Making the news today....

[felixthelogchopper]

4 hours ago, difflock said:

I attempted to quote "hairy on your chest", but failed.

Anyway to say there is no downside to oil drilling is absolutely wrong, IF one cares about the natural world, in its current state.

That is not attempting to deny that another asteroid could not wipe out 97% of all Earths species,

but why is some of, or unfortunately probably most of, the current human population attempting to destroy the Earth it before the asteroid gets here?

To use the energy they pillage to make shit they dont need, to then dump said shit mere months later causing even more environmental damage, never mind flying to places that they degrade merely by dint of their unneeded presence. 

Essentially Homo Sapiens is a plague upon planet Earth.

Marcus

Bill Hicks said it best; We're a virus with shoes.

[Mesterh]

30 minutes ago, Haironyourchest said:

Having my toast, as it happens. To address the last five or so posts about pollution as a side effect of fossil fuel use: Yes there is some pollution, mostly urban from vehicles. CO2 is not a pollutant, it is a plant food. The global warming scare and the scientific consensus is a swindle, plain and simple. Its the green energy lobby, the tax-happy globalist-leaning governments who want to control the energy sector and therefore the economy. The atmosphere (oh God I'm so tired of this...) - used to contain many hundreds of times the CO2 it does today. The earth was lush, warm and brimming over with life, animal and vegetable. The natural state of the earth is to have no ice at the poles. We are still technically in an ice age. The sahara is greening because of increased CO2. The inject 5 times the atmospheric amount of CO2 into commercial polytunnels to stimulate plant growth. Reducing fossil fuels will wreck economies, and not reverse or halt global warming, if indeed it is happening at all, they lied about the data and tortured statistics, computer models very wrong and have recently admitted it.

 

Heres the thing with the Green Agenda - its government trying to force the economy to go a way it doesn't naturally want to go, with the carrot and stick method of subsidisation and punishment. This is dangerous - its taking peoples freedom away. If the fossil fuels were to start running low for real, the alternative energy sector would suddenly take off like a rocket, driven by real consumer demand for cheaper energy and human innovation stimulated by necessity. But at the moment, crude is the most useful form of energy, its cheap, abundant, stores well, transports well, stable, great energy density etc etc. But trying to force us to abandon it and turn to the more expensive "green" option by coercion, based on a moral narrative that is simply made up......

Im fairly sure there is no 'natural state' of the Earth as it has constantly been changing over the last what, 3 billion years or so, plus the ice caps retreat and reform so saying the natural state is no ice caps is a bit wrong I think.

 

Also, yes im sure there was life with many times the CO2 in the air but I bet it wasnt human life and lets face that is the only important thing. I think the point some people are making is that there is a good chance using fossil fuels the way we do is going to cause future problems for the human race, the planet will survive no matter what we do and no doubt plenty of life will too, no good if it isnt us though.

I dont think we should abandon fossil fuels as our current way of life would change dramatically. I still want to get on that fuel guzzling plane and jet off to have a bit of fun. 

[Haironyourchest]

37 minutes ago, Mesterh said:

Im fairly sure there is no 'natural state' of the Earth as it has constantly been changing over the last what, 3 billion years or so, plus the ice caps retreat and reform so saying the natural state is no ice caps is a bit wrong I think.

 

Also, yes im sure there was life with many times the CO2 in the air but I bet it wasnt human life and lets face that is the only important thing. I think the point some people are making is that there is a good chance using fossil fuels the way we do is going to cause future problems for the human race, the planet will survive no matter what we do and no doubt plenty of life will too, no good if it isnt us though.

I dont think we should abandon fossil fuels as our current way of life would change dramatically. I still want to get on that fuel guzzling plane and jet off to have a bit of fun. 

