Now you are just trying to justify natures events as "natural" and man's as "unatural" How are our actions "unatural", are we not apart of "nature"? Sure some creatures build damns and nests, we build rockets that go into space.
Mercury is no a danger to man, and a matter of fact mercury found in lamps is elemental and in it's natural state. You can play with it in your hand without health hazards. Problems arise when it finds itself seeping through the ground, morphing to another state to an underground water supply or stream. At this point it can become dangerous. Now because of this, YIKES double YIKES, sky is falling. So now we must get this out of the hands of man in case " a neon bender might our his merc down his sink and into our streams" - Karen Knabel
Back to volcanoes, exploding volcanoes are not good for us, maybe for the earth but not for you and I, nor birds. Nature does not revolve around man or animal.
I suppose the recent gulf spill we had here is another "bad" mans fault too? Was this a catastrophic man made disaster that hurt nature and hurt it? I doubt it, nature has a way of cleaning itself up, look at the bacteria that ate it up. Besides, a small quake can easily expose an underwater well to flood the waters much worse tan what happened recently.
What comes from the earth no matter how mixed returns to the earth. What you call man making and mixing elements together over a bunsen burner is no different than a warm front mixing with a cold front with the same air as a volcano explosion to bring to trap and brig those elements back down on the earth to poison villager and plant life below for hundreds of years. There is Natures chemistry set.
You may have a better point should a meteor fall on earth bringing unknown elements from another solar system never before seen here that can change the scope of life here, but then again, wouldn't that just be nature working?
I'd be more terrified of super quakes, sudden polar shifting/techtonic plate shifting, large meteors impacting earth than someone smashing a CFL lamp in my presence or other Frankenstien theories on mans arrogance to think we are dictating Mother Nature.
Sure man can pollute, but we have no power to destroy the earth, and it needs no saving from us.
I'm sure more "emotional" responses will follow based on "feeling"
One of the biggest jokes is plastic bottles and how it hurts "our" environment. Good god!
Last I heard the US had more trees now than when the colonials landed. Hmmmm. Oh and, we're living longer. Curse advancements we should be taxed for it!
I still bury oil in my backyard after doing oil changes, after all, it came out of the ground originally didn't it?? Even so, that is an improvement over pouring it down the storm drain like we used to do back when I was a kid.
Oh my god, say that again slowly? If your "logic" made any sense whatsoever..... the world is full of stories about the environmental damage caused by extracting crude oil. What on earth makes you "think" that toxic crude oil is somehow less toxic after it's been refined and used? Uranium comes out of the ground too... should we just dump the contents of every nuclear power station in a hole in your garden too?
FYI used engine oil is a known to be a cancer causing compound. FYI+ engine oil isn't "natural oil"... it's been tinkered with and it's full of man made chemicals which aren't found in nature.
As counterpoint to your overweening concern over things out of your control, I pour my waste ink out on the ground and recycle absolutely nothing. My efforts have exactly the same effect as yours, none whatsoever.
So you're a sign maker as well as fully qualified Chemist and Biologist then? After dumping your liquid cr@p all over your garden you've followed up with an in depth scientific study which examines the impact of your efforts on the flora & fauna in your garden. You've taken soil samples and tested the local water supply to discover what impacts your dirty work have had on the environment. You know which chemical compounds are harmful and you understand how they bind and alter the nature of your environment.
After your extensive research you've passed your results onto the wider scientific community where your efforts are peer reviewed and it's confirmed that slopping toxic $hit all over your garden has no negative impacts on your environment... in direct contradiction of common sense and logic.
Either that or you've slopped your toxic slop in a hole and then covered it with an old plant pot and "seen" no visual deterioration in the environment you can "see" visually.
Next you have the lamp recycle freaks, then the anti mercury crowd. Anyone remember that Volcano that exploded in Iceland, you know, the one that had a name that couldn't be pronounced? Where most of Europe couldn't travel by air? That one explosion just but more mercury vapor into the atmosphere than if every man, women, and child broke all their CFL lamps on the ground, this generation, the last and future generations to come
Volcanic activity is a natural event which does release large volumes of chemicals... however, it has been proven that volcanic events can be beneficial to the planet and it's environment. The Icelandic event did not result in permanent or wide spread heath restrictions... the primary heath concern was the fine ash dust not the chemicals emitted.
Volcanoes emit lots of chemicals but they all share one characteristic... they are all chemicals which are natural to earth... they are chemicals which are built into the very fabric of the planet.
You cannot translate volcanic activity into the human sphere... we as humans have the capacity to invent chemical bindings which are unknown to nature. We understand how volcanoes work and understand the impact of combining the various natural chemicals which come out of them with those in the wider environment. Because man made chemicals are unnatural we have no way of knowing how each individual man made chemical will react when combined with other man made compounds or indeed with those which feature widely in nature.
Once man started creating his own chemicals this opened up a huge range of unknown consequences... how do you test that every chemical made by man will not cause a toxic result when combined with every chemical made by nature.
Mercury is extremely harmful to humans... it makes absolute sense to seek to find other safer alternatives. This has happened before with asbestos.... although asbestos is an excellent thermal insulator it is also an aggressive cancer causing substance... by banning asbestos the regulators forced scientists and industry to come up with safer alternatives.
I suggest you all take a look at the iconic Earth photograph taken from orbit... when viewed from the extra terrestrial our planet can be seen as a beautiful and delicate diamond amongst a solar system of rocks.
This planet is home, if we screw this planet there is no life boat, no plan B.
. I've tried to market the green angle, but have a very difficult time keeping a straight face. We recycle, use most of our scraps but the nature of this industry is not indicative of being friendly to mother earth. "Green" is a marketing term that has a vast gap between what ppl think it means and what it actually means. Green means slightly less harmful to the environment (than the industry standard), NOT good for the environment. As if driving a smart car is good for the environment. Thats about as oxymoronic as the term military intelligence or the department of justice. They are just words that very little to do with reality.