Man is one viscious parasite...

wil

wil

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There is nothing man has done for the environment, or this planet escept feeble attempts to correct his errors.

Man is not by definition nature...man is opposed to nature... Look at a log dam...similar to a beaver dam which is natural... Our dam is not...it is man made.

Refer first to your dictionaries... And then comment, agree, disagree or expound.
 
Unusually pessimistic point of view from you, Wil. Not that I disagree. In point of fact, far from being the pinnacle of evolution, there is no consensus that a smart ape able to understand and alter the world around them isn't the worst kind of creature ever to come along as far as the world biosphere is concerned. We are the first species since life began capable of destroying the planet that gave us birth. What is so sad is that we DO have the potential to responsible stewards of the planet if we only chose to do so. Thus far our record has been quite the opposite.
 
I wish I could offer some tidbit of wisdom to compliment this thread but you have said it all. As DA says it may be a pessimistic view but it is surely an accurate one. I see no positive change in maintaining the environment and catch myself wondering how long can we continue to dodge the inevitable?
 
I don't see it as pessimistic... I actually believe we are smart enough to survive (not all of us) and will leave to go find other planets to infect.

It stemmed from a question is man part of nature... To which I thought...naturally... But it appears we made up that word nature and we made it to mean that which is not us.

I eventually came to the conclusion we are not only not nature....we are its worst enemy.
Fact is the planet will also survive...after we make it uninhabitable for us and the thousands of other species we extinct in the process...the earth will survive, evolution will continue, and we'll hope it does better next time...
 
The first to disagree!
I think your notion of 'life' is rather romantic. I'm not aware of any life form that consciously work for the betterment of the nature around it. All life effect nature around them, some so extreme that it wipes out other organisms. >Life< has infected the world, man is just part of it. The only thing I think distinguishes us from other organisms in this case, is the extent of our effect on the life around is. Unprecedented as far as I know. Life will nt be the same after we're done with the place, but that has always been the case.

In the end, I don't think we are that special.
 
Let us think of Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, the Canadian shale sands, Chernobyl, Hiroshima, the dead zones in our rivers and oceans, the great Pacific garbage patch, amazon derainforstation...climate change...

Maybe I can be enlightened as to a species /life form which has been as destructive to the ecosystems all over this big blue ball.,..

The best thing for planet earth would be a disease that spread thru every city over one hundred thousand....and those in rural areas could reboot...
 
I find this topic often on Green Energy forums, What I find interesting is the backlash when I ask what can we do to not destroy what we call nature?

Every "Green Energy" when added up to levels that could support all people will adversely effect the Earth as well. Wind Turbines alter wind currents, add drag to the natural Wind Pathways. Solar panels block the sun from reaching the ground, causing small but long term exponentially larger problems per acre. Geothermal literally takes the heat out of the ground and puts it in the atmosphere which is much less insulated (slightly curbed by heat pumping it backward for AC, but still not perfect). Nuclear is by far the least impact... until the maintenance crews don't keep up or an electrical malfunction occurs, then it becomes a global issue.
 
Solar panels block the sun, more than building and trees?

Nuclear has the least impact at the moment of production, but it is the small but catastrophic risks and the waste that is worrisome. Every choice we make will have consequences.
 
The dichotomy between man and nature is no different really than the problem any creature faces in its habitat. The current crisis has its roots in the ill-named 'Age of Enlightenment'.

This is when science really was seen as a way of controlling and exploiting the world, rather than, up to then, a way of understanding and working with.

I think it's telling that 'man' in that era context is taken to mean the masculine of the species (it being a given that 'science' was not something the female of the species could get their pretty little heads around), and that nature was described as a 'wanton woman' and had to be tamed. It was this imagery that set the basis for the debate.

So when we say 'man', I would rather say 'industrialised western cultures' as opposed to man generally. It's evident from studying other eras and other cultures that man is quite capable of living in harmony as part of nature in a symbiotic relationship. It's a question of appetite. One could argue that science went off the rails when it moved from 'understanding the world' to 'making my life easier', but the lever and the wheel are both principal examples of that, so the 'error', if that's what it is, goes way back.

We have, in the space of about 200-300 years, followed a path that is leading to an 'extinction event', the 'path' the west is walking is unsustainable. Sadly, there is no immediate solution, other than hoping in 'fairy-tale' or 'magic' fixes.
 
wil said:
... I actually believe we are smart enough to survive (not all of us) and will leave to go find other planets to infect.
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Reckon we are, but part of me also reckons the 'smart' are often the least likeable, and the kind that caused the problem in the first place. 'Smart money' is buying fresh-water resources in the third world as discreetly and as quickly as it can. 'Smart money' is buying real estate in wastelands like N Canada, because that will be the new temperate zone. 'Smart money' will have the best seats on the space ships... the nice guys are too busy helping their neighbour to look after number one!

(Historically, the dispossessed are the ones who 'boldly go', driven by necessity. So the story of America, for example. But then when someone builds a space ship, it's unlikely the tickets will be in the reach of the dispossessed? maybe some will crowdsource the funds to build a Martian spaceship ... anyone thought of that?)

wil said:
It stemmed from a question is man part of nature... To which I thought...naturally... But it appears we made up that word nature and we made it to mean that which is not us.
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I think that's a relatively recent idea. It's a consumer notion, really, the way I see it.

wil said:
I eventually came to the conclusion we are not only not nature....we are its worst enemy.
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Nah. We might well be our own worst enemy. Nature doesn't even notice ...

wil said:
Fact is the planet will also survive...after we make it uninhabitable for us and the thousands of other species we extinct in the process...the earth will survive, evolution will continue, and we'll hope it does better next time...
Click to expand...
Well evolution is part of the problem. Or the notion that it progresses in a straight line, and that line is progressive towards some goal ... it ain't. It's random. If there's a goal, there's an architect.

