Feel the guilt in the Gaia religion: New map shows alarming growth of the human footprint
“Humans are the most voracious consumers planet Earth has ever seen. With our land-use, hunting and other exploitative activities, we are now directly impacting three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface,” said Professor Laurance.
And three-quarters of 30% of the world is a fifth of the world. But algae will be feeling pretty cheezed right now. They wrecked up the whole atmosphere — but get no credit. Algae define the term “voracious consumer”. The pristine state of the atmosphere was transformed forever, plus the schmucks made oil.
But nothing changes the planet quite like a 10-20km wide rock dropping in and wiping out 90% of all species on Earth. That’s a “footprint”.
Note the magical 97% appears again — a sacred number of “certainty”:
A James Cook University scientist says a new map of the ecological footprint of humankind shows 97 per cent of the most species-rich places on Earth have been seriously altered.
JCU’s Professor Bill Laurance has taken part in a study to map the ecological effect of people on the planet. He said the news isn’t great.
“The most species-rich parts of the planet — especially including the tropical rainforests — have been hit hardest. In total, around 97 per cent of Earth’s biologically richest real estate has been seriously altered by humans,” he said.
The scientists found environmental pressures are widespread, with only a few very remote areas escaping damage.
There’s that point about “wealth” again. :
Professor Laurance said wealthy nations and those with strong control of corruption showed some signs of improvement.
“In broad terms, industrial nations and those with lower corruption appear to be doing a better job of slowing the expansion of their human footprint than poorer countries with weak governance. But the wealthy countries have a much higher per-capita footprint, so each person there is consuming a lot more than those in poorer nations.”
Interesting stat:
But he said the news was not all bad.
“While the global human footprint expanded by nine per cent from 1993 to 2009, it didn’t increase as fast as the human population — which rose by a quarter — or economic growth — which exploded by over 150 percent — during the same period.”
REFERENCES
- Oscar Venter, Eric W. Sanderson, Ainhoa Magrach, James R. Allan, Jutta Beher, Kendall R. Jones, Hugh P. Possingham, William F. Laurance, Peter Wood, Balázs M. Fekete, Marc A. Levy, James E. M. Watson. Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation. Nature Communications, 2016; 7: 12558 DOI:10.1038/ncomms12558
- Oscar Venter, Eric W. Sanderson, Ainhoa Magrach, James R. Allan, Jutta Beher, Kendall R. Jones, Hugh P. Possingham, William F. Laurance, Peter Wood, Balázs M. Fekete, Marc A. Levy, James E. M. Watson. Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation. Nature Communications, 2016; 7: 12558 DOI:10.1038/ncomms12558
Image: Asteroid Impact KT Boundary, Don Davis NASA
Centre for Tropical Biodiversity and Climate Change Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Studies.
Professor Bill Lawrence. Two books Stinging trees & wait-a-whiles. Biologist.
What would you expect. He is not going to defend agriculture.
Is there no end to people who want to stop evolution? The dinosaurs would have been banned or taxed so they could not afford children. Humans though are the great polluters, changing the landscape with their evil agriculture and growing edible grasses and fruit trees instead of useless gum and pine trees, changing the world to suit themselves. Appalling.
It is the duty of every biologist seeking more funding to rail against humans. You see, humans are the problem. Only rich Western democracies could afford let alone fund such lunacy, the self haters, the Greens.
292
I grow weary of their self-loathing, complaining how Man consumes and destroys everything while eating ice cream. Send the green hypocrites back to their caves, without their ice cream. They wouldn’t dare try it.
251
On fear ‘n guilt.
We, conscious beings of the universe,
part of that self-same star-dust
as everything else, less pervasive,
though more reflective than bacteria,
’twas one of us who wrote:
‘I saw eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright.’
– Wage, wage war against
the lying and the fright.
bts.
112
Olaf, I grow cranky of their projection of their self loathing onto me. Very cranky this week.
This might look OT, but it is part of the same problem.
In Australia we have a political system where the “conservative” side is split geographically. Urban and rural. The Liberals look after the urban, the Nationals the rural. Why? As Reb Tevye sings, Tradition!
