Theoretical Physicists Say 90% Chance of Societal Collapse Within Several Decades 299
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Two theoretical physicists specializing in complex systems conclude that global deforestation due to human activities is on track to trigger the "irreversible collapse" of human civilization within the next two to four decades. If we continue destroying and degrading the world's forests, Earth will no longer be able to sustain a large human population, according to a peer-reviewed paper published this May in Nature Scientific Reports. They say that if the rate of deforestation continues, "all the forests would disappear approximately in 100-200 years." "Clearly it is unrealistic to imagine that the human society would start to be affected by the deforestation only when the last tree would be cut down," they write.
This trajectory would make the collapse of human civilization take place much earlier due to the escalating impacts of deforestation on the planetary life-support systems necessary for human survival -- including carbon storage, oxygen production, soil conservation, water cycle regulation, support for natural and human food systems, and homes for countless species. In the absence of these critical services, "it is highly unlikely to imagine the survival of many species, including ours, on Earth without [forests]" the study points out. "The progressive degradation of the environment due to deforestation would heavily affect human society and consequently the human collapse would start much earlier." The paper is written by career physicists Dr Gerardo Aquino, a research associate at the Alan Turing Institute in London currently working on political, economic and cultural complex system modeling to predict conflicts; and Professor Mauro Bologna of the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of Tarapaca in Chile.
"Calculations show that, maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization," the paper concludes. "In conclusion our model shows that a catastrophic collapse in human population, due to resource consumption, is the most likely scenario of the dynamical evolution based on current parameters... we conclude from a statistical point of view that the probability that our civilization survives itself is less than 10 percent in the most optimistic scenario. Calculations show that, maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization."
This trajectory would make the collapse of human civilization take place much earlier due to the escalating impacts of deforestation on the planetary life-support systems necessary for human survival -- including carbon storage, oxygen production, soil conservation, water cycle regulation, support for natural and human food systems, and homes for countless species. In the absence of these critical services, "it is highly unlikely to imagine the survival of many species, including ours, on Earth without [forests]" the study points out. "The progressive degradation of the environment due to deforestation would heavily affect human society and consequently the human collapse would start much earlier." The paper is written by career physicists Dr Gerardo Aquino, a research associate at the Alan Turing Institute in London currently working on political, economic and cultural complex system modeling to predict conflicts; and Professor Mauro Bologna of the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of Tarapaca in Chile.
"Calculations show that, maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization," the paper concludes. "In conclusion our model shows that a catastrophic collapse in human population, due to resource consumption, is the most likely scenario of the dynamical evolution based on current parameters... we conclude from a statistical point of view that the probability that our civilization survives itself is less than 10 percent in the most optimistic scenario. Calculations show that, maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization."
oh well (Score:2)
Re:oh well (Score:5, Informative)
The Club Of Rome warned of this nearly 50 years ago in 'The Limits To Growth', it's hardly news.
Re:oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
And practically every society in human history has been destroyed more or less accordingly.
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I don't know about trees but the big scary one I've heard is soil degradation. There are only fifty or sixty harvests left, then everything ends.
Because there's nothing natural about agriculture, which we have been doing for twelve thousand years, and every so often we deplete the soil.
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Keep in mind it is societies that fail, not the entire planets societies that will fail. As in all things some will do better than others, and as a result they will become by far the most popular place to go and as a result will have the most secure and restrictive borders possible.
Those barriers will go up hard and pretty fast, backed by military means and of course major oceans and seas make the most secure barrier. You can pick which countries will do the worst, those in the most unstable predicament.
S
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Unrestricted greed is what will put the planetary civilization to death. The only way out is developing sustainable economies, better redistribution of resources and heavy investment in science, including science that allows us to build a positively better society. Spending resources on "protecting what we have" will not work very well, because it will divert them from what is necessary to achieve the goal of sustainability.
