Ooohh, another credits trading business Al Gore can get into. That may help assuage his guilt about being filthy rich from his father's oil investments.
Wipe Out Global Warming: Sheryl Crow Proposes Limits On Toilet Paper
- Thread starter faceking
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Ooohh, another credits trading business Al Gore can get into. That may help assuage his guilt about being filthy rich from his father's oil investments.
A politician that's rich from his father's oil investments? Sounds familiar.
What never fails to impress me is this juxtaposition - prediction of the most dire consequences with the idea that trivial "solutions" will have any effect. If the phenomenon is real, and if it has anything to do with human activity, then saving squares of toilet paper is not the price we will have to pay to fix it. The price will be the castration of modern industry, leading to a global depression, in turn leading to almost certain mass starvation in those Third World countries which can't feed their populations with the fruit of fields plowed by ox-power. Just for starters. Much of the United States, all of Canada, etc. will become uninhabitable, as we won't be able to heat our houses, and humans can't survive year-round in those area without sources of heat, which tend to involve those dreaded emissions. These thing aren't just minor lifestyle changes.
The price would be severe and real. We'd better be sure it's a price we have to pay before we cripple ourselves so drastically. The modern liberal / pseudo-Marxist notion that only the rich and/or profligate will have to pay is, as usual, sheer fantasy.
I can only think of one who's lecturing all and sundry about how it's a moral issue. Fuck science! Fuck economics! Feels good, I suppose, though it's not too likely to work. None of the laws of thermodynamics involve anything which "feels good."
JustAsking
Sexy Member
I have concluded that one doesn't have to expend any where near the energy refuting ignorant science deniers of GW than in other areas such as HIV/AIDS and Evolution.
First, the number of highly visible global events caused by GW will be coming fast and furious. If the tipping point for societal awareness and acceptance of human induced GW is not already here, it will be in the next year or so.
In the language of "framing", GW resonates with the nurturing frame and the fear frame in a way that something like the Theory of Evolution does not. Therefore the reality of the problem will quickly override the politics of it. It will not be long now when almost everyone becomes extremely alarmed about the environment and our contribution to it.
At this point all the ignorant deniers will be castigated by every common man in the street. So my recommendation is to just go ahead and start doing what you need to do to lower your GW impact and evangelize it to others. Let the deniers dig their own holes.
First, the number of highly visible global events caused by GW will be coming fast and furious. If the tipping point for societal awareness and acceptance of human induced GW is not already here, it will be in the next year or so.
In the language of "framing", GW resonates with the nurturing frame and the fear frame in a way that something like the Theory of Evolution does not. Therefore the reality of the problem will quickly override the politics of it. It will not be long now when almost everyone becomes extremely alarmed about the environment and our contribution to it.
At this point all the ignorant deniers will be castigated by every common man in the street. So my recommendation is to just go ahead and start doing what you need to do to lower your GW impact and evangelize it to others. Let the deniers dig their own holes.
madame_zora
Sexy Member
Well environmentalists with their morally superior attitude suggested Cleveland claen up the stinking lake so it wouldn't catch on fire anymore, and with MUCH protest about the financial impossibility of it, it is now cleaner, and the city basically livable again.
LA imposed stricter emission controls on factories and cars to clean up the smog, and it IS better now than two decades ago.
To deny that we have either the ability or the responsibility to take care of our planet is equivalent to assuming you don't have to do even basic auto maintainence, and the thing should just continue working fine indefinitely. What an absurd view of the world. The planet wouldn't have to explode to become unlivable, and if we have any interest in our race surviving, I'd think some basic understanding of how it works and how we can live harmoniously here should be well in order.
We did what we did when we knew no better, and that's no crime. If we know better, but ignore that, then we ARE at fault. The world's really not flat, our pollution really does us and the other inhabitants of the planet harm, and the icecaps really are melting. What now? Oh, I guess just because Sheryl Crow's stupid, we can all just go on with our lives.
It wouldn't kill us to buy toilet paper that's made from recycled materials, but that's not going to make a significant difference. For realistic suggestions, I'd rather look to scientists than entertainers.
LA imposed stricter emission controls on factories and cars to clean up the smog, and it IS better now than two decades ago.
To deny that we have either the ability or the responsibility to take care of our planet is equivalent to assuming you don't have to do even basic auto maintainence, and the thing should just continue working fine indefinitely. What an absurd view of the world. The planet wouldn't have to explode to become unlivable, and if we have any interest in our race surviving, I'd think some basic understanding of how it works and how we can live harmoniously here should be well in order.
We did what we did when we knew no better, and that's no crime. If we know better, but ignore that, then we ARE at fault. The world's really not flat, our pollution really does us and the other inhabitants of the planet harm, and the icecaps really are melting. What now? Oh, I guess just because Sheryl Crow's stupid, we can all just go on with our lives.
It wouldn't kill us to buy toilet paper that's made from recycled materials, but that's not going to make a significant difference. For realistic suggestions, I'd rather look to scientists than entertainers.
Why should we care about posterity? Great, great, great grandkids? I don't know them, they aren't even fetuses to abort yet.
This is a sincere question: "Why should people care?"
Right. We are used to wasting most of our fossil fuels. The best cars are something like twenty-three percent efficient. Incandescent lightbulbs eight percent efficient. We're throwing most of our fossil fuels away up in our atmosphere. Wait 'til China builds freeways and autobahns.
As fossil fuels become cost prohibitive this gives impetus to develop other energy sources. So good. Meanwhile the average person can do simple things. Like NIC says walk to work. You really notice air quality when you walk or ride a bicycle.
As fossil fuels become cost prohibitive this gives impetus to develop other energy sources. So good. Meanwhile the average person can do simple things. Like NIC says walk to work. You really notice air quality when you walk or ride a bicycle.
Okay, get yourself a horse and buggy and build a rough hewn log cabin with outdoor plumbing. Why do we not use these things. Because we have better. Use your imagination. At the least pretend you have one.What an insipid answer.
madame_zora
Sexy Member
Right, I understand that. Many people do not, they think they get to pretend they don't know what they're saying with diversions like "We can't really affect the planet's survival", which infuriates me.
Why should people care? It's just basic stewardship. We're living in a place we didn't create and just basic stewardship dicatates that we do not wreck it and leave it non-functional. Now, if you're the type to borrow someone's car/house/clothes and demolish them and not worry about returning them in decent condition, there will be no way for you to care about the planet or future generations either. I can't help you there, there have always been an element of the population that is driven ONLY by self-interest. Either "they" will win, or "we" will win. Either we will pass laws and motivate consciences to clean up after ourselves, or we will not. Either the planet will go on, regardless of whether we do or not, none here will ever know.
It comes down to conscience. Personally, I find it lazy and disgusting that so many people choose their "moral beliefs" based on what's easiest for them personally. In the meantime, if I'm being asked to help clean up after the party, it only seems fair.
Because life isn't just about you or me. Because I want to know the earth will be a better place for others to live after i'm dead and gone. Because it gives me great joy to help care for this planet for as long as we're here. Because it's a more beautiful world when we do so. Because the most wonderful things one can experience exist in nature and I would like to extend that splendour to future generations. Because the human race deserves a clean, livable planet. Because Mars isn't fit to live on yet and this is all we have right now. Because this earth contains mysteries yet to be discovered and mysteries yet to be solved. Because i'm grateful for what the earth provides for me and others and I want to return that favour.
My question to you is: why shouldn't people care?
Not quite the path I was interested in persuing.
I believe that if human kind were to disappear for most any reason, 'life' (like after any other mass extinction) would continue and other life forms would evolve to take our place. After all there are a few hundred million years left before the sun goes postal on earth (a few billion years from now).
So, why should we care if mankind dissappears off the face of the planet?
My own modest home-grown measurement program (sea level in the North Atlantic), which has been underway for several decades (long before the current mania), has detected no change in average sea level, which leads me to believe that the icecaps are doing nothing much. It's perfectly normal for some ice to melt. As long as an equal amount freezes, everything's stable. If some doesn't melt, and any new stuff freezes - and new stuff freezes any time there's any snowfall on glaciers - then we have a real Ice Age. So it's a good thing that some of it melts. A photo of some senators looking at some running water with long drawn faces is not itself a sign of any crisis, any more than the same senators looking at a dead animal would signify a health crisis or even an "extinction event". Dead animals, like melting glaciers, are normal phenomena.
