By Diana Holbourn
Becky and Other Students Discuss World Problems, How Some Have Been Unintentionally Made Worse, and How Some Have Been Diminished
Book three of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 1.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
One day, Becky and a group of other students sat down for a chat. It turned into one of the long long discussions they had sometimes. None of them had any classes for the rest of the day.
Not long after they sat down, one of them said, "Imagine if you lived near the Arctic, where it must get really really cold at this time of year! You might think, 'What's all this fuss politicians make about global warming! It can't come soon enough for me! Bring it on!'"
Another student said, "Yeah, but you might decide you didn't want it after all if loads of Arctic ice melted and the sea level rose, and you lived on the coast, and the sea ended up coming right up to your door!"
One of the group said, "Yikes! Do you really think that could happen? I like swimming in the sea sometimes, but I wouldn't want to do it every time I went outside! Imagine if politicians in cold countries decided that bringing on global warming would make them more popular with their voters, because their countries would get warmer, so they did things to really speed it up, but then things happened like the sea level rising so much because of all the melted ice that everyone living in coastal areas had to swim around their towns, and they had to climb out top floor windows to get out of their houses instead of going out their front doors so the water didn't flood in when they opened them."
One of the students said seriously, "I've heard about government policies that can be made to try to improve things that actually end up making them worse. I think it's happened quite a bit.
"One problem is to do with one way governments have been trying to deal with this problem of there being loads of plastic in the oceans, and lots of fish and seabirds swallowing lots and dying. Obviously something needs to be done. It's a horrible problem. Birds starve to death if they're eating too much plastic instead of food, and sometimes sharp bits on it can puncture their stomachs and kill them that way. And some of them get tangled up in plastic things like old carrier bags or abandoned fishing gear and can't escape. Then sometimes they die because they can't get away from predators that come for them; or they can drown if the plastic's being held under water, like if it's fishing gear; and sometimes the plastic can cut them and their wounds get infected.
"I read that birds can mistake plastic for food because tiny bits of it can look like food, and plastic can smell like it too, because little fish feed off algae that make their home on it, so it starts smelling like them. And since it floats, it's easier to get hold of than it would be if it all sank.
"So something obviously needs to be done. But governments have been thinking about banning all plastic that people tend to use once and then throw away, like carrier bags. Some have already made efforts to do that, but it's turned out that what's happening as a result is worse for the environment in a way than using that kind of plastic is.
"It's turned out that a lot of the plastic bags shops hand out aren't just thrown away, but used again. It's been calculated that about a quarter of them were reused, for things like bin liners for little bins, and bags to put dog poo in when people scoop it up after their pet dogs poo on the pavement. And since people have still wanted to use something to do those things, they've just bought other plastic bags to use.
"Some people think objecting to bans of plastic bags is just plastic industry propaganda. But it isn't really, since they don't make much profit on those flimsy carrier bags, since they've often been given away free in shops, and the plastics industry makes more money from the bags people have to buy instead to do things like clean up dog mess and use as bin liners.
"It might be best to charge for plastic bags instead of banning them, since a lot of people will value them more if they've paid for them, so they'll be less likely to just chuck them away. At least that's the theory. And it might also be an incentive for people to swap to using rucksacks to carry small amounts of shopping home in, which is what I do.
"I read that banning those thin plastic carrier bags is actually bad for global warming, which might be surprising to a lot of people, but it's partly because some alternative bags people are given to use cost more to make than those flimsy carrier bags, and the process uses up more gas and electricity, so it produces more greenhouse gasses, and it sometimes uses up more water.
"One alternative to flimsy carrier bags is paper bags. But I heard that it takes about four times as much gas and electricity and water to produce them than it does to produce the flimsy plastic bags, so there's more greenhouse gas emitted. One reason for that is that a lot of water needs to be purified for the process, and doing that uses a fair bit of gas and electricity. And if loads and loads of them had to be produced to substitute for the plastic bags, it might even increase deforestation, because a whole load of trees might have to be cut down to make them, and trees take in carbon dioxide, so cutting them down would mean there was more in the atmosphere.
"I've heard it's a bit similar with biofuels, and plastic made of plant material, instead of oil being one of the main ingredients in it, like it is now. People think biofuel's cleaner than fossil fuels, and that plastic made of plant material's just got to be better than plastic made with oil, since those things won't produce as much carbon dioxide to go into the atmosphere and increase the greenhouse gasses that cause global warming; but if there was a total switch to those, it would mean absolutely masses of farmland would have to be set aside to grow the plants that are turned into them, and then not so much food could be grown, so people wouldn't be able to get so much healthy food, so they might be more likely to go down with diseases that can sometimes be partly caused by eating too much unhealthy food, like heart disease; and more people in some parts of the world might even go hungry. So these problems are more complicated than people think.
"I read that in Germany, subsidies were given to farmers growing crops for biofuels, so lots of them switched from producing food to producing crops for those, and it ended up with Germany not producing enough grain to feed its own people for the first time in over two decades. They probably started importing more.
"And growing more of one of the crops most suited to making biofuels out of, Maize, comes with other problems too. It needs a fair bit more fertiliser to grow in European countries than a lot of other crops do, because it's a subtropical plant, so it's not so suited to growing here. And fertiliser can run off the fields into nearby streams and rivers, causing pollution, and killing fish living there.
"And the soil can be eroded too, leaving what's left less fertile, because the topsoil's the most fertile part, I think, and I read that Maize is slow to grow, and until it does, some of the soil's more vulnerable to being washed away by heavy rain and blown away by high winds. And then after the maize is harvested, apparently the fields get left bare till the following spring when more's planted, so the soil's vulnerable to being eroded again.
"And it's been estimated that growing it in some soils produces so much carbon dioxide in one way or another that the amount of electricity that can be produced from it causes as much carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere as some coal-fired power stations emit.
"So calculations about the costs of switching to supposedly greener fuels and other things ought to be made, instead of people assuming it's just bound to be better for the planet, although obviously we do need to switch to greener energy sources.
"But I have read that fuel and plastics can be made from the waste products of corn and other plants that are used for food, so that sounds promising.
"I think new technologies are being developed all the time that mean the world will eventually solve the problem of the energy that's needed to fuel things causing pollution, and the plastics problem.
"Anyway, another thing about plastics is that the reason making thin plastic bags causes quite a bit less greenhouse gas emission than making alternatives does, according to what I read, is because plastic's got quite a low melting temperature, so manufacturing and recycling it doesn't use as much energy as working with some other materials does that need to be melted or broken down to be turned into things.
