Are most of us just p***ing about ...?

Quite simply, a place does not have to be undiscovered / uncharted to be classified as wilderness; that's simply not a part of the definition.
David can espouse as much of his own rhetoric as he likes, and quote as many publications, but it simply doesn't alter the facts....that by definition, wilderness still exists.
Never one to let facts get in the way, eh David. ;)
 
odd jim said:
I understand the science, I get it, but it still has a theoretical element to it, until we can categorically say we been to and analysed every inch of he planet surely?
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So you're a climate change denier?

Sounds like you're grasping at straws to me.

odd jim said:
Technically the Earth is only a theoretical closed system. It's not truly a closed system - the worst environmental disaster to hit the earth was caused by a meteorite from space. This altered the Earth more than mankind has done since.
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It's closed in as much as we have a finite amount of water and air. We can't realistically make any more.

The only way more can be had, is by the very means you just commented upon... by more of it crashing on us from space. However, to be of sufficient quantity to make any difference, the impact would be a global extinction event any way, making your argument utterly pointless.
 
Pookeyhead said:
So you're a climate change denier?
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No, see what you quoted below!

And climate change affects temperature. Heat / radiation which originates from the Sun. Which is outside of Earth.

So no.

And global extinction is a little extreme, though of course possible.

There are many documented events of meteorites hitting Earth and having environmental impacts, obviously far less than global extinction. And likely a few very small ones we don't know much at all if anything about.
 
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viv1969 said:
Quite simply, a place does not have to be undiscovered / uncharted to be classified as wilderness; that's simply not a part of the definition.
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I'm not saying that's the case Viv. I've just given examples of how we can ruin wilderness without even having set foot in it.

viv1969 said:
David can espouse as much of his own rhetoric as he likes, and quote as many publications, but it simply doesn't alter the facts....that by definition, wilderness still exists.
Never one to let facts get in the way, eh David. ;)
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Ahh.. definitions. You live your life by those Viv? A definition is only so if everyone agrees with it. There's books filled with definitions from the past we now know to be utter b****x :) Our job as a species is to challenge perceived knowledge and find new knowledge, not stubbornly cling to agreed definitions and resist change because it makes us feel better about ourselves.

basically.... what you're saying is that because wikipedia says so... everyone else is wrong.

Brilliant. Let's knock down all the universities then... we don't need them. Instead, we'll just use a crowd sourced internet resource that regurgitates research... oh.. hang on.... then there'd be no Wikipedia.

Doh!
 
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odd jim said:
No, see what you quoted below!

And climate change affects temperature. Heat / radiation which originates from the Sun. Which is outside of Earth.

So no.
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The CHANGE to that temperature is not from an external source though Jim.

I'm sure there are some smaller, harder to reach straws you can grasp at if you try.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
The CHANGE to that temperature is not from an external source though Jim.
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Yes, but it's an example of how external influences from outside a supposed closed system is all part of life. If it were an entirely closed system the radiation wouldn't pass through the upper atmosphere and the Earth would be entirely self sufficient creating its own heat and gravity.

I wasn't debating climate change with that as such (in fact I'm not at all, oddly you brought it up?) though with it was neatly relevant.
 
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odd jim said:
And global extinction is a little extreme, though of course possible.

There are many documented events of meteorites hitting Earth and having environmental impacts, obviously far less than global extinction. And likely a few very small ones we don't know much at all if anything about.
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So small to have no environmental impact in the short term whatsoever... none. The resources we have have been formed over billions of years... all our water, and air... all brought to us by bombardment, sure. If you wanted to suddenly deliver enough water and air to actually reverse or mitigate our impact, then yes, the size of the object would, without ANY shadow of doubt be the end of almost all life on earth... Us being a dead certainty. Do the research Jim.
 
Anyway Pookey, you've not (nor has any scientist) once proven that all of Earth (including subterranean areas) has been found, documented, analysed and evidenced to show that mankind has altered it. All of it, every little bit.

Until that can be done, it's in the realms of theoretical science.
 
odd jim said:
Yes, but it's an example of how external influences from outside a supposed closed system is all part of life. If it were an entirely closed system the radiation wouldn't pass through the upper atmosphere and the Earth would be entirely self sufficient creating its own heat and gravity.

I wasn't debating climate change with that as such (in fact I'm not at all, oddly you brought it up?) though with it was neatly relevant.
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Our air and water are part of a closed system to all pretence and purposes. We have as much as we have. As delivering more in sufficient quantities to make any difference would kill us, it's academic. The only way out is to mine asteroids.. that's the only way we can break out of our closed system, but we're far more interested, as a species, in spending money killing each other over oil and who has the most important magical man in the sky.
 
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odd jim said:
Anyway Pookey, you've not (nor has any scientist) once proven that all of Earth (including subterranean areas) has been found, documented, analysed and evidenced to show that mankind has altered it. All of it, every little bit.

Until that can be done, it's in the realms of theoretical science.
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yeah theoretical science... that utterly useless commodity huh? LOL. General relativity was theoretical science Jim, and we're still trying, and failing to disprove it 100 years later.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Our air and water are part of a closed system to all pretence and purposes. We have as much as we have. As delivering more in sufficient quantities to make any difference would kill us, it's academic. The only way out is to mine asteroids.. that's the only way we can break out of our closed system, but we're far more interested, as a species, in spending money killing each other oil and who has the most important magical man in the sky.
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That part I agree with.
 
Pookeyhead said:
yeah theoretical science... that utterly useless commodity huh? LOL. General relativity was theoretical science Jim, and we're still trying, and failing to disprove it 100 years later.
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Yes but you are presenting it as bona fide fact, like the top of the mountains argument you put forward earlier.

We simply don't know what we haven't discovered, and what we haven't discovered we can't make assumptions about.
 
odd jim said:
Yes but you are presenting it as bona fide fact, like the top of the mountains argument you put forward earlier.
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I genuinely have no idea if there are unclimbed mountains if I'm honest. If there are, my argument still stands any way, as the very environment it will be in is still irreversibly changed and damaged.

odd jim said:
We simply don't know what we haven't discovered, and what we haven't discovered we can't make assumptions about.
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For someone so sceptical of the science suggesting you are wrong, you have an unshakeable faith in our future discoveries :)


We can only act on what we know... we can't base our future on hopes and faith. We've been there, and tried that several times. It doesn't work. At least theoretical science is still science... not people with their heads in the sand.
 
odd jim said:
Yes but you are presenting it as bona fide fact,
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No.. I'm presenting it as published research and inviting you to challenge it with something more than opinion.
 
Pookeyhead said:
No.. I'm presenting it as published research and inviting you to challenge it with something more than opinion.
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Well unless we can *prove* we've documented and analysed all and everything on (and under) Earth, the other side of the argument (whilst there may be some sound science involved but not proving it) is just an opinion too is it not?
 
Pookeyhead said:
I'm not saying that's the case Viv. I've just given examples of how we can ruin wilderness without even having set foot in it.



Ahh.. definitions. You live your life by those Viv? A definition is only so if everyone agrees with it. There's books filled with definitions from the past we now know to be utter b****x :) Our job as a species is to challenge perceived knowledge and find new knowledge, not stubbornly cling to agreed definitions and resist change because it makes us feel better about ourselves.

basically.... what you're saying is that because wikipedia says so... everyone else is wrong.

Brilliant. Let's knock down all the universities then... we don't need them. Instead, we'll just use a crowd sourced internet resource that regurgitates research... oh.. hang on.... then there'd be no Wikipedia.

Doh!
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Wrong again maestro.
I never use wiki.
It's compiled by people who think their version of things is the correct one and presented in a mind numbingly over flowery way.
Oh....wait.... ;)
 
Pookeyhead said:
I'm not saying that's the case Viv. I've just given examples of how we can ruin wilderness without even having set foot in it.


[/QUOTE)

so you've now given examples of how to ruin something that ( you say ) dosent exist . how does that work then ?
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I didn't think most of the rest of us were just p***ing about, but after reading this thread as best I can, I feel so depressed I might just give up on photography. Specially landscape. And obviously wilderness photography. :(

But...

It's a bit like the "meaning of life" thing. You can't really answer those big questions, you get by day by day, the best way you can.

I can say that a recent occasion when I did some concentrated photography in a landscape location for the first time, was such a joyous occasion I was on a high for a week. No doubt the pics I took were unoriginal, even derivative (though not deliberately), and certainly no gallery would ever hang them. But it was magic, pure magic. I want to do it again, next year, better. :)
 
Interesting though it is I'm not sure how relevant this discussion of wilderness actually is. In an absolutely purist sense there probably is no actual wilderness left but in a previous post I gave an example of a tiny area of woodland on almost vertical seacliffs just a few miles from here which will never have been visited because it is totally inaccessible. It may have been affected by air pollution and man-made climate change but other than that it could be described as wilderness.

Wilderness is defined as follows ; An uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region OR "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with roads, pipelines or other industrial infrastructure."

