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.'"
This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Funny)
Just coincidence? I think not...
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. But then, I wouldn't have gotten Fr1st Psot.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Given my downmods, no. :-)
But /. is a game with elaborate scoring - and Karma is not the sole scale for measuring this.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Funny)
Given my downmods, no. :-)
But /. is a game with elaborate scoring - and Karma is not the sole scale for measuring this.
An interesting game -- the only winning move is not to register.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Insightful)
FYI,
They showed us a movie in Jr High, about this same thing. We were being warned of the immenent human-driven catastrophe that would subsume our civilization and imperil human existance.
That was 1977.
I suggest that if 1% of the planet's human inhabitants did not disproportionatley gobble and discard 90% of the wealth, resources and energy, that there'd be plenty to go around in a reasonably sustainable way - and quite comfortably.
Watch out when you are propagandized like this. Once you accept that this is "Science" - they will present you the "solution". It will be a complete horror.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Watch out when you are propagandized like this
And your scientific evidence that this group of scientists are lying is where exactly? Because when you call their conclusions "propaganda", like Fox News, then you're accusing them of lying.
The Earth's load limit is 5 billion and we're over 7 billion already. There aren't enough resources to go around no matter how you divide it.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Insightful)
The Earth's load limit is 5 billion and we're over 7 billion already. There aren't enough resources to go around no matter how you divide it.
What kind of "science" gave you that conclusion?
Recent estimates indicate that there are enough raw materials in the earth's crust to last another 10,000 years of advancing civilization. Just because we have historically only mined the top ½ mile of the earth's crust does not mean that we will not develop new ways to reach natural resources. The beauty of the future is that it does not have to be restricted based on our current technological inabilities. It is organic, adaptable as situations change. In 1950, nobody thought we would be able to sustain a planet with four billion people. By 1980, not only had we surpassed that number, but we also improved world average life expectancy and were agriculturally productive in places that had been barren wasteland before. Do not limit the potential for our children based on the archaic limitations that we face today.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The beauty of the future
will be the five mile mining pit where your national parks used to be, apparently.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not limit the potential for our children based on the archaic limitations that we face today.
Yes, that's the whole point of TFA, degredation of the environment is a limiting factor not just for our current civilization but for all forms of life. The question is, do we continue to act like fermenting yeast in a jar, or do we use our brains and do something about it?
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. Food and water are it. Who cares about uranium when you are starving to death? The reality is that all our food is currently produced by using fossil fuels which Hubbard's curve indicates are either past their peak or approaching it rapidly. His math for the US was spot on and the best predictor of future performance is past performance. Watch "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" by Al Bartlett. Your estimates do not account for growth. Also watch or listen to David Suzuki's talk about growth and resources; anything that grows will double, anything that grows will exhaust its resources, even if we could quantumly duplicate earth twice one more doubling and the second earth is exhausted, the second doubling and all four are exhausted. You have no fucking idea what you are talking about and are not the least bit insightful. The argument that past scientists were wrong about the date is in fact a straw man argument and not deserving of any consideration. Math is the master here and she is an unforgiving mistress.
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: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.
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:5, Insightful)
I understand your scepticism however we know that we are far away from hitting any hard physical limits. We know, that we don't exploit fraction of the energy we receive from the Sun. We know, that fusion is possible. We know, that space travel, hence, spreading in the solar system is possible. This is not a belief or optimism, we know for sure.
Take for example the drinking water problem. It is not that we don't have enough H2O on this planet, quite the opposite. To purify the sea water is not just possible, but we are doing it already. The drinking water problem hits those countries that haven't got the means to do so, which is due the distribution of wealth and has nothing to do with science or technology. If people are dying from the lack of water it is because their areas are excluded from the overall wealth of the human race.
Everywhere I look, food shortages, drinking water problems, even Earth-quakes, I see social problems, not technological or hitting the limit of some physical constrain. The density of population is governed by house prices, and not reasonable organisation of life. Why would people leave the rural areas with plenty of living space for a cramped little place? Lack of work and house prices. Why would people starve in countries where there's large scale agriculture? Because the the crops are sold for higher prices to people with higher earnings thousands of kilometres away only to produce enormous amount of food waste. I can go on...
The problem is that while our population grew in proportion of our technical advancement, our social organisation did not develop as much. We are still stuck with capitalism, ideologies of work ethic, while the automation of production is steadily growing. Our political establishment in the developed world is committed to keep things as they are with every means possible while it is clear that the organisation of the human race can not be tied to the timely structures of nations, ethnicity, while capitalism in the last 200 years acts as a global force already (that is, there's no "globalization" as such). Democracy, at least as it is today, does not serve the population better than any previous oppressing political establishment. Competition is idealized by many while it is nothing but wasting resources on pointless redundancies, all thanks for the bourgeois ideology of "free market" capitalism, which was never really true, and which can not be really true anyway.
My point is in short, that while there's no evidence of hitting our natural boundaries any time soon, we are pretty much like a zombie when it comes to our social system. And the social factor is already causing massive disasters on a never seen global scale.
Re: (Score:3)
Wrong. over population is a myth [overpopula...samyth.com].
Re: (Score:3)
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Insightful)
This "wealth" is an illusion - conjured up by the ponzi-scheme of debt, coerced with state violence.
Are you for real or am I being trolled?
Are you against barter as well? That's all "wealth" in currency is. It's a means to barter without carrying around chickens, cows, etc or fixing a computer or digging a ditch on the spot in order to exchange it to someone else who spent their time/effort/skill to make/grow/create/build something that you need or want. Wealth itself is simply goods, services, or other valuable/useful things you have earned through labor, created, or can provide.
People won't work for nothing or just hand over something they worked and put materials into creating/building/growing. Oh, unless one goes back to that old standard solution that's eventually been employed every time such utopian ideas have been tried through history, and to which I referred to in one of my previous posts: At the point of a gun/sword.
Just like the Soviet farms. Production was extremely poor until the farmers were offered a way to benefit from what the farm produced.
Capitalism is terrible. However, it's STILL the best, most successful system that's ever been created in all of history by any reasonable standard.
>Capitalism is the only system ever created where wealth is a renewable resource for everyone and anyone willing to work and/or come up with an idea, skill, or invention that is useful or valuable to another person that you can then trade with for something you need or want.
>Capitalism has raised more people from poverty and dramatically raised the standard of living of more people than any other system ever created.
>Capitalism has allowed more people to live in more freedom than any other system ever invented.
>Capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance to those in need around the world than any other system or country in history.
Now, the second part about government-run Ponzi schemes, crushing debt, and coercion by the state through the threat of violence I agree with to a great degree.
"I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." - Thomas Jefferson
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." - Thomas Jefferson
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy." - Thomas Jefferson
The root of the government corruption and the power the big corporations and ultra-rich wield originates and is enforced by a too-large and powerful central government. Corporations and the rich don't have military or civilian police forces. They don't pass laws or regulations. It's the government that passes the corrupt laws and regulations and enforces them, sometimes quite selectively, to the benefit of those with power and influence. It's the government that will kick in your door, shoot your dog and terrorize and threaten you and your family at gunpoint.
Any power you give government, you give to those who have bought government influence. The only real protection is to keep government small and tightly restricted to only those few powers actually granted by a plain-language reading of the Constitution without "lawyering" the meaning of plain words to twist their meaning to suit a political agenda.
"How strangely will the Tools of the Tyrant pervert the Plain Meaning of Words." - Samuel Adams
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." - Thomas Jefferson
A large government makes hiding and/or obfuscating corruption and other improper behavior and guilt/blame easy.
If the government doesn't have the power to r
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Insightful)
We were being warned of the immenent human-driven catastrophe that would subsume our civilization and imperil human existance. That was 1977.
When a problem is described as "irreversible within a few GENERATIONS" then talking about it as something that's happening now, even over a 30+ year spread is perfectly valid.
No No No (Score:4, Funny)
When it is described as that it removes all obligation of those making the declaration from having to be right.
As in, they won't be around to admit they were wrong. Sounds like typical consultant work.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because planet Earth is just like Hollywood, and changes to the planet don't actually happen over a period of centuries, they take place over a period of a week, with massive tidal waves and reverse hurricanes freezing people solid in three seconds flat.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Insightful)
That was 1977.
On a geological timescale, that was about 2 seconds ago. Just because nothing much has happened in that 2 seconds doesn't mean it was wrong.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that the bottom 90% are having 2x as many babies as the rest.
We could all be forced to "share", and in the end, the breeders will still ruin everything.
Unless of course, the same benevolent dictator that "shares" our property back to us also dictates who has kids and when.
