Global Warming vs. Terrorism

As Bill Hicks said - The Persian Gulf Distraction.

 

I agree ignorace is by far the greatest influence on the world. If a nuclear war happens the world will be populated by cockroaches and bermuda grass. Two things the modern world seems to hate, but can't seem to control. I guess the same thing could be said for the corporate corrupt, maybe they will share the world with the roaches and the bermuda grass, let's see how far their money get's them in negotiations with those two.

 

Global warming is a bit of an inappropriate term.

There are very common warming and cooling cycles, and while animals acclimated to extreme enviornments may suffer, most species can adapt to changing conditons.

Human intervantion in through releases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases can cause unintended desertification and localized rises in sea levels which can be very dangerous to some areas.

It's not very reasonable to blame one event such as Katrina on global warming. They've been expecting this storm for years and nobody did much about it.

But greenhouse gasses should be curved to prevent any accleration in global warming.

Terrorism is also a bit of an innapropriate term. Terrorism can mean a lot of things, and some acts of violence can't be helped. Combating islamofascism and heling to promote education and cultural awareness in impoverished islamic states, as well as trying to provide oppurtunities and healthcare in poor nations can partially help this, although there isn't a silver bullet.

We know what terrorists are capable of however, while our understanding of the consequences of global warming from increased greenhouse is fairly limited.

 

President Bush rejected the Kyoto Accords due primarily to the

projected costs they represented. As the primary contributor of Greenhouse

gases, the United States will have to divert significant economic

resources to make any headway in reducing its percentages. In hindsight,

President Bush was preparing the nation to commit to a Guns style

economy. Many economists have taken the position that this approach is

usually incompatible with a Butter (aka. consumer) oriented economy.

Despite the known benefits of a war pumping up the Gross National Product

, it channels funds into often non productive areas thus creating

monetary shortages in domestic growth sectors such as housing, health

care, durable goods, and social benefit programs, etc. In IMHO, it will

take many years to swing the economy back to a purely consumer type

system. If this is true, where will the money come from to reduce the

amount of Greenhouse gases we are spewing into the atmosphere?

The answer may be an unpleasant one due to the continuing nature of the

current war against Terrorism in its many forms. There will be few

funds available to combat Global Warming. Does this prospect doom our

children to a fate we ourselves would not tolerate? Possibly.

The actual solution(s) may ultimately be due more to social reforms

than outright economic expenditures. A profound change in consumer

opinion and spending habits could significantly impact the smoke stack

industries. The minimization of profligate consumption could realign

national priorities to be more consistent with the requirements of Greenhouse

gas reduction.

At this moment, there is no [accepted] vision large enough to solve

this problem. We need to turn to our leaders in all disciplines to

determine how best to compensate for the aforementioned economic shortfall.

We need to conduct a thorough review of how we live, work and interact

with our environment. Would smaller homes, redesigned cities and

hybrids be sufficient to turn the tide? This is an interesting

consideration. However according to many of the leading climate experts, there isn't much time left to do this.

One source of inspiration may lie thiry miles east of Prescott Arizona, a town that even movie stars are taking notice of. This inspirational place is a popular Arizona tourist attraction called Arcosanti.

Many visitors view it as one of the remaining redoubts of the late

sixties. Others know it as the origin of some of the most beautiful bronze

cast bells in the world. We as the Global Warming generation may yet

appreciate it as a major source of inspiration in our efforts to reduce

the effects of Greenhouse gases.

Paolo Soleri conceived and implemented the Arcosanti project. Soleri

is a world renowned architect and visionary.1. He is a man before his

time. Now may be the time.

The Arcosanti project is described in their website 2. as being

based on Soleri's concept of "Arcology," architecture coherent with

ecology. Arcology advocates cities designed to maximize the interaction

and accessibility associated with an urban environment; minimize the use

of energy, raw materials and land, reducing waste and environmental

pollution; and allow interaction with the surrounding natural environment.

It may be time now to review Soleri's creation and concepts. I

recommend all visionaries and leaders in their respective fields to take a

hard look at his works and if in the area visit Arcosanti.

1.Soleri has received one fellowship from the Graham Foundation and two

from the Guggenheim Foundation. He has been awarded three honorary

doctorates, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for

Craftmanship in 1963, the Gold Medal from the World Biennieal of Architecture in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1981, and the SIlver Medal of the Academied'

Architecture in Paris, 1984. Soleri is a distinguished lecturer in the College

of Architecture at Arizona State University.

2.<http://www.arcosanti.org/project/background/soleri/main.html>

 

i am equally concerned with both and i feel that both are high threats right now.

 

Depends how you define terrorism and if you include the wars fought as part of the "war on terror". Even so terrorism generally only kills a few hundreds or thousands in a year. If catastrophic climate change and the melting of the greenland ice sheet were to occur we'd be looking at many millions of people dead and displaced.

 

I think alot of people would say terrorism over global warming because its more personal. For me they're just about equal.

