I honestly don't know what to believe when it comes to global warming anymore. Both sides have pretty reasonable arguments. And if global warming was to, somehow, be proven not to be happening (in it's most common description) I'm sure it would not hurt for humans to maybe, stop polluting the earth so much and maybe look after a bit more than we have been? Just a suggestion.



Global warming is happening whether or not mankind has influenced it.  The scientific consensus is that human activity is accelerating global warming.  Mr. Mushroom and I have agreed to disagree on this more than once!  Anyway, if there is a sudden shift in global climate, Mother Nature we hurry along our downsizing needs!


Maxwell is right about that.  And I have never said that "Global Warming" is not happening.  But you have to realize, when I look at something like this, I have a much "Bigger Picture" then most others.  And when you come right down to it, I am even more "doom & gloom" about things reguarding the history of the Earth.

Odds are that "Earth as we know it" will end suddenly, and cataclysmically.  I have mentioned  "Supervolcanos" in here before.  The Yellowstone Caldera has blown up many times through history.  I even mentioned the Lake Toba explosion around 75,000 years ago.  That single event almost brought the human race to extinction (most DNA studies show that less then 25,000 humans were alive on the entire planet after that one).

In addition, there are asteroids that can snuff out life on Earth as we know it.  On 13 April 2029, an asteroid known as 99942 Apophis will be passing by the Earth.  While they are saying there is only a 1% chance of colission at the moment, most people do not realize that this "close call" will occur when 99942 Apophis passes around 10,000 miles over the surface of the Earth.  GPS satellites orbit at only 12,600 miles above the surface of the Earth.

Maxwell is right about that.  And I have never said that "Global Warming" is not happening.  But you have to realize, when I look at something like this, I have a much "Bigger Picture" then most others.  And when you come right down to it, I am even more "doom & gloom" about things reguarding the history of the Earth.

Odds are that "Earth as we know it" will end suddenly, and cataclysmically.  I have mentioned  "Supervolcanos" in here before.  The Yellowstone Caldera has blown up many times through history.  I even mentioned the Lake Toba explosion around 75,000 years ago.  That single event almost brought the human race to extinction (most DNA studies show that less then 25,000 humans were alive on the entire planet after that one).

In addition, there are asteroids that can snuff out life on Earth as we know it.  On 13 April 2029, an asteroid known as 99942 Apophis will be passing by the Earth.  While they are saying there is only a 1% chance of colission at the moment, most people do not realize that this "close call" will occur when 99942 Apophis passes around 10,000 miles over the surface of the Earth.  GPS satellites orbit at only 12,600 miles above the surface of the Earth.

In astronomical terms, 1% is so high it's terrifying!  With any other bad thing, a 99% chance of it NOT happening are comforting odds.  When it's an astroid smashing into our planet, what's at stake is everything...literally!  The dinosaurs didn't have anywhere else to go 65 million years ago, and neither do we!

About this time the Edward Teller-types start talking about firing nukes at the asteroid to deviate its course.  I don't care much for that idea either!

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/04/eek2.gif

In astronomical terms, 1% is so high it's terrifying!  With any other bad thing, a 99% chance of it NOT are comforting odds.  When it's an astroid smashing into our planet, what's at stake is everything...literally!  The dinosaurs didn't have anywhere else to go 65 million years ago, and neither do we!


You are right, it is terrifyingly high.  Are you willing to pull a card out of a deck, knowing that if you pull the Ace of Spades, the other person is going to shoot you?  Well, there is only around a 2% chance you are going to pull that one card, but the odds are still pretty grim.

I look at "global history" on things like this with a huge timescale.  Geologically speaking, in 1 million years, the time of the Mamoths and Mastadons will be combined with ours.  So future paleologists in that far-flung future will probably wonder how we co-existed with humans in an industrialized California.

There are a lot of things that change on such large scales, that most humans can't even contemplate them.  For example, most do not realize that the Earth's polarity reverses every 5,000-10,000 years?  And the last time it reversed was around 10,000 years ago, around the time the last ice age ended.  I am not saying that was a cause, but imagine what would happen if it reversed tomorrow.  I can see a calamity on a global scale, as all forms of magnetic navigation go haywire.

And the Earth's axis is constantly shifting also.  Currently it is Polaris.  5,000 years ago, it was Thuban (a feint star in the constellation Draco).  Around 6,000 years before that, it was Vega.  And in 14,000 AD, it will be Vega again.

And currently the path of our Sun recently passed through a region of dust that blocks our view of the Galactic Center.  Recently, if you think 85 million years ago as "recent".  And we are expected to pass through another such dust-rich region in another 110 million years.

Being long interested in geology, I have grown up thinking of such items as "long term".  However, other things will happen in an even shorter amount of time.

