ArtRage is important to me, but this is much more important

[Sweedie]

Last year me and my family was rescued in the middle of the night from the flooding caused by the strongest hurricane ever in this part of the continent. My house was partly destroyed and it took about one year to repair it. The harbour nearby, the boathouses, the boats and ships and a lot more were wrecked. The woods fell down, millons of pine trees were broken like matches and electricity and telephone lines took many months to repair. Thousands of cars were destroyed. People died. Animals were killed. This happened 1/2 year before the disaster in New Orleans. What is happening to our global home? What is happening to Mother Earth?

This film is probably one of the most important ever made.
http://www.climatecrisis.net/

[Aged P]

Hi Guys,

I'm pulling out of this one before it hits world population problems and their causes.

Sadly, even the tiniest, free, resources v consumers program will show you what's going to happen.

[sweeneymini]

We are having a massive effect on nature IMHO.

Rainforest is being destroyed at an alarming rate through Palmolive plantation farmers burning it down and through illegal logging. Probably not Belgiums fault, but I found this funny:-
http://www.sizeofbelgium.com/pmwiki.php?n=Main.RainForestDestruction :lol:

On an ArtRage level, destruction of the rainforest and tearing up of countryside for more carparks, starbucks and the like means that in the future all country landscapes will have to be painted from memory or be exchanged for subjects like concrete towers and miles of asphalt.

And if all the endangered animal species do become extinct, such as tigers, whales, orangutans, pandas......subjects will have to be made of other animals such as pet chiwawas and hairless cats [shudders] eww

And then if all the jungle juice is all rapidly consumed for unnecessary flights and gas guzzling cars etc, there wont be any power for computers to use, and thus we wont be able to even use ArtRage.

Just my apocalyptic musings anyway :roll:

[AndyRage]

For your peace of mind:
Ambient Design strives to maintain as small an ecological 'footprint' as possible. Most of us work from home, so there is little petrol consumption, and no office to furnish. We recycle dilligently. We use low-power everything.
ArtRage is only sold electronically (except in Japan) - there's no box, CD, case, and manual to be printed only to end up in a landfill in a couple of years.
In buying and using ArtRage, you are supporting a company that cares about the environment.
It's not some 'feel good' corporate image thing - it's who we are and what we do.

[Stephen Lo Piano]

I am very concerned myself. From personal experience here at home in New York State it seems every year I take care of cutting grass and garden activity there are more fallen branches and twigs. Obviously the wind seems to be picking up speed, unless the trees are just getting older and parts are falling off like our hair falls out with old age.

My personal feelings are the human race is in serious trouble if we keep adding to the world's population. We need to maintain balance with nature and not get to the point where we create more waste products and consume the earths resources faster than the ability of mother earth to recycle and reproduce. One scarry thought; it took from the beginning of life till the mid 1800's to add one billion people to this world's population. It has taken only 10 years for the last billion added. Perhaps this radical increase in the world's population is creating this environment and ecological problem we are facing. Thomas Malthus was correct on his theory of exponential population growth and it's consequences, his estimate of time was off a bit. We need to control our reproductive behaviour by using common sense and limiting our biological reproduction for each human to two people. If someone feels the need for a larger family there are always orphan children that need a good home, adoption is possible.
Sure there is the other alternative of letting everyone continue as they are going right now. Keep conserving and cutting back on everything that makes life worthwhile so that we can share with an increased number of people yet eventually we will all be living in hell on earth fighting over what resources are left.
I do not advocate abortion, I believe in self discipline, abstinence and family planning. It would help if governments started providing incentives for people to have less children instead of encouraging population growth.
Staying single is very difficult mentally and economically, most people are deterred from living a life style this way, the system penalizes you for living this type of life style.

[Sethren]

The way i feel is we as a spieces have wonderful minds and are capable of wonderful things, i mean we have the capability of inventing new and innovative tchnologies and this earth could be cleaned if we really wanted it to happen. What i think is hindering that is greed, the selfish, materialism and so on. Case and point. The diesel engine was originally designed to run on vegitable oil with the only byproduct is water vapor but because of greed from the oil companies the original plans were modified because a larger profit was to be gained from it. Look at Gas Prices as well. No excuse what so ever other then greed. The Oil Companies are making such a huge profit as it is sickening. Anyways i recycle as much as i can scrounging everything i can find that goes into the recycling can. I don't beleave in lawns and Lawn Mowers cause pollution and stink to. I only beleave that trees and plants should belong in there indiginous environments, there is a reason for that and this i beleave has caused damage wide spread. I want a hybrid vehicle but they are still expensive, the technology needs inprovement and these vehicles need to be more common. I use only environmentally safe house hold cleaners. Most of my Appliances are Energy Star. I installed florescent bulbs throughout the house. I use Bleach in very limited amounts as to much is harmfull to the environment. As for population control... well we could go into space but i think most people are just not intreasted going into space. Guess we have to see how this whole space tourism thing pans out.

[sweeneymini]

Actually, here's a little tip you might not have heard about for Windows XP.

If you want to turn off the computer but still keep all the programs at the same state, e.g. ArtRage open, FireFox with the current tabs, just go to shutdown the PC as normal and when it gives you the 3 options press the SHIFT key. The Standby button will turn into a Hibernate button. Hibernating saves the RAM content onto the harddrive and when you switch the PC back on, the RAM is filled with the saved data.

[Stephen Lo Piano]

Sethren wrote;
The diesel engine was originally designed to run on vegitable oil with the only byproduct is water vapor but because of greed from the oil companies the original plans were modified because a larger profit was to be gained from it.


I do not believe that anything used for fueling our means of transportation or heating that is in conflict with the world's food supply is a good idea.
With population growing at it's incredible pace, it will not be long before we see shortages of food and fresh water supplies. If you think you see greed now with the oil situation just imagine how bad it would be if people had to compete with; food for eating versus use for fueling your means of transportation or living space. Using vegetables is not the best idea.
I would like to see the development of hydrogen, or solar powered batteries in cars. Have solar panels on cars that will recharge a solar battery and then convert all gas stations to places where you can turn in a battery in need of serious recharge for a fully recharged battery. This would be especially necessary in places like Alaska during the winter time when there is no sunlight. On the other hand desert areas with continuous sunlight would probably need less recharge stations since the solar panels would be able to sufficiently recharge batteries.

[Sethren]

Well Biofuels is just one of many ideas but i do agree that there are other alternatives as well like Hydrogen however i can't see Solar Power taking off as is still seems expensive and not fully dependable. I can't say anything about food or water shortages though. I tend to be more positive about the future and i can't see us as a species being in this horrible state forever. As technology expands and allows us to create new ways of living there will likely be better solutions in the future on how to solve our many delemmas but there will be bumps along the way yet i have hope that this earth has the capability of restoring itself. This planet is not dumb. It can be rescued still.

[Stephen Lo Piano]

Several months ago, I was listening to this radio talk show and they were discussing the things scientists are currently working on. Nano technology was discussed and a scientist went into describing how research is currently in the development stages of applying nano technology to solar panels for producing results that will greatly increase the energy produced from solar panels. When I say greatly we are talking about thousand of times.
My only problem with solar energy is probably far fetched yet you never know. It goes like this, if solar energy becomes very successful and billions of people start using this source, could there be a global cooling effect?
Most of the energy from the sun that heats the earth is absorbed or reflective.
If many solar panels are absorbing the light from the sun will this cause less heat to be reflective within the earths atmosphere (heating the world), instead being absorbed by solar panels?

[AndyRage]

So why does everyone complain when people talk about promoting birth-control, promoting single-child or child-free families, promoting fuel-efficiency or limitations to car travel, promoting wearing a jumper instead of turning up the heat, promoting turning *off* the tv and reading a book instead.

So long as profit-driven corporations run the world, I'm afraid we're unlikely to see any improvement.

[bcmillustrator]

Stephen Lo Piano:

Your fears are probably a little farfetched. Remember the earth is covered with oceans over 75% of its surface. The surface area of solar panels would be miniscule compared to that.

I once had the idea to create solar panels that looked like roof shingles but it looks like the patent in the US was already issued to someone else.

Now if someone just uses heat pipes on our roads rather than re-enforcing the concrete with rebar, we would never have to use salt to clear the ice off of our roads.

Brian

[Sethren]

I am going to leave off by singing "Always look on the bright side of life" by Eric Idle... :lol: