I have been trying for the last few days to discover a coherent logic towards my feelings on man’s relationship with his environment. This is proving not to be simple.
The process started when I heard on World Service radio a gentleman from the International Panel on Climate Change discussing their latest report. As you know, I tend to accept the established opinion on climate change, and rather take the view that if all our industrial activity were not affecting the atmosphere, that would be strange.
But what struck me was that the gentleman said that a pause in warming for the last fifteen years was not significant, as fifteen years was a blip in processes that last over millennia.
Well, that would certainly be very true if you are considering natural climate change. But we are not – we are considering man-made climate change. In terms of the period in which the scale of man’s industrial activity has been having a significant impact on the environment, surely fifteen years is a pretty important percentage of that period? Especially as you might naturally imagine the process to be cumulative – fifteen years at the start when nothing much happened would be more explicable.
Having tucked away that doubt, I started to try to think deeper. Man is, of course, himself a part of nature. Anything man does on this planet is natural to this planet. I do not take the view man should not change his environment – otherwise I should not be sitting in a house. The question is rather, are we inadvertently making changes to the environment to our own long term detriment?
That rejection of what you might call the Gaia principle – that the environmental status quo is an end in itself – has ramifications. It is hard to conceptualise our relationship with gases or soil, but easier in terms of animals. I am not a vegetarian – I am quite happy that we farm and eat cattle, for example – and you might argue that the cattle are pretty successful themselves, symbiotic survivors of a kind. Do I think other species have a value in themselves? Is there any harm in killing off a species of insect, other than the fact that biodiversity may be reduced in ways that remove potential future advantages to man, or there may be knock on consequences we know not of that damage man somehow? I am not quite sure, but in general I seem in practice to take the view that exploitation of other species and substantial distortion of prior ecological balance to suit men’s needs is fine, so presumably the odd extinction is fine too, unless it damages man long term.
I strongly disapprove of hurting animals for sport, and want to see them have the best quality of life possible, preferably wild. But I like to eat and wear them. I am not quite sure why it is OK to wear animal skin on our feet or carry it as a bag, but not to wear “fur”. What is the difference, other than that leather has had the hair systematically rubbed off as part of the process of making it? A trivial issue, but one that obviously relates to the deeper questions.
Yes I draw a distinction between animals which are intelligent and those which are not. I would not eat whale or dolphin. But this does not seem entirely logical – animal intelligence and sensibility is evidently a continuum. Many animals mourn, for example. The BBC World Service radio (my main contact with the outside world at present – I have just today found my very, very weak internet connection just about works if I try it at 5am) informed me a couple of days ago that orang-utans have the ability to think forward and tell others where they will be the next day. Why cattle and fish are daft enough to eat is hard to justify.
I quite appreciate the disbenefits to man of radically changing his environment, even if it could be done without long term risk to his existence – the loss of beauty, of connection to seasons and forms of behaviour with which we evolved. But I regard those as important only as losses to man, not because nature is important intrinsically. In short, if I thought higher seas, no polar bears and no glaciers would not hurt man particularly, I don’t suppose I would have much to say against it. I fear the potential repercussions are too dangerous to man. At base, I don’t actually care about a polar bear.
Anon, and Mary’s views on kosher….
Anything that man does, following this, is natural – let’s just save a step.
Therefore, torturing, enslaving, murdering and generally viciously exploiting other people is simply natural. After all, it surely does appear to be a natural tendency!
Waffle waffle, snark. Amazing what absolute BS mental masturbation can produce.
*
A node said:
Absolutely. How else could a position be described, when it’s argued from utter ignorance, zero scholarship, and a disrespect for the scientific method?
*
Enjoy your new-found champion of ignorance and – frankly – utter heartlessness. Take care all.
“With around 20 years of no statistically significant warming, the AGW junk-science began to fall apart, so they renamed it ‘climate change’. But the climate has always changed, as evidenced by ice-skating on the Thames”
Except that wasn’t the climate that changed, it was the Thames.