Does this mean there's no problem? Not necessarily. My measurements may be of insufficient accuracy (very possible), there may be other effects having nothing to do with sea level (probably), my own understanding of the dynamics of glacier life cycles may be incomplete (almost certainly), or it could be a bunch of crap I'm just making up (use your own guesstimate about that).
Right now the scientific questions (that is; reality) are eclipsed by the political questions (that is; in the main, fantasy) and are almost impossible to see. So who can you believe? Unfortunately, nobody. The guys who insist there are no problem have motivations to say so. The guys who insist there are problems also have motivations to say so, though to some observers they're not as obvious, and are too often assumed to be nonexistent. That is, the "no GW" types are claimed to have an "agenda" and the "lots of GW" types are assumed to have no agenda, therefore must be trustworthy. But I am aware of several agendas being pursued by the "lots of GW" types. I don't trust any of them as far as I can spit.
I'm wary of most "scientific" data too. The sad fact is, all science has to be paid for by somebody. If the somebodys don't get the type of science they want, then they fund some other scientists next year. Then repeat until the desired "scientific" answers appear.
Your measurements are probably accurate, but of insufficient longevity.
Quite likely the reason we notice such and such a glacier is smaller is because we've had film photography for about a hundred years and someone happened to make note of the difference.
Here is the composition of our atmosphere:
Nitrogen N2 78.084%
Oxygen O2 20.947%
Argon Ar 0.934%
Carbon Dioxide CO2 0.033%
For a total of 99.998%. There's also traces of 13 other elements.
madame_zora
Sexy Member
I'm too small minded to give a shit about that. I care about the more immediate future of passing along a livable life to future generations, because I have a daughter, and she may one day have kids (she may not, for that matter, in which case my concern would probably diminish).
It's easier to type the words "mankind disappearing off the planet" than to watch it. Evolution is jagged and messy, and we won't just go quietly into that dark night. We could suffer tremendous diseases, radiation waste conditions, overpopulation problems if the icecaps melting do in fact cause the available land masses to decrease.
Here's my personal belief part. I believe we are all born with the knowledge of good and bad. We know that some things feel good and some feel bad. Through growing, education and experimentation, we learn to control these dynamics. Socialisation teaches us which things fit with the society in which we live, but at the very most basic, most of us can agree that we like "good" things, although we disagree on what those things are, and we reject "bad" things, with the same disagreements.
To a primitive society, good things are mainly determined by needs for survival. As a society evolves, has more of its needs met, then desires become easier to address. Our society has been compared to Rome by some, and perhaps that's fair enough. Tremendous arts, literature, and music have come from societies that have the luxury of producing them, in fact, it's the majority of what we have to determine who they were. We have luxuries, and whether we fall, like Rome, will be largely determined by what we DO. Rome didn't fall passively, they failed to address obvious flaws in their thinking and behavior. A return to the dark ages isn't the answer, we need not model the past to learn from it. However, an unknown future, even a potentially good one, is a very scary thing. Most would prefer to bury their heads in fundamentalism, with a God who loves and supports ME regardless of who I am or how I act. Blanket bullshit, pure and simple.
If someone "drops the big one" and we all blow up, I won't give a shit, and perhaps that's no problem in the grand scheme of things. While I am alive, I WILL care, and do the best I can not to make my visit here a disgrace to those who left it for me to find.
Why are these intrinsically good things when life has no meaning beyond the just living of it? Maybe your feelings about them being good has been built into you as part of your genetic make up for the perpetuation of your genes?
Maybe I like pretty things. The Earth is pretty. I want to keep it pretty and fresh. Simple answer. Obviously you're too homely to reproduce (presumably even through sperm deposits) so naturally you're not concerned with future generations. If you don't like your life on this pretty planet, then why not end it now? I'm sure you would have no qualms since there's no meaning to life anyway.
Incidentally, just because you've so inspired me with your way of deep philosophical thinking, I'm going to stop cleaning my bathroom since there's no point to life.
Okay, I'm insipid. You're vapid or depressed. I was hinting at your thoughts when I said the earth will always be here and there will always be life on earth. Humans are basically a viral influence on Mother Earth. Are you playing Matrix scenarios in your head? I feel you there. We don't have to be self-destructive. Individually most people are not. Collectively we often are. Haven't figured out why exactly. It has something to do with your rationalizing.