We are such a fucking parasite on this planet. Bring on the meteorite

13

Comments

  • RooK wrote: »
    I just threw up in my mouth.

    This might seem a more worthwhile reason to do that.
    From "the Walrus magazine, "At the Whisky Tasting":
    laphroaig 12-year-old oloroso cask, islay single malt
    Greek salad, souvlaki, french fries, onion rings, ketchup, root beer, Peanut Buster Parfait. Oh, wait—that’s what I had for dinner. After the first sip I barfed a little in my mouth.
  • LeRocLeRoc Shipmate
    I read it as sarcasm also.
  • Curiosity killedCuriosity killed Shipmate
    edited July 2018
    Well, my other possible response to @Thatcheright was to ask

    "deano, is that you?"

    but I couldn't be bothered to find all the symbols on my phone on the tube
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Hom. sap. is 500-300,000 years old. H s. s. could be just 80-50,000 We're going to get smarter. A lot smarter. As individuals. Over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. Against the background of our exponentially smartening technologically augmented collectives.

    This only works if thick people have lower reproductive success than clever ones. Do you have any evidence this is the case?

    Here we are.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    Try meditation, CBT and Prozac kiddies.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Martin54 wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Hom. sap. is 500-300,000 years old. H s. s. could be just 80-50,000 We're going to get smarter. A lot smarter. As individuals. Over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. Against the background of our exponentially smartening technologically augmented collectives.

    This only works if thick people have lower reproductive success than clever ones. Do you have any evidence this is the case?

    Here we are.

    Rather providing evidence for the opposite, methinks...
  • Perspective. 20 trillion galaxies, each with billions of stars in our universe. There's no point to us, and there's every point to us. Everywhere there are galaxies. Everywhere there are stars. Everywhere is where we are.
  • "We are star stuff. We are the Universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out."
    --Ambassador Delenn, "Babylon 5
  • @Thatcheright that was some kind of satire of an utterly clueless Trump supporting environmental exploiter, wasn't it?

    1 - I am British, not American.

    2 - I am not a Trump supporter. Sorry. I know you would probably like it if I were but I am not.

    3 - Instead of attacking the man, attack the idea.

    As humans we have moved from basic hunter/gatherers to what we are now with little effort. We have analysed, designed, used science, logic, engineering and taken risks.

    We are where we are.

    Who is to say that it isn't what God wants? Who is to say that as humans continuing on our merry way, we are not destined to dominate the whole Earth fully and completely?

    We know we need plants and oceans to produce oxygen, we know we need insects to pollinate plants we need for food or grazing domesticated cattle.

    We don't need bears or elephants or rhinos.

    Would it matter if they went away? Would it to anyone at all matter in five hundred years (evolutionarily a mere blink of an eye)? What would the impact be if tigers and snow leopards went extinct? Would it matter except aesthetically? Would we dote on the loss of those animals in the same way as we dote on the loss of the passenger pigeon - i.e. not at all unless we read an article that mentions them?

    We could engineer a planet that we can survive on even with rising oceans and changed climate. Why should that not be a destiny that God wishes for us? After all does God actually tell us to preserve nature exactly as He created? Did Christ ever urge his disciples to look after the environment?

    If we eradicated poverty and ensured everyone had enough to eat and a good standard of living with electricity in homes everywhere on the planet and good schools for all children but at the expense of a hundred photogenic animals going extinct, what would God think?
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    My reading of Genesis is we are called to tend the earth, not rape, pillage and destroy all (to us) meaningless life forms. I cannot see a loving Creator rejoicing over the death of the last dodo, a bird He made, or the death of a plant species. But that is my interpretation.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Ye cannae split organisms into "ones we need" and "ones we don't". Ecosystems are complex systems in the true sense of the word; you cannot gather sufficient information to entirely predict the effect of the loss of a given organism within that ecosystem. Take bees for your example - they're on your needed list. But just as humans have certain organisms on which they're directly dependent, so do bees. And so do the organisms bees depend on. And the ones they depend on. And so on and so forth.
  • @KarlLB Great minds think alike:
    And when we've removed everything we believe to be a waste of oxygen, we'll look very stupid when the ecosystem crashes and burns, taking us with it, because some inconspicuous but vital part of the food chain just snuffed it.