Your "solution" doesn't sound all that appealing to me.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Insightful)
It has been demonstrated time and again that education decreases birth rate, partly by decreasing religious membership, as the people who are breeding the fastest in particular are overwhelmingly members of a religion that tells them to be fruitful and multiply... but partly because people understand the consequences of their actions.
I am not sure any such things has been demonstrated.
It is more likely in my mind that as you educate people you also usually improve their overall standard of living and health at the same time. This means a drop off in infant mortality and that means people do not need to have as many kids as they actually start expecting them all to survive to adulthood.
These things are all wrapped up together and interrelated so separating them and deducing which causes what to happen is much harder than you seem to imply.
Re: (Score:3)
Watch out when you are propagandized like this. Once you accept that this is "Science"
Right. Don't believe any of this "science" crap. It's obviously all a scheme by a bunch of atheists who want to use the United Nations to install Al Gore as President-for-Life and take away all your guns and SUVs.
If it were true, why isn't it in the Bible? Those commies can't answer that, can they.
Re: (Score:3)
That 1% you are talking about are Americans. I am an American. I have a place to live, a computer, and a car. Should I give them up? I am taking up too many resources right? I am guessing people in Germany, and Australia do not live inside, nor do they travel to and from work? People in Japan have fairies transport them and provide electricity for the evil earth killing computers?
I sincerely would like to know how I am any different than any of them. I would also like to know how my energy usage is 90% more
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize the universe doesn't give a flying fuck about liberal vs conservative, your way of life or the price of tea in China. This idiotic obsession with trying to turn any science you don't like into some ideological position is bizarre. Not everyone in this world is motivated by simplistic dogmatic positions.
And how is declaring "engineering solutions will be found" not just simply passing the buck to the future?
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Whatever happens, it will become history, and you can't change history.
Sure you can; textbook writers change history with every edition.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Interesting)
And how is declaring "engineering solutions will be found" not just simply passing the buck to the future?
Well, of course, it has to be in the future, because we've so resolutely refused to solve the problems in the past. ;-)
But various others have pointed out that the "engineering solutions" may not be very far in the future, if we want to implement them. One of the consequences of the accumulated evidence that the recent climate changes are primarily due to human activity is that we know that we're capable of pushing the world' climate around, and we know how we've been doing it. So from an engineering viewpoint, pushing it in a different direction (e.g., stability or slower change) is within our capabilities. Granted, the "Further Research is Needed" mantra applies, but we know enough to take effective action now if we want to.
The major questions aren't scientific or technical; they're economic, political and religious. That is, it doesn't do much good to convince the engineers that there's a problem that they can fix. They already know about it (and are looking for funding ;-). We also have to get the go-ahead from the leaders of our governments and major corporations.
The outlook isn't necessarily good. We do have documentation about various major disasters throughout human history, including many that were caused by humans who understood that they were causing a disaster. History says that humans often don't act on such knowledge, even when their society is collapsing around them.
We saw a good small-scale example of this back in 2005. Before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the US Government ran a simulation study of such events. Google "Hurricane Pam" to read all about it. Katrina was pretty similar to Pam. The US Army Corps of Engineers produced a thorough report on the physical infrastructure of the Mississippi Delta, which listed all the places where the levees would later break during Katrina, plus estimates of the maintenance required to fix the problems. Congress turned down the applications for funding. Everyone involved knew that it was just a matter of time until the disaster hit, but the government didn't fund the maintenance, and the disaster followed the engineers' prediction practically to the letter.
This is a local example of the sort of disasters that our political systems have historically perpetrated with full knowledge beforehand. It looks like the climate-change story is a repeat performance. Some of the scientists involved decided to try to publicise it a couple of decades back, on the grounds that it was a growing problem that we could probably fix if we want to. But history says that we probably won't do anything about it, although we know how to.
(If you want a bigger example, look up the history of ozone depletion. That's actually a fairly good example of partial success. The depletion is known to be almost entirely due to chemical compounds added to the atmosphere by human activity. Our dumping of those compounds has been radically decreased, and the depletion has nearly leveled off, though it hasn't been reversed. But it is an interesting example of human governments cooperating on a global level to deal with a global problem. So there's some hope. We don't always fail when facing such large-scale problems. ;-)
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason to state it is to point out the stupidity of trying to insist science you don't like is just some opposing political/ideological claim. If the science is right or wrong it is because of the data, not because one is conservative or liberal.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Insightful)
Well I was referring to drawing conclusions from one experiment which I guess is roughly equivalent to one research paper. Also, obviously some papers are better quality than others. The point is that data can be interpreted (and manipulated, e.g. publication bias) in multiple ways, science tests each theory until one is clearly the most plausible.
