I have been trying for the last few days to discover a coherent logic towards my feelings on man’s relationship with his environment. This is proving not to be simple.
The process started when I heard on World Service radio a gentleman from the International Panel on Climate Change discussing their latest report. As you know, I tend to accept the established opinion on climate change, and rather take the view that if all our industrial activity were not affecting the atmosphere, that would be strange.
But what struck me was that the gentleman said that a pause in warming for the last fifteen years was not significant, as fifteen years was a blip in processes that last over millennia.
Well, that would certainly be very true if you are considering natural climate change. But we are not – we are considering man-made climate change. In terms of the period in which the scale of man’s industrial activity has been having a significant impact on the environment, surely fifteen years is a pretty important percentage of that period? Especially as you might naturally imagine the process to be cumulative – fifteen years at the start when nothing much happened would be more explicable.
Having tucked away that doubt, I started to try to think deeper. Man is, of course, himself a part of nature. Anything man does on this planet is natural to this planet. I do not take the view man should not change his environment – otherwise I should not be sitting in a house. The question is rather, are we inadvertently making changes to the environment to our own long term detriment?
That rejection of what you might call the Gaia principle – that the environmental status quo is an end in itself – has ramifications. It is hard to conceptualise our relationship with gases or soil, but easier in terms of animals. I am not a vegetarian – I am quite happy that we farm and eat cattle, for example – and you might argue that the cattle are pretty successful themselves, symbiotic survivors of a kind. Do I think other species have a value in themselves? Is there any harm in killing off a species of insect, other than the fact that biodiversity may be reduced in ways that remove potential future advantages to man, or there may be knock on consequences we know not of that damage man somehow? I am not quite sure, but in general I seem in practice to take the view that exploitation of other species and substantial distortion of prior ecological balance to suit men’s needs is fine, so presumably the odd extinction is fine too, unless it damages man long term.
I strongly disapprove of hurting animals for sport, and want to see them have the best quality of life possible, preferably wild. But I like to eat and wear them. I am not quite sure why it is OK to wear animal skin on our feet or carry it as a bag, but not to wear “fur”. What is the difference, other than that leather has had the hair systematically rubbed off as part of the process of making it? A trivial issue, but one that obviously relates to the deeper questions.
Yes I draw a distinction between animals which are intelligent and those which are not. I would not eat whale or dolphin. But this does not seem entirely logical – animal intelligence and sensibility is evidently a continuum. Many animals mourn, for example. The BBC World Service radio (my main contact with the outside world at present – I have just today found my very, very weak internet connection just about works if I try it at 5am) informed me a couple of days ago that orang-utans have the ability to think forward and tell others where they will be the next day. Why cattle and fish are daft enough to eat is hard to justify.
I quite appreciate the disbenefits to man of radically changing his environment, even if it could be done without long term risk to his existence – the loss of beauty, of connection to seasons and forms of behaviour with which we evolved. But I regard those as important only as losses to man, not because nature is important intrinsically. In short, if I thought higher seas, no polar bears and no glaciers would not hurt man particularly, I don’t suppose I would have much to say against it. I fear the potential repercussions are too dangerous to man. At base, I don’t actually care about a polar bear.
There’s a contradiction here. If it doesn’t matter whether the polar bear survives, why do you care if people hunt them for sport? Either they matter or they don’t. Personally I can’t help but feel that they do. We have a right to our day in the sun and a share of the earth’s resources – I agree with you on that – but so do other creatures. I cannot go along with the idea that anything we cannot exploit or profit from has no right to exist in itself. This is, to use an old-fashioned word, just barbarous. It seems to me an extension of the by now pervasive idea that everything must justify itself in economic terms, that is turn a profit.
I don’t want to live in a world without room for anything wild, anything outside our own control or outside the cycle of exploitation and profit.
Fukushima to the left of me —-2007 FT3 to the right of me. Guess I’m stuck in the middle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy_MIqbObsU
Gaia………http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynttgx6lNL4
“I don’t want to live in a world without room for anything wild, anything outside our own control or outside the cycle of exploitation and profit.”
