post this?

[Corson]

Genghis Khan was a mass murderer and rapist. I guess people who say that Hitler would have been a world hero if he had won WWII are right, after all.

Mongol sperm

[handy_vandal]

"He was just replacing one set of sperm with another."

No: he was seeding the female stock of conquered races with superior Mongol sperm.

Okay, okay -- the sperm may or may not have been superior, I don't know. But I think it's a safe bet that the Mongols believed themselves -- and their seed -- be superior. After all:

(a) They were the freaking Mongols;

(b) Everyone (well, every male, anyway) believes that he is better than everyone else. (As it turns out, there is exactly one male who is actually better than everyone else ... me.)

Re:Suggestion?

[sarysa]

I can just see someone taking the bait two years down the road, then pundits questioning the limits of free speech, gun control advocates tossing in their two cents, Palin probably getting dragged in somehow(even though you'd think Gore would), then people start chanting for more civility in politics, etc. The cycle begins anew...

Ebola

[zooblethorpe]

If memory serves, that is exactly the limiting feature of Ebola -- it burns through its host so quickly that any given outbreak is self-limiting.

The quick onset of symptoms from the time the disease becomes contagious in an individual makes it easy to identify sick individuals and limits an individual's ability to spread the disease by traveling. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#Transmission]

Re:Ebola

[JWSmythe]

That's why it's always fun to go to the hospital and say "I don't feel good. I've felt like this for the last couple months. I was looking online and I'm pretty sure I have Ebola"

    Just kidding, I've never done that. Well, never been serious when I did. :)

    I wonder how many people have watched Discovery channel, House, or whatever show with some obscure ailment, and then rush off to the hospital sure that their lingering ailment is what they just showed.

Re:Ebola

[silentbrad]

The first time I saw Outbreak, I was convinced I had the Motaba virus. Hypochondria is a bitch.

Re:Ebola

[JWSmythe]

    I'd make fun of you, but I've seen it happen plenty of times.

    I'm not much of a hypochondriac, so I avoid going to the doctor until it's very obvious I have a problem that I went to the doctor once, because I was really sick. 104 fever, and I woke up feeling like I was drowning (serious fluid buildup in my lungs). My ex-wife (wife at the time) drove me to the doctor, because I didn't feel coordinated enough to drive the 2 miles to the doctors office.

    I'm sure you've been through the exercise, where the doctor listens to your lungs from the front and back. It's normally a good thorough exam, listening to quite a few places. He listened to two spots at the bottom of my chest, and then one at the top, and immediately started writing out prescriptions. Yup, I was barely moving any air.

    Then my wife said "I'm sick too.". He checked across her back and said "well, I don't hear anything wrong, but I'll give you antibiotics just in case." She was really upset that he didn't prescribe her the hydrocodone cough syrup. I spent most of the next 3 days sitting outside on the porch with a trash can beside me, coughing up so much phlegm, it looked like I was puking.

    It can be annoying, where it's a competition for some people to be sick too. I have chronic back problems. 3 herniated disks, and hydromyelia/syringomyelia. When people ask me about it, I hear a lot of people say "mine hurts sometimes too." Sure, they hurt, but they've never have been in so much pain where they end up laying on the floor, unable to stand up, or even crawl to somewhere more comfortable to lay down. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I wish it wasn't me.

Re:Ebola

[Hognoxious]

If memory serves, that is exactly the limiting feature of Ebola -- it burns through its host so quickly that any given outbreak is self-limiting.

True - for the current strain(s), at least.

Re:Ebola

[Hognoxious]

He checked across her back and said "well, I don't hear anything wrong, but I'll give you antibiotics just in case."

And that, boys and girls, is how so-called superbugs are created.

Re:Ebola

[silentbrad]

Meh, go ahead. My mom makes fun of me for it all the time. As does my doctor, now.

Re:Suggestion?

[JWSmythe]

What the world (or at least the USA) really needs is a virus that spreads quickly, but only kills lawyers, and harmlessly making everyone else a carrier.

Everyone knows that lawyers aren't human. They are a strange and unusual species, that very little is known about. Vertebrates without a spine. Sentient life without a soul. You get the picture. I doubt we could engineer a virus to kill them anytime soon. There's only one way to solve it. We'll build 3 arks...

Need to remove 600 GT excess CO2

[DanielRavenNest]

The amount of excess CO2 in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution is easy to calculate: 110 parts per million x atmospheric pressure x area of the earth. It comes to 600 Gigatons. If 10% of the land area of the planet is devoted to growing trees to sequester CO2, at average productivity, you can remove about 6 Gigatons per year, so it would take a century to reverse the additions so far. That might be too long, so on second thought we might need those nuclear scrubbers, but the trees can still do their part.