On the other side we have the Australian Labor Party, which was once a Workers’ Party but is now a Marxist Socialist (i.e. non workers) party. Then there are The Greens, who are really Reds, and various lesser parties.
Even in 2016, the rural industries tend to be largely based on agriculture. Most of those industries come under attack from The Green Blob and animal liberationists. For this Australia’s leading attack dog is the ABC QANGO. The ABC has a history of publishing horrors, to the deliberated disadvantage of Australia’s farmers. An ABC show showed among other things a bloke in Indonesia kicking at a cow’s head. The Gillard government responded by banning exports of live cattle to Indonesia for half of that season bringing terrible disruption which is still affecting the market 5 years on. Nobody kicks a cow in the head. All that will get you is a broken foot, and that without causing the cow too much discomfort. So that video was clearly staged. Yet our politicians ran with the lie.
Recently, the ABC ran a story on behalf of Animal Liberationists highlighting unacceptable practices in the greyhound racing industry. The supposedly conservative government of NSW responded by passing legislation prohibiting altogether the racing of greyhounds and all associated industries. That would be bad enough, but The Greens, who introduced this legislation through the upper house, had no members in the lower house to carry the bill through. You couldn’t believe it if you hadn’t seen it, but the National Party sponsored that bill through the lower house. On behalf of the most virulent enemies of The National Party’s constituency.
What, what, what is the world coming to?
10
Olaf, I grow cranky of their projection of their self loathing onto me. Very cranky this week.
This might look OT, but it is part of the same problem.
In Australia we have a political system where the “conservative” side is split geographically. Urban and rural. The Liberals look after the urban, the Nationals the rural. Why? As Reb Tevye sings, Tradition!
On the other side we have the Australian Labor Party, which was once a Workers’ Party but is now a Marxist Socialist (i.e. non workers) party. Then there are The Greens, who are really Reds, and various lesser parties.
Even in 2016, the rural industries tend to be largely based on agriculture. Most of those industries come under attack from The Green Blob and animal liberationists. For this Australia’s leading attack dog is the ABC QANGO. The ABC has a history of publishing horrors, to the deliberated disadvantage of Australia’s farmers. An ABC show showed among other things a bloke in Indonesia kicking at a cow’s head. The Gillard government responded by banning exports of live cattle to Indonesia for half of that season bringing terrible disruption which is still affecting the market 5 years on. Nobody kicks a cow in the head. All that will get you is a broken foot, and that without causing the cow too much discomfort. So that video was clearly staged. Yet our politicians ran with the lie.
Recently, the ABC ran a story on behalf of Animal Liberationists highlighting unacceptable practices in the greyhound racing industry. The supposedly conservative government of NSW responded by passing legislation prohibiting altogether the racing of greyhounds and all associated industries. That would be bad enough, but The Greens, who introduced this legislation through the upper house, had no members in the lower house to carry the bill through. You couldn’t believe it if you hadn’t seen it, but the National Party sponsored that bill through the lower house. On behalf of the most virulent enemies of The National Party’s constituency.
What, what, what is the world coming to?
20
The dinosaurs got what they deserved T. They were huge, murderous, carniverous species who had extended their hegemony over the planet and Gaia finally struck back with her ‘dial a bomb’ meteor final solution. Gaia is striking back at humans for their planetary hegemony via a sophisticated strategy of global warming and a 5th column propaganda campaign via the human’s very own msm.
Graham Lloyd nails it with his article in the Weekend Oz pointing out how Gaia is organising endless adjustments to the data to invoke the sheer scale of the evil of humanity. Why even back in the 1830’s this planetary scourge were starting their end of days behaviour.
It must be so as that is when the temperature records including the adjusted data is melded with that from from the likes of Mann, Briffa and Jones no less and clearly shows this human caused warming after the previous cooling and even some previous warming at about the same rate …. which must have been natural….. whoops, wait a minute cooling preceded by some warming and all before the planet destroying industrial revolution…. Let me adjust my thinking T and I’ll get back to you.
