Jonah Goldberg in the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg20-2008may20,0,3305601.column)

A kind of irrational nature worship separates environmentalism from the more fair-minded approach of conservationism.
May 20, 2008

I admit it: I'm no environmentalist. But I like to think I'm something of a conservationist.

No doubt for millions of Americans this is a distinction without a difference, as the two words are usually used interchangeably. But they're different things, and the country would be better off if we sharpened the distinctions between both word and concept.

At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It's a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. "If you look carefully," author Michael Crichton famously observed, "you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths."

Environmentalism's most renewable resources are fear, guilt and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past. John Muir, who laid the philosophical foundations of modern environmentalism, described humans as "selfish, conceited creatures." Salvation comes from shedding our sins, rejecting our addictions (to oil, consumerism, etc.) and demonstrating through deeds an all-encompassing love of Mother Earth. Quoth Al Gore: "The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

I heard Gore on NPR the other day. He was asked what he made of evangelical pastor Joseph Hagee's absurd comment that Hurricane Katrina was God's wrath for New Orleans' sexual depravity. Naturally, Gore chuckled at such backwardness. But then the Nobel laureate went on to blame Katrina on man's energy sinfulness. It struck me that the two men were not so different. If only canoodling residents of the Big Easy had adhered to "The Greenpeace Guide to Environmentally Friendly Sex."

Environmentalists are keen to insist that their movement is a secular one. But using the word "secular" no more makes you secular than using the word "Christian" automatically means you behave like a Christian. Pioneering green lawyer Joseph Sax, for example, describes environmentalists as "secular prophets, preaching a message of secular salvation." Gore too has often been dubbed a "prophet." It's no surprise that a green-themed California hotel provides Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" right next to the Bible and a Buddhist tome.

Whether it's adopted the trappings of religion or not, my biggest beef with environmentalism is how comfortably irrational it is. It touts ritual over reality, symbolism over substance, while claiming to be so much more rational and scientific than those silly sky-God worshipers and deranged oil addicts.

It often seems that displaying faith in the green cause is more important than advancing the green cause. The U.S. government just put polar bears on the threatened species list because climate change is shrinking the Arctic ice where they live. Never mind that polar bears are in fact thriving -- their numbers have quadrupled in the last 50 years. Never mind that full implementation of the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gases would save exactly one polar bear, according to Danish social scientist Bjorn Lomborg, author of the 2007 book "Cool It!"

Yet about 300 to 500 polar bears could be saved every year, starting right now, Lomborg says, if there were a ban on hunting them in Canada. What's cheaper, trillions to trim carbon emissions or paying off the Canadians to stop killing polar bears?

Plastic grocery bags are being banned all over the place, even though they require less energy to make or recycle than paper ones. The whole country is being forced to subscribe to a modern version of transubstantiation, whereby corn is miraculously transformed into sinless energy even as it does worse damage than oil.

Conservation, which shares roots and meaning with conservatism, stands athwart this mass hysteria. Yes, conservationism can have a religious element to it as well, but that element stems from the biblical injunction to be a good steward of the Earth, rather than a worshiper of it. But stewardship involves economics, not mysticism.

Economics is the study of choosing between competing goods. Environmentalists view economics as the enemy because cost-benefit analysis is thoroughly unromantic. Lomborg is a heretic because he treats natural-world challenges like economic ones, seeking to spend money where it will maximize good, not just good feelings among environmentalists.

Many self-described environmentalists are in fact conservationists. But the environmental movement wins battles by blurring this distinction, arguing that all lovers of nature must follow their lead. At the same time, many people open to conservationist arguments, like hunters, are turned off by even reasonable efforts because they do not want to give aid and comfort to "wackos."

In the broadest sense, the environmental movement has won. Americans are "green" in that they are willing to spend a lot to keep their country ecologically healthy, which it is. But now it's time to save the environment from the environmentalists.

I admit it: I'm no environmentalist. But I like to think I'm something of a conservationist. He isn't. He's a water carrier for capitalist exploitation, and favors policies that lead to environmental degradation for profit.