Within 40 million years, the Mediteranian Sea will vanish as Africa and Europe collide.  Much of Central America will vanish as South America moves closer to North America.  Asia and North America will collide as well, and Australia will move up until it rests only a few hundred miles off the coast of India.

And a mere 65 million years ago, there was a rich tropical rainforest that covered the entire continent of Antarctica.  Fossil records indicate a diversity of plants and animals that could only have existed if they had evolved there over the course of millions of years.  Millions of years without global "Ice Ages".  Millions of years where there were no drops in temperature much worse then what is seen in Florida today.

Like I said, I vote for the true "long term".  Geologically speaking, we are still in an "Ice Age" today.  Polar ice caps are not the norm for this planet, they are an abberation.  And historically, the planet is much warmer then it is today.  So if I have to vote on what is causing "global warming", I will place my cards on it being a normal cycle for the planet.

And even if we are accellerating it, can we really stop it?  Is anybody here willing to throw away all of our technology in the idea that it may stop it?  I don't see that happening anywhere.

And I agree Max, I doubt that any of the ideas of stopping asteroids will ever be good enough to put into use in my lifetime.  They are to unpredictable, and by the time we have enough hard evidence there will be a collision, it will likely be to late.  That is even considering that they would work in the first place, and not turn a near-miss into a collision.

But I do not spend any time worrying about it, because if it happens, it happens.  The same with a Supervolcano.  I can do nothing about it, so I live my life the best I can, and hope that everything turns out OK in the end.  Historically, life on this planet is both very fragile, and incredibly resistant.  Hopefully when the global catrostrophy does occur, the species that replaces us at the "top of the food chain" will be less likely to kill each other for pleasure.

Who knows, maybe it is time for Butterflies to be the dominant creature on the planet.

In geological time mankind's existence is the blink of an eye.  Forget 65 million years ago, go back just one million years to when our simian ancenstors roamed the Earth.  You would see all kinds of strange and wonderful plants and creatures nothing like what we have on Earth today.  As little as 11,000 years ago North America was home to 15 foot ground sloths, woolly mammoths, and giant camelids.  In 10,000 years presents a very different world indeed, and 10,000 years barely registeres as a blip in geologic time.  Humans were genetically the same as we are today.  We lived in hunter-gatherer tribes.  The earliest known civilization, such as Sumeria and ancient Egypt only appeared five to six thousand years ago. 

I don't think I could hack it in ancient Sumeria.  Almost all the "technology" we take for granted daily didn't exist until the last 150 years.  Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb until 1879  and it took a mere century to go from there to home computers.  Simple comforts we would freak if we had to go without: household plumbing and electricity.  As late as 1940, only 66 years ago, millions and millions of Americans did without flush toilets and electric lights.  There was a great push in the New Deal for rural electrification and sanitation upgrades.  They got a lot done, but not all.  In the 1960s, there were still plenty of poor folk in Appalachia and the Deep South who made do with outhouses and kerosene lamps.

Forty years ago not even the government had a computer as powerful as the one sitting right in my bedroom!

Every decade since the end of WWII, our expectations of consumer technology have risen exponentially.  We feel now we cannot live without technology we only saw in James Bond movies 30 years ago.  It was only 11 years ago I got my first email address.  Now I treat the Internet like something I've always had.  That's why I slowed down.  I don't want a cell phone.  I don't want a palm pilot.  I don't want an iPod.  Not yet.

If you took the average American 15-year-old and teleported him back to 1975, he would scarcely be able to navigate society.*  A typewriter? A payphone? A record player?  What are these primitive tools?  Today we get college undergrads at my radio station who look at phonograph records the way you might look at one of Edison's wax cylinders.  They're like museum pieces.  "Wow!  I've heard about these, never seen one before!"

One of those Alaskan Indians could teleport back a thousand years and go fishing with his ancestor no problem!  We all assume we are superior because we make such "technological advances."  I'm not so sure.  If we suffer some environmental apocalypse and our fragile, transitory technology is rendered useless, who is more likely to surve, me or that Alaskan Indian?  I know the answer.  If the said to me, "Hey, Max, make a boat out of that walrus carcass and go spear us some fish for dinner, I wouldn't know where to begin!

*In "Back to the Future," Marty was transported 30 years back from 1985 to 1955.  I now want to see a similar movie in which the kid is transported from 2007 back to 1977!

One of those Alaskan Indians could teleport back a thousand years and go fishing with his ancestor no problem!  We all assume we are superior because we make such "technological advances."  I'm not so sure.  If we suffer some environmental apocalypse and our fragile, transitory technology is rendered useless, who is more likely to surve, me or that Alaskan Indian?  I know the answer.  If the said to me, "Hey, Max, make a boat out of that walrus carcass and go spear us some fish for dinner, I wouldn't know where to begin!

*In "Back to the Future," Marty was transported 30 years back from 1985 to 1955.  I now want to see a similar movie in which the kid is transported from 2007 back to 1977!


