The sky is falling! Let's go tell the president!

[IDAwHOa]

Here's a short list of all the ways in which civilization will end as we know it. If I have left any out, please let me know.

Gamma Ray Burst
Asteroid/Comet
Orbital Shift
Peak Oil
Global Warming
Global Cooling
UV Rays
Nuclear Winter
Biological Warfare
Something about Quantum Mechanics
Sun Exploding
Supervolcano Eruption
Lab-created Black Holes
Methane Hydrate Release

:roll:

An earthquake will cause California to fall into the ocean. Since we all know that California is the center of the everything once it is gone what else is there to live for?

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

I also read the article in The Observer and alternately found it frightening, amusing, confusing, and just so-so. I laughed. I cried. I nearly hurled.

What did give me pause--and I think it should give us all pause--is that this was not some piece of propaganda put out by a bunch of chardonnay-sipping-limp-wristed-socialists with political axes to grind, but by Andrew Marshall, the father of US ballistic missle defense strategy. If he thinks it's a matter of serious concern--a matter of national security, even, then I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

For another very good article on this topic, you might want to check out "The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare" by David Stipp over at Fortune Magazine (http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technolo ... -1,00.html).

In the end, perhaps some of the risk factors here are being a little bit overblown, but to borrow one of the Bush Administration's favorite words at the moment, the potential for these risks is worth noting and addressing.

[Jerry Freeman]

Here is the voice of the government on climate change,
the U. S. Enviromental Protection Agency: ...

Jim, more than once, you've posted comments that the Bush administration acknowledges the reality of global warming on a webpage.

I believe this and similar statements are a smokescreen (pun unintentional) to try to deceive the public into believing the administration is interested in doing something about global warming, which its actions indicate it is not.

Here's a discussion of what the administration has actually done on the issue:

http://www.house.gov/reform/min/politic ... arming.htm

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Wombat]

Nano-tech thingies take over and the world becomes a big pulsating grey globe of them.

Dale

I thought that was civilisation as we know it.

[Roger O'Keeffe]

On the positive side, rapidly rising sea levels in the North Atlantic would dispose of the Florida problem.
<ducks and runs>

[jim stone]

'If anybody's wondering why I posted the article, it's because I found it amusing, not alarming. '

As people are likely to take the ball and run with it,
maybe amusing isn't a good enough reason to
post something like this. I trust that you're
both clever and educated enough to know you
can't believe everything you read, doubly so
in an election year; or post it all
either. On its face, the article makes a central,
flagrant and demonstrably
false claim invidious to Bush: it maintains that
he repeatedly denies what the administration in fact
consistently affirms (see the EPA website on global
warming (which was last modified in 2002) it's
quoted in my earlier post, above).
The article is propanda, it's safe to conclude,
which means not that everything
it says is false but that nothing it says can
be trusted. It is not a reliable source of
information.

So, if one feels there is something in this story that is
true and we really should know about, it would be helpful
to take the trouble to get it to us in a less
prejudicial form. Discussion is a bit
like driving a car fast into a turn; taking the wrong
line into it is a good way to crash and burn.
All the candidates are supported by some of us,
and it would be helpful and courteous if we will be careful
in posting stuff critical of whomever,
avoiding what's plainly contaminated.
The thing I hope we won't have to deal with
repeatedly is propaganda
posing as news and then the partisans hooting
and hollering about how Kerry has always
had a thing for marsupials, hasn't he? Har, Har, Har!
It's going to be a long year; I would be grateful
if we will be discriminating.
Best

[TelegramSam]

Jim, I seriously <i>thought it was funny</i>. That is <i>all </i>

I'm not a Democrat, or a Green, or a Republican, I don't support one candidate or another because I simply don't think it will make any difference who gets elected (they're all jerks if you ask me). I already posted my two bits earlier: I don't think it's anything worth sceaming "armageddon!" and running for the hills over. I'm not trying to "spread propaganda" because I figured most of the people of this board have enough intelligence to see the humor in such an article (and if they don't, their problems are bigger than a bit of global warming). In the wise words of Bart Simpson: Don't have a cow, man.

[jim stone]

We've just gone
through another one of these articles
in a concurrent thread. I do appreciate your
reasons, but I'm afraid your joke is
lost on many. Sorry about the cow. It's six in the morning
here, my sense of humor kicks in at 8.

Also I don't really feel noble about the platypus.
I never mocked her for being a monotreme,
or called her a throwback for laying eggs,
and now she's left me for a.....northeastern liberal!
Gertrude, you fickle marsupial slut!
Sorry, sorry, I feel better now.
Sob!