When he's done "conserving" the Boundary Waters, for example, it will be a drain field for heavy metal mining operations.
Conservation, which shares roots and meaning with conservatism, stands athwart this mass hysteria. Yes, conservationism can have a religious element to it as well, but that element stems from the biblical injunction to be a good steward of the Earth, rather than a worshiper of it. But stewardship involves economics, not mysticism. As Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson and John Muir and a good many other have pointed out, "economics" that cannot include as a cost the destruction of what people are willing to expend great effort and pay good money to have and enjoy is a poor basis for decision.

And stewardship, as any Christian can tell you, involves "mysticism" rather than economics - in Goldberg's false dichotomy and pejorative labeling.

Except that nature is proven to exist, and the absense of nature means our doom. I also prefer plastic bags because they can be reused more often and recycled, and it doesn't involve clear cutting of forests.

Americans are "green" in that they are willing to spend a lot to keep their country ecologically healthy, which it is.
No it's not. Modern industrial civilization is not sustainable or ecologically healthy.

IYO sustainable is...Slash and burn agriculture? Travel by stage-coach? burning peat?

Healthy is giardia, malaria? By all means let us emulate the superb ecological health of sub-saharan Africa. More later...I have to go run some bison off a cliff now to feed my kids.

IYO sustainable is...Slash and burn agriculture? Travel by stage-coach? burning peat?

Healthy is giardia, malaria? By all means let us emulate the superb ecological health of sub-saharan Africa. Sustainable is sustainable - slash and burn is not, by and large, at current levels - it is a recent innovation that will do itself in shortly in most places. Travel by stagecoach probably is. Burning peat depends on rate and climate.

Regardless of our difficulty in imagining alternatives, we will be turning to some - what we're doing now is unsustainable, and that's what "unsustainable" means: you have to do something else eventually.

It just amazes me how many people swallow this hysterical nonsense of catastrophic collapse of the ecosystem. Are they deaf, dumb, and blind? Or just plain ignorant of even basic science? There is much to be said for conservation and care in daily life, but elevating the environment to the status of deity is obscene. Gore and his ilk know full well that what they are peddling is bunk. But there is an immense amount of money to be made by stampeding the sheep. And beyond the money is the end goal of seizing absolute control of everyone's life. You think not? Control who can make what, where he can make it, and tax him to death for doing so, and you have your hand in every citizens pocket. Cap and trade? More power grabbing BS the entire multi trillion dollar cost of which will come ONLY from the pockets of common citizens because all such taxes will merely be passed along to the end user as they always have been. So when you hear "tax the oil companies", for example, what you need to understand is that what is meant is "direct and regulate your life by means of confiscatory taxes"

Heil Gore ! (and the "human caused" Global Warming modern enviro-Nazi movment)

http://www.prisonplanet.com/images/march2007/130307gore.jpg

Except that nature is proven to exist, and the absense of nature means our doom.


The absence of nature cannot destroy us, because death is a force greater than nature.

That makes no sense.

That makes no sense.


That's laughable, considering you were the guy who said "we were never born, so we can never die."
(http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1867176&postcount=4)

Are you indulging in solipsism at our expense?

Nature did not create itself, and, therefore, cannot be the cause of our deaths.

Nature did create itself.

Nature did create itself.


If nature created itself, why does it die?

It will go on without us, but it's not immune from environmental disasters, extinction, and collapse of ecosystems. The only reason life still exists here is that deep underground, there are bacteria that are isolated from any major catastrophe that has happened on the surface.

The greatest environmentalists will NOT be protesters from greenpeace.

They will be engineers sweating it out in labs trying to develop better batteries.

Economics is the study of choosing between competing goods. Environmentalists view economics as the enemy because cost-benefit analysis is thoroughly unromantic.Economics is also the poorly-defined science of exploitation of resources. Economists view environmentalism as the enemy, because the almost total lack of accounting for the environmental costs of resource exploitation reveals Economics as a thoroughly unbalanced point of view, or "science". It's not all that romantic either.

It will go on without us, but it's not immune from environmental disasters, extinction, and collapse of ecosystems.


But nature will die, albeit slowly, over a very long period of time. Unlike our deaths as individuals, which are an abrupt transition from consciousness into nonexistence.

