3661 Warnings

Thursday, November 15, 2012

"Actions lie louder than words."

-- Carolyn Wells  --

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I was going through the backlog of email I hadn't been able to handle during the 11-day no-power no-internet period.  I found an email from Verizon Wireless listing emergency charging stations and all kinds of other assistance.   Email?  They KNOW what my cell phone number is!  They KNOW the power is out.  So they send email?  What tiny mind decided to send emails to people they know don't have power?  Like, they think everyone checks email from cell phones?  I KNOW they know how to make robot calls, but that seems to be reserved for "your bill is ready".  Piss me off.  On the other hand, I shouldn't be surprised.  It was Verizon who sent info on how to reset your FIOS WIFI if you lost internet connection after the storm.  The info was a link to a website.  Wow.  That's thinking ahead....not!

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The following is a repost from Sunday, June 14, 2009.  Somehow, after the hurricane, I thought it was appropriate to repeat it.

If you love something, set it free.
And if it flies away, run after it and kill it.

Saturday night I accidentally watched "earth2100". Apparently ABC aired it on June 2, and then repeated it late last night. I was on my way to bed when I caught a bit as I was turning off the kitchen TV, and was fascinated, and ended up watching it all the way through.

The story is told as comic strip panels (or as the non-readers call it, "graphic novel" format, bleck, and no, that doesn't make comic books sound any more intellectual, sorry, good try but no cigar, beeeeep, thud). The Wikipedia entry linked above pretty much covers the story. It is speculation, science fiction, depicting a possible future.

I found it depressing, because global warming or not, human causes or not, whatever one's opinion or theory, much of the ball is already rolling - the water problems in the west, the melting of ice caps, overpopulation, the cutting of rainforests, the movement of tropical flora and fauna into temperate areas. No one can deny any of that. It simply IS.

The scariest part to me was the thawing of tundra, which would release massive amounts of methane. I hadn't thought of that before. If the glaciers and polar ice are melting (and they are, NOW) how long will it be before the tundra thaws? Is that a tipping point? Or have we already passed it?

By the time it was over, I was glad I had no grandchild. Even if things don't go as the movie suggests it might, I have a feeling the future is grim.

Since then I've read various opinions of "earth2100" from both sides of the global warming debate. I am disturbed by the number of people who just wave it off. They say it's a natural cycle, no big deal. Well, yeah, no big deal to the earth and cockroaches. They'll continue. But will we?

One blogger pooh-poohs "earth2100" as fear mongering:

"If you have tweens and teens, this is one show they don’t need to view. Let them live their lives hopeful and knowing our world is ok – because it is, and it will be for their kids. If we all believe that, we’ll take the necessary steps to ensure our futures."

"Knowing that our world is ok ... we'll take the necessary steps"? Um, that doesn't compute.

And that's the problem. I don't think we will take the necessary steps.

We waste water, and large parts of the country are drying up. We waste oil, but, hey, I NEED my Hummer. We pollute the air, but hey I can buy those allowance thingies and keep right on doing it, ok? We cut down rainforests, and then wonder why weather patterns are changing. We refuse to acknowledge there's any problem until it affects us directly, then we want the government to fix it.

Easter Island once had a thriving population. The island had plenty of fresh water, and was heavily forested. And then, for some reason, possibly in part to raise all those stone heads, they cut down all the trees. That changed the ecology of the island drastically, in a bad way. And then all the people died. One of the lines I remember best from "earth2100" was (paraphrased), "I wonder what the person who cut down that last tree was thinking as he did it?"

I can pretty much figure out what he was thinking: "But *I* need it! I'm cold! If I don't get it, Joe will, so I may as well."

Replace those big stone heads with dollar signs. Would we have done any better? Been any smarter?

(Everybody wants their little piece, and the Earth as we need it might die the death of a thousand nibbles.)

I have absolutely no faith in mankind's ability to "take the necessary steps". The human race is too selfish, too greedy, unable to think ahead, and when they don't already know what the solution is (and have not been assured that a solution, when found, won't require deprivation on their part), then they will deny that there is any problem until it's way too late.

There IS a problem. Forget the words "global warming" if they bother you. Forget "Al Gore"; this is not a political discussion. Look at what IS happening, and what the results of that *might* be. How sure do you have to be to even consider it? By the time you get to 60% sure, it's too late.

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I searched briefly, and the only place I could find "earth2100" for safe free viewing was on YouTube, in nine parts. I thought ABC might have it available, but they don't. Part 1 of 9 is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjmWivCTcvE. Starting there it should be easy enough to find the other eight parts. (Actually I prefer movies in parts. That makes it easier to wander away and pick it up again later.)

2497 Disappearing males

Monday, July 13, 2009

HL Mencken: "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

Well, romantic love, yeah. We too often fall in love with a construct rather than a person.

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We see so many documentaries that scare us. Most people pass them off as fear-mongering, scare tactics, calculated to make us behave in the way that the producers want us to behave.

Sometimes that's true. Crass manipulation is what's going on. Sometimes the topic is a real concern, but many people, jaded by too many obvious attempts at manipulation, pass off real concerns along with the bogus.

Global warming is an example. I will listen carefully to those who say that we can't be sure about reasons for it, or whether anything we can do will stop or reverse it, or whether the results will be so very dire. I'll listen to people who say maybe it isn't warming so much as a redistribution of heat. However, I have no patience at all with people who flat out deny that polar ice and glaciers are melting. That is fact. It's only the "why" that's in dispute.

People will have a similar reaction to the following documentary from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation?/Company? (CBC-TV). The cause may be in dispute, but the facts are indisputable. Sperm counts and motility are dropping, in humans and other animals. Birth rates for baby boys are dropping. It's seen all over the world. It may be plastics. Then again, it may just be Mother Nature saying "Too many people! Let's adjust those birthrates!"