The knowledge, the technologies and the tools are available, what's missing is the m
Re:oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
The main journal "Nature" is considered prestigious, but I'm not sure about "Nature Scientific Reports". It's certainly odd for us to treat theoretical physicists, rather than ecologists or silviologists or rainforest specialists, as experts in this topic. Also, the presence of multiple grammar errors in the very first paragraph of this "peer-reviewed" paper is strange to say the least. I'm not going to read the whole paper before posting on
Re:oh well (Score:5, Informative)
The equations are just a complex way of extrapolating from the dataset in the first link, taking into account population growth. Of course reforestation could change things, as the paper mentions.
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"Extrapolating population growth"?
Population growth in the vast majority of the world is due to immigration. In the rest (which is mostly Africa) the total fertility rate is dropping:
https://data.worldbank.org/ind... [worldbank.org]
I won't be surprised if population growth in countries like the DRCongo remains a problem, and leads to further conflict, and that's a lot of forest. But Brazilian population decline is almost as bad as Russia's, so anyone claiming that Brazilian population growth is going to kill the rainforest
the model relies on super simple assumptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple super assumptions like that used to model Easter Island collapse. That there are two parameters, human population and forest cover and quadratic differential equations. And that forest is the primary resource governing human population and preventing exponential population growth.
And the civilizational "collapse" that comes out of their models means things like population declining from peaks of 6-8 billion to 2 billion or so by 2500 and decline slowing from there.
And there is an assumption that the regeneration timescale of forest is 1/1000 yr^-1. This again assumes something like only regrowing full 'old growth forest' but it's much more heterogenous.
Then it goes on in a second part of the paper to modeling technology as a stochastic process and doing some fancy tricks to evaluate whether we will get to "Dyson Sphere" level of technological ability to live off planet in time to save us from the issue from somehow being uniquely dependent on The Forest as our primary resource proxy.
The obvious problem: "maybe that technological development that gives us warp drive and free energy might also break that iron limit you've imposed between human population and The Forest"? But no, that isn't modeled. It's escape The Forest Or Die.
I mean it's a fun use of modeling in a scary bottle but I think it has little predictive use (and I was once a theoretical physicist working on nonlinear dynamics).
Re:oh well (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, I get a lot of red flags just from two sentences in the first paragraph of the main section ("Model and Results"). The paper says
Checking the reference to this, it says "between 2000 and 2012 [...], 888,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometers) of forest was lost, and 308,900 square miles (0.8 million square kilometers) regrew."
So, there are several red flags here:
I could go further and find more flaws in the paper, but in my experience when you see lots of red flags at the very beginning of a paper, it doesn't suddenly get better when you keep reading. So I'm going to stop wasting my time and call BS on this. I'll just mention a couple of other obvious issues that jump out at me.
Re:oh well (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh... Slashdot will never have an edit feature, will it? More than that, they should retract the story from the front page.
And Easter Island collapse may not be so simple (Score:3)
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com].
The evidence of Rapa Nui collapse before European contact as a result of ecological suicide is weak. It could have been the same result as in many other isolated societies meeting more technologically advanced, numerous, disease-carrying, treasure-hunting colonialists.
"The new research indicates that ahu construction began soon after the first Polynesian settlers arrived on the island and continued even after European contact in 1722. This timeline argues against the hypot
Re:oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
What you perceive as "red flags" is just a difference of scientific culture between (theoretical) physicists and you. This quote from the paper gives you a hint at what I mean (which I will also explain in the following):
[...] is a simplified model which nonetheless allows us to extrapolate thetimescales of the processes involved [...]
Translation: "We're not interested in exact numbers, just ballpark estimates; if it has the same number of digits (i.e. the same order of magnitude), we're calling it a match. The models are very crude, anyway, so we couldn't model more exact even if we wanted to." Now to your red flags:
- The reference is a URL, not a scientific paper - even though the URL appears to be discussing the results of a scientific paper, they quoted the web page instead of the paper itself. No, this is not normal in scientific publishing.
- It's a URL from 2013, rather than more recent information
Who cares? The takeaway message here is "there's roughly 10^7 square km, we're roughly through a rather large 2-digit percentage of it".
