Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 13:43:15 -0500
Reply-To: Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Subject: The collapse of natural systems--Fryedaye R(emote)VC
In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.20050923104050.00aaaa30@fire.biol.wwu.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Say you have a pond with a lily pad in it. Tomorrow you will have two
lily pads, the next day four, the next day eight and so on.
The question is, when is the pond half choked with lily pads? The
answer is the next to the last day.
That's why we don't see this stuff coming.
Pour out a mound of sugar or salt and the table and watch what happens.
It slowly builds higher and higher into a peak, and then, at the point
of a single grain being added, it collapses in an avalanche.
Natural systems behave in known ways. They go wrong slowly, but tend to
end suddenly. The disasters we face are not unknowable, but simply
unknown. Always be suspicious of someone who demonizes you or what you
believe, because it almost always means that you're on to them.
Jim
On Sep 23, 2005, at 12:53 PM, Don Williams wrote:
> I used to think that humans were rational creatures and would take
> care of
> problems as they arose. It''s now apparent to me in my dotage that
> humans
> display very little inclination to err on the side of caution with
> respect
> to environmental problems.
> Our drinking water situation in the city of Bellingham Washington is a
> metaphor for global warming. This lake (Whatcom) serves as a water
> source
> for 80,000 and yet we have done little to preserve it. We build
> around it,
> piss in it, swim in it, boat in it, you name. The data on various
> contaminents show it is declining in quality. There are also powerful
> economic interests that seek to continue the status quo (new
> subdivisions
> and shopping centers in the drainage). And the epithets that they
> hurl at
> those who are opposed is that they are socialists or communists or
> silly
> environmentalists or worse. The part of Human nature that is such a
> powerful defeating force is self-interest and it will never be
> contravened. We (Bellingham environs) will all be drinking bottled
> water
> in 10 years or so and pissed off that we didn't do something earlier.
> We
> just can't make the behavioral adjustment to admit that certain issues
> need
> attention now.
>
>
>
> > >>> >> Global warming is not scientifically PROVEN, and
> > >>> even if it is happening,
> > >>> >> so what? We have NO idea why it's happening.
> > >>>
> > >>> >Not altogether true. Just like in plague times,
> > >>> there were people who knew.
> > >>> >they just didn't have the political voice to
> > >>> convince anyone who mattered.
> > >>>
> > >>> The ones who claim to know are rarley chalenged.
> > >>> They never admit that they
> > >>> are wrong and when proven wrong, they can only
> > >>> resort to name calling.
> > >>>
>
| 
