Climate Change must be tackled NOW

"The world is mostly an empty place, as any cross-country flight on a clear day will quickly verify."

George, you are not seeing what you don't have the expertise to see (most of us don't). The depletion of resources doesn't just take place in areas where you can see roofs and other signs of human habitation. We draw our water from huge aquifers far from home which depend on the health of the landscape which feeds them. The trees, grasses, and wildlife which once kept whole areas of the country very healthy have been replaced, in many areas, by soil depleting crops. The chemicals which we use to increase the speed and amount of production are the same chemicals kill the healthy bacteria which produce food which nourishes. And those mini-facts are only the smallest piece of the bad news. So your eyes deceive you, I'm sorry to say.

We'd all like to fly over great stretches of the landscape and glory in its beauty, but with scientific knowledge and trained eyes come the awful truth. Blatham is probably right that we will self-correct through our own self-destruction, but why should we take the rest of the animal and vegetable world with us? And why should a few cheerful, blind romantics like yourself be allowed to get away with voting in the destruction?

Well, Tartarin has called me a "cheerful, blind romantic" I think that is an improvement. However she also doesn't want to allow me to 'vote in what she considers as the destruction, and that worries me.

My reference to the emptiness of the world is based on my visual impressions from years of flying military aircraft just about everywhere. There is indeed a lot of open space out there. As to what expertise I have or don't have in interpreting the availability or lack thereof of fundamental resources, perhaps particularly including water, I submit Tartarin can't possibly know one way or the other.

However, to make my point I will say that I run a middle sized company ($150-200 mil/year) that provides environmental consulting, engineering, and remediation services to government and industrial consumers. We specialize in water resources (watershed planning & water treatment), ecological risk assessment, environmental permitting for industry, hazardous waste treatment & disposal, remedial design & construction. There are many who know much more about these subjects than me, but I am indeed conversant with the issues.

While it is beyond doubt that the environment has been much affected by human activity, that much of the damage done could readily have been avoided by better system design and operation, and that many of the natural resources we once regarded as free and plentiful are no longer so plentiful and will certainly not be free (water is a good example), the dismal collapse you imply is not at all indicated by the facts. You also imply that we humans have no right to take 'the rest of the animal and vegetable world with us'. That implys a (to me) odd and curious theology. Where to these rights (or lack of them) come from?

The fact is that we have over the last several decades enormously reduced the environmental impact of producing the things that sustain our lives. That process is continuing. Malthusian predictions have been proven wrong so many times that I am surprised to see them surface again.

You may be doing a better job, George, but far too many "environmental consulting" firms are in fact runners for businesses and state governments who'd like to squeak by, just within the boundaries of environmental laws which are themselves, in most cases, way too lax given the lousy situation we're in.

My "theology" (certainly not Christian, in which man dominates) includes respect for our environment. Maybe you respect it too. Show me!

Tartarin,

You should also add the Federal government to your list. It too is having increasing difficulty complying with its own unreasonable laws.

Very often what you term as 'squeaking by' the boundaries of environmental laws is merely an effort to produce a needed material or social good at tolerable cost. Human beings are a part of the environment as well as plants & animals - their good should be included in the equation. Usually the doomsaying environazis exclude them from their equations.

Do you really know that our environmental laws are "... in most cases way too lax, given the lousy situation we're in" ? Do you really mean that the majority of the EPA's contaminant standards for air, soil, and water are too lax? I would be interested to know some particulars.

It is a fact that air and water quality (at least in most major rivers) have improved markedly over the last decade. It is also true that we rather narrowly stopped some serious contamination of a few major aquifers (most notably the huge Snake River aquifer), just in time to escape lasting damage, and that we must remain vigilant for others as well. However overall the situation appears to be in control. Enormous investment in municipal and industrial water treatment plants will be required over the next few decades to meet growing demands and a nearly tapped out self-cleansing capacity of most watersheds. The most pervasive issue is agricultural runoff, and some of the GM crop issues I addressed may offer significant contributions to the needed solutions.

Overall we have every reason to be optimistic, prophets of doom notwithstanding.

george

You may no longer use the term "environazis" without first providing to us all a full inventory of your medicine cabinet along with proof of valid prescriptions for said pills. And we'd also like to interview your housekeeper, just in case.

