OK, actually the question is fairly simple. If there is just 10% chance that we are ruining our environment. Should we just take our chances or are the consequences of those 10% so bad that we should be a little careful just in case?
It´s a little bit like the discussion we had about helmets. Most of the time we don´t crash, but many still use them. Only in this case we are not the only victims if we fail. Are we willing to be just a little bit less comfortable to reduce the chances of ruining our world? DagT Den 27. des. 2006 kl. 18.27 skrev graywolf: > Some of the ice seems to be melting, some of it seems to be getting > thicker. I have found nothing to confirm that the ice cap averages > over > a mile. I do know that it is over a mile think in some places, but > that > is hardly an average. Any realistic information I have found about the > ice caps overall melting faster than normal can be translated to "Who > knows?". Remember where the ice caps extended to 10-20 thousand years > ago; whoops, who can remember that far back? > > And interesting, but related, aside: We think of forests as resources > and recreational areas. To prehistoric (before metal tools) man they > were a real threat slowly encroaching upon their tiny fields and their > hunting areas driving them into the recently melted glacial tundras > along with the game they depended upon. For many thousands of years > mankind was caught between the retreating glaciers and the advancing > forests. The evil forest of folktale was very real. And that long slow > war may be the cause of the rise of modern man as the dominant > species. > > > > John Francis wrote: > >> The problem comes with the Antarctic ice sheets (and, to a small >> extent, >> glaciers and snow/ice cover in other parts of the world). The >> average >> thickness of the Antarctic ice is well over a mile. Even the smaller >> West Antarctic ice sheet contains enough ice to raise mean sea level >> by 20 feet. The larger East Antarctic sheet contains an order of >> magnitude more ice - enough to raise sea levels by over 150 feet! -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