Well, they reckon humans/homonids have been around for at least 2 million years in one form or another. So thats going back a ways... If our use of fossil fuels causes problems for the future of the human race...ok...so can we know the future? The so called climate scientists think so, I don't trust their predictions. They predicted New York under water by 2000...Even if the climate change hypothesis is true, does the earth actually need 7 billion people? The human species did fine for two million years with a crew of half a billion or so. If the population level goes back to baseline - a billion lets say - in the next few centuries, would that be bad? These are questions I ask myself on a daily basis...can growth continue exponentially? Our species is undergoing constant change and flux, and historically most of the changes have been "natural"... If we were to abandon fossil fuels, how would we live? Would the government give us all electric cars? Or just make cars unaffordable for most people so we would have to be dependant on public transport. To and from our jobs. The economy would tank, nobody would hire tree surgeons and we would be down the job centre. The government would have to find something for the legions of unemployed to do, and we would be given jobs working on farms, to replace farm machinery. We would be put to work in factories making solar panels. Travel to and from our wee jobs on electic public transport...no freedom. It would be like going back to the 1800's. I think a lot of people actually crave a planned economy. No pollution, no emissions, no difficult choices, fairness, everyone looked after but not very well, no feeling inferior or guilt if your doing better than others...yeah it has its appeal, I grant.

     

Edited January 20, 2018 by Haironyourchest

[difflock]

Hairy,

While agreeing with your big government using a green agenda to tax us mercilessly,

and the associated AGM hystercial shite,

and yes, indeed we are currently in a particularly benign inter-glacial period

(to which I attribute the rapid development of mankind , and his many civilizations to, it would be much tougher to build such civilizations during an Ice Age)

BUT

The despoilation of pristine natural areas due to commodity extraction is downright criminal, such companies continue to extract, while times are good, and hey, when times turn bad, and they go tits-up,  and gosh, there is no money in the kitty, to even attempt to return the areas to something like they were before.

The Athabasca tar sands would be a good example, or the USSR's simply pumping more oil to compensate for pipeline leakage, rather than fix the leaks.

Let alone "cheap" valley-fill coal extraction in the Appalachians,

Fracking, and the jury is still out, on that one.

etc

etc

So there is significant "on-site" extraction related pollution.

But then the windmills also create much pollution and kill birdlife, ditto for hydro power, cept its fish they kill.

There are simply no free lunches.

etc

etc

Marcus

[Haironyourchest]

7 minutes ago, difflock said:

Hairy,

While agreeing with your big government using a green agenda to tax us mercilessly,

and the associated AGM hystercial shite,

and yes, indeed we are currently in a particularly benign inter-glacial period

(to which I attribute the rapid development of mankind , and his many civilizations to, it would be much tougher to build such civilizations during an Ice Age)

BUT

The despoilation of pristine natural areas due to commodity extraction is downright criminal, such companies continue to extract, while times are good, and hey, when times turn bad, and they go tits-up,  and gosh, there is no money in the kitty, to even attempt to return the areas to something like they were before.

The Athabasca tar sands would be a good example, or the USSR's simply pumping more oil to compensate for pipeline leakage, rather than fix the leaks.

Let alone "cheap" valley-fill coal extraction in the Appalachians,

Fracking, and the jury is still out, on that one.

etc

etc

So there is significant "on-site" extraction related pollution.

But then the windmills also create much pollution and kill birdlife, ditto for hydro power, cept its fish they kill.

There are simply no free lunches.

etc

etc

Marcus

Yeah, agreed. But we (in the west) have come a long, long way in terms of reducing pollution at source. A certain amount of state control is necessary. The USSR was notorious for polluting, same as China. Like we were back in the day...but cultures and nations develop...growing up in Ireland it was commonplace for people to leave scrapped cars rotting in fields for decades. Perfectly acceptable to chuck rubbish our the car window into the verge, and bury and burn trash on your land. Things have changed over the years, for the better. Voluntary changes in attitude are natural changes, and some enforcement on the few hold-outs is appropriate. What I take issue with are poorly thought out, sweeping top-down changes to our lives... Man I got to get off my ass and do some work.