Well said.
I hated this post of Craig’s.
“I don’t want to live in a world without room for anything wild, anything outside our own control or outside the cycle of exploitation and profit.”
In a true wild world, we will be hunting and eating everything.
Unless you imagine a wild world without humans?
Maybe you just wish you were born 15,000 years ago?
“Like the woman who wouldn’t have the tongue because she couldn’t bear the thought of eating something which had been in an animal’s mouth. So she had an egg instead.”
No, not like that. Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVGR1N2Pl00
I don’t eat Quorn.
One should presume nothing. Try this summary for a start:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/24/melting-arctic-ice-banned-toxins-pops
The report is here:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n5/full/nclimate1167.html
I feel unable to abandon my presumptions just yet, as I also presume you didn’t read to the end of (at least) one of the articles…
– my emphasis.
So you were aware of colligative properties and saw fit not to use that knowledge to challenge the articles accordingly?
Just curious.
Sorry, are you saying that because the ‘scale’ is not known – and scientists are urging further research – that this is not happening? Did you read the report itself, or even the summary?
“Here we show that many POPs, including those with lower volatilities, are being remobilized into the air from repositories in the Arctic region as a result of sea-ice retreat and rising temperatures. We analysed records of the concentrations of POPs in Arctic air since the early 1990s and compared the results with model simulations of the effect of climate change on their atmospheric abundances. Our results indicate that a wide range of POPs have been remobilized into the Arctic atmosphere over the past two decades as a result of climate change, confirming that Arctic warming could undermine global efforts to reduce environmental and human exposure to these toxic chemicals.”
As for the scale itself, dozens of reports show the high levels of POPs in the Arctic itself: this is how it works:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100601072630.htm
Frankly, there is no difference between killing an animal for sport and killing it for food – with the exception of when the latter is a case of absolute necessity (rare, these days). They are both the same in as much as they both involve killing, they are both unnecessary and they are both for the gratification of the killer.
Be compassionate, be peaceful, be vegetarian.
Just one study of Arctic contaminants (and then I have to go!)
“The Fuglebekken basin is situated in the southern part of the island of Spitsbergen (Norwegian Arctic), on the Hornsund fjord (Wedel Jarlsberg Land). Surface water was collected from 24 tributaries (B1-B24) and from the main stream water in the Fuglebekken basin (25) between 10 July 2009 and 30 July 2009. The present investigation reveals the results of the analysis of these samples for their PAH and PCB content. Twelve of 16 PAHs and seven PCBs were determined in the surface waters from 24 tributaries and the main stream. Total PAH and PCB concentrations in the surface waters ranged from 4 to 600 ng/L and from 2 to 400 ng/L respectively. The highest concentrations of an individual PCB (138-308 ng/L and 123 ng/L) were found in samples from tributaries B9 and B5. The presence in the basin (thousands of kilometres distant from industrial centres) of PAHs and PCBs is testimony to the fact that these compounds are transported over vast distances with air masses and deposited in regions devoid of any human pressure.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22164112
Juteman
28 Sep, 2013 – 5:51 pm
“@Technicolour.
Unfortunately, there were no Avocado trees growing in my area.
Actually, nothing grows in winter up here.”
So what do animals (that you eat) eat? Certainly not other animals. Has it ever occurred to you that most animals that man eats are in themselves vegetarian!?
Faith and Begorrah , TEPCO has brass.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-28/fukushima/4986614
This independent source needs some support.
http://fukushima-diary.com/category/dnews/
AA; Eerily, the asteroid animation took the impact to the coast off the Carolinas
The debate is over.
http://theconsensusproject.com/
Beginners start here> http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
With around 20 years of no statistically significant warming, the AGW junk-science began to fall apart, so they renamed it ‘climate change’. But the climate has always changed, as evidenced by ice-skating on the Thames (1600s) and red wine grape cultivation in England (1300s). The link between man’s increasing CO2 output and rising temperatures has always been tenuous at best, based as it is on dodgy computer models that produce the *right* result just as long as the *right* data is fed in. Should the results not support the theory, it’s better for one’s career to simply hide the results.
