just a quicky... but supposing you were in a discussion on climate change and your manager at work chimed in with the contribution that it's all a load of hot air (pardon the pun) because (pause for everyone to ready themselves for brilliant insight)... we're still coming out of an ice age. what's a suitable reply to that?
Actually, I read that by the most accepted definition of "ice age" we're still *in* one, going through glacial advance and retreat phases. In fact, if anything we should be due for a glacial advance, which we may have accidentally prevented while doing our very dumb best to fry the planet. Not the best answer to your manager though, Garner.
sigh. A few bits from the top of my head: Solar activity plays a great role when ice ages start and retreat. There was no noticable solar activity during the last 30 years, when most of the warming, the moving of vegetation zones (considerable, not just inches! Greenland is in large parts green again for the first time in more than thousand years!) and the melting of the Permafrost happened. This can be proven - things like those have been measured not for the last two decades only. There is a lot of data; people started to measure the world around them a lot earlier than many of our fellow human beings are a ware. There are many many other places where you can just go and see that global warming is happening - these aren't theories, but things you can go out, too, and take a look at for yourself. So, what does logic induce as the reason for all this, when there are no known natural causes within decades we could really make responsible for all those drastic and quick changes? Guess. No one is really still disagreeing that humans are at least one main course for this development, at least no one with a hint of a clue about those issues. Again: Global warning vs Ice Ages: Just compare the time tables. You just have to see they can't be closely connected, no matter if we are coming out of an Ice Age, are preventing us from going into the next one... It doesn't matter. 30, or 50, or even 70 years. That's the blink of an eye. Ice ages don't end within one human life span, but over the course of millenia! Permafrost again: Some of the meltings set free gas clouds that would have -and have- stayed under earth for hundreds and hundreds of years, actually developing there, like oil - that deep, and that long. It's not a natural up and down we are witnessing. Besides, even if it were meant to happen - when a comet was meant to hit earth, would you just shrug it off because it is not made by human beings and their careless behaviour? Hundreds of species and ecological systems, our own environment, are actually threatened. Not leaning back and making things worse might just be the more intelligent reaction.
thank you, hsing, those are all good points and actually gave me some stuff to think about that i hadn't really been aware of yet. of course, those arguements wouldn't be very effective against my boss, as she doesn't listen to me in the first place and i don't know how prepared she would be to actually reevaluate her 'i'm so clever' view point. on that note, i fear that ben's strategy is the most likely to be successful in my specific case...
If nothing helps, well, someone with the social skills and problem awareness of a chick pea wouldn't have saved the world anyway, if that's a comfort - no matter what you'd told her. You could still buy her an Al Gore DVD, or that one Roland Emmerich film... The Day After Tomorrow, I think, just to make her sell her car...
I would be tempted to tell her that people that produce that much toxicity just by opening their mouths should shut them or be shot. You're American, you can get away with saying things like that... No, seriously, don't talk to managers, they are an evil race.
I've always thought of management as a tree full of gibbering monkeys sitting on the top branch looking down on everyone and thinking they know everything. The truth is, when everyone else looks up all they can see are a**holes...and who takes any notice of them? That might just be Zen!
Tell her she's right, puny humans are nowhere near being able to destroy a planet. They can’t even come close to grasping the bigger picture of climatology because they are still monkeying around with foolish concepts like work, money and management.
I think have a nostalgic déja vu... Also, interesting to see no one is arguing in favour of the manager. In the olden times, someone would have turned up just to point things out for us...
Without having someone to fight. We'll have to fight each other. *Punches Mal* You know, as sickening as it was at the end, there are times when a miss a good flame war. They do make for dramatic reading. This is me waving chocolate cake in the face of Fate while it's on a diet.
So that's why you've lived in secret whilst growing up, pretending to be Irish and secretly coercing the hobos of London to douse this evil. Where is this epic revenge tale? Don't tell me you still haven't managed to quell that beast who not only killed your mother, but also spat on your elderly one-eyed dog, Horatio.
[16:56] Ben: rinso just made me snigger at a customer [16:56] Ella: was he online? [16:56] Ben: no, http://www.terrypratchettbooks.org/post32889.html#32889 [16:56] Ben: i pretended i was coughing [16:57] Ella: that old ruse [16:57] Ella: lol [16:57] Ben: yep [16:58] Ben: i wish i'd intended to imply that [16:58] Ella: it's actually a sad tale [16:58] Ella: the poor one eyed dog [16:58] Ella: <crybab [16:59] Ben: how disappointed must she have been when damien popped out [16:59] Ella: there isn't a heart on the planet that wouldn't melt at the sight of an old one eyed dog [16:59] Ella: whimpering [17:00] Ben: except for captain McLiquidnitrogen-Hart [17:00] Ella: theres a clan name that died out some time ago
:lol: Ironically, the last McLiquidnitrogen-Hart died of a broken heart after a one eyed dog rejected him...
Geeze I"m laughing so hard I'm getting cramps ! Damn monkey* your mother was a cramp. Tramp. Whatever. *We missed you you silly bugger...
