The Discovery Enterprise: Oceans 911

sailor.barsoom wrote:

> After visiting the website I believe that this group wants
> to gain knowledge of the oceans and wants to preserve them.
> The idea that ignorance is the best way to protect the
> oceans, rain forests, or anything else I find truly shocking,
> at least coming from this group.

Nobody's advocating ignorance. In fact, only ignorance (or at least
severe naivet) can explain the belief that people LIVING in an area
will improve its biodiversity. The complete history of humanity, up to
and including the present, demonstrates the opposite.

You don't need to live in the oceans to study them; NOAA does a fine job
of studying them already. I'd be quite supportive of a group advocating
an increase in NOAA's budget (or other groups doing similar things).
Oceanographers != colonists.

> When we are ignorant of the rain forest we burn the rain
> forest down because we don't know that there's anything wrong
> with that.

No, we burn the rain forest down to make space to live in and grow food.

> When we are ignorant of the oceans we dump our
> trash into the oceans because we don't know that there's any-
> thing wrong with that.

For the most part, we DON'T dump our trash into the oceans currently.
But when we live there, you can bet we will.

Consider how much damage we've done to ocean biodiversity DESPITE not
living there -- and then compare it to the much greater damage we've
done to places where we do live. The argument "but this time it'll be
different, golly gee, really it will!" just doesn't hold water.

> "Should we spend time, money and effort on the ocean or on
> space?" This is a false choice exactly the same way that
> "Should we spend time, money and effort on space or on
> solving our problems here on Earth?" is a false choice.

Agreed.

> Sorry to snarl, but this got to me. I don't know if
> Discovery Enterprise is as wonderful as they present
> themselves as (then again who is?), but not all intercourse
> is rape, and we need to make sure DE really is the bad guy
> before we convict them.

Hah. Show me the ocean inviting us in, and then you can make an
argument that it's not rape.

> All of that being said, space is bigger than the oceans, and
> has more resources.

Exactly. Wrecking the oceans to make a little more living space for
humans on our one little planet is not only tragic, but also extremely
short-sighted.

The best (and perhaps only) way to leave nature in a natural state is
for humans to not live there. In addition to that, we need controls on
the amount of damage we do merely by visiting and resource-gathering,
but not living there is the #1 prerequisite.

Best,
- Joe