End of the World Part I

[Daddles]

No need to worry abouit global warning. Wee Johnnie goes to the polls next year. He'll get kicked out and then we'll have Kimbo to look after us.

Richard
now, where are my pills

[woodsprite]

Gotta add my 2 bob's worth. I agree that lack of planning, from maybe 30 years ago has a huge part to play in the current dry period. This is about when I recall the first mumblings about climate change and global warming. And when I recall the power people saying balderdash. Seems to me that the power people - the population - could have been acting then to insulate us against the situation we now have.

I also feel bad about the prospects for my kids and their kids, for the physical world of their futures. It is not that simple that where the climate changes dramatically there will be more land for agriculture, etc. I believe there are far reaching ramifications of climate change that go beyond making some places better off and others worse off - problem is we don't rreally know what the ramifications will be. I am hopeful that there are positive impacts. Weather man was saying the other day that central australia - like up around the Tanami desert, has started to see increased rainfall - might be the place to be in 20 years time (snap up a few hundred kilometres of prime farming desert while you can ).

Have always held the view that in the order of things, we humans are pretty insignificant (except for the damage we have done to our home). The earth is about 14 billion years old - it has been arid, frozen, super-heated, etc. Land masses have come and gone, mountains and seas have risen and fallen and risen again. The whole planet is continually changing - mankind is just contributing a bit of the change - and will always do so regardless of we humans.

We panic a bit about the big dry and about our immediate situations, whatever they may be. But at the end of the day mother earth keeps plodding along, changing. She will be here in another several billion years, we will have come and gone as a species, and none of this stuff will have mattered one bit.

But that doesn't help things now I guess. So I think we all need to do our bit to help out with the current problems - conserve water, reduce energy use where we can, stay positive, etc. And I accept that this dry spell may merely be a bit of a glitch in the weather pattern and all will return to normal in a while - wet winters, warm summers, etc. However I suspect it is a tad more than a glitch.....

Sorry about the ramblings...been up a while, still waking up, still not coherent, waiting for coffee number 2 to hit the mark

[namtrak]

I worked out yesterday, that if 32,000 houses planted out the average nature strip with Australian Natives it would amount to something like:

384,000 litres of fuel saved per year
326,400,000 litres of water saved per year
1,920,000 new plants
At a cost of around $400 per house.

Dont ask me why - I had too much time on my hands

[echnidna]

So have you planted your nature strip yet?

[bennylaird]

Might be that human domination of the world may be but a spike on the timeline. Even dinosaurs managed to survive here longer. Then again they didn't do anywhere near as much damage.

[Andy Mac]

I'm prepared to accept that there are natural and cyclical climate changes, often severe enough to cause major changes in the Earth's biota. In some ways this worry about man actually causing it, making a severe impact, is really over-inflating our own importance: as stated above the Earth will continue quite well without us.
However, there is something special about humans... and that is our ability to adapt.
As a species we will adapt to meet the physical changes, but socially we will change too.
One thing for sure, as farming land dries up, and people in poorer countries (like some of Africa) are displaced, there will be impacts on other nations...like Europe. Social changes, government changes and political instability. Maybe the US will tire of policing the world, they certainly seem stretched at present, but that could leave a vacuum.
There have been some interesting forecasts that combine physical stuff like climate, with poverty, changes in male-female balance (due to hormonal changes or infanticide I'm not sure, but more unemployed males mean trouble!)), Internet access (which links political and racial affiliations across borders) and large scale immigration as seen in Germany, France, UK, and dare I say it, Australia.
Interesting times ahead, and my kids will be in the mix, for better or worse.

Regards,

[namtrak]

So have you planted your nature strip yet?

Years ago - I hate lawn mowers!!!

More food for thought, I reckon there are at least 3,000,000 nature strips in Australia (7,000,000 households)

I've mentioned this before but a good read about the end of the world is the Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything - this is a great read - and its not just about the end of the world. Mind you, and this is a bit sobering he comes up with I think 9 different ways for the world to end. One is we get hit by a rock. And he reckons that movies like "Deep Impact" and "Armeggedon" don't quite have it right, and the most likely scenario is that the planet will know it's going to get hit about 20 secs before it happens. Just about enough time to fill one's dacks!!!

[woodsprite]

Geez the things we hope for... I want to do in my sleep, if we are gonna get hit with a big rock make it a whopper! (don't want a slow death resulting from the resulting ice age) that takes the whole planet out and make it quick! Would hate to have a month's warning that we were in the way of something big and fast and couldn't duck it!

Doesn't pay to ponder too long on the possibilities of the future - well, the negative ones anyway. As mentioned mankind is pretty adaptable and will quite possibly make the adjustments necessary for whatever it is that may be coming, be it ice age, meltdown, big rock, Waterworld or whatever - better join the boaties forum

And now, having eaten, back to the REALLY important things in this world - gotta hang the last cupboard door, my least favorite job!

[Auld Bassoon]

No need to worry abouit global warning. Wee Johnnie goes to the polls next year. He'll get kicked out and then we'll have Kimbo to look after us.

Richard
now, where are my pills

Wee Johnny may be pretty awful, but Kimbola? Aw strewth! What a bunch of waste-of-skins!