We have the power to wipe out most of humanity. We don’t have the power to wipe out most animal life on the planet.

Yes, it has been proven that we can hurt mankind but the rest of the inhabitants of the planet will still be here.

That was the original thought but after studying the blast sites over decades we found that the only animal that can not survive in those areas are mankind. The animal life was back to normal in a few years, the plant life was back after three seasons. The birds eat the plants and live if we ate them we would die even today.

You need to understand that billions of barrels of oil seep out of the ocean floor every year. Microbes feed on it. This has been happening for at least a million years yet you hardly notice it. Sometimes you will see clumps of hardened oil wash up on the shore. That is not from oil spills it is what seeped up from the ocean floor. The ocean will get rid of the oil faster than man can clean it up.

We did that and man was hurt by it back in the 60’s and 70’s the wildlife survived. That was when President Nixon created the EPA to clean up the mess we were making. The environmental nuts have taken the laws created to protect us and turned it around to attack our industry. Dioxin and other chemicals were dumped whole sale into our ground water and we started having birth defects and frogs with three eyes. Most if not all were cleaned up in a decade. And now we know better. You see it was done already and wildlife survived, man was in danger not the planet.

Can’t be done by man. We nuked an island and the trees came back in months. Mount Saint Helens erupted and wiped out a huge area of trees, where man was involved the trees took longer to come back where nature was allowed to do its thing the trees came back in 18 months.  Life his harder to beat than you think.

You are correct, we can hurt man but the wildlife keeps going.

Right, that is what I wrote in my last post. The impact is all on man with some animals hurt on the fringe. Watch the series life after people, after 200 years almost everything that man has built will fall apart and after 10k years all the modern crap we have build will be gone. We will only have the pyramids and stone structures left and most of that will be covered by wildlife. Man has only been the dominant species for the last 10k years and if man were to walk away from the planet in 10k years three will be no sign of man ever having been here. man cam not destroy the planet, only mankind at best.

the_peoples_party, I wasn't referring to climate change in this instance. Even if man can't influence the power of the sun or earth's core, there is plenty that is possible in regards to pollution and nuclear catastrophies, enough so that it would be a real threat if it I was abused as a weapon or an horrible accident occurred or simple carelessness. 

Paladin, even if  nuclear fallout doesn't kill animal and plantlife, it kills humans and that is my mainconcern. What do I care if nature still exists if human kind has been erradicated?

Bottom line is that technology offers the means for massmurder and sustained destruction of our environment so that it would be hostile for our survival. And collective suicide as a species goes against every ethical moral norm and religion (except for some doomsday cults maybe). I am not concerned with the universe at large, just what we can do to impact out existance with the means at our disposal, and that is plenty.

Are you concerned about the environment or are you concerned with man?  Because, it sure seems like you're trying to play the whole outfield.

Man has had technology that can wipe out whole populations for centuries.  The technology we have now just makes it easier and less complex to do it.

As long as there is a remnant of mankind in just aboout an senario we'll survive.  In some senarios it would be more difficult but the way our bodies can adapt and the way our brains can think just like what Paladin said.

Taxes=guns.  Figure of speech.

She is interested in both.

I am not aware of century old technology that could wipe out whole populations and make the environment unliveable and poisenous for continued survival. But if you do, please tell me, I always like to know things like that, for some reason it's fascinating.

Concern for the environment and concern for mankind goes hand-in-hand. We need the environment to survive. It would survive without us, but we cannot exist without it. How is it possible to seperate the two? Unless you are an environmental extremist who believe that nature would be better off without humans at all, of course.

Tell me how you fix the destruction of the rainforest, or the detox of tipped rivers and lakes in China (they poisened alot of the their freshwater) - how do you fill the Aral lake with water again, push back the Sahara (man causes the onward movement - at least I remember something to that effect from school, but I am not absolutely certain about it), erradicate nuclear fallout from the Bikini Atoll, get rid of all the trash and toxic waste in the oceans..  We need a healthy environment, even more so in the future with the global population rising steadily. If less of that is there to go around between more and more people - I see a pretty big potential for violence there. Scarcity of resources like fresh water and clean air, healthy soil and food etc.  is a bigger threat to national security than all existing terror groups put together, even if it isn't in your own country. Those who don't have it in their region will migrate - what other choice do they have? So it's not just about ethical reasons or pure survivalist reasons, it is also a question of war and peace.