[TelegramSam]

but I'm afraid your joke is
lost on many.

Yea, but I don't really give a flying turkey about mooks like them.

[Jerry Freeman]

I read the article in Fortune magazine that's linked to in this thread, and it corroborates the exact same information that's in the article Sam posted. I'm glad to have found out about this, and I don't see it as propaganda at all.

If it means, as the Fortune article suggests, that the Bush administration may take a more serious look at what it can do about climate change, that's good.

On the other hand, I think the Bush administration is derelict in its responsibility to the point of criminality in its obsessive focus on the terrorist threat at the same time as it pushes policies that could be contributing to a global disaster. On the issue of climate change, I believe the entire world (with the exception of certain big money energy interests, heavily represented in the Bush administration) would applaud him for adopting a strategy of preemption.

While the effort against terrorism is necessary and appropriate, Bush has gone about it in a way that has increased anti-American hatred to unprecedented levels.

Even if we have "won" the war in Iraq, I don't see any justification for claiming that has had any effect at all on terrorism. Even if it's possible to draw a connection between our invasion of Iraq and appearances of capitulation in Libya and other rogue states, I don't accept that as justification for invading another country on a pretext that was clearly exaggerated, and at a time when there was an effective UN inspection program in place. All the discussion about "faulty intelligence information" disregards the fact that UN inspectors were swarming over suspected Iraqi weapons sites and finding no evidence of WMD activities at all.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[jim stone]

but I'm afraid your joke is
lost on many.

Yea, but I don't really give a flying turkey about mooks like them.

Apologies for making too much of things.
My request was intended for a wider audience, too.
Best

[buddhu]

I agree substantially with Jerry.

I don't think President Bush is in total denial about the effects we are having on global climate, but certainly acceptance of the problem so far seems to have gone only as far as is politically and economically convenient in the short term. The same is true of many other governments. Our useless bunch in the UK make noises that sound like awareness, and they sign up to the occasional treaty, but any kind of remedial action is hard to find.

I think the situation is very difficult indeed. There are a great many people whose livelihoods depend upon industries that contribute significantly to environmental damage (oil, coal mining, motor vehicles etc etc etc). There are also countries whose economies depend upon oil. It isn't surprising that politicians are treading lightly - they must be very aware that many of the companies concerned line their campaign pockets, or perhaps sometime (*cough*) contribute in other ways, and the citizens who work in environmentally unfriendly industries are voters too.

I'm fairly pessimistic. I don't think the article is to be distrusted as prop' because the issue is bigger than who is to blame/not doing enough. This one can't be blamed just on politicians. Sooner or later, as with tackling world poverty and inequality (contributing factors to terrorism), we are all going to have to make sacrifices if we want our world to stay intact. Are we all ready to use less power, sacrifice our cars, find jobs outside of polluting manufacturing plants, walk more, use public transport, pay more for R&D into alternative power sources etc? Are we all gonna recycle like we say we do? Will we support taxes and surcharges on fuel and road use if they are aimed at reducing traffic?

Governments can only change stuff if we let them.

As for the comment earlier about us not being able to control nature/climate whatever (sorry, don't recall the exact words)... No, we can't control it, but I'll bet we can break it if we keep trying so hard.

[fiddling_tenor]

Hey, check out this extremely cool link!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/

Alright! I had an old hyperlink that went dead last year. So I've missed the APODs! Now I can die a happy man.

[chas]

Factoid: The platypus is the only venemous mammal. They have venom glands and little spines in their hind legs. They're only in males, and they almost exclusively use them while fighting for mates. The dominant toxin is the only known toxin that attacks only pain receptors. I think there have only been two people who have survived documented platypus attacks.

Here's a short list of all the ways in which civilization will end as we know it. If I have left any out, please let me know.

. . .
Lab-created Black Holes
. . .

There actually was an article in the New York Times a couple of years ago when an upgrade was made to an accelerator at Brookhave National Laboratory in which they found soome whacko physicist who told them that it was unknown whether the accelerator would create a big bang and destroy the universe. (Park's law: for every finding, no matter how crazy, there exists a reporter who will be able to find a PhD physicist who believes it. Somehow reporters think their stories will be more believable if they quote a physicist.) This was about two years ago, and AFAIK, the universe wasn't destroyed.

[jim stone]

Gertrude wasn't venomous, being a female
platypus, but fickle, and unstable in her
political affiliations. Venom attacking my
pain receptors would be welcome,
after what that duck-billed strumpet
did to me...