Blatham,

You are undoubtedly right. And I'm really not trying to pick a fight with Tartarin (although she may not find that an easy buy). Nothing in the medicine cabinet except a diuretic for mildly elevated blood pressure and some unused pain pills left over from my rotator cuff surgery.

That rather cheap shot had been dancing around in my head after reading someone's post here about government bad boys using the Patriot act to get at PETA and other environmental "activists" who set fires and trash SUVs.

As the Church Lady said ..... Never Mind.

The fact that you're unsympathetic nails it for me, George. Environazis! Why did you show your hand so easily??!! Ye gods!

Unsympathetic to what????

I'm the very model of a modern warmhearted guy.

It seems to me you are just a bit too inclined to prejudgement. "Nails it for me" - does that mean you never revise your opinions or take in new information?

Send in the clowns!

Blatham, help me in this.

!!

blatham, floating into the room in flowing saffron robe, brings peace and strange odors.

Oh my cheeldren...there ees so verrrry much sadness een the world. You must not succumb...to the temptation...to pull out each other's leevers...for you will not find peace thees way. To find truuuue happiness and brotherhood...you must become as onnnne. Or just geeeve me your credit card numbers, that works tooooo.

The environmental movement has its extreme edge, as does any movement. I think that's just a bell curve phenomenon. But setting that extreme up as a representation of the movement is classic straw man stuff, like suggesting that all Republicans are, say, like the President. Terms such as 'femizazis' or 'environazis' don't help the debate, and that's why so many of us despise the rhetoric of a Limbaugh or Coulter.

Tartarin and I share some notions regarding how modern western societies function (and notions on how they ought to - in a moral sense - function). You too share some of these, but she and I clearly are closer in worldview. And equally clearly, she and I consider that the situation is possibly, if not probably, dire enough to warrant some yelling.

That being said, I have to say that most of what you've written above is reasonable and balanced. And you have a technical expertise and familiarity in this area which both she and I cannot match.

Other than getting all smashing drunk together and bonding in the traditional Irish style, I think we'll just have to keep talking, acknowledging that we are, each of us, half decently bright and good-hearted.

Does that include Tartarin?

Oh yes, it very definitely does include Tartarin.

I guess you'll have to count me out on that, Blatham. Our interlocutor here, the "environmental consultant," is (I betcha) very well equipped with technical expertise of a sort, but it's just the sort which is under the greatest fire by those who do know what they're talking about. The battle here is between the profiteering status quo antes on the one hand, and guys (m and f) of enormous experience wearing well worn field clothes who've seen it up close and nasty. Some of them are running the local, county and/or state organizations of the kind which, for example, oversee water use and note that each new well tapping into the aquifer represents not just more water drawn but a small but incremental roof collapse, gradually diminishing the source of the water at a much greater rate than simply that used by individual homeowners. They are up against the commercial interests who can buy a) environmental consultants to make the disaster look a little better and suggest ways to circumvent truth, and b) politicians who have lunch daily with one or another representative of the commercial interests. It's a dreadful business, and there is nothing reasonable, balanced, or even redeemable about those in category a) or b).

Gesture of finger in throat.

george

I want to press a point I've made before. It's a delicate issue, and gets me in no small trouble with some folks here, but I hope to move you a little in my direction on this.

The thesis is that many citizens of the US perceive the activities of their country through a distorting lens of inculcated mythology. Now, that is not unusual, but it always has the inherent problem of subjectivity, the closest anology of which is not being able to notice our own dialect's accents - others hear it but we don't, we know we are speaking properly.

Tartarin spent much of her adult life outside of the US. That's not insignificant to my point. Consider dyslexia as well. He grew up, until 15 or so (correct me where I've got this wrong, dys) in Beirut. Both share a certain dismay at how so many Americans seem unable to perceive failings in their nation's activities in the world.

I'll point also to folks like Steve (the English football hooligan), or Walter (German beer hooligan), or NIMH or myself or the others here who aren't American. All of us (with the single exception of Steissd, I think) keep poking our little fingers in this direction.

It isn't that the US is bad. It's that the US is normal. It's like France, or Canada, or 16th century Holland. But for some, that's a serious degrade down from the mythologies about the US.

I was recently down south there, and once again, I just loved the people I bumped into on the street. Folks down there are, without question, friendlier than they here in my Canadian city (mind you, living in a climate which won't kill you from hypothermia half the year probably helps one's constitution). And my wife was American, my daughter has dual citizenship, and I'll very likely be moving to the US fairly soon.

