Comments on: “Not with a Bang, but…”

By: Daisy

Daisy — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:08:53 +0000

Anonymous,
I appreciate your sympathic approach very much. Only I don’t think America’s power is waning or China and India can come close to the American dominance, let alone surprass it. Both China and India have many big problems of their own to solve and with the way they function, it doesn’t look like they are capable of solving their problems in near future. Their economic prosperity is also an eyewash – yes, the middle class has become more preosperous – and more oriented towards mindless consumptions than before – old values of using only as much from Nature as is required are dying. The elite class was always elite and the poor people in these countries remain poor – there are still hundreds of millions of people starving to death. And add to that the population explosion in both the countries, which counterbalances any progress made in any field in both countries, not to mention rampant corruption and their policies in the name of social justice which keep good people out of the very few jobs they have and fill up the positions with less capable people with right connections. I know because I am an Indian.

In my opinion both China and India have already crossed over their zenith in pre-modern times and are really going downhill now. These are very ancient civilisations that are dying out now. America is a young civilisation that is on the rise and nothing can stop its growth, if only Americans act wisely, which they don’t seem to be doing and are taking the whole world towards its doom.

Yes, what will happen is that all the capable Chinese and Indians will emigrate to America and you’ll have them ruling the world from the US, not from their own countries. So, the US will still get all the criticism from the world!

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:23:50 +0000

I didn’t say only 50-60 believe it. I said that the the science is based on the work of only 50-60 people who are actually climate scientists!

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:10:10 +0000

PS: On the bright side. I think the generations of Americans that follow Baby Boomers (and my generation, Gen X, the “in-between” generation born into the specter of MAN-MADE global nuclear annihilation and Central Americans death squads backed by the CIA that made many of us cynical about “American exceptionalism”) seem to have a much stronger values. They seem to be more aware that we cannot based our entire economy on consumption. They have stronger values with regards to recycling and doing free activities and enjoying the little things and providing solutions to the problems created by their grandparents and parents. Part of this may be the state of the economy, but I have faith that once the Baby Boomers are out of power (I can’t wait! Take your Socialist Medicare benefits and STFU already!) maybe America will be able to figure out a way to reduce its footprint on the planet an the culture will place higher values on less material things. America’s dominance is waning, and I think the younger generations isn’t all too concerned about that. Eventually I’d like to see China and India become the big, evil empires so that the world can be angry at them instead of us and we can find some kind of decent balance where we are a happy peaceful “middle country” trying to do its best for itself.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:58:05 +0000

Good for you Daisy, unfortunately you are facing huge challenges from people willing to bet a whole lot against scientific consensus (contrary to what Mr. Burgess says, there are far more than 50-60 scientists who think man plays a role in this).

I think it’s unfortunate that the “email controversy” has emerged, because the people who deny humans play any role in global warming. It’s kind of annoying since these are the same people who have for years cited “studies” backed by energy interests, which I find far more insidious.

I will go back to my main point: the issue is moot because the same human activities that I believe play a role in climate change also cause many other problems, so we have good cause to do something about it. Cap and trade sounds silly to me, but it’s not like Exxon or the lawmakers it bribes are going to find solutions, or even give a rat’s turd about asthmatic kids in the city (an global pandemic caused by vehicular pollution concentrations) or the fact that in my lifetime I’ve noticed that now almost every major city I fly to is covered with a yellow-haze you can see from space.

And the reason, as I said before, has nothing to do with right or wrong or fact vs. fiction — it has to do with two things: money and fear — there is far more money batted about in energy, transportation and in Congress than you’ll ever see going to the secret cabal of evil, lying scientists trying to undermine our way of life. The second thing is fear: the public fears doing anything about it because our entire global economy is based on using up natural resources to make products that we all buy. Now imagine this system when the population of the planet tops 10-12 billion, which will happen in our lifetime.

I think well see in the next 20-30 years the denialists finally going away. But the probably will be so huge we may not be able to do anything except mitigate the disaster.

And you can bye-bye to polar bears in the wild. That damage is already done. (By damage I mean that even if humans have nothing to do with global warming, human development has made it impossible for the polar bears to adapt because they’re basically hemmed in at all sides by human development and have nowhere to go, and that IS man-made.)

