The Glade 4.0

Poison the well much?

Funny how people don't think poisoning the well is a problem when someone cites FOX news...

You can see right on the front page that it's a biased site, with a global-warming agenda. They say so. "Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Lenas and RangerDave:

You should write the National Forensics League and see if you can get a copy of their 'card' book for the 1992-93 high school policy debate season. The resolution, that year, was: "Resolved that the United States Government should enact policy to prevent global warming."

Let me know how many of those 20 year old predictions are accurate; how many we've since disproven ...

And then tell me why you guys are stilling pushing Paul Ehrlich's depopulation agenda without even knowing who the hell he is.

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I don't have to poison that well; RangerDave did it by starting this thread ...

The website clearly indicates it has no interest in providing balanced or rigorous information; it's an agenda site.

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Balance does not require giving equal time to cranks and conspiracy-theorists. Saying the "HIGW is real" crowd has an agenda when they scoff at the denialists is like saying the "evolution is real" crowd has an agenda when they scoff at the Creationists.

I know who he is, and no, I don't agree with or support any depopulation agenda. That's just a ludicrous leap of "logic" you're making.

By the by, I'm not even sure I support the kind of massive emissions restrictions necessary to curtail HIGW right now, in part because I put human needs first and in part because I do think that this issue will ultimately be solved by technology. I just find the stubborn denialism about the science itself annoying.

Without wanting to get into refuting the source, because a) I don't have time to look at the methodology and b) I don't care, I'll just point out that it's a pretty well documented fact that scientist who dispute HIGW (or AGW or HICC or whatever you wanna call it) have a hard time getting funding (and thus don't get published) OR they get funding but then don't get into the peer-reviewed journals (because the journals don't want to let opinions in that would refute their prior stance, thus undermining the journal).

This was one of the key's to the leaked email scandal a couple years ago regarding HIGW scientists.


It's a bit like saying, we took a poll, and only Democrats responded. Of the responses, 97% identified as voting Democrat. Bad analogy, but the best I've got.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Humans have been destroying environments ever since we learned how to spark flames and make buildings. I just don't understand the notion that 7 billion of us are so insignificant as to not impact our environment on a large scale. I choose to side with the majority of scientists that are convinced enough to state an opinion. Studies that lack conclusions either way are as useful as an ******* on an elbow.

What I find most frustrating is when people latch onto a scientifically valid and reasonably likely hypothesis, treat it as incontrovertable fact, and then extrapolate several far less likely slippery slope scenarios based on it, also treated as fact, then suggest major political and societal changes that have no scientific study or testing at all done on them as solutions to something that may not even be a problem.

It's called alarmism. The underlying premise doesn't need to be wrong for the alarmism to be completely unwarranted.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Making fire and buildings isn't "destroying" environments. Environments are not inherently better without human influence.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Fair enough, and like I said, I'm not sure I support economically damaging emissions rules right now, though I will note two counterpoints. First, even the low-end predictions of a 2-degree increase in global temperatures (you've referred to that as the worst-case scenario a couple of times, but it's actually the best-case scenario according to the models) would have some pretty serious consequences. And second, there's the idea that when the possible consequences of something are sufficiently catastrophic, it's worth making significant efforts to avoid it even in the face of uncertainty / low probability. I can't seem to remember the term used for that at the moment (the "blah-blah Principle" or the "Doctrine of ____" or something? Anyone?), but I find it persuasive enough to not dismiss the possibility that major preventive action is warranted.

That's not what I said. Fire, agriculture and architecture fueled human expansion and destruction of environments. To your second statement, aside from bringing water into deserts, I tend to disagree. Do you mean to say that a city in place of a rain forest is better for the planet?

Think you're going to catch fire for that one Lenas. Bringing water to a desert ecosystem (and they are living, vibrant ecosystems) could be potentially as disruptive as anything else.

Yeah, I thought about that after I posted it. Was going to delete but I figured someone had quoted it already.

Depends what you mean by "good for the planet", and what the purpose of the planet and the environment are. As far as I'm concerned, its for humans. As for the fire/agriculture part, all you've really done is change your definition of "destruction of environments" to "totally nebulous".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There's no such thing as "better for the planet." What you mean to say is "Better for human quality of life (or even survival.)" And yes, destroying the rainforests in favor of city could potentially be very bad for human quality of life.

There's a certain degree of nonsense spouted by uninformed people who think they're being ecologically responsible that has its roots in creationism and religiosity. The Earth's environment is not naturally some perfect paradise that was designed for the life in it. Earth's environment has changed constantly over the last 4 and half billion years of its existence, and will continue to change. Life survives as it can adapt to those changes, and dies as it cannot. As the environment changes, one might think "This is bad for the Earth!" because they're thinking from the perspective of life currently existant on it, but everything changes (occasionally VERY rapidly), and evolution and natural selection allows life to adapt for it.

Humans do change the environment. We can't even say we do more than any other species (imagine what the environment would be like without bacteria, or plants, or insects, and you know we do not have the biggest impact among terrestrial species), but we do influence it. This change is not 'destroying the environment.' It's changing it. Everything changes it. There's no precious, delicate balance that we are custodians responsible for maintaining. It simply has never existed. The concern (and only concern) needs to be, "Are we changing it in a way that may negatively impact our own survival?"

That last bit is certainly a valid question.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I'm afraid that if you think the Earth's purpose is to suit humans and if you also believe that our advances in technology (starting with fire, moving forward) have never destroyed environments, then you and I will forever be at an impasse.



My concern would be, "are we changing it in a way that doesn't benefit us at all and also puts the lives of many other species in danger?" To which the answer seems to be yes.

True.. but.. We now pit cultural and technological evolution against biological evolution. The forces we create are capable of creating changes that no biological system can compensate for. The advent of human technology could potentially end human evolution (or at least shift focus.) no more do we have to adapt to our environment, we change the environment for our needs. The problem is multifold.

Animals which render uninhabitable their habitat typically die out. Humans who render their habitat uninhabitable, move elsewhere. Technology allows this.

Humans (sometimes) when they find an incompatible environment, change the environment. There are some species who do this as well, but they don't do it on the scale humans do.

Without the "artificial" interference of plant life, Earth would be a rocky planet mostly covered in water, like now. However, the atmosphere would be primarily nitrogen and carbon dioxide. There would be almost no free oxygen in the atmosphere at all. Free Oxygen exists on Earth due to the abundance of plant life here. (Note, too, that biological life already existed on earth long before plants became dominant.) Earth's natural state, before plant-life, was a nice toasty warm CO2 filled greenhouse.

We probably don't want to go back to that. While the temperature may or may not be problematic, we are adapted to an atmosphere that contains very little CO2 and far more free oxygen. We're not in any danger of undoing what earth's flora have done to the environment anytime soon. But let's not pretend one state is any more "natural" than another. Again, the only question is, how will it affect us?

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

unless one feels that we have a moral obligation to destroy as little of life as possible

Lol, **** that! We're the only important lifeforms here.

That's an interesting point.

Of course, we have evolved to directly and indirectly rely on much of the life in Earth's ecosystem. From cows to penicillin, veggies to our domesticated pets, some of the life we need to value is obvious. Of course, those species will have their own dependencies. There's a valid evolutionary reason for us to be concerned with these things, to a degree.

Beyond that, human morality is, itself, an evolutionary selected behavioral traited that has assisted in our survival in various ways. If our morality is getting in the way of our own survival and quality of life, as a species, then it needs changing.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

So you're okay with banning gay marriage if someone feels they have a moral obligation to uphold the sacred union between a man and a woman.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

"Morality" as a behavioral influence may be one of the most amazing evolutionary traits humans have evolved. Morality is incredibly adaptable... human morality changes rapidly...sometimes even within a single generation. It allows human behavior to completely change almost overnight. No other species has this flexibility. It's really quite incredible.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

It seems somewhat telling that the only arguments I hear against HIGW are arguments against the consensus, including attacks on scientists (biased!) and/or their studies. I don't ever hear arguments based on contradictory scientific evidence.