Yeah, it's like the JW's.
Oh man! Morph’s Law again.
Oh shit ,that's right I was once a member of the Watchtower Society that sits on the fence!
Oh man oh man! This is topic pushes buttons. Morph’s Law again.
Climate Change - True Believer or Skeptic?
by Simon 129 Replies latest jw friends
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MeanMrMustard
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ThomasCovenant
''Change my mind.''
What I've learned from online forums is this very rarely if ever happens. Myself included.
How often have you (as in anyone reading this) actually changed your mind over any subject?
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joey jojo
Climate scientists are describing something that needs to be fixed by taking action that will disrupt our lives. There are many people with vested interests that don't like the sound of that.
I find it interesting that we literally put our lives in the hands of other scientific research without question, yet when it comes to global warming we are all expert critics.
If global warming is responsible for increased extreme weather events, how long before the costs of these disasters force change?
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Tobyjones262
Predictions Scientists made around 1977
1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”
15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
So to be skeptical of Science is good. I surly do not put my trust in science with out some critical thought.
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Crazyguy2
I think climate is definitely being effected by humans and thier fossil fuel use. But the sun and the distance the earth is from it also effects the climate as well as many other factors. I watched a documentary on the Amazon rain forests and they said this place put out a huge amount of oxygen but the people and the animals in the area use it all. So deforestation may do more to harm humans in time then climate change from burning fossil fuels.
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Coded Logic
The JWs use many cheap rhetorical tricks and ascribe to a dogmatic view of the world. I really don't see what all the hub-bub about "morph's law" is.
If people are running around on this forum disparaging other peoples motives, using loaded language, or putting forth black and white thinking than it's wholly appropriate to call them out on it. Though, from a pragmatic point of view, I do agree we'd get a lot further with such folks if we actually pointed out the flaws in their position instead of simply asserting "you're sound like the Watchtower."
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no-zombie
From my readings and rather cynical knowledge of how governments work, I believe the the climate change debate has been hijacked to be come a scheme for increasing personal taxation. Think about the multiple carbon credit schemes out there and the direct taxation laws in relational to industrial co2 emissions ... and then ask yourself ... what's happening to all the money. Are huge plantations being planted to absorb all this extra carbon? Has this taxation stopped global de-forestation? Sadly no. Tax is being collected, both directly and indirectly but its not being used to save the planet, baring putting up a few posters and producing a couple of slick eco-movies.
That is not to say that the environment is unimportant, but realistically until all nations get onboard (China and India in particular) and money is spend saving areas like the Amazon Rain Forrest or those in Indonesia, it's rather a pointless discuss being done at the moment ... and I might add, actually economically unfair to those businesses (competition wise) who already paying this bill, in an attempt to do the right thing.
While I do confess that we are collectively are having a environmental impact on this earth, in all the realms of the biosphere, but as to the actually degree humans are responsible for the climate change we are seeing, I'm not so convinced we are totally to blame for the following reasons.
Firstly, solar output is not always nominal. By that I mean, the amount of radiation from our sun is not stable. The Sun actually does have cycles both in the short term (as seen by sun spot activity caused by the twisted magnetic lines punching through the sun's Chromosphere) and the deep pulsations found in its convection layers. Varying solar output therefore must effect the Earth's energy intake, which naturally would effect global climate trends. An interesting time period to consider in the regard was the mini ice age of 1300 to 1850AD and the global warm period before that, which started well be the beginning of the Europe's industrial revolution.
Additionally, we must also recognize that due to our relative short manufacturing age (geologically speaking), I do feel that our impact is overstated a bit. In one study, written by a notable Australian CSIRO environmental scientist (in a effort to ban nuclear weapons), produced data to confirm a global winter from a nuclear war would last between 5 to 10 years. And as devastating as that may be, the burning from thousands of nuclear explosions would be needed to produce it. Now I'm not that much in the know, but I don't think that the pollution humans has made is anywhere near the levels of that kind of event, and so I believe that our personal "sweat level" in the climate debate could be toned down a bit, for more reasonable conversations to be had.
Finally, Earth's climate has always changed and always will. Whether its finding fossilized conifers in the Antarctic or Mammoths in the Russian tundra, regional long term weather patterns do shift. Why even the deserts of Africa and Egypt were once tropical. Why? Geologically there have been many reasons over time. The Earth's axis shifts, the Earth's magnetic poles shift (which effects the Magnetosphere and thus the climate), and there has been periods of increased volcanic actively ... and so on. And so, its not unreasonable to see evidence of changes to the global environment.
Now, ice coring (one of the most useful method of environmental change) does show atmospheric increases in both co2 and particle emissions during or modern age ... but at the end of it ... while we humans must reduce our global footprint, I believe a more calmer attitude should prevail about our impending doom and focus instead on the where our carbon tax dollars are going. Because at the end of the day, I recon that they are just going into our government's general revenue, rather than the environment.
no zombie
PS ... just some references which you can find free online in some places, if you're keen
Climate Change in Prehistory - The End of the Reign of Chaos by Burroughs
Antarctica - A Keystone in a Changing World by 10th International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences
Sunquakes - Probing the Interior of the Sun by Zirker
Beyond Darkness - Nuclear Winter in Australia and New Zealand by Pittock
and read up about the mini ice age ... its quite interesting.
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atomant
its encouraging to see people waking up and questioning the deceptions our governments want us all to believe.Critical thinking is a wonderful thing. A good question to ask yourself is if their lying about global warming what else are they lying to us about.? lf more JW;s used critical thinking there would be far less members than there is now and that's a certainty.
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Coded Logic
Tobyjones,
Yes, there were many predictions made in the early 70s about the problems with air quality. And, fortunate for those of us who are here today, our parents and grandparents didn't bury their heads in the sand saying "Well, you know it could be a liberal conspiracy." Here's what New Jersey looked like in the seventies:
Here's a picture of Louisville KY in 1972:
Go look up images of any metropolitan area in the 1970s and you'll see dark hazy smog. But do you know what else happened in the 1970s? The EPA was created!!! This is why our cities don't look like this anymore. Congress and the Executive took heed of what the scientists were saying and prevented a total disaster - which is the exact same thing US should be doing right now.
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hoser
I think the climate is changing. It always has. Whether or not humans are responsible is up to debate in my opinion.
The province I live in has no sales tax. No government will ever put one in. But we have a revenue neutral carbon tax. It gives low income a rebate on the carbon tax. An income redistribution scheme.
The whole man made climate change religion is just a socialist agenda to take power and wealth away from productive people and countries and redistribute it to the have nots and will nots.