Chris Peterson wrote:Nature solves no problems, because nature has no problems. It is people who have problems, and we can sit back and "enjoy the ride" while nature changes in ways we may not find so pleasant, or we can address our own problems- something we are perfectly capable of doing given the right social structures. We may or may not find the will to change, but personally I prefer to make the effort. The ride isn't likely to be very enjoyable if we just sit back.makc wrote:if there's anything to learn from 4 billions years of earth history, it is that nature solves its problems itself. a scientist sitting in his office writing clever papers cannot solve a problem of industry that he isn't even involved with. you can analyze global temperature trends all you want, but underlying problem is that burning fossils is cheap, has an infrastructure in place and provides source of income for millions of people. you don't need scientists to solve that, it will come to end and thus will be self-resolved naturally. for example, when we will run out of fossils. or something else happens. and all by itself. sit back and enjoy the ride.
I agree with Chris, nature is called nature because it is natural. We step in and preturb the natural way. Sure there is a rainforest in south america which we are depleting to provide tables and chairs and cures for disease. If nature had its way the rainforest would continue to grow or stay the same, its us who are chopping it down, therefore WE are the problem. To say that the problem is resolved after we have cut down all the trees is nonsense.
On top of this, we are using up all of our fossil fuels at a now alarming rate. We are pumping most of our current supplies into the atlantic ocean at the moment and its a joke.
I have an annecdote to share with you.
My now ex girlfriends dad is a mechanical engineer, and when he was starting out there was a man who worked on what he called "his magic box" every lunchtime and break. What this magic box actually did was to make a regular 4 cylinder car (bear in mind this was the 60's so cars werent the most economical) and make it run on 2 cylinders without any loss in power. God knows how he did it, but the point was that he did. He could get a car to do 60 miles to the gallon easily. This would be a lot more in todays climate as cars are more economical as standard.
Now heres the thing. Shell came in and bought this "magic box" from this man for a very substantial amount of money, he took an early retirement and probably moved to the bahamas because my ex gf's dad never seen him again, and this "magic box" has never been heard of since. Shell bought it (in my opinion) to remove a potentially profit reducing machine from the marketplace. If this was to have been sold to car manufacturers the world would probably be a different place right now.
Another thing that annoys me is this http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/
This car runs on hydrogen, which is (apparently) the most abundent gas in the universe. Theres obviously more of that than oil. Now when mixed with air, you get the magnificent H2O, water, you also get a lot of electricity. This car runs on electricity, has 0 emissions, no hassle with repairs as all it essentially has is an electric motor and no road tax for uk users. My question is, where is it? If it was out over here I would buy one. This car also has no problems with power and has a range the same as a normal petrol car. For all intensive purposes it is a normal car that runs on electricity. When it gets low on hydrogen you pull in and fill it up like a normal car. Its BRILLIANT and instead of being the future of motoring, it should be the NOW.
The problem (apparently) lies with fuel providers who say they can't get the fuel to power these cars, which is rubbish. The costs of obtaining hydrogen are about the same if not less than obtaining crude oil to make petrol and diesel. However the cost of hydrogen would be less than petrol (as is seen in countries who are lucky enough to have this car) therfore the oil cartels have a reason to keep this car off the road, and that reason is money. Money which is made from the trees we cut down, by machines which rely on the oil we drill.
We are very much the problem as regards nature. It just seems that those who create ways out of the mess are thwarted at every turn by money grabbing beurocrats.
Paul.
