What is the World coming to?

[ChaosGod]

*Originally posted by Grey *
**Global warming will do nothing to the earth or the life on it. Nothing. It will seriously inconvenience us on the other hand. **

That’s what the martians said.

[msmith537]

*Originally posted by ChaosGod *
Nuclear Terrorism
Unsustainable Overpopulation
Irreversible Global Warming
Moral Bankrupcy

anything else…? **

Incoherant whining and babbling (the entire thread, not your post in particular)

[cowgirl]

Rhum Runner
The world is safer now than it was 15 years ago.

and

Bryan Ekers
The world is hugely better than it was only a few decades ago

Cite, please? Better/safer how? for whom? For you? I understand that this is self-evident for you, but quite the opposite is self-evident for me, probably because we are coming at it from different points of view. Please provide some cites so we can discuss.

Ask someone in Africa who is surrounded by AIDS, or people who have grown up knowing nothing but war, or children who are suffering from athsma at unprecedented rates because of air pollution. People who still don’t have clean water or sanitation … I know you’ve heard all this before but I’m amazed that, with all the misery and unpleasantness in the world, people can still toss around these cavilier assumptions without even considering their own position of privilege.

rexdart

Maybe. But this might actually be good for people who live halfway above/below the equator. As I understand it, the icecap melting has been waaaaaaaaay exaggerated, and the benefits to agriculture might outweigh any drawbacks, at least here in the States and in Europe.

It’s nice that I currently live in a part of the world where malaria isn’t a problem. I’m a bit worried about what might happen when malaria-carrying mosquitos could survive here, because there’s no natural immunity to it here like there is in places where it is endemic. Same with any other tropical disease you could mention. We would also have to shift all our agriculture, and since our economy/agricultural industry/cuisine is already suited to things that do grow here, this could cause some trouble too. I may not be able to get bananas, because the places that currently grow them would become too hot, and the places that would become hot enough may not have the right soil/climate.

Florida and California might sink, as might the Maritimes, which suits me because, well, I don’t live there.

you probably think this is all bullshit. But … are you certain? are you willing to take the risk?

[yawndave]

*Originally posted by Bryan Ekers *
**Great puttering horsehockey!

The world is hugely better than it was only a few decades ago and sabre-rattling and war drums are not recent inventions.

Pick up a history book, dave. If it’s an honest treatment, it won’t fail to mention truly horrific rates of infectious disease and infant mortality. Claiming the world is “coming to” something suggests it was once noble and is now being corrupted. I’d have to call “bullplop!” on any such simplistic bellyaching. **

Hey, Bryan…I didn’t mean to suggest that life in general is worse today that in it has been in the past–I just posted the question to see what people thought about the direction we human beings were headed, considering the current geopolitical climate.

[RexDart]

*Originally posted by cowgirl *
**
It’s nice that I currently live in a part of the world where malaria isn’t a problem. I’m a bit worried about what might happen when malaria-carrying mosquitos could survive here, because there’s no natural immunity to it here like there is in places where it is endemic. Same with any other tropical disease you could mention. We would also have to shift all our agriculture, and since our economy/agricultural industry/cuisine is already suited to things that do grow here, this could cause some trouble too. I may not be able to get bananas, because the places that currently grow them would become too hot, and the places that would become hot enough may not have the right soil/climate.
**

First off, malaria. There is currently a resurgence, apparently, in malaria cases in the US. It continues to plague the tropics in greater numbers yet. I have heard some speculation I’m inclined to agree with that this may coincide with the banning of effective pesticides like DDT that had previously served to keep the insect population down to less threatening numbers. Since the DDT ban was all predicated on the wild fancies of Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring, maybe it’s time to revisit the science of DDT and other pesticides. Perhaps that problem will prove manageable if we look into widespread pesticide use.

As for the shift in agriculture, it wouldn’t be so dramatic. With global warming, we’re talking about an increase of maybe a few degrees. Slightly larger growing seasons would result, but surely that only serves to increase the fertility of the Earth, providing more food and thus sustaining a larger population. Here in this latitude, first-frost is the critical issue, and if that were delayed then many agricultural benefits might accrue. For Kansas to be forced to abandon wheat and take up bananas would require more than just a temperature increase, it would require a dramatic shift in wheather patterns, and for the Rocky Mountains to tumble into dust, because rainfall is still an issue. Likewise, current banana-growing regions would maintain their rainfall and the temperature increase of a few degrees is unlikely to radically alter their agricultural production.

(If somebody can find me a reliable cite from a source other than an environmentalist .org website that discusses alterations to the jet stream and rainfall differential caused by varying degrees of global warming, I would be interested in seeing that, even keeping in mind that such would naturally be projections based on limited information.)