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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (10356)	3/13/2007 4:35:47 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 36917

PB, it's funny that I'm on the Climate Change Denier side of the debate, having been an environmentalist before nearly all the newbie wet behind the ears ignorant cultist eco-believers were born. I was born into it, having an uncle who was leading the charge against the Mangere Sewage Treatment Works which helped kill our Manukau Harbour, in which I spent many days [in, on and above], and which filled our night air with midges [and I mean FILLED] and provided stinks with the prevailing westerlies. I suffered from lead pollution as a youngster, when ignorant about such things. All sorts of things are disgusting pollutants and shouldn't get near our air, food or water. Not to mention the mis-handling of food including absurdly early picking of fruit [which should be tree ripened]. I don't deny that our output of CO2 is having some sort of effect. I hope it IS having an effect and there is no doubt that we have added to the CO2 content of the air to a significant degree. However, I'm not in the category that believes nature loves us and will look after everything in balanced harmony if only we would leave it alone. Nature is indifferent. Humans are just part of the ecosystem, but we are different in that we are sentient. I'm untheological in the normal sense of the concept of religion, in which superstitious people pray for a new tv set, good luck in their travels, and other benefits, such as death to their enemies. But I do think there is a suspicious tendency towards a teleological cosmos where things do not just happen randomly, but in which the four forces of the apocalypse direct matters and antimatters along what looks to be not far off a railway track. Sentience is the fifth force of the apocalypse which renders the other forces into reality. Humans are the link between perception [which is common among beasties] and sentience, which is conscious contemplation of the integration of self and the rest. That's my line anyway [which I just made up]. It doesn't look to me as though humans are putting at risk a lifestyle fit for humans by CO2 production. On the contrary, from what I can see, it's a good thing. Which is not to say any amount will be a good amount. But already, the human population is heading for a bust. The idea that everyone on Earth will want to roar around in 747s, Hummers and otherwise burn huge amounts of fossil fuels seems unlikely to me. There's more to life than that. It's quite nice NOT being on a road or in the sky. Cyberspace is the new cultural norm. That takes almost no energy and certainly needs no fossil fuels to run economically. I don't believe we will produce enough CO2 to be a problem rather than a solution. If there is a problem, we have heaps of time in which to fix it. We haven't even started on carbon taxes and cyberspace tax cuts. The dopey 'carbon credits' bureaucracy is under way. That is a ridiculous idea. It will create vast bureaucracy for no good purpose. Already, the squabbling over it has begun with forest owners in New Zealand being robbed of their carbon credits and forestry being dumped in favour of polluting activities [if CO2 and methane are considered pollutants]. That's what governments achieve! Untheologically, but teleologically, Mqurice

To: maceng2 who wrote (10356)	3/13/2007 5:36:27 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 36917

PB, joking, amusing, hilarious, brain fever etc aside, and ignoring the temperature part of the graph, you can surely see what I mean about CO2 being depleted ever since records began in the Cambrian era [ups and downs notwithstanding]. The big shift in the graph was during the Carboniferous era when plants were going gung ho stripping CO2 from the atmosphere. Then there was a revival going into the Mesozoic. But the overall trend has been towards zero, which is where we are now. Surely that must make you think that there is a trend and what that trend means. What it means is COLD. Lots and lots of cold. Hence the ice age. What is seriously scary is not the relatively piffling effects of people, but what might happen if we turn into a big snowball with a few equatorial hotspots, maybe just on the flanks of volcanoes. What people have done is relatively trivial and can be stopped overnight by simply turning off all oil, coal, gas, wood burning. Maybe keep enough going to harvest wheat, pump water and a few essentials. But if we are heading for Snowball Earth, we really could be in seriously large trouble. Nature is seriously scary when it gets going. Think of Red Giant for example. Think 20 km incoming bolide. The temperature part of that graph does look odd, with two main levels like an either/or situation. Surely temperature isn't so steady over such eons [other than sudden plunges, perhaps due to big bolides, ice ages, etc]. Mqurice