Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I think you'll need several lifetimes to display that virtue.

If only you knew how patient I am in this one Eric...

Originally Posted by Copperfield

If only you knew how patient I am in this one Eric...

I am not so patient. We are ruining the planet, and need to switch our energy use NOW. Patience is not a virtue in this case; sorry!

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I am not so patient. We are ruining the planet, and need to switch our energy use NOW. Patience is not a virtue in this case; sorry!

Hardly. We are ruining your habitat. It's a very important distinction to make. The planet will be here for a long time after the universe delivers our coup de grace and we become coal in the furnaces of nature's "next big thing." The planet does not want or need our help.

Your concern for the planet is the same fear of being personally inconvenienced as everyone else. It's not the least bit impressive or moving. You have neither knowledge, nor respect for nature around you or the universe as a whole.

Hell you don't even leave your state which I might add, is largely the result of humans altering your local biosphere. Without bending the rivers to your will to bring you water, you would likely be shacking up with us lesser beings who pick more temperate zones to live in. And wouldn't that be an uncomfortable dinner table...

No, you're just a shut-in worried that you might have to motivate your ass out of wonderland some day and start trading with the "barbarians" outside the gates.

Originally Posted by Copperfield

Hardly. We are ruining your habitat. It's a very important distinction to make. The planet will be here for a long time after the universe delivers our coup de grace and we become coal in the furnaces of nature's "next big thing." The planet does not want or need our help.

Your concern for the planet is the same fear of being personally inconvenienced as everyone else. It's not the least bit impressive or moving. You have neither knowledge, nor respect for nature around you or the universe as a whole.

Hell you don't even leave your state which I might add, is largely the result of humans altering your local biosphere. Without bending the rivers to your will to bring you water, you would likely be shacking up with us lesser beings who pick more temperate zones to live in. And wouldn't that be an uncomfortable dinner table...

No, you're just a shut-in worried that you might have to motivate your ass out of wonderland some day and start trading with the "barbarians" outside the gates.

Thanks for the scolding. I needed that.

Actually, it's not we humans who are suffering and dying the most from global warming. We are still proliferating. Obviously, it is the other species who are dying off; more than at any time by far in the Earth's history. That is just a fact, no matter how patient you are.

Not with my support, do they bend the CA rivers to human will.

Hell, not only do I never leave my state, I hardly even leave my city now! Travelling is too tough on the biopshere.

I don't need you barbarians. Lots of cool people still here! (I think). But people are fine, whoever and wherever they are. We are all God's chillin'

But we could use some chillin' now....

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Actually, it's not we humans who are suffering and dying the most from global warming. We are still proliferating. Obviously, it is the other species who are dying off; more than at any time by far in the Earth's history. That is just a fact, no matter how patient you are.

So? Extinctionary pressure is one of the biggest drivers of evolution. Ask any biologist and they will tell you, extinction events promote rapid evolution and speciation. These events are necessary and do in fact improve the long-term health of the biosphere. Nature is not concerned with cause and effect. It doesn't care if extinction is caused by volcano or comet or climate change (man-made or otherwise).

You would not be here without these events, which paved the way for you to go from mole to monkey to almost-not-monkey. It is simply the process of life which happens to be here now but will not be here forever.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Not with my support, do they bend the CA rivers to human will.

Really? You pay the taxes. You help bend the rivers.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Hell, not only do I never leave my state, I hardly even leave my city now! Travelling is too tough on the biosphere.

Oh I know. Like most "environmentalists" you think the wilderness is something you ogle on vacation. You have no connection with nature. You just want to consume it for your own comfort and amusement.

Originally Posted by Copperfield

Oh I know. Like most "environmentalists" you think the wilderness is something you ogle on vacation. You have no connection with nature. You just want to consume it for your own comfort and amusement.

Plus he thinks us folks in the Midwest are to "provincial" to interest his uber-refined mind.

Originally Posted by Copperfield

So? Extinctionary pressure is one of the biggest drivers of evolution. Ask any biologist and they will tell you, extinction events promote rapid evolution and speciation. These events are necessary and do in fact improve the long-term health of the biosphere. Nature is not concerned with cause and effect. It doesn't care if extinction is caused by volcano or comet or climate change (man-made or otherwise).

You would not be here without these events, which paved the way for you to go from mole to monkey to almost-not-monkey. It is simply the process of life which happens to be here now but will not be here forever.



Really? You pay the taxes. You help bend the rivers.



Oh I know. Like most "environmentalists" you think the wilderness is something you ogle on vacation. You have no connection with nature. You just want to consume it for your own comfort and amusement.

Did he say that? Did he even indicate that?

I can't speak for him. I know why I'm an environmentalist. It's because my parents raised me that, if you mess up your room, you clean it up, and if you make it uninhabitable, you clean it up NOW, and no backtalk.

Not to mention I have grandchildren and don't think they'll be seeing a better world if we mess up ours beyond redemption, and spend all the accumulated savings (in this case, the concentrated energy of fossil fuels) without leaving anything for them. I'd rather they didn't grow up as Mad Max (or Maxine), thank you.

Originally Posted by Odin

Plus he thinks us folks in the Midwest are to "provincial" to interest his uber-refined mind.

Again, did he say that?

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Again, did he say that?

This might be best understood as a symptom of values lock. If one's values force rejection of the evidence of climate change one also has to demonize those that accept the evidence. Something has to be wrong with their thinking. This results in the creation of strawman values, the notion that 'all environmentalists think X' when in fact most environmentalists don't. I would also expect an inability to communicate, an inability to listen to what an environmentalist is actually saying. Humans have an amazing ability not to hear something that would force values change.

This problem is hardly unique to the global warming issue. It can be seen in many political and religious discussions where one or both sides are unwilling to truly and objectively question their base values.

Originally Posted by The Rani

He sure as hell did!

Yup, I was deeply offended by that.

Oh. Okay. I tend to read day by day and forget some things - not ideologically based things, either. Just plain old brain farts.

Pat, asleep in the provincial heartland city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, land of the flea and the home of the plague.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Bob got it completely backwards about who has the "values lock" in this case.

That's just his chronic misdirected self-diagnosis. No need to take it personally. What was the word the shrinks used for it back in the day? Transference? Something like that?

Originally Posted by The Rani

If you are a midwesterner, and a bigoted Californian repeatedly sneers at the heartland, you tend not to forget it.
Bob got it completely backwards about who has the "values lock" in this case.

Ah. New Mexico makes jokes on itself, as note my quote below. We know we're the backwoods, and the majority-Hispanic backwoods at that. Our state magazine has a column entitled "One of our 50 is missing," about outsiders who treat us like a foreign country, or maps that show Arizona adjoining Texas. We don't even pretend to be the core of the country. That's the difference.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Ah. New Mexico makes jokes on itself, as note my quote below. We know we're the backwoods, and the majority-Hispanic backwoods at that. Our state magazine has a column entitled "One of our 50 is missing," about outsiders who treat us like a foreign country, or maps that show Arizona adjoining Texas. We don't even pretend to be the core of the country. That's the difference.

Try being from Alaska, like my husband, as far maps go. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who really think Alaska is located off the coast of California. But like those in New Mexico, Alaskans don't really care either. They would rather people couldn't find them anyway.

Originally Posted by The Rani

If you are a midwesterner, and a bigoted Californian repeatedly sneers at the heartland, you tend not to forget it.
Bob got it completely backwards about who has the "values lock" in this case.

It's not a big deal to me. Eric's right about the environmental issues even if he is parochial about California.

He still has an open invitation from me to visit Madison.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

This might be best understood as a symptom of values lock. If one's values force rejection of the evidence of climate change one also has to demonize those that accept the evidence. Something has to be wrong with their thinking. This results in the creation of strawman values, the notion that 'all environmentalists think X' when in fact most environmentalists don't. I would also expect an inability to communicate, an inability to listen to what an environmentalist is actually saying. Humans have an amazing ability not to hear something that would force values change.

This problem is hardly unique to the global warming issue. It can be seen in many political and religious discussions where one or both sides are unwilling to truly and objectively question their base values.

Bob, you very rarely post anymore, but when you do, I usually find it of value. This one included. Much wisdom.

Originally Posted by The Rani

The funny thing is that Eric could expand his horizons by simply driving a couple of hours and visiting the central valley.

I still remember driving from SF into the central valley a couple of years ago. There were banners on the bridge in Berkeley across I80 from truthers who wanted the "truth" about 9/11. Then I get into the central valley on I5. Instead of Priuses everywhere, there were pickup trucks with "Real men eat beef" bumper stickers. Later there was a giant billboard on I5 - "Show us the birth certificate". It really is a different world.