60
Yep Komrade Kuma, if Gaia won’t send a thunderbolt Alinski et AL
will do us in by more subversive means.
10
To some 97% is the new pi, e, the new golden ratio, the new magic number.
To the rest of us its a propaganda measure.
233
It might help your cause, if you put /sarc at the end of anything you intend to be sarcastic.
Of course, if you are serious, and do not intend what you wrote to be sarcastic, then you should end it with /lunacy.
31
Speaking of “the guilt in the Gaia religion”…
Humans worst footprint on planet apart from algae, plants, asteroids, volcanoes… and latté sippers!
Get your thinking hats on, engineers. There’s an untapped market for a home kitchen appliance that makes low-footprint lattés. You know how it goes; get in and make your money before they figure out it’s not really a problem.
191
Solved. Bring your own cup, and serve the latté cold. There, can I apply for a patent?
30
Andrew:
I drew up a tentative plan to reduce the impact of latte drinkers but have not been able to solve how to keep the nitroglycerin stable until they add the hot milk.
20
On the news tonight, some clown has discovered X number, [7 I think] new DANGEROUS spiders in national parks around Brisbane.
Firstly they must be terribly dangerous if no one has found, been bitten by, them before now,
Secondly is a call for more protection of their habitat.
There is no other species so stupid that they actually protect their predators, & the things dangerous to them.
If we had half a brain we would be eliminating things dangerous to us, starting with greenies, the most dangerous of all.
40
Just heard… the inventor of them actually regrets inventing them.
http://time.com/money/3733586/k-cups-price-cost-comparison-coffee/
10
Bacteria have a much greater footprint than anything else and have had that position for several billion years.
Evolution is an opportunistic process, with the only plan being what works at the time; eventual outcomes are unpredictable. Homo sapiens is not excused from this process, no matter what silliness activists push. The question of what outcomes will prevail if we all don hairshirts remains completely avoided.
The deliberate timing of this particular piece of alarmism is not difficult to understand. The bureaucratic stratigraphic committee that holds sway over geological nomenclature is to decide shortly if the terminology “Anthropocene” is to be officially accredited; if this happens, the blare of self-righteous AGW publicity will be unbearable.
Personally, I prefer “Idiocene”. But Cassandra thinks that “Anthropocene” is odds-on favourite.
171
Re: Anthropocene
Once Man leaves this planet for the stars, after the Sun bakes this place to extinction, would that be where the Anthropocene ends, because we’re no longer earthbound?
93
According to the green blob the Holocene is over and the Anthropocene has begun, pathetic.
Sadly the Holocene is coming to an end but human ingenuity and geoengineering should prevent earth becoming a snowball. It has been reported that at the Last Glacial Maximum (around 18,000 years ago) there was a mile of ice on top of Wall Street, no word on the biodiversity.
122
I thought naming the present geological time the “Holocene Epoch” reflects hubris (overweening pride).
As far as I can see we are now in Marine Isotope Stage zero (MIS-0), a continuation of the Pleistocene Epoch that began with MIS-104, about 2.6 million years ago.
So I would prefer to demote the Holocene to a stage of the Pleistocene Epoch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_isotope_stage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene
31
Re: Anthropocene.
How about Hubrisocene instead?
70
Who knew bacteria had feet?
How many feet do they have? And what size are they? Do they come in left and right? Curious people would like to know.
50
It’s a terrible thing when a species goes extinct. It’s also a terrible thing when a species has the ability to modify the planet to keep from going extinct. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t. Damned if it makes any sense at all. It seems to me that if you’re going to confer the title “Mother” on Nature you need to recognize that her model of motherhood is the sea turtle – periodically haul out on the beach and drop a few eggs in a hole and then waddle off indifferent to the outcome.
181
Mass extinction by volcanic vent,
Even more by a rock, heaven sent.
The anaerobic host?
Algae killed most.
Do we care how many percent?
170
97%………………………………..MUST BE RIGHT……………..PANIC NOW (and again tomorrow when the next scientific fool drops by).
92
Is that 97% of the top one percent, or 97% of the top ten percent or what.
