Al Gore

[snagged in outlet 3]

I burn fossil fuel to drive my paper and carboard to the recycling center.  Am I really doing any good.  Reports say 80% of recycling ends up in the dump anyway.  Which is going to increase because China quit buying our trash.  The steady stream of plastics out of our households is unprecedented.  I try but it doesn't seem to make a difference. 

[liphunter]

I am on

32 minutes ago, Quillback said:

Well it's not so much pollution as it is population growth, as recently as 1950 there were 2 billion people on this planet, now there are 7.5 billion and growing.  US population grows by 2 million per year.  The base problem is population growth, people have to eat and use water.  That many people on this planet, there will always be "pollution".  We can certainly mitigate the effects to some degree, but if population growth is not addressed, then we're going to have to face the consequences.  

It's been a long held belief by the science community that this plant could comfortably handle 4 billion people. As you said, we are at 7.5  and growing rapidly. Not here to argue any point. This is just my understanding as I have read and understood things. Like many, I have no answers. But population seems to be a problem. I had a friend say something to me one time when we discussing natural disasters. It gave me food for thought. Would it be a natural disaster if nobody was there. Just mother earth doing her thing...

[ness]

3 hours ago, Terrierman said:

Weather =/= climate.  Say that to yourself over and over.

Heard something the other day that stuck: Climate is like personality, weather is like mood. 

Hit zero this morning at my house. Yesterday was about 10 degrees warmer, but the wind was brutal. 

 

[Jerry Rapp]

this has been around a while, but is worth reading again........

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for ...the environment.
The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

The older lady said that she was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain:
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.
We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.
Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a r azor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the"green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart posterior young person.

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off... Especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartass who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.

[snagged in outlet 3]

Love it, Jerry! 

I was in NYC a year and a half ago in the winter.  We drove by Central Park during the trip.  all of the trees were covered in hundreds of plastic grocery bags blowing in the wind.  I made a comment about them and my customer who livered there said: "yeah, best thing about summer is it hides all of our trash"

[fishinwrench]

Even though I grew up in a fairly small to mediocre sized town I remember in the early-mid '70s there was trash EVERYWHERE.  

Old stoves, washing machines, and refrigerator's littered the creeks and ditches.  Tires, old cars, rolls of fencing, busted farm implements, piles of shingles..... I'm talking BIG trash.

The scattered smattering of lightweight paper and plastic you see nowadays can't even hold a candle to how trashed this country was back then.   

[Gavin]

The trash problem has gotten allot better in the western world,  it it is horrible in India & Asia. Those folks just don’t care.

[Mark]

Funny stuff, Jerry! Collecting soda bottles was every kids first job - 2 cents, then 3 cents, then a nickel before aluminum cans too over.

fishinwrench, you are correct, too, I remember all the trash in towns, shooting rats at the city dump, sewage running down the gullies to the creek, the chemicals we would dump anywhere, every factory I worked in back in the day had no regard for disposing of waste.

liphunter - exactly right too. Too darn many people, and I believe I've read that the world pop will double by 2050. I believe Mother Nature will eventually have enough, and something like a worldwide pandemic is coming that will kill millions or billions, if nukes don't take care of it first. Don't think I will be around though.

Hate to sound like a doomsdayer, but I do wonder what this planet will look like in 100 years, and if man don't change, it won't be pretty.

[Dutch]

wow!   And to think all I was trying to do it inject a little levity into an otherwise cold and boring day.

[Terrierman]

Sorry Dutch, there is not one thing funny about global warming and especially global warming deniers like the OP seemed to be.