General > RANT

Product designers should be dragged out and whipped in public!

<< < (7/9) > >>

Peter:

--- Quote from: Numsgil ---Global warming simply means that the planet is warming.  If you don't want to look like a fool needlessly, I would admit that global warming is happening when you talk to other people, since it's all just semantics.

Otherwise very telling responses
--- End quote ---
You're right, after reading wikipedia. Global warming simply means that the the average temperature is rising. Well it is you are right  

Well I leave it to a strange combination, of bad translation of my side(most english have I leaned from games, really  ). And propanganda of scientists, and Al Gore alike that really made me think there was a direct connection between CO2 and Global warming and I turned it into some kind of enlarged greenhouse effect theorie.

semantics: Well I am going to look up the exact meaning of it.  My english isn't that good.

EricL:

--- Quote from: Numsgil ---1.  Is global warming hapening?
2.  Is it humanity's fault
3.  Can humanity fix it
4.  Should humanity fix it (that is, is global warming a net positive for humanity?)
5.  Do other co-inhabitors of our planet have a right to existance (that is, do Polar Bears deserve to live?)
--- End quote ---

1. Yes.  There is overwhelming evidence of this as well as well as my own anadontal personal experience.  I have sailed around in bays that were Alaskan tide water glaciers when the charts were made for example.

2. Yes.  There is of course some historical cyclic variation in both the sun's output and the earths own heat retention, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggests human activity is the primary culprit.  And it's not just recent industrial activity though the curve has gone exponential in the past few 100 years.  Humans have been burning forests to hunt and otherwise changing their environment at scale for tens of thousands of years.

3. Yes, but they won't.  Humans lack the will (and the biology) to think long term and act globally and collectivly (at some local expense) until the local benifits of such global activity are overwhelmingly apparant locally at which point it is often too late.   This isn't cloroflorocarbons.   Too many factors, from the billions in the third world wanting an increased standard of living to the capitialistic models of the first world which (like evolution) optomize for local gain are acting against it.   These will not be overcome in the short or mid term.   I'm afraid the world of 100 years from now will be considerably warmer and less diverse and way more crowded (with humans).  The fall for humans will likely come later when all airable land is used for crops and billions die for lack of petrolum feterilizer or some such.  There will be a Hubbard Peak for food some day I predict.

4. Yes, but we won't.  We're an incredibly adaptable species to be sure that can live in many different environments.  Humans will survice though the world is converred in concrete.  I for one would prefer to live in a more interesting and biologically diverse world.

5. The terms "right" and "deserve" presume an external frame of reference which does not exist.  The environment has changed and will continue to change.  Species which cannot adapt will go extict.  It saddens me, but this is the way it has always been.  There is no deserve, there is no right, except as that allowed by collective human behaviour which as above, I am very pessimistic about.  I have visited mountain gorrillas in Rwanda.  I have sailed with killer whales in Alaska and grey whales in the Sea of Cortez.   Personally I would gladly trade a few billion humans for a more diverse ecology but the realist in me says that they and the polar bears and many thousands of other extant species are doomed no matter what I think.

Numsgil:
The point I'm trying to make with 5 is to ask if humanity could fundamentally change the planet to make it better for us, but at the detriment of other animals, would we be "moral" to do so (moral from the point of view of you personally).  For many people it would be, and for others it wouldn't.  So it's a good barometer of your attitude towards environmentalism.  But you gave a good answer anyway

Testlund:
I think changing the planet in a way so it gets better for us but worse for a lot of other species would just work for a short time, because we're disrupting a balance that has evolved for a very long time. All species that are here are supposed to be here! At least they're not supposed to get whiped out within a few 100 years or so. Very quick changes is more like catastrophies which would cause evolution to have to start over and rebuild everything, with new species. Ecosystems will likely colapse if several species gets extinct. We need a diverse planet!

Peter:
Let go further  

--- Quote from: Numsgil ---Increases in global ambient temperature through the well understood greenhouse effect.
--- End quote ---
Well the greenhouse effect takes more into account then just the CO2 amout. The thickness of atmosphere, other greenhouse-gasses and their amout in atomosphere. You could compare the two closest planets, mars and venus. Both have a very high CO2-percentage in atmosphere. Venus is hot and mars is cold. Venus got a thick atmosphere and mars a thin one. Maybe humans have an effect on global temperature but I highly doubt that it is an measurable effect humands have. And I think only future can bring the truth, about how the effect of humans was/is.