Over a long period of time? One hopes so, but this is by no means guaranteed.

Ever notice how quickly a "greenie" will leave facts and criticism aside and attack you for asking a question or pointing out a weakness in an argument ? The ad hominem attacks become a substitute for discussion, a way out of the impasse of having to face the truth of their irrationality.

How anyone can believe that the Earth System, nature if you will, can be facing disaster because of humans ? This is silly IMO. Nature extinguishes some 25 species every day as I have been told. This "climate crisis" fear will be forgotten in a few years just as acid rain, the ozone hole, planet ice age and population disaster fears were in the last 25 years.

Many civilizations have died out due to environmental disaster, it's not irrational to be concerned about this, especially considering how shitty we treat nature. We are in the midst of a mass extinction event brought about by humans, the evidence is overwhelming.

Except that nature is proven to exist, and the absense of nature means our doom. I also prefer plastic bags because they can be reused more often and recycled, and it doesn't involve clear cutting of forests.
.
Cloth bags last for years.

How anyone can believe that the Earth System, nature if you will, can be facing disaster because of humans ? This is silly IMO. Nature extinguishes some 25 species every day as I have been told. This "climate crisis" fear will be forgotten in a few years just as acid rain, the ozone hole, planet ice age and population disaster fears were in the last 25 years.
You have stated an opinion. You do understand that you have not made any sort of case.

At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It's a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. "If you look carefully," author Michael Crichton famously observed, "you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths."[/URL]

The myth is that nature is nothing but lego block's for us to fuck around with. If someone were to treat someone you loved - and remember that everyone you love is a part of nature - like non-environmentalists think it is OK to treat nature, suddenly you would invoke myths of that loved one's specialness. Get this, many people love nature. Sure some worship it, but those are pretty rare, even amongst environmentalists. That they think more of nature has value than the tiny little portion you give a shit about, does not make them more myth believers than you. You both care about nature and think it has value. You just have a tiny little area that you care about.

You're ability to love and be aware of life is weaker and this is nothing to be proud of. And you are just as much a mythologist as any tree hugger. If not, I'll come over and take your liver for my uncle, he has cancer. I mean what makes you think that liver is yours or that that matters. You're just a bunch of DNA guided organic chemicals. Nothing special.

Seeing things as essentially dead is a myth.

Cloth bags last for years.

Over paper I mean. I use the cloth bags when I remember to bring them from home.

How anyone can believe that the Earth System, nature if you will, can be facing disaster because of humans ? This is silly IMO. Nature extinguishes some 25 species every day as I have been told.I find it hard to believe that people can believe that humans are incapable of changing the planet. This is pretty silly, too IMO.

Or that we might not be able to change it enough that it means we end up extinct, along with a whole lot of other animals (after all, Nature extinguishes species every day, and we're a species, right?). Or why that could possibly mean "disaster", for planet Earth.

After a few hundred million years, it probably won't be all that noticeable whatever it was we humans "did" to the planet.

You have stated an opinion. You do understand that you have not made any sort of case.
================================================== =============

If you watch Al Gore's film you can see his sole source of data is that which his college professor showed him. The method for obtaining the data was to analyze deep earth core samples with information from many millenia ago. Two parameters, CO2 and Temperature are then plotted over a large time period. The waveforms are periodic and very much sinusoidal and they seem to follow each other in lock step.

He then makes the assumption that the CO2 caused the Temperature to follow it. So one can then conclude that if CO2 levels are increased substantially, by industrialization for example, then Temperature will follow suit. Thus the Earth is warming and a climate crisis is threatening 100's of millions of people, possibly the entire human species.

But correleation is not causation.

And the time period of the data in the film is some 100's of thousands of years. From that he concludes that a warming of 0.6 degrees [if that data can be verified] over 100 years fits in to this data paradyme.

Isn't more likely that the earth's temperature is governed by orbital parameters of the earth and the variations in the sun's energy output and that CO2 levels follow temperature [warm climates increase vegetation in the rain forrests] and not the other way around ?