- The number 2x10^5 Km^2 is imprecise, as 2.3 million divided by 13 years is 1.77x10^5 Km^2 per year
If they had written "1.77", a physicist would call it by its name: fake precision. The input data had 1 significant digit (60 million square km, is essentially 6*10^7; so here, "6" is the significant digit). Formulating a result with 3 significant digits (1.77) is faking a precision which you don't have, and is generally regarded a sign of bad / dishonest science in itself.
- The paper refers to the gross loss "2.3 million" rather than the net loss which is 1.50 million square kilometers.
What they actually attempt to model is deforestation. What they're interested in is the deforestation rate owing to our current economoy -- which is 2.3 million sq. km. That's now many trees we've really cut down.
They don't model active repopulation attempts. (That's a (deliberate) limitation of their model they're upfront about. If you want to squabble about that, do the math and show how it would change their conclusion; if you do, please publish, it would probably end up in Nature.)
- It's unclear where "100-200 years" came from. [...] Linearly extrapolating the net loss [...] we get, er... 266 years."
Short: "100-200 years" means "substantially less than 1000, substantially more than 50".
Long: is that consumption rate going to remain constant as our population grows (likely not), or is it going to accelerate (likely yes)? How exactly do we model that? Yes, in principle we *could* try to, but that would make everything a lot more complicated. Key to physics is to make as many crude approximations as we can in order to be able to calculate, but to be as precise as necessary in order to not throw out the window the effect we want to explain.
For this purpose, 266 years is essentially same as "100-200 years".
- The first sentence of the next paragraph says "the current situation of our planet has a lot in common with the deforestation of Easter Island as described in [3]" Reference 3 is a paper with the the same lead author, and the current paper says nothing about why the author thinks he is justified in applying his model of Easter Island to our entire planet. Moreover, since it's the same author, we can expect the same scientific rigor in Reference 3 that we see in the current paper.
Emphasis mine. Of course he does. From the paper:
Like the old inhabitants of Easter Island we too, at least for few more decades,cannotleave the planet. The consumption of the natural resources,in particular the forests, is in competition with our technologicallevel. Higher technological level leads to growing population and higher forest consumption (largera0)
It's coming (Score:5, Insightful)
It had to end sometime.
And people will be surprised when it starts. Human are not very good at listening to warnings.
Re:It's coming (Score:5, Insightful)
More times people have been surprised when it didn't end. Humans are not very good at discerning fables from reality.
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Re:It's coming (Score:4, Informative)
The largest civilization collapse known to scholarship was the Late Bronze Age collapse, which occurred over a period from around 1200 BCE to 1150 BCE. International trade collapsed, educated classes disappeared, a dark age ensued in which writing systems like Linear B were forgotten.
There was a lot going on -- invasions, climate change, drought, famine, technological disruption, volcanoes and earthquakes. Individually things like that happened before, but somehow it was all too much to cope with. Right up to the end in any particular place people acted as if things would return to normal soon. Why wouldn't they believe this? They lived in countries with hundreds or sometimes thousands of years of history.
I think the fact that it all ending was unthinkable probably played some role in their failure to adapt.
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No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There is always a boom tomorrow.
Susan Ivanova
not seeing the problem here (Score:2, Insightful)
If true, forests and other ecosystems can recover, and there will still be humans in a more harmonious relationshp with nature. There is no problem. Things come and go.
Re:not seeing the problem here (Score:5, Interesting)
it's the interim period you should be worried about. Basically when the groups of armed angry men come to steal your stuff and rape/kill your family, then it will be a 'problem'.
Sure, after all the furore dies down we might live like peaceful druids acting as stewards of nature; but until then it's going to be mad max style anarchy.
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it's the interim period you should be worried about. Basically when the groups of armed angry men come to steal your stuff and rape/kill your family, then it will be a 'problem'.
Sure, after all the furore dies down we might live like peaceful druids acting as stewards of nature; but until then it's going to be mad max style anarchy.