Back then the Thames was wide shallow and slow moving and froze easily. Then they rebuilt London Bridge, built the Thames embankment and it became narrow deep and fast moving.
Looks like the hasbara double team are back folks.
Villager who cares what u think? I’m not really sure why you post “on this dreary blog” when its clear all you do is disrupt?
Don’t forget you’ve been put on notice here…. 🙂
N.b. Craig
IPCC is the INTERGOVERNMENTAL Panel on Climate Change.
i.e. it is a political body.
“The tragic fact is that global temperature has declined slightly for 17 years while CO2 levels increased. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hypothesis said that if CO2 increased temperature would increase. The hypothesis is slain.
Instead of acknowledging the hypothesis is wrong, as science requires, the defenders advance bizarre explanations none of which bear examination. According to the IPCC what is happening can’t happen. They were over 90 percent certain of their results and planned to increase that certitude to 95 percent in their next Report (AR5).”
Full article:
http://principia-scientific.org/latest-news/322-17-year-warming-hiatus-causes-panic-cover-up-ipcc-duplicity-continues.html
“Surely the obvious response to that would be to eat meat sourced from local producers operating to the highest standards? Very odd.”
There speaks someone very rich or wilfully blind.
“Anyway, all I’ll say on the veggie debate is: eyes at front of head + teeth for tearing meat = meat-eater, but each to their own!”
Two teeth – canines – for tearing meat. The rest for grinding. Work out the proportion, for your own health, if nothing else. And if you can actually do some research – for example read Fast Food Nation, or The Price of Meat, or watch Facing Animals – and still sound so chirpy about what this advanced species is doing to itself and others I’d be – interested.
Btw what on earth is ‘lefty’ about pointing out that the current economic industrial model is disastrously polluting our land, sea, air and bodies? That’s fact, not politics.
Fred; thanks about the Thames.
Fred, you may well be right there, but the fact remains that whatever tbe delth of the Thames at the time, there was a little ice age before the recent warming, and a medieval warming period before that. I live in a glacial valley.
tbe delth = the depth
As this is the weakest solar maximum for 100 years – and the next is predicted to be weaker still – I wonder if we aren’t in for a period akin to the Dalton Minimum of the 18th/19th century, or perhaps even a Maunder. This means a succession of harsh winters might be in store for us, maybe a few decades worth.
That’s if Ison’s dust-tail doesn’t get us first!
Technicolour,
“There speaks someone very rich or wilfully blind.”
Nonsense. You either pay a little bit more for your meat or eat a little bit less.
“Work out the proportion”
Still makes us meat-eaters.
As for your various campaign orgs, I do not eat fast food and nor do I have any any interest in watching clips of the World’s Worst Things That Have Happened To Animals, Ever, cobbled together and marketed as evidence that eating meat is bad.
The problem, I think, for you Technicolour, is that you are a Londoner and utterly divorced from the realities of what happens in the countryside.
“That’s if Ison’s dust-tail doesn’t get us first!”
Mike; AlcAnon is much more informed on this issue and in his absence, I ask you; What is the significance of the fireballs seen in Continental US (as well as the infamous Russian) wrt to OORT cloud objects too small for NASA and independent astronomical observatories to track? If ISON were to break up prior to sun-grazing, what is the downside to offset matter trails and entry into earth’s atmosphere?
Technicolour:
“Btw what on earth is ‘lefty’ about pointing out that the current economic industrial model is disastrously polluting our land, sea, air and bodies? That’s fact, not politics.”
Earlier I wrote:
“I once debated this issue with a lefty who admitted that he felt AGW theory was in all probability a crock of shite, but that it was worth implementing the legislation anyway as something had to be done to curb economic growth and “save the planet”. I suspect that many lefties feel like this.”
You see now, Technicolour? You’re moving the goal posts. I quite agree that we are “disastrously polluting our land, sea, air and bodies”. The issue in question is whether increased CO2 emissions are causing rising temperatures!