And if it took thousands of years to produce that natural cycle, could humans really interrupt that process with CO2 emmissions which are less than what the CO2 producing forrests and water vapor [another greenhouse gas] do.

If the earth were warming, doesn't it make more sense that the atmosphere would simply expand which would then compensate and naturally cool it; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion


I think humans should act responsibly, conserve energy when they can, and feel a respect for the beauty and vastness of nature. But this is much different than fearing her or needlessly altering the way we live without much evidence that there is a problem.

JMHO

I think humans should act responsibly, conserve energy when they can, and feel a respect for the beauty and vastness of nature. But this is much different than fearing her or needlessly altering the way we live without much evidence that there is a problem.

JMHO

Well said.

He then makes the assumption that the CO2 caused the Temperature to follow it. No, he doesn't.

How anyone can believe that the Earth System, nature if you will, can be facing disaster because of humans ? It's only disaster from the human point of view.

There have been a few in the past, more localized. The forest system of Easter nNorth America experienced disaster at human hands. The Colorado River. These things are easily to generalize, given a global phenomenon like CO2 boosting.

No, he doesn't.

Oh yes he does implicitly.
I just rewatched that segment on youtube.
CO2 and Temp seem to track in lock step for 650,000 years.

There are only 3 possibilites to consider.
1/ Rising/falling CO2 causes Temp to rise/fall ... the thesis for global warming
2/ Rising/falling Temp causes CO2 to rise/fall ..... thus the cause of warming is NOT CO2
3/ There is only correlation but not causation between CO2 and Temp

If Gore does not assume the first case, the whole movie is pointless.

He never considers that the sun's variations in energy output may be the cause. Nor does he consider that the atmosphere can expand to relieve the increased energy and drop the temperature.

He isn't. He's a water carrier for capitalist exploitation, and favors policies that lead to environmental degradation for profit.Yeah, I heard he even supports building fences! The horror!!!!!!
"economics" that cannot include as a cost the destruction of what people are willing to expend great effort and pay good money to have and enjoy is a poor basis for decision. Sure economics can include that. If you're so willing to pay good money to have and enjoy something, buy it yourself and don't let any evil capitalist defile it with his impure hands. Stop trying to turn the world into your own private park without having to go to the trouble of paying for it.

Spidergoat:

Many civilizations have died out due to environmental disaster, it's not irrational to be concerned about this, especially considering how shitty we treat nature.

WHich ones?

Fucksake, are you serious, dude?
Which ones... for fuuuuuuck's sake

Spidergoat:
WHich ones?

The Khmer Empire.
The Mayans.
The Anasazi .
The Vikings in Greenland.
Genocide in Rawanda had an ecological component.
Easter Island.

The Vikings in Greenland.

This disaster was the planet cooling to about its current temperature. If only the Vikings had driven SUV's, maybe their Greenland settlement might have survived!

Oh yes he does implicitly.
I just rewatched that segment on youtube.
CO2 and Temp seem to track in lock step for 650,000 years. Your "implicitly" is my "BS". No one, especially not Gore, has ever claimed that increases in CO2 concentration have caused more than a few, if any, of the past warmings.

They have, of course, intensified them, almost certainly. The CO2 boosting answers part of the question of how the Milankovitch cycles have had as large an effect as they apparently have - the difference in solar flux is not enough.
Sure economics can include that. It hasn't. Until it does, it's a poor basis for decision. If you're so willing to pay good money to have and enjoy something, buy it yourself and don't let any evil capitalist defile it with his impure hands. When the loss is distributed to not only tens of thousands of people but to future generations, when it is (for example) a stream of losses of indefinite extent and uncertain size, the only way to include it in the decision is by governmental action.

The question of which civilisations died out due to environmental change, has a simple answer: "all the ones who haven't survived".

If you take a wander through the fertile crescent (I'll assume you know where that is), you shouldn't have too much trouble finding evidence of past civilisations. If you head south towards the eastern edge of Africa, same deal. There were several Egyptian dynasties that collapsed because the floods didn't happen.

The Romans weren't exactly conquered by climate change, but the people who overran the Empire were on the move, mostly nomadic tribes.
The Romans found plenty of evidence of past civilisations fallen into ruin, in their travels.
Of course, this is only the history we know about, you have to go and dig a bit to find evidence of earlier human settlements (unless you want to get snooty and say early human settlements aren't "civilisation", but you'd just be being snooty, coz they are).

P.S. What happened to the Trojans, or the Minoans, or the Mycenians?

Nonsense !!

You clearly have not read Toynbee or Spengler.
Past civilizations have died mostly due to their internal
moral decay. A few have been conquered but that is
the minority.

You clearly have not read Toynbee or Spengler.
Past civilizations have died mostly due to their internal
moral decay. A few have been conquered but that is
the minority. "Moral decay" in Toynbee's sense is more commonly a symptom than a cause.

But there is another sense: if the degradation of one's environment is a prodcut of moral inadequacy or decay, as the "church of green" would have it, then such failure does apparently underlie the disappearance of many civilizations.

Greed is at the root, quite often. As Diamond put it, from his students: why didn't the Easter Islanders recognize, and prevent, the cutting of the last large trees from their island, marooning them and making it impossible to hunt large fish and dolphins and other food ?

What was going through their minds as the last reproductive tree fell, and they were condemned to eventual starvation ?

Most likely it was a moral failure - the tree was cut to enable the carving and transport of the huge heads of vanity and wealth, in the service of the rulling class, who were not going to starve very soon.

If anyone is in any doubt about the ability of humans to destroy the natural environment and thus encompass their own destruction they should visit (for example) parts of Malawi, and observe the effects of overpopulation. For the most part it is not modern technology which is destroying the world, but the devastation caused by the exhaustion of grazing land or the simple hunt for firewood: prolific rich green fertile lands of thirty, twenty, ten years ago denuded of vegetation, reduced by degrees to barren deserts, soil eroded by both wind and water.

Most likely it was a moral failure - the tree was cut to enable the carving and transport of the huge heads of vanity and wealth, in the service of the rulling class, who were not going to starve very soon.


Stupidity seems the likeliest answer.

The inability to imagine the future is a failure of intelligence.

Stupidity seems the likeliest answer.

The inability to imagine the future is a failure of intelligence. They did find and colonize Easter Island, establish a new agriculture and fishing, raise a civilization , create the means of carving and transporting those heads, etc.

They found Easter Island, less than a hundred square miles of dry land, across more than 1200 miles of open ocean, and colonized it with the full complement of agricultural and technological and societal (they brought women, almost certainly children) requirements of their civilization.

The great seagoing peoples of Europe were hundreds of years from being able to find the North American continent at that distance, and when they did eventually achieve that feat found the hospitality of the residents necessary for survival.

Inability to imagine the future does not seem to have been the Islander's problem.

They did find and colonize Easter Island, establish a new agriculture and fishing, raise a civilization , create the means of carving and transporting those heads, etc.

"Many islanders went about stark naked, but with their entire body artistically tattooed in one continuous pattern of birds and strange figures." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island)

I shouldn't be too cynical, they probably had schools as well in their 'civilization'. After all, a school doesn't have to be a classroom filled with uniformed children studying for exams, it could be a load of naked savages sitting around on rocks listening to the ululations of some deranged bird-man as he recounts creation stories.

Who the hell am I to judge?

They found Easter Island, less than a hundred square miles of dry land, across more than 1200 miles of open ocean,


Of course, they bumped into it by chance. How else?

and colonized it with the full complement of agricultural and technological and societal (they brought women, almost certainly children) requirements of their civilization.

I'll give them credit for bringing women, since that does demonstrate some forward planning. But cutting down all the trees? The results are slightly more abstract and history suggests they really didn't grasp them.

Can't you just imagine the Chief staring vacantly up into the sky, his mouth half open, as one of the tribe asks him where all the birds have gone?

The great seagoing peoples of Europe were hundreds of years from being able to find the North American continent at that distance, and when they did eventually achieve that feat found the hospitality of the residents necessary for survival.

So necessary that when most of the indigenous population died as a result of disease they all died as well?

They thrived, with or without help.

Inability to imagine the future does not seem to have been the Islander's problem.


I doubt they even had a concept of the 'future' beyond a simple agrarian one - certainly nothing like we have in the modern world - and even that would have been completely infused by their bizarre idol worshiping beliefs.

I don't think you can seriously suggest that our modern understanding of what passes as intelligence is something they possessed.

Easter Island's native inhabitants were the victim of man-made ecological disaster. They cut down all the trees. It's not too different from our addiction to oil. We are too stupid to do anything else.

Easter Island's native inhabitants were the victim of man-made ecological disaster. They cut down all the trees. It's not too different from our addiction to oil. We are too stupid to do anything else.


There are plans within plans.

Of course, they bumped into it by chance. How else? So you claim that they bumped into a 70 square mile island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 1200 miles from the nearest possible - not likely, possible - launch point (3,14159 X 1,440,000 square miles of ocean to search in, minimum) with a fleet of boats carrying a colonizing quantity of chickens, food crops, agricultural implements, fishing gear, women, fresh water, and everything else they needed to support themselves for weeks at sea and set up a permanent living human community at landfall,

by chance.

It had to be by chance, because they were stupid and incapable of imagining the future.

And the regular trade routes set up across hundreds of miles of open ocean among the hundreds of islands of the South Pacific - discovering and navigating them was a matter of chance, too, we are to presume. Something stupid people would stumble on by accident.

This being at a time when the Europeans, with a thousand year head start and all the learning and all the technology of three continents of civilization at their disposal, were creeping around the Mediterranean from anchorage to anchorage, because heading out across that fearsome and legendary expanse of ocean to other shores was beyond their capabilities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mediterranean_Relief.jpg (Fans of the superior intelligence of Western civilization inhabitants can trace and admire the 27 year Odyssey across - or around, rather - that storm-tossed expanse. The Greek habits of decorating their bodies and walking about naked are to be overlooked, however, in evaluating their intelligence).

The area of open ocean around Easter Island is about four times the open ocean area of the Mediterranean Sea, if that Sea were a perfect circle.
So necessary that when most of the indigenous population died as a result of disease they all died as well? A couple of the early colonies that lost the aid of the locals died out, yes (Jamestown, et al). The rest were kept alive by regular supply shipments from Europe.

I don't think you can seriously suggest that our modern understanding of what passes as intelligence is something they possessed.This has to be one of the finest examples I've seen in this forum of ignorant stereotyping.
"They were ignorant savages, who couldn't possibly have understood anything beyond simple ideas of gathering food, worshipping idols, and making babies."

The Pacific diaspora that started in Asia apparently, and spread East from modern-day Taiwan, was accomplished by people who learned to navigate by the stars over distances of thousands of miles, and had far superior seagoing skills than the palefaces. You could say they were centuries ahead.

Oh wait, you can say that, because they were.

No one, especially not Gore, has ever claimed that increases in CO2 concentration have caused more than a few, if any, of the past warmings.
Probably you haven't been paying attention watching Gore's piece of trash?

AIT says: "The relationship is very complicated, but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: when there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer."

Heck, Gore's whole evangel and financial imperium is based on carbon dioxide...

And it's true.

Probably you haven't been paying attention watching Gore's piece of trash? I have. You have apparently completely missed Gore's point, as well as the major factors of the entire argument.

AIT says: "The relationship is very complicated, but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: when there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer." That is so. It is predicted from the physics involved, and visible in the records and evidence.

But you appear to be assuming that such a fact implies that CO2 is the instigator, or cause, of all those past warming trends. It does not, and no one - not Gore, not anyone - says it does.

So you claim that they bumped into a 70 square mile island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 1200 miles from the nearest possible - not likely, possible - launch point (3,14159 X 1,440,000 square miles of ocean to search in, minimum) with a fleet of boats carrying a colonizing quantity of chickens, food crops, agricultural implements, fishing gear, women, fresh water, and everything else they needed to support themselves for weeks at sea and set up a permanent living human community at landfall,


Anyone sailing out of Pitcairn Islands, who simply sets a course following the natural curve of that island chain, would automatically be heading towards Easter Island. Not rocket science.

