From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu Jun 14 2001 - 03:11:42 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: J Corbally <icorb@indigo.ie>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>; <transhuman@logrus.org>;
<posthumanlounge@www.posthuman.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 4:43 PM
Subject: >H ENVIR:Is the planet really dying?
Transhuman Mailing List
"Something I picked up on another list.
I get a warm feeling from reading this, and when I get that feeling I get
uneasy. Is most of this backed up as the article says it is?
James..."
Some is quite correct, other things are more open to interpretation.
Off the cuff, from what I've researched-
>Recovering Earth
>Environmentalists said our planet was doomed to die. Now one man says they
>are wrong.
>Anthony Browne reports
>www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,504481,00.html
>Anthony Browne
>Sunday June 10, 2001
>The Observer
>It hardly needed explanation. 'Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape,'
>thundered a Time magazine article last year.
Pure whore-press fantasy to even suggest the ability to divine what everyone
knows, let alone whether "the planet's" shape is good or bad.
> The seas are being polluted,
Yes and no, depending on which areas of the globe one is talking about. Many
areas are much less 'polluted' than 20 years ago, e.g Puget Sound and the
west coast of the US ex San Diego.
>the forests devastated,
Again depends on the area. Madagascar appears to be a near basket case, sort
of like Easter Island. The slash fires (and concurrent CO2 emissions) in the
tropics do indeed light up the satellite night, but actual net hectarage
'devastated' is again subject to interpretation. Jungle grows back real
fast.
> species are being driven to extinction at record
>rates,
Say what? Maybe someone needs to take a vacation in the Late Cretaceous or
Late Permian.
>the rain is acid,
Apparently not true, except perhaps in very limited areas of ex- Socialist
strongholds (e.g. Eastern Europe, parts of China)
> the ozone layer vaporising,
100% swill.
> and the rivers are so
>poisonous fish are floating on the surface, dead.
A 'poisonous' river is distinguished by the lack of fish available to float
on it
>Rivers, seas, rain and the atmosphere are all getting cleaner. The total
>amount of forests in the world is not declining, few species are being made
>extinct, and many of those that were endangered are thriving again. The
>Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjørn Lomborg, professor of statistics at the
>University of Aarhus in Denmark, is a scathing attack on the misleading
>claims of environmental groups, and the 'bad news' culture that makes
people
>believe everything is getting worse, when by almost all indicators, things
>are getting better.
Statists require crises in order to justify their existence and simplify
their grabs for power. If there is no crisis, one will be manufactured.
>When it was first published in Scandinavia, it caused a deafening storm of
>protest, and transformed the nature of the debate. The book is part of a
>growing backlash against green groups, and potentially the most dangerous.
A very interesting choice of violent words here. What is dangerous about an
improving environment, and to whom is that dangerous? Why might 'new'
findings provoke a storm of protest?
>Most previous criticisms have come from right-wing think-tanks hostile to
>the environment agenda.
>Now the attacks are increasingly coming from left-wing environmentalists
>such as Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace. The accusation is that,
>although the environment is improving, green groups - with revenues of
>hundreds of millions of pounds a year - are using increasingly desperate
>scaremongering tactics to sustain donations.
Ah, here we are- follow the yellow brick road.
>Lomborg's book, to be published in September by Cambridge University Press,
>doesn't deny global warming - probably the biggest environmental threat -
>but demolishes almost every other environmental claim with a barrage of
>official statistics.
It is unfortunate the author doesn't deny global warming, or at least look
at both sides of the issue. Something like 19,000 scientists have signed a
petition protesting the UN global warming study (which argued for it). The
UN study claims, based on very scanty evidence and very questionable
computer models, that global temperatures will rise ~10 degrees Centigrade
one hundred years from now. One of the assumptions in the model(s) is that
no further significant technological advances will occur in that period.
Anyone see a possible flaw here?
>forests now - at the eleventh hour for the world's forests.' The Worldwatch
>Institute claims that 'deforestation has been accelerating over the last 30
>years'.
>But Lomborg says that is simply rubbish. Since the dawn of agriculture the
>world has lost about 20 per cent of its forest cover, but in recent decades
>depletion has come to a halt. According to UN figures, the area of forests
>has remained almost steady, at about 30 per cent of total land area, since
>the Second World War.
I think this is correct.
>Temperate forests in developing countries such as the
>US, [have been expanding]
This is correct.
> UK and Canada have actually been expanding over the past 40 years.
