Letters to the Editor
-
To Cut To The Chase
The world is presently populated with at least three or four times as many people as it can sustain in reasonable comfort and security. As the petroleum, natural gas, and coal dwindle, the planet's treasure trove of fossil fuels is reduced to carbon dioxide and ashes, and their cheap, readily available energy declines, we must face a future much bleaker than any previous generation.
Al Gore makes a good case for the inevitability of the fact of global warming, but says nothing about the necessity to take the responsibility to reduce our numbers in the face of the shortages certain to follow the exhaustion of fossil fuels. The world's present population level exacerbates every environmental problem, reducing the time we have to plan and take measures to reduce the dire consequences of using up nonrenewable resources.
Where is the leader who will address the issue of our species' tenure on this planet in the centuries and millenia to come?
-
Thinking about that line...
"What were you thinking? Why didn't you act?"
If I were the betting type, I'd say this is more likely. Don't get me wrong, I'd vastly prefer and hope that we do the right thing.
But... I tend to doubt it. We're much more on comfort, getting what we can, and letting someone else deal with it. It's why I think most of the big time Xians (or pick a religion) abusers aren't really religious. If they were, they'd be freaking out over the eternity they'd spend in Hell/Pandemonium/Burbank for damning future generations. It's just a path to making themselves feel good about their offenses. For every decent whatever, scores of "I'm special" types are idling their SUVs in traffic or road-raging.
Regardless, I keep thinking of this:
"It's not that history repeats itself, it that sometimes she screams "Won't you ever listen to what I'm trying to tell you?" - and lets fly with a club."
John W. Campbell
-
Why the Nobel?
For perpetrating a fraud?
If Mars is warming as much as the Earth is, which it is, due to the actions of the sun, why are Gore and his fellow liars perpetrating the fraud that the Earth is heating up due to human action?
Don't get me wrong, I believe vehemently that we as humans needs to rein in uncontrolled use of fossil energy.
But to perpetrate a fraud, that is bound to be exposed and already has been, is the wrong way to go about it.
It is wrong because it makes the message carriers seem dishonest.
Or maybe lying is the 'new' truth. In which case we are all much more screwed than some mere potential planetary warming.
-
Brightstar
Brightstar,
Please go to: http://www.ipcc.org/. These are the actual scientists doing the work of understanding the causes and effects of climate change. They shared the Nobel Prize with Al. Please read their reports before you continue to spout nonsense in public forums.
Paglia, if you read this letter, the same goes for you.
-
IPCC link
The link that worked for me was
http://www.ipcc.ch/
-
what for?
I simply cannot believe that anyone still thinks Al Gore would go to all this trouble to carry out a fraud! What for? How could he possibly benefit? He could be living a nice quiet life. He's certainly not doing it for the money. I'm simply baffled when people take this line. I think people who deny the fact of climate catastrophe are afraid to face reality and some of them have a deep seated belief that God not we humans is in charge and won't let the worst happen. They're in the minority now so perhaps they can have that luxury but if governments and the majority of citizens don't take it seriously and act then we won't survive and we won't deserve to survive. It's quite simple: we need another way to power this planet. It's not impossible (in fact there's a lot of money to be made out of fixing the problem) but it will take a huge collective effort. If people can band together to make war then they can band together to solve this problem and I believe they will because it's the only sensible thing to do and in the end self-interest rules us all.
-
Not about science at all
Please read their reports before you continue to spout nonsense in public forums.
So it is a cult, above questioning.
Drink the Kool-Aid or die, huh?
Last I heard, much of the scientific establishment was doubting the conclusions of the flaming sycophants.
-
Brightstar...Not that old Martian warming nonsense nonsense
Dust storms on Mars have an enormous influence on its surface temperature.
For the facts, see:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-mars/
-
The unspeakable truth
To echo futhark, I don't know whether the current population is 3-4 times what may be sustainable with future technologies, but it is clearly much higher than is currently sustainable; and most alarmingly, it continues to grow exponentially. The slow linear decrease in birthrates is small comfort as population continues to balloon out of control.
PETA wrote a letter to Gore to complain that he is silent on the massive environmental and climate impact of meat consumption. They are right to point that out and that he is silent on it, but they miss the point. We can only decrease consumption through individual conservation so much. The real driver behind the massively increasing effluvients of our industry and our cities is the growing population. Even if we somehow reduced our carbon emissions to zero tomorrow (which can't happen), we would still be faced with the fundamental limitations of fossil fuels, fresh water, arable land, open spaces, and every other resource on this planet that is rapidly being exhausted by unsustainable population growth, which receives nary a word in his speech or any other Gore speech. To ignore this fact when he is promoting policy change shows that Gore is unwilling or unable to follow his own findings to their logical conclusion.
International projections predict human population peaking at over 9 billion in 2050, plus or minus several billion and several decades, given the inherent uncertainties involved. What will the world be like then?