The groups of armed angry men will not be coming to steal MY stuff and rape/kill MY family. I will be riding shotgun with them, :)
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Predicting the winning faction isn't so easy, and you aren't necessarily in their pool of candidates. Plenty of intelligent and shrewd men were bombed to smithereens north of the 38th parallel, I'm sure.
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haha, no my family and I will be among the very well armed and stocked. Angry groups will choose other targets that won't be pouring death and hell back at them.
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Being well armed and well stocked in such a situation is not a deterrent. It just makes you more of a pinata.
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If you're immobile and don't also happen sit in an impenetrable or at least very easy to defend self sufficient fortress, you already lost the longer game.
Being well armed and well stocked in such a situation is not a deterrent. It just makes you more of a pinata.
Indeed. If you can't withstand incendiary devices, poisoned wells and such, shelter in place won't likely last long.
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So you are saying, "Screw you, I've got mine."
I hope I get modded flamebait for this.
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Statistically they don't though, mostly a guy thing.
Civilization has been collapsing since it started (Score:3, Insightful)
Naysayers have been saying civilization will collapse since we climbed down from the trees.
Except for the civilizations wiped out by disease and warfare, they've all been wrong.
Re:Civilization has been collapsing since it start (Score:4, Insightful)
1177 BC, the year civilization collapsed (Score:5, Informative)
by Eric H. Cline..
Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and Babylonians all had thriving cities and technological systems that were wiped out within a few decades.
Only Egypt survived, but in a somewhat diminished capacity.
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Link to the book mentioned in the parent comment: (Score:3)
Quoting: "In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the 'Sea Peoples' invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations."
How is that possible now (Score:2)
Mayans and Mesopotamians got "de-civilized" by resource depletion, if I'm not mistaken.
Yes they were.
But they had limited technology, and limited places they could move to.
Today, humanity has access to rapidly advancing technology to solve almost any resource problem that comes our way, and the ability for whole populations to shift locations in ways that were unthinkable throughout history.
There is no disaster scenario imaginable at this point, that could not have technological workarounds applied well bef
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The problem today is precisely that whole populations are very much unable to shift locations in ways that were possible throughout history. History is full of migrations, not just the "Migration Era" but really all of it. Today's nations have much more rigid borders than they had almost any time in the past, and large populations are going to be trapped in unlivable conditions dependent on outside assistance because of it. The modern technocratic insistence of vetting and tracking every single person movin
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Re:Civilization has been collapsing since it start (Score:5, Interesting)
List of famines in China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This was up to and including Mao's Great Leap Forward, which is convenient for us to blame entirely on Mao being an idiot and their system for giving him dictatorial powers, but in fact they had famines killing people by tens of millions long before him. (In fact I think liberalism is born of material plenty, whereas devastation always seems to result in despotism).
True, China is still a thing. But if that same pattern were repeated on a global basis on the global population of 7.5 billion+, it would be unimaginably catastrophic.
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which is convenient for us to blame entirely on Mao being an idiot and their system for giving him dictatorial powers, but in fact they had famines killing people by tens of millions long before him.
He entirely deserves the blame for trying Lysenkoism after it had already been proved a failure in Russia.
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Because Europe actually has half the population of China
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Every single civilization in history has at some point ended. Babylon, Assyrian, Hittite, Egyptian, Roman.... And that's just one corner of the planet. All of them had their rise, their apex and their demise. Some certainly in a violent way, but most of them, while having their share of battle and war, eventually withered away without a sudden, final bang. And usually it led to a lengthy period where most of the area was devoid of what we'd consider civilization. After the collapse of Rome, it took centurie
What part of theoretical physics covers... (Score:4, Insightful)
..."collapse of society"?
Don't actually remember seeing the class available at University. Of course, it might have been one of those courses only available to the very best of the very best students....
Why is different (Score:2, Redundant)
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What "people" are you referring to, exactly?
The same ones Trump is always referring to, I would bet.
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Worse than I thought (Score:4, Insightful)
I figured mankind had maybe 100 years at most, before we'd made the planet entirely unfit to support our kind. But I'm not too surprised by what these physicists are saying. I've maintained for a long time that even the most pessimistic models used to predict AGW and its effects, are missing a lot of factors and interactions that make the rate of warming accelerate far faster than most of us ever imagined.
Yes, I realize that the article isn't specifically about global warming. But the increasing incidence and size of forest fires, along with arboreal diseases and infestations, are caused by global warming. The resulting loss of forests increases warming. Lather, rinse, repeat. Add in what's happening to the Brazilian rainforest as a result of Bolson's policies and basically, we're fucked. I'm not even confident that we can save ourselves, even if we start right now. I'm fairly certain that we won't save ourselves. We're too busy victimizing and exploiting each other. Maybe it's a good thing that our time is up.
Things keep going until they can't continue (Score:2)
In several decades, I'd expect genetic engineering to able to recreate any kind of lost plant or animal at will. Even without that, their conclusion is hardly inevitable. In the US, forest size has been stable for the last century.
In fact, this is almost entirely a problem in South America:
https://psmag.com/environment/... [psmag.com]
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We won't be able to create ecosystems, though. Very few species on the planet can survive completely by themselves.
In the US, forest size has been stable for the last century.
You're right, but forests in the US only account for 10% of the Earth's forests. (https://www.fia.fs.fed.us/library/brochures/docs/2000/ForestFactsMetric.pdf)
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You know, technology is not religion. Expecting advances that will save your butt is foolish. There are tons of technological problems from the last 100 years or so that were expected to be solved "soon" (at least by non-experts) and never were so far.
qualifications? (Score:3)
So every time someone who isn't a recognized climate scientist speaks out against the demise of human civilization through human activity, we're told that they aren't qualified and should be ignored. So as these are theoretical physicists, not recognized experts in climate, biological systems, etc. Why are we supposed to listen to them?
Or is this a case of "if it's bad it must be true, but if it's good it must be false?" Because I've seen a LOT of that in the past decade or so.
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These very smart people extrapolated a trend. And then looked at the effects. Do you have any beef with that approach? Because it is Scientifically sound and very likely delivers valid results.
Also, this is _not_ a climate change prediction. This is in _addition_ to climate change.
In other news... (Score:3)
A group of renouned clinical psychiatrists, consulting with world-recognized anthropoligists, claim certain theoretical physicists are off their meds, and should be gently captured and returned to therapy.
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You have no clue what you are talking about. There are no non-smart theoretical physicists. It is not possible to get that degree without being really smart.
No point in even discussing this subject (Score:2)
Instead humans are all about the infighting, the us-vs-them, and claiming 'their' people have a 'God-given right' to such-and-such, and that everyone else can get fucked.
Unless we get over all that bullshit mindset and behavioral patterns, evolve our caveman brains out of it once and for all, nothing is going to change the trajectory we're on: we'll keep wrecking the environment, fighti
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Indeed. A certain large sub-component of the human race is just not equipped to understand that if everybody dies, that includes them.
If you want to stop human population growth (Score:2)
Unfortunately, this means making some hard choices. We need to end hu
Models Can't Accurately Predict the COVID but ... (Score:2)
I'm supposed to take models seriously 90 years out?
Sounds like another attempt by a power hungry group for us to hand over control and money.
First it was overpopulation, then food and energy shortages, global-cooling, global-warming, pandemic.
How about you first get a crisis model right before we start believing you?
"current parameters" (Score:4, Insightful)
"Under the current trajectory of our civilization, under current parameters, in the absence of major changes, we will collapse sometime in the near future".
This isn't new. If you looked at hunter gatherer civilizations 10,000 years ago and projected forward, you'd conclude that it was unsustainable past a certain limit. If you looked at old-timey farm-based civilizations from 1000 years ago and projected forward, you'd reach the same conclusion. The same thing goes for our current modern-farm-based model of sustaining ourselves. If we want to grow much more, we will have to adapt, change, and advance our technology. At some point we can't farm enough... time to grow food in vats. Eventually we can't house our numbers... time to move into space or create dense mega-cities the likes of which we've never seen before. You get the idea. If we just bull forward, cut down all the forests and pump 10,000 ppm of CO2 into the air, yeah we'll collapse the ecosystem and boom goes our species.
