One of Earthsky blogs’ frequent respondents and commentators is Steve Salmony, who sent me the photo at left along with several other images of amazing and phenomenal icebergs in Antarctica. Because of the technology of this blog, I am unable to show you exactly what he sent me, however, I did find this site, where you can see most of the same images that have been posted on the Internet. Google Images can point you to even more.
While I was searching for the images in a location that could be referenced, I came across some other images posted and copyrighted in 2005 by Tom and Carol Dempsey from a 12-day trip they took to Antarctica. I was fascinated by their photographic take of the ice, the water, and the penguins, so after you see the striped icebergs above, take a look at these.
And while you’re at it, look at Tom’s images of Argentina: Patagonia and Buenos Aires.
Many thanks to Steve, Tom and Carol, and the other photographers who brought sights from Antarctica, Patagonia and Argentina to our attention.
These wondrous photographers are of things in our world that are disappearing. Keep these pictures for your children because one day they will see these icebergs and wonder how such beauty could have been sacrificed to human folly. The loss of icebergs are human-driven events associated with the ravage of Earth, I suppose.
Surely, members of the Earth & Sky community can agree that science is indisputably the finest source for gaining an adequate understanding of the way the world we inhabit actually works and for accurately enough grasping the “placement” of the human species within the order of living things on Earth. But, as others have noted with such clarity and coherence, too many world-class scientists have treated the human overpopulation of Earth as a taboo topic and, even worse, perniciously participated in the politicization of the science of climate change. Barack Obama cannot know whatsoever could somehow be true, in large part, because so many scientists have failed to reasonably assume their responsibilities to science as well as to sensibly fulfill their duties as scientists.
Rather than do what I have been doing over the past 7 years by extolling the virtues of good science, today I am going to try something different.
What follows is a brief artistic expression that is intended to convey a symbolic meaning parallel to but distinct from, and more significant than, the literal meaning.
Please consider an allegory: that a titanic struggle between human beings and the natural world is in the offing. It seems this struggle is fulminating now precisely because too many leaders of the 6.7 billion {soon to be 9 billion} members of the human family generally do not share the distinctly scientific, evidence-based perspective of many within this community. Many too many of our brothers and sisters, especially those with great wealth and power, pompously and erroneously believe that human organisms are separate from, and somehow superior to, life as we know it on Earth.
At least to me, it appears that an epochal contest is taking shape on the far horizon between the ‘team’ of “mother culture and father profit” on one side and ‘Team’ Mother Nature on the other.
This could be the greatest show on Earth in 10,000 years.
The team of “mother culture and father profit” appears adamant in its willful intentionality to stay the same old business-as-usual course of recklessly overconsuming limited natural resources; relentlessly expanding large-scale production and distribution capabilities without regard to physical limitations of the natural world; and overpopulating our planetary home, come what may for children and coming generations, biodiversity, the environment and the Earth’s body.
Team Mother Nature simply is.
Which team will likely be seen by reasonable and sensible observers as winning the contest for success in 2012, 2020 and 2050, if the human community continues its idolatry of distinctly human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities by choosing forevermore unbridled overgrowth activities just as we are doing now?
If the leaders of the family of humanity do not choose change, do you have any ideas about which team will prevail and when will the outcome of the colossal contest no longer be in doubt?
Thank you, Steve, not only for the photographs but for your insightful and thought-provoking comment. Many of us grew up to television commercials that still ring in our minds. One of them was an advertisement for Chiffon Margarine which said, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” We now know the transfats in oleomargarine are not the greatest for you, and in many ways it really isn’t so nice to fool Mother Nature. When it comes to who will win out in a contest between man and nature, ultimately, there can only be one winner. And we don’t even have to guess. Everybody knows the answer already.
On the need for scientific education regarding the human overpopulation of Earth in these early years of Century XXI………..
Dear Beverly and Friends everywhere of Earth & Sky,
I want to at least try to gain your quick help. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but yesterday the “AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population” submitted an idea for how we think the Obama Administration could change America. It’s called “Ideas for Change in America.”
I’ve submitted an idea and wanted to see if you could vote for it. The title is: Accepting human limits and Earth’s limitations. You can read and vote for the idea by clicking on the following link:
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/accepting_human_limits_and_earths_limitations
The top 10 ideas are going to be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and more than a dozen leading nonprofits after the Inauguration. So each idea has a real chance at becoming policy.
Thanks.
Sincerely yours,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176