[Janice D. Soderling]

Wrong, John, I don't hope it happens. Surely you don't think me so petty as to hope for world catastrophe so that from my cremated ashes will rise a quavering "I told you so".

Plagues have historically followed war. Until recent medical progress, epidemics regularly and radically reduced population. Global air travel will speed it up, just as the advent of the sailing ship sped it up in its day.

You've heard of the plague in its various forms, well-documented through the centuries. Three great world pandemics of plague are recorded, in 541, 1347, and 1894 , and countless smaller ones all causing devastating mortality of people and animals across nations and continents. Plague irrevocably changes the social and economic fabric of society. Check this out, John, we have them in Sweden too. http://www.medievalhistories.com/des...lages-england/

You do know that new diseases pop up all the time? There are plenty of fleas and rats and bats to spread them. You do know what ebola and mrsa are? And that polio, tuberculosis and smallpox aren't really eradicated.

It is only in the past hundred fifty years or so that Pasteur proved the germ theory and vaccines were developed to give the Western world a false sense of hubris. Now some feel so safe they say, "Ha, ha. Why isn't everyone dead then? I don't want pasteurized milk or measles vaccine for MY kids."

I'm not passing on a conspiracy theory or "my phone is bugged by aliens". It is Darwinian. What fits in best, survives. And that ain't humankind. Rats and bacteria reproduce faster and have the leading edge.

While it is true that cyclic patterns of warming and cooling can be observed from the past, CO2 emission is speeding up the process and can irrevocably change the recovery pattern. I remember a scientific paper I translated thirty years ago that informed us that if all the emission were stopped "right now" (i.e. then) there would still be twenty years of continued damage as it continued to rise. Nothing has changed regarding that except that there is now more in transit.

I remember in early 1960 a magazine from the UN (there used to be those) about the spreading of desert area of the earth. That seemed so unreal at the time.

The Ra expedition in 1972, reported marine pollution and presented their report to the United Nations.

I used to spend summers on a Baltic island and watch the sailboats come sailing in through waters covered with poison algae. The Baltic Sea is dying for lack of oxygen just like the Gulf of Mexico and other once pristine seas. Its dead marine zones are growing because of excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus used as fertilizers in the countries around the Baltic Sea. This are observable facts in OUR lifetime. http://planetsave.com/2008/06/24/bal...ack-of-oxygen/

A dead sea is a dead sea. It has no Easter, it does not rise on the third day.

Check this out. http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...y-destruction/

[ross hamilton hill]

It is not true that the Muslim world is backward, Pakistan now has zero population growth and an active government funded campaign promoting birth control. There is nothing in Islam that forbids contraception. Roman Catholicism on the other hand still maintains birth control, except abstinence, is 'against nature', but they are quietly letting it slip off the agenda but have been responsible for the population explosion in South America and Mexico and Africa where Catholicism is a powerful force.
There's an interesting Ted talk, can't remember the name off the expert, but he says the world population will climb to 12 billion before it begins to decrease, 12 billion seems nightmarish to me, waiting at Hong Kong airport recently many people were wearing face masks, it was very futuristic in a not good way, and personally I feel the world is heading for a plague of some sort, sars, then ebola, it seems inevitable one will be bred in crowded conditions like in China and India.
It seems climate change is creating all sorts of unpredictable events, mainly because the seas are being effected and major reliable currents are changing, but it's a vast subject and there are many unforeseen benefits also, barren cold areas are becoming available for farming.
I think, though there are some solutions, cleaner energy, smarter technologies, that the sheer size of the world's population and the fact that it will take years to reverse its continued rise means we are in for a wild ride, and it will happen suddenly, a tipping point will be reached.

[John Whitworth]

2080 is the date, Ross and of course muslims are backward. Their ridiculous treatment of women shows it. Not ALL muslims, Ross. Just most.

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Temperatures went up. And then they went down.

As Roger, citing Hadcrut, NOAA, NASA, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, has pointed out, that's far from true.

But then you're not the only one writing foolish things in these threads. Despite the clear evidence to the contrary, I and others insist on believing that you are open to facts. How long will we refuse to accept reality?

[Charlie Southerland]

Hi Janice, You are right. I should have referenced the countries and the African continent. I assumed most folks knew. My bad.

Most, if not all of the signees to the Kyoto Accords are poor, underdeveloped countries. Russia is also poor and underdeveloped too. The Oligarchs and the Russian government hold most of the finances there, not the people. My question is this: Why would countries without the ability to pay for the changes they have signed on to sign on to such an agreement? Answer: They expect the U.S. to pay for it, for them, like beggars with their hands out. Same thing with the UN— we pay much of the burden so that all of those poor countries can remain members, stay in nice hotels, eat like kings, and spit in our faces. I am paying for that.


I digress. My next question is this: When the earthquake in Japan's Fukushima happened, whose fault was the earthquake? And, whose fault was it that the nuclear reactors failed to hold up contaminating much land and surely some sea life? Now all of that wreckage from the tidal wave is washing up on America's shore.

To whom does one assign responsibility to?

Who should pay for the cleanup of our shores?

What if our children on the Pacific coast become contaminated and get sick or die from radiation poisoning?

One could say that the Japanese didn't build the reactors strong enough. How can they or anyone outbuild something that has no limits to its natural destructive force?

What irony. Choose, but choose wisely. You can't control or prevent the power of an earthquake or tidal wave any more than you can prevent a nuclear disaster unless you decommission nuclear power— and then more irony ensues. Where does one store the nuclear waste? Some say in the deepest part of the most corrosive part of the ocean. It is saltwater after all. Or let's burn the nuclear waste. Oh wait! That would create air pollution. OK. Then let's bury it in a country or state somewhere where it can never leak out. Someplace like Hanford.

