No matter how you slice it, the Earth's climate is a cycle. Every warming period is fairly rapidly followed with an ice age.

There are many reasons for this, the primary one is the ocean and its currents.

On an other point, many claim that we are hurting the Earth. Know one thing: In the humanoid 4 million-year rise, we have around thirty-thousand years as humans crawling out of the muck and wilderness slowly forming into a few kinds of tribes. From there, the last ten-thousand years blossoming out of an ice age from near total extinction. Within those ten-thousand years we've managed to do some pretty impressive stuff, I guess. BUT, give the Earth another ten-thousand years without us, and I doubt you'd ever know we were here (unless you searched very, very hard)

Face it, we'll only hurt ourselves with any more pollution and over population - Stop with all of the "oh, we're hurting the planet" type of garbage.

We are basically like mosquitos, to open your puny little minds eyes. We started during the "Industrial Revolution" and we never stop until we annaihilate ourselves. We suck crude oil, which is insulating us against volcanoes fluids. We mine out the iron so we can drive this car, and we cut down the rubber tree so we can put the traction on the road. We cut marbles out so we can have a counter top and nice sink area for your mansion. And keep doing all this over and over and over again and again and again, until something really strange happens, like the Western Arctic getting warmer. If you open your eyes, you'll see an extraction at work in the area!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mod_ivy,

Everything you mention is a good, valid consideration, of course.

But, what I am most worried about (for *OUR* survival - more than the Earth's by the way) is this 'totally disposable' mentality we've gotten ourselves (and our economies) locked into.

King Gillette be _amned with his perfect product being one that, "...is used once and then thrown away".

That concept alone has done more damage than any of the other methods of destruction you list. Not because it is any more lethal to us, but because it has all piled up so much faster than any of the other problems -- especially since we are now in much, much larger numbers on this planet than ever before.

Recycling is hardly a solution (it is a good and necessary thing, but it cannot correct the problem alone). Only if we reverse this notion that good, inexpensive products be disposable will we stand a chance to conquer the issues that recycling has been left to deal with.