Warmists come up with some meaningless crap, but this looks like a better-than-prime example.
42
It makes the poor babies feel superior. By using such a number, it implies it’s “real” because it’s not rounded to the nearest 5 or 10. It also implies that if they back such a value, then they likewise have a VAST backing of their peers, so only the minor outliers look foolish instead of them. Saaaaaafety in numbers. Better than “wisdom of the crowd”, which is roughly 80% and implies that some serious doubt exists.
It’s definitely being used as the new Pi, which in itself isn’t accurate, but in climate circles and no matter how they extrapolated 97%, even if entirely bogus, speaks volumes about their lack of either scruples, accuracy or balls.
102
gnome:
I had completely forgotten that 97 is a prime number. I also have no idea why it was chosen as the manic number; any suggestions?
I think it might have been a sub-conscious decision after reading the milk label saying 97% fat free but misreading it as “fact free”.
130
I typed magic but perhaps for once the spell checker has made the right choice.
90
……..And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. (Gen 1:26)
I find Green guilt spreaders creepy. I want some dominion over them.
133
It is clearly the warmist intent,
That on problems they even invent,
To attribute to man,
All the guilt that they can,
By at least 97 per cent.
201
If you guys are so smart and knowledgeable, why is the only thing you have published is on a blog and not in the scientific literature?
113
Brunswick_Hfuhruhurr:
That is because you wouldn’t understand it if you had to read it in your ‘scientific’ literature; especially as you obviously cannot see through the third rate ‘science which is all that they will publish. If you are gullible enough to believe the old nonsense that only something “peer reviewed” and appearing in the “approved” literature counts, then you have sentenced Newton, Liebnitz, Euler, Darwin, Planck and Einstein to be ignored for a start. But you can console yourself that ar least Dawson (Piltdown man) was so “peer approved”. We will see who’s ideas prevail inside the next 5 years.
120
Brunswick, did you never get taught about comprehension at school?
The ability to read, understand and discuss is a foundation of democracy.
How many climate models are there? They all got published as “science” but they can’t all be right.
Climate “scientists” have predicted an ice free Arctic by 2015, the dams in Australia would never fill again, more hurricanes in the US, children won’t know what snow is in the UK, catastrophes will increase as a result of a 16 degree average global temperature. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. Join the discussion and learn, Brunswick. Scientists are far from infallible.
100
Because we’re the ‘smart and knowledgeable’ ones who enjoy having fun while flagging up the obvious crap in ‘climate science™’ pal reviewed papers.
For most of us we know we not going to be around when the big dollop of excrement hits the spinning ventilator vanes, so we give a warning and hope someone like you starts to see the light.
So give us a laugh, explain how CO2 holds heat and how this is measured. Or find the ‘official’, universally accepted definition of ‘greenhouse effect’ or ‘greenhouse gas’.
🙂
90
It’s a joy to see troll folk like Brunswick_Hfuhruhurr dump and run, because one knows that for a moment they forcefully experience the dank hard concrete against their backs and appreciate how hard they’re being shoved against the wall.
If Brundle-fly returns to read the various responses to its solitary sortie, it might acquaint itself with the peer reviewed literature and learned science readily available at Popular Technology.Net .
This may furnish it with a refreshing departure from the implicit propaganda laden progressive postmodern ‘science’ that so frequently characterizes the spineless green blob to whom it refers.
For some relief of what should be a resultant acute bout of intellectual indigestion the following may help:
Any AGW signal in UK temperature data ? – Nope ! – Clive Best , specifically here.
The abdominal pain and cramps should also be soothed quite well by Climate Change Predictions.
As for the concrete induced back pain. That may take some time.
60
I publish in the literature four or five times a year.
But is my literature, the same as your literature? What is your literature, anyway?
My literature goes to my peers, who give me critique, and occasionally find an error, or identify something that could be explained more simply. That is what peer review is about, at least in my world.
What does peer review mean in your world?
10
But, but, but I know the greens are responsible for messing up the land with their policies of producing ;low carbon biofuels’. Doesn’t this show just how messed up the ecological movement is especially when a new report show that they got it wrong.
