First it was academics, then the scientists, then the politicians, then the media. Now our beloved Military has been utterly taken over by a VAST left wing conspiracy (the only kind of conspiracy that exists of course). I guess the military and Intelligence folks who were previously Republican have taken the time to switch parties and THEN become corrupt. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp My god even our high ranking generals have been taken over by the Commie one world government plot that only occurs in the left and never ever, EVER involves even one right wing person because they are immune to the vast corruption that has consumed everyone else. Thank god the right wing being the only clear thinkers on the planet exist otherwise we would all be doomed. I'm so thankful that Republicans never take bribes or other wise even slightly bend from the morally superior pedestel. I mean just imagine if this vast conspiracy ever managed to get even ONE republican to go along with them. Thank god the right wing never makes mistakes and only has the highest moral character. I just thank god that conspiracies by their nature only involve the left wing and that the right wing is immune to corruption. Praise be to god!
I read the article. What a bunch of baloney. As was your jaded, yet humorous in its ignorance, diatribe. First, it's impossible to really predict what the end results of global warming (if indeed there is really global warming) will be to us. And if there are, I am sure we will adapt to the minor changes. We're a fairly advanced society and I am sure what changes may need to be made will be so.
You mean the changes constantly resisted by the right wing and their polluter backers. I'm friends with a number of scientists who hold no loyalty to the kind of left-wing international Cabal right wingers claim is behind the climate change caused by humans debate. Yet all of these biologists agree, we are killing the environment at an incredible clip toxifying our air, water and soil. The only people that debate it are those who put economics over everything including the life support system of this planet. You my friend are the one who is ignorant of the vast climactic changes and it's impact on a highly complex and integrated series of ecosystems which are what we rely on to live. If we were all in a spaceship and one group of people was taking apart the life support system and reselling it at a profit and suddenly everyone was living a bit better materially but was increasingly getting sick as the air and water quality degraded would you want them to stop? I would certainly fucking hope so and yet here we are on a giant spaceship and that EXACT phenomena is occurring. Your idea is this "oh it's probably small and no big deal and I will not worry about being wrong or change in the slightest because I am so certain of this". I'm saying we already know things have degraded MASSIVELY in the past few decades, look at the salmon runs, harvest of fish in the ocean and the massive amounts of species extinction. Scientist can EASILY see that at the current rate of destruction we will be fucked in a VERY short period of time. Look at maps of the amount of old growth forest that were in America in the 1600's and how it has been reduced by about 97%. You clearly think that some magical technological solution will arise. It's possible, but I'm saying you don't fucking risk the destruction of our life support system. If you can't see that you must be on your way to the grave and not giving a fuck about future generations. Most everyone who disagrees that the environment is degrading are old people who want more money at any cost and fuck the future.
Ah, yes, a perfect example of 'flat earthers' propaganda exemplified. Rock on IDog, where does this 'chit' actually come from. ummmm?
Perfect response. Shows your nuanced view of climate science and the granite bedrock your argument lies upon.
LOL, You think everything is infinite? Maybe when the last tree is chopped down the problem will dawn on all you geniuses arguing with an increasing agreement by virtually all educated people on earth. I guess everyone else is wrong. Just like this damn gravity conspiracy scientists came up with. "But I can test gravity myself!" Well I can test environmental collapse myself. How? I can go to any recent clearcut and see the obvious devastation. I can talk to my grandfather about how easy it was to catch a 40lb Salmon 50 years ago. For that matter since I'm an outdoorsman I can just go poke around myself. What's this? My old fishing grounds have little or no fish in them? Well it's either a natural cycle or a conspiracy by lefties. Lord knows over fishing couldn't have caused this problem. It's crystal clear that you guys won't believe anyone about this. Keep eating that factory farmed food in fact make it a double. Yup, the Salmon runs sure are huge this year. I hope you don't mind I'm coming over to dump a bunch of chemicals and nuclear waste in your yard. Oh and I'm cutting down any trees you use for shade. I'm also going to take all your food but since nothing good comes from nature I'm sure you won't mind subsisting on chemical dyes and miller paint. I mean nature does nothing for us, we obviously evolved from machines and so we don't need things like water food or air. Glad to know I will just relax now and start flame throwing orchards for fun and won't let any commie greenies tell me not to. It's my god given right to wipe out watersheds and species.. I should go dump about 10,000 gallons of crude oil into the bull run water shed since it's just a worthless piece of land and water and my waste disposal business is a sacred profit making venture. Oh what's that you don't like it? Well tough shit you can't stop me I'm making a profit by dumping nuclear waste, chemicals from factories and whatever else I feel like doing into your water. Don't talk to me about your safety who gives a shit I'm making a profit here and you're just a whiner. Out of sight out of mind as your apparent motto goes. As long as it's profitable it's good. Sleep well tonight my next profit making venture is getting organs from sleeping right wingers. I know they will approve even if it effects their health. It's just free market unfettered capitalism at it's best. There are rich chinese businessmen who need your organs!