By: Daisy

Daisy — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:29:04 +0000

I am concerned about excessive use of non-replenishable resources and I’m also worried about the Polar Bears.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:31:59 +0000

“climate change science is massively funded”

Proponents against AGW are guided by money and special interests. Climatologists are not getting tons of money; I challenge to to prove that claim. They spend a lot of time just getting funding to continue their research. The money is in the anti-AGW camp in the form of campaign contributions by the energy concerns. To suggest that academia gets more money than private interests is absurd. Portraying academia as “massively funded” is ridiculous. There is no special interest in climate studies. The special interest is in profit-making enterprise. There is no profit motive in this research. The profits lie in “drill drill drill.” The fact that the anti-AGW camp is engrossed in perpetuating a non-sustainable process makes their stance suspect.

As I said before, we must move beyond the archaic “Baby boomer/Cold War” nonsense and find a sustainable way of life. I can’t wait until those people are out of power. That way is not going to be found by dismissing human’s effect on the environment. As far as I’m concerned the anti-AGW camp is for the status quo, which is not sustainable.

Personally, I don’t care about the fate of polar bears. What concerns me is the old world concept that development is linked to non-sustainable growth in energy and resource consumption. the anti-AGW camp is entrenched in this idea that we can continue on the path we are taking and that somehow human ingenuity will be able to sustain perpetual growth in consumption. I find this to be cynical, and old school. we cannot base our society on perpetual growth (and consumption).

I can’t wait until the “Greatest Generation” and the “Baby Boomers” are gone so that people with more modern, global views can take over!

By: Daisy

Daisy — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:48:09 +0000

Thanks, will do so.

It’s not vanity, I can perfectly understand uniqueness as the basic element of diversity – in India we are always trying hard not to look like others! I just thought spams are a bigger problem than uniformity. But, WordPress.com themes can be customised. I think Carol uses the free WordPress version and she keeps on changing the look all the time. But of course everyone has his/her own preferences.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:22:06 +0000

Please do send a list, or even just name the posts here.

I’ve never been on WordPress.com, always having a separate installation on my host’s servers. One of the reasons for that is the blog’s design. I don’t like being limited to the themes available from WP. Perhaps that’s vanity; perhaps it’s something that distinguishes the blog from a million others. I’m pretty happy with it as is, but spam, particularly from Eastern Europe and China is a bore to deal with. Things are much better than the were even a year ago, but still a pain.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:16:26 +0000

Of course, it can always be argued that a “green” approach is detrimental to industrial economy and vice-versa. So industrial economies of the world may not like the Green approach very much. However, since the relationship is not proven so far, I endorse your hypothesis till it gets proven. I am not really against industrial economy, so I can give you the benefit of doubt for the time being.

I think I know why you are getting so much of spam. It may have something to do with the WordPress.org version you are using. Please see the following post, where this reader shifted from the free WordPress.com to the WordPress.org version and began to get a lot of spam and he had to pay for blog-hosting as well – http://vikas-gupta.in/2009/12/12/5-reasons-why-you-should-not-shift-from-wordpress-com-blog-to-wordpress-org/

The kind of blog you are writing can easily be managed on the free WordPress version and you don’t have to pay for it, so you can consider that option, especially because free version doesn’t get that much of spam.

There are so many posts which I found intresting. May be I’ll send you the list through the contact page. But I think you can’t selectively open the comments for a few of the posts – the settings are common for all the posts, isn’t it?

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:34:24 +0000

I’m just pointing out that wearing a ‘green’ label doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right or that you’re without conflicting interests. It’s not a matter that proponents of AGW suddenly rise above the human condition. Thus, applying a grain of skeptical salt might be in order, particularly at the costs suggested by those who seek to undo what they think has been done.

I close comments after 30 days. This is done to stop spammers whose ‘bots’ tend to thrust junk into old comments rather than current ones. I have to deal with thousands of spammed comments as is, so I try to make things a little easier on myself. Just let me know which you’d like to comment upon and I’ll see if I can open them up.