h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well said. All of this is only guesswork in any direction. We can't even get history right <!> Let's all keep a and push the elephant in the direction we think might work.

or just throw the peanuts that way.

No, im not even being so bold as to talk about global warming. That has only just started, so your right about us not knowing much about it - although I wonder if you are just playing at being the devils advocate in trying to deny the reality of it.

Flooding has other reasons relating to the loss of flood planes, faster draining of fields, even the way flood defenses have been built. Areas of buildings and concrete affect local weather patterns as well.

cl zoomer - how can you look at the weather on a scale of centuries? Surely the weather records don't go back that far?

Dire consequences are already happening - at least one island state has had to be evacuated because of a rise in sea levels, reefs have died due to temperature rises, there are thousands of environmental refugees and the hole in the ozone layer is currently three times the size of the USA. Fortunately the USA is not as big as most people think, they just oppose the use of the Peter's Projection world map...

I agree that we must be vigilant, but that vigilance is lacking in the general population - as UNEP said in their GEO3 report, "The level of awareness and action has not been commensurate with the state of the global environment today; it continues to deteriorate".

You seem to present concerns about the environment as connected with the Luddite movement. In fact it could be argued that the opposite is true - much of today's environmental degradation is due to unwillingness to change existing technologies, while much hope comes from technologies being pursued by environmentally concerned scientists and engineers - wind turbines, hydro plants, improving organic farming yields rather than soil-harming technologies etc.

Still, the National Academy of Sciences has claimed that we have already "exceeded the biosphere's regenerative capacity". I'd say that's a negative we MUST focus on - something's gotta change! Yes, the present is better than the past in many ways. But present consumption of resources is not sustainable. If we keep going as we are - no predictions of further growth, just consuming resources at today's rate - we will use up the world's resources.

Alvin Toffler- "Future Shock"
1971, I believe.
Almost verbatim and in 3/4 time, too.

Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?

I'm not saying we should turn our back on a problem, just not lump all of technology into the *bad* category. I agree with you in regard to alternative technology but that phrase alone lumps *us* against *them*. I read reports with a grain of salt is all I'm saying and I am not willing to believe everything that's written. Just as you may not believe everything I write I must balance what you write with research. Talking about local weather patterns doesn't look at global climatic change which is normally measured in hundreds and thousands of years. I am only saying that some of the change we see is natural, not all of it. Let's find out more *while* we find ways to help. Conflicting data and conclussions are most probably not the result of an evil global cabal intent on destroying earth or even stupid capitalists. It's usually valid and funded by no one with an agenda. Check it out.

Oh, please, I need a good ol'fashioned cabal right now.
It makes things so much easier.
I still choose to blame the hairspray and the backyard barbecues.

Bottisatva, I was citing chapter and verse of your earlier comment.
Those of us of a certain age have heard it all before, at least twice.

There were people in 1966 who said that we would all be wearing gas masks and all the urban trees and birds would be dead by 2000...

At least three times I've heard the death knell rung on the economy.
The survivalists have popped up with their stored food and their .22 cartridges as legal tender three times since 1977.
Every single flood, earthquake and hurricane in my lifetime has been cited as a harbinger of Divine retribution leading to the tribulations of the end times.

When it was new, I was excited and concerned. Now, it's someone else's turn. Perhaps yours.
If you beat a drum long enough, your arm gets tired.
If you hear the drum long enough, your ear gets less receptive or you get tinnitus.

How many people out there are aware of the many hoaxes perpetrated on us by our own society, are own people?. How many people out there can see the obvious duplicity of our everyday lives? How many of us buy into what is dreadfully obvious in the way we spend our money? Money at this point in human history is the most powerful thing on the planet (but as we know it does actually exist)why then are we so willing to doom our future by spending it where it does the most harm. Either we start thinking about where we spend it now, or when there theres nothing left to spend it on have the decision made for us.The consquences are grave and irrepairable. I can only assume if myself of limited inteligence can see such obvious flaws in the very fabric of our society(fast food, gross packaging, genetically enginnered food, cigaretes etc,etc,) than so can the majority of humans. Why then do these types of problems exist ? or are we just to spineless to sacrifice what advertisers tell us we should want.

Remember the lemmings and the helicopters?

Don't you think there have been hundreds of times in our human history when the alarm bells have been sounded? Mass suicides, murders, genocide all due to fear of change, religion, technology? What makes you think you're so special?

Tonsil revenge,

"Those of us of a certain age have heard it all before, at least twice...There were people in 1966 who said that we would all be wearing gas masks and all the urban trees and birds would be dead by 2000..."

