Why is the climate changing. (Page 200)

kittybobo34: Gerald,, The far left may want less electricity used, but I doubt it. They want less electricity from oil and more from renewable sources. One way to get that in this time of conversion is more efficiency. If we do it right we can have a greener planet and more technology.

GeraldtheGnome: There were errors there. Most people aren’t interested in a greener planet as you refer to it, in reality most people don’t think about environmental issues at all. A lot of people just want what is cheaper and better or is not worse than whatever they pay money for. Go around and ask most people if they honk about environmental issues and they will tell you no not really. It’s a bit like politics or some other things, most people really don’t think about them. A person who has a political way of thinking thinks that most people or everyone thinks about politics, well most don’t except when an election is on and a person who has an environmental way of thinking thinks that most or everyone thinks that people think about the environment.

You made false claims by thinking that everyone thinks about the environment the same way that you do, so you genealized about it and then made an all or nothing claim about it. They are the errors that I referred to in the first sentence.

GeraldtheGnome: They do want less electricity used Kitty, it is something that they repeatedly speak about verbally, type about and what about constantly, yet here’s the thing most of the far left though contradict themselves all of the time when they try to get everyone to use electric vehicles. Sure, in some little countries like Iceland, if my guess is right, there is less impact or possibly no impact the environment in many ways because of geothermal sources, in medium and large countries though this is not plausible now and in the near future despite a number of governments attempting to have better alternative sources of energy, fuel and so on.

Like Mick Jagger’s wise words, you can’t always get what you want. Most people aren’t interested in the collective use of the word we, most just want to get on with life and don’t think about what we on here do on this forum. So long as nothing gets worse for anyone, in whatever way that is meant by each person, then that is what everyone wishes for. What that means is different for each person on the planet and orbiting around the Earth right now, that’s if even one person is right now. One way or the other it is us three who are very interested in environmental issues, we though are only three people out of more than 8,000,000,000 people in the world now. There is no way in hell that we know exactly what everyone thinks,

Even between the three of us we have a different way of thinking on every topic of every forum on here, what I like though is that all three of us agree about certain things, I like both of you for that and despite our disagreements about the environment, politics and a minority of other things I still like both of you.

kittybobo34: Gosh thanks, you made me smile. You seem pretty level headed to me as well. I am an engineer by training, and have worked with a lot of scientists. I like logical thinkers.

ghostgeek: Yum:

On a clear August morning in southeastern Pennsylvania, more than a dozen adults and children stood in a park pavilion, listening to mealworms sizzling in a hot pan. They were learning about entomophagy — the human consumption of insects — from Lisa Sanchez, a naturalist with the Lancaster County Department of Parks and Recreation, who has taught the practice for 25 years.

Suddenly, one mealworm sputtered out of the pan. Six-year-old Adaline Welk — without prompting — popped it into her mouth. The crowd cheered for the newly minted entomophagist. “It’s not that bad!” she exclaimed. “It kind of tastes like kettle corn!”

Sanchez encourages people to eat insects, in part, to lighten environmental footprints. Farmed insects produce far less greenhouse gas and require much less land and water than conventional livestock. Insects also generate more biomass with less input. Crickets, for example, are 12 times more efficient than cows at converting feed into edible weight.

[ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/27/eating-insects-good-for-you/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB ]

ghostgeek: The edible insect industry is ramping up — one report predicts the market will reach $9.6 billion by 2030. Consumers can already find foods like salted ants on Amazon and cricket powder protein bars in Swiss grocery stores. Recent years have seen numerous media stories extolling the virtues of insect-eating.

But before insects can become common fare, more diners must be convinced that six-legged critters are, in fact, food. Through tasting experiments, surveys and educational demos, researchers, entrepreneurs and educators are delving into consumers’ psychology and finding that resistance to insect-eating can be strong.

[ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/27/eating-insects-good-for-you/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB ]

kittybobo34: yet when you look at the human mouth, its designed for eating bugs, and vegetables.

ghostgeek: Really? Mmm, seems you may be right:

Basic anatomical comparisons show that people have much more in common with herbivores than carnivores – or even omnivores! Just a look at an adult’s mouth – let alone a child’s – shows that the opening is too small for anything but relatively small pieces of food. We can’t even swallow those whole, but must chew them finely and mix them with saliva before the ball of food will slide down the oesophagus. In contrast, carnivorous animals such as cats tear off chunks and swallow them almost immediately.

