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Thread: Obama Rejects Keystone XL Pipeline!

  1. #61
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    Yes, Earth has warmed and cooled repeatedly. Climatologists know this, and they can quantify it. They have many lines of evidence: ice cores, varies, deep sea oozes, the geological record, fossil forums and diatoms. They have modeled changes in Earth’s obliquity, worked out the precession of the equinoxes, and much more. When all non-anthropogenic factors are quantified, there is a small but nevertheless significant amount of change that can only be ascribed to human activity.

    Studies of oxygen isotopes recovered from ice cores 100,000 years old, and measurements of ratios of carbon dioxide to oxygen in the air bubbles trapped in this ancient ice, taken in conjunction with changes in species of microfossils (often highly temperature-sensitive), lead to the same conclusion: Earth’s climate is changing at unprecedented speed, and the change has been accelerating for the last few thousand years. There are diaries kept by individuals, journals kept by amateur naturalist societies, weather records from weather stations worldwide, for the last couple of centuries, telling the same story: as humans have industrialized, significant shifts have occurred in such things as planting dates, first sightings of bird species, the date that ice breakup occurs in Alaska.

    I really like this old cartoon from 2010:
    http://greenmonk.net/2010/01/07/what...d-for-nothing/

  2. #62
    Williamsmith
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    Humans are at their very base predators. They have a means and will to live that surpasses any other species so they have risen to the top. They compete as hunter and gatherers. Climate change and global warming if you will, are simply other banners under which they will expoilt their fellow humans in order to stay at the top. The very proof of that is the insistence that all humans adopt “systems of sustainability” designed by a few.

  3. #63
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    Humans are at their very base predators. They have a means and will to live that surpasses any other species so they have risen to the top.
    Wouldn't a will to live include ensuring that the systems that support our life aren't destroyed? What exactly does "rising to the top" mean to you? To capitalists it may mean having the most employees and the most capital. To a religious sect it might mean having religious freedom and a supportive, self-sustaining congregation. To a naturalist or an aboriginal, it might mean living harmoniously with nature the way all of nature does, except us. In any case, "rising to the top" is completely subjective and based on cultural habits and preferences. Humans have a will to survive that demands both self-interest and cooperation and harmony. If there's ONLY self-interest, there's chaos. Nature is an interdependent web, not a runaway train to "the top," whatever that is.

    ETA: Great cartoon, Suzanne!
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
    www.silententry.wordpress.com

  4. #64
    Williamsmith
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    Humans will use cooperation and harmony only in their own self interest. They will abandon both when it is not needed. I am a climate change agnostic. If climate change is altering the world and the species that live now, evolution and natural selection will aid large population species with short adjustment periods. Small population large bodied species might become extinct but the human race with its capacity for adaptation will continue as the last species on earth. To have the expectation that the human race will work in unison to combat this problem is naive thinking. This is the same species which aims nuclear warheads at each other as an alternative to peaceful coexistence.

  5. #65
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    I think the cockroaches will be the last species on earth - or maybe the tardigrades!

  6. #66
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    Expecting the human race to work cooperatively for this problem (or other environmental problems) may be naive (and we know the drill industrial Western civilization and the human race at this point may indeed be a dead-end). But sitting back and accepting the consequences meanwhile is immoral (consequences are mass death in all likelihood). Pick your poison. I'll take naive.

    (But naive isn't really how to describe it, because it actually has nothing to do with whether one thinks a happy ending is likely, it has nothing to do with whether one is an optimist, but about what is the right thing to do).
    Trees don't grow on money

  7. #67
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    Small population large bodied species might become extinct but the human race with its capacity for adaptation will continue as the last species on earth.
    Man, that's no place I want to be--a barren globe like all the other planets. Back to being an orbiting blob of minerals with only a hint of life-sustaining water evident. Maybe there will be a colonized planet called Musk-town or Branson-town somewhere where crazy human adaptations have permitted some special people to board a starship version of Noah's ark. What a shame that we can't honor the miracle of the flourishing of life and the prolific abundance of species we have now. It's flipping the finger at the Creator, IMHO.

    Maybe I'm naive in believing in the goodness of people and the natural inclination to work towards common ends, but I believe the science that shows that humans are inherently cooperative beings, as well as self-interested. Self-interest drives me to feel fearful of my great-grandchildren's future quality of life by stripping the seas of fish, polluting the air, and reducing life to a soulless existence sans flora and fauna, as we kill each other in a mad scramble for survival.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
    www.silententry.wordpress.com

  8. #68
    Senior Member Rogar's Avatar
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    I don't think survival of the human species is especially at issue, but what form of civilization the future might hold is. And it will be lonely without the diversity of animals and plants, which we are already on the path to loosing. Climate change is just one big player in a system of biological population dynamics that will eventually catch up with us, one way or another.

  9. #69
    Williamsmith
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    Well, you folks are a right bunch of inspiring optimists. So if we accept the fact that we humans are the reason the apocalypse is imminent...then it only follows that like you say....we humans are the only ones that can reverse it. What does science say about how many of us it’s going to take to get that done? Let’s see....7.5 billion of us. Would it take every single one of us, half heartedly reducing our carbon footprint? Or just 50% of us living in a eco friendly commune? Could you perhaps sell permits for people to get an exception? Right, that would be a carbon tax. And why should a guy like me or my ancestors deserve to live in a world that was saved by people like you if I didn’t lift a hand to assist in that effort? Or maybe I don’t.

  10. #70
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    Well, you folks are a right bunch of inspiring optimists. So if we accept the fact that we humans are the reason the apocalypse is imminent...then it only follows that like you say....we humans are the only ones that can reverse it. What does science say about how many of us it’s going to take to get that done? Let’s see....7.5 billion of us. Would it take every single one of us, half heartedly reducing our carbon footprint? Or just 50% of us living in a eco friendly commune? Could you perhaps sell permits for people to get an exception? Right, that would be a carbon tax. And why should a guy like me or my ancestors deserve to live in a world that was saved by people like you if I didn’t lift a hand to assist in that effort? Or maybe I don’t.
    Gandhi said it best: Be the change you wish to see in the world.

    I always respect your opinion, and I know you're a nature lover the way you talk about your childhood in the PA woods. And I don't know who "people like you" (me) are? I'm not trying to do the math to see who needs to do what. I suck at math. And maybe the numbers won't add up and we'll all wind up in the armageddon you describe. But my mother taught me to make my bed and clean up my room, and for me, that's all it comes down to. I can't save the world, that much I know. But I can make my bed.*

    *And I can write my congressmen. And petition. And protest. And vote with my dollars. And take some of the money I earn from Big Pharma and siphon it to the NRDC, Sierra Club, and WWF.

    ETA: Forget Shorter Showers by Derrick Jensen
    Last edited by catherine; 12-17-17 at 5:29pm.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
    www.silententry.wordpress.com

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