Rereading the original post I think it’s an honest attempt to come to terms with the fact that everything we do has an effect. And that, unless one is a Jain, and even then, some of that will be harmful. Sentient creatures suffer, sentient creatures are tortured and killed in their millions, daily, for profit, not survival. Living in a vegan cave doesn’t solve the problem; it just makes it slightly easier on oneself (though that is not a bad thing), while making the rest of society almost intolerable (which is). It’s a perilous line between hypocrisy and awareness, very post-Fall.
““The tragic fact is that global temperature has declined slightly for 17 years”
Yet the 10 hottest years on record all occurred since 1997. The decade 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade on record.
Wild animals suffer too. Wild animals get ill or injure themselves when there is no one to fetch a vet to them. In times of famine wild animals starve when there is no one to fetch food to them. Wild animals get attacked by predators when there is no one to protect them. Animals don’t tend to die of old age where only the fittest survive.
Anon
a) Live in the country. Grew up in the country, lived in London, moved back out to the country. We used to have a local butcher, who slaughtered his own cows. Now closed down. Small local relatively humane abattoirs everywhere have been closed down.
b) ‘Campaign orgs ‘ v dismissive way of treating the research in Fast Food Nation, or Facing Animals. Why?
c) Most people live in cities; silly to dismiss them
d) Rising Co2 levels causing rises in temperature – a question I had also. But if we both accept that Co2 levels are rising, then why would that *not* have an effect (methane a pernicious greenhouse gas also, btw)? Incidentally, I think ‘climate chaos’ is a more accurate description than either ‘warming’ or ‘change’, judging by the reports around the world.
e) “We are meat eaters” – if you read Desmond Morris’ The Naked Ape, you’ll find that this was grafted onto us: we were originally fructarians before the transition to hunter gatherers. Hence the pathetic two teeth (have you looked at a Rotweiller?)
Fred: “Wild animals suffer too” – yes, of course. I think it’s the industrialised, calculated scale of suffering inflicted which really demeans our species.
15-year blip is be explained in the Weather Wunderblog
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
have scrolled through these messages v. quickly, but can vouch for Dr Masters as a good climate reporter, and his commenters are lots of different weather people, with different perspectives.
Fred: although, in a way, I think it’s also a sign of innate human decency that people would rather buy an anonymous slab of plastic packed meat than actually go out and kill something themselves. It’s complicated.
And I’m for bed!
Falloch; Xlnt link. I found it interesting that Human-caused hurricanes was over stated. I’ve always thought the key to Climate change was in our ocean temps. whose currents ebb and flow with deference to salt density and temp.
” anonymous slab…” Heh, tech. I feel certain if people shopped for meat with a face on it, the demand for choice/Prime would diminish post-haste.
I don’t think skating on the Thames and growing red grapes for wine has anything to do with climate change even if it is three centuries apart. In 1980 at about Christmas I could walk across the lake in Cannon Hill Park. Never been able to do it since. There are English red wines still available that have been produced since God-knows-when. This one is from at least the seventeenth century.
http://www.greatenglishwines.co.uk/english-red-wine/stanlake-ruscombe-2010
It is reasonably-priced and I don’t doubt good. My mother, a lovely woman, made wine from the red grapes from Rushen Abbey in the Isle of Man in the 1970s. It was good. She was an excellent wine-maker and won best wine in the Douglas Show on four or five occasions. But not with a red wine. I am a red-wine drinker and the best red-wines are from the South of France (with exceptions), where it is quite hot, and the grapes can benefit from the coolness of altitude in the best vineyards. I’m indulging tonight in a palatable blend from California (Paul Masson). It is not expensive and has a pleasant taste.
Sorry, Anon, your argument does not hold water.
Welcome back Scouse Billy.
