Starship Asterisk*

This guy is saying word for word what I always was thinking (but couldn't put it the way he does)

This guy is great. I agree with him about being a part of sistem that rules for bilions of years.

I think it's pretty arrogant to assume we can continue to do whatever we want and the planet will take care of itself or that we don't need to assume the responsibility of stewardship of the planet on which we live. George Carlin is out of touch with reality, and anyone who can agree with him ... I used to think George was funny. Here I find sadly misinformed.

Most of us would not assume the author of a novel or play was speaking to us through her characters -- the characters take on a life of their own. Most of us know an actor is just acting and is not really showing us themselves through the character they're playing. I think we have to give comedians the same benefit of the doubt. They say outrageous things to entertain us; they're not necessarily telling us what they think and feel personally, but rather what their onstage personality is thinking and feeling.

Rob

bystander wrote:I think it's pretty arrogant to assume we can continue to do whatever we want and the planet will take care of itself or that we don't need to assume the responsibility of stewardship of the planet on which we live. George Carlin is out of touch with reality, and anyone who can agree with him ... I used to think George was funny. Here I find sadly misinformed.

The planet will certainly do just fine, no matter what we do. What it does, however, may not be at all pleasant for us!

I have seen a BBC documentary about what makes the Earth habitable (would you believe it? ) The forces that combine to make the Earth unique and very habitable are, according to the documentary, the Earth's volcanism, its oceans, its ice, its atmosphere and something else that I can't remember now, but it may have been its life itself, particularly its lower life forms which exist in such abundance.

Anyway, a point that was made by this documentary was that the Earth is very robust, and life on Earth is very robust. Life on Earth has survived for billions of years, and it has lived through much worse than anything we can do to it. It has survived huge asteroid impacts and mass extinction events that have taken out 90% of all life forms on the Earth, for example.

But the documentary also said that while life on Earth is robust, we as a species are highly vulnerable. Like all higher life forms, we need very specific conditions on the Earth in order to survive. Chances are that the Earth itself will eventually destroy the conditions that we as a species need to survive. Seeing that, we can either do our best to protect and preserve the conditions that we are absolutely dependent on for our long-term survival, or else we can concentrate on using up our resources fast to get greater short-term gains. Right now, according to the documentary, we are busy undermining and destroying the specific conditions that we ourselves need in order to survive.

The documentary ended by saying that the planet is indeed okay, and it will remain okay for a long time. And life on Earth will go on thriving. But we humans will soon find that we ourselves are not okay, if we can't rather radically change our behaviour.

Of course, that was just what the documentary said, but I thought it was highly interesting.

Ann

Hmmm....This Going Green forum, right now, seems to have a lot in common with - "is searching for knowedge dangerous?"

bystander wrote:I think it's pretty arrogant to assume we can continue to do whatever we want and the planet will take care of itself or that we don't need to assume the responsibility of stewardship of the planet on which we live. George Carlin is out of touch with reality, and anyone who can agree with him ... I used to think George was funny. Here I find sadly misinformed.

You are right when you say that George Carlin is out of touch with reality - He's dead! That's just about as out of touch with this reality as one can get.

I used to like him in the early days before he became profane.

bystander wrote:I think it's pretty arrogant to assume we can continue to do whatever we want and the planet will take care of itself or that we don't need to assume the responsibility of stewardship of the planet on which we live.

That makes 99,999...% of all living creatures arrogant, because they dont give a shіt about what they do to environment, and rely exclusively on environment self-regulation. Humans were the only species who came up with the concept that they are somehow outside of this system, and that they must be resposible for what they do.

makc wrote:

bystander wrote:I think it's pretty arrogant to assume we can continue to do whatever we want and the planet will take care of itself or that we don't need to assume the responsibility of stewardship of the planet on which we live.

That makes 99,999...% of all living creatures arrogant, because they dont give a shіt about what they do to environment, and rely exclusively on environment self-regulation. Humans were the only species who came up with the concept that they are somehow outside of this system, and that they must be resposible for what they do.

Obviously humans are not outside of this system, but unlike all other species we are able to grasp the fact that we are in the system, and we are dependent on it.

Where I live the wild rabbits have been breeding like... well, like rabbits, and now you see lot of dead and dying rabbits which have come down with an infectious rabbit disease. The relationship between rabbits having too many offspring and rabbits coming down with infectious rabbit diseases is not something rabbits can understand it. But unlike rabbits, we can understand concepts like these, and we should be able to understand that aspects of our own behaviour can be detrimental to us as a species.

Or we can choose to say that we want to be like the other species on this world, unaware of our own situation on this Earth and unable even in principle to stop ourselves from messing the world up so bad that a couple of centuries from now most members of our species may not have a fighting chance.

If technological species on other planets are like us, unable to stop themselves from destroying the aspects of their biosphere that they are dependent on, then maybe it is no wonder that we haven't heard from E.T.



If the world is infinite it will never run out of resources, and then we won't hurt ourselves by taking advantage of its infinity. On the other hand, if the world is not infinite but we behave as if it was, maybe that just goes to prove that we have mislaid our heads. And we can look forward, with eyes that we have also mislaid, to a world that can no longer support us.

