[Brian Allgar]

Charlie, your proposition seems to be: "We can't do anything about global warming, so let's stop wasting time and money trying."

Well, first of all, that's a false premise. There's a lot we can do, beginning with cutting the vast quantity of man-made emissions - something the planet has never had to try to cope with in its 4.5 billion years of existence until the last hundred years or so. Yes, the planet goes through, and recovers from, natural cycles. This is a totally unnatural one.

But your argument, by extension, could be carried into other fields:

"We'll never eradicate starvation among children in the third world, so let's stop wasting time and money trying to feed them."

"We'll never wipe out disease, so let's stop wasting time and money on medical research."

"We'll never stop people committing crimes, so let's stop wasting time and money on police forces, law courts and prisons."

I hope you don't actually believe any of those things. I also hope that enough people of good will and good sense will be able to act in time to ensure that there will still be a planet where people can continue to starve, get sick, and shoot their neighbours.

[Charlie Southerland]

To whom shall we assign blame?

For the most part of six-thousand years, men were relegated to burning wood, which came from trees, for heat during winter and for cooking fuel. When men began to settle down and farm the land, they cleared the land of trees to raise their crops. When more land was needed for fuel and more land was required for civilization to dare I say, flourish, they cleared more and more land, which became an ever intrusive and pervasive cycle. I believe that we can agree on that.

For the better part of six-thousand years, the world's population has polluted the atmosphere with wood smoke and particulates. It has been continuous and pervasive. In fact, it had become common.

For the better part of six-thousand years, men started fires to chase and herd buffalo and all sorts of other beasts around the world because they didn't have the capability or intelligence to kill for food any other way.

Certainly, this has had an affect on the planet. It contributed to the creeping of deserts in Africa, China, Australia, and the United States. There are vast areas of deforested areas in South America, Europe, and Russia. Some Pacific Islands are bare because of it.

Nearly all of these intentional actions were man-caused. Kings and rulers and organized governments have authorized these actions for nearly six-thousand years, more than enough time as civilization has exploded to have completely fouled the atmosphere and kill every living thing, block out the sun, raise the seas, make the poles inhospitable. We surely should all be dead from this abuse.

If you throw in all the destructive wars and conflicts over six-thousand years, not to mention pestilence and disease, how has Mankind ever stood a chance?

If you add natural disasters into the mix, it is an even more dire situation. Yes?

Nowadays, people build eco-friendly cars, houses, boats, farms, war-making weapons meant to kill but not destroy the environment. (neutron bombs) But it takes resources to manufacture those things. It takes digging great holes in the ground and drilling deeper holes in the ground to accomplish these goals.

Corporations and governments play shell games with labor forces when called to account for these improvements in ecology. They move their work forces about like playing a game of checkers whack changes the fortunes of one region to the benefit of other regions.

It has always been a zero sum game. One example is ethanol for fuel. Another is electric car batteries. Those are simple examples. There are aplenty more.

In other words, progress only tries to keep up with the demand of the living. It is, in and of itself, a cycle.

Why are we all, all 71/4 billion of us not dead from the stacked deck of progress?

Progressives do not seek an end to global warming. They seek finances to overcome the loss of profit because of it.

Why are we so naive?

Well more than half of the world lives/exists in abject poverty. They are not thinking about global warming. They are thinking about their next meal, their next fuel for keeping warm, enough money for illness or old age if they are fortunate to live that long.

There is truly not enough money collectively in the world to ensure that 31/2 billion people are taken care of. Furthermore, there is no intention of the wealthy and wealthy governments to do so.

Why do we continue to fool ourselves?

Why do we pretend to care?

Who is it that has inspired such folly?

I know, but I ain't sayin'.

[Julie Steiner]

Never mind, I'll take it to PM.

[Charlie Southerland]

Michael, I have set a trap and am waiting for someone to step into it.

Now that I've made you aware of the trap, I dare you to spring it. Hint. You won't get out of it.

At any rate, it is irrelevant what I think of Creation or when Creation happened. Another hint. Someone put this universe together.
Do you care who it was?

And even you skeptics and atheists out there, I don't need to believe in Creation or God Almighty to prove I'm right about the Global Warming/climate change religion. Who will come first?

Michael, tell me what year you want to start with past what I've referenced, if you dare.

[Michael Cantor]

Charlie, I don't think you got my message. I'm not going to waste my time discussing religion, or God, or global warming with you, for reasons which are obvious to me, if not to you.

[Shaun J. Russell]

I've read all the posts, yet I still can't see how this got from being a discussion about global warming to a discussion about a God who apparently grew up with the Sumerians.

[W.F. Lantry]

I've been waiting for days, literally days, I tell you, to be able to use this link:

http://blackbag.gawker.com/is-ancien...man-1694539419

"Can you recall your middle-school social studies lessons? How, at some willowy point in your 11th or 12th year, you learned that recorded history begins with the appearance of writing? There were the Mesopotamians with their cuneiform scripts; the Egyptians' hieroglyphs and demotic scrawls; and later, the Greeks and Romans, whose societies form the backbone, for better or worse, of our own—if only because they kept such meticulous records.

We have all sought and found these connections to our past—in museums, in books, in the ground. This is our inheritance. And it is ingrained in us so early, so matter-of-factly, that it permeates most of our existences without demanding critical reflection.

What if it's all bullshit?"

After all, we just take it on faith, because we were taught by somebody, who was taught by somebody, who...

Kasparov buys it, and we all know he's WAY smarter than I am. Everything we know is wrong. Everything! Six thousand years? It's way less than that.

Seriously. Read it. It's worth your time.

Thanks,

Bill

[Michael Cantor]

Bill - of course the Lamed Vavniks exist. What is more surprising is that, of the 36 worldwide, I believe we have three or four
here on the Sphere. Just look around.

Brian - the three questions you raise are both valid and scary. The fact is that there are an appreciable number of U.S. legislators - particularly on the individual State level - and a lesser but still significant number of citizens who might answer:

1) Yup!

2) Not exactly, but we should focus on diseases that are more prevalent among those who can pay for the treatment.

3) Absolutely not. America has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, and that - and the guns so many of us own - are what keeps this great nation safe. Furthermore, since so many of our prisons are privately owned - are profit making ventures - it provides a real boost to the economy.

Getting anything done about global warming - or anything else that doesn't involve the military (what is it that we spend - more than the next ten countries combined?) or anything more complicated than a game of checkers - is extraordinarily difficult. It didn't used to be. I was around for WWII and the aftermath, and saw what a nation could do when its leaders - all of its leaders, on both sides of the aisle - were men of vision and courage. It is, unfortunately, a very different world today.

[Brian Allgar]

Charlie, I had forgotten that, despite all the incontrovertible evidence, you are a "six-thousand year" mantra man.

I hereby promise to make no further attempt to engage you in rational discourse.

[Charlie Southerland]

Brian,

Rational discourse is a two way street. I used what I know to be recorded history, not speculative fiction. Harrrumph. There is no mantra position here. I was trying to be accurate, not colorful.