[the village idiot]

52 minutes ago, Haironyourchest said:

Well, they reckon humans/homonids have been around for at least 2 million years in one form or another. So thats going back a ways... If our use of fossil fuels causes problems for the future of the human race...ok...so can we know the future? The so called climate scientists think so, I don't trust their predictions. They predicted New York under water by 2000...Even if the climate change hypothesis is true, does the earth actually need 7 billion people? The human species did fine for two million years with a crew of half a billion or so. If the population level goes back to baseline - a billion lets say - in the next few centuries, would that be bad? These are questions I ask myself on a daily basis...can growth continue exponentially? Our species is undergoing constant change and flux, and historically most of the changes have been "natural"... If we were to abandon fossil fuels, how would we live? Would the government give us all electric cars? Or just make cars unaffordable for most people so we would have to be dependant on public transport. To and from our jobs. The economy would tank, nobody would hire tree surgeons and we would be down the job centre. The government would have to find something for the legions of unemployed to do, and we would be given jobs working on farms, to replace farm machinery. We would be put to work in factories making solar panels. Travel to and from our wee jobs on electic public transport...no freedom. It would be like going back to the 1800's. I think a lot of people actually crave a planned economy. No pollution, no emissions, no difficult choices, fairness, everyone looked after but not very well, no feeling inferior or guilt if your doing better than others...yeah it has its appeal, I grant.

     

This is great Hairychest! You are still thinking in extremes but there's some really good important thoughts in there.

 

Regarding humans going 'back a ways', this is only true when viewed in human timescales.

 

If you compress the time that life has existed on our planet into a single hour (let's say an hour ago till now) then homo sapiens appeared around two seconds ago. In the last few milliseconds of these two seconds we have managed to bugger up the planet for most of it's larger inhabitants.

 

You could well argue that if the planet belongs to anyone, it belongs to bacteria. They have been around for a whopping 45 minutes. Admittedly bacteria are probably not sentient and this is an important distinction. I believe that ultimately we should care about the wellbeing of all concious creatures. Being concious means it is 'like something' to be that thing and makes suffering a real option. 

 

The higher the level of conciousness, the greater the capacity to suffer and the more we should care. So yes, we should arguably care most about human wellbeing but we have no special right to inflict avoidable suffering on other organisms. Also, humans do not own the surface of our planet, despite our desperate propensity to stick flags everywhere and claim space as 'ours'.

 

Difficult decisions arise constantly when the perceived wellbeing of humans conflicts with that of other concious creatures, including other humans. We need to pick our way thoughtfully through these issues, constantly aiming to make increasingly intelligent and morally defensible decisions.

Edited January 20, 2018 by the village idiot

[JasonM]

1 hour ago, Haironyourchest said:

They predicted New York under water by 2000...Even if the climate change hypothesis is true, does the earth actually need 7 billion people? The human species did fine for two million years with a crew of half a billion or so. 

..see inaugural speech of Dr Eric Pianka https://evolutionnews.org/2006/04/doctor_doom_eric_pianka_receiv/ at the university of Texas in 2006. Goes to show at what levels population control is being considered. 

[the village idiot]

9 minutes ago, JasonM said:

..see inaugural speech of Dr Eric Pianka https://evolutionnews.org/2006/04/doctor_doom_eric_pianka_receiv/ at the university of Texas in 2006. Goes to show at what levels population control is being considered. 

Wow!

[JasonM]

3 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

Wow!

Indeed - the cause of the recent outbreak of ebola in West Africa has not been discolsed, although it wasn't an airborne strain, but makes you wonder all the same. 

[the village idiot]

4 minutes ago, JasonM said:

Indeed - the cause of the recent outbreak of ebola in West Africa has not been discolsed, although it wasn't an airborne strain, but makes you wonder all the same. 

Has not been disclosed, or has not yet been identified?

 

You have to be very careful with language in things like this.

 

There are theories online about the first 'contractor' coming into contact with infected bats.