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| Feb 18, 2010 7:06 am |
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re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: The Death of Global Warming |
Thomas Holford
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Ken Hilving sayeth:
> I do know that what I pave no longer absorbs rainfall, that what I create in runoff becomes concentrated down stream, that what I throw away doesn't simply disappear, and that what I flush isn't gone. I do know that pesticides are not specific, that they can be indiscriminate poisons, and can concentrate as they move up the food chain. I do know that the lights at night wash out the stars light, and that what goes into the air can change the pH of the rain. I do know that electricity does not simple come out of the socket, or water out of the tap.
Ultimately, it comes down to a question of scale: the planet is large; humanity is small. Very small. Very, very small.
The human ego is large. The human ego has a great deal of difficulty accepting that it is NOT as important as it imagines itself to be.
Humanity at one time believed that the sun revolved around the earth, and that earth was at the center of the universe.
It took the invention of physics and mathematics to help humanity to understand it's relative place in the cosmos: small.
Humanity also has a very self-centered concept of time. Humans imagine that any "mess" they create endures forever. Humanity worries about finding a place to step because someday the entire planet will be covered with human turds.
Not to worry. Humanity is a blink of an eye in the chronology of the planet and of the universe. Great stone pyramids and palaces are swallowed up by erosion or jungle in a few centuries or a few millenia.
Humanity could explode all the nuclear weapons it has, and in a few decades or a few centuries the ecosystem would be back to normal.
The Laws of Thermodynamics say that Entropy increases. Order inexorably disintegrates into disorder. And that is the thermodynamic fate of all human creations. Even pollution.
T. HolfordPrivate Reply to Thomas Holford (new win) |
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