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

Also whilst you are here knowing everything about photography and optics etc why do you still perpetuate this myth about lenses not being good enough for the sensors and not needing more megapixels etc?
 
Laudrup said:
A locked walk in freezer wasn't created by nature though, that is obviously man made, not wild. Try walking through the Antarctic or go up an unclimbed mountain at 7000 metres and say it isn't a wilderness. There is more evidence of humans on comet surfaces or planets or moons than there.
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You still miss my point. I'm not making it a third time. If you're too stupid to get it already, then I give up.

Laudrup said:
Also whilst you are here knowing everything about photography and optics etc why do you still perpetuate this myth about lenses not being good enough for the sensors and not needing more megapixels etc?
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So... you also want to basically troll the thread with stuff utterly irrelevant to it just to try yet again to have a go at me?

Dude.... Move on. I know you're obsessed with gear and not photography, but you're plumbing new depth now with such a blatant attempt to steer the conversation around to perhaps the only one thing you've a hope in hell at arguing about.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
I'm not sure you read my last post, so I'll reiterate. Being hard to survive in doesn't make it a wilderness. I'd find it just as hard to survive locked inside a walk in freezer... it doesn't make it a wilderness... just a really hard place to survive.
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It would be very hard to survive in the city of Anchorage, Alaska in mid-winter, without all the accoutrements of civilisation. But head out what - 50? 100? - miles and it would be hard to survive and it would be pretty close to wilderness.

Funnily enough, at the moment I'm re-reading the journals I wrote while I was in arctic Greenland from early may until early-august 1984. Native Greenlanders came inland to shoot caribou in late summer, and there were one or two funny signs of human presence at other times. Other than that, and the helicopters flying over at regular intervals, it was wilderness.

I was a fledgling (er.....wanabee) photographer at the time. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the experience had a profound effect on my understanding of the landscape and my thinking about landscape photography, which has never left me.
 
Quite a few posts reported in here. Play nice guys, please :)
 
Pookeyhead said:
I also said that wilderness is defined by a landscape that can self-speciate
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I really don't like that definition, and it contradicts the earlier statement that wilderness no longer exists. If this is the case, it would suggest that evolution through natural selection has ground to a halt and that simply isn't true. It could be argued that the increased fragmentation of the landscape (read habitats) actually promotes speciation through geographical isolation - but no doubt the net change in diversity is overall negative due to the destruction of large areas of habitat in the first place. Certainly farming is to blame for a considerable drop in diversity, as that is all geared towards tailoring the landscape to promote a few key species to the detriment (mostly) of all others.

Furthermore it doesn't take into account any wilderness where speciation is unlikely to occur (I'm assuming by self-speciation it's referring to natural speciation); what about the surface of Mars for example? Obviously not wilderness on Earth, but I would still describe it as wilderness (except, maybe, where one of the rovers has been) and although I have slight hope of discovering new species there, it is only a very slight hope...

Anyway, I haven't yet read the full document you linked to but on the face of it I am fully in the "managed wilderness" camp. I don't think it would be possible to preserve a "wilderness" (for want of a better word, but we are really starting to talk more about habitats now) and what would the ultimate goal be of such an endeavour? If you are trying to preserve a wilderness to try and promote speciation (increase diversity) then it's all about change anyway.
 
TimmyG said:
I really don't like that definition, and it contradicts the earlier statement that wilderness no longer exists. If this is the case, it would suggest that evolution through natural selection has ground to a halt and that simply isn't true.
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It doesn't suggest that at all. It suggests that our activities are having an effect in this regard. We don't have to physically hunt a species into extinction any longer, nor do we even have to be present. The examples of the industrialised world having such an effect are numerous in the extreme, from acid rain defoliating remote and uninhabited forest areas, to oceanic pollution destroying coral reefs. There's no part of the earth's surface where we've not had a detrimental effect that can be detected.