The parent referred to "the data", which is what it is. The interpretation of the data has a social aspect and is inherently subjective, many theories have lasted for centuries until finally disproven.
Don't get me wrong, science is the best way to figure things out by far, but we shouldn't pretend it is a completely objective endeavor.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Interesting)
"Science just allows you to be right about 20% of the time rather than 1% of the time."
Oh, really? Then you'll probably want to reconsider ever flying again. Or taking medicinal drugs. Or...
The whole idea of science is objectivity. Sheesh.
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not surprising then, that it's hard for people to see their blindspots, because they are relatively rare.
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:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Funny)
Oh you whacky mathematicians ... always manipulating the numbers to serve your argument!
Re: (Score:3)
Here is an engineering problem for you. Fracking induces a whole lot of horizontal faults fills those faults with polluted fluids and releases large quantities of methane gas. What happens when there is a major earthquake in those regions and a new vertical fault intersects those horizontal faults. Obvious answer, large quantities of toxic water is released into ground water and, the water table and onto surface water catchments. Also huge quantities of natural gas are released into atmosphere at flammable
Conclusion follows from false premise (Score:5, Insightful)
That lack of change is normal, desirable, or even possible.
Since they start with these proven untrue postulates, the whole thing is a worthless mental exercise in what things might be if things weren't as they are.
Re: (Score:3)
+1. I haven't yet seen an empirical argument (as opposed to an argument from first principles) that biodiversity is necessary. I wouldn't want to throw it away, but in this world everything is a tradeoff, and the value of warm fuzzy feelings diminishes rapidly when lives—or simply ways of life—are on the line. When scientists warn of catastrophic species loss, the wooey green types are invited to imagine Bambi and her friendly woodland friends rather than the lichens and cockroaches with differe
Re:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:4, Funny)
As much as I agree that longer term planning is an important (and undervalued) concern in many engineering designs, I think taking into account the heat death of the sun might be over-engineering just a bit.
Re: (Score:3)
I put this and The Last Answer as my two favorite short stories by Asimov .
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:This Announcement Hot on Heels of Bilderbergers (Score:5, Funny)
We need to energize that one percent to invest in its own future by creating an explosion of sustainable technologies and new industries that serve life and living as opposed to undermining life for billions while enriching dozens. Its time to turn things on their heads. Its time to kill the sacred cows, and shatter the broken paradigms that have been shaping this slow motion catastrophe for the last 30 years. Its time to put an end to business as usual, and making the kinds of changes that will ultimately serve the future.
BINGO! What do I win?
(Sorry, I couldn't resist. I agree with you for the most part, but that was awfully heavy on the buzz-words.)
The relativity of wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Choice B it is (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure we're going to pick Choice B, "throw up our hands and say, 'Let's just go on as usual and see what happens.'" Choice A would require some serious coordinated effort from all the world's industrialized nations, and there's absolutely no way that's ever going to happen.
Choice B has worked before (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, we're still here, aren't we?
Apocalyptic visions of the future seems to be a human pastime. Ignoring them seems to be the other human pastime.
Re:Choice B has worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Choice B has worked before (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, many predictions do come true. Sometimes we engineer around them, as we do when we build cities where we are told by scientists not to, like flood plains or earthquake zones. Sometimes we don't and end up paying the price through the loss of homes and industry and lives. Global warming may have bigger uncertainties involved, but we will end up paying the price if it's true and we fail to act on those predictions. Indeed, we may already be paying the price through political instability and mass
Re:Choice B has worked before (Score:5, Interesting)
Ignoring them? We very successfully mitigated the acid rain problem, water pollution problems and dioxine pollution problems of the 70s and 80s. In my youth, forests were full of dead trees and swimming in large rivers was a big no-no. Nowadays forests are back to being green and nearly all surface water is ok to swim in again.
In the mean time China is rather successfully countering the growth of its population, Germany recently ran a full day on 50% solar power, other countries are producing their energy by durable means with an ever increasing pace, water desalination is slowly replacing natural sources, cars are getting more efficient every day, recycling is quickly becoming a profitable industry and in some countries forested area is actually increasing.
We're slowly but steadily steering to towards the right path, partially because it is economically sound, partially by not ignoring scientific predictions of apocalyptic scenarios. If we successfully counteract the massive deforestation going on in rainforests, there's actually a chance of humanity getting on a sustainable track before it really is too late.
Re:Choice B has worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
Species around less than a million years thinks it will be around forever. LOL.
Re:Choice B has worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
Climate change can't kill us, but it will cause serious problems.
Agreed that it's unlikely to make humans go extinct, but it's not so far-fetched to imagine famine (and/or war caused by competition for exhausted resources) resulting in the unnatural/early deaths of 75% or more of Earth's human population.
Re:Choice B it is (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, Europe is doing so wonderfully right now.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It does feel pretty wonderful here. Public healthcare, free university, no signs of those things going away anytime soon, unless you buy into the anti-euro propaganda of the English speaking media.
Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Oh no! A small minority of people in populations with close-to, or below replacement level are having many children! Catastrophe! Somebody call Malthus!
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Funny)
No need to worry (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No need to worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything will correct itself. Once things get real bad, there will be large scale fighting which will kill off a fairly significant number of people which should bring us to the balance needed. Nature is self-correcting after all.
Maybe, but then again you may not like the results from nature correcting itself.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe, but then again one may also not like the results of government trying to correct nature.
At least when nature corrects itself we can be sure it was really necessary and not purely for personal gain.
Re: (Score:3)
There is no doubt that "everything will correct itself". This isn't up for debate.
What's up for debate is how will the correction happen. The whole point of this is in whose terms will this correction happen: will this be in humanity's good terms, by limiting growth and guaranteeing access to limited resources, will it be in humanity's bad terms, with wars for stuff such as access to food and drinking water and the accompanying indiscriminate killing of very large numbers of people, or will it be in natur
try to guide the future (in a way we want to)? (Score:3)
Someone has been reading too much Science Fiction and not enough History.
What other country besides the PRC could successfully implement a one-child policy? (Even then, it's fertility rate is 1.7.)
Huge-scale genocide or pandemic are the only solutions to getting the population down to a more manageable 4Bn.
A call for sanity... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a call for sanity. We need to appreciate, accept, and design for the best and the worst that human beings are prone to and for. The genius of the American form of Government was checks and balances (before greedy self serving people removed them.) We need to understand that there are conflicting interests, belief systems and human enterprises and we need to account for them all.
There must be a sane position between human desire and human need. We need to find and develop that position. We need to evaluate our behavior and our beliefs against hard physical reality and abandon philosophies which are fundamentally bankrupt and ideologies which are inherently self destructive. We can't react our way out of this problem. We need to come together embracing our differences and honoring our distinctiveness. Together we must pick a target, an inspiring and achievable future that serves both the human condition, and the future condition for life on the planet. The problem is not and has never been about life. Life can't be stopped. Its about a world capable of sustaining complex higher lifeforms capable of intelligence. We are an apex species. Destroy the habitat and our numbers will collapse (its happened before, at one time the human population dwindled to less than 5,000.)
That said, we must not let the Plutarchs push the vast majority of humanity off the edge. There is clear indication that education is transformative. Bring knowledge to superstition, starvation, plague and famine, and life improves instantly. Where there is education the natural environment is seen as a value outside of its ability to be burned or eaten. Where there is education, there is social change, contraception, medicine, increased health and lifespan and decreased reproduction rate. We need to educate the developing world and we have amazing new tools to accomplish this. We need to remove the false gods and dangerous superstitions from our midst. Starting with Profit and Endless Material want. Its time to discover what is good for us as human beings and pursue that with passion and joy. It is time for us to honor the miracle of our world and protect it, because until we can leave it, it is the only home we know and we are unfit for any place else. It is time for us to appreciate the miracle of being human and put an end to strife and hatred, fear and war, xenophobia and discrimination.
This is a call for sanity.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't that the plan? (Score:3, Interesting)
When we convert land to agriculture, don't we usually want it to stay that way? Sometimes I wonder if people appreciate just how harsh the natural environment is for people. I don't think it's reasonable to say we should kill half the population just to restore the environment to it's original condition (if that's even possible). Most people wouldn't want to live that way anyway. Rather, we need to be making decisions about how to deal with the environment change that we expect to occur.
Besides, who's to say if it's 50% or 90%? Since the earth is very large, I'd bet on 90%. Also, why are we excluding oceans and ice covered land from our equation?
Long story short, humans alter their environment. Deal with it.
Well, I'm doing my part (Score:5, Funny)
Fewer humans (Score:4, Insightful)
No other solution.
isn't it just part of nature? (Score:3)
Asking people to stop destroying the planet is like asking rabbits to stop fucking and making new bunnies.
Not the Earth (Score:5, Funny)
Tipping points include (Score:5, Interesting)
The positive feedback loop of a previously sequestered source of greenhouse gas causing yet more release of same.
The mass die off in the seas of the base of the food chain and the sudden follow on of all other species that depend no that food chain.
The outbreak of nuclear or biological war as a result of governments toppling under food and or water scarcity pressures.
The breakdown of civil order owing to the bankrupting of nearly all nations in a now-too-late, and ultimately futile effort to avert climate change. A tipping point is reached regarding the human acceptance of climate change and all it entails, including any and all of the above. Just as in the stock market, the full event doesn't even have to happen before the force of the disaster is felt - that happens as soon as a tipping-point consensus understanding of what is inevitable takes hold amongst observers.
It's not too late now, or at least , it's not certain it's too late now.
By the time the symptoms become indisputable, then.. then it will really be too late.
The Princeton Stabilization Wedges concept. An idea we can all benefit from, however you feel today about the certainty of climate change:
http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/ [princeton.edu]
Dialectic failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for the broad sweeping generalizations, it was highly informative.
Why Albert Bartlett and William Catton are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Albert Bartlett's anaysis is miguided because he ignores that while problems can grow exponentially, so can solutions, especially when you have a lot of people to think them up and implement them. Julian Simon's take on things in "[The human imagination as] The Ultimate Resource" was much better in that regard. That's one reason aluminum used to cost more than gold, but now it is so cheap we throw it away. Soon we will have dirt-cheap solar panels and maybe even hot and cold fusion power, all thanks to all those "too many" people using too much stuff that people like Bartlett or William Catton might just as soon be rid of because they use resources and make places crowded, ignoring that people also produce resources and make places worth being in. Same for robotics, 3D printing, and someday self-replicating space habitats. The solar system may have limits to growth, but we are nowhere near them. Carrying capacity is a function of both lifestyle and technology, both of which are affected by imagination.
The main problem humanity faces right now is more the other direction -- highly educated and affluent people tend to stop breeding; you can see that in the demographics. Having so many modern distractions just makes the Peak Population crisis problem worse due to "The Pleasure Trap" of "Supernormal Stimuli". Contributing to that is also a scarcity mythology, made very dangerous because people will then ironically fight over perceived scarcity with the technologies of abundance like nuclear power, rocket ships, robotics, and nanotechnology...
Re:Why Albert Bartlett and William Catton are wron (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that there are no "smart solutions" on the horizon to the energy problem, to the global warming problem or to the biodiversity problem. We are also running out of most finite natural resources, and we have no viable replacement options. You can dream all you want about thorium reactors, fusion power plants or asteroid mining, but none of these will be a realistic option for the next two or three generations that are a topic of the article.
The parallels with the English industrial revolution ignore the worldwide plundering that has gone on since then and has brought the world to where we are now. Also, the fact that there is not much left to plunder.
Re: (Score:3)
"Natural resources" is not the same thing as fossil fuels. We are running out of more stuff than just fossil fuels - metals, minerals, farmland and, not in the last place, wilderness.
In any event, this doom and gloom is pointless. We're not at an "irreversible tipping point". If we can "accidentally" fuck up the earth within a few decades, we can certainly fix it if we are actually trying.
Really? What makes you think so? What have we 'fixed' so far, anywhere, on a scale comparable with the destruction we have caused? What is the technological answer to Sahara, which was turned into a desert thousands of years ago? To the deforestation of Europe? To the desertification of many places in the world today? To the th
Re:Deniers howling (Score:5, Insightful)
No really, it really IS reaching a tipping point, no matter what your energy company overlords are saying.
If you're so big into peer reviewed research, you might want to scale back your claims there, mate. The scientists in the article are a lot more careful in their claims than you, as we see from this quote, "The authors of the Nature review argue that, although many warning signs are emerging, no one knows how close Earth is to a global tipping point, or if it is inevitable." The world would be a better place if more people were careful in what they asserted,like these scientists.
In other words, don't load up on oil futures just yet.
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:Real science means listening to scientists (Score:4, Interesting)
Things are not always black and white. To say that there is little or no effect on climate by humans is just as absurd as claiming humans are totally responsible for climate change. I work in emergency management and can attest through personal experience that the amount and severity of natural disaster has increased over the past decade alone. Hurricanes have become more frequent and tornado activity has increased. Flooding and mudslides are occurring more often as well especially in built up areas where runoff from all the paving has nowhere to go. To see massive changes in a biosphere all one has to do is visit a surface mine operation. Although they attempt to restore the biosphere somewhat it never fully returns to its original state.
Re:Real science means listening to scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Deniers howling (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Amazing. I love hearing about peer reviewd from people claiming AGW. If you actually looked into AGW research you see it is not even close to peer reviewed. The IPCC reports are all based on research done by Phil Jone at the CRU in the UK. He admitted to manipulating data to match his theories on AGW over a 20 year period. He also ignored FOI requests for years because he didn't want other scientists to review his work. He went so far as to DELETE the original unmanipulated data his research was based on instead of risking someone else double checking his work. Phil Jones is the ONLY PERSON on the planet to see the original unmanipulated data that goes into all the IPCC reports. He is a known liar and has admitted to deleteing data instead of risking peer review.
How in hell did that get upmodded? To say that Phil Jones is responsible for all of the data in the IPCC reports if ROTFLMAO laughable. The data he deleted is still available from the original sources, the various weather services around the world. There's not a single thing in that pile of crap you can support.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm unclear what your accusation means. If I retrain myself from beating you to death with a baseball bat, does that represent a denial of evolution.
Re:evolutionist's (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't believe in evoltution. Your phrase implies a faith that is not necessary. We merely understand evolution. For example, we understand that evolution is a biological mechanism, not an all encompassing silver bullet that guarantees survival of the human race regardless of the behavior of the planets inhabitants on a global scale. It is called an ecosystem for a reason, which leads to a need to understand entropy. Note that you don't need to believe in entropy. It is going to happen even if you become best friends with the flying spaghetti monster. The question is, can we dynamically counteract it. Some of us believe we can, and so it matters how we behave. Others don't believe it is necessary to change our behavior as a species, and will keep ignoring any evidence that is contradictory to their comfortable world view.
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:And still some religions ban birth control (Score:4, Insightful)
The world is not being overrun by Roman Catholics. Or even by Floridian Baptists.
Re: (Score:3)
That is because so many Catholics become fed up
That's a bit optimistic. Most that "leave the faith" actually haven't left, but rather no longer practice because they are simply lazy or bored. The third largest religion in the US is non-practicing Catholics. A very tiny percentage of former Catholics are actually mindful enough to have honestly split from the program on epistemic grounds, even if most that no longer practice may claim to have done so. The reason for this is that Catholics are programmed. Generally speaking, there's only one way out... to
Re:And still some religions ban birth control (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re: (Score:3)
From the look of your referenced chart, it looks like population is leveling off.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The sky really IS falling! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Hmm, population doubled in 20 years, and the WORST CASE projection shows population doubling again in 40 years.
Wow, that's explosive growth alright - worst case is half as fast as it's been increasing.
Re:The sky really IS falling! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
That is not a good source. Over the last twenty years, UN population projections have been wrong by a wide margin. Actual growth has consistently clocked below the medium projection, yet the UN continues issuing the alarmist high projection line which frankly has 0% chances of happening.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I haven't lost faith in Science... just politically motivated "scientists"
Re: (Score:3)
If we pollute this planet and kill ourselves (and a good deal of the species on this planet), then so be it. The earth will continue without us, and new types of life will take our place. It is all part of nature balancing itself out.
Now that is not to say that we should pollute as much as we want, on the contrary, I am hugely in favour of
Re: (Score:3)
Newspapers aren't eating up old growth trees. The US practices sustainable forestry management. The trees are like crops. You plant them... you wait... you harvest... you plant... Rinse/repeat. Newspapers are no more likely to use up all the trees then eating a cheese burger is likely to use up all the cows.
Now, the amazonian hardwoods is another matter. Those take hundreds of years to grow properly and they're frequently getting clear cut not even for the lumber but just for the land. We see this a lot in