Since Easter island already had flora and wildlife, as well as fresh water, your preconditions are unnecessary and are, therefore, rejected.

That oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism is sometimes taken as evidence supporting a rapid collapse. For example, to severely insult an enemy one would say, "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth." Diamond suggests that this means the food supply of the people ultimately ran out[12]; however, cannibalism was widespread across Polynesian cultures, rendering his conclusion speculative.[13]
Link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island).


Behold your precious civilization.

And take note of the deceiver Diamond.

The captives destined to be eaten were shut up in huts in front of the sanctuaries. There they were kept until the moment when they were sacrificed to the gods.....The Easter Islanders' cannibalism was not exclusively a religious rite or the expression of an urge for revenge: it was also induced by a simple liking for human flesh that could impel a man to kill for no other reason than his desire for fresh meat. Link (http://www.netaxs.com/~trance/cannibal.html).


C......i.......v.......i.......l......z......a.... ..t......i......o......n.


And the regular trade routes set up across hundreds of miles of open ocean among the hundreds of islands of the South Pacific - discovering and navigating them was a matter of chance, too, we are to presume. Something stupid people would stumble on by accident.

Trade routes? Are you really this much of a fool, or are you just using these terms to wind me up? Just like when a poster on these forums tried to convince us that spear making in Africa was a result of specialization of labor.

I guess they had huge cargo ships traversing these 'routes', using satellite navigation.

Here is a wonderful example of the intelligence of Pacific Islanders, pay close attention because you are in need of an education:

Famous examples of cargo cult activity include the setting up of mock airstrips, airports, offices, dining rooms, as well as the fetishization and attempted construction of western goods, such as radios made of coconuts and straw. Believers may stage "drills" and "marches" with sticks for rifles and use military-style insignia and "USA" painted on their bodies to make them look like soldiers, thereby treating the activities of western military personnel as rituals to be performed for the purpose of attracting the cargo. The cult members built these items and 'facilities' in the belief that the structures would attract cargo intended to be sent to them.
Link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult).

Even better...

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. The cult members thought that the foreigners had some special connection to the deities and ancestors of the natives, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches.

In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and created new military-style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes.

Chortle.

Don't be cruel.

Hey, I just had an idea. Do you think Easter Islanders painted birds on their bodies and wore feathered headgear because they thought it would attract more birds to the island? It seems like the done thing in the Pacific.

Maybe they went around sqwarking and flapping their arms as well whilst they scoffed down their neighbours?

Aside: I typed 'birdman' into google, hoping for a suitable image to use here. Fate strikes, and nearly all the images are of a black rapper who calls himself 'birdman'. It's all falling horribly into place.

because heading out across that fearsome and legendary expanse of ocean to other shores was beyond their capabilities.

No. They did it the right way, at the right time.

The Greek habits of decorating their bodies and walking about naked are to be overlooked, however, in evaluating their intelligence.

And the stupidity of a self-righteous white liberal is to be overlooked as he tries to sell us savagery as a way of life.

But you appear to be assuming that such a fact implies that CO2 is the instigator, or cause, of all those past warming trends. It does not, and no one - not Gore, not anyone - says it does.

Oh yes he does !

If Gore does not think it is the cause, then why does he show the periodic waveforms of temp and CO2 tracking ? His implication is clear. CO2 causes warming.

Again .....

If temp drives CO2, then there is no case for human induced climate change.

But if CO2 drives temp, then there is a case.
But no one knows anything but apparent correlation between the two.
There is no evidence for causation.
And if there is no causation, then again there is no case for human induced climate change.

And if CO2 is the cause, how does one explain the data before industrialization ?

BTW, I am not saying human induced global warming and climate change is
impossible. It just has not yet been proven with any real credible arguments or evidence.

...and no one - not Gore, not anyone - says it does...What difficulties do you have reading: "...that is far more powerful than all the others..."? Or is it just a mental block?
That is so. It is predicted from the physics involved, and visible in the records and evidence. This "evidence" is not much more than a bunch of flawded correlations and GCM's. Bristlecones, anyone?

