Posted on 03/13/2011 8:45:01 AM PDT by Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!
There’s a supermoon on the rise next week. And according to Internet buzz, it’ll bring a scary surge in natural disasters around the globe.
No way, Jose: Numerous scientists have reassured the public that there's absolutely no correlation between disturbances on Earth and this rare lunar phase.
But the moon itself? That's another story.
On March 19, Earth’s satellite will be at its closest point to our planet in 18 years -- a mere 356,577 kilometers away. The event -- also called a lunar perigee -- was dubbed a "supermoon" by astrologer Richard Nolle back in the 1970s. The term is used to describe a new or full moon at 90% or more of its closest orbit to Earth. Next week, it will be at 100%.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Oh go ahead and read it. I read all types of psudo-science/paranormal stuff for fun.
But I’m smart enough to not believe BS because it is on an “official lookin” website. However, too many people on this site apparently are as dense as lead, and will be spreading this garbage to their entire email contact list further causing unnecessary worry and alarm.
The moon is the same size and distance from the earth regardless of it’s phase. The appearance of the moon from earth has nothing to do with anything
“Waiting for Supermoon”
Can we get a countdown clock, to at least 1/100th of a Second?
Please? :-)
Exactly. I saw 1000 THREADS on nuclear reactor ‘about to explode” stories.
Everyone here was trying to post every “reactor about to explode” story like they wanted it to happen..
Reminds me of Scott Brown dementia a year ago when almost everyone was drooling over this POS RINO..
No disrespect, but there have been alot of signs happening lately. Middle East, Earth Quakes. Wars and rumors of war?
I think we are heading into some rocky times coming. Be prepared my friends..
I have glanced at the FR threads that have people saying THEY are the chosen ones to be taken in a rapture and that May 21 is the date of the beginning of something or when Jesus returns.
The very Bible they act supreme in knowledge about says only God knows the date.
Don’t get me wrong I believe we are living in some times that could be called near the end when dumbasses like Obama cause WWIII and destruction but the chosen ones that are holier than everyone else crack me up.
“I swear FR is turning into a loony bin over the past few days over this earthquake. And we have the nerve to rip on the public schools and diploma mills when we take nonsense like this seriously?” ~ VanDeKoik
You got THAT right.
“...So, bottom line, the Earth isn’t becoming more active, more dangerous, or even “out of control.” Despite the fear mongering and what esteemed mainstream media networks would have you believe, the simple reality is that the numbers prove things are happening at an expected rate. Keep that in mind the next time a large earthquake happens and everyone is wondering why the Earth seems so active!”
http://geology.rockbandit.net/2010/03/01/has-there-been-an-increase-in-earthquake-activity/
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“End-times maddness” is a hallmark of religious extremist fundamentalists on the extreme right as well as the left. Both are flip sides of the SAME EXTREMIST COIN. And both sides are politically oriented, meaning that they cannot be trusted with political power which they would use to ENFORCE their religious beliefs on the rest of us.
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Environmentalism as Religion: Michael Crichton
http://www.sullivan-county.com/immigration/e2.html
In 2003 Michael Crichton sent the Ecology industry into a rage by exposing them as a religion. He can get away with it because he has both the science background and enough money not to be silenced by the eco-lobby. In fact environmentalism is as much a fundamentalist’ religion as that of Pat Robertson. He is correct about the religious undertones, but it’s also a political movement as he points out.
In 2008 global warming has fallen off the radar as the presidential election, high energy costs, and the Wall Street meltdown have dominated the news. But this one article seems to have been left out of the discussion. Besides reports of such record cold in Mongolia killing people and livestock, the December 19, 2007 Washington Times reports:
“In Buenos Aires (Argentina), snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold...(in 2007) Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia...New Zealand...weather turned so cold...”
To quote former Vice President Al Gore, in his book entitled Earth in the Balance,
“The richness and diversity of our religious tradition throughout history is a spiritual resource long ignored by people of faith, who are often afraid to open their minds to teachings first offered outside their own systems of belief. But, the emergence of a civilization in which knowledge moves freely and almost instantaneously through the world has spurred a renewed investigation of the wisdom distilled by all faiths. This pan religious perspective may prove especially important where our global civilization’s responsibility for the earth is concerned.”
Remarks to the Commonwealth Club by Michael Crichton San Francisco September 15, 2003 (Extract)
I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.