It's interesting, but it's nothing that educated people haven't known for a century. Every technological era has it's limitations. You adapt, innovate and change in order to overcome those limitations, or you hit the wall hard and stop.
I'm thinking this paper is a goof (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm thinking this paper is a goof, like something from the Grievance Studies affair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It reads like nonsense no one would take seriously and one of the two authors is named Maura Bologna.
"More Bologna"?? How much more obvious could they get?
Jared Diamond: Collapse. (Score:5, Informative)
Jared Diamond mostly talked about the collapse of Easter Island, Greenland settlement of Icelanders, and some native Americans.
But it is patently obvious by the way we are handling social security or climate change.
The way companies reacted to disruptive competitors, retailers failed to react to Amazon, dumb phone makers failed to handle Apple. How the steam loco builders struggled against diesel locos in 1950s. Here the life time of a C-Suite suit is about 5 years. So as long as the dire consequences happen after their stock options/grants have vested, they dont care.
Just look at the quandary of traditional car makers switching to electric cars. How do you jump from combustion cars to battery cars smoothly?
They may be right, but the finding is not very surprising, it might not even be significant or novel.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot.. (Score:2)
Keep your eyes out for the Lorax - when someone sees that guy I'm really worried.
Run for the hills (Score:2)
I remember being taught the same thing in the 70s and 80s. And being reminded in the 1990s it would all end by 2020. Every 10 years, the deadline gets pushed to 40ish years from the date of the dire warning. I figure itâ(TM)s around the retirement age of the person making the prediction. Occasionally they will make a mistake and set the date within 20 years.
We hit peak oil in the mid 1990s, and should hit peak coal in the next 10 based on what I was taught in the 80s. We ran out of food in 2000. The pl
That reminds me (Score:2)
"They say that if the rate of deforestation continues, "all the forests would disappear approximately in 100-200 years."
In 1894, The Times newspaper predicted “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of horse manure.”
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"They say that if the rate of deforestation continues, "all the forests would disappear approximately in 100-200 years."
In 1894, The Times newspaper predicted “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of horse manure.”
That's exactly what these two researchers did. Project forward based on the past, assuming nothing changes.
It's complete nonsense, not to be taken seriously by anyone.
Areas of expertise (Score:2)
So a bunch of theoretical physicists, who live in a world of pure math to the point where mathematicians think they're freaks, are pontificating about sociology and environmental science.
In other they're talking out their ass.
There's no content here.
Not really unexpected (Score:3)
The human race has grown too much and will be hitting several environmental limits at roughly the same time in the near future. Interesting times. And I am so glad I decided not to place children into this world so I am not directly responsible for anybody having to go though the hot phase of the upcoming multi-catastrophe.
Theoretical physicists? (Score:2)
Re: Good (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, this is good news. I was predicting a societal collapse on November 3rd regardless of who wins. Glad to know we have a few more decades.
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Good (Score:4, Informative)
Still, good news, according to a study in Nature comparing 1982 to 2016, the world has more trees than it did 35 years ago, increased by 2.24 million square kilometers. In fact, forest in the United States has been growing since the 1940s, increasing more than 40%.
Anyway, there is no reason to trust a projection like this. They built a model and left out little things like trees regrowing and being planted in order to weight it as heavily towards doomsday as they could. Garbage in, garbage out.
This article and study are garbage.
Re: Good (Score:3)
The saplings will grow faster catch up than the oak would have. Also, because the wood is an economic resource, there is incentive to grow it quickly. We would water the trees and fertilize them well, which in turn makes them even more productive.
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The study is talking about a model of deforestation on a planetary scale, and your counterargument is: but in the US...
The study in Nature quoted by the GP says "the world... increased by 2.24 million square kilometers." The GP then went on to be specific about the US numbers. But it applies globally. The study in TFA is hot garbage, using literally wrong data as its entire premise.
