Climate change, deforestation, mass extinction...

[awitch]

You have no comparison. You do not know what is "better".

Well, sure, if you throw out all of recorded history that described human affairs dating back to the 4th millennium BC.

 

[Zoness]

You have no comparison. You do not know what is "better".

Well I can read history and study what the conditions were like in the past and can compare them to my own in the present. Humanity is in a unprecedented time of peace, though our connected world makes that feel untrue--the world as a whole is the least violent it has ever been. Though I do have much concern in the West about the increasing gap between rich and poor as well as the potential for climate change's havoc to become more widespread in the form of natural disasters, rising sea level and climate refugees pouring in from areas with insufficient food and water.

 

[juvenissun]

Well, sure, if you throw out all of recorded history that described human affairs dating back to the 4th millennium BC.

You were never there. You do not know.

 

[juvenissun]

Well I can read history and study what the conditions were like in the past and can compare them to my own in the present. Humanity is in a unprecedented time of peace, though our connected world makes that feel untrue--the world as a whole is the least violent it has ever been. Though I do have much concern in the West about the increasing gap between rich and poor as well as the potential for climate change's havoc to become more widespread in the form of natural disasters, rising sea level and climate refugees pouring in from areas with insufficient food and water.

Read about ancient life is not enough. The knowledge is never real.
You would never know how did people live 100 years ago when there was not Internet. Advancement of technology does NOT change people and will NOT make human any better.

Psychology is a critical part in manned mission to Mars. That is why.

 

[awitch]

You were never there. You do not know.

Ha ha!
Were you there during the time of Jesus's supposed life?

 

[juvenissun]

Ha ha!
Were you there during the time of Jesus's supposed life?

I were not there by time. I were there by location and environment.

 

[awitch]

I were not there by time. I were there by location and environment.

I think I'm speechless.

 

[MehGuy]

You were never there. You do not know.

Yeah.. you were never there!

Back then it was like a constant non-stop party.

 

[awitch]

Yeah.. you were never there!

Back then it was like a constant non-stop party.

Yea, but the party wasn't as good as parties today.

 

[juvenissun]

Yeah.. you were never there!

In fact, I am going to re-visit there in the coming summer.

 

[MehGuy]

In fact, I am going to re-visit there in the coming summer.

What? Are you like some kind of wizard?

 

[juvenissun]

What? Are you like some kind of wizard?

No, I am absolutely normal.

 

[MehGuy]

No, I am absolutely normal.

Ah, I failed to read some of your previous posts. Lol.

 

[Zoness]

I think I'm being led on a wild goose chase in this thread.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Whatever the causes of GW, something ought to be done.

 

[dlamberth]

Whatever the causes of GW, something ought to be done.

Agreed, but will those in power get over their denial and do something about it?!?

 

[awitch]

Agreed, but will those in power get over their denial and do something about it?!?

BWAHAHAHAHA
They're talking about de-funding the Environmental Protection Agency (because they can't legally disband it entirely). Scott Pruitt, Trump's EPA pick denies climate change, supports fracking and believes the EPA is just a leftist political activist group. Trump's administration wants to entirely terminate NASA's climate studies, and bail on the Paris climate agreement because their pretty much in bed with the fossil fuel industry.

 

[Serving Zion]

Environmental issues may not be exactly a question of religion or faith - yet bizarrely enough, there are people out there who treat them as if they were. Bafflingly enough, conservative think tanks who feel that any change to the status quo would endanger their future profits have managed to convince a considerable portion of the population that it's all a big controversy, that the verdict is not yet in, and that those who'd call for an immediate response to these threats are loopy fanatics who don't know what's what.

And all the while, the rainforests keep on dwindling, the oceans are not only plagued by growing garbage patches but also subject to acidification, which may cause the entire marine ecosystem to collapse from the bottom up, species everywhere are disappearing at a rate that you'd otherwise associate with major natural catastrophes, our own species grows at an alarming rate, and we are using up natural resources at a pace that would require several planets at the same time to sustain.

