she came over for my brothers birthday and since the house we reside in is in the process of being sold she wanted to take the grapevine and remove some "weeds" as they call it. I told them removing the plants will only cause selection towards the most tenacious plants and what is more cause a lessened water absorbtion and air filtering effect in the area and habitat loss especially to thistle butterflies and other small animals. they also wanted the Ivy shortened citing it growing into the shed would cause costly repairs to be made. I decided not to tell them that all that is earthly is transient because I think my catholic christian stepfather gets enough sass from my little brother and citing "god's plan" when you are not yourself a believer in god is somehow offensive. apparently they decide which life "belongs" in the garden. not 2 minutes after we finished horrible screams of a frog driven from his home in the undergrowth being stepped on and batted around by my crosseyed cat. it reminded me of the time my mother's dog while leashed ran out and bit down onto an unsuspecting bird. I told them this would happen, yet they did so anyway. my mother has through action and inaction caused death and injury to several wild vertebrate animals for no apparent reason. this is what happens if you do not listen to experts. to be fair the garden here does look a lot roomier now that half of it is not vines and ivy and assorted wild plants.
what should we talk about next? the time I saw a transgender deer why I sometimes wait to throw out fruit untill fruit flies have found it for "religious" reasons.
Well meaning environmentalists usually do much more harm than good. Let her remove the grapevine and the weeds. You may protect the property from a fire resulting from too much overgrowth. California has been following the advice of environmentalist groups for years resulting in massive forest fires and burning down the state. Jerry brown cuts fire fighter funding every year since 2011 in the millions and the money conveniently goes into the *cough* general fund. The Sierra club and other well meaning environmentalists have prevented logging companies from thinning old dry lumber. Also prevented the forestry dept from enacting control burns. Ironically environmentalists are doing more harm than good for the ecosystem in California and so is jerry brown. On the bright side we will have health care to pay for burn injuries. The bad thing is California will be a pile of ash.
Wildfires are a natural part of the cycle and is actually important to a healthy ecosystem and not necessarily harmful. We humans just don't like it when it threatens our buildings so we think it's a bad thing, but the reality is that this the kind of thing that's always been happening and will continue to happen as part of nature. Read more about Fire Ecology here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ecology Of course, with human involvement it's never quite clear anymore. For example, since we introduce so many new species, sometimes, wildfires end up allowing for new non-native/invasive species to become dominant and that changes the ecosystem. With that said tho, I think too many think that status quo or equilibrium is what the environment should be at (environmentalist and non-environmentalists are both guilty of this), when the reality is that there is often a lot of fluctuations. In many cases, citing that specific actions are net good/bad is quite a reach and is usually surface level thinking, as in most cases it's just better or worse from a limited short-term human perspective but it's much harder to say it's good/bad for the planet in the long run.
while wildfires are a thing that happen in nature areas you seem qutte unaware as to the level of urbanization I reside in. given the climate, local land conditions and these other factors it is more likely that an electrical fire starting 4 houses to the right of me would spread here burning through the building rather than cross over stone slabs with very not dry plants growing over them. ( to the right because left of my house is a brick road.) However you and @Sokolov are both correct, for a time Sequoia was under threath of eventual extinction because humans stopped forest fires which meant new sequoia did not have room to sprout. your claim that there have been more forrest fires under the advice from ecologists is correct. sadly the scope of the fires often becomes larger than is desired which I atribute to the local climate and weather conditions and the tendency of fire to grow out of control, of course often now it is humans who set fires by accident or mistake rather than a lightning strike or heat accumulating to an ignition point somewhere. I have to agree with Sokolov that management and changes of and to natural resources is neither good nor bad unless you see from a strictly human perspective, and often a limited human perspective. @profhulk I cannot argue your opinion that enviromentalists do more harm than good, it would be terribly difficult to calculate the cost/benefits. can I get you to agree that fire is harmfull to humans but periodically beneficial to some species and ecologies? and perhaps that the main problem would be the fires being lit by humans or going out of control too often rather than occasional controlled natural fires? Naturally we all have a pro-human bias. that is fine. but surely you cannot deny that what for the fisherman is a disaster is for the fish a miracle? Anyways anyone else have good stories or which of the aformentioned in the second post should I tell you about?
gressen. you DO realize sok just put a big fat torpedo through the hull of climate change alarmists with that post, right?
With Climate Change concerns, there are 2 primary things people are concerned about when they discuss it: Something seems to be Disrupting Natural Cycles: This means that, unlike a situation in which natural cycles are expected (such as the wildfires), human activity is causing a shift that goes beyond the natural cycle. This is incredibly hard to determine, of course, but people are trying to understand whether it's true or not. Based on what we know currently, it certainly seems like SOMETHING is different right now - whether it's natural or not is somewhat muddier. The trend appears to be taking us away from natural fluctuations to a different trend line which is what is concerning. Climate Change is Going to Harm Humans: Regardless of the cause, the major concern, from a human perspective, is that the effects of climate change is going to be bad for humans - from rising oceans, to changing weather patterns such as drought, to increased surface temperatures - all of these things are generally seen as bad for humans. So what does this mean? First, we want to know if this is natural or not - and pretending that nothing is happening isn't going to help us in understanding it. Second, no matter WHY it is happening, humans should be preparing for this problem. So no, I didn't "put a big fat torpedo" anywhere. You just seem to lack the ability to think beyond the surface of an issue.
sorry sok, but climate change alarmists are guilty of the very thing you are criticizing. feel free to use the term 'surface thinking' in your reply.
sorry ragic but you are still not making good arguments backed up by spiderman. by which I mean evidence but I am also watching spiderman and had written all but the N before I realised what I was doing and that mistake is too good to not share. first tell us which alarmist, what arguments, and why they are wrong.
I mean, there are certainly valid arguments to be had about the scale, source and the outcome of climate change. No one is suggesting those aren't valid to be discussed. My point was simply that my statements about equilibrium and fluctuations were not intended to be a commentary on climate change debate, and in fact, the climate change proponents would state it's exactly the fact that they see climate change as potential UNNATURAL impact that is not following NORMAL fluctuation patterns at a SIGNIFICANT SCALE that they are "alarmed." It's why climate change proponent talks about all kinds of potential impacts and there are actually many different camps as to the extent of the issue and what can be done about it, and why they continue to update/adjust models to try and figure out what is happening - because they recognize it's a complex issue with all kinds of potential inputs and impacts. This is completely unlike the instances that I am criticizing where people take the base action that occurs naturally (naturally occurring wildfires) and the outcome (stuff is burned) and not going any further to understand anything else and assuming it must always be bad because stuff gets burned. Now, it's certainly possible that climate change proponents are wrong and maybe in the long-run fighting climate change is bad for the planet, but that's not the same as being unaware of or ignoring natural fluctuations. Ironically, it is the deniers who use the "pause" as evidence against climate change and such that is guilty of what I am arguing - they cherry pick specific data points in a short-time scale and point to a brief period of equilibrium as "proof" of stability while ignoring everything else that is happening: While ignoring the bigger picture that within the fluctuations we see an overall trend: Then we have the 'Doomsday' Seed Vault thawing from deep permafrost: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-norway-vault-idUSKCN18G0QH The northwest passage having been open almost every year since 2006: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/northwest-passage-clear-ice-again-2016 ~ Maybe the "pause" continues (or eventually declines even), in which case I will be pretty pleased, but until then, I reserve the right to be "alarmed" by a significant deviation from recent historical trends. Either way, WHY EVER the changes are happening and WHATEVER the changes actually are, I think we should at least consider the possibility that it is happening and be prepared to deal with the consequences, if any, that might arise.
besides that being weather caused by the normal effects of sunshine without having measured and written down the temperatures your anecdote is not backed up by data and in turn it is not backing up anything.
I had an MRI scan today, it was quite a stunning experience. I do not know why they gave me headphones with music, couldn't hear it through the earplugs and over the sound of the machine. felt weird at first and felt stunned and funky afterwards but that wore off quick. better than having an echo made of my neck/cheek though, while the sound of that is just out of reach I got quite a headache afterwards in the back of my head from the sound hitting there.
