Is The Sky Falling ?

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

In any case the end of man will come when one of the super volcanoes like the one in Yellowstone goes off and the Earth is blanketed in dust and darkness for years and years.

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When, and if, that happens it will usher in another Ice Age. What will the Global Warming people do then, switch their mantra to Global Freezing? Man, unlike the dinosaurs, has the ability adjust to severe climate change. The poor dinos didn't have the ability to think through solutions to the rapid change in their environment when (probably) a meteor hit the earth and caused a blanket of dust and darkness, similar to what you describe, for years on end. That dust caused global cooling that the dinos just couldn't cope with and they died off along with lots of tropical vegetation, and other species that could not adjust to the changes in global temperature. I have confidence in Humans and their ability to adjust to and even correct unfavorable living conditions.... if the Eskimos did it for many centuries, so can the rest of humanity.

Clothes Line? Yup, Got One! Well kind of. I have a very small back yard here at the Boars Nest (rental duplex)and I made a clothes line by stringing clothes line rope between two of the posts that hold the cross bars for the cedar boards. Works Great!

I'm not 'Cheap' but I am 'Frugal' plus I love the smell of clothes off the line! To appease my son's dislike for the 'crunchy' I just toss them in the dryer with No Heat for a couple of minutes and Viola! He's a happy camper and the cloths still smell nice!

I can get around the dryer with his underwear by hanging them inside out then once dry and when they are pulled right side out to be folded it does the same as the dryer. :tu

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Originally Posted by DoctorSaul

I have confidence in Humans and their ability to adjust to and even correct unfavorable living conditions.... if the Eskimos did it for many centuries, so can the rest of humanity.

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I would too if politicians and an endless amount of special interests groups weren't involved.

John

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Originally Posted by BobH

Modern 20th century man can quickly effect the environment world wide. The background radiation level is still higher than the naturally occurring background radiation level prior to the nuclear age, 1945. Low-background steel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia That is just one small example of how we moderns effect our environment in a negative way.

We have the ability today to effect the environment globally in a very short time span that Medieval Man was incapable of doing.

Yes, climate change is cyclical but there can't be much denying that modern man can accelerate changes to the environment, including the weather.

Bob

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Surely you realize that the total amount of radioactivity in our world is a relative constant. There are small losses due to extinction, and small gains caused by nuclear reactions, but in the main all the radioactive elements in our world is constant, as is their radioactivity. There are differences in DISTRIBUTION of radioactivity caused by man. But, distribution is addressable. If producing nuclear energy produces too much radioactive waste, you need to lock up the waste somewhere (like a couple of miles underground) so as not to negatively affect living conditions. Atomic bomb testing in the open atmosphere was not smart. But, nobody does that anymore. Producing electricity from nuclear energy has addressed the radioactive wastes so that they don't affect the environment, they need to be stored away from people, like a few miles underground isolated from natural underground water reservoirs.

In the main, the other things that modern man has done to the environment has been self limiting. Take Beijing for example, the air pollution is so bad that there is a general decrease in population over the last few years. People will continue to move away from such polluted areas until the offending industries clean up or close up. I remember the river in New Jersey that caught fire in the 1970's and precipitated a clean up effort that was effective and that river (wish I could remember the name) is pristine clean today. Remember Pittsburgh? When I was there 30 years ago, the river stank from pollution.. Last time there was amazing, with a riverwalk and all. Modern man usually sees its mistakes environmentally and corrects them.

(I think that river was in Ohio, not New Jersey, the Cuyahoga river, or something like that... although the east river off Manhattan/New Jersey stank pretty badly with all kinds of pollution back 30 years ago too)

Any day now I expect Rod Serling to appear on the television screen smoking his trademark cigarette. We will know then that this is all part of the show ..........

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Man has always had this belief that technology will come to the rescue like the Cavalry in an old western movie. Many times it has worked but hedging your bets on it might not be a good idea in the long term. Ask the folks who were on the Titanic (if you could).

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Originally Posted by DoctorSaul

Surely you realize that the total amount of radioactivity in our world is a relative constant. There are small losses due to extinction, and small gains caused by nuclear reactions, but in the main all the radioactive elements in our world is constant, as is their radioactivity. There are differences in DISTRIBUTION of radioactivity caused by man. But, distribution is addressable. If producing nuclear energy produces too much radioactive waste, you need to lock up the waste somewhere (like a couple of miles underground) so as not to negatively affect living conditions. Atomic bomb testing in the open atmosphere was not smart. But, nobody does that anymore. Producing electricity from nuclear energy has addressed the radioactive wastes so that they don't affect the environment, they need to be stored away from people, like a few miles underground isolated from natural underground water reservoirs.

In the main, the other things that modern man has done to the environment has been self limiting. Take Beijing for example, the air pollution is so bad that there is a general decrease in population over the last few years. People will continue to move away from such polluted areas until the offending industries clean up or close up. I remember the river in New Jersey that caught fire in the 1970's and precipitated a clean up effort that was effective and that river (wish I could remember the name) is pristine clean today. Remember Pittsburgh? When I was there 30 years ago, the river stank from pollution.. Last time there was amazing, with a riverwalk and all. Modern man usually sees its mistakes environmentally and corrects them.

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Surely you realize I was not talking about producing electricity via nuclear energy and the safe storage of spent fuel rods which is also a hotly debated subject with no clear guaranteed fool proof solution. That is not even considering the risks involved in transporting these spent nuclear materials from where they are now accumulating to the proposed, supposedly safe, deep underground storage sites.

I mentioned naturally occurring background radiation only as an illustration of how quickly man can alter things. It took slightly less than 20 years to raise the background radiation level, 1945 -1963, and from 1963 until now the levels are are "almost" back to the naturally occurring levels present before the atmospheric use of atomic weapons. We can and do impact our environment and negatively so in a lot of cases. We were not capable of effecting our environment so quickly and to such a degree in the middle ages. Just saying man has a much greater impact now than back then.

Bob

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Originally Posted by gssixgun

I have a Green question ???

How many here have a Clothesline(s) yes I know you still need a dryer for the Winter / Rainy times but really how many take just that one simple cheap step to conserve quite a bit of NRG..

Just one simple step, that actually makes your clothes last longer and smell nice,,, do you ????

Trust me I don't do it for your Kids and Grand-kids or even for the Planet, it is a simple thing that saves money a couple of ways..

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Most homeowners associations do not allow clothes lines. Fine if you don't have an HOA...

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Originally Posted by BobH

We can and do impact our environment and negatively so in a lot of cases. We were not capable of effecting our environment so quickly and to such a degree in the middle ages. Just saying man has a much greater impact now than back then.

Bob

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A logical effect of too many people. The more there are the higher the impact on everything. We couldn't survive another ice age with this population...where is the food going to come from?

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Originally Posted by Splashone

Most homeowners associations do not allow clothes lines. Fine if you don't have an HOA...

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The strip 'Doonesbury' addressed just that when I believe California was having an Electrical Energy Crisis a few years ago:shrug: