At the BBC: Should “killing nature” be a crime? Rob Sheldon responds

_{Denyse O'Leary

November 11, 2020

Climate change, Intelligent Design}

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Hey, we kill nature every day just by being alive. Anyway,

Ecocide – which literally means “killing the environment” – is an idea that seems both a highly radical and, campaigners claim, a reasonable one. The theory is that no one should go unpunished for destroying the natural world. Campaigners believe the crime should come under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which can currently prosecute just four crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.
Sophie Yeo, “Ecocide: Should killing nature be a crime?” at BBC

Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon writes to say,

–

The Great Plains with their varied grasses and enormous herds of buffalo, were managed for 10 millennia by humans, who made sure that the aggressive trees did not take over by burning the Plains every year. It recycled the nutrients, and kept the buffalo happy.

The California Indians, on the other hand, lived off the oak forests and did the same for the oak trees, making sure that their environment did not burn up in the annual wildfire season.
The Sahel is greening as humans plant drought-tolerant grasses to stabilize the sand dunes. Dunes naturally move with the wind and often increase the area of the sand-desert. Goats and sheep can easily destabilize this relationship if allowed to multiply unchecked. The mere existence of an ecosystem is in a large part due to humans.

Humans have been part of the ecosystem for not just centuries, but for millennia. And if we are allowed to go back a few millennia, then whose ecosystem is the privileged one–the ice age, the Holocene, the El Nino or La Nina climate? Pretending that we can extract humans out of the ecosystem to find its “pristine” condition is like letting whitetail deer devastate the young timber. You know the deer population is going to crash the next year. There is no “pristine” state, unless you mean a chaotic state of population explosions and crashes. And how is that cyclic ecosystem any the better for it?

The contribution of humans to ecosystems is stability. And we get to choose what that stable state will look like. Nature is too chaotic to tell us. Even if we were to ask.

—

Rob Sheldon is the author of Genesis: The Long Ascent and The Long Ascent, Volume II .

If killing nature is a crime, the punishment, of course, is annihilation of ourselves — as that would be the result if the situation were serious.