What difficulties do you have reading: "...that is far more powerful than all the others..."? Or is it just a mental block? I read it fine. It seems to be the fact of the matter. The physics and the evidence agree. So ?
This "evidence" is not much more than a bunch of flawded correlations and GCM's. Plus a set of mechansims, of course.

A large number of independent correlations plus verified mechanisms makes a reasonable argument, IMHO. One needs a counter-argument, similarly buttressed, for dismissal.
If Gore does not think it is the cause, then why does he show the periodic waveforms of temp and CO2 tracking ? His implication is clear. CO2 causes warming. Your "implication" is my BS, as I have pointed out. He does not say, anywhere, that past warming trends have been instigated, set off, begun, "caused" in your "implication" sense, by CO2 accumulation.

There are a couple of past warmings that do seem to have been begun, caused, etc, by CO2 accumulation - the one that brought us out of the "snowball earth" eon has been attributed to CO2 from volcanoes slowly building up over millions of years and instigating a warming - but that is not Gore's argument.

I read it fine. It seems to be the fact of the matter. The physics and the evidence agree. So ?

So? Well you already forgot what you wrote earlier: "No one, especially not Gore, has ever claimed that increases in CO2 concentration have caused more than a few, if any, of the past warmings."

If CO2 did not cause more than a few, if any of the past warmings, then what did it and why is it that important to Gore?

And the stupidity of a self-righteous white liberal is to be overlooked as he tries to sell us savagery as a way of life.And of course, savagery is something the European "races" never had to bother with, thank goodness.

What a crock, man. I bet you can't even define "savage".

If CO2 did not cause more than a few, if any of the past warmings, then what did it and why is it that important to Gore? Explanations vary from Milankovitch cycles to asteroid impact recoveries to effects of continental drift and several others.

It's important to Gore because they seem to illustrate the effects of boosting CO2 - once caused, or started, warming trends that set off or are accompanied by CO2 boosts get much warmer than others. The CO2 boosts amplify small solar and other effects, and the greenhouse effects of CO2 seem to be very large.

Anyone sailing out of Pitcairn Islands, who simply sets a course following the natural curve of that island chain, would automatically be heading towards Easter Island. Oh yeah, that's how they did it. "Setting a course" following a "natural curve" somehow deduced from a chain of islands themselves hundreds of miles apart, across 1200 miles of open ocean to a single, isolated chunk of dry land. Nothing to it !
I guess they had huge cargo ships traversing these 'routes', using satellite navigation. They didn't have satellite navigation. That's something smart, civilized white people need so they won't get lost from entire continents as soon as they lose sight of land (as the Mediterranean traders routinely did, and feared).

The stupid savages, trading their shells and stones and feathers and food and so forth, whaling and fishing and arranging marriages and visiting the relatives all over the South Pacific, were coming upon their little island destinations days over the horizon by stumblebum luck.

And the Irish are reputed lucky. These people built a civilization on it.

It just has not yet been proven with any real credible arguments or evidence.Put it this way, whether or not we compute and "figure out", that is: put into those figures we like to play around with, what is happening and what might happen, the planet is going to go ahead and compute its own "result".

So are you waiting until you need to start swimming, or what? What would be "proof" arriving on your doorstep - a newspaper with a story in it? A documentary on the box? Changing weather patterns, and mass migrations of species (we happen to be one of those)?
What's your poison?

First you say:
No one, especially not Gore, has ever claimed that increases in CO2 concentration have caused more than a few, if any, of the past warmings.
Now you say:
and the greenhouse effects of CO2 seem to be very large.

Can you pls make up your mind?

Can you pls make up your mind?How do you connect those two things with someone not "making up their mind"? ??:bugeye:

You seem to be saying: "because no-one has claimed that CO2 has caused warming in the past except for a few times that means it can't have an effect". That doesn't follow even remotely, if that is what you are asking them to make up their mind about...?

The absence of nature cannot destroy us, because death is a force greater than nature.

Wtf ? You're joking right ? :eek:

Wtf ? You're joking right ? :eek:


No.

Dude, the absense of bees would destroy us.

Dude, the absense of bees would destroy us.


Eh?