Same with public transportation. We need more of it, and more people using it.
And we already penalize people for buying random bric-a-brac through garbage fees.
That does nothing to prevent those things from using up resources when made or transported, nor does it cut down on the space they take up in landfills.
As I said, show us something that we should be doing, but aren't already doing.
It's not a matter of what we are or aren't doing, it's a matter of how much we're doing it.
What's wrong, is that you don't see anything wrong with people who are *not* bona fide US Citizens having a vote in a US election.
According to the article you linked to, this is a ballot measure that will be voted on by the public.
Isn't that the whole point behind "States rights"? Letting people that live there decide on law that will only affect their local community? Who are we to judge what the people of Portland want for their own lives?
I recall a similar argument happening on another topic. What was it again? Oh right.
You, and the posters before you, were talking about global warming, not every pollutant known to man
And does every pollutant known to man not have the potential to affect global warming? I would think the destruction or damaging of entire ecosystems (such as swamps on the Gulf coast or rainforests in South America) would directly impact the overal weather pattern and temperature of the Earth.
Or are you saying these things have no bearing whatsoever?
I was responding to Vintermann's (original poster) and khallow's (post I originally responded to) own opinions that were on opposite sides of the debate, with no concession in either direction.
This is evidenced by the fact that I didn't single out any specific portion (or viewpoint) on the topic of global warming in my post...merely the topic itself. Like so many things, absolutes are rarely the answer, which was the entire point of my post.
You stated "I recognize we can't dump shit into rivers and into the air for all eternity with no side effects". The implication here is that if we all disappeared, and had no further environmental impact, that somehow things would be "better" - either the status quo would be preserved, or the "natural" course of the earth would go on unhindered (begging the question as to whether or not we know what that natural course would be, or whether it would be better or worse by any specific definition of morality).
I just meant that we can't expect to create landfills and clog up rivers and the ocean while simultaneously expecting zero side effects. Note that this doesn't only equate to global warming.
Now maybe, you didn't mean "shit" literally, and maybe you didn't mean that CO2 was equivalent to "shit" - you and I might agree on nuclear waste in rivers, and radioactive clouds of dust in the air as "bad". But if I read it right the first time, and your assertion is that "we can't put CO2 into the air for all eternity with no side effects", I think you are making a pretty radical leap. We could just have easily insisted that prehistoric plant life not put O2 into the air for all eternity with no side effects.
Putting words in my mouth. Never said CO2. I was referring to everything (which includes, but is not limited to, CO2.) The "for all eternity" was a reference to extremists on the side that think we aren't affecting the planet in any way.
And as I've said many times, CO2 isn't the only thing we have to worry about. This is what pissed me off about your response earlier in the thread...I touched on a number of subjects, yet every time your answer involved CO2.
What about nuclear waste? What about landfills populated by material that never degrades? What about cutting down billions of trees (i.e. filters)? THOSE are the things (amongst others) we need to worry about).
CO2 doesn't represent the whole problem. Ever seen Idiocracy?
I was responding to your fireball comment, which immediately segued into an eventual doom scenario, which we just don't have the evidence for with regards to CO2. Historically the planet has been at much higher levels.
Bad writing form on my part, then. I didn't mean to imply that "something real bad" would mean "fireball"...the "fireball" comment was touching on people who insist that the sky currently is falling (or will be tomorrow). The "something real bad" comment was in reference to things like weather, ambient temp changes, mass extinction of species, that sort of thing.
Should have been clearer about what I was trying to say -_-;;
I should have clarified: I'll vote for ballot measures and such, but I'm not going to vote for the "lesser of two evils"...I just won't vote for any of them.
As far as "choices given" are concerned, it's more a problem with the system in general. In this day and age (and who knows how long it has been this way), the very nature of what's required for someone to make it in politics, in my mind, immediately disqualifies them from being fit for office.
Do plants create landfills? Do they bury radioactive material? Do they crash tankers or blow up oil rigs, causing millions of gallons of oil to flow into the oceans over a very short period of time?