    Or we're dying of some disease and the best cure comes from an antibiotic discovered in a just about to go extinct plant, too late to be able to save the plant

    @Thatcheright - it also helps if you don't ignore the straight answers when you're accusing everyone of attacking you
  • @KarlLB Great minds think alike:
    And when we've removed everything we believe to be a waste of oxygen, we'll look very stupid when the ecosystem crashes and burns, taking us with it, because some inconspicuous but vital part of the food chain just snuffed it.

    Or we're dying of some disease and the best cure comes from an antibiotic discovered in a just about to go extinct plant, too late to be able to save the plant

    @Thatcheright - it also helps if you don't ignore the straight answers when you're accusing everyone of attacking you

    No just ThunderBunk. He played the man not the ball.

    Billions of species have gone extinct with or without our help. According to The Bill Bryson book A History of Nearly Everything, it is estimated there are hundreds of extinctions per week and not all of them by any means are due to human activity.

    It may be the cancer cure went extinct centuries ago for no human-based reason.

    It may the antibiotic plant is out there but because we just don't know what species are really "out there" it is not at all likely we will find it.

    All we know is people - real humans with kids and everything -need food, shelter, power, clean water, education, transport, jobs and so on. We might have to rely on our own wits to survive and thrive because it is possible nature has already extinguished any miracle cures.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    Ye cannae split organisms into "ones we need" and "ones we don't". Ecosystems are complex systems in the true sense of the word; you cannot gather sufficient information to entirely predict the effect of the loss of a given organism within that ecosystem. Take bees for your example - they're on your needed list. But just as humans have certain organisms on which they're directly dependent, so do bees. And so do the organisms bees depend on. And the ones they depend on. And so on and so forth.

    Oh please! I said - and emphasised - I am not talking about insects or even most plants! I stated the top of the food-chain, photogenic animals that people get all worked up about.

    In five hundred years who will get upset about the demise of the polar bear?

    Should we stop plastics getting into the ocean? Yes of course, because it is dangerous to even the small creatures that larger creatures we like to eat depend on. Don't kill the small things off so that people can fish and feed families. That is sensible. Saying don't put plastics into the seas because Blue Whales might go extinct is questionable from the perspective of doing good for humanity.

    It is of course entirely likely that saving the food chain of the edible fish is also going to save the Blue Whale, which is a nice consequence.

    My point, which is being missed I think, is that we owe it to humanity to preserve whatever nature is useful to us. But if there is some nature that is not useful to us and - note I said 'and' - get's in the way of humanities needs, then do we really need to preserve that sort of nature? Surely humanity must come first. God told us to look after people.

    An example might help. Wolves are exactly the photogenic, top of the food chain animals I mean. If ranchers kill them so cattle can be raised in safety, who will mourn the wolf in five hundred years, and to what extent? I would say it would be no more that we mourn the dodo, that is not that much really. We can go for really lengthy periods of time without thinking about dodos. We will do the same for wolves.
  • Depends on who it is. There are movements encouraging the Rewilding of Britain (link to Rewilding site) and the reintroduction of the lynx and other animals to Europe.
  • Because dear Thatcheright, nature is part of us and we part of it. You might need to Forest Bathe/ at little. You may mean it sarcastically, or you may be profoundly ignorant, inexperienced, culturally imperialist. Perhaps you've never visited any natural areas? We do a good job of sterilizing the terrible graveyards of a blasted ruined forests and meadows, making them look manicured in ways that delude us that they are good.

    "The wilderness is my parish" (John Wesley, C18)

    "In the rather ill-considered rush we have been in to exploit our natural resources, we have taken little trouble to examine into the capabilities and possibilities of the wild creatures involved in it, save in so far as the findings were of commercial value. Therefore much that is interesting has been overlooked. The kinship between the human race and the rest of our natural fauna becomes very apparent to those of us who sojourn among the latter for any length of time; alarmingly so to those whose attitude has hitherto been governed by the well-worn and much abused phrase that "Man shall have dominion over all." " (Grey Owl, 1935)

  • @Thatcheright - I think you are proving my point really. Such large brains, such little use of them.
  • RooKRooK Admin Emeritus
    Wolves are exactly the photogenic, top of the food chain animals I mean. If ranchers kill them so cattle can be raised in safety, who will mourn the wolf in five hundred years, and to what extent?

    Your intentional ignorance is impressive. I'm not even sure you're trolling any more.

    But consider, even with your wildly optimistic contemplations, do you really think our current inability to even figure out how to stop honey bees from going extinct is going to translate into a vaunted ability to design stable ecosystems in the future? In time?

