Dear Log,
«But many have pointed out that there is still a long way to go. Gay marriage has become the touchstone social issue in the forthcoming elections, with both presidential candidates opposed and President George Bush saying he will support an amendment to change the constitution to define marriage as a heterosexual institution.»Pay no attention to the lack of universal health care in the US! Waste all energy fretting over why those wacky gays/fundamentalists can't just abandon/accept gay marriages!
I'm tired. The future was supposed to be full of great drugs and jetpacks and enlightened rapartee. Instead, we have President Napoleonjesus's live-action Risk; slummy Walmartian macro- and micro-economics; and Flash intros.
Somehow I'm not in a great mood to work on Pod::Simple::HTML. Maybe pancakes will make it all better.
Re:well, the future is shorter than you think
TorgoX on 2004-05-18T21:05:21
The one thing I'm unhappy with in Arctic ecologies is that for humans, there's nearly nothing to eat.Re:well, the future is shorter than you think
hfb on 2004-05-18T21:26:14
Except ourselves! Mmmm...tastes like chicken! I'm pretty certain that humans will be on the menu if a catastrophic climate change occurs. Aside from that...it'll be interesting to see if the reindeer survive and the polar bears, etc. If not, we can all go hunting and looting at the local abandoned grocery or prepare to migrate south.Re:well, the future is shorter than you think
jmm on 2004-05-18T22:34:16
Well, as the weather warms, various plants and animals that can survive/thrive in the new climate will migrate north. It would help if the warming trend is gradual enough that the migration can happen naturally, otherwise there will only be little man-created oases of transplanted life and they will have a hard time getting established. Of course, in a century or so, nature will catch up without human assistance.Re:well, the future is shorter than you think
hfb on 2004-05-18T23:41:30
Sure, will we put them on an Air Canada or SAS flight to the warmer climates? This weird weather may be many things, but gradual in terms of geologic and evolutionary time is not one of them. I'm rooting for the planet myself. If it were gradual, they wouldn't be calling it global warming. Prepare.Re:well, the future is shorter than you think
jmm on 2004-05-19T01:44:21
As long as the plants and animals can move with the changing weather, no evolution or geology is required. As the weather warms, the area that specific species are found will change, the boundary away from the equator will thrive and grow while the boundary closer to the equator will die off. Species with a narrow survival zone (relative to the rate of climate change) won't make the leap to the newly hospitable area fast enough, and species that have critical dependencies on other species that can't move fast enough will also fail, but some more tolerant species will move just fine. Air Canada on the other hand might not survive the month.Re:well, the future is shorter than you think
hfb on 2004-05-19T06:54:45
Yeah, they say that about every airline that declares chap 11 and still flies. I want to read what you've been reading so that I, too, can naively cling to the belief that this is all totally gradual and normal....all while the polar cap is melting in the space of a few years...Re:well, the future is shorter than you think
TorgoX on 2004-05-19T06:22:32
The problem, in my area, is one of soil types. If tomorrow Alaska suddenly had the same climate that the California central valley has today, it wouldn't have the same soil. Here in the Southeast Islands, it's basically trees growing in on rocks, or bogs. And further north or inland, thawed tundra may or may not be such a great medium for growing wheat or corn.On the other hand, it might be absolutely ideal for growing pot!
And/or the gene-splicers might actually prove useful.
I call dibs on the job of shoo-ing the Emperor crabs away from the aqua-soy! (With a water-whip.)
