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Will Earth Expire By 2050?
_josh writes: "Will overconsumption force humanity off this planet in less than 50 years? It may sound sci-fi, but according to the WWF in this story at the Observer, it's entirely possible. Maybe now I can convince my brother not to buy that SUV ..." Take with as large a grain of salt as you think appropriate.
SP BITCHES
People have been saying that we will run out of fossil fuels and giving the estimation of "50 years" for nearly 100 years now. However, due to increases in technology in the area of combustion engines that allow them to use less fuel for the same amount of propulsion and in the area of drilling that allow drillers to extract fuels in areas never thought possible, we've been able to continually extend this number.
It is highly unlikely that we will ever run out of fossil fuels on this planet when you consider a few facts:
1. Less fuel is being used due to engine technology. (As I mentioned.)
2. More fuel is being found because of drilling technologies. (As I also mentioned.)
3. Hybrid vehicles. We won't even need fossil fuels eventually, and it will happen long before there is a risk of running out of them.
So stop worrying! Just sit back, enjoy life, and stop thinking about running out of fossil fuels. It's not going to happen!
This is crank "science" by the same bunch of idiots who said that we were going into an ice age back in the 70's, and who put in children's readers in the early 80's (I remember this in school) that you wouldn't be able to go outside in the 1990's without an oxygen mask.
This trash is funded by the WWF. No wonder they wanted to divorce themselves from the wrestlers (now WWE), their science is just as fake.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
You eat your Mcdonalds and large Cokes, and drive around full speed in your brand new black Civics, SUVs, whatever. You come home to a fully furnished apartment with the best AC, refridgeration and entertainment money can buy. Living, as you do, on the fat of the land -- how can any one who has responded thus far make any accurate assumptions, scientifically or otherwise, about the state of the natural world? Over a billion -- BILLION -- people live on less than a dollar a day. Cities of the dispossesed (read: Bangkok, Jakarta) with millions of teeming, poor, industrialized "market slaves" pull your microchips from your t-shirts. Our entire economy is overseas, in cities made from jungles that were there in 1950. If you think that the change is in your back-yard, its not even really on the American continent. The 1/3 of the worlds resources they're speaking of are in the 3rd world-- where your luxuries are invisibly produced. In the future-- when as someone noted there are trade wars over resources-- and the 3rd world wakes up to realize "Oh, all the factories are here. Lets' just take over the total production line"-- then America's precious dot-conomy hits the fan and you're stuck, at 60 with NO social insurance, NO snazzy retirement package and are lucky to get a factory job back from India (where the coders now live).. You think America/1st world is special? By globizationalization, we've empowered 3rd world countries to snatch resources as easily as our evangelical X-tian Texan redneck assholes do it. Wake up: the elephant trade was destroyed by the Japanese and their fetish for a ivory stamp to put on their business papers. They just recently discovered that the whole time we had thought there was only one kind of African elephant, there are actually two -- plains elephants and forest elephants (smaller, darker, almost untrackable). God made this world and our greed is annihilating it in ways no one can see from a desk. Too many more biological scientists dont read ./ instead of the engineer trash.
On second though, another famous economist, Owe Kinsante, speculated that, in the event of widespread famine, we could eat our own poop for nourishment. Any thoughts on this? I have only tried this a few dozen times, with only moderately satisfactory results.
Think about the advances in pollution contorl, recycling etc etc in the last 10 years. Those advances are happening at a steady rate, and aren't going to slow down. This means we will keep getting better at looking after the planet - NOT screwing it up like some want us to believe.
WRONG, you forgot about the human greed factor which puts Business puppets(Bush) in places of power so they can kill any oposition to coporate wellfare(which usually means ANY environmental protection plans,technology, or efforts).
Good thing we have more than twice as much land as those inbred bucktoothed fags in the UK or I might be concerned about them.
Why does it seem like all of the good people left Europe to come to the U.S., leaving their deformed slightly-retarded relatives behind to pester us hundreds of years later?
Who decides what is proportional? You? Me? Some commie at the U.N? All the resources we are 'consuming' we are paying for, every drop we use. Nothing is being stolen: we even have receipts for what we are using. Why don;'t you stop wringing your hands like some nanny, and let the markets take care of economics? Malthusian was wrong then, and you are wrong now.
Dawn of the Dead
More fool congress. Actually, America was nearly kicked out of Kyoto by the rest of the world, as your diplomats were constantly harrassing the others and making things difficult - ie opposing any attempt to reach a resolution. They said outright in fact, "we're not going to go with this, as it'd damage our economy". Needless to say, that attitude pisses off pretty much everybody who isn't American.
And don't be fooled that Kyoto is the answer. Kyoto is nothing more than an attempt to cripple the US economy to allow other nations to catch up. And it is hidden behind a solution to a "problem" that scientists can even agree exists (global warming).
WTF? What kind of stupid paranoia is that? Last time I checked in fact the dollar was a 1:1 parity with the Euro. We're doing just fine thanks, and this mindless protectionism is just a feeble excuse to not change your ways. America preaches free trade to the rest of the world, but the moment other countries threaten its economic interests, suddenly it's all trade barriers and diplomatic sabotage.
What, the US steel industry is inefficient? That's OK says Bush, we'll just impose huge trade barriers and flood Europe with cheap foreign steel to protect voters in the rust belt. The rest of the world is developing digital TV faster than us? That's ok, we'll just invent our own (inferior) transmission systems to give US manufacturers a boost. But the moment the rest of the world attempts to do something about global warming, suddenly it's us who's attempting economic meddling.
Do you guys realise just how much respect America lost abroad when it pulled out of Kyoto? At least here in England Bush is a laughing stock, most people are of the opinion that he's simply in the pockets of american business. There are people here who HATE his guts because of what happened to Kyoto. It wasn't much, but it was something, and it was sacrificed because American voters didn't want to give up their lifestyle.
I'm always hearing on /. that open source hackers are smelly hippies with no girlfriends.
Obviously, that is completely wrong, but in a way, that's a shame, because the gradually increasing adoption of Linux, (sorry, GNU/Linux), might actually create more smelly hippies with no girlfriends, and then the population increase would slow down.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.