Posted on 06/13/2008 6:44:08 AM PDT by rellimpank
Are we living in the last century of our civilization? Is it possible that all of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves? Could our society actually be heading towards collapse? A dramatic preview of an unprecedented ABC News event called "Earth 2100."
According to many of the world's top scientists, the answer is yes, unless we take action now.
This September, in Earth 2100, a dramatic ABC News 2-hour broadcast, the greatest minds across the globe will join together in a countdown to the year 2100 to tell us what we must do to survive the next century … And what may happen if we don't.
The time to act is now, says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
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This is why I’ve sort of stopped watching the History Channel. Getting tired of shows that forecast the end of the world. I don’t understand this predisposition lately to point out how we may kill ourselves through our technology, how an asteroid will kill us all, or a super caldera in Yellowstone will destroy half the world.
People must be into doom and gloom, I guess.
Which century?
She kind of sounds like ABC News, in other words.
A more fascinating topic would be a forum on ABC News' prospects for surviving the current decade.
Oh, perfect! As if the media hasn't already killed off any intelligent discussion of the subject, now they want every fringe nut-job on the planet to join in. Does anyone know what comes after Yellow Journalism?
I read the whole article last night. It is textbook propaganda. ABC isn’t even trying to hide that fact.
From the article,
“We are asking you to use your IMAGINATION to create short videos about what it would be like to live through the next century.”
Imagination! And it will be presented as science.
A group of egotists realizes it’s not immortal and extrapolates the end of civilization as a result.
I take great satisfaction that none of the “scientists” on this panel will live to see 2100, because they will all die of old age long before then.
Maybe the next generation of “scientists” will not be such a bunch of manipulative political hacks.
Fearmongers.
Give us millions of dollars so we can sit and discuss all that could possibly go wrong, and when it doesn't give us more dollars to think about how we were so wrong and what could have we corrected in the thought process to arrive at a proper conclusion.
Total Bravo Sierra!
I see only one mega-threat to civilization and that’s a super-lethal, super-contagious bug spread by birds or insects. Avian flu might qualify, but the more likely scenario is a third world bioweapons program with sloppy safety procedures and poor personal hygiene. Some of you may be famiiar with the story about the modified mouse pox that was created in an Aussie lab. A change on one gene made the mouse pox lethal to every mouse. The scientists said that if it escaped the lab it might have wiped out every mouse on Earth. This is the kind of thing we SHOULD be worrying about. Oh, yeah, everybody should have an emergency food supply. Remember that you will have to feed the children of your imprudent neighbors.
It’s one thing to worry about the health and survival of the extant life on the planet for one can construct scenarios wherein such destruction could take place; it is an altogether arrogant and hubristic flight of fancy to foretell the health and survival of the planet itself once it is shed of its biological burden.
We have not yet BEGUN to scratch the surface of what civilization may become, people.
ENERGY - For better or worse, humanity is tied to carbon-based fuels, if for no other reason than we ourselves are carbon-based. This tantalizing promise of a “hydrogen economy” is just that, a tantalizing promise. Hydrogen is sort of mean stuff to work with, especially in an atmosphere that is composed of some 20% oxygen. When a plume of hydrogen escapes, it ascends straight up, since it is so much lighter than any other gas (except, for the most part, helium), and burns with a near colorless flame. You wouldn’t SEE the fireball, unlike carbon-based fuels. Of course, the plume, once ignited, would burn off with great rapidity, but it would radiate an enormous amount of heat.
This means, that because we are sort of stuck with carbon-based fuel for most of our portable energy sources, there will be carbon dioxide with us always. We cannot, could not, eliminate carbon dioxide. Which is fortunate, because without carbon dioxide, plants simply could not grow. There is no substitute. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is an essential part of life on earth.
POPULATION- there is a certain minority that grieves because the growing population of the world is somehow devouring all the natural resources right before our eyes, and pretty soon, we shall see the “peak level” of all this largesse of the planet, and everything shall be in decline, as the human population continues to grow. Nonsense.
Human beings have some very ingenious solutions for whatever happens when some resource is stretched to its limit, and it becomes either extinct or so scarce that its value is inordinately high. A substitute may be found for practically every product in daily use is out there, but there has to be some kind of economic incentive to adopt the product. Consider home lighting, for instance. For eons, the only light at night came from fires fed by wood or other combustible materials gathered for that purpose. Some ingenious person, weary of carrying around a stick with a flaming brand on its end, came up with the burning of oil or wax in a bowl with a wick. It was easier to carry and the light produced was of more steady nature.
Various means were used to supply this lamp with fuel. Back in about the 17th century, a great source of burnable fuel was discovered in the carcasses of whales, so the industry of whale hunting, for the express purpose of extracting the oil from the carcasses, was born, and the light from lamps fueled with this product was much superior to that from melted tallow (from cattle) or lard (from swine). Also did not stink up the house nearly as badly.
But alas, the constant search for whales drove the great beasts of the sea to near extinction, and while the rewards for capture and rendering the blubber from whales were great, more and more whaling ships came back empty-handed, and eventually whale oil got so expensive it was unaffordable to all but the most wealthy of households.
About this time, there was discovered a substance called “coal oil” that could be recovered from some grades of coal, if heated in a retort and the fumes collected and distilled into various grades of oil fractions. About the same time, “rock oil” that simply oozed up out of the ground, could also be distilled into fractions the same way. Thus a new industry was born, converting the “coal oil” and the “rock oil” into a fuel for lighting homes, at a cost vastly much lower than whale oil ever was.
Not all the fractions that were distilled in this manner were suitable for home lanterns, though, as they were too volatile, and tended to ignite rather explosively. This fraction, which was pretty much of a waste product, was either routinely “flamed off” ar simply dumped out and allowed to evaporate.
Several ingenious souls, however, came up with an engine design that was essentially an air pump, using cylinders with pistons to draw in a fuel-air mixture, closing the inlet valve, compressing the fuel-air mixture, and by means of an electric spark sent at a critical instant, the fuel-air mixture was ignited, and the piston in the cylinder was driven down, at which point a second valve was opened and the mixture of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and a good deal of heat, was allowed to escape, forced out by the ascending piston. The moving piston was then again drawn downward, while the valve that admitted the fuel-air mixture was opened, and the cycle was repeated. This, in its simplest terms, is the internal-combustion engine thich has been tweaked endlessly for the past 150 years or so. The first internal combustion engines were but modifications of existing steam engines.
This application of a relatively compact power source that could be run on a waste product that otherwise had to be thrown out because of its troublesome properties, led to wider and more complex uses, freeing individuals up from drudge-work that left little time for actually living. The drudge-work itself was often so strenous that those who engaged in it, were reduced to little more than work animals, dying at a relatively early age and quickly replaced by younger and somewhat healthier specimens. This was a pretty good way to control population growth, until the ingenuity of the application of power took over, and far fewer peole died at such an early age, living long enough to reproduce and see their children and children’s children also grow up and reproduce. As you may well imagine, population grew by higher and higher exponentials. But strange thing, even all these multitudes were relatively much wealthier than their predecessors of only a few generations earlier. Population growth, so long as there is an adequate economic base, is itself a growth generator, working on compound interest.
NATIONAL INTEREST- It is said, that there no “friendly nations”, only nations with similar goals and interests who form alliances for particular purposes. This is so true in so many ways. At one time, not so long ago, the US was an oil-exporting nation, and the rest of the world stood by and saw the benefits of using this oil for their own purposes. Result, world demand for oil began to grow, as country after country moved from primitive subsistance agriculture to pre-industrial and fully industrial development. But the United States itself did not stand still. There was a realization that oil existed elsewhere, and could be extracted at a lower cost than could be done domestically. So as oil wells dried up, or so it seemed, it made economic sense to open up new wells in whatever place it seemed easiest to bring in the machinery and transport the crude oil out to refineries.
Oil became, and is, a very valuable international commodity. And where it moves form one country to another, it also involves the potential revenue generated by the sale and use of this commodity. Sometimes this is a simple buyer-seller transaction, but other times, it involves issues like national sovereignty, animosities that transcend business relations, and just sheer bull-headed contrarian easily bruised egos.
Some countries, upon gaining this wealth of energy supplies, whether by its own resources, or trading with willing partners to obtain the needed commodities, can turn this raw energy source into even greater wealth. Other countries, even with the blessings of an excess of these commodities, cannot or will not unleash the potential of their own people to make these conversions of energy into wealth, and people flee from the repressive country, to the country where they are allowed to make decisions about how to use the wealth and actively join in the enterprise of converting energy.
For years, the United States was that country where energy was changed into wealth, and the leaders had the good sense to encourage multiple enterprises by the people. America was growing.
But now, the growth has become cancerous, both because some of those who flock here, come not for the opportunity to join in the quest for wealth by conversion of energy, but to feed upon the vast store of accumulated capital and the tremendous reservoir of good will for which Americans are famous. Even some of those who have been born here, and SHOULD be acquainted with the responsibilities and obligations of being an American, seem not to recognize their birthright, and would squander it for some vague ideal that America has “too much”. It is not that America has too much, it is that the rest of the world has too little. The reason they have too little, is that they are shackled by fears and ignorance, sometimes willful, and do not release their own creativity and enthusiasm, which had been burned out of them as early as childhood, and they remain forever stunted persons.
