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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (150258)	8/26/2002 12:27:09 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1584091

With the environment, its mostly a feeling thing with only a little intellect required. The fact that many people respond in a similar way on this issue scares me. The earth had to cool by only a few degrees to end the dinosaur age It was more then a few degrees cooling. Apparenrly it was reduced sunlight as well, in fact that was more likely to be the most important component. things are more delicately balanced then you seem to think... ...In same way, human errant behavior is putting nature into a kind of ecological pressure cooker that it can't keep up with. Given the way it works, its very unlikely that nature can sustain the assault on its fabric without at some point damaging it beyond repair. If nature was so delicate then we would have already had the disaster you are talking about. Within human history climate changes and emissions of gasses on a large scale by volcanos, extinctions of important species both human caused and otherwise all sorts of things that environmentalists complain will be disastrous. Sometimes these things happen on a larger scale or faster then the more recent human caused problems. I'm not saying that nothing bad will happen from human activity, or that we shouldn't take steps to avoid environmental harm, just that people get illogical about the possibility of disaster when they let their emotions override reason. Do you think we are invincible? I will not try to prove my point because I know you will not believe what I say. However, let me put it to you this way........are you willing to take the chance and not change our destructive ways when the result could well be our extinction? No we are not invincible but it would take a lot to cause our extinction. A nuclear war or an impact like the one that killed the dinosaurs would probably not do it. Any impact from the things you are talking about would be far less then either of those. Is it possible that continuing along the lines of doing what we are doing now could cause our extinction from environmental damage? Well I suppose it is possible but the possibility is so vanishingly small that it really isn't worth worrying about. Your not talking 1%, or even 1/10000th of one percent. What is worth worrying about is the far more likely smaller scale damage that could be done. Ridiculous apocalyptic scenarios just distract from dealing with real problems in realistic ways. Tim

To: tejek who wrote (150258)	8/26/2002 1:02:45 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1584091

You make me want to laugh. Do you think we are invincible? I will not try to prove my point because I know you will not believe what I say. However, let me put it to you this way........are you willing to take the chance and not change our destructive ways when the result could well be our extinction? In the same way that you don't trust Bush on the environment, we can't trust environmentalists. Environmentalists are constantly exaggerating the "effects" of man, converting minor or nonexistent problems into catostrophic conditions. The Earth is subject to "global warming", our forests are being cut at alarming rates; wildlife is dying out; we're running out of water; and there is a hole in the ozone layer that is going to cause catostrophic problems; the list goes on. That isn't to say there aren't legitimate environmental issues; but there exists a chronic overstatement that, unfortunately, many have "bought into" with the result being a literally false political issue. I can never forget Carl Sagan on Niteline describing what would happen if Saddam set Kuwait's oilwells on fire. He described a virtual holocaust resulting from a "nuclear winter" that would result. Of course, the wells were set of fire (perhaps Saddam saw the same edition of Niteline I saw, and actually BELIEVED it!). It was going to take "five years" to put out all the fires. What happened? The job was done in 8 months, no nuclear winter, and ten short years later the local environment is well on its way to repairing itself. If Environmentalist Wackos want to be taken seriously, they need to be a little more realistic.