Silly question Pojut - how would your statement reflect in terms of other life forms? Would you go back into previous geologic eras, and apply this radical environmentalism logic against say, mammals versus dinosaurs? O2 spewing plants changing the atmosphere?
Those plants didn't bury nuclear waste. Those plants didn't dump toxic substances into water supplies, nor did they create landfills.
Also, how am I a "radical environmentalist"? I acknowledged in my original post that there are extremists on both sides of this debate, with moderate voices being drowned out.
At what point did you start believing that we could all disappear, and never dump a single bit of shit into rivers or the air, and *the world would stay exactly the same*, or *the world would take a predictable course which we're otherwise altering*?
If the majority of the population doesn't even show up to vote, that is a de facto vote against the system. Nobody can claim a mandate to govern under such circumstances. Any government elected under such circumstances cannot be considered legitimate.
Agreed!
I'm certainly not going to vote in this mid-term election, because I'm either disgusted by or uninterested with every single choice I have.
Something many people fail to remember is that we don't just have the right to vote...we have the right to choose to vote, which is a luxury some people in this world don't have.
I'm a very multi-lingual kind of guy...go most places in the world, and you'll see English plastered everywhere. Likewise, I think it's only fair to do the same thing with "alternate" languages that are common in this country.
That being said, there shouldn't need to be an "English" option when it comes to voting. you can (in theory, anyway) only vote if you are are a citizen or here legally. I can't imagine either case being true without being able to speak English well enough to vote.
I'll skip over the drivel about oil spills and such except to note that oil is food. The reason you don't see permanent sheens in the Gulf of Mexico is because it gets digested rather quickly.
Right, of course! What a waste it was to spend billions of dollars on cleanup, right? After all, it would have gone away completely and entirely on its own without affecting anything! Hell, why don't we just dump a million gallons of oil every day into the ocean! With all that food, I'm sure sealife population would explode!
There is some bacteria that finds oil to be tasty, but most of the creatures in the sea don't seem to like it all that much.
So what can we do now, that we aren't already doing? My view is that we're already doing more than necessary to deal with the above problem.
Ignoring NIMBY would be a huge start. Offshore windfarms, widespread adoption of solar power (both through solar power plants as well as solar cells on as many buildings as possible.) More widspread use of public transportation (this is more of an issue here in America than elsewhere.) Slowing or ending production on useless trinkets that just end up in land fills (like the random bric-a-brac sold at a truck stop.)
My body heat warms the Earth. My motion on its surface changes the moment of inertia. Everything affects everything when you look at sufficiently pedantic scales.
Your body doesn't drop millions of gallons of waste into the ground or water supplies. It doesn't destroy ecosystems, nor does it cause species to go extinct...species whose specialized purpose in the food chain is no longer fulfilled.
These are all things that would happen through natural disasters, but they also happen due to our actions. I fail to see how, for example, causing millions of gallons of oil to get into the ocean over a short period could be considered a pedantic example.
And don't give me that "oil seeps into the ocean all the time" line. It does, but not at the rate that happened in the Gulf of Mexico. If it did, there would be constant oil sheens that never dissipated.
Merely asserting that something changes when we do things, isn't interesting. We're only interested in changes that have a considerable adverse effect.
I see. So it's not worth looking into unless some activity, by itself and within an almost immediate time frame, was enough to mess things up?
You seem to be implying that we'll somehow, generations from now, stumble over some point of no return without realizing it, just because we didn't act now. I don't think that scenario is credible. And it ignores that our actions now won't mean much in the future when the problems actually happen (or don't happen as the case may be).
I also noted that the window we have is quite large, likely lasting longer than the lifetime of anyone reading this on the day that I've posted it. This was my point against "radical" environmentalists that insist the sky is falling TODAY, NOW!!!! when it clearly isn't.
That doesn't mean it won't.
It's worth noting here that few things the human race produces are cumulative over long time frames. Even heavy metals (the prime example) tend to get buried and bound up in soil or silt. Carbon dioxide has a limited lifespan in the atmosphere and there's strong evidence that plant-based carbon sinks such as algae in the ocean and marshes, absorb more CO2 as concentrations of the gas increase in Earth's atmosphere and oceans.