Denny, I always respect your opinion even when I disagree strongly with it because you do the research and are pretty even-handed. That said, there is no comparison between monoculture reforestation efforts and old growth forest. Old Growth is better then monoculture reforested trees because it has the following qualities: Withstands fires better. Is less susceptible to destruction by insects. Holds and releases water more evenly helping with that natural cleaning process of water filtering into the aquifer. An Old Growth forest contains organisms not found anywhere else such as fungi that work in a symbiotic manner with the ancient trees to enrich the soil and fix nitrogen for them. There are thousands of these kind of interactions between 1000's of species in an old growth forest. These organisms have co-evolved over the vast millennia and are not found in secondary forests and some believe they are the key to turning a mature forest into an old growth forest. An Old Growth forest Is vastly more bio-diverse - this may seem unimportant to you but consider that ALL of our medicines come from plants. They first isolate what they think is the active chemical to achieve a desired result (lower fever etc.). After the chemical is isolated it is then synthesized with petrochemicals. Also consider that we are just beginning to make use of DNA we find to make medicine and otherwise improve human life with genetic engineering. As an aside, the way genetic engineering is currently done, I'm not completely a fan. If it's done ethically it could be a fantastic field for human endeavor. The point is the rarest thing that humans know of is DNA, in that in all our exploration of the universe thus far we have found no evidence of it anywhere but on earth. To waste this vast encyclopedia of genetic success in our various organisms is a crime that exceeds the burning of the library of Alexandria. Don't you see what a childish waste of the most precious and rare thing in the known universe this destruction is? It is sheer folly that we continue our destruction of these fully developed ancient ecosystems. The loss is incalculable, and our descendants, if they aren't dying in a depleted ecosphere that has gone completely amok, will look upon us with scorn that we wasted these finite and precious resources. More importantly, they will bemoan the rape and pillage of the most important thing of all: the creation we were born into. I believe reforestation attempts are necessary, but without old growth forests they may never become old growth themselves. These ancient intact ecosystems that are like arks filled with rare life and they must be preserved. I'm not against planting and harvesting trees or mining or modern technology or the free market. I am against ecocide because it is tantamount to suicide. We can still have all of our wondrous inventions, we just have to change the way we look at our environment and resource use and become less wasteful. We should shift to being as energy and resource efficient as possible and also have our top scientists figure out the best way to restore the parts of the environment that we must leave wild in order that our medicine, food, air and water needs will be met. We just need to radically transform our relationship with the environment I'm certainly not a luddite or a Marxist. I believe we can meet these challenges but not as long as some extraction corporations continue to lobby and propagandize about critical problems. These are critical problems that must be faced soon if we wish to avoid what scientists are increasingly telling us is certain doom. It's not a joke, it's not a conspiracy. There is a very real crisis going on in our environment from dead zones in the oceans to the logging of old growth and the death of coral reefs; there are vast global climactic shifts going on and it's increasingly obvious that with the industrial revolution and our subsequent population boom, we are more than able to wipe out so much life that it throws the whole planet out of whack. We are also the victims of our short term thinking, profit-only driven society. Look at the rates of cancer and autism. They are sky rocketing and in the case of cancer we know some is caused by plastics and carcinogenic chemicals. Look, what we are doing isn't working anymore; we're seriously like a bunch of drunk teenagers destroying the house and making it unlivable. We don't have to stop living we just need to start being the stewards of creation that we are told we are in the Bible and elsewhere.
To the best of my knowledge, the logging companies in the USA have been doing something like a crop rotation of new trees and harvesting the older trees they planted themselves. This has been going on since at least the 1970s, probably earlier than that. MacDonalds used to serve burgers in styrofoam containers. When they realized the ecological damage done by billions of those things in landfills, they switched to biodegradable packaging. A similar story with disposable diapers. The thing is, corporations are organizations of people. A corporation itself is nothing but a piece of paper. It can't pollute or otherwise harm anyone. It's the people who run them that do the "bad" things. And it isn't necessarily the guys at the top. In Silicon Valley, a lot of the smaller chip manufacturing plants were toxic waste sites. It was the workers in their everyday job who were doing the damage. I'm not looking to blame the workers, it is just what it is.
I agree that corporations aren't at fault it is the humans who run them. Much like the SS stormtroopers can't get away with saying we were just following orders, neither can the workers. However, the people giving the orders in my mind have a more significant share of the blame then those carrying them out. Also the Old Growth forests are often sold off and logged even today. Just a few years ago Maxxam corporation was logging ancient red woods. Thankfully, in this particular instance some Jewish Rabbi's convinced the Jewish CEO of Maxxam to preserve the forest. However, for every victory for ancient eco-systems there are 10 losses of irreplacable habitat and bio-diversity. Even in Oregon forests recovering from a fire such as the biscuit wilderness were logged, including healthy ancient trees, by invoking a rule about forests being logged after a fire. Forests recover and usually well from fires. They do not recover from clearcuts. Sustainable harvest of wood I have no problem with. Unsustainable clear cuts, especially of Old Growth are massively destructive. There are innumberable examples of destruction of ecosystems. The ones that recover tend to be left alone or actively repaired by humans and abutting healthy ancient systems from which life forms can then migrate and heal the damaged region. All I am saying is we need to massively change our behaviors in a variety of ways, especially the logging and burning of forests along the equator (very likely a greater carbon emitter then cattle or vehicles). Cap and trade is a sham and I don't think helps things at all. We need to massively subsidize technologies to increase our energy efficiency and our green energy capacity. We also need to stabilize and heal regions that are damaged and clean up regions such as the vast garbage island twice the size of texas in the Pacific. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7rNYzSH-BA Children behave this way in their own home. Wreaking the home and making it unlivable. We are on a one shot only spaceship if we destroy our life support system or so toxify it that it becomes unlivable we have nowhere else to go. It seems like people either haven't looked into the real state of our environment or don't understand the ramifications of what we have been doing in ignorance for generations. If you are right and nothing is wrong but we try and fix the environment and maybe alter the economy then not a whole lot is lost. However, if I'm right and we keep plugging along as you seem to suggest then we are doomed. This isn't something that can just be ignored it threatens the future of our species not to mention countless others.
rereading it does appear to be 'snarkalicious'. It has been reported recently that the ocean's fishes are 1/2 the size they were 20 years ago. Corporate fishing fleets, logging, population are the main contributors.
