Well, not all of us. Sarah Palin insults the intelligence of most twittering things by claiming that man can't influence or change "nature's ways" and is arrogant to think so. Yes, that's OK, speechlessness is a normal reaction to such idiocy. What can you call it but idiocy and what can you call it but arrogance to assert that the magical powers of God will steadily restore the countless square miles of ocean bottom scraped bare by drag nets, restore the countless miles of coral bleached by growing acidity and reanimate the countless species disappearing at an accelerating rate? And what is arrogance, after all, but making grand statements about nature without any knowledge whatever having to do with atmospheric and oceanographic sciences, geology, physics, chemistry or in fact, any damned thing but talking in tongues and burning witches?
"arrogant&naive2say man overpwers nature" tweets the idiot Palin.The painful irony of course, is not that man is part of nature and man is changing the world in many, many obvious and quantifiable ways. It's not just that we've disassembled the building blocks of matter, decoded the blueprints for life, unravelled the history of the universe -- the irony is that it may be arrogant to say that we can ever overpower stupidity, cupidity, stone age superstition and the crackpot politics that eats away at America like a cancer.
Well, of course if Sarah Palin only talked about subjects where she has real factual knowledge, that would be pretty much like a vow of silence.
ReplyDeleteThe Earth's atmosphere is about 20% free oxygen. Its original atmosphere billions of years ago contained zero free oxygen. All the free oxygen in the atmosphere has been generated by plant life -- mostly by the microscopic plant life of the pre-Cambrian period. If microscopic organisms can change the Earth's atmosphere so profoundly, human industrial technology certainly can.
Of course Palin probably thinks the Earth was created 6,000 years ago exactly like it is now, but actually oxygen is so reactive that it would probably disappear from the atmosphere in a lot less than 6,000 if the plant life weren't continually replenishing it. If it were true that life cannot affect the atmosphere, we wouldn't even be able to breathe any more.
Counting on God is even stupider. Even if you believe that a deity exists, there is ample evidence from history that that deity does not intervene to save humans from the effects of disasters.
Above comment is by me; hit wrong key when posting.
ReplyDelete"arrogant&naive2say man overpwers nature" tweets the idiot Palin.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how The Idiot Palin manages to breathe, let alone tweet. It's a mercy for her that breathing doesn't require intellectual thought.
And here's only one piece of hard evidence to refute her moronic statement:
"The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) or wild pigeon was a species of pigeon that was once common in North America. It lived in enormous migratory flocks - sometimes containing more than two billion birds - that could stretch one mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long across the sky, sometimes taking several hours to pass.
Some estimate that there were three billion to five billion passenger pigeons in the United States when Europeans arrived in North America. Others argue that the species had not been common in the Pre-Columbian period, but their numbers grew when devastation of the American Indian population by European diseases led to reduced competition for food.
The species went from being one of the most abundant birds in the world during the 19th century to extinction early in the 20th century. At the time, passenger pigeons had one of the largest groups or flocks of any animal, second only to the Rocky Mountain locust.
Some reduction in numbers occurred because of habitat loss when the Europeans started settling further inland. The primary factor emerged when pigeon meat was commercialized as a cheap food for slaves and the poor in the 19th century, resulting in hunting on a massive scale. There was a slow decline in their numbers between about 1800 and 1870, followed by a catastrophic decline between 1870 and 1890. Martha, thought to be the world's last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
In the 18th century, the passenger pigeon in Europe was known to the French as tourtre; but, in New France, the North American bird was called tourte. In modern French, the bird is known as the pigeon migrateur.
In Algonquian languages, it was called amimi by the Lenape and omiimii by the Ojibwe. The term passenger pigeon in English derives from the French word passager, meaning to pass by."
It's a hallmark of backward "thinking" that it relies mostly or entirely on unmediated recourse to ideas and attitudes several centuries out of date. Just as we have defenders of untrammeled capitalism who treat Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations as if it were written in 2006 instead of 1776, we are often treated (and "tweeted") to precritical foolishness flowing from a medieval sensibility with regard to nature. Once upon a time -- indeed until fairly recently in human history -- people thought of nature as a frightening place, one bristling with the predatory, desperate howls of hungry wolves blocking mountain passes through which one needed to travel, and so forth. Even though we have long since turned the tables on the wolves, bears, gators and sharks (they now need our understanding and protection if they are to survive), and even though we now traverse vast distances that would have been all but unthinkable for our ancient predecessors, that doesn't keep our latter-day medievals and flat-earthers from thinking of nature as one big bad wolf out to get us, something that must be tamed and conquered, chopped, shot and hacked into submission. An endless "resource" to be used without reflection or pity. They will continue to think this way until the last wolf is killed, and the last tree is chopped down.
ReplyDeleteI think the Easter Island experience looks a lot lie our future. People will survive, but what life will be like 500 years from now, I can't imagine.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that we're really getting dumber, but dumb people are being given more power by those whose riches depend on people making dumb decisions. I don't know whether Palin is as deluded as she sounds, but the people who truly love her and hang on her every twitter will be the end of everything.
I am skeptical as to exactly how things will change as a result of higher CO2 and other gasses, but as the population increases, we owe more and more to the status quo and we're not likely to like what happens, whatever it may be.
I won't hold my breath waiting for the country to figure out that the large majority staunchest supporters of the "ain't gonna happen" school have either no background in earth sciences or a vested interested in fossil fuel use.
I think our first priority should be to build a giant monument to Palin so that thousands of years from now, alien visitors may look upon her and her works and if not despair, then certainly at least giggle.
I'm reminded of the guest post I put up here a month or so ago from Dr. Joseph Suglia:
ReplyDeleteThere is discussion of the animals Sarah Palin enjoys slaughtering, the caribou and moose she takes pleasure in shooting, the salmon she skins and guts. A photograph of the Arctic Huntress beaming with the psychosexual thrill that comes from killing game, the bloodied corpse of a caribou under her heel. “I love meat... [I] especially love moose and caribou. I always remind people from outside our state that there’s plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals—right next to the mashed potatoes” [18-19]. Little commentary is required; what is said is clear. The only room for animals, even endangered animals, is inside of us.
This latest Tweet (coming from this source, I think of it more as a crow's crackling caw) is a sign of the dominionist theology at the heart of Sarah's world view. The Earth is meant to be eaten. Or, as phrased by the monopolist character in (of all things) the video game Alpha Centauri, "Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."
This is what comes of believing in Rapture.
"It's not that we're really getting dumber, but dumb people are being given more power by those whose riches depend on people making dumb decisions."
ReplyDeleteDing! Ding! Ding! We have a winnah!
At least when Cheney said "conservation is not the American way" you understood he was only looking to make money. Sarah's really looking to lay waste the world.
ReplyDeleteI'm far from being young, but I'm starting to think I may see my country become largely irrelevant when it comes to anything not enforceable by nuclear threat. Our refusal to plan for the future insures it.