And as for 'the blue planet', it's all a fluke. We're in the 'goldilocks' position, and organic life is the product of so many 'fluke' events that it's a strong scientific argument to suggest there isn't life elsewhere ... the odds are stacked against it, but then in an infinite space, who knows?

The point is, an infinite number of monkeys at typewriters can come up with the complete works of Shakespeare, but not necessarily. They might never. Same with the Cosmos. Theoretically it can replicate a similar set of conditions, given its infinity, but that doesn't mean it must, or it will. Certainly not on a timescale that's relevant to us. I would say the odds of earth meeting another species like our own, within the timeframe of our own species, is tantamount to a proof of God!

The cosmos isn't working towards life as it's goal, life is just something that happens as the product of some random events. The odds of such events being replicated elsewhere are limited, but then space is limitless, so who knows?

But the idea that life 'must exist out there' does rather rest on the idea that something wants life to exist, or our notion that we think that life is the best thing since sliced bread ... that evolution necessarily means life ... Does it? I don't think so.

If evolution was heading the way the Enlightenment thought it was, then we're also heading towards the best virus, the best cancer, the best bacteria, etc.

Remember we're only here because of previous 'extinction events' that killed everything and remade the environment. Our oxygen rich atmosphere is the result of one such 'fluke' event. We've had meteor strikes, ice ages ...

Professor Laycock, a guru I much admire, the proponent of the Gaia Hypothesis (not the romantic goddess nonsense), reckons nature will shrug off the human species, with about 80% extinction.

I wonder if evolution is not like a monkey at a typewriter, just banging away, and every now and then something makes sense? Life just keeps having a go, and every now and then something happens to survive long enough to impact the environment and alter the ecology. No guarantee that there's an evolution event round the corner that will undo everything so far ...
 
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I'm with most of what Thomas is saying, the one thing that differs is the fundamental nature of man. Thomas, you see man as once feeling part of nature, recent even, but that is not my view. I specifically remember reading a religious history book that tries to point to where even tribal and shamanistic religions centre around a human vs. nature theme. I will dig that book up and see if I can gleam some insights from it.
 
wil said:
Windmills alter wind currents? More than smokestacks and buildings....

Yikes..
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If there were enough to power a city, yes...They already have issues when installing them of how they place them so that the currents still pass through... They are gigantic structures which add great restrictions to wind currents. Now multiply that by Millions, and that is an issue, both with real estate and wind currents.

Buildings outside of cities are rarely tall enough to alter the landscape. Places like NY and Chicago have recorded changing currents through and around town.

A Cup Of Tea said:
Solar panels block the sun, more than building and trees?
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Block more, yes. Trees usually only filter light, also the heat travels through the tree to the ground through conduction. A Solar panel is made to completely blot out a section. Tilted to cover as much as possible, the stands are made to transfer very little heat, which is necessary for the electronics to survive. What's also interesting is most modern panels use plastics to encase them, and the screen is replaced every few years... that means oil is still needed.

I'm not disagreeing that something needs to be done to slow it down, or alter the issue so that portion of the issue can resolve before we switch back, but we can't just assume that something is going to come from nothing. unless we go to another planet and use only resources from it, can we say we aren't destroying it. But then again, that would alter the Mass of the Earth and the other planet making both a cataclysmic effect in some trillions of years...
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
I think your notion of 'life' is rather romantic. I'm not aware of any life form that consciously work for the betterment of the nature around it. All life effect nature around them, some so extreme that it wipes out other organisms.
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Can not agree with you on this statement, Tea. In point of fact, in all other ecosystems down threw the millennia life reached a balance of predator and prey that was sustainable for, well forever, unless some external event kicked the planet in the gut and forced mass extinctions. The dinosaurs lived and evolved for 65 million years, for goodness sake, and maintained a natural balance thru-out that entire time. Man is the only creature to come along that has the capability, the ability and the will to devastate the planet for our own ends.

I do agree that it is almost impossible for humans to destroy the planet's biosphere. We surely can make it toxic enough so our species will not survive, but other species will. We are capable of causing a manmade extinction event that would drive 90% of the life on the planet to death. But give it a couple millennia and new life forms will arise. This last fact comforts me a great deal.
 
Man cannot destroy the planet, man can only make it uninhabitable for man, the planet will survive.... And THAT should make the liberals happy

~ Rush Limbaugh
 
Two concepts we need to sort out, could you tall me more about 'natural balance' and 'devastate the planet'. I'm not aware of any ecosystem that has remained balanced since the last extinction, that's one key part of evolution, the need to adapt. En what is the scale of devastation we are talking about? the biggest yet? Because there can always be a bigger devastation than a previous one. Ever life form makes an imprint on this planet, humans make the biggest imprint than any other organism we are aware of. And it's because of the use of more and more advanced tools.

So I think our key disagreements are balance and devastation.
 
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