The thing is: none of this is a controversy. The verdict of the scientific community (i.e. people who deal with these matters professionally and have all the data at hand) is virtually unanimous. To deny it and pretend that it's still nothing more than some wishy-washy hypothesis is the rough equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and going "LALALA!!! I CANNOT HEAR YOU!!"

So... how does your religion relate to the devastating effect our post-industrial species has on the planet, and what does it have to say about combating the mess we've created?

Hello Jane,

As you'd well know, that Christianity is plagued by many false doctrines, and as a result of it's representatives that do not cling to the truth but delight in falsehood - the way of the truth is brought into disrepute (2 Peter 2:2). These are the wolves in sheep's clothing, whose confession and teaching of false doctrines have crippled their faith because of their own pride, that they are not able to repent to accept the truthful doctrines that Christianity depends upon, so that the church can become unified as intended (Ephesians 4:11-13).

If you're interested to know more about how the apostasy of Christianity occurred, there is actually some very interesting information in the scriptures that never gets taught from the pulpit: The Gospel : What Went Wrong?

This is the basis for why the world is in such a mess, and why Christianity has not yet achieved the intention that Jesus and His disciples set in motion.

So... how does your religion relate to the devastating effect our post-industrial species has on the planet

John 10:10 - the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, whereas Jesus has come so that we might have life abundantly. The Kingdom of God has been hijacked from Jesus (Luke 19:14), the truthful disciples have been killed (John 16:2, Revelation 6:9), and the world is being destroyed (Matthew 24:22).

and what does it have to say about combating the mess we've created?

Prophecy states that God will redeem the world from the curse of sin (Isaiah 11:6-9), when the day of the father comes (Matthew 21:40), that because Jesus and His disciples are faithful to the task (Revelation 17:14), all secrets are made known (Revelation 10:5-7), and because The Gospel of The Kingdom is made known to all nations (Matthew 24:14), then the whole world becomes full of the knowledge of God, and there is one flock, one shepherd (Ecclesiastes 12:11, John 10:16). In this way, God's Word will reside in the hearts of His people everywhere (Jeremiah 31:34). All people will recognise that Jesus is King of Kings, and that heaven is with those who faithfully serve Him (Matthew 6:10). This is The New Jerusalem, Zion, The Everlasting Government of a Holy People (Daniel 7:21-22, Daniel 7:14), which will never pass away nor pass on to another people (Amos 7:7-8, Isaiah 28:17-18).

 

[DennisTate]

Right back at ya!

This is not a controversy. The scientific verdict is as unanimous as it gets, at a whopping 97% - and we're not talking about vague hypotheses, either.

I bet you can also trump up some sites that say burning excessive amounts of fossil fuels is completely harmless, just as tobacco companies were still insisting that their products were neither carcinogenic nor addictive up until the early 1990s.

But ignore the facts, ignore the scientific verdict if you want. Just ask yourself this: cui bono?

But... the answer may NOT be a carbon tax in any form because obviously.......
no form of carbon tax can break....... .and then bend the hockey stick shaped graph in the opposite direction.

But there is a way:

Tony Lovell on Soil Carbon: Putting Carbon Back Where It Belongs - In the Earth (TEDx video) - The Permaculture Research Institute

 

[Erik Nelson]

Modern farmers deforest "Mother Earth" in order to clear land for farm fields, so as to earn gainful income from (economically) productive activity. They (arguably) do turn a blind eye to the impact they have on wildlife.

50,000 years ago (say scientists, colleagues of climatologists) Australian aborigines migrated into Australia. With witting intent, they burned down all of Australia's then vast forests, turning the whole continent into the Outback desert of today, for the specific purpose of wiping out the 50' long dinosaur sized "Megalania" super komodo dragon monitor lizards, and other mega beasts, then living there. No mere blind eye -- slashing & burning the virgin pristine natural environment, in order to eradicate the habitats of indigenous wildlife species, was the whole entire purpose & point.

So, should Australian aborigines be charged with first degree "Crimes Against Nature" ? Stereotypically speaking, why do they get credit for "living in balance with Mother Nature", when they torched an entire continent, just to wipe out wildlife (which was surely rather difficult to live with) ?