Don't be so sure about a modern Inuit going back to a Neolithic age and surviving.  I have been to Inuit villages.  Most have electricity, running water year round, and live in modern houses.  It is only a small minority that live in the "historic manner" anymore.  In fact, I would bet that more people in the rural 48 would survive percentage wise.  You go to the Rocky Mountains and SE USA, and you still find a large amount of people who still hunt, fish, and farm for a large amount of their food.

My Great-Grandfather was born on an Indian reservation in 1900.  He left home at the age of 14 (illegally) and proceeded to integrate himself into the "white man's world".  My grandmother knew nothing of her "Heritage".  She actually learned more survival skills when she started backpacking in her 40's then she ever learned from her father.  And I am sure that most Native American's are in the same boat.  They buy their food from the local A&P, and put it in the freezer.  The closest they have probably ever come to producing their own food was occasional weekend fishing.  And if they had a bad day at the river, there was food at home waiting for them (or at McDonalds).  They never had to go hungry because they had a bad day fishing.

And a lot of the skills that the native Inuit had have been lost over the years.  Restrictions on hunting and fishing have lead to the loss of the skills their forefathers once used.  Remember, it was less then 10 years ago when a lot of environmentalists went nuts when some of the tribes wanted to be allowed to hunt 1 whale a year.  They simply wanted to preserve a part of their heritage, by hunting an unendangered species.

If you want to get an idea what the world may be like without technology, check out a book called "Dies The Fire" by S.M. Stirling.  It is a Science Fiction book that came out last year.  In it, all technology suddenly stops working.  Bullets will not fire, Internal Combustion and Steam powered devices no longer work, electricity stops "flowing".  Basically no technology more advanced then early 18th century works.  It is truely a different twist on the old "Armageddon" stories of a decade ago.  And it shows how worthless most of us would be in a neolithic (or even Iron Age) civilization.

And you might be surprised at how many people in the modern US still do not have things like electricity and running water.  And with a lot of them, it is by choice!  There are several communities in the Mojave Desert that live like this today.  I know because I used to visit a friend that lived like that.  He used a fireplace for heat, and had a wind powered generator that powered his well pump.  A lot of people live that way in the Rocky Mountain states by choice.

And even in the South, a lot of people live that way by choice.  When I lived in Jacksonville NC in the late 1980's, there was a small farm that I would pass all the time.  Often in the spring and fall I would see this old black man out plowing the field with his mule.  It was a roughly 5 acre plot, that was surrounded by the town.  An article about him was in the newspaper when I was there, and his story was fascinating.  He was almost 90, and the land he owned was bought by his grandfather after he was Manumitted at the end of the Civil War.  At one time it was 60 acres, and was one of the first black owned farms in the South.

It was outside of town when purchased, but the town spread around it, and pieces were sold off over the years.  In the 1960's the town annexed the surrounding area, and he sold most of it off, only keeping the 5 acre plot that was allowed for farming.  At about the same time, the city required his shack to be "brought up to code".  So it was only by force of the law that he installed a floor, running water, and sewage.  And even though he made a lot of money selling the land, he still lived simply, plowing and harvesting his plot of tomatoes, corn, peas, and tobbacco with a mule.  One of his grandsons (a lawyer) tried to give him a small tractor, but he refused.  He was happy with his mule.

I met this gentleman a few times at the farmer's market.  He was a wonderful man to talk to, and he loved talking to the children about how things were "in the olden days".  He was still alive and plowing when I moved out of the area in 1990, and I am sure that he has passed on since then.  But I am sure that man had the skills and capability to have survived anything that could ever be thrown at him.

Interesting story I read a while back about how Alaska has the highest rate of food poisonings in the country.  Alaskan natives had folkways of  fermenting fish, shellfish, and roe as part of their traditional diet.  They would bury the foodstuffs in the cold ground for a certain amount of time.  I can't recall all the details, but if you don't do it just right, you get things like salmonella, E.Coli, and botulism.  When the people switched from natural cold storage to electrical refrigeration and plastic sealants, the food poisoning rates went way up.  Turns out the old know-how passed down through the generation was a sophisticated prophylactic against poisonous bacteria.  I suppose a lot of it was trial and error in centuries past.  Alaskan natives started having these problems many decades ago, but they persist to this day.

I was romanticizing the Inuit and other boreal peoples a bit.  There are many who try to preserve the heritage--as the ones who wanted to practice whaling--but there are many who want all the modern conveniences they can get.  There's also rampant poverty and substance abuse in some areas.  A lot of the young people can't wait to get the hell out.  I used to belong to classmates.com.  I read profiles of students who graduated from high schools in rural Alaska and northern Canada.  I noticed a lot of the students who reported living elsewhere had joined the military and learned a trade.

