Text 945, 136 rader
Skriven 2006-05-30 11:01:00 av Robert E Starr JR (1391.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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"Paul Harper" <paul@harper.net> wrote in message 
news:ipmn72lpsihhej25lks0u61mf02umkop6f@4ax.com...

>>The trick is being adult enough about them to not get hot and bothered by
>>them.
>
> Hot and bothered isn't the issue. It's the effect of the differences,
> the vigour with which people defend them and the willingness they
> demonstrate to put others specifically and society in general down in
> defense of them.
>
>>Eliminate one kind of difference something else will take its place.  Look
>>at prejudice's twin, anxiety.  We in the First World do not need to worry
>>about getting ourselves fed, so we have evolved a more advanced and
>>sophisticated set of mortality fears.
>
> Which kind of illustrates my point. Wouldn't it be better, having
> achieved such a high level of self-sufficiency (to the extent of quite
> criminal waste) if we devoted some of our energies enabling the rest
> of the planet to achieve a similar high standard of living?

You may be missing my point because you're headed off on a tangent. 
Eliminating poverty, etc has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Religion and politics are effects not causes.  The cause is a degree of 
natural xenophobia that people don't completely unlearn.  If we're always 
different and we always see difference, and we always react badly to some 
differences, eliminating those differences is not going to produce any kind 
of social harmony.  At best it's going to change what differences are used 
as touchstones for prejudice.  At worse, it drives the prejudice underground 
both into the common psyche and in the sense of true believers congregating 
in some dark crack of the world.

Prejudice against a given difference is effect not cause, so when you try to 
eliminate a difference all you're doing is rearranging the deck chairs.

Teaching people to embrace uncomfortable difference without prejudice, as 
liberalism once taught, seems a far better solution.


> That we do not do that is nothing short of shameful.
>
>>30 years ago, people were fretting about the imminent onset of the next 
>>ice
>>age.
>>
>>Right now, the truth is that we simply don't know.  Our understanding of
>>global climate is still too limited, allowing politics to insert itself 
>>into
>>science.
>
> Not quite sure where that came from. Which eminent scientist (or even
> respect television presenter like Sir David Attenborough) did you
> think was unsure about climate change?!  The only people who profess
> to be unsure about this are the oil companies and their political
> lapdogs. It is fact. We have to deal with it or live with the
> consequences.

There is no consensus on the CAUSE of global warming, which is the true root 
issue.  Yes the planet is warming up, and there's a pretty good consensus 
about that.  But Earth has had a higher global average than it currently has 
and well before humanity came upon the scene.  We're currently well within 
natural tolerances.

For global warming to be of concern, the temperature shift has to mostly or 
comepletly human-made and within humanity's ability to change.  All global 
warming concern is based on assuming we know the answers on these two 
points.

Boilerplate global warming assumes that the shift in temperature is entriely 
human-made and entirely within humanity's control--but only if we hurry!

I have never heard a global-warming alarmist ever talk about what percentage 
of the earth's temperature rise could possibly be due to natural causes, 
leading to the conclusion that the entirety of global warming is being 
blamed on humanity.  This seem to me to be naive in the extreme.  We live on 
a world that is constantly in flux.  If humans never appeared, this planet 
would still see climate change over time due to solar output and the 
gods-know-what-all.  There is no constant, static baseline background to 
measure the current warming against.  Nor have we taken detailed temperature 
readings across the planet for a long enough period of time for large-scale 
trends to appear, as evidenced by the fact that as little as thirty years 
ago enviornmental alsrmists were worried about the onset of the next ice 
age.

Thus I think it can reasonably be said that we don't know what humanity's 
contribution to global warming is.  Therefore we don't know what degree of 
threat this warming poses or whether we can do anything about it.

If, for example, the current warming cycle is 90% nature (about as high as 
could reasonably be suggested) then hang on, because we're passengers on a 
roller-coaster.  Eliminating 100% of the world's CO2 emissions would at best 
put a minor dent in the degree of the shift.  Global warming could be said 
to be out of practical human control.


>>Nature needs intelligent tweaking from time to time.  Unfortunately we 
>>give
>>into the temptation of micromanaging.
>
> No, it doesn't. It needs understanding, yes, but nature is going to be
> there, slowly recovering, long after we've wiped ourselves off the
> planet. Nature always wins in the end. The only variable is how long
> we fight against it before we lose.

Only if you have Stephen Spielberg writing the script.

Otherwise, I'll take vaccines, hybrid grains, anti-biotics, anti-viral 
medications, collagen injections to repair joints, surgery, canals, 
silver-iodide rainmaking and water-storage dams, thankyouverymuch.  You may 
think of these things as excersises in futility if you like, but I don't.

-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent


"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."


"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

-Methuselah Jones
                       
--- SBBSecho 2.11-Win32
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