From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sat Apr 13 2002 - 11:16:42 MDT
On Saturday, April 13, 2002, at 12:08 am, spike66 wrote:
> Australia is as new as the US. We can move stuff back a few meters if
> we
> have to. Both continents have plenty of land. All the other
> continents do too.
We can't do that in Florida. The whole state is flat and only a dozen
feet above sea level. Twenty feet would be devastating. Remember when
hurricane Andrew was supposedly the worst disaster of all time? That
only wiped out a few islands and the tip of the peninsula. Wiping out
the majority of the state would be a thousand times worse. Even
spreading it out over a thousand years would be like having that level
of disaster every year for a millennium. We simply can't face that
level of disaster. It actually would be cheaper to take extreme
measures to dike the whole state or try to change the atmosphere.
I doubt it will come to that, however. If global warming really exists,
it will be slow. There will be no question if the ocean rises a few
feet that something is really happening. We won't actually debate this
issue until it is too late. Although earlier prevention would be a lot
easier than later, I doubt we could conceivably procrastinate too long.
Therefore, I am not worried about having to "prove" it either way. We
will figure it out. (I think most politicians just want to delay a
decision until their administration is out of office.)
> I was a scout, I agree with that philosphy. This planet is too cold and
> there isnt enough CO2 in the atmosphere for optimal plant growth. We
> could remedy both situations, leaving the campsite better than i was
> when we found it.
Spike, I can't tell if this is just your sense of humor, of if you
really believe it. Do you really think we have a low-temperature
problem and that we need to raise it? Do you really think that air
quality has too much oxygen in it, and we need to push the balance
toward CO2?
> They have all the improvements, and I can think of *nothing* that is
> worse for them, not one damn thing. We had Israelis and Palestinians
> fighting back then. We had global whining back then, hell 30 years
> ago. And the beach is still in the same place I always remember
> finding it.
> We had teachers assuring us the population bomb would blow up in
> our faces back then. Well, what of that? Where is the Soylent Green
> nightmare scenario? The bomb was a dud! This global whining about
> greenhouse gas is also a dud. Assured nuclear destruction: dud.
> Eradication
> of the worlds rain forests: dud. Massive extinction of wild species:
> dud.
> Choking on car exhaust fumes: dud. Pollution of all the world's natural
> waterways beyond life support: dud. Universal famine, ecological
> disaster,
> pandemic disease: dud, dud, dud.
Population explosion was not false. We changed our breeding habits and
avoided it.
The cold war was not false. Democracy won over communism, but would not
have if we had surrendered.
Pollution was not false. We changed our air-quality rules and now have
cleaner air than before.
Epidemics were not false. We invented medicines and vaccines and
survived them.
For example, AIDS was not false. We now have medicine so that patients
can survive for decades.
Let me add, Y2K was not false. We fixed 90% of our computers to avoid
the problem that testing showed they had.
These disasters were not duds because they were false. We faught these
threats, and we won. We need to keep on fighting future threats if we
are to keep winning. We can't assume that we will always will and then
quit fighting. Do you advocate giving in to Terrorism because they've
never taken over the West before? Of course not. We need to keep
fighting these threats. Global warming, if true, could be another big
battle that we can win. We can't just avoid fighting expensive wars
assuming we will always win.
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