    Maybe your hypothetical god's purpose is to inflict a plague of humans to reset the planet for a new age of cockroaches.

    Playing the man instead of the ball doesn't matter much when the man is all bullocks.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Hom. sap. is 500-300,000 years old. H s. s. could be just 80-50,000 We're going to get smarter. A lot smarter. As individuals. Over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. Against the background of our exponentially smartening technologically augmented collectives.

    This only works if thick people have lower reproductive success than clever ones. Do you have any evidence this is the case?

    Here we are.

    Rather providing evidence for the opposite, methinks...
    It's completely statistically, evolutionarily inevitable. And it will trickle down. As it always does. Never mind. I'm just glad I'm a cock-eyed optimist. We've never had it so good.
  • ThunderBunkThunderBunk Shipmate
    edited July 2018
    @Thatcheright that was some kind of satire of an utterly clueless Trump supporting environmental exploiter, wasn't it?

    1 - I am British, not American.

    2 - I am not a Trump supporter. Sorry. I know you would probably like it if I were but I am not.

    3 - Instead of attacking the man, attack the idea.

    This is hell. I used the local shorthand.

    In any case, the argument was either trolling or breathtaking stupidity. So in the end, I supplied a little light trolling of a Thatcherite, and, inevitably, you supplied the missing element. So you see, it all comes out in the wash.
  • Soooo.... nobody is able to say what people in 500 years will think of the extinction of say the polar bear?

    Nobody is able to confirm whether or not we have got over it and moved on, or are gnashing and wailing their teeth.

    By the way, how did we get on with the ecological disaster and mass extinctions that must have completely destroyed farming and life when we removed the forest that was once spread over the UK and replaced it with fields?

    I mean losing that must forest must have killed off huge populations of vital animals and plants and that must surely have meant the human population of the country died off as well.

    Or did we actually get over it and farm the now cleared lands giving more food to the people? When people get misty-eyed over England's green and pleasant lands, they forget none of it is natural. It is all man made, and it seems we survived. Do we mourn the bears and wolves that we killed off in the process of making nice fields and putting cattle and sheep on them, or growing food in them? Do we miss them?

    Why wouldn't the rest of humanity simply get over it?
  • So somebody is going to separate the useful animals and plants from the non-useful? Wow, what prescience.
  • RooKRooK Admin Emeritus
    @Thatcheright, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Nobody is hung up on our poor widdle feewings about missing some charismatic fauna. The ecological change that happened to the UK was the global equivalent of trimming your nails and cuticles, and you are extrapolating that blithely to being unconcerned about skinning the whole fucking planet.

    It's not about "getting over it", it's about being extinct along with the majority of our life-support system, you mindlessly egocentric arrogant fucking shitstain.
  • After the ape has sawn off the branch it is sitting on, it is devastated to find itself falling to its doom.
  • LeRocLeRoc Shipmate
    3 - Instead of attacking the man, attack the idea.
    I wonder if 500 years from now, people are going to be upset by ad hominem attacks from 2018.

  • They'll probably just classify them as ad hominid attacks.
  • The changes we're going to see are as dramatic as the melting of the ice. But quite a bit faster. We replaced Neanderthals. There isn't any obvious replacement for Homo sapiens. Though I'd vote for penguins. I like penguins. They are living proof that some things aren't black and white.
  • LeRocLeRoc Shipmate
    edited July 2018
    There isn't any obvious replacement for Homo sapiens. Though I'd vote for penguins. I like penguins. They are living proof that some things aren't black and white.
    This is what happens in After Man: A Zoology of the Future. Penguins become one of the dominant species on Earth. They involve into dolphin- and whalelike beings.

  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    RooK wrote: »
    Wolves are exactly the photogenic, top of the food chain animals I mean. If ranchers kill them so cattle can be raised in safety, who will mourn the wolf in five hundred years, and to what extent?

    Your intentional ignorance is impressive. I'm not even sure you're trolling any more.

    But consider, even with your wildly optimistic contemplations, do you really think our current inability to even figure out how to stop honey bees from going extinct is going to translate into a vaunted ability to design stable ecosystems in the future? In time?

    Maybe your hypothetical god's purpose is to inflict a plague of humans to reset the planet for a new age of cockroaches.

    Playing the man instead of the ball doesn't matter much when the man is all bullocks.