The point being, in spite of us, nature does what it wants, not what it is mandated or directed to do.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Max Goodman

But then you're not the only one writing foolish things in these threads.

Max,

No serious person still argues about this. The only reason it's even still on the agenda is because american politicians take money from energy companies, and they don't want the flow to dry up. And a certain kind of american voter watches a certain network which keeps viewers by using it as a point of cultural identification.

Rational people ask themselves, all the time, why people vote against their own self interests, in the face of all evidence. How could there be an electoral coalition between the guy who lives in a penthouse and the guy who fixes the rich guys' air conditioner? I wondered about it for a long time myself. Then I found the answer in Dostoyevsky:

"Even if man were nothing but a piano key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of sheer ingratitude, simply to have his own way…then, after all, perhaps only by his curse will he attain his object, that is, really convince himself that he is a man and not a piano key!"

In other words, John and Charlie and the others know they're wrong, they know it with deep certainty. But they believe in personal freedom. Under those conditions, no amount of natural science will persuade them. The defiance of their self-determination gives them identity. It doesn't matter how many maps Julie posts. Reality is beside the point, that's all external. They want their own way, to have their own say, and it's theirs, after all, and so they exist.

It's why the guy who fixes air conditioners votes for people who hate him, it's why the deep south is so poor, it's why women still don't have their rights, even to equal representation. "I'm not defined by circumstances, I'm my own person, my beliefs are me, and I share them with others, and to hell with reality." When people told Cheney invading Iraq wasn't realistic, didn't match the facts on the ground, he said "We make our own reality." And that reality was his, he wasn't just some piano key, and to prove it to himself he still has to deny the results. And he does so. With heartfelt conviction.

John and Charlie and the rest have those same convictions. Rationality never persuades anyone. Poets should know that better than anyone else. "Only emotion endures."

Best,

Bill

[Charlie Southerland]

Bill, you have wandered off into the land of goofy again.

At no time in this thread have I said that global warming doesn't exist. I am not a global cooling denier or propagator either. There are clearly both, simultaneously happening all the time. What I am denying is the depiction of the phenomena and the attempts to co-opt and blackmail unsuspecting souls with the theory that either is man-caused. Nonsense. Conversely, Bill, just because you believe what you do, doesn't make it true. It is unprovable. Lots of serious scientists continue to argue with the man-caused meme you spout. By the way, I vote against my own self-interests all the time. That is another discussion though. Rational people normally vote their pocketbooks, unlike the past two presidential elections which hinged upon the promise of a savior who would change the world. Well, he surely did that. As to the piano key reference; I am surely a man, not a piano key. I play piano, it doesn't play me.

Your idea that the south is poor because of ignorance or redneckedness borders on insanity. What is South LA's, Chicago's Detroit's, Seattle's, Cleveland's, and numerous other northern and western city's excuse for dire poverty? What ails you, Bill? I fear that upon reading your pointy-headed silliness, some southern-repressed women are gonna' come up there and whup your ass. Foolish things indeed!

I have few convictions, Bill. The ones I do have are Christian-based. If that makes me irrational, I can live with that. Emotion isn't such a bad thing. They're trying to install emotions into robots so that robots can be more humanlike. Unlike dodo's who watch certain other networks which keeps viewers by using them as propaganda tools for their progressive agenda. Down deep in your heart,Bill, you know I'm right, but no one likes to be embarrassed by a stump jumper with mud between his toes. Ya'll.

[ross hamilton hill]

The biggest energy users are the USA and Western Europe, not only in terms of overall use but use compared to land area. Also Japan. So if pollution and over use of resources is one of the world's biggest problems then the culprits are there to see. But I still think over-population is by far the biggest danger, we have over-bred and over-crowded the planet and are victims of our own success as a species. It's no one's fault. It's like Lenin said , 'two steps forward,one step back' we will have huge problems and it's hard to see it not being disastrous in some ways. A drought in California is just one of dozens of ways the world is feeling the pinch. Sydney was almost out of water a few years back, we built a huge desalination plant in expectation of there beng no water for a city of 3 million then the rains came and it's never been used.

And John a quarter of all Muslims live in Indonesia, a moderate democracy where females form half of the public service and participate fully in all aspects of life, including getting a good education. Islam is not by definition an extreme religion as anyone who has read the Koran knows. It is extreme in some countries because those countries are in a different stage of their development from the West, it is easy to forget what Western countries were like in the 17th or 18th centuries, you can't expect all countries to progress at the same rate.

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Charlie Southerland

I have few convictions, Bill. The ones I do have are Christian-based. If that makes me irrational, I can live with that.

G-d bless you, Charlie, for acknowledging at least the possibility that your convictions are irrational.

The only problem comes when people insist that their irrational convictions play a role in our collective decision-making. The bible says the sun goes around the Earth. Should NASA take that into account? If 50% of U.S. citizens take the bible literally, should half of NASA's budget be devoted to projects based on a biblical understanding of astronomy and only the other half to projects based on science?

We need to work together based on fact, not conviction.

[John Whitworth]

Max, you do go on and on about facts. A bit of a Gradgrind. Scientific facts tend to fade away like the morning dew. But perhaps you have noticed. I might mention many facts, but the solid state universe will do for now. And I gather the big bang is not quite the fact it was.

Then there was the cause of ulcers. Know about that?.