But that I even mention these last points speaks to the delicacy of bringing up this issue... "Hey, I'm not 'anti-American'" is the message. You see, there is no comparable concept even here in Canada. I have never in my life heard or seen the expression 'anti-Canadian'. That's a very curious difference.

And a related argument I've touched on before, equally sensitive, is that I think it not a coincidence that folks with a military background commonly seem to have a particular vigor in their defence of America as actually matching what the mythologies impart. I think this not a coincidence because the subject here is inculcation of identity and values.

Tartarin is, by some, clearly considered a 'radical' and has been accused on more than one occasion of being herself anti-American. I think they are both bum raps. I have as much respect for her intelligence and analytical skills as anyone on this site, and I think her humor and her broad life experiences allow her an unusually rich viewpoint.

Do I like her more than you? Yes, but she has breasts.

Thank you, Blatham, but they are teensy weensy and very old. Poor choice.

Figure george's are better? I could redo this calculation I suppose.

But the truth is I've come to respect george's intellect and experience (and humor) too. I can talk with george and get into slugging just half the time.

Well Tart,

I don't suggest that I have proceeded with perfect grace, but ... you don't leave me much room. Odd to be referred to in my (figurative) presence in the third person.

Sometimes I do know what I am talking about, sometimes not. We stumble or are corrected by others, learn, and move on. Do you know anyone on this or any subject who truly always knows all that he/she is talking about? How can you tell ?

I can neither accept nor understand the dismal view you express with respect to these environmental issues and others here as well. The facts of the matter do not support them. Life, even in America, is birth, death, and rebirth. It isn't all winding down. Your view is, in my judgement, more a state of mind than a rational formulation of observable facts.

It is always possible to postulate that the actors in the play are subject to only base motives and the critics all for sale, pile on the anecdotes reflecting these postulates - and then conclude the whole thing is doomed. However that drill has no meaning at all - apart from the arbitrary postulates that launched it and the mentality that formed them.

Gesture of hopeful expectation

Blatham,

Thanks for your considerate message. I will reflect on it and try to understand.

I do recognize the fact that the peculiar American self-centered, insensitive, brash, self-important and confident attitude towards the world is often grating to others, as is the vulgarity of many of our cultural artifacts. Reactions to it can be found throughout European literature as far back as the early 19th century and they no doubt continue today. It is as real as are the salient characteristics of other nationalities - and probably has louder impact. However, I find the often excessive preoccupation with it on the part of others just as interesting and worthy of consideration as the phenomenon itself.

I'm a great fan of Joseph Conrad's novels. He isn't read so much anymore, but I'm now well into my second pass through his principal works. One of the near constant figures in his novels, along with the exotica of South Asia, and the wonder of young men bent on self discovery, is the ever present greedy, power-seeking and dangerous German expatriate. This figure, in several forms appears again and again in Victory, Alamayer's Folly, Lord Jim, and many others. I have always thought that this near obsession told us more about Conrad than it did about Germans. There may be an application of this observation here as well.

I haven't lived for any extended period overseas, however I have travelled a great deal, from Iceland to Chile and from South Africa to Australia and China. I have encountered various national characteristics and lots of cultural variation, but whenever I was able to get through that stuff I found the same human material everywhere. Your point about the very common terms of 'Americanism & anti-American' is well taken, and I do concede that anti-Canadian is not heard. However, please note that Anglophobe & phile and Francophobe & phile were common jargon two centuries ago. Point is there may well be another explanation.

You are indeed correct that the culture of our military does tend to amplify many aspects of that American persona, particularly the brash competitiveness. In general comradeship is a far more significant source of cohesion than is an exaggerated national mythology. (Our politicians tend to push out more corn than do our generals.) However, up close many are surprised to find far more individuality and creativity among military members than in many businesses and professions. That has been my experience since I took up my second career. I will admit that, even in Naval Aviation, I was known as one who could not bear to see others suffer from the lack of my opinions.

I will continue to look for signs of Tartarin's humor. I did see a flash of it a bit earlier on this thread and reacted to it. Let's hope there is more.

Well, perhaps there were two flashes ("teensy weensy"). Why do women so consistently underestimate the appeal of their breasts?