(Untitled)

[ladyelaine]

The topic today was "Global Warming as a Religious Crisis." The last article was Global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites. The class quickly proceeded to prove Mr. Pilmer correct, without even realizing it

Comments

[mothwentbad]

Eh, I think a distinction between human-caused extinction and other kinds is in order. A lot of things are going to happen eventually anyway, but you can justify anything with that.

[ladyelaine]

Why does it matter to distinguish between human-caused and asteroid-caused? Is pointing fingers going to make it less drastic?

[mothwentbad]

Well, ok. An even more important distinction is whether it's too late to do something or not. But just knowing that something we did a while back caused X is cause enough to take note that we don't necessarily tread lightly wherever we go.

[ladyelaine]

IMO, it is too late. Changing the culture (dependence on fossil fuels, etc.) can hopefully ameliorate things, but won't stop climate change. Direct intervention (trying by whichever method to extract greenhouse pollutants from the atmosphere) will (again, IMO) trigger unforeseen side effects that could be just as bad, if not worse.

[cinnabari]

That would've pissed me off, too, but mostly because the claim leaves out the actual, you know, science. 99-plus percent of species on this planet have gone extinct. Most of those extinctions had nothing to do with people. Some of them sure as hell did. Climate change is a complicated process, and there is a lot of debate as to how much human industrialization has impacted it, but we have had an effect

[ladyelaine]

I agree that we've had an effect. I agree that our effect should be ameliorated. But I also think the law of unintended consequences will bite us in the ass.

I don't not care. Nor do I think we should do nothing. I think we're doing things for the wrong reasons (not that that means a damn thing in the long run).

In Hawai'i, they brought in mongooses to get rid of the rat problem. The mongooses ignored the rats and are busily wiping out the native birds. There's ideas about sinking the excess carbon and whatnot into the ocean floor... where there's millions of tons of methane waiting for us to screw up.

It may take a thousand years (or more), but the climate is going to balance itself. We're going to pay, no matter what our role was in the climate change. I'd rather see us adapt to the changing environment than trying to "fix" things and screw them up.

People are going to die. I care about that. My caring about that means absolutely nothing to the laws of nature.

[cinnabari]

While I agree that we should be careful before we launch into fixing things--and introducing non-native species to clean up other non-native species is fucking stupid, as a general rule--the whole climate change argument is on a different scale

[ladyelaine]

But that's the thing. "Living green" involves changing an entire culture, which is a massive affair; but even if we magically converted to an insant planetary "green" culture, there would still be massive effects from our history. That's what I'm trying to express (and failing miserably) when I said that nature's going to do what it's going to do.

I'm scared about what the climate and environment is going to do, how it's going to affect the world and my descendents. But I also have this weird, totally illogical trust that nature "knows what it's doing" (in a totally non-anthropomorphic metaphorical way) and that things will sort out. Eventually. After the human race (and a jillion other species) have the shit kicked out of them.

[aristoboule]

I am in total agreement with you. Don't even get me started on the cap and trade crap. The last 100 to 150 years is statistically insignificant in the history of the Earth. I do think we need to find ways to reduce pollution, but that's another issue.

[ladyelaine]

I'd actually put the article in there because of what he said about it being a religion. Are scientific theories being affected by religious attitudes?

[topaz08]

I'm always amazed at humans, that they think they cn destroy the planet ~gasp~!! Ummm, we may muck it up a bit, but the Earth will be here long after humans are gone.