Do you not think God can make good out of bad? .
I am snipping most of your introductory paragraph just to save space as otherwise the post is too long.
Two things about this. First is the time element. Recovery takes time and the deeper the injury the more time it takes to recover. The recovery time after previous mass extinctions has been tens of millions of years.
So, if we can mitigate the damage of climate change, thereby reducing the timetable of recovery, does it not make sense to take action?
Second, note that in several of the examples you mention, the good that was brought out of destruction depended on humans changing their mode of activity. Pollution of the Great Lakes did not stop on its own. It stopped because we stopped polluting them. Acid rain did not go away while we twiddled our thumbs. It went away because pollution controls were put in place. DDT was banned by human decision. Atmospheric nuclear tests were banned by human decision.
So why quibble about human action to mitigate and adapt to climate change? In fact, it would fit your scenario of good coming from evil as humans realize their behaviour is damaging nature, and we change it to safeguard important eco-systems.
Do you honestly think the whole world is windy enough to power a Rapid Transit System?
There are a lot of places where there is a lot of wind. The prairies is one. As you noted elsewhere, the oceans are another. Deserts too. There are not many places where wind power is so feeble or so rare as not to be economically viable.
Or solar? Where it works, great.
There is practically no limit to solar power, especially now that it is becoming so cheap. And practically nowhere it cannot be used. It is being used successfully in foggy Britain, for heaven's sake. It has taken off in a big way in Germany.
Given that all energy on earth is some form of modified solar power, I expect that we could in theory use it and nothing else. But harnessing solar power economically is the key. In pragmatic terms, we will probably need a combination of several types of energy for places and different uses.
But as far as there being enough energy---sure, we can do everything we are now doing with fossil fuels by other means. And probably save money while we are at it.
But where it doesn't, forget about it. But nuclear power can be done nearly anywhere.
I grant you, nuclear energy is as limitless as solar energy (after all solar energy is nuclear energy). But it has more downsides. It is much more expensive to build and maintain safely; it takes longer to bring a nuclear plant on stream--a new nuclear plant can take 20-25 years to become operational and we need faster solutions than that. The long-term waste storage problem has never been solved yet and is an accident waiting to happen. And when things do go wrong at a nuclear plant (think Three Mile Island, Cherobyl, Fukushima) it is a huge health and environmental problem.
I don't have a problem with solar, wind, hydro or nuclear. I do have a problem with limiting choices. Another problem is where to put the wind farms. John Kerry didn't want a wind turbine disgracing his property on Cape Cod, poor baby. There's a lot of hypocrisy and agenda-driven thought out there, on all sides.
I agree, that is very hypocritical. I don't even understand why anyone thinks of a wind turbine as unsightly. Currently, I live within walking distance of a wind turbine. It dominates the horizon of our neighbourhood. When I was a kid I lived next to a corridor for high-voltage hydro-electical towers. Now those were unsightly. Given the option, I would take wind turbines over hydro-electric towers any day of the week.
I do understand that wind farms, where many turbines are operating simultaneously, can be very noisy, so that is a consideration. But "unsightly"? Gimme a break. That's just stupid and prejudicial.
As I said, I'm all for conservation, but if you think an electric car can get you conveniently from San Francisco to New York as fast as a fossil fuel driven car, you have another thing coming. Fossil fuel is more efficient, right now, than any other, except for nuclear.
So how important is speed? And don't forget, one reason a fossil fuel car is more efficient is that we have already built the infrastructure for them. When you can charge up an electric car in any neighbourhood as reliably as you can fill it with gas, the difference won't be anywhere near as significant.
Have you seen what they make vehicles out of these days in order to make them get better mileage? They cannot make the engine more fuel efficient, so they have to make the car from lighter materials, which are more brittle, and destroy more readily on impact.
Well, that is not pertinent only to non-fossil fuels then.
Too funny. Driving herds of buffalo over a cliff vs people shooting at them from a moving train. Settlers ate buffalo just as natives did.
Oh, I am not saying settlers never ate buffalo. But while the native peoples had a culture of using every part of the buffalo with no waste of meat, skin, bones, hooves, or horns, and a culture that said, "take only what you need" the settlers, especially tourists, had no such culture. How does someone on a train use the animal he just killed? He doesn't. And even apart from the trains, there was much wanton killing of buffalo by non-natives with carcasses left rotting in the sun.
CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Plants use CO2 as food and produce oxygen.
Oh, yes it is. Very much so. One of the functions of atmospheric CO2 is to retain heat in the atmosphere. If we had no greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, the planet would be in a permanent global ice age and completely lifeless. Yes, CO2 has other functions as well. The problem is not that CO2 exists in the atmosphere. It is that there is currently too much of it and the proportion is increasing. Less than 2 centuries ago, atmospheric CO2 was about 270ppm. Recently we went over 400ppm. We need to get to at least under 350ppm to restore a healthy balance. Obviously, we cannot do that so long as we are putting more in.
The CO2 in the atmosphere today will take about 200 years to dissipate. So, reduction now, and in absolute terms--actual reductions not only in emissions, but in the level of atmospheric CO2, is crucial. And it won't be achieved without something in the neighbourhood of 80% reduction in fossil fuel use.
Fortunately, we have a lot of creative people in the world; all the technology we need already exists. We just need to choose to use it.
Really? That's news...
