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Post by cletus on Feb 11, 2014 12:04:59 GMT -5
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Post by nathanp on Feb 11, 2014 21:24:13 GMT -5
While I am sure there is some truth to that, as we certainly have effected the environment negatively, what people normally take as 'climate change' (usually meaning only increased temperature) is assumed to be due to mankind. This is largely an assumption. Long term data in inconclusive on temperature. Global temperature change over the past 150 years may be rather insignificant, geologically speaking. We are still exiting from an ice age, and temperatures today do still appear to be lower than the average for our planet's history Wikipedia - Geologic Temperature RecordTemperature changes would be pretty far down my list of environmental problems today. Land and water use (and misuse) are hugely more important, and very few people pay much attention to those.
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Post by steev on Feb 11, 2014 22:28:52 GMT -5
While there is no doubt in my mind that our energy-using release of carbon, from coal and petroleum, long-sequestered in the Earth, has had effects on the environment and will have increasing effects (hello, China!), I am more concerned with the effects cascading from our over-population. Our inability to catch up with the needs of our increasing population in basic matters: water, food, shelter, and health care, let alone education and meaningful work, is likely to destroy us through conflict long before climate change will.
The notion that there are things we're simply better off not doing, seems to be beyond us, as a species, when there is a short-term profit to be had. We aren't evolved so far beyond monkeys as we would like to think, apparently.
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Post by cletus on Feb 13, 2014 13:43:44 GMT -5
It seems no other species can cause a mass extinction because for one thing it violates the naturally growth-enhancing feedbacks of ecosystems. The land and water mismanagement that promotes this is I think also what underlies the population problem: too many people eroding soil and breaking down ecosystems too quickly. In the last 100 years we have taken out around 20% of the vegetative surface cover of the planet. The plants moderate the climate so it makes sense that less vegetation leads to more erratic storms because as the sun hits the ground it heats instead of cools. I drove across the midwest a few years ago after corn harvest, flat mostly bare land. We noticed very strong winds blowing the car around. Once in a while we would hit a wet area thick with vegetation. We noticed the winds were minimal whenever we could see vegetation around, even short wetland grass without trees.
In the 5th extinction the meteor changed the climate, blocking the sun and causing the mass extinction rapidly compared to the current 6th one where we more gradually (but still fairly quickly) taking out links of the web. At at certain point though we can expect a rapid collapse, maybe its DEvegetating 45% of the land, maybe its acidifying the ocean to a certain point. This is why, apart from simply temperatures or the greenhouse effect, I think you can make a strong argument that human induced climate change is a result of the human induced ecological collapse.
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Post by steev on Feb 13, 2014 14:17:26 GMT -5
Think how exciting it will be if/when the Tundra-locked methane and ocean methane-ice start out-gassing!
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Post by cletus on Feb 13, 2014 14:34:23 GMT -5
Just like the ominous excitement of the Chinese proverb "may you live in interesting times." Its hopeful too because healing the climate means increasing the richness and functionality of ecosystems, which is something we should do anyway and everyone can get behind. NRP covered the 6th Extinction yesterday too, and I'm just glad more people are aware and hopefully won't look at me blankly when I mention it.
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Post by steev on Feb 13, 2014 21:58:50 GMT -5
The good news is that this is the Sixth MME. The Earth has experienced five and kept on truckin'; Earth will survive this, too. We may not, and may it be a lesson to us. Oh, wait; we won't be around to have learned from our mistakes. Best of luck to the bats, rats, and roaches; may they rise to achieve ecosystem balance, social justice, and a four-day work-week.
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Post by cletus on Feb 14, 2014 0:41:40 GMT -5
steev you just made me lol on the subject of mass extinction, nicely done! Hopefully when the chipmunks and such become smart enough to be making those decisions stupidly, they will look back in the geology at our track record and set some firm ground rules. But that goes back to the point you made earlier: rationally accepting that something should not be done is a far cry from not doing it. Chomsky made a similar point about energy resources. He said suppose even if we were all running our houses and cars from advanced cheap solar panels and batteries, it would not stop the war and power plays over oil in the oil rich areas because it would still be a resource powerful institutions would use for control and profit.
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Post by steev on Feb 14, 2014 3:39:02 GMT -5
If I can run my house on solar panels and have a truck that runs on batteries, I will still have supported the industrial complex that produced those swell products, and will still have benefited from the resource extraction and pollution required by their production. There is no free lunch.
However, to the degree that I can wean myself from continuing to buy their products, those power-hungry institutions can go piss up a rope.
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Post by cletus on Feb 14, 2014 9:44:34 GMT -5
Have you heard about the rhubarb battery? No metals, high energy density, and made from rhubarb! In theory we could we could have distributed manufacturing of say rhubarb batteries and graphene solar panels. This would avoid the need for expensive metals and silicon, but if Chomsky's right, it wouldn't stop fossil fuel resources from being plundered and burned.
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