111
The arch-villain CO2 inflicts a mere fingerprint but humans manage a footprint. We need to hang our heads in shame.
71
Or walk on tippytoes, to reduce our footprint.
20
I am human
but I can change
if I really have to
I guess
60
Take out the humans and something else will mess with the climate. Because there is no “pristine” environment and no eco-stasis. The temp record of the last fifteen thousand years is like a cooked noodle dropped on the floor: all wiggles. We may actually be helping to stabilise a cooling climate – but who can know and what does it matter? (Actually we should care. A cooling like 2200BC, the Migration Period or the LIA would really rough us up. A cooling like the Younger Dryas would be a real mangling.)
If you are listening, the birds and insects outside your front door are not quite the same as last year. Everything is changing, both in linear and cyclical fashion, all the time. It’s our turn to catalyse a bit, that’s all. Don’t worry, climate warriors. When this brief Holocene is over we lose our turn.
This is something easily understood by all except neurotics. But there are a lot of neurotics around, that’s the prob. Why can’t they go back to worrying about eternal damnation or Sputnik or Y2K or the stickers on apples?
90
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Were the writers of this ‘paper’ sponsored by Nike?
With so many footprints I do hope so.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Seriously —
All these footprints are downloadable at http://wcshumanfootprint.org/ where I also got this —
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯[my bold]
Basically it feedstock to justify Agenda 21 that has been modified and name-changed to — The 2030 Agenda
So what are these footprints?
So that is the 8 they admit to include but is that all there is being assessed?
I have not the bandwidth to download the 200+MB of data files available to find out. So if someone is feeling generous…
60
I have time enough coming up to try to download. Bandwidth isn’t an issue. Staying awake as I read could be…
Pasture and crop land should not be included, except maybe the huge swathes of mono-cropped areas recently engaged for bio-fuels. Pasture is just areas chewed on by animals, and is natural. Croplands, if diverse, multi-crop areas would function much as a pasture or a prairie re plant life. Of course, the agro-chemicals would need to be taken into account…
And why only -navigable- waterways? We have lots of little cricks and rills that only a wee fishie or three could navigate that might be something crucial to that area…
If they -really- want to see a human footprint, the should watch a nifty series called “Filthy Cities” wherein the joys of living in the 16th – 18th centuries are explained in graphic detail.
00
Can’t speak for the rest of the world but in USA “Navigable Waters” are under Federal jurisdiction even if they are within State borders. In other words, when working out restrictions on use, the UN only has to negotiate with one entity rather than all 50 states separately.
That would not sound conspiratorial did it?
10
I would suggest that much of the report is simplistic propaganda, to drum up emotional support for ‘the rainforests’. Here are some alternative arguments, many of which are used in government studies and policy, but which are also debated.
Biologists within governments often use such things as ecosystem irreplaceability (EI) and other indices to gauge the relative human impacts on different types of ecosystems as a whole, within designated bioregions. In other words, where an ecosystem type has been largely cleared by farming and is now poorly represented, this normally indicates a high EI for what remains, and pressures occur on those species which particularly rely on such an ecosystem to continue to survive and flourish. (There are other factors which go into EI, but relative proportion of what remains is a large component). Broad ranging analyses of EI indicate that in many cases, tropical rainforest EIs are low, compared to many other types of ecosystems. They are actually often less stressed than many temperate, subtropical, and cool temperate counterparts.
Contrary to the report, ecosystem types within tropical regions are generally still well represented, with some exceptions. This is also partly why there are few extinctions recorded within tropical regions, most extinctions are recorded within warm temperate and cool temperate zones (think moa, mammoth, sabre tooth tiger, and so on, the same goes for many plants with which I am less familiar). Think of it this way, most of the Brazilian rainforest is relatively homogeneous and still intact-around 85-90%- and various ecosystems types and species within it are still relatively well represented, but in many temperate regions where vegetation was initially thinner and sparse, and where farming is now widespread, many of these ecosystems and the species associated with them are now poorly represented, in some cases well under 15% is left from before human settlement. This is not the case for many tropical rainforests, particularly in mountainous areas such as West Papua and the tropical Andes. A high proportion of mountainous rainforest remains intact throughout the world, but you won’t hear this from the greens.
