Greenpeace Building Replica of Noah's Ark

[Amelia]

Greenpeace Building Replica of Noah's Ark

Wooden planks are carried by horses to build a replica of Noah's Ark near Mount Ararat in Agri, eastern Turkey. Greenpeace activists are building the boat in an appeal to world leaders to take action against global warming. Manuel Citak/Greenpeace/HO/AP

By The Associated Press

16 May 2007

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Environmental activists are building a replica of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat - where the biblical vessel is said to have landed after the great flood - in an appeal for action on global warming, Greenpeace said Wednesday.

Turkish and German volunteer carpenters are making the wooden ship on the mountain in eastern Turkey, bordering Iran. The ark will be revealed in a ceremony on May 31, a day after Greenpeace activists climb the mountain and call on world leaders to take action to tackle climate change, Greenpeace said.

"Climate change is real, it's happening now and unless world leaders take urgent, decisive and far-reaching action, the next decades will see human misery on a scale not experienced in modern times," said Greenpeace activist Hilal Atici. "Those leaders have a mandate from the people ... to massively cut greenhouse gas emissions and to do it now."

Many countries are struggling to address global and national standards for carbon emissions. U.N. delegates are meeting this week in Germany to prepare for December negotiations on a new set of international rules for controlling emissions. The new accord would succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012.

Climate change will also be on the agenda when the Group of Eight major industrialized countries - the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia - meet in Germany in June.

[Planey]

Sort of seems ironic that many of the conservative Adventists we see here on CA would support the idea of Noah's Ark on Mt Ararat, but don't believe the Earth is warming.

[olger]

For me, the healthy dispute lies in the erroneous claim that human activity is the cause. "Balderdash", as Grandpa would say.

[nuff sed]

Balderdash.........I think that most Adventists would agree that the globe is warming but not that mankind is the cause of it.

[nuff sed]

Jerry Bowen,Director of Anchorstone International is on his way to Turkey at this moment. Too bad that they can't build it at the site of what we think is the real ark. Of course their agenda is different from that of Anchorstone.

[nuff sed]

Jerry Bowen,Director of Anchorstone International is on his way to Turkey at this moment. Too bad that they can't build it at the site of what we think is the real ark. Of course their agenda is different from that of Anchorstone.

[Dr. Shane]

I didn't know that Greenpeace believed in the Bible. There is a growing movement within Adventist ranks to support conservationist causes more. The term "environmental" is kind of a hot, political bottom with the left-end of the spectrum thinking they own the issue and the right resistant to it because of the far-left's radicalism. The word "conservation" is more user friendly to all.

Were not all these carbon atoms that are trapped in coal, oil and other such recourses once in the atmosphere? I mean before these forests, animals and other organic material was buried and trapped beneath the earth, wasn't it part of an ancient ecosystem? If that was so, then wasn't there a time when there was a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is now? In burning up all these fossil fuels, aren't we putting carbon back into the atmosphere that was already there in ancient times?

[Bravus]

Yep, true. But conditions at that time were dramatically different from conditions now. We're in a little island of stable climate on a planet that has a history of dramatic climate change, so those who say climate change is natural are quite right. Earth has seen ice ages and warmer periods.

The problem is that our whole civilisations and ways of life are predicated on this island of climate stability. The water for the populations of China and India to even survive, as just one example, is one of the things that is currently under threat. So we do have some interest in trying to prolong this climate, rather than to have it change. Change in almost any direction from what we've been used to for the past couple of centuries would be likely to lead to mass deaths of human beings and suffering on an unimaginable scale. (And please think carefully before you say calously 'Oh well, that's a good thing, earth is over-populated anyway'. Jesus died for every starving soul.)

So the levels of carbon we're putting into the atmosphere are not unprecedented in earth's history, but they are definitely unprecedented in the short (6-10,000 years) history of human civilisation (and it has been argued that the climate stability is what has allowed civilisation to develop in the first place).

Climate change is a humanitarian issue, and basically the science is incontrovertible that the majority of the observed warming is human caused. Any claims that that is not so are determined flat-earthery.

[Stan]

One never knows where some of the topics end up landing....

hmmm flat-earthery....

There is a book out called "Lies my Teacher Taught Me" or something similar, that exposed the 'facts' that socio- anthropologist have taught for years, that the people of Columbus' day, ( and before) did not believe in a flat earth, we said they did to make us look smarter than them..

We tend to make those who live far away or long ago look a bit on the dull side..

[Stan]

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

it has been argued that the climate stability is what has allowed civilization to develop in the first place

That, of course, would be contrary to the Bible, which states man has been a part of the Earth from the beginning. Significant climate change would have started at the time of the Great Flood, which seems why Greenpeace is building a replica of the ark.

[Bravus]

I didn't say man, I said civilisation, aka building cities.

[bevin]

Quote:

Were not all these carbon atoms that are trapped in coal, oil and other such recourses once in the atmosphere? I mean before these forests, animals and other organic material was buried and trapped beneath the earth, wasn't it part of an ancient ecosystem? If that was so, then wasn't there a time when there was a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is now? In burning up all these fossil fuels, aren't we putting carbon back into the atmosphere that was already there in ancient times?

No, the carbon was not all in the atmosphere at CO2 at one point.

Carbon is one of the types of atoms made in stars. It was present in the rocks of the Earth when the Earth was formed, and is still present in rocks that don't have a biological origin. Carbon from those rocks is an input into the carbon cycle.

http://www.icsu-scope.org/downloadpubs/scope13/chapter13.html

/Bevin

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

Carbon from those rocks is an input into the carbon cycle.

I fail to see how that address the issue of carbon in fossil fuels. These fuels were at one time organic material. Which means they themselves were alive and growing. When they were alive and growing they were consuming carbon out of the atmosphere. Thus the carbon we now find in them, was once in the atmosphere. It seems I am not understanding how the carbon found in rocks plays into that cycle.

This brings up the whole issue of carbon dating. If the atmosphere had a much higher concentration of CO2 in ancient times, can we accurately know how much carbon organic material contained when it was alive and if the rate it lost carbon after its death was comparable to what we observe today?

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

I didn't say man, I said civilization, aka building cities.

I imagine if the Bible is true, as I believe it is, after the flood there was enormous climate change issues. However, according to the Biblical narrative, the tower of Babel was built shortly there after.

The Bible doesn't address civilization prior to the flood. I am not aware of what scientists believing in Genesis think of that period.