Poll: Can people fix the Earth?

Happy Earth Day! People are aware of global warming. They are aware of the hole in the ozone layer. Some conservation and pollution control efforts have been implemented. But will it be enough to clean up the Earth ?

It really isn't so much a matter of fixing the earth but to stop breaking it.

Yeah, that's how I see it. You can't start fixing it effectively until you stop breaking it. Otherwise there's no real progress.

This from the NY Times

Sacred Planet," a hymn to the harmony of nature, is a seductive visual tone poem that portrays a world without pain, pestilence or aggression. The movie is awesome, not in the sense of "See ya tomorrow, dude" awesome, but as in gasps inspired by the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park and other natural wonders. Filmed by Jon Long in the large-screen Imax format, it wraps and lulls you in its splendor while transporting you to the farthest reaches of the earth in search of pictorial perfection.

Few would argue with the utopian dream of the movie (released to coincide with Earth Day), which gently scolds the human race (in the voice of Robert Redford) for disturbing the precious balance of things. The movie suggests that only a few scattered people still live in harmony with their environment, and that their ways of life may not continue for much longer. The wise men who speak, from Indian shamans to Buddhist sages, preach variations of the same message: that all things are inhabited by spirit, and that to disrespect that spirit is to court catastrophe.

Because "Sacred Planet," which opens today across the country, is only 45 minutes long, it doesn't have much time to make its case. And because it is a G-rated family movie, its criticisms of human folly are muttered almost under its breath. In visiting several possible Edens, each as tranquilly beautiful as the next, it offers a view of nature that is pointedly (and some would say outrageously) one-sided.

In Namibia we visit a peaceable tribe living in grass huts near a plain teeming with zebras and giraffes. One of the movie's final images is a group photo in which the camera pans over the grinning faces of the tribe members and paints them as the happiest people ever born. Inside an old-growth forest on the Pacific Coast British Columbia the camera peers up misty-eyed at tree trunks soaring into the sun. Fishermen in Borneo ply the waters of a woodland stream, and in Thailand majestic Buddhist statues look out calmly over the landscape. Except for an image of mud-caked seals clustered on a rock, most of what is shown looks pristine and sanitized.

In between its far-flung stops, the movie offers standard but stirringly rhapsodic glimpses of nature: wheeling flocks of birds, schools of silvery fish, orangutans at play, snow-capped mountains, forests and canyons, often in time-lapse photography that makes the clouds rush overhead and shadows dart instead of creep.

What the movie lacks is contrast. The sped-up ribbons of traffic in a city look as pretty as the interior of a redwood grove. As for the perils of logging, one brief shot of a clear-cut forest flashes by so quickly it is almost subliminal.

Here are some of the things you will not see in "Sacred Planet:" a limping animal, a vulture, a mosquito.

SACRED PLANET

Directed and edited by Jon Long; written and produced by Mr. Long and Karen Fernandez Long; director of photography, William Reeve. Narrated by Robert Redford. Released by Walt Disney Pictures. At the Loews Imax Theater at Lincoln Square, 1998 Broadway at 68th Street. Running time: 45 minutes. This film is rated G.

Yes, we've done some pretty rotten things to the Earth. I have no doubt that she'll set things right in her own time.

Sure she will. But if we don't stop damaging her she'll set it right by wiping us off the planet.� She'll be around and recovered long after we're all gone but we're severely limiting our time in office.

well, that is, unless my death star finally becomes completely operational.� until then, cheers!

i plan to single-handedly fix the earth with superglue and duct tape.

Details... at least the Earth will be fixed. :-)

Oooh... Death Star!� Can I be the cross eyed gunner?� wait... that wasn't the Death Star.

don't fergit the staplegun and hot-glue, too, care� ;)

and WD-40

The earth is destined for ending. Hate to be a downer, but . . . no matter how hard we try, everything ends. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try our darndest to keep it well, but I won't be surprised when it's over.

biodegradeable duct tape, post-consumer metal recycled staple gun, superglue never tested on animals and not derived from petroleum products, and non-aerosol WD-40.

But...I'm the emperor of the galaxy...shouldn't I be the one with the Death Star?

