Why Climate Change Won't Matter in 20 Years

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Solar panels are not as "clean" as many would believe



How Green Are Those Solar Panels, Really?

Sent from my SGP521 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

AH-HA! Now we know Ken's real motives! He's obviously not just a denier, but a polluter to boot!

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by Exile

. But for others, it's more of a self-centered effort to make themselves feel superior, to preach condescendingly to others who don't share the same beliefs, to perhaps relieve some festering guilt. This is the more cultish, intolerant, even religious side of CC advocacy that many find so objectionable, and one which only winds up undermining the credibility of the arguably more objective facts & science.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, MMGW is a replacement theology that gives the adherent absolution from sins and gives them self worth by saving the world. How bigger an ego boost can you get than by saving the world?

[Exile]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

So who started the "Denier" meme...

The Ayatollah?

[SV THIRD DAY]

The DOW has lost 911 points this week....
Will a recession be good for CO2 reduction?

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by Exile

The Ayatollah?

That's microagression.... Ha ha ha

[Exile]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

The DOW has lost 911 points this week....
Will a recession be good for CO2 reduction?

Yes, recession is good, and another Great Recession would be even better. But oil prices plunging to $33 is bad. Yet not enough people buying it is good. The decline in China's growth rate is also good. But they built another coal-fired power plant this week so that's bad. NPR recently blamed two earthquakes in Oklahoma on fracking -- also definitely bad. It's all so confusing.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

The DOW has lost 911 points this week..

The week ain't over yet.

[Mike OReilly]

The tenor of this discussion illustrates why I am not very optimistic about our civilization's future. We like to think we're different, or better, than all other critters on this planet. We could be, but so far we're proving that we're not.

Species grow and expand to the limits of their eco-system(s). At that point they hit natural limits and come into balance, either gently or harshly. We could choose to be smarter than deer, viruses or lemmings, but so far we're not.

So I'm somewhat sanguine about the whole thing. The planet doesn't care about us, or anything else. It will go on just fine without us. We've had a good run, but this whole big brain thing is turning out to be yet another evolutionary progress trap (with a nod to Ronald Wright).

I'll continue to walk my talk as best as I can, but without global collective action, there is no way individual action will make much of a difference. But as I say, that just proves that we are no different than any other species.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

The tenor of this discussion illustrates why I am not very optimistic about our civilization's future. We like to think we're different, or better, than all other critters on this planet. We could be, but so far we're proving that we're not.

Species grow and expand to the limits of their eco-system(s). At that point they hit natural limits and come into balance, either gently or harshly. We could choose to be smarter than deer, viruses or lemmings, but so far we're not.

So I'm somewhat sanguine about the whole thing. The planet doesn't care about us, or anything else. It will go on just fine without us. We've had a good run, but this whole big brain thing is turning out to be yet another evolutionary progress trap (with a nod to Ronald Wright).

I'll continue to walk my talk as best as I can, but without global collective action, there is no way individual action will make much of a difference. But as I say, that just proves that we are no different than any other species.

100%

Though I wouldn't let it ruin your day, just because we're not actually anywhere near as clever as we like to think. No reason not to sing and dance as much as we can on our daily march towards death.


(Ever read Straw Dogs by John Gray? )

[Kenomac]

Mike,

When you eventually begin cruising on a more world wide basis, you're going to discover the world to be much larger than previously thought. Most people even on this forum, only know the twenty or thirty miles surrounding their homes and then extrapolate their vision of their environment onto the rest of the world.

The world is huge and the vast majority remains unaffected by us lowly humans. It's not made up of oceans filled with garbage and city air so polluted that makes your eyes water. Mostly, there is no trash just laying around like on the Eco documentaries. Where we stay in Sardinia, I'd describe the environment as pristine.

Cheer up... The world isn't coming to an end.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Cheer up... The world isn't coming to an end.

Just a matter of time....
And the oceans are full of garbage, there's plastic everywhere, even the Antarctic isn't immune. Mercury run off, fertiliser run off, bit of a mess.

One day we'll be extinct just the other 99% of animals which have every existed. Hopefully not for a while yet though, but you never know, it was a human just like us that cut down the last tree on easter island. He probably though some technical advance would sort them out....

[fryewe]

Originally Posted by conachair

...it was a human just like us that cut down the last tree on easter island. He probably though some technical advance would sort them out....