Comments

Seversky: If the gazelle[s] were able to gang up on the lions the latter would undoubtedly get very short shrift just like human psychopaths when we can find them. So might makes right? Would you be in favor of killing all the lions so that no more gazelles would be eaten? So let’s establish in law... Let's who? You're preaching to the choir on that one. A lot of the "molecules" in this world strenuously disagree with you. Sometimes they march in great numbers. Who decides? And is the majority right?mike1962_{November 15, 2020
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Science says that life starts @ conception. That means it is the anti-science dolts who allow abortions to happen without recourse.ET_{November 15, 2020
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Nice own goal for seversky!
Case dismissed for lack of evidence!
That is what we can say about everything to post. seversky doesn't understand that if he is right then there isn't any rape or murder. There isn't any right nor wrong. And all of our laws are meaningless drivel. Antifa and BLM exist to push socialists ideas. Antifa wants to wreck society. Just look at the riots wee alleged BLM supported looted and ruined minority owned businesses.ET_{November 15, 2020
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Bornagain77/22
Sev, you honestly admit you have no objective moral basis.
I have told you many times I do not concede the existence of objective morality or that morality can be grounded in the nature of physical reality
Without a objective moral basis, you have no right to make any moral judgements. PERIOD! I rest my case!
You still have not established that objective morality exists or is even a rational concept. You still have not provided any explanation of how your God supposedly arrived at His moral judgments. Case dismissed for lack of evidence!Seversky_{November 15, 2020
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Mike1962/20
Seversky: [a woman] has the power [to abort her baby] but that does not mean [she] has the right, unless you are defending the view that might makes right. That template can be used to justify or vilify about anything.
Agreed. So let's establish in law the right to life of the unborn, acknowledge that both the unborn and the mother have rights that have to be reconciled and move on from there.Seversky_{November 15, 2020
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Sandy/10
Antifa and blm are a good representation of present time atheist religion.
Antifa and BLM exist because of the white supremacism, nationalism and racism that you are defending.Seversky_{November 15, 2020
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BobRyan/18
Most people who use the environment as a bumper sticker to justify limiting what man does through limiting innovation, cares nothing about the environment. They are silent when it comes to China.
I have read criticism of both China and India for being major polluters and demands that they should be reducing their emissions. Even if there weren't such criticism, it doesn't change the need for the US to do what it can to clean up its act.Seversky_{November 15, 2020
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Mike1962/17
Well, if it’s all just “molecules in motion” as some say, there’s no objective-moral reason why I shouldn’t maximize my own pleasure and happiness at the expense of others/nature/earth/whatever. Gazelles don’t like being killed and eaten by lions. I get that. But don’t expect the lions to care
Except that the number of gazelles that would prefer not to be eaten no doubt vastly outnumbers the number of lions that want to eat them, just as the number of human beings who don't want to be raped and killed greatly outnumber the psychopaths who want to rape and murder others at will. If the gazelle were able to gang up on the lions the latter would undoubtedly get very short shrift just like human psychopaths when we can find them.Seversky_{November 15, 2020
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Sev, you honestly admit you have no objective moral basis.
I have told you many times I do not concede the existence of objective morality or that morality can be grounded in the nature of physical reality.
Without a objective moral basis, you have no right to make any moral judgements. PERIOD! I rest my case!bornagain77_{November 15, 2020
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Bornagain77/16
Tell you what Seversky, tell me how you can possibly ground objective morality in your materialistic worldview, and then I will concede that you have a right to tell God when and where he has the right to deem a society as being morally evil and then God subsequently destroying that society for being morally evil:
You cannot derive 'ought' from 'is' so you cannot "ground" morality in any explanation of the nature of physical reality. Any deliberate and unlawful taking of human life is evil. We only have God's word that the people He is alleged to have killed were evil, which is like a murderer claiming the victims asked for it. Where is your evidence that those people deserved killing? Why couldn't an all-powerful God changed their behavior without killing? We know from the Bible He had the power to harden the Pharoah's heart s so why couldn't he have just done a Jedi-like wave of the divine hand and said "You don't want to be evil any more. You want to go home and re-think your lives." And the would all have trooped of home to re-think their lives. Wouldn't that have been a better way?
Seversky’s materialistic Darwinian worldview simply denies the very existence of morality. i.e. Morality is merely another illusion, in a long list of illusions, for the materialist.
No, we don't. We just deny the right of an illusory God to draw one up for us. We can do it for ourselves, thank you very much.
The elephant in the living room problem for Seversky, is that his Darwinian worldview denies the very existence of morality, and therefore Seversky has completely forsaken any right to tell God, or anybody else, how they ought to morally behave
I deny the existence of coherent worldviews. The whole concept is too fuzzy to mean anything useful. Darwin's theory is about how life has changed over time. It says nothing about morality. I can judge the actions of others based on my own morality. You do not know what is right or wrong until your God tells you.
As David Wood put the self-defeating nature of the atheist’s argument from evil,, “By declaring that suffering is evil, atheists have admitted that there is an objective moral standard by which we distinguish good and evil.”
No, they haven't and Wood and others have failed to establish any basis for the claim that morality is anything other than a human cultural construct.
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?
The Golden Rule?
So again Seversky, tell me how you can possibly ground objective morality in your materialistic worldview, and then I will concede that you have a right to tell God when and where he has the right to deem a society as being morally evil,,,
I have told you many times I do not concede the existence of objective morality or that morality can be grounded in the nature of physical reality. I am also waiting for you to explain how your God "grounds" His moral prescriptions or point me to passages in the Bible where He explains his reasoning in detail.Seversky_{November 15, 2020
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Seversky: [a woman] has the power [to abort her baby] but that does not mean [she] has the right, unless you are defending the view that might makes right. That template can be used to justify or vilify about anything.mike1962_{November 15, 2020
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Atheists are ok with doing /allowing /encouraging an abortion(to kill ) but they are against when God take life in Bible. Why is that ? Because their justifications are better than God's justifications(atheists have no clue about) . :) This happens when atheists ignore sexual morality given by God ,they end up killing innocent persons and as a killers just won't stop from their madness ...they accuse God of killing . :) Antifa and blm are a good representation of present time atheist religion.Sandy_{November 15, 2020
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Most people who use the environment as a bumper sticker to justify limiting what man does through limiting innovation, cares nothing about the environment. They are silent when it comes to China. The biggest polluter in the world continues to be the biggest polluter in the world. Solar panels being pushed are mostly made in China, which lets the rather nasty byproducts flow out of the buildings and poison everyone in the surrounding area. There are no environmental controls in China. Where are the environmentalists? Silent due to not being environmentalists. Marxists/socialists use environmental issues they care nothing about to justify continued assaults on democracy.BobRyan_{November 15, 2020
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Well, if it's all just "molecules in motion" as some say, there's no objective-moral reason why I shouldn't maximize my own pleasure and happiness at the expense of others/nature/earth/whatever. Gazelles don't like being killed and eaten by lions. I get that. But don't expect the lions to care.mike1962_{November 15, 2020
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Well someone apparently touched off Seversky's delicate nerves.,,,, Tell you what Seversky, tell me how you can possibly ground objective morality in your materialistic worldview, and then I will concede that you have a right to tell God when and where he has the right to deem a society as being morally evil and then God subsequently destroying that society for being morally evil:
"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” - Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life - pg. 133
Seversky's materialistic Darwinian worldview simply denies the very existence of morality. i.e. Morality is merely another illusion, in a long list of illusions, for the materialist. The moral argument for God is summed up at the 4:36 minute mark of the following video,
Premise 1: If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist. Premise 2: Objective moral values and duties do exist. Conclusion: Therefore, God exists. The Moral Argument – drcraigvideos - video https://youtu.be/OxiAikEk2vU?t=276
The beauty of this argument is that, (as Seversky himself has made abundantly clear in his moral outrage against God that God would ever dare judge any society as being morally evil), is that everyone intuitively knows, and therefore everyone intuitively acts as if there is an objective moral standard that everyone ought to live by. The elephant in the living room problem for Seversky, is that his Darwinian worldview denies the very existence of morality, and therefore Seversky has completely forsaken any right to tell God, or anybody else, how they ought to morally behave. In other words, 'The argument from evil", (which is one of the main arguments that atheists try to use against God), is a self-defeating argument, As David Wood put the self-defeating nature of the atheist's argument from evil,, "By declaring that suffering is evil, atheists have admitted that there is an objective moral standard by which we distinguish good and evil."
