Originally Posted by
Dextrous63
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Thank you for your detailed reply OGF. I'll not quote it to save space.
You cite the sun and volcanoes as big burners. True, but these are "natural" and the world had evolved in accordance within those parameters. I don't think it's entirely "natural" to dig/mine/drill up a load of things and set fire to it and release the chemicals which the world had buried as part of it's evolution.
I use the mini bus example to show how a tiny deviation from a state of equilibrium can produce catastrophic effects. Your own example of DDT is another example of us mucking around with things without thinking through the consequences.
I avoided the wood that my shed is built from since, in deference to your request of avoiding resorting to quoting stats and science, it would have brought up the matter of how much deforestation has taken place across the globe, and a long rant about the problems that this is possibly/probably producing.
We're all of an age when we can remember the smogs. But we're not of an age where we can remember how things were before we started to mess about with things that we don't full understand. So, although I take your point about things looking OK at present, I also kinda guess that the world was a much cleaner and healthier place with a greater diversity of wildlife before we began to rip it apart.
I have a robotic vacuum cleaner. Every night it give the floor of the downstairs a quick once over and need emptying every 2 days. We went away for a weekend recently; when we came back it it hardly had anything in it. You can see where I'm going with this in relation to the "self repairing" argument. The earth may recover, but only if we stop messing it up in the way we are now.