In the past I have supported the Nature Conservancy. For some reason they started sending me a magazine about a year ago. It turns out they've totally drank the Global Warming kool-aid. Every article will have at least a couple mentions of the Threat of Global Warming. So the big thing with Nature Conservancy is that they protect habitats so threatened plants and animals won't die off. While I was in the reading room this morning, it occurred to me that this makes no sense. I'm going to make a few inductive leaps here, so walk with me: I suspect that a significant number of Global Warmers are agnostic or atheist. While a deist could believe in evolution as one of God's tools, there is no reason an atheist would buy in to anything but blind natural selection--species adapting to best survive in their environment. Throughout time, the environment has changed--radically. If the nature shows are to be believed, there were times that there was a radically higher percentage of oxygen in the air. And it was a lot warmer and more humid. The entire landmasses were covered in lush, aggressive vegetation. And life evolved accordingly. There have also been periods of catastrophe. Whether extraterrestrial impacts, increased volcanism, solar flares, or some other calamity, the climate and atmosphere changed quickly and radically, leading to wholesale die-offs. Only the strongest lifeforms survived and a new round of evolution took place. There have been times when, I'm told, the entire surface of the planet was covered with ice and our world almost became a dead iceball. But luckily life survived and the globe warmed again. Even during our recorded history, we've had the Little Ice Age and the Year Without a Summer, leading to widespread die-offs of the weaker and less successful in the human race and leading to new innovations in farming, construction, and industry. So why are Global Warmers so keen to prevent any further evolution? They're desperate to prevent the extinction of the Woody-Toed Treesucker (only 140 left in existence!). Well maybe the Woody-Toed Treesucker's time has passed. Like the brontosaurus or the woolly mammoth, the treesucker should go into the pages of history and make room for whatever species HAS figured out how to adapt and thrive to take its place in the evolutionary chain. Maybe we NEED less safety features, product warnings, social safety nets, and litigation to protect the weak and the stupid--we need to let them die off so only the successful reproduce. So why is it, that the people with the most stock in evolution are also the most inclined to try and freeze it; to halt its progress?
Describing evolution is a science, not a value judgement. Just because I believe that 2+2=4 doesn't mean I have some kind of special stake in seeing lots of couples paired up in fours.
It's hard to live through life without believing in something. Whether it's God, Allah, Gaia (mother nature), everyone believes in something, even if they don't know it. Another natural condition of man is the need to belong. The bigger the better. One's hometown, place of education... even mere attendance at a sporting event for several hours satisfies that want. Throw together a bit of science, celebrity, and a heaping tablespoon of arrogance, and you have the perfectly content global warming alarmist. Where do you go from there? Like any belief, it must have new inductees and an opposition that gives it purpose... and here we are today. :sip:
I don't think ALL environmentalism is evil, it's a balance of all things. We should do reasonable things to protect nature, if only so that our kids and grandkids get to see some wilderness. I don't mind setting aside some areas to just be wilderness, so that massive numbers of species don't die horribly. I do disagree with the religious aspect of Environmentalism. I don't think that we should throw away civilization itself just because some SUV driving hippy thinks life was better before modern sanitation and agriculture. If you think civilization sucks, I dare you to try to live off the land for a month. I'll even make it easy -- I'll let you go in the summer. Of course, being as how hard it really is to live in the wild, I think I'll be looking for your corpse rather than looking for you. So are these Treescucker thingies good for BBQ?
Because people like trees, flowers, and tigers. That, and there's a good chance that there will be a mass extinction if temperatures get too high. Sure, the ecosystem will rebound, we're talking hundreds of thousands of years later.
The extinction that we are now directly causing is about equivalent to the worst of those. As owners/guardians of the planet we are doing a DAMN shitty job. We are like a 5yr old who has been given free run of the toyshop overnight. When morning comes, all there will be is a horrible mess
The so-called Permian–Triassic extinction event was far more severe than the current extinction wave. Let's not lose perspective.
So, if we destroy 98% of all life in the next million years we are worse? We could do that, we are on track to do it at least. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
Quoting Wikipedia? Please tell me you're only parodying an ignorant leftist; I'd hate to pass judgment. tr
The thing with the envirofreaks is that they seem to think Earth should be trapped in a kind of time capsule during whatever point in their life they thought things were best. These people have absolutely no consideration for things that happen outside of their own life-span, so pointing out that species have gone extinct before and others took their place, or that the climate is constantly changing will be completely lost on them. Mention the Medieval Warm Period and the fact it was warmer then than it is now, or point out that we're still coming out of the Little Ice Age and they'll probably accuse you of making those terms up. You could even point out that in the last century the warmest temperature recorded was in 1934 - when the bread basket was a desert - and they'd probably call you a lier for that, too.
Boo-hoo! The poor dusty hill sand catcher! The poor Cooper's moss! Boring shit no one has ever seen and will never miss when it dies off. How will we ever cope? Evolution is a bitch. Adapt or die, motherfuckers.
Even if true, "oh well" You still can't have it both ways - if nature is as it is professed to be, then extinction is part of the game...even if the events are aided in any way by our own actions - we are a part of the ecosystem too, so be it. The minute someone says "what about our future?" speaking specifically of human survival, then they tacitly admit that interest in our own well-being is the prime consideration, rather than the best interest of every tiny factor on nature. Thus, if farmers in California have interests which conflict with some unimportant little fish (which they do) then it sucks to be the fish. IMO.