>Britain has more forest now than 200 years ago, and the growth is all
>broadleaf natural woodlands, not pine plantations. Tropical forests in
>developing countries are being cut down or burnt, but at a slow rate; and
>despite all the dire warnings the Amazon rainforest has only shrunk by
about
>15 per cent. Lomborg concludes: 'Basically, our forests are not under
>threat.'
>Conservation efforts have been spectacularly successful. Whales are no
>longer threatened with extinction, elephants are being culled because their
>numbers are so high, and the bald eagle is off the endangered list.
25 years ago a bald eagle in Washington State was so rare that a sighting
created a sensation. Now they practically live downtown. The natural
tendancy to focus on charismatic megafauna may distort our picture somewhat.
>Many environmental scares have simply failed to happen. Despite repeated
>fears about a looming 'energy gap', the world now has more energy than
ever.
>In 1980, it was predicted we only had 30 years of oil left but, 20 years
on,
>we know we have at least 40 years left. Improvements in exploration
>techniques mean the known oil reserves are at record levels.
This one is something of a wild card. Oil production peaked in the US in
1971. No new "giant" or "supergiant" fields have been discovered since
Prudoe Bay/ANWR. World production will peak within th next 5-10 years, while
demand may or may not continue to grow. We are unquestionably running out of
cheap oil and natural gas, the current energy crunch will probably worsen
and continue for several years- the time it takes to build new capacity. The
supply and demand depending on the rate and severity of the current global
economic collapse, for which you can thank grotesque levels of misallocation
of resources for, due to absurd economic 'theories'.
As the easy stuff is used up it becomes economical (due to the rise in
energy costs) to extract from tar sands, go to coal gasification and
synfuels, mine methane hydrates, etc. These kind of projects require the
better part of a decade to research, design and construct.
One other thing- the data is faulty. We do not actually know the extent of
hydrocarbon deposits in the world and particularly in the US. This is Top
Secret Info, one of the 6 (?) item on the non-FOIA-able list. There are
rumors and stories...
>In the Eighties, there was alarm that acid rain would destroy Europe's
>forests. Ten years later the fears had evaporated: studies showed acid rain
>rarely affected trees. It did, however, affect life in lakes, and emissions
>of acid-making gases were curbed.
As noted above.
>'Acid rain does not kill the forests, and the air and water around us are
>becoming less and less polluted,' says Lomborg. The UN said in 1997 that
>'the widespread death of European forests due to air pollution which was
>predicted by many in the Eighties did not occur.'
Correction: should read "as predicted in studies funded by the UN and other
Statist outfits".
>'Mankind's lot has improved in terms of practically every measurable
>indicator,' concludes Lomborg. A recent study by the right-wing Institute
of
>Economic Affairs backed the claim.
This really smells like a Marxist rag. Anybody who isn't left-wing must
therefore be right-wing. Guess that means there's no such thing as
anti-Statist or 'classical' Liberal.
>'The ozone layer is beginning to recover because ozone depleters are being
>very rapidly phased out. It's a tri umph of the environmental movement.'
>Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth UK, insisted that the
>environment was facing new threats: 'The more obvious and simple
>environmental issues have by and large been tackled. But we have replaced
>smelly pollutants you can see with invisible, sneaky pollutants that affect
>you over the long term.'
And if you can only see your way to making Charles Secrett our Beloved
Maximum Leader then every little thing will be A-OK.
>He said: 'At the beginning, the environmental movement had reason to say
>that the end of the world is nigh, but most of the really serious problems
>have been dealt with. Now it's almost as though the environmental movement
>has to invent doom and gloom scenarios.'
>Environmentalists admit that there has been a change in emphasis - from
>problems that have actually occurred to warnings about those that might,
>such as genetically modified foods. 'It is not scare-mongering to draw
>attention to a risk that could have very serious consequences if it comes
to
>pass,' said Tindale.
>Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
Ok, here is a nightmare scenario: Collectivist thinking invades and take
over the planet, polluting everything in its wake. The democratically
elected President issues a dictat for sustainablility. A new economics of
third-way ecologic brings the earth into balance at last, a sustainable
ecosystem composed of Socialists and cockroaches feeding on each other until
the Sun burns up.
Do you trust your life
savings to a computer disk somewhere-
money created and annihilated
at the flick of a pen
or the click of a mouse?
Or would you prefer the kind of money
that can only be
created in a supernova.
-- Forrest Bishop Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering www.iase.cc
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