 

I think a lot of people would say terrorism because it's on the news more, is a political buzzword, and is easier to understand. The actual risks from and damage caused by terrorism are, of course, minimal.

 

Seeing as how my chances of being killed by a terrorist are worst than those of being struck by lightning, I'm going to have to go with global warming. Extreme weather conditions, rising sea levels, holes in the ozone layer, etc bother me *a lot* more than BushCo.'s boggymen.

 

I think both global warming and terrorism are actually symptoms of a similar underlying problem.

So what's the underlying problem? Distruction of the life systems we depend upon. If people feel they have plenty of resources, they generally don't fight so much. Likewise, if we keep the resources of the earth intact that keep our climate in balance, then global warming will not be a problem.

I think both problems can be addressed by learning to live more sustainably!

 

Yeah... Global warming... I think global warming is the biggest problem in this world....Because it is a thing that will destroy us someday if we don't do anything for it... Terrorism is a problem also... But it cant destroy all mankind...

 

i agree with mr. brown.

also, i want to make clear that i am not living in fear of terrorism. i believe that terrorism is the latest word for 'communist', 'homosexual', 'killer bee' and all the other imaginary monsters that the state has been telling us to fear. because i am in control of my thoughts and my life, i choose not to be afraid of something that doesn't threaten me.

the reason terrorism is fresh in the minds of the easily persuaded, is that the world trade center was recently brought down in a controlled demolition, while it appeared that hijacked planes were responsible (internal fires do not result in freefall-speed collapse, ever).

i'm not saying terrorism isn't real (my country, new zealand, suffered a terrorist attack from the french in the 1980's), but i don't agree with the culture of fear being created in order to justify militarisation and the inevitable wars that follow.

i also don't fear global warming, but i am deeply concerned about it. i don't think it's fair to subject the next generation to a lower quality of life than the one we are enjoying. it also bothers me because the problem is rooted in our inability to change our lifestyles. we say human beings are intelligent, but what other animal shits in its own nest?

for the deniers: you can question the science all you like, of course nobody knows exactly what will happen. does that mean that because we're not sure, we should do absolutely nothing? there never are certainties with problems as big as this. also, there is a general consensus that pollution is bad (e.g: it kills things, notably us), so what reason do you have for wanting to resist a reduction in pollution? the economic argument is a weak one, because of the numerous benefits of clean energy, such as being paid to put your power into the grid. just try to think outside the capitalist box for once.

i suspect the deniers are people who are simply ignorant of the fact that a healthy natural environment is linked to our own health and wellbeing. not exactly rocket-science.

 

I voted "other" in your poll.

As near as I can tell the real threat is our incredibly destructive
supermaterialistic lifestyle.

We take it for granted and most people think that this is just
the way life is. We are taught that it is the cultural crown
of creation and the result of a natural evolutionary process.

But it is simply one way of living and in no way inevitable
and certainly isn't natural in the usual sense of that word.

The average American does more harm to this planet than
than the entire pre-Contact Native American civilization
did.

Not long ago, only the very rich had a horse-drawn carriage
at their beck and call, 24-hours a day. Now, the typical
American has at least one car and that car does more harm
to the planet than a hundred horse-drawn carriages.

(I'm talking about the industry that creates the car and its
fuel and road system....)

This lifestyle is the cause of global warming and the cause
of what we call terrorism, which is simply people who are
being bullied by our military into submitting to corporate
rule striking back.

It pays to keep in mind that the Native Americans who
resisted the theft of their lands, the destruction of their
cultures, and their wholesale murder, were called
"terrorists" by the early Americans....

Littlefoot

 

Global warming and terrorism are very much alike as they are both contrived and used by governments to instill fear in the public, making the people more subservient to the government, who use these things to forward agendas (which we are told are in the people's best interests). Now when I say they are both contrived, that doesn't mean I am saying they don't exist. Terrorism exists, but who is perpetrating the terrorism and who stands to gain from it? With global warming, we know it also exists and that the earth is indeed warming up, but what is really causing it and who stands to gain from the "solutions" used to combat it? If you ask most people about these two issues, they will merely regurgitate whatever they've heard on TV from the established talking heads. Most people don't realize how they are being lied to, and how BOTH of these issues (which are being shoved down our throats by the media) are being used for control purposes, because a public that is fearful is more easily duped into giving up its freedoms in the name of "security and protection," which is really tyranny and oppression. Both the so-called Left and Right are being manipulated by fear, and I look at global warming as being the sort of 'War on Terror' of the political left.

 

That is an interesting position, I must say.

It is in human nature to be fearful of those things that we can exert some control over and that were likely to do us harm as we evolved. 100,000 years ago we didn't worry greatly about heart disease, or diabetes, or cancer 1) because we didn't know that such things existed and 2) because more immediate threats to our survival came from violence between humans, or mauling by wild animals, or the effects of natural disasters. We thought about what was relatively immediate because that improved our chances of survival.

Now, in modern society, we still have the relicts of our natural fears that allowed us to survive. We fear other humans that wish to harm us greatly and instinctively. This makes sense given our history. We fear large, wild predators instinctively both because they could eat our livestock, but especially because they could (and did) eat us. Those were common sources of mortality, but we had some power to exert over them, so it was adaptive to fear them gravely--so as to avoid mortality.

Natural disasters like tornados, hurricanes, droughts, etc. we fear too, but perhaps not as much because we have no control over such events. Since we can't prevent their occurence there is less benefit to be had by fearing them, so we tend to fear them less.

Global warming is not something for which we have any instinctual fear. It is something for which we can only understand the consequences using reason. Heart disease, cancer, and many other diseases might fall into a similar category. Tell the country that we need billions of dollars to fight a "war on terror" and they fork it over willingly. Tell them that we need billions of dollars to fight global warming, or do medical research, or work on so many other problems that, as it turns out, actually do and will kill thousands of times more people than terrorism and we get very stingy with our money. Simply put, it is natural for us to be more afraid of terrorism because that was a very real and more preventable cause of death for humans over the ages.

However, being that we are reasoning, intelligent beings we can and do make decisions based on information that goes against our instincts and do this to our great benefit. Therefore I am very hopeful and relatively optimistic that we will indeed solve these problems that our reason allows us to understand, but I am also fairly confident that our instincts will instill in us more fear than is necessarily warranted from terrorism and any number of other issues.

Terrorism is a terrible thing and something we must deal with, but realistically it is a minor threat to the safety of we americans, and a much smaller threat to most of the world. Dangerous global warming is a much bigger threat to americans than terrorism, and a much bigger threat to most of the world than to americans.

Chris

 

Your entire argument is based on the assumption that
the Theory of Evolution is a fact.

It isn't. That's why they call it a "theory".

The evidence supporting it is circumstantial and open
to other interpretations, and has some serious holes
in it.

I suggest that you base your arguments on something
a little more tangible.

Yes, I realize that there are a lot textbooks and teachers
out there that present the ToE as a proven fact, but it isn't.
Except to fanatics who have closed their minds to logical
argument.

LIttlefoot

 

Uh, no, evolution is very much proven, as much as anything ever can be proven. Evolution is a scientific theory yes, just like Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Evolution is and has been an observable and demonstrable phenomenon in natural populations. Arguing that evolution does not exist in any form is utter nonsense. For some reason people have gotten the unfortunate idea that evolution is somehow at odds with a belief in a higher power or purpose in life. That is a very unfortunate misunderstanding. Understanding mechanisms in the natural world, I would think, shouldn't be enough to shake someones faith...

cj

 

LF=Littlefoot

Chris Jury wrote:

Uh, no, evolution is very much proven, as much as anything ever can be proven.

LF: Not to me and hundreds of millions of other people. You may
believe what you wish to believe.

Evolution is a scientific theory yes,
just like Newton's theory of universal gravitation.

LF: No, it isn't anything like Newton's theory of gravity. I
don't need any geek with a college degree to tell me that
graivity exists, so it isn't even a theory to me. Newton has
nothing to do with it. Gravity exists whether Newton was
born or not.

Evolution is and has been an observable and demonstrable phenomenon in natural populations.

LF: Wrong. No one has ever witnessed a species of vertebrate
become another species. There isn't anything but the sketchiest
of circumstantial evidence supporting the hypothesis that this
has ever taken place.

Arguing that evolution does not exist in any form is utter nonsense.

LF: That's what YOU think. I disagree with you. Nor can you offer
anything resembling concrete evidence to substantiate your
claims. All you can do is say "someone smarter than me told
me it is true, therefore it must be".

For some reason people have gotten the unfortunate idea that evolution is somehow at odds with a belief in a higher power or purpose in life. That is a very unfortunate misunderstanding. Understanding mechanisms in the natural world, I would think, shouldn't be enough to shake someones faith...

LF: That is an utterly irrelevant paragraph. I haven't said anything
about any "higher power".

LF: Darwinian evolution is a shabby theory supported by
scant circumstantial evidence open to other interpretations.
That scant circumstantial evidence is only accepted as proof
by people who have decided in advance that the the ToE is
a fact and who have never examined the alleged evidence
supporting it.

LF: Sure. The univierse is evolving in a sense. Becoming. But it
has nothing to do with so-called "random mutation" or
"competition for scarce resources". Nor is everthing evoloving
on the same path.

LF: It's a good thing for us that the soil bacteria aren't mutating
and evolving at the rate that the ToE would have us believe
they would have to be. If they were, the planet would be
in big trouble indeed.

LF: If there was even a significant amount of real compettition
in Nature, it would cease to exist. Just as all human societies
with a significant amount of competition have ceased to
exist.

LF: Competition is just negative cooperation. What if they
held a war and nobody came?



Littlefoot

 

Evolution exists.... only when that evolution is being guided by man himself.

 

Ha- I can always come here when I want a good laugh! Especially when it comes to ignorance about anything scientific- these environmental threads have become a joke while the problems remain untouched. Basically, any chance of discussion is cut off by name-calling, exaggeration, and outright false claims.

Peace and love