A non theological case of ridiculous assumptions...

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The list goes on and on, if anyone wants to debate one of these issues (I think they all would make a great topic) please speak up and Ill write up a topic request.

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Shrug, most of these bar Feng Shui. I mean, where do you get off elling the worlds scientific community that they are wrong about environmental issues here? Its the opponents of these well developed and supported positions that are dogmatic fantasists. your very presentation of such issues as "dogma" is itself a dogma.

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what I am saying is that each thing I mentioned has people that belive in them so entirely that they dissconnect themselves from the reality of the facts. Like I said if you don't belive me pick a topic and Ill writeup the request, if your going to resort to childish namecalling, then by all means don't bother.

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And I say that is an ad hominem assualt on those who hold opinions you do not like. To assert your opponents are disconnected from the facts - and in the case of environmentalism, we are talking about the overwhelming majority of the worlds scientists - is to slander their credibility BEFORE you engage in the debate.So go on then, lets see your criticism of environmentalism. At the moment I am expecting you to produce discredited "evidence" from a narrow sect of global warming deniers who have zero credibility in the big bad world. But by all means, bring it on.

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In March, 1996, the International Panel on Forests of the United Nations held its first meeting in Geneva. The media paid little attention to what appeared to be one more ponderous assemblage of delegates speaking in unintelligible UNese.

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See Stormworlf, I am already alienated by the arrogant tone of these two sentences. Appealing to a "ponderous assemblage" and "unintelligeible UNese" is a blatant appeal to orthodox Conservative dogmas about the "big state" and how the UN is some sort of world government in waiting. This is more in the realm of conspiracy theory than cogent argument. But soldiering on...

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But of most significance to the subject of forests, WWF claimed that the main cause of species extinction was "commercial logging", that is, the forest industry. They provided absolutely no evidence for this so-called fact about logging and the media asked no hard questions. The next day newspapers around the world proclaimed the forest industry to be the main destroyer of species.

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Well yes obviously. Its well established, and has been since the 1970's. The most biologically diversity-dense region of the world is the Amazon rainforest, and it is being logged, and there have been multiple appeals about the dangers iof the loss of this doiversity - not least becuase we stand to gain many medical treatements from the highly developed chemistires of such a dense biomass.And whay would you, or whoever wrote this piece, expect all evidence to be produced at a press conference? Thats what the scientific peer-reviewed journals are for. Probably, as is usually the case, the press would have been given a package with relevant statisticis and refernces to papers and whatnot.All of that is elided in this snide and unfair criticism. If whoever wrote this is so ignorant that this is the first time they have enountered the idea, then they should be slapped around the head and told to wake up and smell the coffee. This is old news.

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Since that announcement I have asked on numerous occasions for the name of a single species that has been rendered extinct due to forestry, particularly in my home country, Canada. Not one Latin name has been provided.

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An appeal to personal incrdulity; 2 minutes on Google produces the Caribou dawsoni subspecies and the Sea Mink, see Statistics Canada - We couldn't find that Web page (Error 404) / Statistique Canada - Nous ne pouvons trouver cette page Web (Erreur 404)

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Today, the main cause of species extinction is deforestation, over 90% of which is caused by agriculture and urban development. Why is WWF telling the public that logging is the main cause of species extinction?

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Maybe because logging is, by definition, deforestation? Duh.

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This wasn’t written by some outcast of the scientific community, it was written by Patrick Moore, one of the original founders of Greenpeace.

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Irrelevant - thats an appeal to Moore's presumed authority. For all I know, Moore has since aquired Alzheimers, or a very large estate courtesy of the logging industry. Moore's personal authority is simply not comparable with the consensus of the scientific world.But that said, it may also be making mountains out of molehills. This looks like a crtitic seizing on a dispute and turning it into a huge issue that it may not be. Two scientists have different opinions - whats weird about that? Leave it to the method to resolve the impasse.

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I’m accusing the people that spoke at this event on behalf of the WWF of being at best grossly misinformed about the effects of commercial logging on the extinction of species of animals, and at worst deliberately lying about the effects of commercial logging in order to discredit it in the eyes of the public.

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... which is a HUGE assumption to make from the evidence at hand! In order to make that kind of harsh accusation, you need to demonstrate first of all that threy are actually wrong, and all you have in that regard is Moore's isolated opinion! Motion denied.

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but I believe that when environmental organizations lie about the facts its damaging both to the legitimacy of the movement and in turn the overall well being of human kind.

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Well IF that were true, I might agree wit you, but so far you have zero evidence that it is true. All you have are Moore's objections - that simply is not enough of a basis to leap to the assumption that the WWF - a well respected body - is actively perverting facts for no apparent reason. This is indeed a conspiracy theory type accusation.

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The next time she started one of her rants I challenged her and said that logging was not as harmful to the environment as she claimed, she responded (and this was the funny part) prove it, I showed her the evidence I collected, she had no response except asking me to stay after class, I did, and I got 1 week of detention for classroom disruption.

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I'm sorry thas also invalid. I once had a teacher tell me that "light always moves in straight lines". This is not, in fact, true; but it was good enough, she thought, for a 14-year old. It is not legitimate to seize upon a single anecdote of human failure and from there construct a grand conspiracy theory about how the public are being defrauded.Nevertheless, I can and will challenge some of your claim anyway - while total forestry stocks in the US have increased, as they have in swededn, the problem is that this increase is in short growth evergreens, like pine. This is good and useful, but it is actually tangential to logging ancient growth woodland, not least because big reserves of pine are a monoculture and thus restrict the diversity of both animals and plants. Furthermore, pine growth, being so fast, and the wood being relatively light, means that the carbon trapping carried out by pine and other evergreens is substantially less than would be the case for a hard timber woodland.So what this all adds up to is the following: evergreen farming is a good eidea, especially for high turnover products like paper, but is in fact not a substitute for the old growth woodlands we are destroying in any of the important respects.