"People can be given thick plastic bags instead of the flimsy ones, that they're supposed to use more than once. But I read that producing thick plastic bags causes a lot more greenhouse gas emissions than making paper ones does, and a lot more than the flimsy ones does, since they're heavier. And making cotton ones produces a whole lot more than that, and growing the cotton for them can lead to problems like some of the fertiliser needed to make sure it grows well being washed into rivers by rain and causing chemical pollution, which can harm fish in rivers. I even heard that a government did a study that found that if people were to use masses of organic cotton bags instead of the masses of cheap plastic bags they've been using, it would produce twenty thousand times as much greenhouse gas, because the process of producing them's more complicated. I don't know how reliable all those estimates really are.
"It's horrible to hear about loads of those flimsy carrier bags finding their way into the sea and then being eaten by creatures like dolphins and whales and other animals, and them going without proper healthy food as a result, because their stomachs are full of those, so they don't feel hungry, and can even starve; ... although if they weren't swallowing those, they'd be killing more smaller animals to eat, which must hurt those animals, you'd have thought! I'd have thought fish must get stressed when they're eaten. Nature seems cruel."
One student said, "Yes. I wonder if there really are any creatures that don't feel any pain or stress when they're caught and killed. ... Actually, I wonder how germs feel when it happens to them. ... Not that I really care about those, since a lot of them deserve it, or seem to deserve it. ... Well, I wonder how conscious harmful germs are of how much suffering they're causing when they infect us. Imagine if it was possible to do surveys of psychopathy in different species, and it was found that harmful viruses and bacteria have a much higher percentage of psychopathy in their populations than humans do. Imagine if a scientific paper appeared in a respectable science journal that said, 'A study has found that while the percentage of psychopaths in the human population is believed to be very small, among the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, the psychopathy rate is almost a hundred per cent.'
"I wonder what would happen to any germs in a disease-causing species of them that didn't actually want to attack people like the rest, but preferred to sit around or travel about learning interesting things. I wonder if they'd be thought of as defective and not towing the line, and be punished by the germ bosses, if most of the population wanted to just attack people. ... But maybe no germs ever would like to devote their lives to studying and learning new things, who knows! I wonder if it's only some humans who want to do that.
"And I wonder if germs get upset when they see their fellow germs get killed, and if it hurts them when they get killed.
"Actually, I did read that the reason one species of germs can turn nasty is because they can live harmlessly in certain parts of people's bodies, like the nose and upper throat, organising themselves into structures there to help them survive, but if a person they're living in catches the flu or some other infection that makes the area a difficult place for them to live in, some of them escape and maybe get trapped in other parts of the body like the lungs and the middle ear and the bloodstream, and at the same time turn on genes that make them a lot more harmful, that cause infections to their human hosts like meningitis and painful earaches in children, and pneumonia in elderly people or people with weakened immune systems. But the scientists who've studied this kind of thing think they're not deliberately making people ill; it's just a defense mechanism. At least there are vaccines for at least some kinds of meningitis and pneumonia now.
"And I read that some germs that start off living harmlessly in the guts of chickens can turn nasty because they pick up genes from other germs during sex, or somehow from dead bacteria around them, or when they get infected by viruses that transfer genes from one bacterium to another. I don't know if that happens in humans too. I think it can, and I read that the kind of bacteria scientists discovered doing that can normally live harmlessly in the gut, but can turn deadly if they get into the bloodstream."
The students felt a bit yucked out.
Then one said, "Talking of having pests in the gut, I heard about a man who goes around encouraging people to start eating insects, saying they're really nutritious, and that people wouldn't have to use so much farmland to rear animals if people ate more insects instead. I don't know about that. Imagine how many you'd have to eat to eat the equivalent of the amount of meat you might get in a couple of burgers or something!
"Imagine if a company advertised packets of harmless germs, telling people they were really nutritious, saying, 'Just pour them into a bowl. You won't be able to see them, but if you put a spoon in the bowl, you can scoop a load up with it, and if you eat enough of them, they'll be really filling.'
"Or imagine if they sold a little microscope with each packet, and said it would enable people to enjoy looking at the germs they were eating. Or maybe the packaging would be see-through, and to stop the germs getting away, you'd have to open a tiny hole in a packet and put a straw in it and suck them up, and the straw could be see-through, so you could look at them while you were doing that. ... Then again, I suppose it would have to be a paper straw if they ban plastic ones."
Another student said, "Well, swallowing germs you buy isn't as daft as it seems, since after all, you do get probiotics that are supposed to be full of good germs that can make you healthier, in little plastic bottles, that hopefully don't end up in the oceans!"
The student who'd been talking about plastics in the oceans said, "Yeah. And more obviously does need to be done to clean up plastics from the world's coastlines so it doesn't get into the sea and cause damage. After all, we're probably eating quite a bit of fish that's swallowed tiny bits of plastic, and that's not a nice thought, ... although since we're not all dead, it can't be doing us masses of amounts of harm. Well, I don't know what the cumulative effect might be on people's health over decades. But in any case, it would be nice to get rid of the problem.
"But banning some plastics might not be the easy answer some people might think it is.
"Some developing countries banned plastic bags before alternatives were made easily available for people to use. That probably disadvantaged a lot of people in very poor countries who couldn't afford to buy their own bags, like rucksacks to carry food to their homes from shops in. And manufacturers of plastic bags there didn't like it, claiming loads of people who worked making them would be put out of work. That really matters in poor countries where unemployment's high, and there isn't much of a welfare state. But in countries like that, discarded plastic bags would sometimes clog the drainage systems so rainwater couldn't drain away, and that would create puddles of water that would be breeding grounds for harmful mosquitos that cause malaria and other diseases; and people have even been killed there because lots of drains have been clogged by plastic bags so rainwater didn't go down them and flooded the place instead. If only people wouldn't litter the place, things would be better.
"I read that most of the plastic in the oceans actually comes from China and Indonesia and other countries near there and other developing countries, that haven't yet got recycling facilities and other waste management schemes that are as good as the ones in Western countries. According to what I read, only a very small proportion of plastic in the oceans comes from Western countries, and only a tiny proportion of that's those flimsy carrier bags that are being banned in some places. That might have something to do with the fact that councils pay people to clear up after all the irresponsible littering people do around here. What would do a lot to prevent plastics getting into the oceans from the countries that pollute them the most is if they had schemes where plastics were regularly cleared out of the seas just off their coasts, so they didn't have a chance to get into the oceans from there.