    Humankind as a species isn't really as smart as it thinks it is. (Where is a dummy emoji? Here? :astonished: )
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    LeRoc wrote: »
    3 - Instead of attacking the man, attack the idea.
    I wonder if 500 years from now, people are going to be upset by ad hominem attacks from 2018.
    I think maybe we’re all being too hasty in dismissing Thatcheright’s new morality. “X is fine as long as you don’t think anyone will care 500 years from now” could really be quite liberating, I think.

    Thatcheright, do you think that 500 years from now anyone will care what happened to you?
  • Thatcheright--

    A question, if I may:

    On this thread and others, I'm having a hard time figuring out if/when you're serious, sarcastic, joking, trolling, etc.

    Mind giving us a cheat sheet, so we know how to tell? Might save a lot of yelling, screaming, and dropping you off at Greenpeace HQ for deprogramming.

    Thx.
  • @Golden Key there's always this thought:
    <snip> @Thatcheright
    "deano, is that you?"
    <snip>


  • CK--

    True. Or some others. But I'm beginning to like the idea of dropping someone off at Greenpeace for deprogramming...
    (wink)
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited July 2018
    RooK wrote: »
    What a fascinating and informative article. Truly, all things are connected. Thank you RooK.

  • Climacus wrote: »
    Oh crap. I *had* to respond to someone with a PhD in bloody planetary geophysics.

    Ship rule of thumb: some shipmate or other probably has a PhD in whatever you're talking about.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited July 2018
    The changes we're going to see are as dramatic as the melting of the ice. But quite a bit faster. We replaced Neanderthals. There isn't any obvious replacement for Homo sapiens. Though I'd vote for penguins. I like penguins. They are living proof that some things aren't black and white.
    That is bloody funny. In multiple ways. I wish I'd had more to drink.

  • LeRocLeRoc Shipmate
    Don't worry, I'm drinking for you.
  • The changes we're going to see are as dramatic as the melting of the ice. But quite a bit faster. We replaced Neanderthals. There isn't any obvious replacement for Homo sapiens. Though I'd vote for penguins. I like penguins. They are living proof that some things aren't black and white.

    I like rock-hopper penguins, who do just what it says on their label. They go to Patagonia, among other places, and hop and clamber over rocks. They do something they're soooo not designed for--but they do it, anyway.
  • Keeping up the cheerful nature of things is wrong. Just plain wrong. So let's get back to killers, thieves and lawyers because God's Away On Business.
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    Keeping up the cheerful nature of things is wrong. Just plain wrong. So let's get back to killers, thieves and lawyers because God's Away On Business.

    That is amazingly cool.
  • Simon ToadSimon Toad Shipmate
    edited July 2018
    How can someone calling themselves Thatcher, right? be anything but trolling. The name itself is a troll. Is Mark Thatcher still interested in Equatorial Guinea by the way?
  • Keeping up the cheerful nature of things is wrong. Just plain wrong. So let's get back to killers, thieves and lawyers because God's Away On Business.
    I'll counter that with Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed (lyrics) by Show of Hands

    @Thatcheright - this is what you're proposing:
    Toxic springs you tapped and sold
    Poisoned every watering hole
    Your probity, you exchanged for gold
    Let's not exchange our probity for greed.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    Keeping up the cheerful nature of things is wrong. Just plain wrong. So let's get back to killers, thieves and lawyers because God's Away On Business.
    You're on a roll today No...
  • Well, my other possible response to @Thatcheright was to ask

    "deano, is that you?"

    but I couldn't be bothered to find all the symbols on my phone on the tube

    Sorry, I've just spotted this.

    Just want to say I called round at the old place to find you'd all done a moonlight flit as we say round my way. Love what you've done with the new place though.

    Somebody said my username was a deliberate troll. Nope. Only a dyed in red wool lefty wanting to maintain a socialist safe-space could possibly think that. It is a reflection of what I thought Mrs Thatcher was. Right.

    Anyway, it's good to be back amongst the warm and tender love of the Ship.
  • Hey, what are Christeeuns for eh?
  • I read the ight as an initialism and throw in adjectives or labels of my own choosing. Helps pass the day.
  • ArthurShoppenArthurShoppen Shipmate Posts: 2
    Come friendly meteorite and wipe us out. Absolutely agree.
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    I'm holding out for a Yellowstone eruption, personally.
  • You both don't mind the collateral damage to everything else then?
This discussion has been closed.