Our teeth are much better suited for eating starches, fruits and vegetables – not tearing and chewing flesh. What many refer to as our ‘canine teeth’ are nothing at all like the sharp blades of true carnivores designed for processing meat.

Our jaws can open and close as well as move forwards, backwards and side-to-side. This is ideal for biting off pieces of plant matter and then grinding them down with our flat molars. In contrast, carnivores’ lower jaws have very limited side-to-side motion. They are fixed only to open and close, which adds strength and stability to their powerful bite.

[ https://viva.org.uk/health/what-is-our-natural-diet-are-humans-evolutionarily-adapted-to-eat-animals-plants-or-both/ ]

ghostgeek: Humanity may be destined to disappear someday, but almost everyone would agree that the day should be postponed as long as possible, just as most individuals generally try to delay the inevitable end of their own life.

In recent years, however, a disparate group of thinkers has begun to challenge this core assumption. From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity’s reign on Earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. The revolt against humanity is still new enough to appear outlandish, but it has already spread beyond the fringes of the intellectual world, and in the coming years and decades it has the potential to transform politics and society in profound ways.

This view finds support among very different kinds of people: engineers and philosophers, political activists and would-be hermits, novelists and paleontologists. Not only do they not see themselves as a single movement, but in many cases they want nothing to do with one another. Indeed, the turn against human primacy is being driven by two ways of thinking that appear to be opposites.

The first is Anthropocene anti-humanism, inspired by revulsion at humanity’s destruction of the natural environment. The notion that we are out of tune with nature isn’t new; it has been a staple of social critique since the Industrial Revolution. More than half a century ago, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, an exposé on the dangers of DDT, helped inspire modern environmentalism with its warning about following “the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature.” But environmentalism is a meliorist movement, aimed at ensuring the long-term well-being of humanity, along with other forms of life. Carson didn’t challenge the right of humans to use pesticides; she simply argued that “the methods employed must be such that they do not destroy us along with the insects.”

In the 21st century, Anthropocene anti-humanism offers a much more radical response to a much deeper ecological crisis. It says that our self-destruction is now inevitable, and that we should welcome it as a sentence we have justly passed on ourselves. Some anti-humanist thinkers look forward to the extinction of our species, while others predict that even if some people survive the coming environmental apocalypse, civilization as a whole is doomed. Like all truly radical movements, Anthropocene anti-humanism begins not with a political program but with a philosophical idea. It is a rejection of humanity’s traditional role as Earth’s protagonist, the most important being in creation.

[ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/anthropocene-anti-humanism-transhumanism-apocalypse-predictions/672230/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB ]

ghostgeek: Transhumanism, by contrast, glorifies some of the very things that anti-humanism decries—scientific and technological progress, the supremacy of reason. But it believes that the only way forward for humanity is to create new forms of intelligent life that will no longer be Homo sapiens. Some transhumanists believe that genetic engineering and nanotechnology will allow us to alter our brains and bodies so profoundly that we will escape human limitations such as mortality and confinement to a physical body. Others await, with hope or trepidation, the invention of artificial intelligence infinitely superior to our own. These beings will demote humanity to the rank we assign to animals—unless they decide that their goals are better served by wiping us out completely.

The anti-humanist future and the transhumanist future are opposites in most ways, except the most fundamental: They are worlds from which we have disappeared, and rightfully so. In thinking about these visions of a humanless world, it is difficult to evaluate the likelihood of them coming true. Some predictions and exhortations are so extreme that it is tempting not to take them seriously, if only as a defense mechanism.

But the revolt against humanity is a real and significant phenomenon, even if it is “just” an idea and its predictions of a future without us never come true. After all, unfulfilled prophecies have been responsible for some of the most important movements in history, from Christianity to Communism. The revolt against humanity isn’t yet a movement on that scale, and might never be, but it belongs in the same category. It is a spiritual development of the first order, a new way of making sense of the nature and purpose of human existence.

[ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/anthropocene-anti-humanism-transhumanism-apocalypse-predictions/672230/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB ]

ghostgeek: If the choice that confronts us is between a world without nature and a world without humanity, today’s most radical anti-humanist thinkers don’t hesitate to choose the latter. In his 2006 book, Better Never to Have Been, the celebrated “antinatalist” philosopher David Benatar argues that the disappearance of humanity would not deprive the universe of anything unique or valuable: “The concern that humans will not exist at some future time is either a symptom of the human arrogance … or is some misplaced sentimentalism.”

[ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/anthropocene-anti-humanism-transhumanism-apocalypse-predictions/672230/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB ]

mrsmargaret48: Celebrated by who I've never heard of him,, he is right though when it comes to philosophers.

Academics and their Ivory Towers, with a few notable exceptions most will be forgotten in their lifetime and their ramblings sold in second hand bookshops for pennies.

ghostgeek: My position is very simple: humans first! I don't advocate killing other species but if it's a toss-up between us and every other living thing, then everything else goes.

ghostgeek: Food waste has long been a huge climate issue—rotting food’s annual emissions in the U.S. approximate that of 42 coal-fired power plants—and with inflation’s brutal toll on grocery bills, it’s also a problem for your wallet.

[ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/11/expiration-dates-food-waste-safety/672311/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB ]

kittybobo34: We as a family are very careful about food waste. Very little to nothing goes in the garbage. Vegetable scraps go into the compost, which fuels our garden the next year.

ghostgeek: That's good to hear. My father was a keen composter until he got too old to be messing about in the garden. The thing is, though, that plenty of people in today's cities have little or no garden and therefore no reason to think about composting.

ghostgeek: There's a scheme where I live for food waste to be collected and burnt to provide heating.

kittybobo34: I have heard of big vats with food waste in them , building up methane, that has a pipe into the home for heating and cooking.

ghostgeek: Could be a little pongy. Also, how much food waste would be needed to make such a project viable for an individual house?

ghostgeek: There's always so much to worry about nowadays. If it isn't global warming, then it's a pandemic, and if it isn't bugs then it's pollution of some sort or other:

On one of the 40 islets of the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands, there is a gigantic concrete dome known as “the Tomb.” Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. military conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, dropping the equivalent of about 1.5 Hiroshima bombs per day. A decade later, the Tomb was built to contain 110,000 cubic yards of highly radioactive soil. A few years ago, someone climbed up onto its surface, which sits just above ground level, and spray painted a message: “Nuclear Waste. Property of USA Government. Please Return to Sender.” 

Modern concrete usually lasts around 100 years before it starts to crumble and fall apart. The half-life of plutonium-239, one of the radioactive particles present in the Tomb, is around 24,000 years. There are already cracks around the edges of the Tomb, and toxic waste is seeping into the surrounding soil and ocean.

[ https://www.noemamag.com/concrete-built-the-modern-world-now-its-destroying-it/ ]

ghostgeek: Makes me wonder if plutonium couldn't be used to power a few government offices. I'm sure our representatives wouldn't mind glowing for the greater good.

kittybobo34: I don't think that waste in the dome is in a usable form. Their best bet is to bury the dome under another dome. You are right the concrete will not last. At GE we used to keep our nuclear sources such as plutonium and strontium in a glass cube, under 20' of water, and it glowed like a light bulb. Every couple of months we had to put the source in a new glass cube as the old one turned to powder.

ghostgeek: I can't see somebody transferring nuclear material from one glass cube to another for umpteen thousands of years, so presumably it got dumped somewhere in the end?

GeraldtheGnome: It’s not bloody happening right now ! You are like the religious are about gods and goddesses on this matter, you are going only for what you want to believe. You are like the prisoners in ‘The allegory of the cave’ by Plato. It’s not really that you want to believe, it’s you feel that you need to believe that it is true, all of it because you have let your fear and paranoia control you. Now because of that you have an unrealistic way of thinking about certain things about the environment. You can’t see the forest for the trees, yes there are trees getting knocked down illegally and in too extensive a way around the world but that is another story. The only thing globally happening right now is far left brainwashing about the mythical human caused global warming all because of fear mongering.

kittybobo34: Yet, most of the worlds scientists agree with global warming, The Geologists agree with it, and have traced previous warmings that got out of control. There is no denying that we have almost tripled the amount of co2 in the air, to the point that the oceans are turning acidic from all the carbon they are absorbing, There is no denying that as the temperature warms, the huge amount of Methane hydrates are bubbling up from the arctic, and ocean bottoms. That gas is a hundred times the warming effect of co2.