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Re: Global Warming and Cane

Author: seabreeze
Date: 2022-01-06 02:05

SunnyDaze,

As an amateur historian, I suspect that a massive change in human consciousness of the same order that occurred when Louis Pasteur's theory of "germs" finally gained acceptance will be needed if the human race is to survive the global warming crisis. Prior to Pasteur the prevailing theories of disease involved "miasmas" of bad air and the balance of body "humors" like phlegm and bile. The prevailing establishment laughed at Pasteur's idea that minute organisms too small to be seen by the unaided eye could possibly cause disease. Most people in "developed" societies bathed at best once a week. There is the story that Queen Elizabeth, upon hearing that Native Americans bathed often, perhaps daily, shrieked in horror that they would surely catch their death of cold. After Pasteur, people began soaping up daily and practicing modern hygiene because they correctly believed that microrganisms were real and had to be kept in check.

But for some time, it was an uphill battle to get people to accept the reality of the germ theory and change their daily habits of hygiene accordingly. So far, not enough people accept the theory that fossil fuel combustion layers the atmosphere with misplaced carbon, trapping heat, and causing massive climate disruption. That macroeffect is as invisible to them as the microworld of bacteria was before Pasteur! Perhaps we need a charismatic figure like Pasteur or Einstein to help us realign our view of reality. Fire and combustion are not a Promethean steal from the gods to man; no matter how much "progress" they may have driven during the Industrial Revolution or how "romantic" they may seem in the fireplace, they are, or have become, a curse. They need to be replaced by more benign processes like electric motors, solar and wind electricity, solar thermal and geothermal controls, induction cooking, hydrogen fuel cells, and conservation of energy and heat by advances in building materials and insulation. If the day arrives when everyone routinely chooses these alternatives to open fossil fuel combustion, just as they now choose to wash daily and keep surfaces clean in the name of hygiene, then the climate change battle will be won.

Post Edited (2022-01-10 23:48)

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Global Warming and Cane new

SecondTry

2021-12-31 07:46