We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we’re told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.
As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism. And in order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and I believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future. I believe the world has genuine problems and I believe it can and should be improved. But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance. I think our past record of environmental action is discouraging, to put it mildly, because even our best intended efforts often go awry. But I think we do not recognize our past failures, and face them squarely. And I think I know why.
I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can’t be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people-—the best people, the most enlightened people-—do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday-—these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.
And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let’s examine some of those beliefs.
There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?
...In short, the romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things... If Eden is a fantasy that never existed, and mankind wasn’t ever noble and kind and loving, if we didn’t fall from grace, then what about the rest of the religious tenets? What about salvation, sustainability, and judgment day? What about the coming environmental doom from fossil fuels and global warming, if we all don’t get down on our knees and conserve every day?
Well, it’s interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today. Is this a reason to rejoice, to say halleluiah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true...
Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they’re human. So what. Unfortunately, it’s not just one prediction. It’s a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on. With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it’s a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn’t quit when the world doesn’t end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts.
...I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigeous science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won’t impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependant on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.
Fundamentalism
Most of us have had some experience interacting with religious fundamentalists, and we understand that one of the problems with fundamentalists is that they have no perspective on themselves. They never recognize that their way of thinking is just one of many other possible ways of thinking, which may be equally useful or good. On the contrary, they believe their way is the right way, everyone else is wrong; they are in the business of salvation, and they want to help you to see things the right way. They want to help you be saved. They are totally rigid and totally uninterested in opposing points of view. In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas.
I want to argue that it is now time for us to make a major shift in our thinking about the environment, similar to the shift that occurred around the first Earth Day in 1970, when this awareness was first heightened. But this time around, we need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead.
There are two reasons why I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism.
First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s. It’s not a good record. Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible...
How will we manage to get environmentalism out of the clutches of religion, and back to a scientific discipline? There’s a simple answer: we must institute far more stringent requirements for what constitutes knowledge in the environmental realm. I am thoroughly sick of politicized so-called facts that simply aren’t true. It isn’t that these “facts” are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organizations are spinning their case to present it in the strongest way. Not at all-—what more and more groups are doing is putting out is lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false...At this moment, the EPA is hopelessly politicized. In the wake of Carol Browner, it is probably better to shut it down and start over. What we need is a new organization much closer to the FDA. We need an organization that will be ruthless about acquiring verifiable results, that will fund identical research projects to more than one group, and that will make everybody in this field get honest fast...So it’s time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that.
I agree the signs are as obvious as the buds on the tress say spring is here but I think the poster was referring to those I mentioned in my last post.
Aww come on people who doesnt love a good conspiracy theory every now and then. Maybe a moon quake will be so bad a chunk of the moon will break off and the Earth’s grivtational pull will make it crash on Japan. I dont think anything else can happen to these people but this just might the way they have been suffering the last couple days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon
Distance at perigee ~364397 km
Distance at apogee ~406731 km
This event puts the distance at 356,577 km.
Closer than usual but not enough to result in any substantial difference from the typical effects.
“I swear FR is turning into a loony bin over the past few days over this earthquake.And we have the nerve to rip on the public schools and diploma mills when we take nonsense like this seriously?” ~ VanDeKoik
Exactly. Here’s more:
“....the diagram [shown here: Fear, Complexity, & Environmental Management in the 21st Century http://www.crichton-official.com/videos.html implies that things are simple: Kill the wolves, and save the elk. Move the grizzlies, and avoid the lawyers. And on, and on. It’s this simplistic, cause-and-effect thinking that must go. ..”
“We must embrace complexity theory.”
“..[it is] Our human predisposition [to] treat all systems as linear when they are not. ..”
“The science that underlies our understanding of complex systems is now thirty years old. A third of a century should be plenty of time for this knowledge and to filter down to everyday consciousness, but ... not much has penetrated ordinary human thinking. ... complexity theory has raced through the financial world. It has been briskly incorporated into medicine. But organizations that care about the environment do not seem to notice that their ministrations are deleterious in many cases. Lawmakers do not seem to notice when their laws have unexpected consequences, or make things worse. Governors and mayors and managers may manage their complex systems well or badly, but if they manage well, it is usually because they have an instinctive understanding of how to deal with complex systems. Most managers fail. ..”