The video is about 45 minutes long. No commercials. If "The Disappearing Male: Doc Zone" isn't the title on the video panel on the left, look for it in the list of videos on the right.
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/docplayer2.html?maven_playerId=docportal&maven_referralPlaylistId=f21067aaabfdece3076458e7e035e69febe7cfe7&maven_referralObject=4505047

It'll make you think twice next time you reach for the Tupperware.

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I am left with a nagging question. The thrust is what it's doing to males. Females seem to be unaffected? Huh? Females have and use testosterone and other male hormones. Are the effects there but more subtle? Does it matter?
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1499 Sunday Warming

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Today I went to a ... panel discussion? (but there was no discussion, really. It was three presenters) ... on global warming, organized by Mensa and sponsored by Sierra Club and two SUNY environmental groups. Today's portion was the science and why it's worrying. Next Sunday is the politics. The following Sunday is what can be done.

It was at 3 pm in the lecture center at SUNY New Paltz. I have a problem with that campus. It's huge, and no matter what maps I print out, the minute I enter the campus, I'm lost. Somehow, the way the roads twist around, and end suddenly, and unexpectedly become one-way, I lose all sense of direction. North becomes west, labels on the map bear no relation to signs on buildings. I always just park in the first legal-looking space I can find and ask someone to point me in the direction of the building I want.

Our current Mensa programs person is a prof at SUNY New Paltz, so she seems to think the campus is the ideal place for events. "So convenient." I hate to admit the place scares me.

I found the talks interesting. There were a lot of townspeople and students there, which was nice, but only three of us Mensans, two of whom were the organizers of the event, and me. That was disappointing, but I could have predicted it - there was no free food!

The first speaker addressed what "global warming" is, what causes it, where the greenhouse gases come from, and why it's dangerous. Even a small change causes a shift in ocean and air currents, increasing the effects.

The second speaker addressed a question I've had, which is "How do we know what the temperatures were all those thousands of years ago, when, like, there was nobody out there waving a thermometer around." There are several things they look for in ice and ocean floor cores, one of which is the proportion of two particular oxygen isotopes (I'm not a chemist and may be using the wrong term - ignore me) in the shell remains of ocean critters, and the air trapped in ice. He showed the relationship of temperature fluctuations over a few hundred thousand years in relation to the amount of methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and how they determine those amounts.

The third speaker addressed the environmental and economic effects of rising temperatures on the state of New York. (I figure one good outcome is a shorter snowmobile season. I HATE the damn things. Noisy ground-tearer-uppers, operated by idiots with no respect for private property.)

We three Mensans went out for dinner after the program. The other two were saying that the second speaker was completely over their heads, and maybe they should review content ahead of time. I said that he's the one I found most interesting, the others talked about stuff I already knew, and I didn't find him dense at all. Oh, well.

They've had some difficulty finding politicians willing to speak at next week's session. Several well-known federal and state representatives at first agreed to participate, and then one after another they cancelled. To hot a topic, perhaps? Too small an audience? They've had to settle for poli-sci types.

I had a question I've been carrying around for two years now, and I should have asked it of the second speaker, but I forgot. The movie about the march of the penguins - the penguins walk a gazillion miles across ice shelves into Antarctica to breed and raise their chicks, because that's where they have been going for eons. Now, is it possible, even probable, that back when penguins started going there, it wasn't so terribly far? That either the ice shelves didn't extend so far out, or the ocean was higher? If so, where does that fit on the time/temperature charts he was showing us? Is there an explanation?

I'm so annoyed that I forgot.
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1223 Yeah, Nature Recovers

Sunday, April 29, 2007

I've been reading and hearing a lot lately about bees disappearing. I was reminded again when I walked out the door this morning and passed the rhododendron. At this time of year the bush usually sounds like a woodworking factory, all the buzzing of bees in the blossoms. It was buzzing this morning, but at low volume. I counted. Only seven bees. There should be fifty times that.

So, yeah, there's something going on.

I'd been hearing for a long time about a parasite that was killing off hives, but there's a new theory, a complication, that's worse. Some are blaming people who grow genetically modified or patented crops, who don't want "wild" bees spreading random pollen through their crops, so they are using pesticide to specifically target bees. They don't feel guilty about it because they are merely protecting their crops.

No one raindrop ever feels responsible for the flood.

At one extreme are the doom-and-gloom people who say that if the bees die, we die. No more fruits and vegetables. In the middle are the people who shrug and say, oh, well, there's still grains. This morning on NPR I heard the other extreme, the cycle theory, that bee populations naturally fall periodically, that records from the 19th century show that farmers were worried about bees disappearing. They called it "the disappearing disease". And therefore there's nothing to worry about.

The "natural cycle" theory is also used by people who want to shrug off global warming. "Nature will correct. Nature will recover. She always has and she always will."

Uh, yeah. But do they forget that Nature doesn't much care about us as a species? That sometimes, even left on her own, her recoveries are cataclysmic? She'll go on, the Earth will go on, but possibly in a quite different mix. We are not that important to Nature. Given the almost overwhelming success of pathogens, I'm not sure we're all that important to God, either. Don't forget they're His creations, too. Maybe His favored pets. Maybe we're pet food, and we don't realize it. Gotta keep the "herd" (us) contented.

Well, that's not where I was headed. Where was I - oh, yeah, Nature recovering from cycles that disturb us.

We have to remember that in the past, human influence on Nature didn't tip any balances. She did her thing without interference. That's the way she was set up. Things got to a certain point, and swoop! they came around again to balance. Nothing in the past several thousand years (when was that last ice age?) has gone beyond a tipping point.

Human influence and interference can quite possibly push Nature past a tipping point too quickly for her to react, to recover naturally.

And THEN we die.
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