51–60 of 63 posts
Yet let’s ‘contextualize’ the darkness of the Renaissance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if you've seen the latest, but Greenland just had record ice gain during the middle of the ordinary melt season, after an already substantially strong year (and 3 out of the last 4 years have seen substantial gains): http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/ we are thousands of years away from polar melting, if ever. We have less war than they did prior to the industrial revolution. Prior to…
And yet it's glaciers have receded over the past 40 years (and the distance covered is a very deceptive view of total amount of ice lost and you'll find the same everywhere else. 1°C can mean a ton for coral reefs or algae bloom. 1°C can mean a lot for methane retention in permafrost. 1°C has a lot of knock on effects.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the catch is not well put, it’s not going to be just 1C hotter which in my oppinion is off, but the erosion of the coastlines, the near total melting of polar glaciers round, massive rise in sea levels, mass extinctions of many species, chaos and war amongst the remaining people for the diminishing resources, etcetera. All these for technology and comfort at the hands of humans with enormous costs for everything…
I don't know if you've seen the latest, but Greenland just had record ice gain during the middle of the ordinary melt season, after an already substantially strong year (and 3 out of the last 4 years have seen substantial gains): http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/ we are thousands of years away from polar melting, if ever. We have less war than they did prior to the industrial revolution. Prior to…
I'm not against technology, I am on the internet too, I have electricity, running water and all the modern facilities and I admit it is quite amazing for us to be living with all these but there is a cost to these and i'm not afraid to feel responsible and ready to scale back.
Aside from carbon emissions - which some say it's unavoidable and I halfway agree - we have polluted the planet and spread our plastic things everywhere. Despite knowing this we are still using plastic and discard it with no care like there is no tomorrow. Think about the next generation. Do you have children or grandchildren?
I've been kind of wondering if we will start to see an increase in anti-enlightenment arguments given the issues we face with no clear way out. Given climate change for example, was the industrial revolution a mistake? If it was an inevitable consequence of the enlightenment era, then was that a mistake? Too early to tell, but if we end up destroying ourselves I guess the answer would have to be "yes", but it's a har…
I'll take climate change for modern medicine and technology. I think any anti-enlightment thinkers are really need to understand what life was like before that.
I've been kind of wondering if we will start to see an increase in anti-enlightenment arguments given the issues we face with no clear way out. Given climate change for example, was the industrial revolution a mistake? If it was an inevitable consequence of the enlightenment era, then was that a mistake? Too early to tell, but if we end up destroying ourselves I guess the answer would have to be "yes", but it's a har…
But the mercantalism, I think, was precipitated by the plague years and the resulting labor shortages. These are often seen as a good since they produced wage increases. But they also motivated development of stronger controls over the person - the nation is tied to the individual via legible identity as a wage earner, rather than as a member of the village, and slavery thus reemerges as a way of shifting around the accounting by denying identity. And so by the 1600's, you have press gangs kidnapping people, and debtors becoming indentured servants, as well as the slave trade.
In this light, this whole thing of civilization has been a seesaw of problems since antiquity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll take climate change for modern medicine and technology. I think any anti-enlightment thinkers are really need to understand what life was like before that.
The concern is that climate change will also remove modern medicine and technology (and food, and water) for a huge number of people.
Pick your path of suffering or something.
Which I guess is why the other poster winds the clock back before the industrial revolution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet it's glaciers have receded over the past 40 years (and the distance covered is a very deceptive view of total amount of ice lost and you'll find the same everywhere else. 1°C can mean a ton for coral reefs or algae bloom. 1°C can mean a lot for methane retention in permafrost. 1°C has a lot of knock on effects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF7M-KzjrXY
I've been kind of wondering if we will start to see an increase in anti-enlightenment arguments given the issues we face with no clear way out. Given climate change for example, was the industrial revolution a mistake? If it was an inevitable consequence of the enlightenment era, then was that a mistake? Too early to tell, but if we end up destroying ourselves I guess the answer would have to be "yes", but it's a har…
Lack of progress doesn't make it more sustainable. Very early farming was a semi-sedetary "slash and burn" the forrest and then relocate once the soil is depleted and let the forrest reclaim their abandoned buildings while they go to despoil someplace else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A line of great rhetorical effect but not necessarily great logical worth. First of all if he is correct that the Swiss had 500 years of democracy and peace then it follows that they produced a working democratic model which at the time was pretty remarkable. However being Harry Lime it is no surprise that he is not correct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Switzerland Second of all I don't know what populatio…
Nor did the Swiss invent the cuckoo clock - more likely Bavarian.