I can't wait till it's over, but in the meantime, I would rather live on a cleaner place than a dirtier one. I think humans are too selfish though (I am)

it's not the earth, its us. We don't really have to be concerned about breaking the planet, just the fact that we have the capability to wipe ourselves off of it, possibly taking a number of other species with us. It takes a special kind f arrogance to believe that short of blowing the whole damn thing up we really have the capability to break the damn thing. Earth is way bigger than we are, we just have to remember not to fuck ourselves over.

What Pete Seeger said about the Hudson River can be said about the Earth:

Do you think the Hudson will ever run clean again?

Seeger: One hundred years from now, it will be as clean as a whistle. At least there's a 95 percent chance it will. If we don't get rid of pollution-and if we don't get rid of racism, sexism, militarism, and the rest-there's not going to be anything left of the human race. Then the river will be clean again. Won't be anyone around to pollute it!

Of course, there's a five percent chance that 100 years from now we'll still be discriminating against each other, threatening to kill each other, and cheating and polluting each other. But I don't think we have more than 100 years left to straighten out and fly right.

When I was giving religion a second try, I had the thought that God had tried creating life before. I figured that he didn't like what happened on Mercury, so he smote it. Then he tried again on Venus, which is obviously overcome with greenhouse gases. We're the third try, and I think Mars is primed for its shot at life soon.

But that was in my younger days.

"'Save the planet, save the planet...' The planet is fine!!!

"...the people are f*cked..."

-- Pauley

and that's a bad thing? ;-)

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*snicker* touch� :-P

-- Pauley

touch� - � = touch

hmmmmmm ;-)

��

-- Pauley

On a serious note, the answers were misphrased. Wherever it says "they" it should say "we." It is all our responsibility, not some nebulous "they."

Global warming is based on junk science and is not provable.
The hole in the ozone layer is also not provable as something other than a natural cycle.

I'm all for a naturalist approach to living with the earth, but the way to do that is to get rid of so-called "public land" and privatize and enforce property rights vigorously.

Next time you bitch about your high gas prices, thank environmentalists for it.

Have you done any research into this "junk science"? I'd like to know what makes you call it junk. Global warming is based on much speculation, admittedly, but all evidence so far is pointing to its existence. While it is still unclear as to whether it is a natural weather shift or a result of our massive efforts to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is still unclear, but we certainly can't be helping.

Ozone depletion, on the other hand, is a pretty clear problem. Ozone breaks down as a result of CFCs. The effect is extremely dramatic, and judging by the size of the hole (proven quite well to exist), there is no explanation as to how the process could have naturally occured.

Oh, and next time you bitch about your high gas prices, look into why alternative energy plans have not been further researched or even implemented as they are.

It's junk science by concluding that there is global warming and that it is due to humans. A global ecosystem represents such a complex environment and set of variables that the entire 350 years or so of accumulated weather data represents a statistically insignificant sample. When a single volcanic eruption can spew more "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere than man has since the industrial revolution, I would say our effect is pretty minimal.

Ozone depletion suffers from the same problem, we only have about 40 years of observational data. Again, a statistically insignificant sample of data.

My problem is with taking these theories and then doomsaying and suggesting it conclusively indicates human activity has a negative effect on the overall system. It's scientifically dishonest. I believe we should research and find out what's going on, but much of the data is inconclusive and making claims and conclusions is intellectually dishonest.

No, the high gas prices right now come from a lack of refining capacity in this country (since environmentalists block buidling new refineries) and the so-called special blends required by environmental policies.

The only reasons alternative energy have not been researched is because we keep subsidizing the oil industry. However it is not clear that alternative energies would be competitive even in a completely free market.

if you look at a short term graph of weather/environmental patterns, it would seems that humans have had a negative influence... however, once you start look at data over alonger term, a lot seems to fit very nicely into natural variation.

back in canada i have the notes from a geography class where we discussed this in a fair amount of detail.

the instructor disagreed with a lot of practices today, but insisted that there was no substantial proof that we'd done a significant amount of harm.

in the "junk science" of glabal warming (by the by, "global warming is one of the reasons we have life on this planet, if we didn't have our "greenhouse gasses" we'd all die) th correlation of climate differences and the industrial revolution and all that. is only correlation, and as we all know correlation/=causation.

i'm not saying that it's good what's been going on. i think the collective we should clean up our act as a whole. but. it's not so tragic and doom is not so impending as some would have us believe.

To make conclusions on statistically insignificant data is junk science. To state hypothesises as conclusions is junk science. you stated it perfectly. The vast majority of people working in the field believe that humans are causing the warming. Then they skew data and twist results to reinforce and confirm their belief. A specific example is the most recent UN report which used computer simulation models which were skewed by assuming the absolute worst case variables, many of which are not supportable by the data we do have (i.e. they assumed a 1.5 degree increase PER YEAR over a ten year period and the statistical data for the last 150 years shows a general up and down trend of 0.5 degrees).

That's junk science. Science is not supposed to be political, ideological, or personal. It's about logic and what is provable to be true.

but it is a correlation that fits theory. People started looking for global warming before it was observed because theory says it should be going on. Increased amounts of CO₂ methane, chlorofluroucarbons, and other greenhouse gasses should make the earth warmer.

A second point is that action needs to be taken sooner not later. If a person has the symptoms of a disease but there was no conclusive test for it would treating him or her for it be junk science or simple prudence?

I'm not focusing on the global warming trend because, as I said, it is the more speculative theory of the two. Ozone depletion, however, is getting damn near undeniable. The estimated amounts of CFCs released into the atmosphere, the rate at which they reach the ozone layer, and the rate at which the hole in the ozone has been growing are far too similar to be a mere coincidence at this point.

i think some simple prudence would be great.

but i get frustrated by the double talk.

we need to clean up our act...
so save the seals and make clothes out of plastics. what?

i also support investigating alternate forms of energy.
i support extra charges on suvs and trucks in urban environments.

theory supports the correlation, yes.

but simple variation accounts for a good chunk of what's been recorded in the last 50 years, or observed in the last few hundred.

so the "oh my god the earth will fall apart within the next 50 years" line of talk does bug me.

We actually have 100,000 years worth of data on atmospheric composition from ice core samples, and the data shows that greenhouse gas levels have been mostly constant during that time. It is only since the beginning of the industrial revolution that CO2 levels in particular have risen to a�higher concentration than seen in the past 100,000 years. (Source: Ice Chronicles, Paul Mayewski� and Frank White)

The hole in the ozone layer is very provable. It is in part, also very natural. Really still air above Antarctica during their winter causes polar stratospheric clouds to form. They are made of air, water vapor and nitrogen compounds. They release atomic chlorine when they form due to the temperature decrease.

When the sun returns to the southern hemisphere at the end of winter (late August) it causes a series of reactions including the break down of ozone by chlorine. Because chlorine and ultraviolet radiation have the same reaction with ozone (breaking it into atomic oxygen O and molecular oxygen O2), the oxygen can't react fast enough to reform ozone to continue blocking the UV rays. When the polar stratospheric clouds evaporate, the chlorine is trapped back in resivoirs.�

UV radiation gets through and increases cancecr rates, but only affects temperature increases when it looses energy to become infrared radiation. The infrared radiation has less energy and so is more easily absorbed by the greenhouse gasses and less of it escapes causing the Earth's surface temperature to rise. Increasing the temperature causes more vater to evaporate which leads to extreme weather conditions and more gasses in the air to absorb more heat before it can escape.

it's just occurred to me that Dar's son Stephen was born on Earth Day. What a great omen!

I've been away from my studies for years and never really got as far as I wanted.� There are some things here that read wrong to me.� I don't want to be argumentative, but I'm confused.� I'll welcome clarification from anyone.

-Because chlorine and ultraviolet radiation have the same reaction with ozone (breaking it into atomic oxygen O and molecular oxygen O2), the oxygen can't react fast enough to reform ozone to continue blocking the UV rays.

If the oxygen can't react fast enough to reform ozone, then this is a completely natural process... does that mean that the whole in the ozone layer is (for lack of a better word) predestined?� Granted, CFC's are speeding the process, but it was happening anyway, right?� If that's true, than it implies that it can't be stopped or reversed.� Possibly slowed, but it can't actually improve, right?

-UV radiation gets through and increases cancecr rates, but only affects temperature increases when it looses energy to become infrared radiation. The infrared radiation has less energy and so is more easily absorbed by the greenhouse gasses and less of it escapes causing the Earth's surface temperature to rise. Increasing the temperature causes more vater to evaporate which leads to extreme weather conditions and more gasses in the air to absorb more heat before it can escape.

I thought that energy in light was measured by amplitude, not frequency.� Is it possible for UV light (radiation) to become IR light?� That's not a reduction in energy, it's a reduction in frequency.� What causes the UV light to 'become' IR?