Earth Approaching Tipping Point Say Scientists 759
Hugh Pickens writes "The UC Berkeley News Center reports that a prestigious group of 22 internationally known scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation. 'It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,' warns lead author Anthony Barnosky. 'The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.' The authors note that studies of small-scale ecosystems show that once 50-90 percent of an area has been altered, the entire ecosystem tips irreversibly into a state far different from the original, in terms of the mix of plant and animal species and their interactions. Humans have already converted about 43 percent of the ice-free land surface of the planet to uses like raising crops and livestock and building cities. This situation typically is accompanied by species extinctions and a loss of biodiversity. 'My view is that humanity is at a crossroads now, where we have to make an active choice,' says Barnosky. 'One choice is to acknowledge these issues and potential consequences and try to guide the future (in a way we want to). The other choice is just to throw up our hands and say, 'Let's just go on as usual and see what happens.'"
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dialectic failure (Score:2, Informative)
Watch Albert Bartlet's "energy arithmetic and growth" on youtube. Also see Assamov's the law of the bathroom. Smarter people than you know you're wrong.
Re:The sky really IS falling! (Score:5, Informative)
The report cites "explosive population growth" [citation needed]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World-Population-1800-2100.png [wikipedia.org] would be a start. For your other claims, maybe actually read TFA?
50-90%... They can't get any more accurate? (Score:2, Informative)
So... we've altered 43% of the land mass.. and catastrophic things happen *somewhere* between 50-90%... So either in like 10 years the world will fall apart, or it won't because it turns out that the number is much closer to 90% than 50%...
It would be nice if these "scientists" could you know.. provide some accurate data upon which to make their oh so important decision. Last time I looked that was their job, not making sensationalist claims with little to know proof or evidence.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the "evil 1%" amounts to about 70 million people, and the USA has about 330 million.
So it looks like you have no better than a 25% chance of being one of the "evil 1%" if you live in the USA.
And that would be assuming that noone else in the world is part of the 1%....
Re:The sky really IS falling! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Real science means listening to scientists (Score:4, Informative)
You are ignoring the work of REAL scientists
And there are no real scientists here [realclimate.org]?
Re:Deniers howling (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense
United States area = 9 trillion square meters (approximate)
United states average insolation over 24hrs = 100w (pessimistic)
United States average energy draw all forms of energy = 3.4 trillion watts
Photovoltaic conversion factor = 15% (pessimitistic)
area * insolation * conversion factor = 135 trillion watts average over 24hrs
135 trillion watts > 3.4 trillion watts, even given these wildy pessimistic assumptions.
of course covering the whole of the USA with solar panels is ridiculous, then you have storage to deal with, but yeah, your sums are out by several orders of magnitude.
Re:Choice B has worked before (Score:4, Informative)
Re:evolutionist's (Score:4, Informative)
To illustrate the low intellectual frame of mind that starts your message, I need to point out your title. Someone, somewhere did not educate you in the usage of the apostrophe.
"An apostrophe does not mean 'uh-oh, here comes an s.'" - Dave Barry as "Mr Grammar Person"
And I highly recommend buying this poster to hang on your wall, so you don't ever forget: http://angryflower.com/aposter.html [angryflower.com]
Similarly, someone, somewhere, did not educate you in the scientific concepts like the scientific method, what a theory is, what a hypothesis is, what evidence is, etc., and I am being kind here. I could accuse you of being a lay-about all through school not paying one whit of attention to what was being taught because you were smoking dope or something.
Now to get to your actual question: It is without merit and assumes that "evolutionists" (there is no such thing - evolution is not a system of belief) "believe" in evolution as a matter of faith. This is pure unadulterated nonsense. Before Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, thinking people understood that "change over time," i.e., evolution happens. Lamarck was one of them, but while his was one of the first self-consistent theories of evolution and set the tone for future research, it had major problems. What was ground breaking about Darwin's book was that he wrote down what the more sensible method by which Nature does it and had hundreds of pages of observational notes and logical argument to back it up. He did this by going out and observing how the world actually works instead of sitting on his arse and pontificating like Aristotle, who while a smart guy in many respects, was laughably wrong in others.
And to this day, the evidence points in the direction of evolution as fact and away from bronze-age mythology ever more so. While people may debate the finer points (punctuated equilibrium vs. gradualism) the overall fact of evolution gets more understood every day.
Now if you are unwilling to buy into the fact of evolution and wish to call it nonsense, I demand that you put up or shut up and present your case as to why you think you have a better idea for how the universe works. If you do have indeed a better case, the next Nobel prize and lots of cash and fame is yours and someone might name a city after you. If you do not, we can ridicule you mercilessly.
Do you feel lucky, punk? Well do ya?
So present your case.
--
BMO
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Informative)
You're right that anything that grows will exhaust its resources but you're missing two key points. First, humans tend to expand the amount of resources at their disposal through new technology. Second, in general the first world is no longer experiencing population growth.
It is thus conceivable that we could expand our resources enough to get everyone up to a first world standard of living and thereby achieve a steady state population. I'm not saying this will be easy, just that disaster is not foreordained. (Well, outside the heat death of the universe anyways, but we might even figure that one out if we last long enough =)
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Until the percentage of the world's population with higher standards of living starts to decrease, which it hasn't for any meaningful period in centuries, I don't think we need to gnash our teeth in worry.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Informative)
This is not some radical new technology that should be available in 25 years [xkcd.com], this is a tried and proven technology that we can put into full scale production whenever the economics justify it.