Yeah -- and quite honestly, I'd rather get the flu than dengue fever, yellow fever, viral encephalitis, malaria, and a whole host of other tropical diseases.
Given that the scientific consensus is an average rise of just 2 to 4 degrees over the next 100 years, I doubt you're going to see a rise in tropic disease rates in temperate climates. For that to happen you would need consistent tropical temperatures and humidity for both disease and host to flourish. Even the worst case scenarios have Germany more like Southern California in the winter (where there are no tropical diseases) than Manila.
Additionally, the latest UN report on Global Warming downgraded the estimated rise in sea levels from 30 inches (2000) to 8 to 12 inches -- well below the 1 meter needed to flood 60 million people out of house and home.
I think what the article was trying to say (however clumsily and inaccurately) is that a rise in global temperatures is not necessarily the catastrophe many seems to claim that it is. The Earth has been considerably hotter and cooler in the past and life flourished -- even in Alaska where permafrost is melting to reveal -- guess what -- that all kinds of life that no longer exists there did quite well at those northerly latitudes.
Human nature is to fear change (it's unpredictable and scary) and therefore fight it tooth and nail (I could several examples via religion here, but what's the point). If there's one thing that we *know* will happen, it's change. Prepare for it.
Worst case -- humanity gets wiped out and Mother Earth starts again just like she's done millions of times before.
Video blogging will be just like traditional blogging - some quality, mostly crap, but all of it interesting to the intended audience...
You hit the nail on the head. The biggest use of video on the Internet won't be video blogging and it won't be public. You look at software like olivelink (olivelink.com) that lets people stream video across the web from their personal PCs and it's not video bloggers using it, it's 30-something women video-taping their kids, weddings, vacations, etc. and sharing it with family and friends as if they would pics or videos in their home. No weblogs, no public broadcasting, just private videos between people who knew each other already.
According to their engineers they've got something 30,000 users and more than 1 million hours of video shared -- and you'd never know it because these people aren't trying to be Steven Speilberg, they're just showing grandma her new grandson.
There were once tens of millions of buffalo that roamed the western plains... Same with Redwoods, forests, moutains that have been mined, fish that are now being deep sea dredged (look at the cod stocks around Newfoundland). I could go on and on
Puuulleeeezzz. The amount of time when buffalo and fish and redwoods didn't even exist is many millions of times greater than when they did. Just because something on Earth exists and then it doesn't (either gradually or instantly) doesn't mean the Earth is/was "destroyed".
The Earth is constantly in change. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. People are only freaking out because they've recently figured out ways to measure the change -- sorta like looking at a 20 year old photo and realizing that you've gotten fat, wrinkled and ugly.
Humans are arrogant little fleas who think they're in charge of the dog because they ran the ticks and mosquitos off and made a pimple on his ass. Got news for you - one day the Earth will shake us off too.
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It's been that way since PhotoShop 6 came out in 2001.
Given that the scientific consensus is an average rise of just 2 to 4 degrees over the next 100 years, I doubt you're going to see a rise in tropic disease rates in temperate climates. For that to happen you would need consistent tropical temperatures and humidity for both disease and host to flourish. Even the worst case scenarios have Germany more like Southern California in the winter (where there are no tropical diseases) than Manila.
Additionally, the latest UN report on Global Warming downgraded the estimated rise in sea levels from 30 inches (2000) to 8 to 12 inches -- well below the 1 meter needed to flood 60 million people out of house and home.
I think what the article was trying to say (however clumsily and inaccurately) is that a rise in global temperatures is not necessarily the catastrophe many seems to claim that it is. The Earth has been considerably hotter and cooler in the past and life flourished -- even in Alaska where permafrost is melting to reveal -- guess what -- that all kinds of life that no longer exists there did quite well at those northerly latitudes.
Human nature is to fear change (it's unpredictable and scary) and therefore fight it tooth and nail (I could several examples via religion here, but what's the point). If there's one thing that we *know* will happen, it's change. Prepare for it.
Worst case -- humanity gets wiped out and Mother Earth starts again just like she's done millions of times before.
Go mamma.
You hit the nail on the head. The biggest use of video on the Internet won't be video blogging and it won't be public. You look at software like olivelink (olivelink.com) that lets people stream video across the web from their personal PCs and it's not video bloggers using it, it's 30-something women video-taping their kids, weddings, vacations, etc. and sharing it with family and friends as if they would pics or videos in their home. No weblogs, no public broadcasting, just private videos between people who knew each other already.
According to their engineers they've got something 30,000 users and more than 1 million hours of video shared -- and you'd never know it because these people aren't trying to be Steven Speilberg, they're just showing grandma her new grandson.
There were once tens of millions of buffalo that roamed the western plains... Same with Redwoods, forests, moutains that have been mined, fish that are now being deep sea dredged (look at the cod stocks around Newfoundland). I could go on and on Puuulleeeezzz. The amount of time when buffalo and fish and redwoods didn't even exist is many millions of times greater than when they did. Just because something on Earth exists and then it doesn't (either gradually or instantly) doesn't mean the Earth is/was "destroyed". The Earth is constantly in change. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. People are only freaking out because they've recently figured out ways to measure the change -- sorta like looking at a 20 year old photo and realizing that you've gotten fat, wrinkled and ugly. Humans are arrogant little fleas who think they're in charge of the dog because they ran the ticks and mosquitos off and made a pimple on his ass. Got news for you - one day the Earth will shake us off too.