What makes the current situation different from '66 is that if the world carried on being run as it was then, that would have been sustainable - the "predictions of doom" required that things get much worse.

However now, as per the report Tracking the Ecological Overshoot of the Human Ecology, we have already "... exceeded the biosphere's regenerative capacity since the 1980s..." - our load in 1999 was 120% of the capacity of the global biosphere. That is NOT sustainable - "predictions of doom" now require only that we carry on with business as usual.

A bit to explain how the 120% can work in the short-term, taken from the Living Planet Report 2002:

"...humanity now exceeds the planet’s capacity to sustain
its consumption of renewable resources. We are able to
maintain this global overdraft on a temporary basis by
eating into the earth’s capital stocks of forest, fish and
fertile soils. We also dump our excess carbon dioxide
emissions into the atmosphere. Neither of these two
activities are sustainable in the long-term – the only
sustainable solution is to live within the biological
productive capacity of the earth."

There is one thing that hasn't changed since '66, '19-' or '10-'....
it's hard to care about tomorrow if you're starving today.

Does it really matter what we do with the planet if the only people who truly care are the ones who outlive thousands of others who are less fortunately placed in their economics, color and geography?

Millions of people have died since '66.
And they died the old-fashioned ways, the ways that the future have not eliminated: starvation, disease, war, politics, ignorance.

To those people, the end of the world is the day they draw their last breath.

It is only those of us who are not dying at the moment who worry about a planet that will not be sorry to see us go.

But it's precisely by not worrying about limited resources of this planet that we cause much of the suffering in this world. Global warming leads to rising sea levels and environmental refugees, companies in rich countries which have stringent domestic environmental legislation set up heavily polluting operations abroad, causing further suffering to the "ones who don't care"

If we don't care about preserving environmental peace then that guarantees increasing suffering. And the ones who suffer most are the weak, who have limited choices.

Why should we worry about pollution when so many in the Third World are suffering now? Ask the people of Bhopal.

I accept your point that current needs must be met in priority to future needs. But I think that we in rich countries should work for a better world. Yes, we should start with fair trade, social justice, debt relief - but we should be careful not to use short-term solutions which make things much worse in the future. I think we probably agree, don't we?

Oh, yeah!

I just keep getting caught up in the absurdity of it all.

I was sitting in a Sunday School classroom yesterday with a bunch of white
middle class 'Christians' who were talking about a question in the lesson book. The question asked was, "What will be the most important problems in the future?"
The answers:
1. Sin
2. Crime
3. Immorality

My answer? The one that got me stares and questions like, "What are you talking about?":

Ignorance

I said, "Modern media technology and the internet allow ignorance and stupidity to spread faster than it ever did before. Once upon a time you could spend your entire life in a village and, while knowing there were other people in other villages on the planet, you didn't know much about them except rumor and a peddlar's tales. Nowadays, with the push of a button, you can learn about practically any corner of the globe. How people live, how they die, what they wear, what they speak and what they believe. But people don't do that. They still live mentally in villages, where they don't want to know what's beyond the next hill. Because that would require them to think and to care and then, to do something. So, ignorance will be the biggest problem of the future. Instead of truth and information and help, there will be fables and lies and rumors. That is the biggest sinful and immoral crime of all, to believe that what you do doesn't affect or concern other people and what they do doesn't likewise affect or concern you..."

Not very popular yesterday.

Well it makes you popular with me! Happy to know there are people like you in the world - it gives me hope.

Sunday School? Are you Christian?

Bod

What exactly is the difference (in Christian terms at least) between sin and immorality?

My father was a pastor, and I've read the Bible most of my life, but I wouldn't call myself a Christian. I don't like lying to God.
He gets enough of that.

Uh. Sin and immorality?

Got me.

The class seemed to think there was a difference.

Basically, in the Bible, I find two things:
What you supposed to do.
What you not supposed to do.

Not much gray area.
Some contradictions.
A lot of questions.

A sin is anything you're not supposed to do.
Immorality is a kind of sin. A la lusting after your neighbor's wife.
Fornication. Lustful thoughts. Divorce. Watching movies with nudity. Listening to lyrics that suggest that sex could possibly be performed without benefit of matrimony...

Of course, once upon a time, there were people who thought that women riding bicycles was immoral.
Didn't have any problem with them working in filthy factories and living in slums and pumping out offspring as fast as they could, as long as they didn't ride a bicycle...

Did you know there was once a 'sidesaddle' bicycle for the moral woman?