And exactly who gets to decide who “..the greatest minds across the globe” are?
Enron? GE? Soros? Maurice Strong? Algore? Pew Research?
The “liars for Jesus” and “liars for science”?:
The Reverend Sir John Houghton, former head of the UK Meteorological Office, Publisher of Al Gore’s book on GW and Former Co-Chair of the IPCC, said this:
“Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen”
“.. human induced global warming is a weapon of mass destruction at least as dangerous as chemical, nuclear or biological weapons that kills more people than terrorism.”
** “..Pre-monsoon temperatures this year in India reached a blistering 49C (120F) - 5C (9F) above normal.
Once this killer heatwave began to abate, 1,500 people lay dead - half the number killed outright in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre...”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/23errors.html
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“While no one can ascribe a single weather event to climate change with any degree of certainty...the parallels between global climate change and global terrorism are becoming increasingly obvious.” ~ Reverend John Houghton - Former head of the UK Meteorological Office, Publisher of Al Gore’s book on GW and Former Co-Chair of the IPCC.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93466,00.html
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“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” ~ Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory) (in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)
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“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” ~ Maurice Strong - Secretary General of the Rio Summit in June of 1992
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“Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue, and energy sources such as “synfuels,” shale oil and tar sands were receiving strong consideration.” ~ James Hansen presentation to Council on Environmental Quality, June 12, 2003
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“Human induced global warming is a weapon of mass destruction at least as dangerous as chemical, nuclear or biological weapons that kills more people than terrorism.” ~ John Houghton Monday July 28, 2003
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“For a century, an ambitious arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (Communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism.) Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism.” ~ Charles Krauthammer, 6/1/08
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“Everywhere you go, you hear the news that we have only a few years to save the planet before we reach the point of no return, the tipping point, irreversible catastrophic climate change, and the end of civilization. Hyperbolic statements like these are meant mainly to scare people into acting and accepting the enormous sums required for the proposed reduction program. Sir John Houghton, the first chair of the IPCC, wrote in a 1994 book, “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.”
A backlash against such exaggeration is growing, not least among scientists concerned for their own professional integrity. In any case, we need cooler heads to go with a warmer climate.” ~ The Politics of Global Warming First Things: http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6000
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The Marcusian Marxist “liars at Pew Research” using their Goebbels-type propaganda machine to advance the agenda of the ‘RAT party? http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110006449
Why Enron Wants Global Warming http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3388
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How Enron hyped global warming for profit (and the scientists they funded to help them prove their conclusions)
http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_oct_5.html
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“It began in 1992 after the first Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro, where all the nations of the world went, and they signed the Climate Convention, which said that action had to be taken to combat climate change, even though the science was not completely certain.
“After that, vested interests, led very much by the ExxonMobil oil company and some [US] coal companies, set up a misinformation campaign aimed at persuading people that the science was flawed and that no action was required. In particular, they tried very hard to discredit the IPCC. That campaign was influential at all levels of American society.” ~ Sir John Houghton - Former head of the UK Meteorological Office, Publisher of Al Gore’s book on GW and Former Co-Chair of the IPCC.
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July 29, 2005 Shuttle Undone By Environmental Regulation
“Thanks EPA for killing our astronauts.” ~ Rich Blinne ASA
http://www.blinne.org/blog/science/index.html
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At the United Nations, the Curious Career of Maurice Strong
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,250789,00.html
Thursday , February 08, 2007 By Claudia Rosett and George Russell
NEW YORK
Before the United Nations can save the planet, it needs to clean up its own house. And as scandal after scandal has unfolded over the past decade, from Oil for Food to procurement fraud to peacekeeper rape, the size of that job has become stunningly clear.
But any understanding of the real efforts that job entails should begin with a look at the long and murky career of Maurice Strong, the man who may have had the most to do with what the U.N. has become today, and still sparks controversy even after he claims to have cut his ties to the world organization.
From Oil for Food to the latest scandals involving U.N. funding in North Korea, Maurice Strong appears as a shadowy and often critically important figure.
Strong, now 77, is best known as the godfather of the environmental movement, who served from 1973-1975 as the founding director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi. UNEP is now a globe-girdling organization with a yearly budget of $136 million, which claims to act as the world’s environmental conscience. Strong consolidated his eco-credentials as the organizer of the U.N.’s 1992 environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro, which in turn paved the way for the controversial 1997 Kyoto Treaty on controlling greenhouse gas emissions.
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Here’s a link for ya if you haven’t seen it yet:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2030322/posts?page=13#13
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