DrPizza
Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Originally posted by: Jeff7
Sure, Earth self-corrects. But how long does it take to do that? Are we willing to wait 700 generations while the planet gets itself back to our comfort zone? We could dump all of our nuclear, biological, and chemical waste into the oceans, and the planet would eventually get itself back to some semblance of stability. How long might it take though? 100,000 years for the last of the low-level radioactive stuff to decay, and for the heavy metals to sink to the depths, or be otherwise removed from the ecosystem at large?Originally posted by: sao123
I believe that the climate is changing... how much of that change is natural vs how much of it is man cause i think is the debateable subject.
It stands to reason that if it was that way a long time ago (as i bolded in your post)... then we could be returning to that point naturally. Everything is cyclical. Maybe even that is the preferred state of balance, and were just living in a temporary abnormality.
The simple fact remains that every time a super disaster happens, (volcano, meteor, whatever) After every mass exctintion event - BTW these are for more destructive than what man is doing now... the fact that the eart returns to a habital state, is evidence of the self correcting power of the earth.
We seem to want the planet to be comfortable and predictable for every generation now. That's where things become dicey.
It won't be a doom and gloom thing like some (the true "eco-kooks," similar to those whom IGBT obsessively squawks about) are saying. It won't render the planet uninhabitable. Only something like an impact by an object the size of Mars, or perhaps the sun suddenly exploding, would be capable of doing that.
It won't kill billions of people. Some may die because of more severe, unpredictable weather patterns, which can destroy critical crops. Therein lies the problem which I alluded to earlier, being pushed out of our comfort zone of being able to predict weather patterns. Weather that is unexpected can be labeled as "severe." What qualifies as a severe drought in one place may simply qualify as normal in another. Why? Because it's unexpected.
Yes, maybe this is a temporary abnormality. Maybe it's part of a natural swing. Whatever is happening, it may well affect local weather patterns, which affects the people living there. As such, it's in our best interests to learn as much as possible about what really is going on.
I think a more looming problem is scarcity of necessary resources. As long as people continue to reproduce in desert areas where there's enough water, water is going to be a precious resource. Eventually, it's going to lead to some fighting.