Many leftists like the idea of climate change legislation to create sort of socialist utopia in which wealth creators are taxed into extinction. I once debated this issue with a lefty who admitted that he felt AGW theory was in all probability a crock of shite, but that it was worth implementing the legislation anyway as something had to be done to curb economic growth and “save the planet”. I suspect that many lefties feel like this. Veggie campaigners, too, jump on the bandwagon, seeing an opportunity to end wasteful meat production. Big oil, finance, etc., unsurprisingly try to work out ways to make money out of it. Government, ditto, wants more government. Poor and low-lying island nations seize the chance to make a buck out of the West and through all of this China carries on regardless (the leftists don’t tend to bother about China and India because the target is, of course, the West’s economic sucess).
I should add before the usual accusation is made that I do not have a climate science background myself, but having spent a lot of time reading sites where qualified people on both sides of the debate gather, it is quite clear that the sceptics absolutely wipe the floor with the alarmists. Even a layman can see that. And I am quite prepared to change my mind should I see solid research that proves the sceptics wrong, but in the meantime it is a crying shame that real conservation and biodiversity issues are being drowned out by – and government resources put into – this obvious scam.
Exexpat: “The debate is over.”
Doesn’t look like it is, fella. 🙂
Ps, I take it you departed to and returned from your expatriate destination by wind and sail?
O/T Gulnara and all that….!
Unexpected find on the Mail website.
The split at the heart of one of central Asian repressive dictatorships: Uzbek dictator’s glamorous daughters hate each other Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva says she hasn’t spoken to her elder sister Gulnara in 12 years
Dictator’s younger daughter gives first interview to western media
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2436597/The-split-heart-central-Asian-repressive-dictatorships-Uzbek-dictators-glamorous-daughters-hate-other.html
@anon
Since you’re getting personal are there other things in your life you are in denial about? 🙂
Glenn: “Without doubt, this is the most disappointing article Craig has written to date. My old grandfather advised that if you’ve got nothing to say, then don’t say it. This article would have been an excellent opportunity to put that advice into practice.”
Dreoilin: “I hated this post of Craig’s”
Craig (2011): “When I am lacking time or energy for deeper thinking, I tend to throw out some provocative thoughts from the top of my mind to see what people make of them.”
I’m wondering if there must be a troll shared services unit somewhere.
Was very Hasbara in here now the Energy Industry seems to be represented?
Exexpat
28 Sep, 2013 – 9:19 pm
“I’m wondering if there must be a troll shared services unit somewhere.
Was very Hasbara in here now the Energy Industry seems to be represented?’
Thanks for letting us into your wondering mind.
While you’re at it, are there any other neuroses you would like to let us into?
We suspected as much
http://www.alternet.org/media/seymour-hersh-story-about-killing-osama-bin-laden-one-big-lie?page=0%2C0
Well now he knows.
There are animals on this planet that I would rate higher than some of the f*ckers that claim to be running entire countries.
G’night
With regard to vegetarianism and vegetarianistas, I find there is little point challenging vegetarians on their beliefs as those are their choice and the debate can make for the most boring dinner of party conversations as well as blog threads. However, I do object when a vegetarian says they do not eat meat because of the appalling conditions animals are kept in in industrial farming units. Surely the obvious response to that would be to eat meat sourced from local producers operating to the highest standards? Very odd.
Anyway, all I’ll say on the veggie debate is: eyes at front of head + teeth for tearing meat = meat-eater, but each to their own!
Villager: best to ignore the twerp!
Dreoilin: “Well now he knows.”
Knows of what, Dreoilin? That you disapprove of his views and lack of conformity? Perhals you would like to add some of your own views on the past two decades of no significant warming?
I don’t know about other readers but I’m just aching to hear Technicolour’s views on Halal slaughter…
…
🙂