I really don't mean for it to be a personal attack, but your post seems to be pseudo-philosophical and a bit oversimplified. I am also not a climate scientist. My Ph.D. will be in designing and implementing high-resolution, localized weather models (assuming everything goes well at my defense next month). I am debating about moving into larger scale (regional and global scale) climate modeling for my postdoctoral work.
Seventy5 said:
I am no scientist, but here goes.
You all talk about climate change, water purity, air quality etc in a way that makes it sound important that we should act on improving each. Who is that important to? Humans.
If we change the air, water, temperature etc who is that to benefit? Humans.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding your post. But, I don't understand why we shouldn't improve air quality etc, we're the ones who are reducing it. There are aerosol detectors in California that are picking up increasing amounts of pollutants coming from China. There are recommendations that you shouldn't eat big ocean fish more than once a week due to mercury levels. The U.S. puts out the most CO2 of any country on the planet. As far as I can tell, human production of CO2 is significantly higher than any other natural production method, including volcanoes (with current eruption frequencies and including large ones like Pinatubo). When it comes to oil pollution in the ocean, standard tanker operating procedure dumps significantly more oil into the ocean than accidents like the Exxon-Valdez. Most ocean pollution (i.e. not just oil) is due to urban and agricultural run-off. Why shouldn't we push to clean up the messes we have made?
Can you drink water from a stream on a mountainside in Scotland, Canada, New Zealand? Yes and you will probably be fine (as long as there are no dead animals de-composing upstream).
Unless the powerplant upstream accidentally dumps a huge amount of Benzene into the river (like in China). Then you're screwed unless you can fly in the Evian Water Plant.
There are other things that most people don't understand. Look up Persistant Organic Pollutants (POP's). This is a broad class of chemicals. Some, for example, are chemicals released by manufacturing processes that were once believed to disperse into the atmosphere. The atmosphere is big, so the concentrations of these toxic chemicals shouldn't hurt anything. Except that they don't work that way. They tend to be transported towards the poles where the concentrations increase significantly. And, they are persistant, they remain active for very long periods of time.
Maybe time to think outside the box for once and realise that we are nothing special in the great scheme of things, and the great scheme of things will move how it wants. We may help, or hinder it, but we can not control it to any degree.
I agree that we are not significant in the grand scheme of things. We could turn this planet into Venus, with its huge greenhouse effect and it's 700K surface temperature (higher than the maximum surface temperature of Mercury). The universe would still go on, although life on Earth would cease.
We are easily the most self involved, narcissistic animals on this planet and we suffer greatly for it.
I also agree with this; however, I think that the biggest problem comes from those people who believe we cannot possibly have much of an effect on our planet. People that believe they couldn't possibly be doing anything wrong when they fire up their SUV and drive two blocks to get a soda and some cigarettes. These are the same type of people who run companies and feel that a high profit margin outweighs their social responsibility. Companies that allow their plants to release toxic chemicals poisoning the workers, as well as everything around it.
crackpip
