Epitaph to a latter-day Glacier

Quid est Veritas? · Aug 26, 2019

Iceland's Okjokull glacier commemorated with plaque - BBC News

They did a funeral for a glacier in Iceland. It is supposed to be a symbol of man-made climate change and all that, but then they chose a glacier that was only 700 years old. The Icelandic parliament is older than the thing - It formed during the Little Ice Age following the Mediaeval Warm Period.

So really, this more represents the fact that the climate isn't static, and the argument of mourning our effect on the world climate is rendered a bit ridiculous. Hysterical wailing over a comparatively recent glacier is an odd poster-child, when your argument is that we are altering the environment to an unacceptable degree. After all, humans have always done so, as Dingoes in Australia, extinct Megafauna in the Americas, or deforested swathes of Europe attest. This glacier isn't an old established one, and in all likelihood would have waned regardless of Industrialisation, just as the Thames no longer freezes. Certainly we may have sped up the process, but the image of a 700 year glacier conjurs up more that Climate is a dynamic mutable process, and not a static one that we can clearly delineate. I mean, they used to plant barley in Greenland of all places, back in the day.

It seems almost satirical.

Heavenhome · Aug 26, 2019

The world is crazy

2PhiloVoid · Aug 26, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
Iceland's Okjokull glacier commemorated with plaque - BBC News

They did a funeral for a glacier in Iceland. It is supposed to be a symbol of man-made climate change and all that, but then they chose a glacier that was only 700 years old. The Icelandic parliament is older than the thing - It formed during the Little Ice Age following the Mediaeval Warm Period.

So really, this more represents the fact that the climate isn't static, and the argument of mourning our effect on the world climate is rendered a bit ridiculous. Hysterical wailing over a comparatively recent glacier is an odd poster-child, when your argument is that we are altering the environment to an unacceptable degree. After all, humans have always done so, as Dingoes in Australia, extinct Megafauna in the Americas, or deforested swathes of Europe attest. This glacier isn't an old established one, and in all likelihood would have waned regardless of Industrialisation, just as the Thames no longer freezes. Certainly we may have sped up the process, but the image of a 700 year glacier conjurs up more that Climate is a dynamic mutable process, and not a static one that we can clearly delineate. I mean, they used to plant barley in Greenland of all places, back in the day.

It seems almost satirical.

...at the same time, it's not like the presence of excessive hydrocarbons is an "old" thing. :dontcare:

Quid est Veritas? · Aug 26, 2019

2PhiloVoid said:
...at the same time, it's not like the presence of excessive hydrocarbons is an "old" thing.

I quite enjoyed her deadpan, almost exasperated, delivery of "hydrocarbons are bad; humans are bad", after disavowing their evilness in and of themselves.

2PhiloVoid · Aug 26, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
I quite enjoyed her deadpan, almost exasperated, delivery of "hydrocarbons are bad; humans are bad", after disavowing their evilness in and of themselves.

Yes, that was kind of the highlight of it for me as well. I thought you might like it.

As to your article, I'll admit that I am one of those who is concerned about the environment, but like you, I do find it a bit odd they'd commemorate a former glacier with a plaque.

But whatever ...

Quid est Veritas? · Aug 26, 2019

2PhiloVoid said:
Yes, that was kind of the highlight of it for me as well. I thought you might like it.

As to your article, I'll admit that I am one of those who is concerned about the environment, but like you, I do find it a bit odd they'd commemorate a former glacier with a plaque. But whatever ...

Even more so, as a metal plaque is obviously the product of an industrial society to boot.

2PhiloVoid · Aug 26, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
Even more so, as a metal plaque is obviously the product of an industrial society to boot.

Yes, this is true. But I guess that since all the damage was already done, they thought one little bit more wouldn't hurt? ^_^

Goonie · Aug 26, 2019

The US are going to have to rename Glacier National Park at some point otherwise they’ll be false advertising.

Halbhh · Aug 26, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
I quite enjoyed her deadpan, almost exasperated, delivery of "hydrocarbons are bad; humans are bad", after disavowing their evilness in and of themselves.

One thing I wondered about a few times, and wonder if someone can help with -- why is there any reaction to someone saying humans beings are responsible for doing bad things, such as global warming. I don't understand why this bothers people.

Could you tell me why?

Is it people don't want to accept that they are basically wrong doers to begin with?

Mark 10:18 "Why do you call Me good?" Jesus replied. "No one is good except God alone. (ergo, all humans fail at the true essence of Good on their own: we're all not-Good as our basic human reality)

But He has amazing grace on us, despite that! --

Matthew 7:11 So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

So, if someone said we are 'bad' or 'evil' to do whatever in some manner or another, that tends to be a true statement, pretty often. Even to this level:

Matthew 15:19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander.

But, how is global warming any different? Why have people reacted about hearing global warming being blamed on human actions? I don't understand why the reaction part. Do they think they are so Good that they cannot have done bad things? Or is it something else?

rambot · Aug 26, 2019

Halbhh said:
One thing I wondered about a few times, and wonder if someone can help with -- why is there any reaction to someone saying humans beings are responsible for doing bad things, such as global warming. I don't understand why this bothers people.

Could you tell me why?

Is it people don't want to accept that they are basically wrong doers to begin with?

Mark 10:18 "Why do you call Me good?" Jesus replied. "No one is good except God alone. (ergo, all humans fail at the true essence of Good on their own: we're all not-Good as our basic human reality)

But He has amazing grace on us, despite that! --

Matthew 7:11 So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

So, if someone said we are 'bad' or 'evil' to do whatever in some manner or another, that tends to be a true statement, pretty often. Even to this level:

Matthew 15:19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander.

But, how is global warming any different? Why have people reacted about hearing global warming being blamed on human actions? I don't understand why the reaction part. Do they think they are so Good that they cannot have done bad things? Or is it something else?

Essentially i think industry against agw is fuelled by the fear of developed folks having to make changes to their lifestyle and developing countries' development getting stalled as they'd need cleaner sources.

Halbhh · Aug 27, 2019

rambot said:
Essentially i think industry against agw is fuelled by the fear of developed folks having to make changes to their lifestyle and developing countries' development getting stalled as they'd need cleaner sources.

Building more wind, solar, nuclear are all work -- good paying jobs -- and boost economic growth during building and also later by helping hold down energy costs as demand increases.

Maybe a few older people wouldn't know that unless we explain it?

They are ways to add economic growth, and more lasting an economic benefit than for instance extra military hardware manufacture.

Nithavela · Aug 27, 2019

Halbhh said:
Building more wind, solar, nuclear are all work -- good paying jobs -- and boost economic growth during building and also later by helping hold down energy costs as demand increases.

Maybe a few older people wouldn't know that unless we explain it?

They are ways to add economic growth, and more lasting an economic benefit than for instance extra military hardware manufacture.

I don't know about your place, but over here in germany, wind energy faces an uphill battle. No matter where there is an attempt to build them, the people living there start forming protest groups and comb the local area until they find some sort of protected mole, lizard or bird, all in an attempt to prevent the turbines from being built.

The only place with an abundance of turbines is the north and east sea. There are actually so many wind turbines up there that they produce more energy than can be used. The energy could be transported to the south of germany, but once again, local protest groups form whereever there are plans to lay the neccessary cables.

It's ridiculous. People want to save the world, but only as long as it doesn't inconvenience them in the slightest. It seems that we as a society have forgotten what it means to make sacrifices.

Nithavela · Aug 27, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
Iceland's Okjokull glacier commemorated with plaque - BBC News

They did a funeral for a glacier in Iceland. It is supposed to be a symbol of man-made climate change and all that, but then they chose a glacier that was only 700 years old. The Icelandic parliament is older than the thing - It formed during the Little Ice Age following the Mediaeval Warm Period.

So really, this more represents the fact that the climate isn't static, and the argument of mourning our effect on the world climate is rendered a bit ridiculous. Hysterical wailing over a comparatively recent glacier is an odd poster-child, when your argument is that we are altering the environment to an unacceptable degree. After all, humans have always done so, as Dingoes in Australia, extinct Megafauna in the Americas, or deforested swathes of Europe attest. This glacier isn't an old established one, and in all likelihood would have waned regardless of Industrialisation, just as the Thames no longer freezes. Certainly we may have sped up the process, but the image of a 700 year glacier conjurs up more that Climate is a dynamic mutable process, and not a static one that we can clearly delineate. I mean, they used to plant barley in Greenland of all places, back in the day.

It seems almost satirical.

It's always catharic to laugh at your own impending end.

Quid est Veritas? · Aug 28, 2019

Nithavela said:
It's always catharic to laugh at your own impending end.

Have you ever watched the movie Dr Strangelove? That is how I feel about climate change. It sounds scary and all, but just as there never was a nuclear war with the Soviets, I am not convinced we'll see the worst case scenario anyhow; and even if we do, we'll accommodate. The climate has always been a changing, so areas might be abandoned thereby and so forth, but other areas will be opened up. Back in the 19th and early 20th century, some Russians and British argued to warm the world - to help open up Canada and Siberia to settlement, as well as the Northwest and Northeast Passages. A lot of the negative effects can be mitigated with resettlement, levees, irrigation schemes, etc.

