Gigi,
"Human progress" has and WILL effect the environment. No doubt. The question is whether we need to hurry up and route the terrorists and then move onto environmental isses because they are so important. I think, in general, that the world has been doing a great and balanced job as regards environmental issues - that is, one that balances human needs for economy and progression with that of conservation and environment. In the industrialized world, SO2, O3, NO, and CO emissions are down. Air quality in industrial countries is better today than it was in our industrial past. Consider the history of the "London Fog". In the US, emissions are down even though the number of car miles driven has doubled. The World Bank has concluded that as the western world was better able to afford to pay for a cleaner enrivonment, it has.
I find the modern environmentalists especially the organized groups such as Green Peace to be irresponsibly alarmist. Every statement from them is about disaster, doom, and gloom. They want to scare people and they have. When you start talking about sea levels rising and destroying South Beach or New York city being under water you are being irresponsible. These doom and gloom predictions come from numerical simulations of various factors upon each other and the Earth. Numerical simulations are only as good as the model and data themselves and there are way too many variables and discluded effects for these models to have any validity whatsoever. They are dealing with systems even more complicated than the stock markets and researchers have not had any success at all at modeling markets from the input data. Such models certainly cannot predict with any certainty whatsoever the complicated and huge open system we call home, Mother Earth.
We are only at the very beginning of our climatological predictive abilities. The National Hurricane Center, here in Coral Gables, has been making 5 day predictions on storms in
private and has announced that in the near future they will begin to make these predictions public. That is where we are. 5 days. Even in that case, the average error in just a 12 hour prediction is over 40 miles and in a 3 day prediction and over 200 miles in the median model of those used by the NHC. Want to discuss the error involved in climatological predictions at 50 years?
Chaos, the imperfect modeling that results from imperfect data renders all long-term predictions at this time to no more than intellectual curiosities at the dawn of time.
I think in reality, from a knowledge point of view, we have a very limited understanding of what long-term negative impact humans may or many not be having on the globe. We have done an excellent job already in continuing with a moderate and balanced approach.
As far as the bears, get a gun.
Last edited by Colin at Dec 6 2002, 06:14 AM
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