TimmyG said:
Furthermore it doesn't take into account any wilderness where speciation is unlikely to occur (I'm assuming by self-speciation it's referring to natural speciation); what about the surface of Mars for example?
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We have no idea if there is life on Mars, as we've not found any yet. If there is no life, then surely there can be no evolution of any species. Clearly, any definition as explained above is only relevant to our own planet as we've never set foot on another one (excluding the moon and we've not found anything there either). With the moon, you'd have to use a different definition, as everything you do on the moon will be there for millions of years... even the footprints of the Apollo astronauts will be there, literally, for millions of years. On an active planet with weather, then a footprint woudl not be anything to be concerned about as in all likelihood it will last only a short while.



TimmyG said:
Obviously not wilderness on Earth, but I would still describe it as wilderness (except, maybe, where one of the rovers has been) and although I have slight hope of discovering new species there, it is only a very slight hope...
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Absolutely... but clearly if we're discussing a planet without life, then we'd need another definition. Clearly it's a wilderness. The ultimate wilderness in fact, as no human being has ever been there. However, on earth, we have, so you clearly can't define a wilderness by whether anyone has ever been there before, so you need to arrive at a workable definition, and I feel that a land that can self-speciate without interruption from man's activities would be a suitable definition. It's not something I just made, up - it's a widely agreed upon definition.

TimmyG said:
Anyway, I haven't yet read the full document you linked to but on the face of it I am fully in the "managed wilderness" camp.
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I agree in principle. I think we SHOULD manage wilderness... that's not my argument. It's whether it is truly a wilderness if we do. It may be the closest thing we'll get, but... (shrug). I'm not suggesting all these majestic places are somehow worthless because they're not a true wilderness. I'm as awed at some of these places as the next man. From a purely academic point of view though, I think this is an interesting philosophical point of debate.
 
Everything is ultimately joined and to the finest degree - that's fundamental & inescapable, though in a cosmic proportion humankind & its effects may seem infinitesimal. But we as humans have affected even the atmosphere that surrounds the whole globe, so in effect we have pushed the wilderness boundary away from us (towards the core of the planet, & towards outer space).

However in a sense we are ourselves wilderness - we embody it in some form - we are it, if I can stretch its definition so. We are certainly of it (in that we evolved from it, & are a species in ourselves). So where's the line?
 
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Pookeyhead said:
Having people living there doesn't mean it's not necessarily wilderness, as people can, and did live simple hunter gatherer lifestyles that had no impact upon the lands ability to self-speciate. Only when we decided to farm did this change the land. Many would argue this is when the Anthropocine started.
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Quote above was in reference to (or following a reference to) Australian Aboriginals... IIRC pre-invasion they didn't farm as such, and lived a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but they certainly managed the land, particularly by the use of fire. A fair number of plants important to them don't germinate well without fire. The Australian landscape was profoundly affected by their actions. Still pretty much like wilderness by my own definitions, though.
 
This thread is absolutely hilarious it's gone so far way of beam and some of the comments are just plain ridiculous !
 
steveo_mcg said:
If you'd met @ChrisR you'd not find this so hard to believe. :D
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I used to think that everyone on here was under 30, given all their seeming obsessions with cars and shopping? Could that be a misapprehension?
 
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Not me, it's the way I make my living.
 
droj said:
I used to think that everyone on here was under 30, given all their seeming obsessions with cars and shopping? Could that be a misapprehension?
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In F&C, I don't think many are under 30. In some cases 30 is a distant memory even if they're not all that old but that's probably rodinal poisoning....
 
Studio488 said:
Incomprehensible? don't follow, my answer was to the OPs question.
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Your comment was isolated without reference to an original ...

steveo_mcg said:
In F&C, I don't think many are under 30. In some cases 30 is a distant memory even if they're not all that old but that's probably rodinal poisoning....
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Oh, that lot - I'd always assumed they were all over 90 ....
 
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