Comment Re:More news for AGW alarmists (Score 1) 324
1 mm over many decades doesn't mean squat..
You missed out the rather important per year part from that sentence.
1 mm over many decades doesn't mean squat..
You missed out the rather important per year part from that sentence.
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Ever wondered if a certain species of animal can be found where you live?
Unless I'm doing it all wrong, then you'd need to know the scientific name of every animal that can be found where you live, in order to search in the first place. You'd be much better off just going outside for a look.
The cheapest solution would probably be to have a small camera inside the fridge, and get someone on Mechanical Turk to fill out an inventory for you. And that's just sad.
Everybody says
Orly?
I don't think it's entirely a matter of education. Even educated people can be tempted to vote for what's good for themselves in the short term, even if it's bad for everybody in the longer term.
True, but I think the parent was implying that uneducated people can be tempted to vote for what's bad for themselves, and everyone else, in the short and long term. However, I disagree with their either-or approach. Uneducated democracies are bad, and two party democracies are also bad. Look at what's happening in France right now. Sarkozy's losing to a socialist rival, so instead of trying to appear more centrist to increase his appeal to everyone, he specifically tries to increase his appeal to the far right, effectively cutting his losses among the left. A binary choice inevitably leads to extreme polarisation. See also: American's Republican Presidential Primaries.
Hey...as long as it happens after I'm dead and gone...what do I care?
Some folk take an interest in events that will happen beyond their own lifespan, and others don't. There appears to be little reconciling these groups.
Incidentally, do you care about history, beyond how modern lessons can be learned from it?
Developing countries into modernity lowers the birth rate, and that's the best solution.
But that also increases their demand for resources, per capita. Who consumes more resources globally, 4 starving kids in a refugee camp, or 1 well-off western kid? There's an infographic somewhere (can find it if required) of the number of Earths-worth of resources we'd need if the whole global population were to have western standards of living. Unfortunately, that's way higher even than what we currently consume.
You may mock Roosevelt, but perhaps he was aware, as you seemingly aren't, of how many past civilisations have collapsed due to timber crises... Easter Island being one of the most dramatic. What if someone hadn't invented creosote coatings? Sure, technology provided a solution that time, and many other times in recent history, but there are plenty of other times it hasn't.
Our modern global/western civilisation is big and impressive, I'll give it that. But if you take the historical perspective, the number of civilisations that have collapsed is quite a long list, and some of them were quite big and impressive, too.
So yeah, we've got lots of scientists. You think we're the first civilisation to have lots of scientists? Sure, we're more advanced than our predecessors, but do you really think that our civilisation's size, or even technology like the internet makes us so different from all other civilisations to come before us, that we're immune to collapse? On the contrary, our current civilisation is so big that most efforts to make significant changes seem almost completely ineffectual. And that oil is going to run out.
I've certainly not abandoned hope, but I'd like to think I've got beyond the mindset of thinking that people in history were so radically different from us. Technology may well provide a solution to all our problems, but it also might not. Isn't it wise to prepare, at least slightly, for that eventuality? Isn't believing otherwise just placing blind faith in a deus ex machina?
If all else fails, lower your standards.