“...who believes that the complex system of our atmosphere behaves in such a simple and predictable way that if we reduce one component, carbon dioxide, we will therefore reliably reduce temperature? CO2 is not like an accelerator on a car. It’s not linear (and by the way, neither is a car accelerator.)
And furthermore, who believes that the climate can be stabilized when it has never been stable throughout the earth’s history?
We can only entertain such an idea if we don’t really understand what a complex system is. We’re like the blonde who returned the scarf because it was too tight. We don’t get it. ..”
“If we want to manage complexity, we must eliminate fear. Fear may draw a television audience. It may generate cash for an advocacy group. It may support the legal profession. But fear paralyzes us. It freezes us. And we need to be flexible in our responses, as we move into a new era of managing complexity ...”
“Is this really the end of the world? Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods?
No, we simply live on an active planet. Earthquakes are continuous, a million and a half of them every year, or three every minute. A Richter 5 quake every six hours, a major quake every 3 weeks. A quake as destructive as the one in Pakistan every 8 months. It’s nothing new, it’s right on schedule.
At any moment there are 1,500 electrical storms on the planet. A tornado touches down every six hours. We have ninety hurricanes a year, or one every four days. Again, right on schedule. Violent, disruptive, chaotic activity is a constant feature of our globe.
Is this the end of the world? No: this is the world. It’s time we knew it.” ~ Michael Crichton
I was starting to wonder if I was the only one who noticed this. Of course you have to be afraid to say anything on those threads you will get attacked and the mods set on you lol ....
Mass is not increasimg, but gravitational force is proportional to r(squared).
Mass is not increasimg, but gravitational force is proportional to r(squared).
Yes, and there is a physical effect associated with it, namely the lunar tidal potential, which varies as the inverse cube of the lunar distance.
However, there are several points which depreciate the significance of this. The first is that spring tides occur at full and new moon, so a lunar perigee at new moon would have the same effect.
The second is that the solar tidal field also varies with the solar distance from earth, and this occurs in late January, so a SUPER supermoon would have to occur then.
Perhaps the most important point is the nature of the variation, which is very flat near the maximum. The article mentions 90%, but the lunar tidal force is within 90% of its maximum value when the moon is within 70 degrees of perigee, and this approaches half the time ( my calculations here. )
The force is within 95% of maximum for angles within 45 degrees, and 99% for 20 degrees. When the moon is within 10 degrees of perigee, the tidal force is within 99.75% of the maximum.
So physically, there is nothing very significant about very close approaches to the theoretical maximum. The press made the same sort of hullaballoo about the close approach of Mars a few years ago, which was said to be the closest in thousands of years. People were walking around saying that Mars would be as big as the moon! In fact, I was asked about this last year, I think, because a popular article about the event “went viral” and surfaces every August.
From the article:
“The moon will be a little closer than it was last year, 1/4,000 of a percent closer,” Johnston told.
Factor in that small change with the inverse square law for gravity and we’re talking about a very, very small difference for the “Supermoon”.
“No disrespect, but there have been alot of signs happening lately. Middle East, Earth Quakes. Wars and rumors of war?
I think we are heading into some rocky times coming. Be prepared my friends..”
The the problem is that you can take any period of time in the past 3000 years and you will find periods of chaos that would meltdown the minds of people that think that these are the worse times ever.
WW2 stretched over the entire globe, and posed a clear danger to civilization. Whole populations of
Jews, and Chinese were killed. Cites destroyed by the hundreds. Economies collapsed, lives disrupted on every continent. Not only that, there were also volcanoes, earthquakes, and “super moons” at the same time.
Guess what? The world went right on like it had before after it was over.
Also look at the Black Death. A huge swath of humanity was wiped out in a few years, and people had no clue how to really control it. Civilization was near free fall in Europe
Humanity made it through just fine.
Dont get me started on the 1960s.
Here today we have the Middle East being as unstable as its have always been, and an earthquake that killed less people than the floods that resulted from it, and all of a sudden Jesus is coming?
Times are rough, and people should always be prepared for those things. But it is nothing that bad.
I saw that. And I’m THANKFUL it’s there. I wasn’t directing my comment specifically at this article.
However, this “super moon” crap has been floated all over this site in numerous threads as a legitimate thing. Another bit of nutty nonsense that went with the all of the disaster porn over the past few days.
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