Global Warming... bollox I say!
The planet is in a constant state of change. There
will be another ice age. There is
nothing anyone can do about it. We may be catalyzing it with our activities but to be perfectly frank, our time on top is limited. I'd be surprised if our species lasted another 10,000 years -- which is very short geologically speaking, dinosaurs reigned over the world for millions. The reasons:
-Overpopulation: This one is huge. We are at the top of the foodchain, like lions, bears, eagles, tigers..etc. Because we're at the top there should be, by the rules of nature, fewer of us than our "prey". Of course, we've cheated this with our technology, but in doing so, we've put a tremendous strain on nature. In the last 10 years the world has lost somewhere in the ballpark of 7% of the available nutrient rich topsoil because of farming. In nature, it takes years to grow forests, to grow grasslands, to grow crops like we do. The land wasn't meant to support the farming that we need to survive. Because of it, much of the topsoil erodes into the rivers and oceans each year. We've deforested way too much land (for both timber and rich soil to farm in) and this of course removes huge carbon sinks (carbon dioxide is necessary for photosynthesis) and further catalyzes the erosion of the topsoil. There aren't supposed to be ~7 billion human beings on this planet. It doesn't work. From an economics stand point, you think oil prices suck now, imagine what will happen when we have 15 billion people competing for whatever energy alternative we come up with next. As selfish as it sounds, the more of us there are, the less there is to go around. We've beaten the odds, most of our children will survive into adulthood, there's no reason to have 5 kids.
-Pollution: This one's obvious, messing with the chemical make up of the atmosphere will result in changes in natural cycles, and only having the technology to really 'track' weather patterns for less than 100 years now, we have no idea what effect it will have. It's kind of like aiming a gun somewhere and firing, not knowing what the outcome will be for another 10-20 years.
-Ignorance: There isn't some high power that is going to correct everything when we've destroyed our earth. Nature has a funny way of getting rid of the things that don't play within its rules. There are probably millions of planets out there that have life just like we do. We are nothing special and need to figure that out fast. If we as a species cease to exist, the universe won't change at all, in fact our planet would be much better off.
We live our lives so detached from nature because we can, unfortunately, we need that attachment to nature to keep ourselves grounded and understand what our role on earth is.
EDIT: sidenote, the antartic has record level glaciers.
Last edited by CommieChipmunk (2008-02-27 19:26:52)
