[Stefan]

Do you think the global weather phenomenon is getting worse with more catastrophes? I had some damned religious group come to my door the other day to explain that God in his rapture is doing more global weather catastrophes to punish man. (Sorry I can't remember their denomination). I replied: BS! The only reason why more people are dying is becuase we have a significant increase in the human population on a global scale thereby making more death tolls AND the global weather catastrophes have always been there but we as humans never had the communication that we once did 50 or 200 years ago--therefore we now know more about these weather events! What do you think?

[MtnGoat]

IMO you're right on target. There are plenty of religions trying to scare us about the end of the world, and some of 'em won't even admit they *are* religions....

[MCaver]

Ah, the global warming debate. IMO, there probably is some truth to global warming, but the cause of that warming is the real debate, and for that I'm afraid we just don't have enough data to determine if it's man-made or not. It's entirely likely we're in a natural cyclical warming trend. But we could also be increasing the effect by our own actions. From what I can tell, many of the other things we should be doing for the environment -- less industrial pollutants, cleaner burning vehicles, etc -- would remove man from the equation altogether. Then we would be able to tell if ew're really on a warming trend, and have a cleaner environment to boot.

[Wound Up]

I don't know. We tend to punish ourselves enough without divine help. Were there more deaths in the 20th century due to weatherfare or warfare? Some believe that man's actions are predetermined. Actually I don't know anyone who really believes this, but it somehow made it's way into textbooks and everyone learns about it in philosophy 101, at least the ones that were predetermined to take philosophy 101. Was man created like a wound up clock and with all of his actions predetermined like me typing this letter "z" (I wanted to type "q" but I couldn't) or do we really have free will. Is Willy really free? If we have him, he is not. Did he get to choose where he was released? Was he forced to act in the movie. Do animals have free will or just man? Am I here just as a chance as some say nwhikers.net is? I did not create myself, that much I know. Some say that a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong can cause a toronado in Texas. If that's the case, I think everyone should be given a butterfly net so we can eliminate one form of natural disaster. Do we really need butterflies afterall? Haven't they come out with a mechanical one yet? Just think, no more toronados, but the catch is you have to catch them all. Frankly, I noticed the natural disasters really started to occur much more frequently following the creation of this thread. https://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1133 Please delete the picture already Is chaos theory an oxymoron? http://www.mathjmendl.org/chaos/