There could be others, but these definitions suggest that nowadays wilderness is relative. Relatively wild, that is. But in most cases hasn't it always been like that? It is to be hoped that somewhere in the deepest Amazonian rainforest there still are unvisited native tribes hanging on to their particular wildness. But how many once definitively wild places were also inhabited by hunter-gatherer societies over long periods of time? Most, I suggest, even the most extreme. Yosemite would have been occupied by native Americans at the time of modern man's discovery of it. So was Ansel Adams photographing wilderness or not? It's really not that easy to say.

In an earlier post I also suggested that photographers depict many landscapes AS IF they were wildernesses. Places can be both wild and not-wild at the same time. It is a paradox. I don't see why it should be a problem for the landscape photographer. If fragments of wild-ness exist why not photograph them as such? What really bugs me is when the photographer clones out (for example) an electricity pylon in order to mislead us into believing that the place is more wild than it actually is. It also bugs me is when an element of human intervention - like a pier, lighthouse, or something similar is included in an image merely as an aid to composition.

Fay Godwin got it about right for me. She had no fear of photographing wilderness - or as close as it comes in the British Isles - and obviously saw value in doing so. But when human interventions were included in her images they were there for a reason, not as a "focal point". She must have had a deep understanding of the human influence on our landscapes, because sometimes these interventions were quite subtle. Sometimes we value them (standing stones, other ancient monuments), more often not.
 
jerry12953 said:
indeed! Although we know that the A82 is not far away..........
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You cannot see the A82 from here....when you stand here looking out, you feel like you are in the wilderness...the view is that of the wilderness. The road is behind you...you cannot see it. Unless the viewer knows the area, they do not know this

This was taken in the wilderness...(well just off the west highland way)

_DSC3053 by Stephen Taylor, on Flickr

This rather spoils the effect mind but it still feels wild, and open, despite the track...

_DSC3086 by Stephen Taylor, on Flickr

However it doesn't take too many brains for the viewer to work out this is anything but the wildnerness

_DSC6233 by Stephen Taylor, on Flickr

_DSC5184 (1) by Stephen Taylor, on Flickr

Still pretty mind :D
 
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Pookeyhead said:
I can look up the definition of "God" too, but it doesn't mean it exists.
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Ricky Gervais said: There have been nearly 3000 Gods so far but only yours actually exists.The others are silly made up nonsense. But not yours. Yours is real.
 
Byker28i said:
Ricky Gervais said: There have been nearly 3000 Gods so far but only yours actually exists.The others are silly made up nonsense. But not yours. Yours is real.
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Exactly. They're all BS.
 
jerry12953 said:
Fay Godwin got it about right for me. She had no fear of photographing wilderness - or as close as it comes in the British Isles - and obviously saw value in doing so. But when human interventions were included in her images they were there for a reason, not as a "focal point". She must have had a deep understanding of the human influence on our landscapes, because sometimes these interventions were quite subtle. Sometimes we value them (standing stones, other ancient monuments), more often not.
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Exactly. She wasn't photographing wilderness.

I've no idea why we have this obsession with trying to capture wilderness any way. It's an irrelevance to our lives.. a historical curiosity. It's gone.. get over it.
 
jerry12953 said:
Fay Godwin got it about right for me. She had no fear of photographing wilderness - or as close as it comes in the British Isles - and obviously saw value in doing so. But when human interventions were included in her images they were there for a reason, not as a "focal point". She must have had a deep understanding of the human influence on our landscapes, because sometimes these interventions were quite subtle. Sometimes we value them (standing stones, other ancient monuments), more often not.
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The British library bought all her work, the entire contents of her studio. I saw some of her landscapes in an exhibition a few years ago, but it was her portrait work I was attracted to.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Exactly. She wasn't photographing wilderness.

I've no idea why we have this obsession with trying to capture wilderness any way. It's an irrelevance to our lives.. a historical curiosity. It's gone.. get over it.
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It's not gone, we established that, it's theory.

And your version of "wilderness" is at odds with the commonly established definition, we established that too...
 
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odd jim said:
And your version of "wilderness" is at odds with the commonly established definition, we established that too...
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Ahh commonly held definitions... like Gravity; Still defined by the OED as "The force that attracts a body towards the centre of the earth, or towards any other physical body having mass", even though the best theory we have (still robust after 100 years of trying to disprove it) says that's not the case at all.

Ideas persist whether they are right or wrong if we like them.
 
To get back to the original question,,, the answer is very simple if YOU get something out of what you create, then how can it be P***ing about?
 