I notice a lot of the people who live by choice off the grid ply a mix of high tech and low tech.  They may use kerosene and outdoor plumbing, but they drive SUVs and own laptops at the same time.  Nothing wrong with that, do your own thing out there, but it's not really like living out in the bush in 1850!  There are true low-tech survivalists out there.  To bad Ted Kaczynski was the one who got famous!

There's also a psychological difference between "by choice" and "by necessity."  If we all had to learn to shoot our own food, and dye-cast the bullets to do it, you would hear a lot of b!tching and moaning.  But that leads to another point.  We didn't have 300 million people in the U.S. back in 1850.  I remember Ted Nugent was all smug about how he knew how to survive out there and the rest of us didn't.  Just how many people are hunting game in Michigan, Ted?  Quite a few, but still a miniscule percentage of the state population.  Imagine if five million people had to troll the forests of Michigan for food!  Long pig, anyone?  If the international industrial/agricultural system we now take for granted just collapsed and went away, I think we would see a signficant downsizing of our population in the subsequent generations!
::)

Public Television had a couple of "reality" shows.  These should not be confused with the likes of what is on networks.  These were well researched, the people chosen knew(well, thought they knew) what they were getting into.  1900 House, Frontier House, 1940 House, Texas Ranch House, Manor House, Colonial House, Iron Age.  The people were told what to expect.  They were to live just as the people in these respective eras lived.  It was very interesting, very enlightening.  Most of the people wanted out within the first two weeks, but most stuck it out. The gist of it is if we had to go back even to 1940 we would be hard pressed to survive.  If any of these shows pop up I would suggest watch it.  (My favorites were Frontier, Manor, and 1900)

Public Television had a couple of "reality" shows.  These should not be confused with the likes of what is on networks.  These were well researched, the people chosen knew(well, thought they knew) what they were getting into.  1900 House, Frontier House, 1940 House, Texas Ranch House, Manor House, Colonial House, Iron Age.  The people were told what to expect.  They were to live just as the people in these respective eras lived.  It was very interesting, very enlightening.  Most of the people wanted out within the first two weeks, but most stuck it out. The gist of it is if we had to go back even to 1940 we would be hard pressed to survive.  If any of these shows pop up I would suggest watch it.  (My favorites were Frontier, Manor, and 1900)


I remember these very well.  They are based on a similar BBC series.

The first one I saw was "Victorian House", where an entire family (mother, father, 3 kids) had to live for a month in a Victorian era house.  Before they moved in, the producers of the show ripped out all of the "modern conviences" like electricity and hot water.  They refurbished the fireplaces, and even installed authentic appliances of the era.

Everybody even had to dress the part (with the exception of the kids when they were at school).  I remember that the father was an officer in the Army, so had to go to work decked out in an authentic era uniform (hot red wool).  And that the mother and 2 daughters were "busted" when they got caught going to a pharmacy to buy hygiene products.  I seem to remember that there was a fairly substantial prize given to them at the end of the show though.

Of course, the "1900 House" was a cushy 1900 lifestyle.  They could never make the series I'd like to see, "1900 Tenement."  In the end, the residents who had not died of cholera would die when the place went up in flames because a candle got left burning next to a pile of rags.  Hard to remember to snuff the candles when you work 18 hours a day as a seamstress!
::)

Of course, the "1900 House" was a cushy 1900 lifestyle.  They could never make the series I'd like to see, "1900 Tenement."  In the end, the residents who had not died of cholera would die when the place went up in flames because a candle got left burning next to a pile of rags.  Hard to remember to snuff the candles when you work 18 hours a day as a seamstress!
::)


Well, to be more accurate, a 1900 tenement would have gas jets instead of electric lighting.  Candles for the most part were phased out by the last 1870's and replaced with natural gas lighting.  Then they would have the wonders of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Or when the father comes home drunk and truns off the light wrong, filling the house with gas.  This would lead to either an explosion, or the entire household dying of gas fumes.

Well, to be more accurate, a 1900 tenement would have gas jets instead of electric lighting.  Candles for the most part were phased out by the last 1870's and replaced with natural gas lighting.  Then they would have the wonders of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Or when the father comes home drunk and truns off the light wrong, filling the house with gas.  This would lead to either an explosion, or the entire household dying of gas fumes.

Depends on the tenement.  Certainly as late as 1900, some immigrant sweatshop workers lived in tenement hellholes with no electricity.  How could this be?  NO enforceable building codes. NO enforceable health codes.  NO organized labor,* NO social safety net.  So, next time some libertarian blowhard starts puffing about how the free market will take care of everything and freedom of contract is paramount, just refer back to Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.  The libertarian will dismiss both as socialist propaganda, but why bother to talk to libertarians anyway? 

*organized labor was a powerful movement by 1900.  That's why textile companies employed immigrant laborers who worked at home.  It was harder for the union guys to get to them.