"The thing is though, that's not the whole story, and just leaving it there could be misleading, since actually, I used to assume that things that are sent for recycling in this country get recycled in this country and then turned into other things. Lots of people probably think that. But I heard that loads and loads of it gets sent to be recycled in those very countries where most of the ocean pollution's coming from, since it's somehow cheaper than recycling it here. But I don't think their recycling facilities are all that sophisticated, and also a lot of the stuff that gets sent to them can't really be recycled anyway because it's contaminated with dirty stuff, so a lot of it just ends up getting dumped in massive rubbish piles, where some probably finds its way into the sea after a while; and some of it gets burned, which releases toxic gasses.
"So it seems that recycling facilities need to be made more sophisticated all over the world, and everyone needs to be more careful about what we put in the recycling.
"Another thing I heard was that an unintended consequence of recycling is that some people can use more plastic or paper than they would do otherwise, like more straws for drinking, when they think they're just going to be recycled so it doesn't matter how many of them they use. So that can end up causing more waste, if they're not recycled after all.
"I've heard there are impressively sophisticated recycling plants around, and new kinds being developed, where all kinds of things can be easily separated by machines, and contaminated things thrown out, I think; but they're really expensive.
"I read that there are other reasons why providing alternatives to the plastic bags people have been using and other plastic things sometimes accidentally makes the problem worse.
"One is that there are some plastic bags that are sold as biodegradable, but they actually take ages and ages to biodegrade properly, and they cause problems because they start the process by falling to bits, so instead of having a bag in your cupboard, or in the ocean, you might have hundreds of little bits of bag all over the place. And in the ocean, those bags are even worse for the environment than ordinary carrier bags, because they break up into the kinds of little bits of plastic sea creatures can mistake for food, but they can actually take thousands of years to biodegrade entirely, it seems. I heard about a boss of a company who thought buying biodegradable plastic bags instead of ordinary ones would be a good thing, after his customers put pressure on his company to care more about the environment; so he switched to using biodegradable ones, only to find they were that kind, so they could make a real mess, either in his cupboards or other people's! Or in the sea.
"And if plastics were used that biodegraded quickly, what if they biodegraded in supermarkets while they were still full of food waiting to be bought! Wouldn't that make a mess all over the floor! And who would ever want to buy the food in them!
"And there's a problem with having both biodegradable plastic and recyclable plastic, because if biodegradable plastic gets in the recycling, it'll get mixed with the recyclable stuff, so some products made of the recycled plastic will have biodegradable stuff in them, which will be biodegrading while people want to use them, so their quality will deteriorate. So that's another problem that needs to be worked on.
"And I read that when the biodegradable plastic that's around nowadays biodegrades, or at least when some kinds of it does, it gives off methane, which is actually over twenty times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. I read that paper does that too when it biodegrades. So people think using paper's greener, but plastic that doesn't biodegrade keeps all its carbon in it, while paper biodegrades and lets off all this methane.
"I heard that the company boss who mistakenly switched to using supposedly biodegradable bags that just fell to bits has some other problems as well. His company sells boxes of organic fresh vegetables that people can have sent to them every week, and some of his customers wanted his company to be greener, complaining when he sent them in plastic boxes. So he packed all the food in cardboard boxes instead, and they liked that because they thought it was greener than plastic ones. I mean, it does seem like it, doesn't it, with cardboard being natural and biodegradable. But he started feeling sure it wasn't better really.
"It turns out that paper and cardboard take much more energy that emits greenhouse gasses to produce than plastic does, what with all the energy it takes to crush trees down into tiny bits, and do all the other things that need to be done. And it seems even the manufacture and recycling of cardboard boxes involves the use of quite a few chemicals. And far fewer plastic boxes would have to be used by his company than cardboard ones, since people would return the boxes when they'd finished them, when their next box was delivered, but a lot of the cardboard boxes often had to be thrown away and new ones supplied, because it seems people used them for things that made them dirty or damaged, while plastic boxes could just be washed and used again, so they could even be reused hundreds of times. I don't suppose anyone would want vegetables to come in a cardboard box that had been used that many times!
"And when cardboard boxes are thrown away, they eventually rot down and produce methane. And recycling them causes a fair amount of greenhouse gas too, apparently a lot more than recycling plastic does, for some reason.
"I read that it's been argued that it shouldn't matter that cardboard uses up a lot of greenhouse gas to produce, since more trees will grow in place of the ones that were cut down, and trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen in its place, so they're good for the planet. But it takes ages for trees to grow big enough to take in lots of it; and there's no guarantee that trees will be planted to replace the ones that are being lost. And also, I heard that trees can't take in enough carbon dioxide to cancel out the amount that's generated by manufacturing all the things made of paper and wood and cardboard and things."
The students said they thought that was interesting, and were thoughtful for several seconds.
But then one of them said for fun, "Talking of reusing plastics, imagine if doctors started using recycled old plastic bags as ingredients in plastic surgery. I don't suppose there would be many people who were keen on that idea! Imagine if lots of old people started having plastic surgery to make them look younger, and there was an advert that claimed that a fantastic new development was that old carrier bags would now be used to help old people look younger, and that the doctors thought that was kind of fitting, so they expected other people to think so too."
The students giggled.
Then one said, "That reminds me of a conversation I had on an Internet forum not long ago, with this man I'll call Trollfest. I once joked to him that I'm well over 2000 years old, and now he jokes about me being old sometimes. We're always teasing each other for fun.
"One day I said, 'Oh if only we'd had the Internet in my day! What calamities we might have been spared! Hitler might have argued with people from the sections of the population he didn't like on forums until he realised arguing with them was such fun he gave up all ideas of putting them to death. ... But then, maybe he'd have got so angry with people instead that he'd have decided to destroy the entire world and not just some of its people.'
"Then I said a few things that probably sounded a bit vague and made a typo, and Trollfest said, 'Err, you're not ... um ... intoxicated, are you? I mean, you sound like you're staggering down Sloane Square right now, waving a half empty scotch in the air and trying to type simultaneously.'
"I joked, 'It's rather spooky that you know what I'm doing!'
"There was another time when he said something to tease me, and I said, 'Right! Don't think you can get away with that. Shudder! Your doom awaits! I'm gonna get ya! Ah, I said doom when I really meant, ... well you'll see.'
"He joked, 'Ah, the suspense mounts! Surely you aren't Agatha Christie in disguise, are you? Oh, I forgot - she was only 45 when she died. You can't be her.'