Now it's true that global forestation is still well below where it was 600 years ago. We've got a long way to go. But human-managed reforestation is happening quite steadily all over the world. China's and India's efforts are especially imp
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While in reality, by being able to correct the grammar, they only prove that the point the other party was making came across well enough.
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Sounds perfectly fine to me. Maybe you are the one not educated.
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You should ask for a refund on your education if you can't parse professional writing, as your educational institute has obviously failed you by giving you a passing grade.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
In my lifetime, I have encountered many very intelligent, well-educated people who speak English as a second language, and have trouble with it. And yet people listen to their imperfect English and overlook minor errors because they have something important to say, and they're doing English-speakers a favor by saying it in their language.
By their names, I surmise the authors are not native English-speakers. IMHO, in no way do their minor language-errors indicate a lack of education or intelligence. Just look at their titles and institutional affiliations.
I speak a second language (French) and I am grateful for the encouragement and patience that native-speakers have shown towards me, especially when I make mistakes.
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For bonus points, please repeat your post in grammatically and idiomatically flawless Spanish.
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Nope, we never developed one or the technology to get there. It was more cost efficient to send robots.
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Re:This Is Not A Prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope... not buyin' it. Sorry.
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40,000 years is an odd number to choose. If you mean the history of civilization you're likely at least 25,000 years too high, but if you're talking about the actual time man has been on Earth, then you're at least 150k years too low.
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Probably the beginnings of organized society happened at that time frame, start of sedentism, domestication of dogs, beginnings of domestication of cattle etc would be 15000 ybp. When did societies get organized and grew big enough to collapse? 8000 ybp? Or may be 6000 ybp? Pyramids are 5000 years old. That society would be big enough to warrant the term "collapse" if it suffered a serious decline.
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Counter-Counterpoint (Score:2, Interesting)
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I feel said wizard's been slacking lately.
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Will your imaginary sky wizard provide more forests for us in the next few decades?
Definite maybe.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g... [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
the earth was put here by God for mankind to use.
It is possible to use something without completely destroying it which is probably also why God had a fair few negative things to say about greed.
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The next patch level will perhaps solve this greed business.
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The next patch level will perhaps solve this greed business.
http://all-geo.org/highlyalloc... [all-geo.org] ... nuff said.
Re:Counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the Earth was given to mankind to manage.
We were not given a gift, we were given a responsibility.
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the earth was put here by God for mankind to use.
And to be fucked up, obviously. If this is some divine intelligence test, then the human race is failing with a really impressive low score.
BTW, I am an atheist. But the catastrophic effects the smarter minority of the human race is now seeing for the next 100 years or so could well explain the Fermi Paradox.
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I'm just wondering... why do you just make shit up all the time? What's up with that? Do you get some sort of pleasure from saying random shit that has no basis in reality?
Re:silly assumptions to get to 90% (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com] sums up my thoughts on this.
At some point, the countries that are actively engaged in deforestation will have no more trees left to cut down, and then they won't be able to cut down any more trees. Meanwhile, for the last 30 years or so, the U.S. has planted more trees than it has cut down. Add those two trend lines together with the appropriate zero limit on the former, and I would expect the total forest coverage of the planet to start increasing again long before 100 years have passed.
badly misinformed (Score:2, Informative)
You're wrong. https://www.fia.fs.fed.us/libr... [fs.fed.us] or https://ourworldindata.org/for... [ourworldindata.org]
In the last 30 years, forest coverage in the US has increased by a total of 2.6%.
And considering the US only accounts for 8
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I think you must have misunderstood something I said, because what I said is basic mathematics. The percentage of trees in the world that exist in the U.S. has absolutely zero bearing on the accuracy of what I said.
I should probably give you a bit more context. The deforestation we're seeing these days is not because we need more wood than we have. In fact, most of that extra wood just gets burned in place. Most deforestation comes from a misguided attempt to create more fertile land for agriculture. (
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_That_ is your level of insight? That is utterly pathetic.