Chernobyl's Effects Live On

jamesbently writes: "Scientists have discovered that our ecosystem isn't healing itself as fast as they originally thought: bans on consumption of certain plants and animals in areas affected by radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster have been revised upward."

Comments

We are our own greatest threat

[akiaki007]

Once upon a time (long, long time ago) the Earth was a happy place. There were trees abundant, Bengal Tigers free to roam, and a few people running around having fun. There was no Carbon Monoxide in the air, we didn't have to worry about PPC (particle count in the air) because there was no pollution. The sun set was beautiful everyday, and there was no sh*t brown color in the sky ruing the sunset today. People could see a mile (or kilometer if you prefer) down the way and see clearly, now the lovely pollution doesn't let you.

We have created a place where everything we do kills us. Kills the environment. Kills everything that is living.

Only when the last tree is dead, the last field paved, the last river dammed, will we realize we can't eat money.

Once upon a time we didn't have to worry about cancer. We didn't have to worry about light. We didn't have to worry about intoxicating chemicals. We didn't have to worry.

Today we have to. Today we have to suffer what we've been doing to Earth. Nuclear Power. Super fast airplanes that can fly above the O-Zone.

What was wrong with a world witout all this technology? It simply wasn't enough. We needed more. We had to have more. Well, now we have it! NOW WHAT?

Re:We are our own greatest threat... or... Oh BULL

[NulDevice]

There's a fundamental fallacy often invoked in this line of reasoning, i.e. that nature is perfectly balanced and self-correcting.

We know this not to be the case. Lovelock and Gaia aside, ecosystems of all types are in flux and have always been in constant flux. Everything living alters its surrouding environment in some manner. Sure, there are often cycles, but even those are subject to the whims of nonlinear dynamics.

Life changes it's environment. Humans are just reaaallly good at it.

Is humanity going to destory the planet? No. Is humanity going to destroy all life on the planet? No. Is humanity going to destroy countless species and ruin the ecosystems of many others? Yes. Is humanity going to render the planet uninhabitable for humanity? Quite possibly. The earth will survive. Life will probably survive. We just probably won't. Give it a billion years or so, and the giant, ugly, sentient roaches will be posting here instead of us.

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Civilization and ecology

[epcraig]

I don't feel comfortable with the time scale we use to make decisions. What we should be thinking about is the long term effects of agriculture on the land. For a laboratory we can use isolated islands, and see that when we expand the human population desertification occurs. In extreme cases, without outside assistance, the population crashes with accompanying famine, plague, cannibalism etc.
Easter Island is the best example. Seems it was a forest when first settled, but an oligarchy ran the place until all the trees were gone, and when there were no trees left, there was no more fishing. (The descendants of the remnants were pretty much exported by the Spanish to Peruvian silver mines).
Now we have 6,000,000,000 or so people on a planet which we don't think can support a tenth of that in the long term. An all too huge part of that population haven't reached an age to add to the problem, but surely will. No parent will worry for more than their grandchildren's generation, but the damage we do with agriculture, let alone modern industrial society, doesn't show that fast.
We're coping now with the decisions made in the early twentieth century, which were made to cope with the effects of the decisions made a century before. The notable thing is that until now, there was always new wilderness to tame. There's no unmapped territory left on the planet. It doesn't take prophesy to know that without a wild, uncivilized resevoir, agriculture will expand until desertification sets in. Folks, Iraq was once the Fertile Crescent, Egypt was the breadbasket of Rome. Both are better known now as desert lands, importers of food.
Civilization depends on agriculture, agriculture depends on a viable ecology, and we've been taking short term advantage of practices which do not appear to work on the multi-generational time frame. Pretty natural, actually, as we've managed to civilise agricultural so that farmers won't worry more than a year ahead.