"He'd sent me a private message that said a few flirty things and asked me if I'd be willing to go on a date with him, and I hadn't replied. He asked me to reply, and I joked, 'What, to that message that asked a question I never answered? Why do you want an answer? Why not be willing to wait in suspense for a few centuries? That's what I had to do when Nostradamus prophesied to me that I'd one day be famous, but didn't tell me how.'
"Then I discovered Trollfest had sent me another private message, and said, 'Oh no, I see you mean a new message. Well, I might answer, one day. Perhaps in a thousand years or so. What do you mean you don't expect to live that long? If I can, why can't you?'
"Trollfest said, 'Come now, surely it isn't that bad? Oh, allright, if you reply, I'll take back what I said about you being a golden oldie with a touch of distinguished grey in your temples, (even though you know how much it irks me to shy away from boldly proclaiming the truth.)'
"Then he said he'd send me a picture of him, and I joked, 'I won't believe it's you. I have it on reliable authority you look just like Abraham Lincoln ... would be expected to look like in 200 years if he was still alive.'
"Trollfest said, 'Ah, I'd look pretty good then, because Lincoln would have been the first to line up for plastic surgery.'
"I joked, 'No he wouldn't. The word is his face was already all wrinkly with care when he died, and he'd want to keep it wrinkly as it got worse and worse just to show he'd cared about what he was doing.'
"Trollfest said, 'And he'd keep at it until he started looking like your mirror image, would he?'
"There was a grumpy forum member who I'll call Malcontent, who used to insult everyone, especially Trollfest. He went away for a little while, and one day during that time, after Trollfest had been teasing me, he said, 'Here's a link to a nice song on YouTube for the person who suffered most at the hand of my sharp tongue the past few weeks ... yes, of course my tongue has hands; how else do you think it managed to stab Malcontent with a meat cleaver so badly that he never recovered, hence his disappearance from the forum?'
"I joked, 'If you tease me some more, I'll have you hauled up before the United Nations Council of Human Rights.'
"Trollfest said, 'And archaeologists! You forgot the archaeologists! What about that archaeologist called Ambrose Milverton you told me about the other day - the one you met in the desert when he dug you up and invited you home to introduce you to his wife, who, apparently, had a shock when she saw you in her living room, and mistook you for a 3D x-ray of her own skeleton, and shrieked, "Surely I'm not that anorexic!"'
"I said I was at least a famous fossil, first hunted by Richard Dawkins thousands of years ago. I said, 'There were lots of Richard Dawkinses in those days. They roamed the earth hunting for fossils. Sadly, most Richard Dawkinses have become extinct. I think there's only one left. Perhaps he really ought to be put in a cage to protect him from marauding head-hunters, although there don't seem to be many around nowadays, so perhaps there's no need.'
"I was thinking of saying something else, but thought better of it, and joked, 'I think I'd better edit the last bit of that post out before I even put it on the board! Such are the technical wonders of the modern age that thankfully, it's even possible to edit something before you write it!'
"Trollfest quoted what I'd written about hunting for fossils and said, 'And are they still hunting, or have they caught you yet?'
"I said, 'They didn't catch me, but I heard they caught you. I heard they dated you as being millions of years old, and they were going to put you in a little glass case in a museum when you squeaked, "Hey, I'm alive, you know!" Startled, they almost dropped you. In fact, the first Richard Dawkins did. You were only spared because another Richard Dawkins was standing there and caught you in the nick of time. What an adventure!'
"I said he wouldn't believe how many Richard Dawkinses there were around in those days, and he said, 'Ah, but this is completely a matter of perspective. You see, "many" is a relative term. To you, many would mean a smaller number than it would to me, as you lived the better part of your life at a time when the world population was only about two hundred and fifty. You see the logic of my argument?'
"I said I could have proved that wasn't true, if only I'd been able to write and keep the thank you letters I'd been intending to type to my relatives on my computer after my 50th birthday after they'd got me birthday presents just a few hundred years ago, but my typing skills had been in a temporary state of malfunction at the time, because my hands were busily engaged in lifting the chocolates they'd given me to my mouth.
"He said, 'Only a temporary malfunction? This is too good to be true! You mean arthritis in the finger joints isn't a permanent disease? But I've got to relay these joyful tidings to my great grandma Ethel Goodrich-o'er-the-Hill at once! She'll be so delighted she'll rattle off three verses of Hamlet without even stopping to take a breath! (That's a little habit she has when she gets excited about something.) Hey - would you happen to know her, by any chance? You went to school with her, I think. She was a few forms your senior though.'
"I said, 'With me being a few thousand years old, do you really think I can have lived all that time and not have discovered the cure for arthritis? I haven't had it for nearly 2000 years, ever since I learned how to grow fingers in a jar and snip off the ones threatening to become arthritic and replace them with the nice new-grown ones every so often.'
"He said one or two things I didn't like, and I said, 'Right. Now I've a good mind to report you to the lame joke section of the serious crime squad! I don't usually have complaints though.'
"He said, 'Except when your poor old joints ache as you walk up the stairs. Right ho, it's good you're not a fusspot. As Solomon says in the Bible, it's better to become a Republican than to marry a cranky woman.'
"I joked, 'I know you want to marry me; but you really need better chat-up lines than that if you want me! I've heard more romantic conversation coming out of a pig sty! Since I can understand pig language, it's interesting to eaves-drop on their conversations sometimes.'
"He said, 'No wonder you smell so tasty. May I call you Porky, please?'
"I said, 'Only if you let me call you Malcontent.'
"He didn't respond to that, and I joked, 'I think the shock of that idea must have driven Trollfest raving from the board. Who knows how far he'll run before he stops.'"
The students were grinning.
Another one said, "Imagine if a scientist one day announced that he'd discovered that trees can get arthritis, and the reason they sometimes creek in high winds is because their arthritis is making their joints creek as they move, and when they fall down, it's because their arthritis has become so painful they can't tolerate it any more and collapse.
"I actually read that some fake science papers get into science journals sometimes. Not that often, but sometimes. A couple of people invented a computer program for fun that generates fake science papers that use scientific jargon but are really nonsense. They put it on the Internet so anyone could use it, and lots of people, mostly in China and India, I think, have used it to get fake science papers published in their names, maybe hoping the fact that they were fake wouldn't be discovered, but that then they'd be more likely to get grants to study real things, or promotions or better jobs, because the number of papers they'd had published would look more impressive than it really was, so the people who give grants out would think it was worthwhile giving money to them, or they'd be more likely to get promoted.