So merely "pumping shit" into the atmosphere doesn't necessarily mean that we have a cumulative effect.
You're right...but we're acting like it definitively doesn't. I say that since there is even the smallest bit of doubt about that, we should do something about it. I'm not saying drop fossil fuels tomorrow, I'm not saying we have to spend trillions of dollars changing our energy policies overnight, and I'm not saying the planet is doomed.
I'm saying that we're in a position where we can start to do something about it BECAUSE nothing of major consequence has happened yet. Why pass that opportunity when there is a potential, no matter how slight, of things going wrong?
"Application" was in widespread use, and geeks (and their acquaintances) used "app" forever.
See the bold part of your comment, which was exactly my point: it wasn't in widespread common usage. I now hear average, non-geeky folks referring to things like Photoshop or Firefox as an "app".
I know that, technically, there's nothing wrong with this...it's just really annoying.
It's the only thing he can be saying. I'm pointing out that there is no way we aren't affecting SOMETHING, and his response continues to regard past CO2 levels with zero comment on other potential envrionmental and weather side effects of pollution.
So let me get this straight: you are trying to say that we can put whatever we want into the atmosphere and water supplies at any rate we want, and it will never have any sort of effect on the environment? At all? Ever?
Slashdot Mirror
We already have windfarms and solar plants
But not enough of them, which is what I said. Wind and Solar Energy, combined, account for only 1.12% of all electric production in the United States as of 2006.
Same with public transportation. We need more of it, and more people using it.
And we already penalize people for buying random bric-a-brac through garbage fees.
That does nothing to prevent those things from using up resources when made or transported, nor does it cut down on the space they take up in landfills.
As I said, show us something that we should be doing, but aren't already doing.
It's not a matter of what we are or aren't doing, it's a matter of how much we're doing it.
That's correct.
And don't call me Shirley.
But by observing the article, you're changing it. Does that mean it will explain it to you...but not to me? :)
What's wrong, is that you don't see anything wrong with people who are *not* bona fide US Citizens having a vote in a US election.
According to the article you linked to, this is a ballot measure that will be voted on by the public.
Isn't that the whole point behind "States rights"? Letting people that live there decide on law that will only affect their local community? Who are we to judge what the people of Portland want for their own lives?
I recall a similar argument happening on another topic. What was it again? Oh right.
You, and the posters before you, were talking about global warming, not every pollutant known to man
And does every pollutant known to man not have the potential to affect global warming? I would think the destruction or damaging of entire ecosystems (such as swamps on the Gulf coast or rainforests in South America) would directly impact the overal weather pattern and temperature of the Earth.
Or are you saying these things have no bearing whatsoever?
I was responding to Vintermann's (original poster) and khallow's (post I originally responded to) own opinions that were on opposite sides of the debate, with no concession in either direction.
This is evidenced by the fact that I didn't single out any specific portion (or viewpoint) on the topic of global warming in my post...merely the topic itself. Like so many things, absolutes are rarely the answer, which was the entire point of my post.
Really? That's funny, because I mentioned the hyperbole of a fireball in my first post. A post in which any reference to CO2 is completely absent.
You stated "I recognize we can't dump shit into rivers and into the air for all eternity with no side effects". The implication here is that if we all disappeared, and had no further environmental impact, that somehow things would be "better" - either the status quo would be preserved, or the "natural" course of the earth would go on unhindered (begging the question as to whether or not we know what that natural course would be, or whether it would be better or worse by any specific definition of morality).
I just meant that we can't expect to create landfills and clog up rivers and the ocean while simultaneously expecting zero side effects. Note that this doesn't only equate to global warming.