Catastrophic global warming is what occurs when a volcano erupts, for example.
Not necessarily. Depends on how wide-spread the effect is. Many volcanoes have only a local or regional effect. Some are biggies.
Climate change IS global. And it affects a lot of things: weather, of course, more extreme and violent weather, extreme shifts in weather. Acidification of the ocean. Sea levels rising. Desertification of continental interiors reducing accessible arable land. Tropical plants and animals, including disease-producing insects and parasites moving into temperate zones, depletion of ice caps and glaciers disrupting rivers and aquifers and so the water supply of more than half the world's population (Water, not oil, will be the principal cause of international conflict in decades to come.)
When Pinatubo erupted in the 90's, they estimated that 6% of the ozone layer was depleted, which, if you take that to its logical conclusion, means that, if we had as few as 18 similar volcanic eruptions, the ozone layer would be completely gone. We HAVE had more than 18 similar eruptions. One continuously since 1983. And yet the ozone is not depleted. This means that it regenerates.
Of course ozone regenerates. Who ever said it didn't. The protocol that banned hydrofluorocarbons in spray cans--because they were implicated in reducing the ozone layer--didn't add any ozone to the atmosphere. It just stopped destroying it. The recovery has been entirely nature's work.
I think I will need a little more info than a blog. Including who sponsors this one and what they choose not to tell us. And more than the opinion of one scientist. Not saying he is wrong, but I'm not convinced to jump on his bandwagon without more substance to go on.
You know what happens when the waters warm? Corals move north or south. They know how to survive. Then when the waters cool, they move back to where they were before.
If they have time. They don't move as quickly as fish, after all. It takes many centuries to build even a single atoll of coral reef. Right now as much as 60% of the coral reefs worldwide are in serious danger of collapse including large parts of the Great Barrier Reef.
Down here, Arctic air passing over bodies of water produce snow. In the Northeast ,it's called lake effect snow. Other snow occurs when a cold front passes over the ocean, then comes ashore, and as it passes over the higher elevations, the moisture is wrung out of the air in the form of snow.
That's right. Because down here, especially near large lakes and near oceans, there is plenty of moisture put in the air during warm seasons to be wrung out as the temperature drops. I have lived many years by Lake Ontario; I know what lake effect is. I also used to live in southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan where all year round the atmosphere is quite dry and there is no ocean or lake effect. Even there we do get some heavy rain storms in summer and heavy snowstorms in winter, but in winter, as the temperature drops even lower, the snow stops and the days become clear until it warms up enough to accumulate moisture again. Only then do we get another snow storm.
In the high Arctic, where even the summers are what we would call cold and winters very cold indeed, there is surprisingly little precipitation. Those thick layers of ice were built up year by year because it did not melt off in the summer, so the ice from previous years was still there for what snow did come to land on and become part of the ice pack. Now, in summer, more than half the Arctic is clear water. So we get changes like more snow, more ice formation, but its all new ice, not permanent.
btw, have you ever seen a documentary called "Chasing Ice". Well worth watching.
Again, I am not saying that we should have unfettered and orgyistic use of fossil fuels to the exclusion of everything else. I think conservation has to be convenient and useful. For example, the area I live in, people very often (mostly) get into their cars alone, and drive 1-2 hours to get to their place of employment because mass transit in our area is inconvenient. That's wasteful, but necessary for the economy. Some companies allow employees to work from home one day a week, which effectively reduces the emissions of a single day by 10% or so. I used to have to drive into my office 1-2 hours every day. I switched jobs and now use a bus, so I don't drive at all. I love being able to conserve that way, but if the need arose, and I lost my job and had to start driving again, of course, I would. Meantime, let them perfect other means of energy production. I'm all for it. I would not feel comfortable driving an electric car today.
Great! You put your money where your mouth is. That's good. I understand. Last week my daughter bought the first car she has owned in more than a decade, because she got a new job for which an automobile is the only feasible mode of transportation. I stopped driving when my last car broke down nearly 15 years ago now even though it meant two hours a day each way commuting by rail and bus until I retired. And actually, I enjoyed it more than the grind of driving in heavy traffic.
But given that you applaud personal conservation practices, why are you so hesitant about taking measures to help most people rely less on fossil fuels? Lots of people would switch from fossil fuels if they had feasible options---and they will have feasible options if we, as a society, invest in them and promote them. Denmark significantly boosted production of wind power when they encouraged farmers to build turbines and sell the electricity they produced. Tax breaks to home owners who install solar panels or retrofit their homes to waste less energy can go a long way.
The last question you ask begs the question: Is man the highest form of life, as Christians believe we are, or not?
Does it make a difference? FWIW, I do not believe God will protect us from our own stubbornness, rebellion and lack of concern for the welfare of the non-human life on this planet. Not in a temporal way. I don't think God will protect us from extinction.
This has nothing to do, of course, with what has always been the Christian hope: resurrection to eternal life in paradise.
But I also remember the parable of the talents (especially as it was last Sunday's sermon topic). It is those who are faithful in small things that receive a great reward. Can those who refuse God's command of caring compassion for all the creatures of the planet, not to mention all who will suffer under climate change, expect a part in the resurrection? After all, believing in Jesus is more than a mental assertion; it is a way of life, following in his footsteps and obeying his commandments. Now more than ever we need to think about what it means to serve the "least of these" both human and non-human.
