[lit-ideas] Re: global luke-warming
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:38:33 -0400
Before anyone jumps all over me as a conservative naysayer who speaks for
big oil, let me say that I am NOT denying that the consequences of burning
copious amounts of fossil fuel are that certain things about our
environment are changing -- pollution and a very slight change in the
makeup of our atmosphere are obviously consequences.
My argument is with the varying notions of problems gathered under the
heading of "global warming" which most people don't know the definition of,
since there really isn't a definition. My trouble is that to imply "the
planet is warming up" is deliberate misdirection for political reasons so
that people will 'take notice' of this 'global problem' which is a doomsday
scenario in its present incarnation.
The thing is, the problem is not well defined so that lots of phenomena
that normally and naturally happen are brought under the "see, global
warming IS happening" umbrella and both snow/rain and drought, cold and
warm, ocean currents and ocean calmness, evaporation and arid conditions
are all blamed on "global warming."
>The WSJ editorial page is ultra conservative.
>
> And... ANY "Green" movement is ultra-liberal. Your point?
>
Real quick. Any green movement is ultra-liberal? If you say so.
I reckon.
Mexico City; Teheran; most of China the air is unbreathable (something like
80% of the country)
Do you mean "unbreathable" as in 'will not sustain oxygen breathing life"?
Or are you just hyperbolizing?
and many places in China are actually soot covered;
India; Madison and Lex in a summer smog alert;
smog alert? You know, I used to live in a city that had regular 'smog
alerts'. On a summer day, 100 F, hazy, humid as a sauna, and the radio
would say "there's a smog alert, don't do any strenuous exercise" blah
blah blah. Our bicycle group would meet and ride our regular 150 km with NO
ill effects. Of course it might be dangerous for the
respiratory-challenged, but do we REALLY need to design our societies
around its illest members? Cleaning up the smog is a noble notion. I WORK
as an engineer who has as one of my primary jobs, designing systems for
scrubbing pollutants out of exhaust gases and designing waste water
treatment facilities. We achieve great results in doing this, but it's a
long process to retrofit every plant in the industrialized world. AND...
like I said, the other countries you mention are now going through what we
already went through. They can't afford to put the blocks to their
economies just as they are building them up. The notion that dilution is
the solution to pollution is an old one and hard to break -- Afterall, the
world is HUGE [he said ironically] -- I think we're getting there.
L.A. before the clean air legislation; the hundreds of Superfund sites in
this country, midnight
dumping just about everywhere and on and on. There's acid rain in Alaska,
in Canada.
These things are all "pollution" and are NOT the [current] blames for
"Global Warming". I'm not arguing there's no pollution. If you make stuff,
you will have pollution. But. we can't completely stop making stuff.
> >pollution concentrations are visible on satellite imaging,
>
> That's because satellite imaging is really good now.
Really good and it shows what's there.
And.. if it would have been around 100 years ago, it would have shown an
even worse case.
> >and oceans that weren't polluted?
>
> Oceans are polluted? What do you mean by 'polluted'?
The oceans are actually dying. Don't take my word for it. Mother Jones
did an entire issue on it a little while back.
Mother Jones? See very first exchange about "ultra-liberal"...
incidentally, I'm subscribed to MJ.
evidence that has to come from retrospective studies, which take decades.
So here we have all sorts of evidence and no proof so let's wait decades
and see what happens. Obviously there are those who think things can be
reversed. Why not take Pascal's Wager and just clean the place up?
Why not, indeed. But destroying whole nations' economies is not a good
place to start. We have to slowly adjust the national economic model and
wean ourselves off oil. But my reasons for saying that are completely
different from yours. You want to save the earth, i want to save the
humans. We are going to run out of oil before we destroy the atmosphere and
fuck up the weather completely. I want an alternative to oil, not because I
care about the environment (I do by the way) but because I care about being
able to run stuff.
Make an industry out of cleaning air and water.
what's it going to run on? Where is the money going to come from. Do you
know why all these huge office buildings leave all their lights on all the
time? Because it's cheaper to pay for the electricity than it is to pay
some dude to change all the light bulbs -- since it would be a full time
job for a guy if they kept turning them on and off (that's what kills
fluorescent lighting, not length of time burning). This is NOT a moral
issue though. As long as it's economical for this situation to remain, then
we are wasting gigawatts of electricty just lighting office buildings. How
are you going to make businesses do what is NOT in their interest to do?
Also... it's clearly a liberal agenda that wastes another huge amount of
electricity lighting our streets. Where did this notion come from? Just 25
years ago, there were NO streetlights on most of our subdivision's streets.
Now... there's one every couple of hundred feet. Each one of those millions
of streetlights uses at least 250 watts. Oh, so we can be safe. Safe? From
what? Is the bogeyman around the corner? Should we contribute to ruining
the planet JUST so we can prevent a few muggings? Why not put that money
into teaching people not to mug, or giving them jobs or for extra cops (who
walk around the streets and use NO electricity)
You also fight tooth and nail in favor of spanking, when study after study
shows that children who are
spanked are more aggressive.
My argument is not against the studies' conclusion "children who are
spanked are more aggressive", my problem is with the black/white notion
that ANY aggression is a bad thing. I'm arguing that, even if the studies
conclusions ARE true, which I think, in their own way, they are, I disagree
with the overall concept of sparing the rod in all cases, bar none. That's
not denying the 'evidence', that's a fundamental disagreement with the
touchy-feely way the world is going. "Anger" has become a bad word. It's
becoming stigmatized and in some cases, criminal behaviour, JUST to get
angry. That's a dangerous world when you just toss out a completely normal
human emotion.
My point: you won't change your opinions no matter what the evidence.
That's absolutely not true. My whole life is based on evidence. If it is
convincing, I will be convinced. The things that, for you, count as
'evidence' are readings of evidence. Give me the same initial evidence and
I can give you an alternative reading.
in the mean time, in some ways, I think that animals are a bit purer than
your average human, only because they don't HAVE morals. But humans are so
clearly superior that I won't even entertain the notion that we aren't. OF
course, at the bottom of it all we have crocodillian brains and our
subconscious desires are something to be reckoned with but our rationality
has to win out in the end. I saved the bunny because he was cute, in
trouble, and I felt like doing it. It's a minor inconvenience in my life.
Unlike you, I am optimistic in the face of selfish pricks all around me. I
see enough good people and believe that if I do a few good deeds, the world
will be a better place. Why else would I volunteer to actually DO work and
write book reviews?
passive-aggressively yours,
Paul
##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada
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