I don’t believe there’s any value in this never ending left right palava but I am still saddened that well meaning people who see themselves as left liberals have been conned and used on such a massive scale. Critical theory has never been so prominent. The Henry Ford political equivelant of ‘you can have any views you like as long as they are the same as ours’ The same brainwashing could be said to be true of others of other political persuasions of course – all causing a very convenient Everton/Liverpool – Man U / Man city dialectic. The question is, who always benefits regardless. Cui Bonno?
I know the above is an exaggeration but surely the overwhelming evidence of the trickery of the global sustainable develpment and climate change governmental and inter governmental lobby groups is obvious to all by now? Don’t believe a few commentators on a blog – the evidence is there in the computer you’re looking at!
Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space.
We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because unbounded.
We are the children of that great blue white jewel. Through our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars.
William Golding’s Nobel Lecture
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1983/golding-lecture.html
A Node asked:
Glenn_uk replied:
My intention was to demonstrate that your attitude towards people who disagree with you about AGW was irrational. Job done.
Mark; Any relation? I sense a similar passion for prosaic insight. Cheers.
A Node
A bob for you – job well done 😉
I am reminded of the Chartist, Gerald Massey when he said,
“They must find it hard to take Truth for Authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth.”
first thing to remember is BP, Shell, the Insurance Companies, the Banks, the military, the MSM, are all behind the scam. second thing is to realise the “sceptics” all believe in climate change & believe that the temps have been rising since the 17th Century, tho paused for the past 15-17 years. the sceptics includes IPCC scientists, Labour voters, Green voters, environmentalists, etc., even tho the MSM tries to portray all sceptics as rightwing nutters in order to make it a partisan issue to keep one lot onside.
James Corbett in Japan always does a thorough job. recorded just prior to the release of the new report:
28 Sept Corbett Report: Episode 282 – the IPCC Exposed
http://www.corbettreport.com/episode-282-the-ipcc-exposed/
btw if Govts really believed in catastrophic manmade global warming, (something they never dare call it since they started using the deceptive, generic “climate change”, would they really be starting wars all over the place?
VIDEO: RT: Morales: Obama can invade any country for US energy needs
In his dramatic speech in New York, Bolivian President Evo Morales called for the UN to be moved out of the US and for Barack Obama to be tried for crimes against humanity. Speaking to RT, Morales explained his controversial proposals.
In his most controversial demand, Morales said that Obama should face an international trial with human rights watchdogs among the judges. The Bolivian president accused his US counterpart of instigating conflicts in the Middle East to make the region more volatile and to increase the US’s grip on the natural resources it abounds in. He gave Libya as an example of a country where “they arranged for the president to be killed, and they usurped Libya’s oil.”
“Now they are funding the rebels that fight against presidents who don’t support capitalism or imperialism,” Morales told Eva Golinger of RT’s Spanish sister channel, Actualidad. “And where a coup d’état is impossible, they seek to divide the people in order to weaken the nation – a provocation designed to trigger an intervention by peacekeeping forces, NATO, the UN Security Council. But the intervention itself is meant to get hold of oil resources and gain geopolitical control, rather than enforce respect for human rights.”
The US also operates in the same imperialist way outside the Middle East, Morales argued. At the General Assembly Obama said that the US “is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure these core interests” in the Middle East. Among the core interests, he mentioned “the free flow of energy from the region to the world.” Morales said that Obama’s statement should make any country possessing natural resources worried. …
“I think that statement poses a threat to all countries that have energy sources, especially gas and oil,” Morales said. “But mostly those countries that sell gas and oil to the US. It is a direct threat. I am planning to meet with President Maduro and analyze the issue. I understand that this is a direct threat to Venezuela, because in order to secure his country’s energy needs, Obama can invade any country.”
http://rt.com/news/morales-interview-obama-un-442/
“High levels of European military spending played a key role in the unfolding EU debt crisis and continues to undermine efforts to resolve the debt crisis, alleges a new report by Transnational Institute and the Dutch Campaign against Arms Trade.”
http://www.pana.ie/articles/eu-military-spending-2013.html