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Comment by mmaro | Hacker News Reader

Let's try to take apart this muck, which I seem to have read a hundred times before:

> we’re becoming disconnected from nature and that we are on a precipice.

Why is it bad to be disconnected from nature? What's wrong with going in the opposite direction towards increased artificiality, given that our very artificial infrastructure keeps us alive?

> take control over our stewardship of our planet / the planet [...] will be in significant danger

What the heck does that actually mean? Can we just admit that these statements are religious, but wrapped in non-religious language?

> 70% of species will be extinct by the end of this century if we do nothing due to the rise of world temperatures

I wish it were as fashionable to care about runaway AIs, nuclear attacks, geologic events, etc.

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You're not worried the world seems to be shifting under our feet because of us simply doing what it takes to live?

If you were a programmer adding an extra feature to an existing system, and after a few days work you realize that 90% of the system has been modified by you in some way or another, won't you be alarmed?

In 200 years, many species have been driven to extinction by our activities, entire forests were chopped away, and countries are now sinking due to rising ocean levels "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldives, and you're still not worried?

It's fine to be "disconnected from nature", as long as everything can keep going the same way, but I don't think they can. Our own artificial infrastructure is like a ponzi scheme, requiring ever increasing amounts of resources to support it. Until you can find a way that it'll support itself without killing everything around it (I'm not exaggerating, your roof is a desert.), it is not sustainable.

I didn't say I'm not worried, I just think it's counterproductive to promote environmentalism in emotional ways. If people think of nearly everything we do as bad, they'll make decisions based on good intentions instead of rational analysis.

I don't understand your analogy. Programs are human constructs. The Earth is a chaotic system, with or without us.

Do you have any evidence for our infrastructure being a ponzi scheme? (I think it would be hard to find, given that this same infrastructure will probably soon give us fusion power).

FYI: deserts are defined by the amount of rainfall they receive, not by whether they have plants or not.

Sorry but the Maldives is not sinking. They mustn't be too concerned, having just built a new runway. There are several trees that exist just inches above the high tide mark which are at least 50-100 years old.

There has been erosion in the Maldives due to changes in use, but erosion != sea level rise.

I also challenge anyone to nominate 1 single species made extinct in the past 50 years as a result of climate change. Note that you must be able to attribute the sole or overwhelming cause of extinction to a change in the average temperature, and not through habitat loss, local pollution, overhunting or any other myriad of ways that humans wipe out species.

edit:typo seal->sea

I for one would be happy to see more seals in the Maldives ;-)

yes, those pesky seal level rises. Fixed now:)

  habitat loss, local pollution, overhunting or any other 
  myriad of ways that humans wipe out species.

Why not? I was challenging your statement:

  Why is it bad to be disconnected from nature? What's wrong 
  with going in the opposite direction towards increased 
  artificiality, given that our very artificial 
  infrastructure keeps us alive?

Bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_threats_to_the_Gr... is an example of destruction of environment around us as we keep doing what we're doing.

I don't feel the need to count the species that became extinct due to habitat loss, local pollution, overhunting or any other myriad of ways that humans wipe out species.

Keep doing what we're doing and we will screw ourselves, global warming or not.

What the heck does that actually mean? Can we just admit that these statements are religious, but wrapped in non-religious language?

It's actually the reverse. The religious view is God gave us the Earth as a kind of fruit to be plucked. Since we go on to live in Heaven for eternity the stewardship of the Earth is sorta in the hands of the Aethists and non-believers...

That's an extremely narrow, Judaeo-Christian view of religion.

You're right. But I wanted to reply on the same level as the OP.

I thought the OP's point was that phrases like "taking control over our stewardship of the planet" was a religious statement in that the only reason the concepts in it have any grounding is through the faith of the person saying them. That's not religion-specific.

I don't follow you on the jump from unfounded to religious. Not every statement which does not include a scientific footnote is religious in nature.

We're drifting into semantics here, but it boils down to whether you have to take something on faith or not. Taking anything without a "scientific footnote" as true relies on belief, because it cannot rely on proof. That makes it an article of faith, which is a synonym for religion in the sense I believe the OP used it.

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