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The teacher was one of the liberal radicals that I was talking about and the WWF was at least in part one of the sets of propaganda and yes men to which I originally refered.

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And as far as I am concerned thats about as well informed as accusing them of being vampires and sucking your blood. And you know, I do understand your response to your teacher - if nothing else, it does look like she abused her authority in an unethical way. But come on - people are people with all their frailties, and to presume that becuase of this single experience, all, or even a substantial number, of environmentalists are ill-informed or fanatical is simply not reasonable. You need to account for the fact that there are going to be stupid people on both sides of every debate; thats the way humanity works.But that is absolutely no defence against the solid, peer reviewed, scientific consensus on environmental dangers. Certainly, accusing the WWF of such dishonesty is simply ridiculous IMO; even if they are mistaken, it would be much more reasonable to assume such a mistake is honest. But as I have already shown, they are not in fact mistaken.

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Simply because logging goes on in areas of the rainforest does not make them the main cause of species extinction, the main cause of species extinction now is overpopulation, and the combined over hunting of certain types of animals and systematic clearing of the rainforest for agricultural use. Foreign influences are still responsible in that much of this agricultural use is grassing land for cattle, but that is a different problem.

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Umm, yes. Overpopulation is certainly the driver, becuase people need products that come from wood. That does not make overpopulation a different cause than logging; it means that logging is caused by the demand of large populations; that is elementary.Yes of course the clearing of woodlands for arable is a problem, but that is still deforestation. This does not appear to be hard. And whether its foreign or local, we live on only one planet.

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I can attest to his claim, as I come from a suburban area, and many people do think that American + Canadian logging practices are a far larger threat to the environment than they really are. So much so that students in my school’s ecology club circulated a petition to prevent selective logging on what I later found out was a privately owned section of forest taht was deemed at high risk for forest fires due to the fact that it was over dense.

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Well, the problem is that seeing as you seem to be doing your best to discredit the problems of logging, I'm not sure that your assesment that their view is erroneous is correct. The alternative might be that some people in suburbia, such as yourself, have an overly complacent view of the safety of logging.In addition, btw, its not always a good idea to log woods that are so dense as to be a fire risk - a lot of woodlands need to be burnt down from time to time to regenerate.

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Commercial logging in Modern NA practice is logging done for making wood products. It’s Deforestation if that land is then used for agriculture and urban development because it is not thereafter forest.
Commerical logging, especially in NA, either only selectively logs, or replants after they harvest.

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But as I pointed out, the bulk of replanting with fast-growing evergreens that do not adequately replace old growth hardwoods. the simple fact is no-one is going to plant a plot and wait 50 years before it can be harvested again. This is a cheap, quickie, partial solution.

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Patrick Moore is not some kind of wacky conspiricy theroist, hes simply an enviormentalist that wants to work with industry by creating solutions, not just creating conflict between the two.

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Now you are appealing to his alleged morality. But the problem is that that is the kind of thing that business always says when they mean "has sold out to us". Thus, politicians who work for a minimum wage threaten to "wrwck" the econommy and thoise who work against such ideas are "working in partnership with industry".The whole environmentalism moevement has ALWAYS wanted to work with undustry to create solutions. That in fact is the entire purtpose of environmentalism as a whole - to raise into sight the problems that we face, so we can all see what needs to be done and organise to do it.But business is resisting doing anything at all becuase any change threatens short term profits. And this has been going on for forty years now; it is ridiculous. Just as it is ridiculous to accuse environmentalism of "wanting to create conflict" when all it wnats is a proper reponse to the dangers we face. That is simply slandering the opposition.

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Ok, but I never said that all or even a substantial number of environmentalists are ill-informed or fanatical. I merely stated that they exist. To state that they don’t is the same as stating that religious radicals don’t exist. I think this is where we are having our misunderstanding.

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But why is your teacher a representative of the movement? Was she speaking an official capacity articulating the agenda of a group? Was she laying out a prospectus or election address?Therein lies my issue with your statement. Of course, on ANY issue under the sun, there will be some nutcases. But if they are no representative of the serious people trying to get things done in the real world, it is unfair to hold the entire movement hostage to the example of the non-representative nutters.Otherwise, any position or ideology could be discredited by finding a single person who claims to support it, but says nutty things. I do not think that the environmentalism movement is remotely similar to the UFO conspiracy "movement".

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The problem is not that these people exist, its that they are the ones that shape political movements because they are the most dedicated and outspoken, and when uninformed people hear extremist arguements, many people will ethier accept them in their entiraty, and forge their beliefs on inncorrect facts, or disregard them completely, and miss the positive aspects of the arguement.

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Well maybe, but the example breaks down becuase your teacher does not appear to be among them. I strongly dispute these people shape political movements - these people are unable to sustain any kind of position in any formal movement where you are likely to be publicly challanged. The lone nutcases are, necessarily be being alone, not part of such movements - may even have been kicked out, I point out as well.And so this is why I react badly to your proposition; it appears to be an attempt to slander environmentalism unfairly, appealing as it does not to the headline statements or peer reviewed articles emerging from the serious venues and conferences, but takes nutters off the street as a fair represenatation of the Green movement. But that is NOT fair at all.