Pookeyhead said:
Ahh commonly held definitions... like Gravity; Still defined by the OED as "The force that attracts a body towards the centre of the earth, or towards any other physical body having mass", even though the best theory we have (still robust after 100 years of trying to disprove it) says that's not the case at all.

Ideas persist whether they are right or wrong if we like them.
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Seriously, what are you on about now? The commonly held def' of wilderness is no more 'wrong' than the definition of coffee. No doubt some academic will try an alter that at some stage...
 
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odd jim said:
Seriously, what are you on about now?
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That definitions, as in the snappy, one line descriptions found in dictionaries, are not the definitive meanings at all... they aren't always "right" just because they're in a dictionary, despite most people assuming they are. We accept what feels right, and if it does, we don't... and often don't WANT to question it. Just like gravity FEELS like it's pulling you somewhere, when in fact, you're perfectly stationary in spacetime, and the earth is pushing against you. That sounds crazy though.... that can't be right, surely... LOL.


Just a thought.

Any way... @lizzy23 above is right of course, but if we'd all said that on page one, we'd have not had this wonderful, educational, and thought provoking journey :)


No one cares if you're p***ing about or not ultimately.

odd jim said:
No doubt some academic will try an alter that at some stage...
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Oh God forbid an academic would challenge anything! Where would we be if THAT ever happened? :)
 
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Pookeyhead said:
That definitions, as in the snappy, one line descriptions found in dictionaries, are not the definitive meanings at all... they aren't always "right" just because they're in a dictionary, despite most people assuming they are. We accept what feels right, and if it does, we don't... and often don't WANT to question it. Just like gravity FEELS like it's pulling you somewhere, when in fact, you're perfectly stationary in spacetime, and the earth is pushing against you. That sounds crazy though.... that can't be right, surely... LOL.


Just a thought.

Any way... @lizzy23 above is right of course, but if we'd all said that on page one, we'd have not had this wonderful, educational, and thought provoking journey :)


No one cares if you're p***ing about or not ultimately.




Oh God forbid an academic would challenge anything! Where would we be if THAT ever happened? :)
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My coffee would become tea, and I don't want that!
 
Have to say I have enjoyed reading all the discussion, all of it very thought provoking, and I actually agree with you there is probably nowhere left on earth that hasn't been touched by man, however I also believe that Wilderness is subjective,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, to some who have never ventured out of the city anywhere 100yards from a shop maybe classed as Wilderness to them, where as to someone who spends their time wild camping 3 weeks hike away from a road, true wilderness may no longer exist
 
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Pookeyhead said:
That definitions, as in the snappy, one line descriptions found in dictionaries, are not the definitive meanings at all... they aren't always "right" just because they're in a dictionary, despite most people assuming they are. We accept what feels right, and if it does, we don't... and often don't WANT to question it. Just like gravity FEELS like it's pulling you somewhere, when in fact, you're perfectly stationary in spacetime, and the earth is pushing against you. That sounds crazy though.... that can't be right, surely... LOL.


Just a thought.

Any way... @lizzy23 above is right of course, but if we'd all said that on page one, we'd have not had this wonderful, educational, and thought provoking journey :)


No one cares if you're p***ing about or not ultimately.




Oh God forbid an academic would challenge anything! Where would we be if THAT ever happened? :)
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Actually, coming back to this, and you've said it yourself, who is right and who is wrong? After stating the above, which I wholly agree with, is it not hypocritical to discount others opinions on the basis of another (and it is just an opinion, its not proven)? You're saying the view you put forward is the definitive meaning (and you are, you really are!), that's the issue I have with your "no wilderness left" argument when its utterly impossible to say that with certainly. For someone who professes to say definitions aren't always right, you're pretty sure yours is :)
 
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odd jim said:
Actually, coming back to this, and you've said it yourself, who is right and who is wrong? After stating the above, which I wholly agree with, is it not hypocritical to discount others opinions on the basis of another (and it is just an opinion, its not proven)? You're saying the view you put forward is the definitive meaning (and you are, you really are!), that's the issue I have with your "no wilderness left" argument when its utterly impossible to say that with certainly. For someone who professes to say definitions aren't always right, you're pretty sure yours is :)
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Regardless... you've been debating with me stride for stride for over 2 pages because you enjoy doing so.

you're welcome :)
 
My one deep thought for the month before I go out and get hammered...

Wilderness, like god, exists only in the mind of whoever perceives it and in the form in which it is perceived.
 
lizzy23 said:
To get back to the original question,,, the answer is very simple if YOU get something out of what you create, then how can it be P***ing about?
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Because David says so :D;)
 
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