"There are other scams around, such as people paying companies to write fake science papers and submit them to journals in their names, and scammers pretending to be scientists and persuading journal publishers to let them guest-edit certain journal issues that they then pack with sham articles, such as ones for scientists who aren't that good, but want to be able to claim they're working hard and producing papers.
"Papers have been found with titles like, ‘Sea level height based on big data of Internet of Things and aerobics teaching in coastal areas’, and ‘Rock stress and deformation characteristics based on SVM and sports high-intensity interval training’."
The students giggled.
The student who'd been talking seriously before the humour started said, "Talking of trees and paper and things, and carrying on what I was saying before about people thinking products made from trees are greener than they really are, I actually read that trees might not be as good for reducing global warming as most people think. Some scientists say they release chemicals that can actually contribute to global warming, including methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas, and that their dark leaves absorb heat from sunlight, so that contributes to making the planet warmer too, at least in cold parts of the world, because the sunlight doesn't just float off into space again the way it does when it hits things that are light colours. I don't understand how that works, and it would probably make barely a difference at all when it's just a few trees that are absorbing the heat. But I suppose when there are millions of them, it must count.
"Well, I think more research is going on to find out how much it really does cause a problem. But apparently, some scientists have found out that in some parts of the world, leaves absorbing heat from sunlight cause more warming than they do in other parts of the world, because in cold parts of the world that get a lot of snow, or where old snow stays around for a lot more of the year than it does in warmer climates, then where there are lots of small evergreen trees growing together, they absorb some of the sun's heat all year round, and their leaves can cover areas where snow has fallen that would otherwise reflect sunlight back into space because of its white colour, ... or reflect it right into people's eyes, so sunglasses can protect their eyes against sunburn, which can be made worse by that, and even protect them from permanent eye damage, which some unlucky people who spend a lot of time in the sun can get after a while. But dark colours absorb heat, so heat from the sun stays around longer and warms the place up a little bit. Or something like that.
"But anyway, trees growing in tropical countries are thought to help make the world cooler, and are better for the planet, since they grow way more quickly than trees near the Arctic do, so they take in more carbon dioxide; and some of the moisture that falls on them from rain in the rainforests evaporates from their leaves as water vapour, which rises up and forms clouds, that block out some sunlight. And species of trees there release more water into the atmosphere than a lot of the trees in the Arctic do, which are of different species. So although the leaves of trees in the tropics absorb heat from the sun, overall, it seems they do help to cool the planet a bit.
"Droughts can stop trees taking in so much carbon dioxide, because they can't grow so quickly during droughts, and they take in the carbon dioxide while they're growing, using it as a fertiliser to help them.
"It seems trees are more complex than we might think, ... or at least than people who might just think of them as furniture-and-paper bags-in-the-making and are eager to cut them down might think, ... well maybe anyway; but they can absorb water and nutrients from the earth with their roots, that they can then transmit all the way up themselves through a network of cells that distribute them to every part of them."
One student joked, "Who knew trees were up themselves! ... Sorry, carry on."
The student telling the rest about trees and plastics and things smiled and carried on, "Quite. Anyway, I was talking about biodegradable plastics before, wasn't I. I read that as well as those, there are plastics that are labelled as compostable plastics out there, but which won't break down in ordinary compost heaps; they need to be industrially composted. I think that means it takes a lot of heat to make them turn into compost, - way more heat than could be generated in a natural compost heap. I don't know if other things need to be done to them as well. But it seems from what I've read that labelling maybe needs to be a bit more precise, so people know more about what it takes to biodegrade that stuff, so they don't assume they can be composted in ordinary compost heaps in people's gardens.
"I did read that plastics are being invented that actually can be turned into compost right in the compost heaps some people have in their gardens; or for people who haven't got them, local councils could put them in ordinary compost heaps they can have, and they can biodegrade in there. So that's good.
"Imagine telling someone you're putting rotten old plastic around your plants to help them grow! They'd probably think you were a bit weird, wouldn't they, unless you told them it was plastic that had been specially made so it could be composted!
"But another thing is that I've often heard about people complaining about the amount of packaging on food, saying it's wasteful. Well, I don't know if some of it is; but a lot of it's there to help protect the food from being knocked around and spoiled while it's being transported, and to keep it fresher for longer, since some fresh food's transported long distances, and a lot less of it's wasted than would be if manufacturers didn't use the techniques they use to keep oxygen and moisture out of it, since things go off quicker when those things get to them, ... apart from things that need moisture actually inside the packaging to help them stay fresh, like some ready-prepared vegetables do.
"The thing is that keeping food fresh for longer means we can all eat healthier diets, and more variety of fruit and vegetables, since if there were really tight restrictions put on the use of plastic packaging, it's possible that companies would stop trying to transport fresh fruit and vegetables long distances, so we'd get less variety, and we'd get some only in the season when they were harvested in this country. At least, that's what I've read. That wouldn't be good!
"The thing is that I would imagine that companies wouldn't put packaging on things that was genuinely unnecessary, since they normally want to make as much profit as possible, so you'd think they wouldn't want to waste money by putting unnecessary packaging on things. I don't know. But that's just the way things seem to me.
"Maybe it's not that simple though, since I have heard of supermarkets being able to reduce the amount of packaging on some things. I've heard that plastic waste has been reduced quite a bit that way. And some supermarkets have redesigned some of their own-brand packaging and bottles so they don't contain as much plastic as they used to. Actually, I think some packaging's put on just to make the items look more attractive, in an attempt to sell more of them. So I suppose that could be classed as unnecessary, ... although maybe it depends on who you ask. ... I mean, the businesses trying to sell stuff might say it's necessary for the survival of their businesses that they sell as much as they can or something.
"But I've read that supermarkets are recycling a lot more plastic than they used to, and tons and tons of plastic waste has been avoided by them redesigning packaging, like making some of it thinner, so there's less of it on their own-brand foods, and yet they can hopefully keep the food as fresh as they always did. So it must sometimes be possible to do that.
"And I heard that at least one of them has introduced a deposit scheme to encourage people to bring glass bottles back so they can be recycled instead of just chucking them away - people get a bit of money every time they bring one back. Some people think rubbish could be reduced if more supermarkets did that kind of thing.
"But anyway, I've heard that other solutions some people want to bring in don't work as well as some people probably assume they do. Like with some kinds of biodegradable plastic. I read that some plastics labelled biodegradable don't biodegrade in cold temperatures, so they'll just hang around in the sea like other plastics do because the sea's too cold for them to biodegrade. I don't know that much about this stuff; but it seems things are a lot more complicated than they might seem.
"It seems that some people think glass bottles would be a better alternative to plastic; but according to something I read, the heavier things are, the more fuel it takes to transport them, and manufacturing glass bottles causes more greenhouse gasses than manufacturing plastic ones does, so replacing plastic bottles with glass ones could lead to more carbon emissions caused by more fuel and energy having to be used to make and transport them. People argue that they can be reused and recycled more than flimsy plastic ones; but that doesn't mean they always will be. And I've read that recycling creates a fair amount of greenhouse gas.
"Like I said, I don't know much about this stuff really. But it does seem that people really ought to look into the costs of alternatives to plastic before supporting bans of certain kinds of plastic, like single-use plastic bottles and bags."
One student grinned and quipped, "It seems like if we really want to do the best for the planet, we maybe all ought to go back to living like people did in the stone age. Yikes! ... Well, maybe we'd still be able to have a few creature comforts. I wonder if they had pizza in the stone age. I mean, they would have had cheese, probably, and tomatoes; and maybe they had the ingredients to make pizza bases. So at least we could maybe have a bit of comfort food while we all died of depression and cold and things."
The student who'd been talking before said, "Come on, I don't suppose things are that bad! What I've been saying doesn't mean nothing can be done. I think lots of solutions are being worked on. Things will get better when countries all around the world develop more recycling facilities and better ways of disposing of their rubbish. Apparently that tends to happen when countries get richer and consumers start demanding things like that, and they can afford to put more money into recycling things, and that kind of thing.
"And I think there are lots of pretty impressive technologies being developed that can help solve the plastic waste problem. Maybe some of them just need a bit of work. Hopefully it won't take too long for them to be developed so they can be in widespread use. There might be some really good ones around. I heard about one impressive-sounding technology that's being developed that can turn plastic back into the things it's made of, like oil, and then that can be made into new plastic, or used for other things; or if the plastics are made of plant material, when they're broken down again, they can even be used for animal feed!
"And I heard that when plastic's recycled nowadays, it has to be made into lower-grade plastic, because the plastic that goes into recycling's of all different types, some more high-grade than others, and all different colours, and it would take a lot of work to sort it into different types and colours, so as to be able to make new things out of plastic of the same quality the old things were made of. But I think solutions are being found for that. I heard there's computer technology that can help sort waste plastic into different colours somehow. I've heard technology's even been developed that can get all the colour out of recycled plastic, so it can be used to make clear bottles or newly-coloured ones.
"And I read about schemes that shred plastic and mix it with the usual things they use to make tarmac, so roads can be made out of the mixture, that are actually more durable than ordinary roads, such as because they don't develop pot holes after icy weather. Ice normally damages roads, because when water gets into little holes and cracks in them and then turns to ice, it expands, which can make any holes and cracks in the roads bigger. Something like that. And somehow it takes hotter weather to damage the roads with waste plastic in them than it does to make the tarmac on ordinary roads start melting. And I think there are other benefits too. I read that tons of waste from things like plastic bags could be turned into material that can be used as part of the mixture used to make roads.
"Mind you, I think that idea still needs work, since it seems that when those roads get old, or if they're not built very well, the plastic can break down a bit when it's exposed to a lot of heat or light, and particles can shed into the soil underneath or next to the roads, and get carried away by rain water or drains and cause pollution. Something like that. Hopefully solutions will be found for that.
"And gas released by waste on dumps and in recycling facilities can actually be captured somehow and turned into energy that can be used for electricity, instead of newly-produced coal and oil being used for it, it seems. I don't know how long it'll take for technology like that to become common.
"Obviously a lot needs to be done to protect the planet from plastic waste. And it's good when the public gets involved and puts pressure on governments to change things, and people do what they can to change things around them themselves. Governments and companies probably do most to change things when there's a lot of public pressure to make things better, since politicians want votes, and companies want people to buy their products. But it's important that people are well-informed about what really works and what doesn't, since otherwise, they can campaign to get the wrong things done.
"Some solutions to problems that seem good on the surface can be a lot more complicated than they sound in reality; and like I've been saying, simple-seeming solutions can have unintended bad consequences, because people haven't thought for long enough about possible downsides of them and possible modifications they could make to them to prevent the problems before deciding to put them into operation; or governments make policies because they're popular with the public who are upset about something and want it fixed, so they do what they think the public wants, probably hoping they'll vote for them at the next election if they do, instead of doing what's really best.
"It seems something like that happened when Tony Blair and a group of other European leaders decided they really needed to be seen to be doing something about carbon dioxide emissions because of the concern about global warming, so they gave people incentives to switch from using petrol cars to using diesel ones, which don't cause as much greenhouse gas. But they ignored the fact that diesel causes other kinds of pollution which is bad for people's health, and can even worsen problems caused by some diseases that give people severe breathing problems, to the extent that people who've got them can be more likely to die, I think. I don't know if that's just in areas that are highly polluted because there's absolutely masses of traffic, but still."
The student who'd been talking continued, "I think the outcry about plastics that's led to some things being unintentionally made worse is like what's happened with palm oil, with it being really useful, so the world would probably be a worse place without it, but its manufacture causes problems, so some people want to boycott it, but doing that would mean things were unintentionally made worse.
"I think palm oil first started growing in popularity after some companies discovered it was a healthier thing to make margarine with than the trans fats they'd been using before, which they used because they made margarine softer so it was easy to spread, but they were found to be bad for the heart, after a load of advertising for years that had claimed that those margarines were better for it than butter, which their manufacturers believed was true at the time, because they were lower in saturated fat, which is bad for the heart, and the companies producing them didn't know trans fats are bad for people.
"Then after they discovered that palm oil was a good substitute for trans fats, people found that palm oil was a really useful ingredient in loads of other things too, not just edible ones, but things like soap and shampoo, because it made them lather up well, so they were easy to use. It's a really useful product, because it has loads of different uses, like being a natural preservative to stop processed foods going off so fast, so it can cut down the use of chemical preservatives; and it can even be used to make fuel, and to make some kinds of wood stronger. I don't know all that much about it, but it seems to me that it's no wonder it's so much in demand.
"But the problem is that lots of forests are being cut down so more trees that produce palm oil can be grown, and that causes a whole lot of smoke pollution that makes the problems of anyone who already has breathing difficulties worse; and forests being burned can mean animals living in those forests get burned to death, which must hurt! And burning forests produces greenhouse gasses that increase global warming. Producing lots of different products, as well as making more space for people to live in, must have done that kind of thing over centuries. But it's happening really fast now, because palm oil's so useful that it's really in demand.
"It's grown in places like Indonesia and Malaysia. I think a lot of people have been lifted out of poverty because they've been able to grow it and make a fair bit of money from it; and it's allowed some people to buy cars for the first time, or even just send their children to school. So that's obviously a benefit of it. But not all poor people who work to produce it benefit. I've read that some horrible things have happened, things that probably happen in a lot of other industries in developing countries as well, like young children being made to work to harvest the stuff, sometimes doing dangerous jobs, and people having to work with hazardous chemicals like insecticides or doing dangerous jobs without proper protection, and being paid really low wages.
"Hopefully the companies that buy palm oil from the ones that produce it so they can sell it in lots of the countries in the world will somehow manage to persuade the producers to treat their workers better. I don't know how much incentive the companies it's sold to really have to do that, considering that if it means that wages are increased to give the workers a better standard of living, the price of their products will have to go up to help pay for them, so they might worry that not so many people would buy them. But hopefully they'll at least do something to help the workers on plantations like that. I think they're more likely to do something if they get a lot of bad publicity for buying palm oil from companies that abuse their workers, so they'll worry that some people might stop buying their stuff if they don't do something. Mind you, I think some companies do just buy from responsible producers.
"You might think that if workers get abused in one company, they can just leave and find jobs with other ones; but I think unemployment's high in some countries so there's a lot of competition for jobs, so it isn't all that easy. And in countries that don't have a proper welfare state, unemployment can have worse consequences than it would have in this country, where people at least get given some money to live on by the government.
"One reason companies started using palm oil was because soaps used to contain an animal fat called tallow, which was sold to companies after cows were slaughtered so they could use it for different things. Cows weren't being killed specially so they could get it; but understandably, people must have started feeling a bit squeamish when they found out that one ingredient in their soap was cow fat. It would be a bit cringeworthy, really, wouldn't it, if you found out you were washing your hands with something that had cow fat in it. So some people started campaigning to have soap made of things that were mostly made from plants instead. I don't know what's going to happen if scientists find out that plants have feelings and get upset and are in pain when people pick them and pull bits off them and things! You'd end up not wanting to eat or use anything much at all, wouldn't you!
"I suppose we've got to eat and use some things, even if it does hurt some species of things, so we can survive and have a decent quality of life. But it seems that a lot of people publicised that they didn't like the fact that animal fats were in their soap, so companies started using palm oil instead, which did a good job of making soaps foam up so it was easier to spread them around the area people wanted cleaned. The problem was that using animal fats from animals that had already been killed in things was actually a fair bit less bad for the environment than the alternative companies thought they'd better adopt, - using palm oil, which would have to be transported from thousands of miles away on a lot of planes that would produce greenhouse gasses. And the same happened with some cosmetics and detergents. Companies did look at alternative options to see how likely they were to work, but came to the conclusion that palm oil was the thing that would work as a substitute best.
"And it seems that the European Union, keen to reduce the use of fossil fuels, thought it would be a great idea to advise people to use products that were made from plants instead of oil, like biofuel for vehicles instead of petrol, so they encouraged companies to switch to using things like palm oil, which can be an ingredient in some fuels, only for it to turn out that producing it actually increased greenhouse gasses, because forests were being burned to make room for it to be grown, so more carbon dioxide was being released into the atmosphere because of all the smoke.
"But techniques are being developed to make fuel out of the waste from the palm oil plants that get harvested as well as from the palm oil itself, and there's a whole lot of waste. Apparently, about 90 % of the plant material that gets harvested can go to waste. So it's good that they've started using it for things.
"But some people have got upset by the amount of palm oil that gets produced and tried to get it boycotted, or tried to avoid eating or using it themselves, to try to stop forests being chopped down to make way for growing the plants that produce it. The trouble is that if it didn't get produced, people would naturally want alternatives, and it would actually take up a lot more space to produce the same amount of some of those as it does to produce palm oil, partly because palm oil fruit can be harvested surprisingly often, even once every two weeks! So that might just lead to a lot more burning of forests, with the increase in greenhouse gasses that that would cause to make room for growing the alternatives, not necessarily in the same countries that grow palm oil, but in other places, like Brazil, if people started using more soya bean oil instead. Or sunflower oil could possibly be used, but I think palm oil trees can produce ten times as much oil as what could be produced if the space they're in was used to produce sunflower oil.
"Another incentive to produce palm oil has been that waste products from it, like the shells from the fruit and other parts of the plants, can actually be processed in some way to produce electricity, which means not so much oil from fossil fuels has to be used to produce it, and it saves pollution from the way they used to dispose of the palm oil waste by throwing it into streams and waste ponds; but it does mean that the more useful it becomes, the more forests might be burned to produce the stuff.
"I think there's been quite a switch to sustainable palm oil though, where some producers guarantee that they won't cut down any more forests to make more room to produce it, but they'll just replace old palm oil trees with new ones when they die or stop producing fruit. I think the fact that a lot more people have started doing that has saved a lot of greenhouse gas from being produced by burning forests.
"Biofuels could just as easily be produced from some other crops; but palm oil's especially useful, because the fruit used to make it grows so quickly, and also it grows in soil that isn't fertile enough to grow a lot of other crops. So switching to other crops might make things a lot worse, like with a lot more forests having to be burned down to produce them. But still, it seems that growing palm oil has caused a lot of pollution and greenhouse gasses because of the amount of forests that have been burned down to produce it, although it's possible they'd have been burned down to produce other things anyway, or to be turned into pasture for cattle to graze that could then be turned into hamburgers and things, if they weren't burned down to produce that.
"The thing is that when people hear about the downsides of producing certain crops, or of plastics in the oceans and things, it's easy to get upset and think that some things ought to be banned; but things are often not as simple as that.
"There's been a push for sustainable palm oil, grown from trees that will always be replaced by other ones once they get too old to produce much, so less deforestation will be needed to plant new ones; but it seems that palm oil can be classified as coming from sustainable sources even when a lot of it doesn't, because mills get their palm oil from lots of different places, so it's harder for them to classify it as one thing or the other; and even if some of it comes from less ethical sources, it can somehow still be all classified as coming from sustainable sources.
"The thing is that most people probably ought to care about the environment, as well as the people who work to produce the things we eat and use, and things like animals that get harmed by plastic in our oceans, as well as lots of other things that affect the world. But it's easy to get upset by pictures of forests being burned to make way for palm oil fruit trees, or things like baby ocean creatures being fed bits of plastic by their mothers instead of proper food, and think the solution must be to ban plastic bags, or boycott palm oil, and things like that. But people ought to investigate things a bit before deciding that things like that would be the best things to do, because like I've said, doing things like banning some things might cause other problems, or even worse problems than were being caused by what's already happening."
The student talking carried on, "It's a bit like something I've heard about wind turbines in America killing over half a million birds a year because they crash into them. That sounds horrible, and it's tempting to think wind turbines shouldn't exist if they're going to do that! But it turns out that there are things that can be done to reduce the number of deaths they cause, such as new technologies that are being developed that can use radar to sense flocks of birds approaching and temporarily shut down the wind turbines till they've passed, or illuminate them at night so birds can see them better, and other things as well. And off-shore wind turbines kill far fewer birds than some others.
"And another thing that can help is putting wind farms in places where birds won't be so likely to fly into them, like in places that aren't on the routes they typically fly on when they're migrating, although it seems that the routes they fly on can be the best place for wind turbines, because birds use winds to help them get to places quicker, it seems, so they're attracted to places where the winds are often quite strong. I don't know much about this kind of thing; but it seems that that's the way it is, from what I've read.
"But also, the number of birds killed when they crash into wind turbines, or when wind turbine blades crash into them, has been calculated to be a lot less than the number of birds killed by breathing in the pollutants caused by coal and oil-powered power plants that provide most of our electricity nowadays; that's been measured at about ten million bird deaths a year, or so I've heard, although no one's really sure. And birds get killed by flying into oil platforms, and cooling towers that power stations use to cool down water after it's been used to help create energy too. I don't really know how the process of creating energy that way works; but it seems there are lots of them around.
"But looking at it that way can change a person's perspective on things, because it seems at first that wind power must be a bad thing when you hear that maybe even over two million birds a year will be killed by collisions with wind turbines in just one country as they develop more and more of them; but then when you hear that a lot more birds are being killed at the moment by pollution from fossil fuels, switching to wind power where possible at least sounds not so bad by comparison, when you think that bird deaths from pollution might go down a lot when it happens."
One student said, "Some people seem a bit obsessive about doing certain things they're sure are best for the environment. I mean, I know people ought to care about it, but it's worth knowing that things that might seem for the best sometimes aren't.
"I had some fun conversations on a forum not long ago with someone who lives on an island halfway around the world, who called himself Creative Writer.
"One day I read a news story and made some stuff up about it, and then joked, 'Hey Creative Writer, I heard a story about your island on the news this morning. A scientist-type was talking about how a group of animal enthusiasts had ventured out into the forest at midnight night after night after night after night, and had eventually found a cute little animal scientists had thought was extinct. The last sighting was in 1937. The animal enthusiasts captured the poor little thing, to prove to everyone they'd found the real thing. Unfortunately, now its mate is bereft of it, it won't be able to have any offspring, increasing the chances of the species going extinct for real. But scientists aren't bothered about that. They're going to clone the cute little animal till there are millions of them. Then they're going to set them all free all over your island. They want to turn the whole of it into a massive safari park. Nothing else will be on it except several hotels and an airport. They hope masses of tourists will flock there to see the cute little animals.
"Did I hear that news story correctly?'
"There were quite a few people on that forum who Creative Writer didn't like. One called himself Captain Cookery. He'd been in the navy for a while. Creative Writer joked, 'Well, I knew Captain Cookery deserves to be punished for his Crimes against society, but to treat his kids as tourist attractions would be going too far.'
"There were some fun things that happened on that forum. Once I commented on someone's signature that said, 'Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven'
"I said, 'Beethoven's music probably brings tears to the eyes of Everyone, at least if they're forced to listen to it for more than five minutes! I once heard about a teenage boy who was causing a nuisance by playing his horrible rap music really loud, and the police punished him by putting him in a room and playing him loud opera and classical music for a while so he could see how he liked listening to music he didn't like. Sounds about right. Beethoven should be played to prisoners all day. Perhaps in time it would reduce them to quaking wretches pleading for mercy. ... Or perhaps it would calm them down, just as eating salad and things instead of junk food has apparently been found to a bit.'
"The person who had that signature once posted a clip of opera, and I commented, 'What a terrible noise! Its only redeeming feature is that the high notes make it sound amusingly like a baby's squeaky toy.'
"I got a bit fed up of that forum after a while, so I joined another one. But the moderation was stricter, and I wasn't accustomed to it. So I said things that were a bit more insulting than people are supposed to say on there, that got me suspended from it for a while, since people provoked me by saying insulting things to me, and I reacted in a bit of style. I told people on the old forum that that had happened, and one person who liked to say controversial things commented that I was so lame I'd 'make Stephen Hawking look like Spiderman.'.
"I thought the accusation of being lame was a bit of a strange one, considering all the other more appropriate things I could have been accused of. So I joked,
"'What? Are you suggesting that if I was going to go and get myself suspended, I shouldn't have done it in such a weak-kneed wimpish way as to just say things like, "This thread is a great heap of sludge!"? Are you suggesting that to have done it in a decent way, I should have done it in style, by perhaps saying something to someone like:
"'"It's no wonder you're so useless at arguing - you probably dropped out of education when you were five years old, you simple-minded flea! You have the arguing ability of a potato, you maggot-brained pile of scum! I wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley! I bet you're all brawn and no brain! I bet the only way you ever win arguments is by taking a horse-whip to your opponent with ten of your mates for back-up! In fact, I bet the only way you can get friends is by mugging frail old ladies and buying people drinks with the money you've stolen, you repulsive low-life! In fact, I bet you molest a nursery-schoolful of children before breakfast every morning, you worthless creep! The world would be a better place without you! Why don't you go to a desert island and nuke yourself?"
"'Well, if I ever decide I never ever want to post on that Forum again, I might consider taking up your suggestion to go out in style.'"
"The day after I first posted on the new forum, I went back to the old one and said, 'I decided to leave this place, because I decided I wanted a forum that was a lot less trashy. I've found a new one now, so I'll see how that goes. I first posted on it yesterday evening. So far, I've only made 122 enemies, so I'm doing quite well. Much better than usual.'
"When I got suspended, I complained about how unfair I thought it was on the old forum, and one person told me to stop complaining, saying I must just be moody 'because periods'. I said for fun, 'Oh try and be nice for once. If you said that to me on the new forum and you'd made a few previous comments like that to people, the ban hammer would hit you so hard you'd go sailing out the window, and the momentum would make you keep on flying for miles till you perhaps came down in the middle of the ocean.'
"The new forum was a better one really though."
The students chuckled.
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