Can we save our planet by reasoning together?

no....

From what, precisely, do you allege the Earth needs to be saved?

Louis Armstrong said in response to the request to define jazz, "When you got to ask what it is, you never get to know."

The difference is that Louis Armstrong wasn't purporting to offer a social critique and diagnosis. Would you accept Louis Armstrong's answer if it came from a doctor or a prosecution lawyer?

Everyone sing: To Dream the Impossible Dream

Perhaps man's best chance for long-term survivability relies on the exponential growth of technology outpacing our myopic short term destructiveness. As to what form man will take moving forward with survivability it will not likely be as we are now:

Life extension
Cybernetics
Off world habitats
Artificial intelligence
Robotics

It's a race to see if our stupidity can best our inventiveness!

Here's what we need to do:

Park our cars and throw away the keys.
Ground our planes and disassemble them.
Stop finding and using oil.
Stop mass production of **** we don't need.
Plant a tree.
Take a nap.
Lighten up.
Calm down.

Can't we just start at "I don't give a rats ass about the next generations, but I don't want to live in a shithole" ?

Self interest, baby. Maybe eventually enlightened self-interest.

Isn't it that attitude that got us where we are today?

Life extension technologies may change that timetable. In fa
Life extension technologies may change that timetable. In fact I suggest life extension technologies may have already changed that timetable. If people live for 1000 years it may be that they'll be less willing to be long-term eco-destructive if they know they'll be around to face the effects.

It's also quite possible that through cybernetics and genetic engineering we will become much more resilient to the accumulating negative environmental effects and thus not care enough even with life extension technologies.

Now that's what i called a gold-plated chickenshit response, and a clear dodge of the question.

From what, precisely, do you allege the earth needs to be saved?

People who have to ask such questions.

Re: Can we save our planet by reasoning together?
I really ought to know better, but you always proceed from such bullshit premises, that i thought i'd just plunge in once again and point out how little you really know about what you nonetheless are willing to rant about.



Only in the sense that the word is an English word, could it have been said to have often been used in England.



This was true only in an evolutionary framework--people who abused their properties soon found themselves without property to abuse. By no means do you have any real basis upon which to make such a statement. What is your source for this horseshit? As far as i can ascertain, as is so often the case with you, you just make this **** up as you go along.

In feudal times, the amount due to the lord of the manor was specifically designated, in writing, to the level of detail that the actual stewards of an estate--the reeves and bailiffs--were told precisely how many measures of grain, how many chickens, how many sheep, how many beeves, etc., they were required to deliver to the manor house each year at the time of the Michaelmas slaughter. You just simple don't get it.

The central concept of the Protestant ethic embodies the notion that someone were enjoined by the God of the covenant to preserve the property, and to increase it if at all possible. It was a concept dear to the heart of the Puritans, and all other forms of Calvinists, but it had absolutely no connection to any concept of aristocracy.

Basically, if an aristocratic property were well-managed, it was the product of the decision of whichever aristocrat had the control of it at any given time. In times of trouble, the entire situation could be completely out of the hands of the property owner. The "Black Death" removed about a third of the population of Europe from the equation in the 14th century, with recurrent visitations in the centuries which followed. Entire villages simple vanished--and manor estates crumbled and disappeared as well, leaving families of the peerage bankrupt, without regard to anyone's fanciful claims about their concept of "stewardship."

The ambitions of the peerage to increase their property could well be the death of them, too. In the Wars of the Roses, when there were seven claimants for the throne of England at one time or another, more than half the families of the peerage were extinguished in the direct male line. That sounds more like a prescription for keeping one's head down, and to avoid meddling in the affairs of princes than it does any prescription for "stewardship."



This one really made me laugh aloud. I can just imagine you attempting to explain to the baronage and the peerage of England how they did not actually own their property. After William the Bastard had successfully defeated Harold, and seized England by right of conquest, he had the entire nation inventoried, in a document known as the
Domesday Book. So, in fact, the King, and all of his aristocratic tenants knew exactly what was owned and by whom, and were very particular about their rights of ownership, and the right to deal with their property as they saw fit, without interference. Read Magna Carta sometime, despite all the PR about rights such as trial by one's peers and habeas corpus, it is principally concerned with rights in property, and reaffirms the rights of the baronage and the peerage to do with as they pleased with their own property.