Besides, I don't expect any useful global action to stop it. It is too far gone anyhow, so the world will warm regardless, and developing nations such as China and India aren't going to stop polluting because the developed world tells them to. That just looks like latter day Imperialism, tut-tuting the natives, and unfair as they already had their freewheeling Industrialisation on the back of pollution. As you said, "people want to save the world so long as it doesn't inconvenience them in the slightest" - truer words have seldom been said.

The Green lobby is shooting themselves in the foot anyway, as I personally think this glacier stunt is. For instance Gore's Inconvenient Truth that told us major areas should all be flooded by now. It is all reminiscent of Missile Gaps and Arms Reduction Treaties and the ilk, all these protocols people don't keep to and photo-op conferences that people fly around to - ironically burning hydrocarbon to 'save' us from it. Carbon Credits and Footprints are the most ridiculous of all - this is literally the selling of Indulgences to pollute, like a latter day Tetzel.

No, society does not like making sacrifices - just look at the hysteria when any Austerity measures are introduced, no matter how necessary. That is why countries are drowning in debt, and while we shall just have continuous hand-wringing and ineffectual half-measures on the Environment. A classic tragedy of the Commons situation here.

Effort is far better spent trying to deal with what we think it will cause, as again climate change does happen anyhow, even if we may be accelerating it. We could be a Mediaeval Norse Greenland that disappears, or an Easter Island Birdman cult that adapts - but this is hardly our 'impending end'. Humans will go on as we always have, and the brunt of climate change always strikes the undeveloped world anyway. We can all keep typing on our electronics, on an internet run on massive polluting servers, while decrying the poor drowning Maldives - oh wait, no one cares about humans nowadays - I mean, the plight of the Polar Bear or the Sumatran horned Frog; while declaring the evil of plastic bags, or SUVs, or plastic straws or whatever else. The same empty rhetoric will waft from on high, of how we need to beat the Commies/Polluters like China, of how the -insert city here- Protocol isn't being adhered to (which works for climate change and the Cold War), while the world and most people will blunder forth regardless, maybe doing an ineffectual ritual nod here and there to indicate fealty to these ideas. Bread and Circuses mostly, while Drs Merkwaardigliebe retool to Dr Strangelove, MAD policies run forward and when they breakdown, rushed post-hoc planning will be the order of the day.

Humans are silly creatures indeed.

Nithavela · Aug 28, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
Have you ever watched the movie Dr Strangelove? That is how I feel about climate change.

You mean this movie?

Quid est Veritas? · Aug 28, 2019

Nithavela said:
You mean this movie?

Exactly. They seem a comedic shambles, a satire of reality, rather than something you can take seriously. To be fair though, a lot of the Cold War stuff looks similar in retrospect, and hence this movie was made. Changes in the climate represent serious challenges, but what I see is mostly empty rhetoric tempered by idiocy. As Dr Strangelove is subtitled "How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb", so I feel about the climate. I expect I'll hear about this stuff the rest of my life, but mostly I just enjoy the spectacle. Maybe I'll retire to the nice temperate shores of Greenland's new central inland sea one day...

Halbhh · Aug 28, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
but this is hardly our 'impending end'.

Not by itself, definitely. But have you read Luke chapter 21? In it is a forecast, if you like, about oceans, that does not seem as if it would be a small thing. But I agree with you the tragedy of the commons is inevitable. I only suggest not to be to insistent the outcome will be nothing much. This thread is about a nothing much. But the future holds a something much. I don't want anyone to tremble in fear. I want them to believe in God when things become scary for those who do not.

Nithavela · Aug 28, 2019

Halbhh said:
Not by itself, definitely. But have you read Luke chapter 21? In it is a forecast, if you like, about oceans, that does not seem as if it would be a small thing. But I agree with you the tragedy of the commons is inevitable. I only suggest not to be to insistent the outcome will be nothing much. This thread is about a nothing much. But the future holds a something much. I don't want anyone to tremble in fear. I want them to believe in God when things become scary for those who do not.

I agree, it's more pleasent to die without being afraid.

Quid est Veritas? · Sep 23, 2019

High-altitude funeral for lost Swiss glacier

The practice seems to be spreading. Weird.

Endeavourer · Sep 24, 2019

Goonie said:
The US are going to have to rename Glacier National Park at some point otherwise they’ll be false advertising.

Or perhaps they just need to stop their false advertising.

Glacier National Park used to have displays and signage about the glaciers being gone in 2020. When my husband and I were hiking there this year we noticed the signage was gone. We weren't wrong:

Glacier National Park Quietly Removes Its ‘Gone by 2020’ Signs

Epitaph to a latter-day Glacier

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