Contrary to the report, most of the pressures on ecosystems today are in temperate to warm temperate zones, not so much in tropical regions. Australia for example, has a high extinction rate which almost invariably occurs within temperate and drier areas; its’ tropical zones around the northern parts of Australia are more intact and less stressed, compared to many of its’ temperate zones. The same applies for much of the rest of the world, but with exceptions.
I would suggest that the reason we keep hearing about ‘tropical rainforest clearing’ is largely twofold:
-1) it’s emotionally easier to drum up support because clearing of dense vegetation is simply more obvious where it does occur, but this does not take into account the context of how much of such an ecosystem type still remains in such landscapes. (If you clear 50% of a remaining 5% of a savannah woodland it is a big deal, if you clear the same land size area constituting <0.1% of the 85-90% left of the Brazilian rainforest, or for that matter a small portion of a Tasmanian rainforest (most of which has low EIs, incidentally), it's simply less of a big deal from an ecological perspective, even though visually and emotionally it might be more dramatic). In most but not all cases, tropical rainforest ecosystems are still well represented within designated bioregions, partly also because humans and domesticated animals don't particularly like to take up residence and farm there, they much prefer open woodland, places close to the coast, and savannah, but with exceptions.
2) It's partially a white person superiority/colonial thing, we cleared most of our cool temperate and temperate ecosystems with associated high rates of extinction and high irreplaceability, but you can't clear yours with relatively low rates of extinction and low rates of irreplaceability.
It's hypocritical, same sort of argument as not allowing developing nations to use their coal.
Note some of the above is certainly debated and it gets complicated (where for example some areas of SE Asia have had high levels of tropical clearing in non-mountainous areas), but note that using indices such as ecosystem irreplaceability makes much more sense than simply emotionally reacting to clearing part of a well-represented rainforest, such as in most of Tasmania, or for that matter in Kalimantan or Brazil. But don't expect the greens or the tabloid media to understand, even though things such as EIs are routinely used in broader government studies and policy, mostly behind the scenes, to try and balance the economic and social needs of a nation, with conservation and heritage values. (I know this because I have been at times involved with them; we routinely used advice guided by EIs and other similar sorts of indices, to make decisions about land classification and tenure).
30
It also could be that the UN elites have tasked their bureaucrats, NGOs and functionaries with initializing a nice tidy method of ‘sustainably’ accounting for resources (including humans).
Basically corral everyone (except elites of course) into cities, control and restrict fuel, food and water, teaching, medicine, freedom to roam, etc., leaving the rest of the ‘wild’ globe as a real big theme park for the rich and famous elites.
Welcome to the wonderful UN
Agenda212030 Agenda world.Or maybe they just are ‘saving the planet’ (for the Malthusians)!
50
“With our land-use, hunting and other exploitative activities, ” sounds like some sort of anti human, culturally if not species centric, bulimic, self loathing, weasel words but that would be speciesist towards weasels which would be just unforgiveable and only help bring on the destruction of the planet. Damn those CAGWarmists, they have me morally hog tied!
Oh, well weasels, its Sophie’s Choice, its not your fault…. sorry to offend you….. sniffle,,, sniffle. You could try 18c in a test case…
30
Off topic (only to a degree, as it IS climate related) but I may not have access over the weekend to pop in and post this.
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/27552/20160826/biofuel-not-environmental-friendly-might-be-worse-than-gasoline.htm wherein the huge promise of carbon-neutral (or even FREE!! a word we all love when it comes to food and festivities) turns out to be, well, wrong. U of Michigan, USA, at least, thinks so.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/uom-sbi082216.php
Disclaimer – funding provided by (gasp) non-greenie orgs
“DeCicco’s co-authors include current and former students at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and the U-M Program in the Environment, as well as a postdoctoral researcher at the Energy Institute. They are Danielle Yuqiao Liu, Joonghyeok Heo, Rashmi Krishnan, Angelika Kurthen and Louise Wang.
