Let's Talk Inconvenient Truths

[mrsteerpike]

You know what's really been irritating the snot out of me lately?  Global warming.  It really bugs me how far people will take this obsession!  I for one don't happen to even believe in the idea.

Allow me to clarify, since I've just stepped on a lot of toes.  Do I believe that the average temperature of the globe is on the rise?  Yes.  Do I believe

Comments

[herzograven]

It's funny you should post this up when you did, I just had a "discussion" with a distant family member who's a total pseudo intellectual. She really thinks she knows, but she couldn't be further from it. She started on talking about not understanding conflicts between nations/religions/people that lead to hate/war, etc, then she went off on the pollution tangent saying how computer companies are responsible for pollution more than anything else, and global warmning, blah, blah, etc, etc. Mostly bullshit. I wasn't going to even TRY to talk sense into her, I mean she has already made up her mind, and that's that, hehe.

Then she's going on about how people in Canada are WAY smarter than people in the U.S., and how the education system is WAY better than the U.S. education system, blah, blah (she's one of those annoying patriots who sees NO faults in Thunderbay). Hate to say it, but the education system is MUCH better in Germany than Canada AND the U.S. combined, and Japan's is better than all those three places combined. There really IS always a bigger fish, that's just how it is.

But yes, your article just about summed the perception of the western world. Blowing shit out of proportion and then worrying themselves to death about something that is inevitable.

However, I will say that there are things that I will do just because I believe that's the thing to do. Batteries for instance, I just CAN'T toss them into the regular kitchen garbage, I'm not entirely sure why it's bad, I just take it somewhere where the dispose them properly. But then again I also don't throw glass in the garbage either, mostly for safety reasons - if I forget there's glass at the bottom of the bag, and drop it on tile, there's pile of shit I have to clean up. I make use of scrap paper, not cause I'm worried about the trees, the bees, and the whales and the snails, but because it's scrap paper, and I use it. I'm planning on using solar panels one day to save on electricity, and other natural resources that ARE available to me, if it helps the environment, great, if it helps me buy DVDs, that's even better. We have a dehumidifier in the house, because we have excess humidity and in the long run it causes mold problems in the house. So we run that thing, it increases our electric bill by about 10$ a month, however I use the water for things around the house and the water bill goes down about 12$ a month. So in the LONG run it's not great amounts of cash I'm saving, but the machine is doing what its suppose to do, and it's not costing extra money. I'll admit it, I'm broke, and I'll do things to save money in the long run, what I won't do is run around and point fingers at people who aren't doing what I'm doing, and worry about doomsday being VERY SOON!

We really haven't gone through enough disaster (Great War, WWII, etc.) to understand what real disaster IS! Same problem I have with people who pull the race card right away. Someone called someone something, and that was RACISM! Yea, tell that to the person who picked cotton with their bare hands for the first 30 years of their lives, got beaten every day because their owners could get away with it. You really think THAT person would take offense at being called a name?

I think we need to just lower the damn sensitivity level to make people understand what the hell is REALLY going on.

[mrsteerpike]

Wow...you're all over the place there. lol, but thanks for posting. :D
I'm not writing to preach to other people, I'm just stating things as "I" see them. Does that make them the course of action? No. Do I believe my ideas are flawless? No. If nothing else, I'm simply presenting an opinion, or an alternate perspective on something. Doesn't have to be correct to be interesting.

That being said, you're comment is centred around the concept of waste. I'd just like to mention that there's a huge difference between being practical, and being conservative. Using two sides of a sheet of paper only makes sense. That doesn't make you an environmentalist, it just makes you practical. If NOTHING else, it's saving you money, since you go through paper at half the rate someone who only writes on one side does.

Solar panels have been a bit of a grey area with me. Sure they make power, but how much, (from what I can dig up from memory, only 15% of the potential). And the west lllooooovvveeesssss its power, so 15% of "a lot" does warrant some consideration from a personal perspective. However, I also feel that westerners gobbling them up to save 20$ a month doesn't do as much good in the grander scheme of things as one would initially hope. (Unless of course your only objective is to save that 20$, then mission: accomplished.) Markets being what they are, based upon the concepts of supply and demand would imply that westerners buyin' them all up would make it increasingly difficult for poorer places to get them, where that small amount of converted power translates into a 600% (number chosen at random) increase in accessible power.

But yes, the gist of my opinion is one of simple vanity. People today feel the need to do what our forefathers did, and make the world a better place by triumphing over evil. However, we're simply not confronted with sufficient quantities of it to feel good about ourselves, so we invent it, and push it on ourselves to give us something to do. "Look Stan! Adversity! Let's triumph over it!" A good ol' fashioned catastrophe of global proportions with say, 30 million dead across western countries will give us something legitimate to be afraid of. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we don't have to face this kind of thing, but at the same time, let's PLEASE not take what we've been given for granted.

(yay! A comment!)