Your examples are good - but most (except for mustard gas) have not that much to do with technology. Sending someone sick as a trojan horse is sly and deceptive, but hardly technolgy of massdestruction. And it didn't render the environment or town/region unliveable and toxic for the greeks who followed behind.

Mustard gas was the beginning of hightech warfare. WW1 was the first modern war where technology started to play a more dominant role. Airplanes and huge artillery, machine guns, gas attacks etc. - that is a sliver of what modern weapon technology enables people to do now. But it isn't even a century old yet, and it was the first time modern technology was used for purposes of war. Before that battles were fought differently, not less devastating in terms of human lives, but with more pillaging, raping and burning down whole cities. The 30 year war  during the 17th century in Europe killed so many people that wolves were back in central Europe and whole regions existed where nobody was left alive. But that wasn't due to technology, just good old famine, disease and foreign troops passing through.

Actually it was small pox but close enough.

Don't forget the Mayans and most of the native populaton in America.

No matter how you spin it though, archaic people simply couldn't have affected human life on earth on a global scale (even if they had pretty amazing technology for their time), but that is certainly possible today. Besides, I never really contested that some form of technology was around for a long long time, just the scale of the impact said tech had.

I think you are mixing two different aspects together that have vastly different meanings: cultural impacts and longlasting negative threatening technological impacts. Culturally, you are absolutely right. Predating highcultures certainly influenced our development and also our technology. The other issue, I don't think so.

The romans had a huge empire and influence our culture, laws and customs (English language for instance has a lot of latin via french in it), they built cities that still exist in Germany, and  aqueducts that could almost still be used, after all that time. But I don't know of anything technological wise that the romans did that impacts our live here 2000 years later in a negative or threatening way.

I am relatively sure that todays modern technology could/has the means to impact the lives of people in a mostly negative way in the centuries or millenia to come. This fact is the difference for me beween technology of the romans and our modern technology. Add to that the fact that our knowledge about technology and its sideeffects is not growing parallel to the development of new technology itself - meaning that we can do things  with technology without really knowing what exactly the consequences would be, and you have one dangerous constellation. And to bank all hopes on the development of new technology to repaire the damage done already is very risky and reckless IMO. It's a lethal cycle, and it is one that the romans never had to worry about, even if they had been a political worldpower and were amazing architects and had inside plumbing and floorheating, skyscrapers (multistory appartment blocks) and a ton of other things.

PS I've been in Rome and Ostia and they are great cities.

Afghanistan.. can't afford to lose there. Do you want the taleban to have nuclear capabilities? If they gain even more influence in Pakistan than they already do.. it is a pretty creepy outlook to have terrorists with Abombs in their arsenal. No other choice but to win that one, or the outcome could be worse than before. It is's a messed up situation in a basically ungoverned country (no central government that has any power outside the capital) and the decades of civil war and terror did their part to destroy most functioning infrastructure. It isn't really a wonder ISAF and coaltion troops lose ground when there is not even a basic functioning administrative body that could take over after the taleban have been driven off somewhere. The US should have done what the Romans did.. conquer and then rule the land after the maxime divide et impera. You have the US military in command and work together with the locals and hand responsibilities off to them but regain oversight. Democracy isn't the right thing for everybody right off the bat, people need to learn how to be democratic first, how not to be corrupt and not to use nepotism for everything, how to have a functioning administration on every level - from local to national - to have a good legal code etc. Roman imperialism shaped Europe and was a grain for western civilization after all, so it can be positive.

Not very leftist thoughts, but it's pragmatic and in the interest of my national security to have stable country there. And it would be a good way to get rid of over 90% of opium and save lives that way if there is less heroin around.

Impressive..Do you know what Zimbabwe's national deficit is like? Must be one impressive number

Time will tell for the US, but I doubt that you'll have to print bills with 14 zero's anytime soon.