Funding for the study was provided by the American Petroleum Institute and the U-M Energy Institute. “
30
“Note the magical 97% appears again — a sacred number of “certainty”:”
Wot ever happened to “42”? 🙂
50
Hmmmm I’ll have to give that some deep thought.
20
It is not “magical” it is “mystical”. Fortytwo is encoded in the archane mysticism of The Pattern:
The meaning of life, the universe, and everything, when multiplied by the prime genders, and added to the biblical rendition of the number of Directors present at the “Last Supper” (TM) Board Meeting, gives you:
42 * 2 + 13 = 97
Voila!
10
Sorry, I believe the directors made up 2 to 13. Numero uno was Chairman.
Otherwise the maths seem right:
SO…..42*2+12+
=97
10
I keep seeing the comment that humans are changing the environment and I keep wanting to reply – SO WHAT. Whose property is the Earth? Who or what has the right to change it? Every living species just by living changes the environment. As many have pointed out bacteria and algae probably caused the greatest change simply because they are so numerous. After all they created the 20% free oxygen on Earth without which no animal life could exist. Now that’s a hell of a big change, far bigger than anything humans have done.
There seems to be an inherent assumption that humans have no right to change anything, that the only thing that has the right to cause change is blind chance. The chance of a rock hitting Earth or the chance our sun will go supernova. A view that seems to imply the natural world is “owned” by a higher being and we must not interfere.
A view that anything wrought by intelligence or purpose (other than that of the “higher being”) is inherently bad, but exacting change is almost a definition of intelligence so are these people claiming intelligence is bad. Maybe they believe the development of intelligence was the “original sin”?
But here is an alternative view; Maybe a major purpose of the universe (assuming there is a purpose) is to provide an environment for the development of intelligence. Those species that develop it survive while those that don’t sooner or later die out. In this scenario, humans are not a blight on the planet but rather a reason the planet was created in the first place.
50
“But here is an alternative view; Maybe a major purpose of the universe (assuming there is a purpose) is to provide an environment for the development of intelligence. Those species that develop it survive while those that don’t sooner or later die out. In this scenario, humans are not a blight on the planet but rather a reason the planet was created in the first place.”
This can also go back to the Thestic! Perhaps this Universe is more like the Greeks, with intoxicated gods and goddesses cavorting everware! Earth’s sub-god is typical. “All powerful”, dats nice! “All knowing” dats nice, if you wish to be a wimpy smart ass! Both, naahh; I would be so bored I must destroy myself. Give me clever susprizes dat I can fix wif all my power!
I ain’t never goona hire Generous Dynamics unt Aerojet General to finish a planet again! Dey lets all dat methane from da pressurized center out to da mostly O2 atmosphere! One flick o da Bick unt we gots 40 days unt 40 nights of raining carbonic acid! We ain’t even decided what a day is yet! We all must live and learn!
All the best! -will-
31
BIG DEAL. This does get boring after a while and the world turns off to it unless they up the ante continually. So what’s new?
I rate this with the half dozen or so emails I’ve gotten that announce, “Trump drops out of the race.” A joke. He was never in the race in the first place. And so we have a big footprint?
Sometimes I think someone is selling dumb in boxes to eat for breakfast.
11
Where’s the map? Did I miss something?
10
Socialism is covetousness, theft, idolatry, false witness and, with abortion, murder. So it is vice, and vice cannot be done virtuously. For that reason, socialism will always trash the environment as well as end up killing humans, lots of them. Capitalism has flaws, and wicked people can exploit it (e.g., Epipen pirate Mylan), but there is at least the possibility of freedom and virtue.
Progressivism poisons everything.
40
Not sure if anyone saw this SBS News article?
[25 Aug 2016] “An open letter to the Prime Minister on the climate crisis, from 154 scientists”
“We call on the Australian government to tackle the root causes of an unfolding climate tragedy and do what is required to protect future generations and nature, including meaningful reductions of Australia’s peak carbon emissions and coal exports, while there is still time. There is no Planet B.”
00