Arguably the best thing that ever happened to early humans until the advent of agriculture. 'Man' is supremely designed, or evolved if one must, to be a tier one predator. Upright with hair suited to shed solar heat. A gait that facilitates long distance pursuit, opposable thumbs which helped in using tools to crush skulls and bones of carcasses dragged into trees by leopards or scavenged on the plains allowing access to high caloric fats.
Once groups of hunter/gatherers realized that they could 'push' prey ahead of them while other members of the pack could carry water in gourds or bladders and skip ahead to ambush prey at the next water hole 'we' reigned supreme on the savanna.


Nope, think I'll stay awhile.

Errr guess I wasn't clear. "Just move along now" wasn't meant for you or anyone individually. It was a characterization for what fossil fuel industry spokesmen effectively say to get people to dismiss anthropogenic climate change offhand. They had sufficient funding for both the motivation for deception and also to deceive very effectively.

I agree in the case a few million years ago in Africa when the Great Rift changed climate that decimated forest land that the ensuing struggle was a good thing for us now. Struggle makes one (and many) stronger. You don't have to be strong or smart to sneak up on a leaf. However we are quite a bit less adaptable as a species now since we've become dependent on technology. People like to watch survival reality shows but most wouldn't last a month without electricity, let alone in the actual wild.

I heard a story on Le Show about this: Zambezi is moving animals from one wildlife park to another because of the effects of drought.

Drought has replaced poaching as the greatest danger to Zambezi's wildlife.

Frankly, I am not sanguine.

I fear that we are well past the tipping point and I fear for my grandchildren.

10-4 on that, sorry for jumping to conclusions. I do agree that the industry has often been deceptive.

Er, I think I'll move along...

When I see two armchair paleontologists having a go at each other, when the topic is Global warming, Ocean temperatures, and the Energy crisis, it's time to go. It's pretty clear there is not going to be much conversation on this topic for a while. This appears to be another thread reduced to irritating nonsense. And don't bother replying - I'm gone.

@frankbell -- Precisely.

And those taking this post off-topic may be labeled 'deniers' since the issue is not taken seriously by such.

A harbinger of what's to come -- The Klamath River and Basin, in northern California --

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/docu...-working-group

https://www.hcn.org/articles/klamath...eres-a-rundown

https://www.kcet.org/shows/tending-t...th-salmon-wars

"Everything there is dead."?

If one cant stand the heat, one has no business in the kitchen. For my part I have deep confidence that we as a species have actually made some substantial progress since The Bronze Age and actually know that humans belong in the ape family and have evolved over millions of years.... OR if you'd prefer to go back even further, albeit with reduced confidence but still in high percentages of validity, ALL Life on Earth is related. All is carbon-based and depends on RNA/DNA for offspring to inherit traits from their ancestors with small combinations and variations that add up over millennia. That's what Sex IS, whether one thinks a Divine Creator did it directly in one go, did it in billions of years of small steps, or that it came about through the very nature of the Universe and it's chemical reactions, which even that could possibly have something humans would call "Divine Cause".

Not only is there the Fossil Record, it is literally written in our genes. For a closer to home example, just ten or twenty years ago, the recent discovery of the body of Richard III would have been VASTLY less compelling. Surely the skeleton bears some striking resemblance to accounts but small stature, scoliosis, etc wasn't likely completely uncommon among Blue Bloods back then. Without DNA the path back would have been far less clear.

I submit that "armchair" is a term borrowed from sports enthusiasts who simply observe repetitive gaming but never study the mechanics of the game. I suppose if we resort to the applied broad brush denigration here, even coaches and Sports Medicine doctors are "armchair".

I truly wish, indeed--it would give me great comfort if--I could share your optimism.

Sadly, I do not see international cooperation for a common cause to be in the offing.

But that's just cynical old me.

Hello frankbell, and please accept my hopes that you and your loved ones are reasonably healthy and happy, but I don't understand why the above quote seems optimistic. I am just as confidant that very few things,. even from an individual POV, are all good or all bad. Most things seem to be a tradeoff. We press a balloon in creating a depression and it pops out on the other side. That's how self-supporting systems tend to work, at least uintil some tipping point is reached.

We have most definitely evolved but Evolution is not goal-oriented. It's largely a crap shoot. We have definitely increased our knowledge and the effectiveness of our methods to gain evidence but we aren't any smarter and our success at creating more comfort and convenience has also made us less resilient and self-reliant. Recently large segment of global population, and perhaps especially in the US, have become so disenchanted with how such evolution has served them in their immediate lives there has been a substantial reversion to assuming perception is reality rather than objective, repeatable evidence combined with critical thinking... a sort of blanket skepticism beyond "old ways" not to mention the maintaining of the age old measure of success being wealth and power.

