Quote:
Originally Posted by fdpaq0580
Any single event could easily be the first, or one of many heretofore unrecognized symptoms of climate change. Actually, global warming/climate change was a thing before the first brave politician ever mentioned it. Brave because he knew he was signing his political death warrant and would be subjected to ridicule.
The question, can man effect the climate?
Can an insect effect the life of a building?
I say "yes" to both questions.
The building may have an expected lifespan. A single insect can't do much. But hundreds of thousands of termites can certainly contribute to the early demise of that structure.
Likewise, earth with a smattering of humans probably wouldn't notice us. But with billions scouring the earth and destroying habitats and devouring resources. Yes! I do think human activity is definitely having an effect. And billions more to come from the billions here already.
Like lemmings who over populated and destroyed their island home, they jump in the sea and hope to find another home. We live on an island in space. How soon before we over populate and the planet can't cope? We are not yet able to, figuratively speaking, jump off this island and start swimming.
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Lemmings do not commit suicide. However, this particular myth is based on some actual lemming behaviors. Lemmings have large population booms every three or four years. When the concentration of lemmings becomes too high in one area, a large group will set out in search of a new home. Lemmings can swim, so if they reach a water obstacle, such as a river or lake, they may try to cross it. Inevitably, a few individuals drown. But it’s hardly suicide.
So why is the myth of mass lemming suicide so widely believed? For one, it provides an irresistible metaphor for human behavior. Someone who blindly follows a crowd—maybe even toward catastrophe—is called a lemming. Over the past century, the myth has been invoked to express modern anxieties about how individuality could be submerged and destroyed by mass phenomena, such as political movements or consumer culture.
But the biggest reason the myth endures? Deliberate fraud. For the 1958 Disney nature film White Wilderness, filmmakers eager for dramatic footage staged a lemming death plunge, pushing dozens of lemmings off a cliff while cameras were rolling. The images—shocking at the time for what they seemed to show about the cruelty of nature and shocking now for what they actually show about the cruelty of humans—convinced several generations of moviegoers that these little rodents do, in fact, possess a bizarre instinct to destroy themselves.