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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:31 am
Puzzling thing about environmentalists; for folks dedicated to Gaia, they’re oddly given to analysing the planet according to narrow human-centric measures. For example:
The world’s deserts are being threatened “as never before”, particularly by climate change, but can still be used as a key resource if action is taken to protect them, according to a report released on Monday.
Those deserts were formerly lakes or forests or something else other than deserts. But it is their current status—as deserts, during the relatively brief time in which environmentalists are alive to stare at them—which must be preserved. Weird, no? Same deal with the once-tropical North Pole, now forbidden to return to its previous Gaia-ordained condition. Change is the planet’s normal state; why do environmentalists wish to arrest it? Why are they anti-nature?
- A valid question, but first and foremost, they’re not anti-nature. They’re pro-employment; namely, their own.Posted by James Waterton on 2006 06 05 at 11:15 AM • permalink
- I thought most Gaia devotees are anti-human, myself.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 06 05 at 11:19 AM • permalink
- #5: A little humility might let the environmentalists learn that drawing large conclusions from small amounts of data isn’t a sound basis for policy decisions.
Wise words. I have found that a large dose of humility is the best course
of action in practically all walks of life, and in connection with all of our various speculations.
- I’m looking into buying some desert property in Nevada. When the Big One hits, voila! Beachfront!Posted by mark from monroe on 2006 06 05 at 11:49 AM • permalink
Religions are generally opposed to change.
Spot on, Dave!
#5: A little humility might let the environmentalists learn that drawing large conclusions from small amounts of data isn’t a sound basis for policy decisions.
Applause. I don’t know all about the environment, and I’m willing to do my bit to “help, but I won’t do it because some “learned savant” changed their minds again. Which characterizes the environmental movement over the past 30 years or so.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 06 05 at 12:19 PM • permalink
- Every time a feral preaches at me, I cut down a tree. Seriously. I have a special axe, I call him Sap-Bringer, and he hungers for the sweet heartwood. But then, I make a point of doing the opposite of anything a tree-hugger says. Feel the spite, ferals, feel it!.Posted by Daniel San on 2006 06 05 at 01:17 PM • permalink
- The Sahara didn’t just used to be a forest. It used to be a forest right up until pastoralists overgrazed it and turned it into a desert. That’s pastoralists with two legs. Pre-capitalist man living in harmony with nature.Posted by P. Froward on 2006 06 05 at 01:52 PM • permalink
- You ask any climatologist and they’ll tell you that the climate has fluctuated for millions of years; right up until about 1965. Right then it stopped and any change since then has been Republican’s fault.Posted by lumberjack on 2006 06 05 at 02:26 PM • permalink
- #11.
People are always blaming Lex for everything. Why did you melt the ice caps, Lex? Why did you drown the polar bears, Lex? Why did you use depleted uranium weapons that cause headless babies to be born in Iraq, Lex? Blah blah blah.
Posted by mark from monroe on 2006 06 05 at 02:39 PM • permalink
- paco #18: why’d you go and do that? A cute joke if you’d kept your mouth shut.
Up on the Gold Coast the locals have formed a protest group to preserve a multi-story car park. Now there’s modern-day environmentalism at work.
Of course I’m against them, and in favour of the developers who want to rip it down and stick up another 75 storey apartment block.
Posted by Smithovitch on 2006 06 05 at 07:51 PM • permalink
- goodYa gotta unnderstan’, there’s good searing, lifeless sand, and there’s bad searing, lifeless sand…
And besides, how far would Frank Herbert have gotten if he wrote a science fiction novel called “Wetlands”?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 05 at 07:57 PM • permalink
- Now you’ve buggered it.Posted by James Waterton on 2006 06 05 at 08:38 PM • permalink
- is that it?Posted by James Waterton on 2006 06 05 at 08:39 PM • permalink
- Argh! No!
(scarpers away to hide – surely this is a sign that Lucifer walks amongst us on such a fateful day)
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 06 05 at 08:40 PM • permalink
- Maybe this will fix it</i></i>… any luck?Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 05 at 08:52 PM • permalink
- Jes’ kiddin’, ah hope.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 05 at 08:53 PM • permalink
- I guess it means the cacti will be, uh, cactus.
Water-hogging, spongy, pricks of things they are anyway. Much like environmentalists really.
Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 06 05 at 10:15 PM • permalink
- As I was putting my cd collection into itunes for syncing with my fabulous new purchase (just love the ipod!), I spent sometime reminiscing with my Midnight Oil albums. It was clear peter garrett and co got progressivly more ‘activist’ and anti-american as the years went by, but, and here is where I get to the point, is that in the early days when they were just a surf pub band, MO was also clearly preservationist regarding old pubs, knocking car parks on sand dunes etc.
Bottom line, at a basic level, a lot of greenies are actually conservative. They just want things to stay the way they are.
- Can anybody explain why it is that only the plants that grow in places like the Amazon forest and deserts have possible life-giving properties, yet the thousands that grow everywhere else cannot possibly be useful? Is this a trick by Gaia to give the radical environmentalists something to crap on about?
- People are always blaming Lex for everything. Why did you melt the ice caps, Lex? Why did you drown the polar bears, Lex? Why did you use depleted uranium weapons that cause headless babies to be born in Iraq, Lex? Blah blah blah.
Posted by mark from monroe on 2006 06 05 at 02:39 PM
Silly Mark from Monroe!
All of that was Wronwright, of course. He does like his little jokes.MarkL
Canberra
Hotter temperatures have meant glaciers are receding, meaning there is less water to sustain deserts in places like Central Asia and both sides of the South American Andes.
Right, because glaciers turn into… wait a minute…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 06 at 09:48 AM • permalink
- Sod off, Sandy!Posted by Some0Seppo on 2006 06 06 at 10:47 AM • permalink
- Actually a large part of Norhtern Africa was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire. I guess they just couldn’t build aquaducts across the Mediterranean. (Probably the environmentalists wouldn’t let them. Kept it tied up in the courts for centuries.)Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 06 06 at 12:18 PM • permalink
- I have been to Death Valley. I cannot imagine any other desert being more deserty than Death Valley, except that huge penisula of Big Nothing in the Middle East, that big sandpit there, whatever it’s called.
But wait–if the rising oceans destroy all our beachfront sand–we got replacement sand available! By the ton! We’re saved!
I cannot imagine any other desert being more deserty than Death Valley, except that huge penisula of Big Nothing in the Middle East, that big sandpit there, whatever it’s called.
I’ll confirm that, ushie—Kuwait is all desert, except for those parts irrigated or paved. Ain’t much in between.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 06 06 at 06:59 PM • permalink
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