X-Message-Number: 15035 References: <> Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 14:11:14 +0000 From: "Joseph Kehoe" <> Subject: environment I agree with most of the posting on climate change. Most politicians will do as little as possible and there is not much difference between them in America or Europe but Bush would prob. be worse than Gore and Nader would be much better than either of them. Whether the difference between Gore and Bush will be substantial or not is a different question that we will prob. never have the answer to. As for Patagonia It is quite near the South Pole which had its first (I think it is its first anyway) hole in its ozone layer this year. Given the projected rates of diffusion of CFC's in the atmosphere I think that the UV light will be a substantial problem in a decade or two not hundreds of years. I don't know about America but over here we get uv warnings during the summer as part of the weather forecast! At the climate summit the Insurance Industry predicted that the world economy will be bankrupted by 2040 by global warming inspired disasters. Hopefully we won't let things get too bad before we take some responsible action As for whether it (the greenhouse effect) is real or not we do know that there is a growing hole in the ozone layer and that the temp. is rising substanially. Even if this is a natural perturbation it will still cause enourmous problems. Waiting to see if it is going to be a problem before we do anything strikes me as a bit silly. We also have a large amount of weapon quality plutonium handing around for the next 10,000 years and no known way to store it safely for that long and a lot of near earth asteriods etc. For anyone thinking of cryonics this is something we should be very concerned about as our outlook will be much longer term than most people. Even if the present rate of progress continues it will be a while before they can unfreeze anyone and until then we are all sitting ducks for wars, environmental disasters and public opinion. If we do make it out the other side then I expect a few pointed questions from people about what exactly we thought we were doing in the early 21st/late 20th centuries. Although I am not signed up yet I do expect to be signed up by the end of next year so these things concern me as well. In any event our treatment of this planet seems just plain wrong. I partially agree with George Smith. You must "save" yourself before you can begin to helpe anyone else. That being said I always remember the saying: "All that is necessary for Evil to triumph is for a good person to do nothing" Joseph. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15035