Responding to the Argument From Evil: Three Approaches for the Theist - By David Wood Excerpt: Interestingly enough, proponents of AE grant this premise in the course of their argument. By declaring that suffering is evil, atheists have admitted that there is an objective moral standard by which we distinguish good and evil. Amazingly, then, even as atheists make their case against the existence of God, they actually help us prove that God exists!,,, https://www.namb.net/apologetics/responding-to-the-argument-from-evil-three-approaches-for-the-theist If Good and Evil Exist, God Exists: Peter Kreeft - Prager University - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xliyujhwhNM
And C.S Lewis, (a former atheist who converted to Christianity), put the failure of the atheist's argument from evil like this: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?,,, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?,,, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Harper San Francisco, Zondervan Publishing House, 2001, pp. 38-39.
So again Seversky, tell me how you can possibly ground objective morality in your materialistic worldview, and then I will concede that you have a right to tell God when and where he has the right to deem a society as being morally evil,,, Verse
Luke 18:19 “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.”
bornagain77_{November 13, 2020
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Bornagain77/9
Although God is perfectly within his rights to destroy any society that He judges to be evil, ...
Says who? If He exists as described then he certainly has the power but that does not mean He has the right, unless you are defending the view that might makes right.
… it is interesting to note that many of the ancient civilizations that God judged to be evil and then subsequently destroyed, were judged to be evil, in large measure, precisely because of the practice of child sacrifice.
Again, says who? And even if that were true then genocide is not a justifiable response, especially not by a being who has the power to do otherwise.
And, as should be needless to say, the child sacrifice of ancient cultures, is very, and eerily, similar to the abortion industry in modern cultures.
No, it isn't, even if it existed.
America, as should be needless to say, is treading on very thin ice with the practice of unrestricted abortions where millions, upon millions, of unborn babies have been ‘sacrificed’ on the alter of secular humanism since 1973 when Roe v Wade first mandated nationwide abortion on demand.
What is your religious justification for opposing abortion? The Bible doesn't proscribe it, there is no commandment against it and, according to the Old Testament, your God had no problem with killing people on a massive scale which must have included a large number of unborn children. If your God has no problem with killing the unborn - and you are made in His image - why should you?Seversky_{November 12, 2020
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Bornagain77/8
Whereas on the other hand, as Seversky made clear in his comment at 2, atheists hold an extremely pessimistic, even nihilistic, view of man’s relationship with the environment.
Atheists are not some sort of monolithic bloc. They hold a wide range of different views, just like Christians. I hear there are a lot of Christians who have no problem with the theory of evolution, for example. That said, the rate at which the rainforests are being cut back, the rate at which other species are being driven to extinction, the rate at which fish stocks are being are being depleted, the rate at which sea-levels are rising, the rate at which glaciers are retreating, the growing pressure on sources of fresh water, to name but a few, are not exactly grounds for optimism about our future.
And as I pointed out yesterday, since natural selection and the environment are functionally equivalent in the Darwinian scheme of things, and since natural selection is the ‘god substitute’ that produces the ‘overwhelming appearance of design’ (R. Dawkins), then in the Darwinian scheme of things, ‘being green’ turns out to be, in essence, a religion for the atheist since, in defending the environment, the atheist is, for all intents and purposes, defending the god which he falsely believes created him
We depend on the ecosphere I which we emerged for our existence. Protecting the environment is ultimately a question of survival and our survival depends on that of the other creatures on this planet. It has nothing to do with gods.
In short, the atheistic naturalist’s view of reality, where man is basically a parasite on the environment, instead of a steward of the environment, is a demonstrably false view of reality
I agree. It is not a view I hold. I do not defend it.
A crystal clear example of how the Atheist’s perverted view of man’s relationship to nature has wrought devastating consequences have been the California wildfires,,,
I don't see anything there to do with atheism. On the other hand, there was also a fascinating piece on MPR about how Native American practices of wildfire management- carefully targeted, low-intensity "cultural burns" - are proving to be more effective than current strategies. These practices were developed over thousands of years, long before these peoples had the dubious benefits of European Christianity inflicted on them.
Of course, even though his very own worldview is, in fact, the root cause of these devastating Californian wildfires, don’t ever expect Seversky, or any other atheists, to ever honestly admit that their very own worldview is what is, in fact, the primary cause of this devastation.
Of course not, because it isn't. You will probably find that most, if not all, of those who developed current practices for wildfire management are good Christians. The Native American peoples who developed what are proving to be better methods of controlling wildfires had different faiths or spiritual beliefs which, by this measure, are superior to Christianity.Seversky_{November 12, 2020
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Marfin/6
Sev who says we have any responsibility toward nature , animals kill other animals fire , flood and earthquake ravage the land, the earth will eventually be a cold dead rock so why exactly do we owe any responsibility
We have responsibilities towards each other, here and now. What will happen billions of years in the future is beyond our knowledge, certainly beyond our power to influence and, hence, irrelevant.
. Also The head of Amnesty Int in Ireland was very , very vocal in his support for abortion to become legal in Ireland , but just as vocal in his opposition to the death penalty.
I oppose abortion in principle for the reason I gave although I think it should be permissible under certain circumstances. I support the death penalty in principle as the most appropriate and proportionate penalty for murder. Whether there are cases where the guilt of the accused is so certain that there is no chance of an innocent person being executed, is a different matter.Seversky_{November 12, 2020
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Mike1962/5
If I said that I was pro-abortion, would you think that wrong?
You are as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. I think abortion is wrong, except in certain circumstances, I have no right to force my opinion on others and neither do you. If I could persuade enough people in society to agree with me then the law could be changed so that the unborn would be presumed to have the right to life regardless of their stage of development. If the pro-life movement want to stop abortion, that is their best course of action.
If I said that I was pro-abortion, especially among the inner city poor, would you think that wrong?
Location is irrelevant.Seversky_{November 12, 2020
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Mike1962/4
Human are nature. Whatever humans do is nature. Burning down the planet is natural because everything is natural. Punishing people who harm the planet is nature. People being punished for harm the planet is natural. Blah blah blah.
We all depend on this planet for our survival. Harming this planet is ultimately harming ourselves, which is not very smart. A few people harming this planet for their own personal profit, regardless of what harm this may cause others, is irresponsible to put it mildly.Seversky_{November 12, 2020
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@Seversky @3 Aside from your Fallacious attempt to discredit the Bible which is tried and annoying Go to http://catholic.com/ where ALL of your objections and criticisms are addressed I would like to ask one thing Did you really say you’d like the right to life to extend to all human persons? If so that would be the one thing I agree on and yes I do not agree with the death penaltyAaronS1978_{November 12, 2020
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Seversky at 3 tries to have his cake and eat it to with abortion. Then Seversky goes off on his usual tangent of saying that God had no right to judge and destroy the "firstborn male children in Egypt or the whole populations of Sodom and Gomorrah or the whole population of the world in the Great Flood," Although God is perfectly within his rights to destroy any society that He judges to be evil, it is interesting to note that many of the ancient civilizations that God judged to be evil and then subsequently destroyed, were judged to be evil, in large measure, precisely because of the practice of child sacrifice. And, as should be needless to say, the child sacrifice of ancient cultures, is very, and eerily, similar to the abortion industry in modern cultures.
Abortion and the Ancient Practice of Child Sacrifice https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.493.4980&rep=rep1&type=pdf
America, as should be needless to say, is treading on very thin ice with the practice of unrestricted abortions where millions, upon millions, of unborn babies have been 'sacrificed' on the alter of secular humanism since 1973 when Roe v Wade first mandated nationwide abortion on demand. The recent push by secular progressives for publicly funded late term abortions, and even for the legalization of infanticide itself, only underscores just how morally depraved many on the secular left have become over the past 50 years.
Democrats' extreme abortion push BY JESSICA ANDERSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 03/04/20 https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/485775-democrats-extreme-abortion-push
Of related note:
How early Christians resisted infanticide by loving their neighbors https://www.christianpost.com/voices/how-early-christians-resisted-infanticide-by-loving-their-neighbors.html
Verse:
Deuteronomy 12:31 You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.
bornagain77_{November 12, 2020
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Excellent commentary by Rob Sheldon. In the Judeo-Christian view of reality, we are meant to be good stewards of the earth, i.e. to take care of creation and not abuse it. As Rob Sheldon made clear, good stewardship, i.e. good management of the land, also entails managing the environment properly, with controlled burns, and I would also hold it entails taming waterways with dams to prevent uncontrolled annual floods that devastate farmlands and cities, management of wildlife populations, i.e. hunting limits on the number of game you are allowed to harvest,,,, I'm sure many more instances can be found where man 'tamed nature' for its own good can be found. Whereas on the other hand, as Seversky made clear in his comment at 2, atheists hold an extremely pessimistic, even nihilistic, view of man's relationship with the environment.
"The days when we could live in harmony with our natural environment are now long gone. We are driving other species to extinction at a terrible rate and soon all that will be left will be us, the beetles and the bacteria." - Seversky
,,, as you can see, Seversky holds an extremely pessimistic, even nihilistic, view of creation in which man is, basically, a parasite to earth, not a steward of earth.
The root cause of climate catastrophism Excerpt: I believe that the root of today’s environmental catastrophism is a framework of false, anti-human assumptions and values. Catastrophists,,, believe that long-term human survival requires that we human parasites refrain from impacting the delicate, nurturing Earth. If we do that, the Earth will supposedly be a stable, safe, and sufficient place to life. Thus, minimizing our impact on our environment—being “green”—is a proper goal. None of this is true. https://industrialprogress.com/the-root-cause-of-climate-catastrophism/
And as I pointed out yesterday, since natural selection and the environment are functionally equivalent in the Darwinian scheme of things, and since natural selection is the 'god substitute' that produces the 'overwhelming appearance of design' (R. Dawkins), then in the Darwinian scheme of things, ‘being green’ turns out to be, in essence, a religion for the atheist since, in defending the environment, the atheist is, for all intents and purposes, defending the god which he falsely believes created him. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/darwin-is-now-blamed-for-environmental-destruction/#comment-716687 And as I also pointed out yesterday, "There are, as usual, a few major problems for the atheist with his worldview in which man is, basically, a parasite that must be prevented, at all costs, from making any changes to the environment." https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/darwin-is-now-blamed-for-environmental-destruction/#comment-716688 In short, the atheistic naturalist's view of reality, where man is basically a parasite on the environment, instead of a steward of the environment, is a demonstrably false view of reality And this false, even perverted, view of reality is not without devastating consequences A crystal clear example of how the Atheist's perverted view of man's relationship to nature has wrought devastating consequences have been the California wildfires,,,
Wildfires Caused By Bad Environmental Policy Are Causing California Forests To Be Net CO2 Emitters Chuck DeVore Excerpt: In the early 1990s, a series of restrictions were placed on logging in the West to protect the Spotted Owl. As it turned out, nature was more complicated than expected, with owl numbers continuing to decline—even after the California timber harvest plummeted—due to predation from other raptors. In the meantime, the harvest fell below the growth rate in the 1990s, to about 1.5 billion board feet per year over the past decade. The tree harvest on federal lands is now one-tenth of what it was in 1988, President Reagan’s last full year in office. The California forest report draft concludes by observing that the “Current flux [of CO2] may not be sustainable without forest management!” while citing the challenge of “Aging of forests on federal lands.” Unlike much of the American South and East, California has a distinct wet season, with Pacific storms rolling in by November or December and wrapping up by March. In even the wettest years (2016-17 was the wettest in 122 years) much of California is bone-dry by late fall. Thus, it isn’t climate change that sets the conditions for fires—it’s California’s natural weather pattern. Comparing acres burned in wildfires to weather and tree harvest data, there appears to be little link to climate—but a big connection to the growing forest fuel load, especially on government land. Which brings us back to policy. If federal and state environmental policies continue to make it difficult and costly to harvest timber and manage the fuel load, then the wildfires will continue and they will be bigger and deadlier. This will, in due course, cause some politicians to blame the fires on climate change. In the meantime, the timber harvest infrastructure is less than one-third of what it was 30 years ago, meaning that even if politicians were sincere in wanting to manage the public forests, there few people remaining to manage them. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/25/wildfires-caused-by-bad-environmental-policy-are-causing-california-forests-to-be-net-co2-emitters/?sh=571fa9815e30
Thus, in reality, it is not Global Warming that is causing the semi-annual devastation in California by wildfires, not by a long stretch,,, it is the Atheistic Naturalist's very own pessimistic, even nihilistic, environmental policies, where man is basically a parasite on earth, (instead of rightly being seen as a 'good steward' of earth), that are what, in fact, driving these semi-annual catastrophes in California (and also in Oregon and Washington). Further note,
The saddest part about these fires in California is that they are self inflicted. Californians should not allow such mismanagement to continue. For decades, environmental protection schemes have usurped common sense. For example, most fire ecologists say that the surest way of preventing massive forest fires is to use prescribed burns. The California Environmental Protection Agency states that “prescribed burning is the intentional use of fire to reduce wildfire hazards, clear downed trees, control plant diseases, improve rangeland and wildlife habitats, and restore natural ecosystems.” Prescribed burns keep forests healthy by burning up the underbrush that accumulates on the forest floor and by thinning trees. Yet for decades the Forest Service has suppressed most fires. According to a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection executive summary: “Land and fire management have in many cases increased fire hazard. In some shrub types, fire suppression appears to have shifted the fire regime away from more, smaller fires toward fewer, larger fire.” Despite scientific evidence, the federal government continues spending more money on fire suppression than prescribed burns. The Forest Service has performed prescribed burns on an average of 2,187,64 2 acres a year for the past ten years, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. This means the Forest Service has only performed prescribed burns on 11.3 percent of the land they manage. https://thefederalist.com/2018/11/16/misguided-environmentalism-blame-californias-wildfires/
Of course, even though his very own worldview is, in fact, the root cause of these devastating Californian wildfires, don't ever expect Seversky, or any other atheists, to ever honestly admit that their very own worldview is what is, in fact, the primary cause of this devastation. After all, Seversky can't even bring himself to honestly admit that it was his Darwinian worldview that was the root, and primary, cause of the mass genocides of last century, i.e. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.. etc..
Hitler, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao – quotes - Foundational Darwinian influence in their ideology July 2020 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/michael-egnor-on-the-relationship-between-darwinism-and-totalitarianism/#comment-707831
bornagain77_{November 12, 2020
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Well, we don't always create stability. Some of our activities run rampant. In the past, governments often restored stability after independent fishers and farmers destroyed fish populations or topsoil. In the modern world, the environmentalists and governments ARE the destabilizers. When they are in control, they SPECIFICALLY BAN the activities that help to stabilize Nature. Flood control is out. Logging is banned. So the "crime" as defined by these monsters would be the opposite of the true crime.polistra_{November 12, 2020
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Sev who says we have any responsibility toward nature , animals kill other animals fire , flood and earthquake ravage the land, the earth will eventually be a cold dead rock so why exactly do we owe any responsibility . Also The head of Amnesty Int in Ireland was very , very vocal in his support for abortion to become legal in Ireland , but just as vocal in his opposition to the death penalty.What I found tragic about this was if a guy rapes 10 women and they all become pregnant he would support the death of all those babies but would be vehemently opposed to putting to death the rapist , talk about a warped sense of justice and morals.Marfin_{November 12, 2020
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Seversky @3, question... If I said that I was pro-abortion, would you think that wrong? If I said that I was pro-abortion, especially among the inner city poor, would you think that wrong?mike1962_{November 11, 2020
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Human are nature. Whatever humans do is nature. Burning down the planet is natural because everything is natural. Punishing people who harm the planet is nature. People being punished for harm the planet is natural. Blah blah blah. The answer to the stupid question is this: it depends on who you ask. Butthole A or butthole B. Opinions are like that.mike1962_{November 11, 2020
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As for abortion, I would prefer the right to life to extend to the whole of an individual's lifespan but that's just me. There's no specific prohibition of of abortion in the Bible, no commandment, which seems to indicate an odd sense of priorities given the commandments against graven images and coveting neighbors wives or oxen. And God seemed to have no problem massacring the firstborn male children in Egypt or the whole populations of Sodom and Gomorrah or the whole population of the world in the Great Flood, Can you imagine how many unborn children died in those two events? But if God does it, it must be right, Euthyphro be damned.Seversky_{November 11, 2020
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In the days when human populations were in the thousands or hundreds of thousands we didn't do too much damage. There are now over 7 billion of us, all needing food, water, shelter,energy and a whole lot of other resources, The days when we could live in harmony with our natural environment are now long gone. We are driving other species to extinction at a terrible rate and soon all that will be left will be us, the beetles and the bacteria. Of course, according to the Christians here, we are made in the image of God so maybe the devastation we are causing is His will. That, at least, would be consistent with His behavior in the Old Testament.Seversky_{November 11, 2020
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Killing babies should be a crime but we all do abortionAaronS1978_{November 11, 2020
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