Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

nlightn, George Carlin is good, but with his environmental gigs he's either missed the plot, or he's just doing comedy which would be great. However in
that one he, for mine, he did those genuinely keen on providing a cleaner atmosphere for humans, and clean waterways, and drinking water a disservice.

'Saving the planet' surely should be seen as saying 'let's do as good a job as we can to help our planet to maintain it's human-friendly nature.'

One question here, ooi, re your "the fact that we, us human types, are on the planet means nothing. we are guests yet we act like the creators of the planet."

to me taken literally is nonsensical on a number of fronts as, for one, it sure means more than nothing to us that we
are here. However i know you mean something like it means nothing relative to the existence of the planet itself.

I know you mean that Does that mean you are in agreement with Trump that the EPA should be abolished?

--

That said, some of the articles looked at since seeing your post.

Is Consciousness a Property of Everything in the Universe?

Panpsychism implausibly claims that consciousness belongs to everything.

Paul Thagard Ph.D. Posted Jan 20, 2014

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-thought/201401/is-consciousness-property-everything-in-the-universe

-

Gaia theory: is it science yet?

February 12, 2012 6.31am EST

https://theconversation.com/gaia-theory-is-it-science-yet-4901

--

Earth’s holy fool?

Some scientists think that James Lovelock’s Gaia theory is nuts, but the public love it. Could both sides be right?

Michael Ruse

is director of history and philosophy of science at Florida State University. He is writing Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know.

3,900 words

Edited by Brigid Hains

The inventor James Lovelock was born in England in 1919. Early during the Second World War, armed with a degree in chemistry, he went to work for the British government on a variety of projects on the borderline between the physical and the biological sciences. He had an incredible ability to make gadgets from piles of old junk, often surplus to the military effort, and this continued after the war. His greatest triumph was to invent the electron capture detector, an instrument so accurate that if one spilt a solvent on a rag in Japan, one could detect it in Britain a week later. Naturally, a man with such talents attracted attention. Lovelock went freelance and in the early 1960s he was often in California aiding one of his clients, the American space agency NASA, which was just then trying to detect if there was life on Mars.

Lovelock approached the problem indirectly, arguing that there was no need to send rockets to the red planet, but this wasn’t necessarily a welcome conclusion for those invested in space travel. He argued that simply looking at the atmospheric composition of a planet would enable us to know whether that planet was likely to support life. Mars, Lovelock said, had no life, but Earth obviously was very different. This led to his great insight. The Earth is not just teeming with life. The Earth, in some sense, is life. Earth is an organism!

In the mid-1960s, Lovelock returned to the somewhat isolated village in the south of England, where he lived, undisturbed, with his family. Here he talked things over with his one close friend, the novelist William Golding, a man who likewise sought solitude, especially since the success of his first novel, The Lord of the Flies (1954). It was Golding who gave a name to Lovelock’s insight, suggesting that it be called Gaia, after the ancient Greek goddess of Earth. But Golding did more than just give the idea a name. For the next few years, as Lovelock extended his thinking on the subject, Golding encouraged and helped the scientist to explore his hypothesis. This came naturally. Since his youth, Golding had been an enthusiast for the thinking of the polymath and mystic Rudolf Steiner. Steiner, who is best known today as the founder of the Waldorf (or Steiner) school system, which emphasises the role of the imagination in learning, had some very odd ideas (many derived from the theosophists) about heavenly spirits and reincarnation, all bound up with an idealistic philosophy that sees life throbbing everywhere. Hence, absolutely central to Steiner’s thought, was the view that Earth is living, it is an organism.

Lovelock did send one of his sons to a Steiner school, apparently without embracing the metaphysics of the Steiner system.

More - https://aeon.co/essays/gaia-why-some-scientists-think-it-s-a-nonsensical-fantasy

-

The Gaia guy: how James Lovelock struggled to be taken seriously

By Steven Poole 16 May 2014

Nowadays, the area of study called “earth systems science” uses many ideas originally championed by Lovelock, though people are still allergic to the name Gaia.

https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2014/05/gaia-guy-how-james-lovelock-struggled-be-taken-seriously


Perfect harmony

Ridiculed by some, Gaia theory - the idea that all living and non-living components on earth work together to promote life - is gaining support

Kate Ravilious @katerav

Mon 28 Apr 2008 09.01 AEST
First published on Mon 28 Apr 2008 09.01 AEST

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/apr/28/scienceofclimatechange.biodiversity

--

Finally, on your "have been occurring for before time on this planet." two things.

When was before time? Perhaps you meant before "real time."

as against Hawking's "imaginary time."

Finally, finally, are you a humanly-induced global warming denier? Or is it that you just see the scientific communities' work on it, and say stuff
as regulated logging and preservation of unlogged areas, as a waste of time. in that the planet will look after us irregardless of what we do?