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Location: When you take flak it means you are on target
7,646 posts, read 9,950,661 times
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I've been a bit pessimistic the past couple of days and got to thinking, do we (humans) even have a chance of surviving?
If the US and Europe stopped all pollution today it wouldn't matter. China, India, So. America poisioning the air. Trees around the world are dying. The oceans are full of plastics, the ground water has pcb's and worse. The seas are being plundered to extinction by outlaw fishing fleets.
So what happens when the plants and oceans die and we can't breathe?
Have we already passed the point of no return? Some think so. I just don't see any hope of stopping the death spiral unless massive change occurs pdq. I see a hundred years, maybe.
Is there any point in surviving the apocolypse or whatever just so our kids can die of asphyxiation?
Who's been indoctrinating you? Are you a liberal, progressive, a Democrat, or just some poor soul who listens to the lame-stream media too much? Do you realize that most of that stuff is just a guilt-inducing scheme to extract more (carbon) taxes from you?
The earth is far too big and has too many complex systems for puny humans to have any effect on it. There can be localized "pollution" but even that is subject to self-correction once it stops.
How do you define "pollution"? Look at the earth as a sphere in the sky, much like the pictures of it taken from the moon. Nothing ever comes here, save for an occasional asteroid. Nothing ever leaves here, except an occasional satellite. So...where does "pollution" come from? Right here on earth! Those plastics you speak of, all are made from ingredients from right here on earth. They will degrade back to same. If they don't do so fast enough for you, consider that this planet is 2 to 6 billion years old. Geologic time moves much more slowly than we do.
Consider that the politicians and bureaucrats continue to waste paper, consume electricity, and spew out CO2 from their cars and jets, as much as they ever have. They just just don't want us to...or else they'll tax us. This is just another tax scheme, and total bs.
Chin up, when left alone mother nature takes back and corrects things vey quickly.
We will eventually hit a population peak/plateau/cliff it could be 2050 or 2100 but it will happen.
Someone a few years back put together a quick documentary about the Chernobyl site and there's this:
"The area has been uninhabited since the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which killed 31 people and forced all residents to evacuate from more than 1,000 square miles. But a new study published Monday in the journal Current Biology found flourishing numbers of large wildlife, including wolves, elk, foxes and wild boar, inside the Belarusian part of the exclusion zone"
Location: When you take flak it means you are on target
7,646 posts, read 9,950,661 times
Reputation: 16466
Nor Easter, you know that I'm not a liberal, I can't believe you'd even suggest such a thing. I want my friendship bracelet back.
But I see the signs and read the scientific reports. They are burning the rain forests. I have seen it personally. Most are gone in many areas.
Drive throught the west, bark beatles are killing vast swaths of trees weakened by ozone poisioning and drought.
Look at the haze in the west. It was never there when I was a kid. Everything was crystal clear. Now there is always a haze of dust, smoke, and general pollution.
Look at China and India, makes our pollution look clean.
As a kid we'd surf and be able to see the bottom and huge schools of fish in SoCal. When I got too old sbout five years ago, the fish are gone, you can't see your feet below your board, you get rashes, there's brown foam.
I'm kind of glad I won't live to see when it gets really bad.
Look at the haze in the west. It was never there when I was a kid. Everything was crystal clear. Now there is always a haze of dust, smoke, and general pollution.
Good thing you didn't live in the 1930s Dust Bowl era!
Nobody mentions it but world population growth is having an impact. I'm not a believer in people being the major cause of global warming but...
A mere 50 years ago, the population was less than 3.4 billion. It's now 7.4 billion.
That's more than double in 50 years. If the government & greenies counts human farts like they do cow farts in determining global pollution and methane increases, you see why we're in trouble.
Be advised that if we hit 10 billion and someone farts near a fire, the whole planet is going to blow up. The human race will end the same way as the dinosaur, in a global fire. The rodents (with really small farts) will inherit the earth.
Look at China and India, makes our pollution look clean.
It is true that there are problems in these countries, but things can take time to be fixed. You have to remember that third world countries do not have the general education that first-world countries have. Poor people are trying to survive and seek every way to earn money to do that. This is their first priority, putting food on the table for their family.
Yes, there is so much to do. However, there are visionaries like Elon Musk and the Tesla battery which may be able to help the world get off oil-based fuels. That will make a great contribution if it is adopted by the populations of the world.
In China, already I see more electric charging stations springing up all over the place here as people take the opportunity to provide an alternative to petrol for their cars. This gives me hope that someone is doing something to help the situation. Coal fired heating plants are being changed to natural gas. Trees are being planted in cities, and new parks are being created.
I think you have to go with the idea that every little bit helps drag us out of the bad situation we have got ourselves into.
As far as the Chernobyl article goes, there is this.
Quote:
While animal populations may be doing well, the study’s authors say their research didn’t look at the individual health of animals, which has almost certainly been impacted in some way by the potent fallout. Scientists have long observed the toll of radiation on certain species, including deformed beaks in birds, a decline in the number of spiders and an uptick in tumors in some animals, according to a report last year by The New York Times. But those effects are mostly concentrated in so-called “hot zones,” regions where radiation is still found at high levels. Other areas in the exclusion zone are relatively clean of the fallout, enough so that disaster tourism has spiked in recent years.
So of course without the humans there, the ecosystem will try its best to return to 'normal' but there is still the radiation which has contaminated the DNA gene pool of those animals and plants living in that area. There will be mutations over a short time frame and not as a result of natural selection.
Last edited by ocpaul20; 10-20-2016 at 01:34 AM..
Reason: chernobyl
Good thing you didn't live in the 1930s Dust Bowl era!
That was a man-created disaster, as I read an entire book on this era. The Indians in the area warned the settlers about clearing all those bison grazing areas, planting all those crops, during a fluke of nature. The fluke being there was an inordinate amount of precipitation during that era, and settlers thinking, the moisture would continue, and? It didn't! A 7-8 year drought appeared, creating a new desert.
During the most serious times, the heavy winds carried that dust all the way to 200 miles offshore on the East Coast, where, at times, they had to turn the street lights on in NYC during the daytime!
My recent pessimism about the fate of the world revolves around a book I recently read: Strangely Like War, The Global Assault on Forests.
If the OP is pessimistic now, please don't read that book!
The most important lesson I learned is that tree farms have only 3 cycles, and then? Kaput!
If any corporations are facilitating the demise of this planet, it's the lumber companies of the world, building all their Weyer-haus's, and lying about how much more expensive it is to build a structure that's more fireproof like concrete!
Last edited by tijlover; 10-20-2016 at 03:41 AM..
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