When your basic premises are based upon such very obvious crap, which you apparently are content to make from whole cloth, and think those who read here are stupid enough to swallow whole--how can you expect that anyone will take your rants seriously.

Once again, Coberst demonstrates that he doesn't let a little thing like reality to interfer with his rant.

Still trying to dodge the question, eh? Do you now suggest that the planet needs to be saved from me, personally?

You begin by begging the question. You don't start by demonstrating that the earth is endangered, and how it is endangered, you start with the assumption, and proceed immediately to your confused maunderings. How can there be any rational discussion of how the earth is to be "saved," until it is established precisely how it is endangered, and by whom and why? Without establishing rational premises, there can be no rational discussion.

Which is exactly what people have come to expect from you.

Set, how would you go about establishing what criteria would be appropriate to argue that a sufficient level of potential endangerment exists given the inherent risks if incorrect/correct?

Undoubtedly you could quote studies etc but at some point you would have to balance perceived risks versus perceived rewards and make a risk/reward assessment.

How can you assess risks and rewards if neither the risks nor the rewards are advanced? Coberst has a long history at this site, and many others (one of which has a thread calling for him to be killed), of posting these screeds (he posts the same drivel at each site) which are vague and unsubstantiated.

I don't deny that it were possible to discuss risks and rewards, but that is not what he has done. He has not defined what risks the earth allegedly runs, nor the source of the risks, nor the cause of the risks. He only vaguely suggests the rewards, to wit, that the earth will be "saved" for future generations.

This is the kind of crap in which he delights. He posts a contention, which he never bothers to rigorously support, for which he provides a completely bogus "historical" justification. He did this with his thread on the ownership of people, which began with a completely false bleat about the military superiority of the Southern Confederacy in the American Civil War.

Once again, any attempt at discussion is pointless when the premises are either faulty, or unsupported. Coberst consistently avoids concrete evidence for his rants--why should anyone take them seriously?

Re: Can we save our planet by reasoning together?


This is a prime example of what passes for risk assessment at Coberst's house. He has not established that the use of air conditioning endangers the planet, one is left either with ignoring him (which is probably best, and the course i ought to have taken), or accepting that the use of air conditioning endangers the earth. If it is so that the use of air conditioning endangers the planet, is it because of the inherent properties of air condition? If so, what are those dangerous inherent properties? If not, is it the generation of the electricity without which air conditioning is not possible which is the danger? If so, is it possible to generate electricity in sufficient quantity to provide air conditioning without endangering the earth? These are the sorts of questions which will always go unanswered in a Coberst rant.



Here we reach the heart of the Coberst method. He doesn't want to discuss anything, he simply wants to throw his moralizing out there, and if you fail to agree, he condemns you as stupid, which is essentially how he has responded to me when i have asked him how it is that the earth is endangered.

I am not the first to have noticed this:



And i was inaccurate--the thread in question at another site was not a "kill Coberst" thread, it was an "I hate Coberst" thread, in which the author suggests that he be banned for being an idiot.

As you can see in this post by Joefromchicago in the same thread from which the above post was quoted, Coberst follows the practice of dropping his rants off at a number of sites. As Joe points out in a post which lies between the quoted post above and the one i have just linked, Coberst never participates in any discussions other than his own, and he invites all to agree with him, or be damned.

I usually don't pay any attention to him, but i galls me when he posts such blatant horseshit as his remarks about the aristocracy of England with which he opened this thread. He attempts to put a patina of scholarship on his screed, but in fact, he just makes the **** up as he goes along.

I have read little of Coberst's posts and no doubt this one is pretty loosy-goosy.

Still I think it's an interesting question as to where you would draw this subjective line, and how you would rationalize your choices as per risk / reward, even in the highly unlikely event that all information was definitive & factual as to present conditions. Maybe a thread on what level of risk / reward is meritable would be worth the time?