-----

The modern chemical industry is a mar on "Mother Earth", scarring her surface with vast chemical factories. Obviously bad. The chemicals created are all artificial, synthetic, non-natural, not in balance with "Gaia". Obviously bad.

Except corn, wheat, soy and virtually all of the other crops farmed upon this planet love the ammonia-based fertilizers the factories churn out by the megaton. They can't get enough of the stuff. The more farmers use, the taller & thicker the crops grow. The crops grow so much more than they otherwise would, that most of 5,000,000,000 humans alive on earth, are alive, because they (and their parents) are (and have been) eating artificially-fertilized food stuffs.

Pull the plug on artificial fertilizer factories, and 5,000,000,000 humans starve to death, because natural farming methods (e.g. using cattle manure to fertilize farm fields instead) can't feed half the present population of this planet.

But natural is obviously better. Not a debate. So, which 5,000,000,000 people do we starve, for the sake of preserving balance with nature ?

Now that that is done, jolly good, farming & agriculture is still not "in balance with nature". You still have to slash & burn, and clear-cut, land for those farms. Fertile land that would otherwise grow into beautifully balanced forest ecosystems.

Having outlawed the Industrial Revolution (second most important sector of the global economy), we now ban the Agricultural Revolution (first most important sector of the economy). Farmers are required to "do right by Gaia our Earth Mother", and turn their lands back over to Her, to let nature take Her Divine course.

Back to the hunter-gatherer Paleolithic stone age.

The human population plummets from a couple billion, to a couple million. One out of a thousand survive.

But... now we (of course, we, since we're not the guilty Nature Criminals -- Gaia forgives us for all those artificially fertilized farmed foods we ate, but only under duress)… now we, the chosen proud few, all live in glorious "balance with Mother Nature".

Right?

Healthy "paleolithic diets" in harmoniously peaceful communion & balance with Nature.

Without human carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere...

and with trees once again overgrowing whole continents, absorbing CO2 out of the atmosphere...

Earth plunges back into a now-long-overdue Ice Age...

Glaciers gradually grow...

Covering those continents, and wiping out all those trees & forests...

… umm, well, Mother Nature can deforest whole continents, and that's Her Prerogative, not a Nature Crime ...

so, all that carbon gradually cycles back into the atmosphere...

and tens of thousands of years later, Earth warms once again...

the glaciers retreat...

the forests follow...

the trees suck the atmosphere dry of CO2...

Earth cools back into another Ice Age...

the glaciers advance, plowing over the forests...

and Earth's climate returns to what it was before, in the long lost glorious Golden Age of Peace & Balance before the rise of evil human civilization on earth:

… umm... wait wait… you call that "balance" ? If your car air conditioner & climate control fluctuated your vehicle passenger cabin temperature up & down like that, cycling your passenger compartment from "freezer" to "oven" and back and forth over & over again...

would you call that "balanced" ??

Moreover, just as we condemn modern man for Nature Crimes for his ridiculously near-sighted short term values, for ravaging Mother Earth in an un-long-term-sustainable manner...

so we convict man for Nature Crimes...

well, we have to convict trees for Nature Crimes, too -- cause they also blindly over-consume resources from their environment (CO2 from the atmosphere) until they imbalance the whole planet's climate, causing it to crash into Ice Age after Ice Age after Ice Age...

Just like the Sumerians & Maya deforested their environments, until their environments crashed and they all starved...

so trees extract CO2 from the air, until the global climate crashes into an Ice Age and they all freeze & get buried in glacial ice..

they just never learn...

Trees -- guilty of Nature Crimes
Aborigines -- guilty of first-degree Nature Crimes

We convicted human civilization, Maya, Sumerians, along with trees & Australian Aborigines of despicable Nature Crimes...
We starved 5 billion humans by banning the chemical industry & artificial fertilizer factories...
we starved 2 billion humans by banning Gaia-scarring agriculture...
we returned ourselves to the blissful pristine pre-civilized paleolithic stone age...
we did it all for "environmental harmony & balance"...
and this is what we got -- wild (and totally 100% natural) climate cycles swinging from Ice World to hot house & back: