Usually, I take a cue from some newspaper or web article citing someone or other with some profound or ridiculous comment, but it turns out we have our own profound QOTW right here at WUWT.
In the thread: What really goes on at COP16 in Cancun
steven hoffer says:
Start the burner under that smoke stack, dam that river, bridge that gap. push back the night. You might wonder why these fools are trying to let the outdoors back in, when we’ve spent our entire history trying to keep the outdoors out.
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Makes “cents” to me.
Bill Derryberry
Classic.
Steven… ” Start the burner under that smoke stack, dam that river, bridge that gap. push back the night.”
Are those your words, or am I missing out on an American writer/poet?
“let the outdoors back in…”
/sarc
But it looks so pretty in the magazines…
It’d be marvelous to live in harmony with Nature.
Outdoors+humans-technology = less humans
@ur momisugly Gene Zeien says:
December 1, 2010 at 12:27 pm
“let the outdoors back in…”
/sarc
But it looks so pretty in the magazines…
It’d be marvelous to live in harmony with Nature.
Nature includes modern humanity. To think otherwise is a very narrow view of nature.
The question is: Who stays indoors?….just wondering, because outside there are no toilettes. 🙂
When I was a teenager I had this fantasy about ‘living in harmony with nature’. It gradually dawned on me that every step of our development was based on keeping nature out, or at least at bay.
I don’t think they will introduce us to an alien who looks like a green clone of Obama’s brother.
We were just animal fodder until we came up with our first weapon.
Concentrating on weapons of survival (warmth, food and protection) rather than weapons of war would be a start but the need for expansion and security requires a new frontier…..not the same old frontier split in different ways.
Hindering man’s natural creativity will only stifle his survival. Onwards and upwards as the sky is the limit, for now.
If the outdoors was so great they would have never invented video games.
Some people say the want to be one with Nature. The problem, of course, is Nature doesn’t want to be one with you. Nature wants to drown you, burn you, poison you, starve you, bury you, freeze you, crush you, and on and on.
Being one with nature means choosing burial over cremation
Crichton pretty much said the same thing in “Climate of Fear”.
PaulH,
You left our “eat.”
Man, there are a lot of good quotes just in the first 11 comments. Good work, people.
The one thing more cruel than civilization is nature!
I’m at the top of the food chain in my native environment and I am happy to be there.
I’ve worked in the forest for 20 years, and when I’m not working outside, I recreate outside. I love being outside but will never take for granted being warm, dry, fed and watered, clean, and safe from critters large and small.
Going to a park for the day makes you appreciate nature. But working and living in the wilds for months on end gives you a healthy fear of nature. Another week here up in Slave Lake, Alberta and I’ll be homebound ready to keep the outdoors out for a while.
After all of the trouble humans have gone to in developing the largest frontal lobe and cortex, which requires our high energy modern diet to sustain, now scientists and policy makers tell us to give up the grains and meats to save the planet.
So if we’re so smart, we’ll go back to foraging fruit and drinking Fairtrade shade grown coffee.
Oh wait
Global Warming meet it’s Stalingrad cold of the century
http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/01/global-warming-meets-its-stalingrad-cold-of-the-century/
In African climates you don’t need much more than your basic hut. Keeping the outdoors out started in earnest when we expanded out of Africa into harsher climates.
So we’ve really spent most of our time devising ways of getting away from each other and keeping others out of our claimed space. If all I had to worry about was pests and the elements then my house would be a lot simpler.
They only have to agree on a world wide ban of the incandescent bulb and with the UN as a regulatory authority and they get what they want.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8173850/Cancun-climate-summit-UN-calls-for-worldwide-phase-out-of-incandescent-bulbs.html
Eric Hoffer, in one of his lesser-known books, says the same.
Much to recommend here but I think “Hug a Polar Bear Tv “would be a great way to watch the believers become one with nature, ie well distributed through the arctic food chain. And Churchill Manitoba would have a new and interesting industry.sarc on or off??.
“In African climates you don’t need much more than your basic hut. Keeping the outdoors out started in earnest when we expanded out of Africa into harsher climates.
So we’ve really spent most of our time devising ways of getting away from each other and keeping others out of our claimed space. If all I had to worry about was pests and the elements then my house would be a lot simpler.”
Keeping the outdoors away is more then just shelter from the elements. I would hazard to guess that habitation allowed people to sleep without being seen from predators but even this is not enough in some cases, as the predators have been known to break through straw to get children.
Our history has been a story of survival by escaping the realities of the outdoors….. From climate, to droughts, floods, storms, predators, pests (insects), and anything else that nature throws at us.
Humans also fight with one another, but the largest thing we fight over is a lack of something. When you make something scarse, we fight. This serves a competitive bonus as then the population is lessened, and the resource can continue to serve its purpose. Migration also serves a similar purpose.
As much as people claim that we spend all of our time getting away from one another, most people would be happier if we all lived close together. Look at the big cities for case in point. Lots of people have never left the city other then travelling through other areas. In reality, most people are perfectly content living together as long as the supplies exist to do so.
This is very relevant as in the future we will be fighting a war of pro-society people versus pro-nature people. The degree that this escalates really depends on what is thrown at us to be honest from corrupt leaders all the way down to what nature decides to throw at us. This is something to fight about, our ability to choose our preferred method of living.