Our world is dying

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Oops, double post. Don't know how it happened.

Last edited by Gromit on 30 Sep 2007, 4:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Save the Rainforest! By mowing it down to grow biofuel.

Ahh the joyous stupidity that is the paradox of environmentalism.

Heathrow, where the great jets loft rich and poor abroad is beseiged by protesters, bemoaning the building of a new runway, and the prevalence of cheap flights. The loudest voice in the crowd? He flown from the land of the Americans!! So how did he get here? f*****g walk? I doubt it.

Councils all over our green and pleasant land are now forcing people to recycle, with threats of fines and all manner of nasty. So every week, boxes of cans and bottles, bins full of cardboard and other such appear in our streets. Guess where they send it? CHINA. Cause bulk shipping CRAP across the globe is a surefire way to reduce emissions.

Meanwhile, refuse collections for non-recyclable rubbish are reduced to fortnightly, and the bins are getting smaller. Theyre getting picky about reasons they wont take them as well. So we start to see a rise in the number of unemptied bins, and crap starts to accumulate in alleys and on backstreets. Thank f**k we had a crappy summer, or it would have been rat season wahey! And the rubbish mounts up. People are tempted to flytip it, because its easier and cheaper than taking it to a skip or the dump, where they are starting to charge, and wont even take half the crap anyway. Nice way to clean up the planet there.

British Gas (clue in the name there) are taking part in Carbon Offsetting.. by the power of GRAYSKULL.. when will people realise that Carbon credits reduce exactly bugger all? Its still the SAME AMOUNT OF s**t.. its just selling the clean air you dont f**k up to someone else to do it for you.

I did a "How much carbon you make" test.. Suggested usage for a house my size is 5 tonnes. We only go through 4.3 odd. (No car, no holidays.) Even though we have gas fires, a gas cooker, no insulation, barely any decent windows.. the list goes on. Woohooo!! I'm going to go burn some fridges or something, as I have all that spare carbon credit.

The onus of responsibility is pushed upon the citizens of the world. About 10 percent of waste created by the UK is domestic. About half of that is actually recyclable. So who exactly is guilty of making the mess? Industry? With its 90% of waste? Or is it... Industry? With its obsession with mountains of utterly pointless packaging you cant recycle? Or is it.. drumroll... Industry.. for making stuff out of materials that will last for ever (like plastic) and whacking them together into cheap s**t that breaks, just so you have to buy more. At least back in the day, if you bought furniture made of wood, logged in huge amounts from all those poor forests we wish we still had, you got a piece of kit that lasted for a LONG TIME.

Bemoan the death of the tree, but I have a desk here that has lasted 100 years, will probably last 100 more, and hasnt had to be replaced 3 times in as many years. Think how much MDF and plastic didnt have to be made because of this desk?

In fact, lets camp out in the tree to stop a road being built over it.. because nailing a shedload of pallets and plastic tarps to a tree then climbing all over it for six months is REALLY HEALTHY for the poor bloody thing. Lets all gather round our WOODBURNING campfire wearing PLASTIC boots because no animals died making them, singing Levellers songs about how bad nuclear energy is for the environment, whilst making a thousand cars idle on jammed motorways. Or we could tunnel under the proposed site, because humping all that soil back and forth isnt going to disturb any ecosystems at all, is it?

And then we can all die gasping anyway, because even if our whole population lived in caves oeating shoots and berries.. it wouldnt make a jot of difference, because Texas on its own pumps more s**t into our atmosphere than the Uk has ever managed.

Yknow what reduces carbon in the atmosphere? Trapping it it in solid state. Know what does that well? Concrete.. Tarmac.. and Books. Print more books people, it saves the day. More roads.. more buildings!!

I think I'll go see if I can get any of that Roman vintage wine they used to make in Scotland bak in the day. Yknow, Scotland.. kilts and Nessie and Snow and about three inches from the Arctic circle. Made fine wines back in the day, because it was warmer... funny that. Warmer.. about 1800 years before the industrial revolution.

Wonder if environmentalists count as a renewable fuel resource?