James50

Ya know, Eric is a good guy, who like all of us, might have a misconception of us who live in the midwest. Instead of us being offended, why not ask him where and how he gets this idea about Mid-Westerners? Maybe it's a teachable moment.

Originally Posted by The Rani

I think you mean projection, and are you talking about Eric or Bob?

I wasn't thinking about Eric when I wrote it, but I guess maybe it could apply to him, too.

Also

Originally Posted by Deb C

Ya know, Eric is a good guy, who like all of us, might have a misconception of us who live in the midwest. Instead of us being offended, why not ask him where and how he gets this idea about Mid-Westerners? Maybe it's a teachable moment.

We've gone through this with him before. He ultimately thinks that voting patterns are sufficiently descriptive of people to alleviate the need to actually be among and around them.

It's not something I consider to be more than a venial personal flaw, though. He can't help the fact that he's a Californian. That's a pretty heavy yoke around his neck.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I wasn't thinking about Eric when I wrote it, but I guess maybe it could apply to him, too.

Also
We've gone through this with him before. He ultimately thinks that voting patterns are sufficiently descriptive of people to alleviate the need to actually be among and around them.

It's not something I consider to be more than a venial personal flaw, though. He can't help the fact that he's a Californian. That's a pretty heavy yoke around his neck.

Clearing throat here. Justin, can you see where you may have done the same thing, saying about him being a Californian, as you accuse him about his comment in regards to midwesterners? We are all guilty and we are all innocent.

Working my 12 step program here. I mean, I did a similar thing with David K..

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

This might be best understood as a symptom of values lock. If one's values force rejection of the evidence of climate change one also has to demonize those that accept the evidence. Something has to be wrong with their thinking. This results in the creation of strawman values, the notion that 'all environmentalists think X' when in fact most environmentalists don't. I would also expect an inability to communicate, an inability to listen to what an environmentalist is actually saying. Humans have an amazing ability not to hear something that would force values change.

This problem is hardly unique to the global warming issue. It can be seen in many political and religious discussions where one or both sides are unwilling to truly and objectively question their base values.

And people can change their minds on different issues. I know I have. But it wasn't because of someone convinced me otherwise. It came from the realization of figuring it out on my own. Lecturing people really doesn't work. Usually it has the opposite the effect and makes them even more determined in their own beliefs.

I can remember when the topic of global warming started coming up years and years ago. I had a kind of "whatever. I'm not seeing it" attitude toward the whole thing. I figured people who were ranting on and on about it were just being alarmist or they had some sort other agenda in trying to persuade the rest of us that this was true. So I just kind of tuned out the rhetoric.

But in more recent years I've come to understand that it is real. But not because someone preached to me. It was because I just started really paying attention to what is happening around me or in areas of the world. The polar ice caps really are melting. There is no denying that. And the earth's temperature has gone up a 1/2 degree in a certain of years. (I can't remember what that number is, but I know it's been within my lifetime.) So the evidence speaks for itself and I can no longer just shrug it off. Plus I do believe we are seeing more continuous severe weather patterns in the past few years that what we have had in the past. They don't seem to be isolated events like we have had in the past when we had more sporadic severe storms years or the occasional year when different areas suffered from droughts and floods. These things are happening consistently all over the world in recent years. So whether global warming is man made or the earth is changing on it's own, I do now believe it's happening.

As for people who don't want to believe there is global warming, that's fine. I'm not going to argue with them because I know nothing I can say will that change their minds anyway. This, as with many things in life, sometimes people have to just figure it out for themselves.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Ah. New Mexico makes jokes on itself, as note my quote below. We know we're the backwoods, and the majority-Hispanic backwoods at that. Our state magazine has a column entitled "One of our 50 is missing," about outsiders who treat us like a foreign country, or maps that show Arizona adjoining Texas. We don't even pretend to be the core of the country. That's the difference.

But you guys have beautiful landscapes!

Originally Posted by Deb C

Ya know, Eric is a good guy, who like all of us, might have a misconception of us who live in the midwest. Instead of us being offended, why not ask him where and how he gets this idea about Mid-Westerners? Maybe it's a teachable moment.

I tried that already, Deb. Didn't work.

I wonder if the Hundreth Monkey Theory can apply to our influencing one another on various issues?

http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/monkey.html

All I know is that being around people with different views has had a tendency to affect my own.

Originally Posted by Odin

But you guys have beautiful landscapes!

Those golden Aspens in the Fall are amazing.