Now maybe, you didn't mean "shit" literally, and maybe you didn't mean that CO2 was equivalent to "shit" - you and I might agree on nuclear waste in rivers, and radioactive clouds of dust in the air as "bad". But if I read it right the first time, and your assertion is that "we can't put CO2 into the air for all eternity with no side effects", I think you are making a pretty radical leap. We could just have easily insisted that prehistoric plant life not put O2 into the air for all eternity with no side effects.
Putting words in my mouth. Never said CO2. I was referring to everything (which includes, but is not limited to, CO2.) The "for all eternity" was a reference to extremists on the side that think we aren't affecting the planet in any way.
And as I've said many times, CO2 isn't the only thing we have to worry about. This is what pissed me off about your response earlier in the thread...I touched on a number of subjects, yet every time your answer involved CO2.
What about nuclear waste? What about landfills populated by material that never degrades? What about cutting down billions of trees (i.e. filters)? THOSE are the things (amongst others) we need to worry about).
CO2 doesn't represent the whole problem. Ever seen Idiocracy?
That was originally done by me...it was an exaggeration.
See here.
I was responding to your fireball comment, which immediately segued into an eventual doom scenario, which we just don't have the evidence for with regards to CO2. Historically the planet has been at much higher levels.
Bad writing form on my part, then. I didn't mean to imply that "something real bad" would mean "fireball"...the "fireball" comment was touching on people who insist that the sky currently is falling (or will be tomorrow). The "something real bad" comment was in reference to things like weather, ambient temp changes, mass extinction of species, that sort of thing.
Should have been clearer about what I was trying to say -_-;;
I should have clarified: I'll vote for ballot measures and such, but I'm not going to vote for the "lesser of two evils"...I just won't vote for any of them.
As far as "choices given" are concerned, it's more a problem with the system in general. In this day and age (and who knows how long it has been this way), the very nature of what's required for someone to make it in politics, in my mind, immediately disqualifies them from being fit for office.
No.
An uninformed vote is just as bad as a misguided vote. I'm not going to say I support someone if I don't.
Do plants create landfills? Do they bury radioactive material? Do they crash tankers or blow up oil rigs, causing millions of gallons of oil to flow into the oceans over a very short period of time?
No. They don't. That's the difference.
Silly question Pojut - how would your statement reflect in terms of other life forms? Would you go back into previous geologic eras, and apply this radical environmentalism logic against say, mammals versus dinosaurs? O2 spewing plants changing the atmosphere?
Those plants didn't bury nuclear waste. Those plants didn't dump toxic substances into water supplies, nor did they create landfills.
Also, how am I a "radical environmentalist"? I acknowledged in my original post that there are extremists on both sides of this debate, with moderate voices being drowned out.
At what point did you start believing that we could all disappear, and never dump a single bit of shit into rivers or the air, and *the world would stay exactly the same*, or *the world would take a predictable course which we're otherwise altering*?
I'm not quite following you...
If the majority of the population doesn't even show up to vote, that is a de facto vote against the system. Nobody can claim a mandate to govern under such circumstances. Any government elected under such circumstances cannot be considered legitimate.
Agreed!
I'm certainly not going to vote in this mid-term election, because I'm either disgusted by or uninterested with every single choice I have.
Something many people fail to remember is that we don't just have the right to vote...we have the right to choose to vote, which is a luxury some people in this world don't have.
Agreed.
I'm a very multi-lingual kind of guy...go most places in the world, and you'll see English plastered everywhere. Likewise, I think it's only fair to do the same thing with "alternate" languages that are common in this country.
That being said, there shouldn't need to be an "English" option when it comes to voting. you can (in theory, anyway) only vote if you are are a citizen or here legally. I can't imagine either case being true without being able to speak English well enough to vote.
I'll skip over the drivel about oil spills and such except to note that oil is food. The reason you don't see permanent sheens in the Gulf of Mexico is because it gets digested rather quickly.
Right, of course! What a waste it was to spend billions of dollars on cleanup, right? After all, it would have gone away completely and entirely on its own without affecting anything! Hell, why don't we just dump a million gallons of oil every day into the ocean! With all that food, I'm sure sealife population would explode!
