Hi Everyone! It is just getting light now here...

I don't know about you, Jim, but some words like "world" can mean many
things. The word world as Ursula Leguin noted once can be used in many senses. 

"The word for world is forest." 

I think if you are going to interpret a scientific article, then it best to
interpret the term world within context of the meaning of the article. 

For instance the world may mean only the 'biotic world' or the 'world's save
drinking water' and certainly if we were to assess the sanitary world's
water supply we would have to exclude most of the major watersheds in the world.

So we are not talking about 'Battery World' or some commercial world or some
limited social definition of the word world, but various facets and elements
of the biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and geosphere that are being
'destroyed'. 

We have destroyed as much as 50 % of the worlds forests. No one is disputing
that, and the forests are a 'world' unto themselves. Of course we could
extent our 'notion' of world to 'will and idea' as did Schopenhaur for
instance, and integrate ourselves as wholes into and within a larger
holistic perspective. It is our world afterall. 

color your world (with water based paints), not collar it and choke it. 

chao,

john foster








t 09:18 AM 9/29/00 -0500, Jim Tantillo wrote:
>Hi Adam,
>Nice to see your thought-provoking presence here again . . . .
>
>I couldn't help notice the strange juxtaposition between something you
>wrote and the blurb at the bottom of John F.'s email:
>
>Adam wrote:
>>
>>Any good scientist will tell you that on, say, a pie-chart graph, the amount
>>we scientists understand is like an infinitesimally small sliver compared to
>>what we know that we don't yet understand, and cannot yet quantify or
>>explain in positivist terms. Yet we proceed with our Pinchotian management
>>agendas as if we know what there is to lose, what it is we're losing
>>everyday. [snip]
>
>To which John offered in response:
>
>>HUMANS HAVE VORACIOUS APPETITE: The London Guardian says "humans have
>>destroyed more than 30% of the natural world since 1970," according to
>>"The Living Planet Report" from the World Wide Fund for Nature, New
>>Economics Foundation and World Conservation Monitoring Centre. One of
>>the "most serious problems" is depletion of freshwater, where humans
>>are using "half of the accessible supplies." This is twice as much as
>>in 1960 and threatens to "dry up many wetlands and push the species of
>>those habitats to extinction."
>
>How is it that we can come up with a statement like "humans have destroyed
>more than 30% of the natural world since 1970"??  Where does THAT figure
>come from??
>
>By my calculations, if the earth's surface is 70% water, and we've
>destroyed MORE than 30% of the natural world . . .  then an earth-shaped
>pie-chart graph showing the amount "humans have destroyed" would leave just
>about that 70% left over after we've destroyed all the continents.  (do we
>all have waterproof computers or something?)
>
>:-)
>
>Sorry, I just couldn't help the comparison.  Many "good scientists" simply
>are adept at playing with nutty numbers--as they say, there's lies, damned
>lies, and statistics . . . and the London Guardian's "humans have destroyed
>more than 30% of the natural world since 1970," strikes me as an especially
>nutty statement using nutty numbers to the extreme.
>
>jt
>
HUMANS HAVE VORACIOUS APPETITE: The London Guardian says "humans have
destroyed more than 30% of the natural world since 1970," according to
"The Living Planet Report" from the World Wide Fund for Nature, New
Economics Foundation and World Conservation Monitoring Centre. One of
the "most serious problems" is depletion of freshwater, where humans
are using "half of the accessible supplies." This is twice as much as
in 1960 and threatens to "dry up many wetlands and push the species of
those habitats to extinction."
  
AMERICA ON "RECORD PACE OF EXTINCTION": A new book, The Condor's
Shadow, by Environmental Defense senior ecologist David Wilcove finds
that "16% of species in the U.S. are in 'immediate danger of
extinction'," says the Daily Grist 9/19. The book documents the
wholesale destruction of entire ecosystems such as the Southeast's long
pine forests and tallies the results, "33% of the animals and plants on
the Endangered Species List are declining." The review is at
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books091900.stm



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