(Want a quick solution to several problems at once? Start paying Brazilians as game keepers and wardens in rainforests. Then pay all those opium farmers in afghanistan to grow biofuels, dumping their own cash crop. We get biofuels, the worlds drug problem is halved, and we get the Rainforest back to boot. Get Columbia on board and bam, problems solved.) )

This is the kind of response those with vested interests are hoping for by being deliberately ambiguous in their argument. No scientist ever denied global warming happening. The argument is about what is causing it not that it is happening. It makes me cringe when people say stuff like this. It makes me wonder what they know if anything.

The only reason petroleum fuels are as cheap as they are (they are) is that governments subsidize them to keep the prices low. Makes people happy. Keeps politicians elected. Yeah, petrol companies would make loads of money more if they were unregulated. It would also destroy the economies of the world. But there would be less fuel used in the future.

Currently, to make a unit of energy from bio fuels, it takes a slightly less unit of energy to make it. The only reason that bio-fuels is remotely possible is due to government subsidies to make it and cheap grains which are also subsidized to produce. If the current path of bio-fuels will only increase the prices of grain. To keep it low enough to feed people governments will need to give out more subsidies.

There are technologies that will improve bio-fuel production. The one that will be most likely is a genetically engineered yeast that produces ethanol from cellulose which can survive in large concentrations of ethanol. (Currently the best grain yeast is about 25%, 80-90% would be the goal) With this, all organic waste can be made into ethanol. Sounds great. Our solid waste sewer treatment plants would become ethanol plants. But imagine this yeast released into the environment. Organic matter all over the planet will be producing ethanol which is a good antiseptic which then will kill many other bacterias.

People today will not be able to live off the land. There are too many of us. Modern agriculture is the only reason this many people survive.

The solutions may be worse than the problem.

...or maybe we just slow down, demand less and enjoy more, peace j

Impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax, nuff said.

The thing that bothers me most with films like An Inconvenient Truth is that they try to put the blame on us, the everyday folks. I didn't choose to be born into this destructive culture but I get pummelled with guilt from people like Al Gore. One dude did the math and even if everyone in the States were to follow Al Gore's "Ten things you can do" on an An Inconvenient Truth handout it would only offset 22.2% of U.S. CO2 emissions... I suspect the big bad corporations are doing the worst but this doesn't lift us completely of any responsibility because then it would be up to us to stop them, I guess, because they'll still carry on even if we're doing what little we can.


>snip!!<_<

Last edited by BrownieCharles on 06 Oct 2007, 12:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is exactly the issue I have with all this "saving the environment" stuff. We the public are expected to do all this work to help save it, and no matter what we do, it makes no difference. Its a nice idea, recycling all your stuff and having energy efficient homes, but it merely costs us money, drives us to extra work, and for what? Its futility. I have no problem with the basic concepts of recycling etc.. it makes sense. But what we do domestically will not help. Some governments are using the green excuse as an extra stealth tax, which is unfair and defeats the point. The onus of responsibility lies upon those who can control the greater part of these things, and that is government and industry, and always will be. Unless they do something, we are wasting our time.

surely the only answer to climate change is the following: population control, adaptation and technological innovation (leading to more energy-efficiency and new energy sources)?
frankly, a one-child world policy would be needed - the resources to give even the current world population a decent standard of living simply do not exist. not that this is likely to happen - on the one hand, you have the oil companies, the SUV fans, etc. on the opposite side, you have neo-luddites that want to solve things with pie-in-the-sky technology like nuclear fusion, or unrealistic alternatives to hydrocarbons like solar, and who are the same people who are against GM food and modern industrial agriculture (even though both are the only realistic chances of keeping the world population fed without cutting down what wildland remains in the world).

China already has a one-child policy and look at the troube that causes. There are STILL loads of them, and they have the corpses of children lying in gutters, all manner of dodgy back street abortions, and more recently, an upsurge in trouble-causing male youths brought about by a lack of women of the same age. I cant imagine how messy it would get if the whole world were forced to this end as well. Thats before you even get into the potential psychological issues of only children.

Given the gap between the wealthy and the poor, it would be more than feasible to increase the living standards of many. A set of gold taps from Saddams palace is probably a years wages to a poor family. There are people who own a single diamond that would feed me for months, or longer. (thats not counting all the other diamonds they have.)

