Thanks for the link, it had me laughing. To be an astronaut you have to be 50 miles up out of the atmosphere. So yea, something only 50 miles HIGH looks thin compared to an object 25,000 miles around and 8,000 miles across.

The funniest thing is Japan is one of the biggest buyers of logs from the USA and Canada. She should have told Japan's P.M. to stop buying our logs

 

We all do need to protect the environment, if only for selfish reasons(so we and our kids can have clean water and air). The problem I've got with most of the environmentalists is that they are SO RADICAL. They don't seem to understand that not every capitalist venture is a threat to the earth. Bunch of WAAAYY left people in those groups. Also, so much of the stuff that they base things on is junk science. Many more scentists disagree with their findings than agree, but they are put out as gospel anyway. Let's all try to do what we can to protect what we've got, but do it with some common sense.

 

I'm no tree hugger or emviromentalist by any means...look what I drive. But some of you folks need to get your heads out of the sand. If it was'nt for the enviromentalists and tree huggers, the air you'd be breathin now would be a hell of a lot worse. They are responsible for cleaner air regulations, cleaner water regulations...etc. If it was'nt for them the water you guys are drinkin ( or used to make your beer ) would'nt even be close to being clean and clear. Granted some of those enviroists can be pretty RADICAL, but sometimes you have to be if you want to get attention about something, and no politicians or anyone else choose not to hear because it will interfere with there way of doing something. OK I've had enough time on this soap box. I'm done

 

I'm not saying I think everyone should litter and whatnot, but a lot of the solutions we've come up with to "save the planet" are bogus, and come at a huge expense!
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/
For example... take the link above. It's to a site about global warming. Look at the time scale... not very long. 1865 to present. If we're looking at a tiny little sliver of the records, and we know most things in nature are cyclic to begin with, how can we honestly say that this is due to our cars? We can't. We can guess, but there have been colder and warmer years since this time. And I'm not even sure how these temperatures were gathered, as I'd heard that the records aren't really accurate until 1965 (globally) anyway.

My biggest problem with this article is that she says NOTHING to qualify the title of the article... NOTHING!!! She makes some comments about things that haven't exactly been confirmed by photos or anything, but in the article, they mention these things she said and nothing more about it. A whole article that's really about the mission as a whole, given a controversial title like that to generate readers. Pathetic, CNN... just pathetic.

(Please don't use my age against me... I used to be more into environment stuff, but I tried doing research to back up some of the things I believed and found out that things I was learning as facts were actually theories and had very little scientific fact to back it up. Thank you, Mr. P.!)

 

Try this:

Compare photographs from orbit in the 70's-80's, with ones taken now.

There's a lot less green, and lots more brown/grey where the humans have congregated in masses,or deforested, etc.

If you have the time, take some basic math and compute how much carbon-dioxide a square-mile of forest will process in a year. Then, figure out how much of the earth is currently covered in greenery, and how much there was 20-30 years ago.

Since the earth was sorta in balance decades or centuries ago, figure out what happens when the square-mileage of forest is 50% of what it was. There's no way that can be made up, and the ecology will collapse, or at least change drastically, as a result.

Then, add in how much more carbon dioxide (and other carbon based things) we're pouring into the atmostphere, and really, it's just basic math.

If you had trouble with high-school level math, I'm sorry, but, really, bow out of the discussion because you have no basis with which to disagree.

Too blunt? Sorry...

art k.

 

Square mileage of forest is 50% of what it used to be? I'm new in this industry, so that may very well be true. However, forests that are managed (i.e. logged, seed trees left, let em grow for 20 years) produce better trees faster than an unmanaged forest (ie- usfs grounds). Not to mention the lower risk of fires in managed forests.

 

whups- forgot this part- i also agree that tree huggers / environmentalists do good things every now and again. We definatly need balance. There are those around here that even with the rules and regs for logging STILL destroy the land.... its unfortunate that the rules are catered to the knot heads making it harder for those that do it right to do it at all.

 

I read the article again and have realized what she means; she is trying to point out how thin our atmosphere appears. The air isn't any thinner, but when seen from outer space it doesn't look too impressive, she was shocked to see that our atmosphere appears very thin when seen from her vantage point.
If our atmosphere was disappearing I'm sure FOX news wouldn't tell us, but at least CNN would. She probably didn't receive high marks in english or communications 101, her statement was poorly worded, ( or the reporter is illiterate).

This is the message she meant to deliver; the earth has a limited supply to offer us, and once we foul up what we have there is nowhere else to go. Standing on the ground and looking around our atmosphere seems infinite, but after traveling up 100 miles you realize that there is only air for a few miles above the ground.
The astronauts always return to earth, if they can't get off this rock, neither can we.

 

krewat,
I have no problem with advanced math (calc 3+) thank you. I do, however, have a problem with fake statistics and chicken-littles who draw attention to what might just be natural occurances. Certainly, with a growing population, more of the planet will have to be made habitable to humans. I'm not surprised by that... I also believe that the environment is actually very versatile and that, try as we may, it will prevail over most anything we do to it. We'll likely destroy ourselves before we destroy it. You're entitled to your own opinions, but don't assume that I don't understand your 'creative math' before I've even had the chance. So, are you going to do your part to help keep world population in check? It would help your argument a little...

I can see that she may be just making a random comment about the atmosphere, however, as you can see, an entire article which was not even about that subject was created here. It used the same content from all their other articles about the space mission, just injected her comments. I have a problem with this because it misleads the public with NO EVIDENCE to back it up. Now we've got testimony from an astronaut, but how qualitative is that? When you actually study the system interactions, how do these statements relate?? Problems arise because nobody bothers to look into it and they just run around freaking out.

 

Perhap she can starting plugging volcanoes so they would stop spewing ash that is hundreds of times more reactive in our atmosphere.

Science dictates that the changes in how people see the earth is because it is always evolving, do to it's natural condition..

Climatizing cycles.

 

And farting too! Don't want too much methane in the air.

BTW, isn't livestock the biggest producer of airborne methane pollution?

 

For all those good with calculators, answer this with real data.

What produces more oxygen? The ocean that covers more then 3/4 of the world's surface or forests which cover much less then 1/4 of the earth's surface?

 

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...1520.En.r.html