Ann

but we can mess it all up and still exist, can't we? you could look at latimerias for example. at some point of time coelacanth were everywhere, then the earth changed and they were no longer dominating it but, after hundreds of millions of years, they are still here.

Japan seeking to export low-carbon technologies
PhysOrg | Environment | 09 Aug 2010

Japan is seeking to export low-carbon technology and equipment to nine mostly Asian countries in exchange for "right-to-pollute" credits, a press report said Sunday.

The Japanese government has already reached basic agreements with Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and India on such deals and plans to start talks soon with Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, China and Peru, the business daily Nikkei said.

It will initially provide financial and technical help to 15 projects in which Japanese firms will export energy-efficient technology and equipment to these countries, the report said.

Japan emits some 1.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. The 15 projects, when fully implemented, are expected to cut five to 10 million tonnes worth of emissions.

The deals will be made in keeping with a "bilateral offset mechanism" which was reached during the Copenhagen summit on climate change last December. This is the first time Japan will make use of the anti-global warming scheme, Nikkei said.
...
Japan, Asia's biggest economy, has pledged to cut greenhouse emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, provided other major emitters also make sharp reductions, one of the most ambitious targets of any industrialised country.

Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey has a suggestion for how to use a giant ice island that recently broke off a glacier in Greenland. He says it's plenty big enough for people he calls "global warming deniers" to start their own country.

ESA: Greenland glacier gives birth to giant iceberg

Environment be damned, there's way too many people out there taking up valuable space that could otherwise provide some peace and quiet for me if they were not there.

bystander wrote:I think it's pretty arrogant to assume we can continue to do whatever we want and the planet will take care of itself or that we don't need to assume the responsibility of stewardship of the planet on which we live. George Carlin is out of touch with reality, and anyone who can agree with him ... I used to think George was funny. Here I find sadly misinformed.

IMO, George Carlin is using satire to question our sincerity about our willingness or ability to make the sacrifices necessary to save the Planet's ecosystems for our posterity. He does so essentially by using the same sort of "the end of the world is near for human beings" shock therapy lecturing that Carl Sagan uses though in a very different tone of voice.

• The need simply to wash clothes in cold water:
  ...............................
  Q: How much potential energy does snow melt on the top of K2 contain
  when it is converted directly into water temperature?
  
  Potential energy/unit mass = gh = [9.81 m/(s·s)] · [8611 m] = 84,500 J/(kg)
  
  Heat energy/unit mass = specific heat capacity: c_p = 4,185 J/(kg·K)
  ...............................
  A: ~ 20 K

neufer wrote:IMO, George Carlin is using satire to question our sincerity about our willingness or ability to make the sacrifices necessary to save the Planet's ecosystems for our posterity. He does so essentially by using the same sort of "the end of the world is near for human beings" shock therapy lecturing that Carl Sagan uses though in a very different tone of voice.

I prefer to think more like Carl (or perhaps Pink Floyd) than George.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the Cosmos stir us. There's a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as of a distant memory, of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries.

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home, the Earth. For the first time we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger. But, our species is young and curious and brave and it shows much promise.

In the last few millennia, we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos, in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos: The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean, 1980

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there's a sucsession of incidence, events, occurences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet, at this moment, here, we face a critical branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants.

It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidty we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissaince. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.

-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos: Journeys in Space and Time, 1980

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

On the Turning Away

• No more turning away
  From the coldness inside
  Just a world that we all must share
  It's not enough just to stand and stare
  Is it only a dream that there'll be
  No more turning away?

-- Pink Floyd, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, 1987

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

another evidence for "earth is fine" pov:

[color=#7F7F7F][size=85]In this undated image provide by the journal Science, microbes degrade oil, indicated by the circle of dashes, in the deepwater plume from the BP oil spill in the Gulf, as documented in a study by Berkeley Lab researchers. The newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe, which is suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico, was discovered by scientists studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig[/size][/color]

---

A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe is suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

And the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers led by Terry Hazen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., reported Tuesday in the online journal Sciencexpress.

"Our findings, which provide the first data ever on microbial activity from a deepwater dispersed oil plume, suggest" a great potential for bacteria to help dispose of oil plumes in the deep-sea, Hazen said in a statement.

(note clever " placement, btw)

makc wrote:another evidence for "earth is fine" pov:

Not very good evidence. It's hardly news that the Earth has numerous feedback mechanisms to try and keep things in balance. It's not even news that natural microbes eat oil.

What doesn't make the news so often (perhaps because it's a difficult thing for so many people to understand) is that these correction mechanisms have limited capacity, and many are observed to be near saturation. Anybody with a bit of background in control theory knows just what happens when feedbacks get pegged.

bystander wrote:Wired Science | Maps: How Mankind Remade Nature | 27 Aug 2010

neufer wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

Huh? Not exactly a rocket scientist. I wonder if she was one of those US Americans that didn't have a map.

bystander wrote:

neufer wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

Huh? Not exactly a rocket scientist. I wonder if she was one of those US Americans that didn't have a map.

She did EXACTLY as I do myself at the ASTERISK* :

Answer the question to the best of my ability while flashing a big smile to the judge from HD231586b.

BMAONE23 wrote:Going Green isn't easy

Oh, i don't know, geckzilla. If one hops to it - it's do-able