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.
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
No, he doesn't. 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.
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.
Yeah, I heard he even supports building fences! The horror!!!!!! 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.
The Khmer Empire. The Mayans. The Anasazi . The Vikings in Greenland. Genocide in Rawanda had an ecological component. Easter Island.
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!
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. It hasn't. Until it does, it's a poor basis for decision. 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.
"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.
Stupidity seems the likeliest answer. The inability to imagine the future is a failure of intelligence.