Frankly I have similar concerns to Carl Sagan's expressed existential question posed to any hypothetical but intelligent, technological civilization(s) of "How did you do it? How did you survive the acquisition of the technology to destroy yourselves?". I am hopeful but I think I suffer no illusions of wide-eyed optimism and our responses to extremely important issues beyond short-sighted personal goals I see as "defecating in the kitchen". It should be obvious that we have wasted much of what we have learned. I sincerely hope we grow up before it becomes an apocalypse, whether just a phase or an ultimate curtain call.

Didn't mean to be here, but I thought folks might enjoy this:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-01019-9.pdf

It appears the Antarctic Thwaites Glacier which I've read is based on the seabed, is disintregating at a sifnificantly faster rate than predicted. When it goes, all the land based ice it's holding up will follow it. Being sea-based, more than the 10% that applies for the Arctic can stick out of the ocean. So it means sea level rise - 1 to 3 metres (3 to 10 feet).

Fat chance! Over two milennia and we have 'devolved' enough to value monetary gain over the Web of Life.

Progress? that's a laughable term, in this instance!

I think I must agree with those who note that Language, especially WRITTEN language literally changed everything for our ancestors and subsequently of course, for Us. While it is quite amazing how much information remained from one generation to another once verbal language was invented, it is impossible to overestimate the impact of written language, especially after the invention of the printing press. Being a dumb machine the printing press could not alter anything for any reason once it was typeset. While a human could change the typeset, still once in place, typesetting eliminated a percentage of variables and knowledge could be passed down precisely and with confidence.

This changed how we evolve. Even Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking, just to name 2 big thinkers, noted that we began having 2 distinct forms of Evolution - 1 natural, agonizingly slow and random physical and a 2nd artificial, cerebral method that was fast, precise, goal oriented and extremely effective. Once again the printed word can be utilized to spread false information, typified by Used Car Salesmen and those selling Snake Oil, but the percentage was diminished so evolution of the mind became rapid. Unfortunately millions of years as Hunter Gatherers has left us with deep, even subconscious evolution that does not, CAN not keerp pace with the cerebral.

So while we celebrate that we can have "our heads in the gutter but look at the stars" it nevertheless remains our heads are stuck in the primitive gutter. For example the single most important lesson Religions have ever tried to imbue in societies is to attempt to divorce ourselves from those base instincts and revel in the cerebral. Unfortunately when all but a handful of religions were created, we were steeped in base instincts and we could fool ourselves to thinking we had actually risen above them. That made them all the more powerful.

So, yes, today we still have instincts like blind devotion to charismatic leaders that once served us pretty well and sexual urges that are so deep we often can't even see how much we are or can be compelled by them, just 2 examples of what is likely many. It should be obvious this blend is a "double-edged sword". They can get us out of bed in the morning and motivate us to work for food and shelter, find a mate, but also pervert that interest into raw, unbridled acquisition with no borders or limitations... the kind that TorC has just pointed out.

That doesn't change the fact that more of us survive birth and live, not only longer but healthier longer, and we are now not just looking at the stars, we are on the way to go there and change our odds of long term survival. A friend of mine, actually the Godfather of my only Son, once noted ..

It doesn't matter who he is, how smart or educated he is. All that matters is that needs to be axiomatic or we are literally doomed.

Simply put, "Ad Astra per Aspera!" and we face one of those difficulties now with anthropogenic climate change. It could possibly be a false alarm but the data does not yet support that so until it does we have little choice but to act and quickly to at least improve our odds... IMHO of course.

And BRIEFLY, the link to global warming is what, exactly?

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62758811

On Pakistan and flood Potential. We'd all better start thinking "What are we going to do with hundreds of millions of climate refugees?"

Before it is even possible to discuss a thing, it matters that the thing being discussed actually exists. For example ask yourself how productive (not to mention boring) a discussion about the color of Unicorn horns would be. For such a discussion to have any meaning or validity at the very least the participants in the debate need to have some definition of terms and have a modicum of agreement.

It is impossible to meaningfully discuss anthropogenic climate change if many deny the scientific evidence that lends any credence to the idea that humans actually have dramatically, though in cumulative steps, altered Earth's climate. IMHO the deceptive misinformation spread by billionaire fossil fuel industries has made them billions more dollars and indeed convinced many that the Science that shows it exists is a "pot calling kettle black" grift. The collaterql damage is it has also been one element that has led to Science Denial, the trend to disregard logic and evidence and exalt personal opinion as just, if not more, valid.