Not So Green After All

[YetAnotherBob]

This corresponds nicely with the cold weather onslaught in the 1300's. the Little Ice Age that killed off the Vikings in Greenland and opened the conditions for the Black Plague in Europe and Arabia.

Maybe we should be worried about high and low CO2 levels.

Re:Not So Green After All

[Corson]

The Little Ice Age is conventionally defined as a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

The ultimate depopulation program

[boorack]

You see, population growth happens mainly in poorest countries. Western countries got rid of this problem to the point the opposite social problem occurs. Maybe it's time to educate women how to avoid unplanned pregnancy and make anti-conception stuff affordable for them. It it's not too late. Properly thought out as a part of some bigger effort it would coincide with improvement in overall life conditions. Unfortunately, our lovely corporations want life conditions of so called 3-rd world countries to be as low as possible to get their natural resources for pennies on the dollar, so meaningful change won't happen soon.

Re:This exposes the environmental mindset

[cowboy76Spain]

I do not know why with environmental posts, the IQ shown in some posts drops so sharply...

So, someone does that video and you automatically asume that "this exposes the environmental mindset".

Let me play it too... all the people in the USA are mass murderers and rapist. That's right because I know of someone in the USA who was a rapist and murderer.

Do you get to understand it? If not, I think you should show your post to your boss in order to show him/her how smart you are...

Re:Suggestion?

[h4rm0ny]

You don't need to run around on horseback slaughtering people to reduce the population (or use guns). A fairly simple method was shown in the movies "I Am Legend", "28 Days Later", and "12 Monkeys".

I can give you a more humane and long-lasting method of population control: education, equal rights for women in society and effective birth control. Anyone who is worried about third world nations outbreeding the West, should be focused on fostering these things in those nations.

Not the cuelest but the smartest most likely.

[LaRainette]

Gengis Khan conquered the vasted territory ever, by not slaughtering everyone as you seem to suggest but on the contrary using the local elite to control the areas.
He set up the vastest communication network (some sort of pony express ancestor) with 200,000 horses and 50,000 workers, that covered more than 14,000 kilometers.
He was the first great actor of globalization, as he unified the territories between middle-east and China and permitted Jewish, Arabs and Venetians merchants to travel safely to china.
He ruled and organized the biggest and fastest expanding empire of all time, creating sets of laws, installing a very powerful administration, and HE COULDN'T EVEN READ !
Not that he was stupid or not instructed but the mongols didn't have any form of writing at the beginning of their insane conquest spree !!
He chose to adopt the writing of the first people they conquered because even though he couldn't read he knew how vital that was to an empire.

Yes he apparently was the best tactician ever but he was MUCH more than that.

Is he greener than Hitler?

[Rsriram]

So did killing 20 million people in 6 years help in mid 20 th century more? Given than the average emission per person would have increased in the 1000 (or whatever) odd years!

Re:This exposes the environmental mindset

[LaRainette]

Ok their is no logical link whatsoever between any of the lines of your post.
I suggest you go troll somewhere else, or if this is not a troll (*sic*) that you read your crap before posting it.

Because I fail to see how Hitler or Gengis Khan are leftist for starters, and I also fail to see how you transpose left and right from the 1300s to the 2000s but I guess you EXTENSIVE knowledge of global politics throughout history allows you to draw such fine analysis.
Open a fucking book PLEASE.

And please define leftist for me. (yes you can ask your daddy or his daddy or his daddy)

Re:Stupid comment

[mcvos]

The inherent genocidal madness of the modern "environmentalist" movement.

Think about it; This article actually tries to put a POSITIVE SPIN on GENOCIDE.

I don't understand how this piece of drivel got modded up as Insightful. There's nothing genocidal about the environmentalist movement. At least not the mainstream part of it; there's always some loonies on the fringe, but like another comment already pointed out, that's like saying Christianity is evil because of the KKK, or atheism is evil because of Stalin, or the free market is evil because of Pinochet or Enron.

d3ac0n is an idiot in desperate search of anything to confirm his own wacky world view. There's no need for Slashdot to give him any attention.

Re:Stupid comment

[Moryath]

that's like saying Christianity is evil because of the KKK, or atheism is evil because of Stalin, or the free market is evil because of Pinochet or Enron.

All arguments I've actually seen in "mainstream" news organizations.

what a twist on this man...

[hesaigo999ca]

I preferred Alexander the great myself, he came and conquered, but allowed the opposing troops to join his, those that didn't met their deaths, so his army grew and grew....did he slaughter many, sure but not needlessly, when conquering, you leave behind you a mess that needs to be cleaned up, which costs money to do so...i imagine the less mess you create while taking over, the more money left over in your coffins afterwards.