New study suggests that humans didn't cut the trees, but that a population explosion of the rats that stowed away on the boats bringing Polynesians to the islands killed them by eating their roots. Guess they expanded to the limits of their ecosystem.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Mike,

When you eventually begin cruising on a more world wide basis, you're going to discover the world to be much larger than previously thought. Most people even on this forum, only know the twenty or thirty miles surrounding their homes and then extrapolate their vision of their environment onto the rest of the world.

The world is huge and the vast majority remains unaffected by us lowly humans. It's not made up of oceans filled with garbage and city air so polluted that makes your eyes water. Mostly, there is no trash just laying around like on the Eco documentaries. Where we stay in Sardinia, I'd describe the environment as pristine.

Cheer up... The world isn't coming to an end.

In 1998 there were thousands upon thousands of shoes that washed up on our beaches here ranging in age from decades to not that old thanks to some cyclonic swells. Aside from the distress at being unable to find a single matching pair, it was the first time I realised that we in fact do treat the oceans as a rubbish dump. Since then I've also had the opportunity to walk along a number of remote and rarely visited beaches facing primarily to windward and have been astounded at the amount of junk that the ocean throws back on land.

That's what makes AGW research into plankton and coral and whatnot so aggravating when the biggest danger to the ocean is plastic waste yet so little in comparison is done to address it.

Sent from my SGP521 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

When you eventually begin cruising on a more world wide basis, you're going to discover the world to be much larger than previously thought. Most people even on this forum, only know the twenty or thirty miles surrounding their homes and then extrapolate their vision of their environment onto the rest of the world.

The world is huge and the vast majority remains unaffected by us lowly humans. It's not made up of oceans filled with garbage and city air so polluted that makes your eyes water. Mostly, there is no trash just laying around like on the Eco documentaries. Where we stay in Sardinia, I'd describe the environment as pristine.

Cheer up... The world isn't coming to an end.

Thanks Ken, but as I said, the world is just fine. It's us who are at risk.

I haven't yet sailed far and wide, but I have cruised in some pretty remote and superficially pristine areas. I've also paddled into the wilds of northern Canada, into places that are unreachable by engines, or indeed most people. Yet even here the signs of human pollution and impact are not hard to spot -- if you care to look.

Perhaps the contrast between what you and I see is a perfect metaphor for this discussion. While you see nothing but unspoiled nature, I see the impacts of our global civilization.

Like most things, the "truth" is likely somewhere in between.

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Mike,

When you eventually begin cruising on a more world wide basis, you're going to discover the world to be much larger than previously thought. Most people even on this forum, only know the twenty or thirty miles surrounding their homes and then extrapolate their vision of their environment onto the rest of the world.

The world is huge and the vast majority remains unaffected by us lowly humans. It's not made up of oceans filled with garbage and city air so polluted that makes your eyes water. Mostly, there is no trash just laying around like on the Eco documentaries. Where we stay in Sardinia, I'd describe the environment as pristine.

Cheer up... The world isn't coming to an end.

Well, Ken, I sail world wide, and unfortunately I disagree with you. There is plenty of plastic, even the likes of large television sets, washed up on the remotest atolls in the world. Much of the world is being deforested and burned at a literally eye watering rate, around many parts of the world the debris of the logging industry making way for palm oil and the like is difficult to avoid just floating around. Throughout SE Asia the water is so choked with plastic that I long since stopped bothering to fish, as I caught 90% plastic. Standing on the doghouse of my vessel through thousands of miles of Indonesia, I have never noted less than a half dozen pieces of visible plastic instantly identifiable. In the loneliest parts of the Oceans you will happen upon large Chinese and Korean fishing fleets hoovering up whatever is alive there, and killing out the sharks as they chase whatever schools.

Europe has long since "cleaned up its act" so the beaches may appear pristine, and picked clean for the tourists, but I have dived around the coasts of Italy and Greece and Spain and Turkey, and there are basically zero fish of any size left. The place has been killed out by us. Only a few remnant tiddlers remain. The remotest beaches and coastlines of the high latitutess of Europe are covered in an astonishing array of plastic.

You are now living in the Anthropocene. This is indeed aptly named. There are not "endless wildernesses" left that you imagine. In just one example of how penetrating our influence has been, the chemical DDT can be detected in every fish in the oceans, and every animal on any continent, anywhere.

'Case is made' for Anthropogenic Epoch - BBC News