The food issue is only an issue through distribution, which is the part that really buggers the environment up. Making the distrubution part less messy would help no end.

As for a decent sustainable power-source that would power us all with a damn sight less pollution.. we already have that. its called nuclear power, and it works. People are merely afraid of it, because of bad handling by the energy companies, and a couple of accidents. Its the bogie man of power.

I agree with you on nuclear power (part of the what i mean with eco-luddites being completely unrealistic), though it's expensive. That doesn't solve fuel problems, just electricity, though.
Look at the contrast between China and other poor countries that did not adopt a one-child policy; China's GDP per capita is soaring, it is about the only 'developing country' that is actually developing (India's GDP per capita is growing far more slowly, in large part due to population growth). Yes, there are still lots of Chinese; without the policy, there would be far more - they would be as overcrowded as Japan, minus the wealth. Only children do just fine, at least if they're NT. Africa has some of the highest birthrates in the world and look at the mess it is (with plenty of environmental problems, too). Latin America has lower birth rates and is better off than Africa. The last thing poor countries need are more mouths to feed - they already lack enough jobs, schools, housing, clean water, etc for their existing population. When people acquire wealth, they want consumer goods - so either you keep them in abject poverty, or you ruin it for everyone by exhausting the world's resources, or you keep population growth in check so that you can cope. Of course the distribution of wealth has much to do with poverty (in Mexico, a single individual owns 7% of the country's entire GDP), but increasing the levels of consumption of the poor means using more resources - including clean air, cutting down wildland to make way for crops, etc. The evils of a one-child policy seem to me less than the evils of a bankrupt world using up its resources.

THANK YOU SO MUCH 0_EQUALS_TRUE!! !

Regards, mightyzebra

I put up a nice, friendly, innocent little discussion. I expect to chat to people, helping along with their saving our dying world.

Then what happens? Disaster strikes (thunder boom).

People start to use foul language about saving the planet, people start to argue about the principal, one person EVEN said that global warming is a myth.

WHAT IS GOING ON??! !

Everyone who reads this and wants to put up a discussion from now on, please follow these rules:
1. Do not argue with people about the principal of global warming, saving the planet or the like. 2. If you are new to saving the planet, then I would love to help you take part in being enviornmentally friendly! 3: If anyone has some new ideas about helping our dying world, animals or people, please post them here! 4: No foul language - but if you HAVE to (like Calandale, possibly..?) then please use stars for all the letters. 5: In your reply please write that you have read these terms and conditions and agree to them.

Regards, mightyzebra

Your post is well intentioned. But you picked a very hot topic and chose a side. All your suggestions should be taken and are. Since the '70s environmental friendly efforts are increasing both voluntarily and by regulation.

Your original post indicates that people are causing global warming and that we can reverse it. It is also extremely alarmist saying that our world is dying.

Reread the posts that the people have written expressing the opposing views. They have valid points.

There are people who take the extreme view either way. Yours seem to be one of them. People respond with an extreme viewpoint. Then people respond to that.

If you want more moderate responses, take on a moderate view.

Heres an example of the first of the Greenpeace fleet:

Rainbow Warrior

type of ship motor assisted schooner
built 1957
max. speed 13 knots (2 engines, 5400 l/day)
economic speed 10 knots (1 engine, 2700 l/day)
gross tons 555
net tons 166
No. of engines 2 Diesel
type engine/h.p. Deutz M.W.M.
2 x 6 cylinder
2 x 500 KW

http://archive.greenpeace.org/marine/ships.html

And theres a link to the rest.

Notice something? A bunch of 30 to 50 year old reconditioned hulks. What do they run on? Goodwill and Pixie dust? Nope. Diesel.

So if the ardent environmentalists cant run clean ships, why is anyone else going to bother?

This is the sort of irritating s**t that drives me spare about the Green lobby. Like americans who FLY to the UK to campaign about how cheap flights ruin the environment. I have no issue with looking after the damn place.. after all, its the only home we have, and I would like it to be nice for visitors and such, but these people really need to quit with the double standards.

I can see you obviously didn't read the terms and conditions.