As for the mass genocide, if we talk numbers, is ghengis kahn the worst of the worst, i do not know how to go about siting references for listing a top 10 biggest human slaughter machines out there...

already thought this/

[amazin0]

Had this exact same thought when I was 12.. N3XT

Re:Suggestion?

[Philomage]

By the token of depopulation being "green" then wouldn't the Black Plague be the greenest event in human history?

Re:Suggestion?

[Grishnakh]

There's a small problem with that: religion. Certain religions (namely Catholicism) are adamantly opposed to birth control. Not coincidentally, most of the nations with still-excessively-growing populations are ones where Catholicism (or other, fundamentalist, Christianity) is either strong or growing stronger: Latin America, and Africa.

And other religions are adamantly opposed to equal rights for women in society, namely Islam. And, Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion; even some people here in the US are converting to it! and of course it's also very popular in Africa. Worse, it's getting more fundamentalist, not less, and also, fundamentalist strains of Christianity are growing in popularity (esp. here in the USA), while the mainstream Protestant denominations are losing members quickly.

Personally, I think we're headed for another Dark Ages.

Dishwashing

[tepples]

my use of a reusable Nalgene water bottle over thousands of disposable plastic bottles

How often does one wash a plastic bottle, and how much energy is spent making dish detergent?

Re:Dishwashing

[Jason Levine]

We tend to wash the bottles once per week. The energy spent making dish detergent to wash the bottles is negligable because it gets used to wash all of our dishes as well. The full dishwasher was going to be run anyway, so adding a few water bottles to the mix doesn't cost more. Compare that with the energy to make and dispose of (or recycle) all of the disposable plastic water bottles one might use instead of the reusable one. I'm sure you'd find that the reusable bottle is the greener solution.

HTPC is better on HDTV

[tepples]

My wife tries to be a "green" consumer, yet we got a giant-ass TV to replace the free big-ass CRT that a friend gave us.

Might it be because one of the video sources that she wants to connect to the TV, such as a home theater PC, requires a TV with a high-definition input such as VGA or HDMI? Not many people are aware that VGA-to-SDTV adapters exist because they're sold online (e.g. at sewelldirect.com), not in Best Buy stores.

Re:HTPC is better on HDTV

[HeckRuler]

Partially, I guess. But it was mostly because there's this hole above the fireplace, and the big-ass TV wasn't quite big enough to fill it. Yes, there were plenty of jokes about filling holes. Move on.

Thank you for suggesting genocide

[Programmer_In_Traini]

Thank you for suggesting genocide as a long term solution to overpopulation and pollution and earth's warming. its good to know that good ole techniques still works. and you know, while we're at it, let's also celebrate the fact that we could all go back to IPv4 since there would be enough IP for all inhabitants of the world to have a static ip. im sure we can think of a long list of other positive side effects to genocide.

Greenest plague!

[Paracelcus]

The black plague must have done wonders for the environment!

Re:Suggestion?

[h4rm0ny]

There's a small problem with that: religion.

You'll note that education was on my list of things to foster. Not because education is incompatible with spiritual belief, but because it undermines religious dogma. I actually thought atheism was the World's fastest growing religion. Can you provide some citations, out of interest?

We may be heading for a new Dark Ages, as you say. I suspect not, personally. But in either case, what I said stands: the most human and long-term effective method of population control is education, equal rights for women and convenient, cheap birth control. Plagues burn out, wars trigger vast amounts of shagging and reproduction as soon as they're over. But a whole generation of educated, successful people begets a smaller number of offspring who, in turn, are guided by their parents to be similarly educated and successful. Whether you want to throw up your hands in the air and say: "religion means we're doomed" or roll up your sleeves and promote education and equality around the world, that's a personal decision that is orthogonal to whether or not education and equality lead to a reduced birth rate. Consistently we have seen that they do.

Re:Suggestion?

[Grishnakh]

But in either case, what I said stands: the most human and long-term effective method of population control is education, equal rights for women and convenient, cheap birth control.

I completely agree. But I'm not hopeful about the way things are headed these days.

Re:Suggestion?

[Hognoxious]

You'll note that education was on my list of things to foster. Not because education is incompatible with spiritual belief, but because it undermines religious dogma.

Indeed, but as long as the fundamentalists are present in sufficient numbers you won't get the kind of education you're proposing, and until you get it their number is hardly likely to decrease.

I actually thought atheism was the World's fastest growing religion.

I find that pretty unlikely. Atheists tend to be found in the developed world - people in poorer countries tend to believe what they're told. It's the latter that have the increasing populations. Many European countries are set to have muslim majorities within this century, though the politicians hush this up.

Re:Suggestion?

[Hognoxious]

For a virus that 'deadly' (if the zombies were alive or dead, I don't remember)

Aren't they undead?