--- Quote ---Average temperatures usually change extremely slowly, and even then have dramatic effects on the planet.  A hotter planet means more extreme weather (to put it simply there's more energy in the system).  Places that were once wet become dry, and vice versa.  Which means floods and droughts.  Many plant and animal species, already on the brink of extinction, could be pushed to the extinction.  This would decrease the global biodiversity.  Most of humanity is surviving on the brink of death themselves.  Consider the little ice age which had profound effects on Europe.  A hotter planet means a wetter tropic and a drier temperate zone.
--- End quote ---
How much knowledge do we have in the change of average temperatures, so how can we tell what a fast temperature rise is and what is normal.
I had seen some graphic lieing around somewhere that would show that the increase in temperature we have now isn't very unusual, poorly I can't find it back  
I agree with your points that global warming could have good/bad effects, and the fact that anyway we turn it we may not be able to reverse it.


--- Quote ---Monocrops are huge profit makers in the short term.  But most species are not hardy at all.  They're grown for their ability to produce money, not survive.  They grow on a razor thin margin that can easily be upset.  Witness the Irish potato famine.
--- End quote ---
The irish potato famine, well that could even happen right now in any country. It was a disease that did it in Ireland in combination with the poor people of Ireland so that even the leftover potatos where bought by the english, in africa it even happens nowadays, any bad harvest will couse many people to die.
With today subsidion on green petrol/alcohol well fuel. The prices for the particular crops has rissen. Meaning that every not rich country could await disaster. I don't know where exactly in america you live but I try to get a country close, look at mexico. The higher prices will probably couse for the upcoming jears to have a foodshortage in mexico. A lot of their crops will go to america for the green fuels.
The upcoming jears you could have a complete and possible worse irish famine if there came an unknown desease like happened there.


--- Quote ---A loss of biodiversity and soil quality.  That land doesn't suddenly become farmland.  After a few years it becomes unarable, and is left fallow.  Left unchecked, eventually the entire amazon basin could look like the sahara.
--- End quote ---
There is a reason there is a forest in amazon and there isn't in sahara. The slash and burn policy couses to just get suddenly some farmland. And to my idea it works there is farmland and it stays. I haven't heard of any farmland to get turned into desert suddenly. If it turns into desert why doesn't the forest do so.


--- Quote ---Forbidden or not, they've had and are having strong effects on the environment.  Consider your computer monitor.  It has roughly a pound of lead in it, if I remember correctly.  All sorts of volatile and toxic chemicals exist in all sorts of household products.  And they're routinely disposed of improperly.
--- End quote ---
They have had some effects on enviroment, the effects of older products will eventual wear off. Today products have got a lott of toxic-testing and other stuff. It is just better then it use to be. There exists some volatile toxic chemicals in household products, but I haven't heard of anyone eating then. A pound of lead in my monitor, that is a lot. The inproperly dispose is a bad point but I don't know the exact proces of all garbage to have a proper idea to what the effects are.


--- Quote ---Those requlations go against the natural tendancy of the fishing industries, and are largely a consequence of the environmental movement in the 60s and 70s.  When environmentalism goes out of vogue, so will those regulations.
--- End quote ---
If envirolism goes out of vogue, the hunting on seals will also legal. And as a fisherman thinks less seals is more fish. There could stay a proper amount of fish that way, seals will probably also stay, they have tried before to kill them out, but atleast there will be less in number.


--- Quote ---Actually, human growth does seem to have a natural sense of carrying capacity, at least in industrialized areas with ample supply of birth control and a social acceptance.  Europe's birth rate, I believe, is in strong decline.  Apparently economic pressures might actually be sufficient to limit human growth, when birth control allows parents to choose to conceive or not.  But it remains to be seen if this birth rate decline is just a short term fad or a long term trend, and wether this self-limiting growth is universal to humanity or a side-effect of the rather liberal European culture.
--- End quote ---
Yes true, but saying the colonist have set on particular ilands they lived on, different kind of animals like chickens and pigs. Them seem harmless but they where better in surviving then the natural spicies as history has proved, and humans always had enough to eat. If they keep pigs from going wild, they will keep coming back. So in first they had an explosion of capacity everywhere new colonists came.
And about europa's birth rate, yes it is low. Every rich country has a low birthrate. I believe america population is keeping stable becouse of the immigrates they have, without them population would probably drop.


--- Quote ---Like we did with the Tasmanian tiger?  Zoos are only barely beginning to reach a break even point with animal breeding.  It wasn't all that long ago that most zoo specimens were hunted from the wild.  Go to your local zoo and find out how many of the animals were born in captivity.  I'll bet you anything that it's in the far minority.  Plus, populations need a large gene pool to remain stable.  Zoos have to spend a lot of money to get breeding pairs together.  It's just not economically viable as a long term solution.  Zoos are not the way to ensure long term species survival.
--- End quote ---
Barely begining?, well I am pretty sure most of them are born in capitiviy. There are even some zoos making money out of the animals. I know some have been on the discussion of some animals that didn't had strong genes becouse in the beginning anything that was born was good and they went further with those. Even with some strange combination like Lion+tiger->lijgers(dutch name, haven't got a clue what the english name is).
And economally speaken, there are even some zoos making money selling their pure breed animals.
Main problem could be the large gene pool, I dunno.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page