There is some bacteria that finds oil to be tasty, but most of the creatures in the sea don't seem to like it all that much.
So what can we do now, that we aren't already doing? My view is that we're already doing more than necessary to deal with the above problem.
Ignoring NIMBY would be a huge start. Offshore windfarms, widespread adoption of solar power (both through solar power plants as well as solar cells on as many buildings as possible.) More widspread use of public transportation (this is more of an issue here in America than elsewhere.) Slowing or ending production on useless trinkets that just end up in land fills (like the random bric-a-brac sold at a truck stop.)
Just a few examples.
My body heat warms the Earth. My motion on its surface changes the moment of inertia. Everything affects everything when you look at sufficiently pedantic scales.
Your body doesn't drop millions of gallons of waste into the ground or water supplies. It doesn't destroy ecosystems, nor does it cause species to go extinct...species whose specialized purpose in the food chain is no longer fulfilled.
These are all things that would happen through natural disasters, but they also happen due to our actions. I fail to see how, for example, causing millions of gallons of oil to get into the ocean over a short period could be considered a pedantic example.
And don't give me that "oil seeps into the ocean all the time" line. It does, but not at the rate that happened in the Gulf of Mexico. If it did, there would be constant oil sheens that never dissipated.
Merely asserting that something changes when we do things, isn't interesting. We're only interested in changes that have a considerable adverse effect.
I see. So it's not worth looking into unless some activity, by itself and within an almost immediate time frame, was enough to mess things up?
You seem to be implying that we'll somehow, generations from now, stumble over some point of no return without realizing it, just because we didn't act now. I don't think that scenario is credible. And it ignores that our actions now won't mean much in the future when the problems actually happen (or don't happen as the case may be).
I also noted that the window we have is quite large, likely lasting longer than the lifetime of anyone reading this on the day that I've posted it. This was my point against "radical" environmentalists that insist the sky is falling TODAY, NOW!!!! when it clearly isn't.
That doesn't mean it won't.
It's worth noting here that few things the human race produces are cumulative over long time frames. Even heavy metals (the prime example) tend to get buried and bound up in soil or silt. Carbon dioxide has a limited lifespan in the atmosphere and there's strong evidence that plant-based carbon sinks such as algae in the ocean and marshes, absorb more CO2 as concentrations of the gas increase in Earth's atmosphere and oceans.
So merely "pumping shit" into the atmosphere doesn't necessarily mean that we have a cumulative effect.
You're right...but we're acting like it definitively doesn't. I say that since there is even the smallest bit of doubt about that, we should do something about it. I'm not saying drop fossil fuels tomorrow, I'm not saying we have to spend trillions of dollars changing our energy policies overnight, and I'm not saying the planet is doomed.
I'm saying that we're in a position where we can start to do something about it BECAUSE nothing of major consequence has happened yet. Why pass that opportunity when there is a potential, no matter how slight, of things going wrong?
Is it going to happen at the Thirty-One Flavors? Eh? Will it? Bueller? Bueller?
"Application" was in widespread use, and geeks (and their acquaintances) used "app" forever.
See the bold part of your comment, which was exactly my point: it wasn't in widespread common usage. I now hear average, non-geeky folks referring to things like Photoshop or Firefox as an "app".
I know that, technically, there's nothing wrong with this...it's just really annoying.
I'm a radical environmentalist because I recognize we can't dump shit into rivers and into the air for all eternity with no side effects?
Your definition of "radical" is pretty strange.
Take a second and read what he said. I'll even quote it for you: It wasn't a fireball.
I know it wasn't. That's why I said it was foolish to believe that would happen in the near future. Go back and read my OP.
Is today "pay no attention to what was said"? WTF.
It's the only thing he can be saying. I'm pointing out that there is no way we aren't affecting SOMETHING, and his response continues to regard past CO2 levels with zero comment on other potential envrionmental and weather side effects of pollution.
So let me get this straight: you are trying to say that we can put whatever we want into the atmosphere and water supplies at any rate we want, and it will never have any sort of effect on the environment? At all? Ever?