Towns May Shut Off Tap On Home Car Washing

[Wellardmac]

One the original topic of car washing - it had occured to me also that it was a bogus ban motivated by emotion rather than facts.

As for global warming - I'm with you both on this.

The reality is that global warming is happening, but there are two issues that most choose to ignore - Chris identified one issue, which is that we have not been recording temperatures for long enough to be sure of cause-effect. The other is that geologists have shown that there is a natural cycle to temperature anyway and what we're seeing could be part of the natural cycle of things.

The part that is upsetting some scientists is the rate of warming, which appears to be faster than in previous cycles. The other is a genuine fear of extinction and an arrogant belief that we could stop that from happening.

I would say that if we have changed the natural cycle and sped up the rate of change, then almost certainly things have moved beyond the point where the damage has already been done and it's just a question of letting nature take it's course and seeing if we can ride out the consequences.

Here's the sad thing - the developed world is making an effort to minimize damage, when in fact we did our bit to damage the environment over the last 150 years. The real damage right now is being done in the rapidly developing economies of China, India and Africa - Those countries are not the areas that are attempting to modify their behavior to help the situation, so what we do here in the Americas and Europe will have little effect. The reality is that on a bad day in many Chinese cities you cannot see across the street due to the smog (look up the measures that China is taking to clean up their act during the olympics) and if you were to wipe your face with a white towel at the end of a day, then it would be brown from accumulated airborne pollutants that you had been exposed to through the day.

One thing that most scientists agree upon is that nature is the most powerful force - it will get it's own way and it is self-correcting for all things that happen in a given ecosystem.

If we truly are having an influence upon our environment, then nature is just compensating. I really don't see any point in fighting it, as nature will win.

We can try and slow the effects on nature down, but in the long run the human race will go the same way as the dinosaurs - it's just a matter of whether we self-destruct, or if we influence our environment enough to force nature to make us extinct.

At best (assuming no other environmental changes) we are heading towards a global population of 9 billion and that is not sustainable. Nature will compensate in a manner that will force a population reduction or remove the population entirely.

Evolution is a wonderful force. Sleep well.