Why is man's harvesting of fossil fuels always deemed unnatural?

Question

We are made up of the same things everything else on our planet is made of. Doesn't our existance make us a natural part of the environment, therefore are actions are natural, for good or bad depending on perspective. Wait it seems we are the only ones here with a perspective. Is this what makes us so unnatural, because we have the ability to consider cause and effect?

What about the honeybee or the termite? Do they have any understanding about how their activities make life possible for so many other life forms?

Maybe unknowingly, we are doing something very important in the nature of the carbon cycle. Maybe we are saving the planet.

If the CO2 theory is correct which I highly doubt, maybe again unknowingly, we are creating a rainforest like the dinosaurs enjoyed.

It's interesting. Many environmentalists and far left liberals agree with the Bible. They both tell us man is evil, only one though offers a solution to that problem. Jesus Christ.

Answer 1

Animals do not make electricity ,or mine for gold ,or contaminate the Air ,water and soil. Neither do they break natures law of equilibrium ,Which governs ALL animals and plants,confining their numbers to the food supply , available space or environmental conditions.

Man DOES

he breeds with out restraint.

overstepping the bounds of sustainability

+that is NOT Natural

By your argument if God created man and their behavior is part of his design and responsibility ,as you point out

,than the wars ,genocide,torture and the destructive effect Man has on his surroundings ,must be as well .

Making God incompetent at best  for having lost control over his creation`s or the planet`s, behavior.

Or criminal at worst for having killed so many people as well as being a fibber for telling his people that he loves them all the time.



All in All  you sound confused

first figure out what god is

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

then where we came from

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sitchi...

The Christians Attitude, Globally has been the worst towards Nature compared to every one else,Their way of farming

the Ethanol production

,http://byderule.multiply.com/journal/ite...

Religion has alienated people from the environment from the word go

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

probably to make exploitation morally easier acceptable

And most people would not even be aware of the fact WHY they are alienated.

So what you say about Jesus ,is not a recommendation on the contrary.

Now about unnatural ways in which Man has been changing local climates all over the world for probably thousands of years ,by changing forests into deserts.

And there is a big climatic difference between the two extremes.http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Genghis Kahn burned all the forests and filled the wells with sand ,that sure changed the climate in whole countries at a time

The deforestation of Spain to build the Spanish Armada changed the climate over there

The same way the building of the Phoenician fleet deforested Lebanon which is now a hot desert ,like the Sahara ,large parts of which used to be forests .

But one cannot deforest on the equator because replanting trees with out water under the hottest Sun is very difficult.

But we are the best at changing climates than any one else before us ,by exchanging forests for concrete and tar ,and large scale mono culture farming with out trees ..

And the Mexican indigenous people deforest large parts of their mountain slopes for plots to grow corn, to feed their large families of around 15 kids average .

All old people agree that there are less clouds hanging over the mountains ,less rains ,and less water in the rivers ,then when they were young .

The days are now hotter and their winters are much colder ,And they have many cases recently of people who have frozen to death

They were, the first to ADMIT that they are changing their climate.I know I interviewed many

These kind of climatic changes are happening all over the world

Take a look at Northern China which is now a dust bowl impossible to grow anything or even live there ,

Whilst before it was a thriving agricultural region ,and before that it was forests,the climate has been totally changed there

due to unsustainable agriculture ,using Chemicals and with overgrazing grasslands turning them into dessert

In Africa some rivers have dried up because so many of the forests have gone in places ,because of expanding populations ,this also results in different climatic conditions locally.

And did not the farmers change the climate in central USA during the 20ties with the straight lined plowing ,turning the country into a dust bowel.

Global warming is an additional ball game

No one who knows the facts can possibly say we do not affect climatic conditions .

Only ignorance and dishonesty can,and the overwhelming desire to absolve humanity from any guilt,so that some unscrupulous people can continue to behave like Pigs in Paradise,http://byderule.multiply.com/journal/ite...

you sound as if you are working for the corporations who are doing the damage,and i do not believe you seek the truth

being more comfortable in a fantasy world

Answer 2

Weird. I always thought that the true environmentalists were atheists or non-religious. Like the Union of the Concerned Scientists. Or everyone at my Environmental department in my college. Because you could say the same thing with non-environmental religious people: They think that God put them on this Earth to 'dominate' the land, animals, etc.

Answer 3

Yes - Everything man does is unnatural.  We are the only creatures on Earth that are inherently bad, as all other life is good.

I suspect this viewpoint comes from Religion when we are taught about orginal sin.  Man is guilty of being bad just because he was born and not because of anything he did.  We must accept the burden of guilt for the rest of our lives.

Religion also tells us that the Earth is not a good place, that our reward comes to us when we die and go to heaven.  Man is evil, does evil, and has evil in his heart.  We do the work of the Devil.

Only when we follow the word of liberals and environmentalist can we save ourselves.  We must accept the guilt of being man, suffer here on Earth, submit to their teachings, and never advance to be good.

Oil is not a finate resource.  Oil is derived from life living below the crust that feeds on carbon to produce oil.  Oil was produced when the planet first started, and it is still being produced at unknown rates.

"Apparently, this new oil is seeping up from deeper underground. The article asserts that this is simply upward movement from older, deeper oil fields. I would point out, however, this discovery might also be evidence supporting the controversial theory that oil originates within the molten mantle of the earth, not from the decay of organic material "

Even crazier, raw oil seeping into the ocean from old wells seems to be supporting its own ecosystems:

"Our first discovery was with trawls. We knew it was an area of massive seepage, and we expected that the oil seeps would poison everything around" the site. But they found just the opposite.

It would appear that, in a manner similar to the life forms recently discovered around deep hydrogen sulfide vents, complete ecosystems spring up around the places where oil naturally leaks out of the bedrock and into the ocean.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/24/...

Does there exist, deep within the earth's crust, a second biosphere-- composed of very primitive, thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria, and containing more living matter than the entire surface? This idea, first proposed by the author in the early 1980s, is now supported by a growing body of evidence. The implications are astonishing: is the deep biosphere where life originated? Can Mars and other seemingly dead planets contain deep biospheres? Is there yet another--deeper, hotter--biosphere within the earth, based on silicon instead of carbon? This is the first book to explore this very controversial, intriguing theory.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN...

Answer 4

I had a random thought like this in the bath this morning. i've always thought that the pollution we produce is bad for our health and we should reduce it as much as possible, but this morning  i thought that, fleas become immune to flea treatments, rats become immune to rat poison, rabbits half halfway become immune to mixamatosis (they don't die from it anymore, they just suffer) maybe in time in won't affect them at all, and maybe, we will become immune to the pollution we produce, and thats what we need to evolve. It's all part of the grand plan. I do believe we are natural though.

Also as much as i prefer the green and natural countryside to a concrete city, to make and build the things we make and build we use the ingredients that the earth provides, so is it not possible that what we make is also natural, and maybe all the c**p we throw into landfill sites will rot down to produce a new fuel, and maybe quicker than the earth can produce fuel.

Answer 5

of course we are natural. and the usual natural consequence of an animal out growing its food and land supply is a population crash. do you want that?

the natural consequence of an imbalance of the earth system is an episode of extreme disruption, a mass extinction, do you want that?

does your 'god' want that? i would rather rely on our intelligence, or, failing that, as willow suggested, our natural ability to mutate and survive.

Answer 6

It's not.  But it would be very harmful to us.

Coastal flooding and damage to agriculture would cause hundreds of billions to fix.

There's nothing shameful in avoiding the worst damage by reducing our impact.

It's "natural" for predators to eat prey.  That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with prey trying to avoid that fate.

Answer 7

If they are waiting for Jesus Christ to save the planet or solve any problem they're in for a long wait.

We're on a runaway train, six billion people and counting, there's no stopping us now.

Greed is in control.

Answer 8

I suspect that it is an attempt to divorce man from his natural surroundings utilizing man's selfish reasoning to justify man's greedy ambitions.

Answer 9

Because we are liberating it from the ground at least one million times faster than it was put there.

I had a neighbor once who would pour his used motor oil down his old abandoned well.  When I confronted him, he said "It's all natural, it came out of the ground, I'm puttin' it back in the ground."

So it came from a stable geologic formation 100's of millions of years old on the other side of the world, and he is putting it into the local aquifer, where we are all drinking it.

What is natural about that?

Answer 10

We are the only species that has the luxury of feeling guilt about utilizing our environment and because we are successful, less successful animals are probably going to suffer a bit.  That luxury of worrying about other animals is a recent phenomena.  People a couple hundred years ago were too worried about surviving to worry about interfering with the mating habits of the Southwest Arroyan Toad.

A coyote won't feel bad about out competing a fox but Leftist always seem to be guilt ridden by human success.   I for one, am glad that humans are so successful.  We have a responsibility to try to keep the environment as reasonably clean as possible but not the extent that it severely reduces our comfort or treasure.

So called Fossil Fuels such as petroleum are gobbled up by bacteria.  It is entirely natural and if you are a petroleum eating bacteria, absolutely necessary for survival.

Answer 11

The distinction between natural and unnatural isn't really meaningful in this context.  All species affect their own (or others) environments in some fashion. Whether it's a heard of buffalo overgrazing an area, an infestation of termites destroying a human home, or humans pouring waste into a river without consideration for downstream communities.

It doesn't matter if you call it natural or unnatural, if our current human activities are harming our own environment (which seems to be the case) then intelligence and common-sense demands that we address the problem.  Mankind isn't evil, but if he does nothing about this problem (given the amount of warming we have) then he sure is stupid.

Answer 12

If your idea of natural is sucking black goo out of the earth, "refining" it, and burning it in a manufactured hunk of metal and plastics (more petroleum), which is manufactured by more refined and engineered metal and plastics, then I guess by your definition everything associated with humans is natural. Except that your definition is illogical. Where in nature do you see an automobile naturally occurring, or a power plant? They don't without intelligent beings with the cognitive ability to affect their surroundings. Everything else in nature works in equilibrium, except humans.

Answer 13

Natural or not, there is currently no viable alternative. Drill, baby! Drill!

Answer 14

I asked roughly the same question a few days ago, but nobody seemed to get it.  It's logical contradiction to accept Evolutionary Theory and view man's actions as unnatural.

If you believe in a Deity or a creator and believe that he made humans with some special significance, then it does make sense to view man's actions as unnatural.  Oddly it seems that most of the people who accept Evolutionary Theory believe human actions are unnatural and most the people who believe in Deity(ies) hold an equally illogical position.

Edit:  Link to my question on roughly the same thing.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Edit 2:  Birdog we probably agree alot more than you think, but here the point isn't what our personal beliefs are.  It is if they are or are not logically constant with our reaction to Climate Change Theory.  Thanks for the compliment tho.