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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.
A planet controlled by wrestlers? The devil, you say!
It will probaly be earlier than that. Get it? Heheh
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
It may sound sci-fi, but according to the WWF in this story...
Everybody knows that the WWF is all scripted! None of it is real!
I always knew that wrestling was a sign of the end of the world. Now the WWF has confirmed it.
cuz i'll take you down in a steEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL CAGE!
Photos.
From the article:
The report offers a vivid warning that either people curb their extravagant lifestyles or risk leaving the onus on scientists to locate another planet that can sustain human life. Since this is unlikely to happen, the only option is to cut consumption now.
Okay, does this strike anyone as leaving out the most likely option? It's highly unlikely we'll massively change our ways. It's also highly unlikely that we'll colonize other planets in the next 50 years.
What's that leave? Simple! Massive resource wars! Woohoo!
It just amazes me that the whole article ignores the inevitable outcome... we'll all fight over dwindling resources, thus thinning the population down to sustainable levels.
....so all this idiocy we call mankind will cease. I personally, can do without mankind, or if you prefer, humankind.
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
so let me think... first they said we'd be gone by 1985, then it was 2000, now its 2050? hrm...
I love reading about our doom... its so funny.
I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe
well yet another argument for the human race to move to machines instead of biological bodies, the tech (at least according to kurzweil if i'm not mistaken) is supposed to be ready by then right? then we'll just be bots mining silicon living in a virtual earth.
Photos.
Piece of advice: when writing a topic, any use of acronyms that have a high possibility of being misunderstood (ie: World Wildlife Fund) should be explained, so as to prevent people from being mistaken.
I, for one, have -never- heard of the World Wildlife Fund before this, and I'm sure there are others like me, who thought why the fsck are we believe the World Wrestling Foundation these days?
this has been predicted by tree-hugging morons every decade for the last god-knows-how-long. get over it. it's not "damning" because it's not true.
Let's see...a scientific analysis of resource consumption based on the decline of animal population over the past 100 years, plus a very relevant hectare/person statistic. Sounds like excellent research to me...
If they really want to be taken seriously, quote the actual usage of arable land per person in each country. Countries like Ethopia and Burundi will be astronomically high, while the US will be very low comparatively. The truth is that those countries are overpopulated based on their own resources and require outside assistance from countries like the US.
Overall, if worse comes to worse, don't fret for the Earth. Nature is self-regulating and will find a way to keep man's progress in check. More likely, if such a scenario is possible, man will make himself extinct before the effects can jeopardize the world.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
The population is growing at a rate much higher than the Earth can sustain. I suppose we can look back to the cynical economist Thomas Malthus to see what will happen. He predicted that, since the population grows exponentially and the food supply only grows linearly, famine and disease will be the ways in which the population is kept in check. This may very well happen, but I don't believe Earth will expire by 2050. I have befriended a number of economists over the years, and they have stated that the food supply has always grown faster than predicted. Interesting topic, though. R.Diltan
I was going to say the same thing, but now that you've beaten me to it, I realize that it wasn't very clever after all.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The Chicago Trib is running this story on the shrinking of various glaciers around the world that is also pretty terrifying. Perhaps its time for Bush to reconsider Kyoto?
Not to dismiss this study out of hand, but this prediction has been made in the past many times, most famously by the economist Thomas Malthus in 1798 entitled An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus predicted man would outgrow it's resources within ~50 years if strict population checks were not enforced. However, he did not take into account the pace of technological change and food production far exceeded his estimates for the time frame.
It is very difficult to predict the future, especially almost 50 years out. As stock brokers are supposed to say "Past performance is no guarantee of future performance." Or something like that.
This is more than a little alarmist. There is a problem, however the quote
"extra planets (the equivalent size of Earth) will be required by the year 2050 as existing resources are exhausted"
is just irresponsible.
Oh come on I hardly think Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon, and The Rock, et al can predict the fate of humanity.
Seriously though, for us "crass" Americans, to whom WWF is an acronym for World Wrestling Federation, I think it would have helped if for someone to point out(especially an editor, you listening timothy?) that in this post refers to the World Wildlife Fund. In fact, I think in general it would be a good idea to clarify any algorithm which might not be popular in the Slashdot lexicon. That way, stupid comments like that above will not be made by the many of us (including myself) who prefer to spout our mouth off before reading the story.
________________________
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
that we will run out of salt. Move along, nothing new here.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess, if you make the assumptions that population will grow at a continued rate, there aren't any major wars, some desease doesn't wipe out much of the Earth's poor population (no AIDS?), and that materials/food production technology doesn't advance any further than it has - then I guess you could come to this conclusion. I'm a bit skeptical, though, as I know their analysis probably made some of these assumptions.
That doesn't mean, however, that we should keep up our current wasteful practices. I think more does need to be done to slow our usage of raw materials. Hell, if NASA can't even get a funding boost, how the hell are we going to be able to develope the tech to get us to other planets?
Maybe the WWF should label the 'natural resource crisis' as some sort of terrorism so that Bush et al. will being pooring money into the 'Ecological Defense Fund for the Preservation of the American Way of Life through the Rape of Other Planets and Near Earth Objects'.
My $0.02
I quick search (and reference from my sibling) indicates that the World Wildlife Fund brought Suit against the World Wresting Federation in the British House of Lords (a case which the World Wildlife Fund won). Instead of fighting some more, the World Wresting Federation changed its name to World Wresting Entertainment.
I also believe their new slogan is "Get the 'F' out."
I just wish the Earth would have a Born On Date like fine beers do.
Expire is a pretty strong word. Will the earth exceed critical mass and humanity implode? Maybe. Maybe humans won't survive at all - but believe me, SOMETHING will survive.
As the lyrics to an In Flames song goes:
Species come and species go, but the Earth stands forever fast
Soccer moms of America and yuppie cockeaters need to belly up to the table and cut out the fucking consumption competition..
These are the same folks who predicted that the world would run out of food by 1980, then predicted we'd run out of oil by 1985.
And of course Thomas Malthus predicted imminent mass starvation in the early 1800s.
In the 1970s, they predicted:
"The world as we know it will likely be ruined before the year 2000
and the reason for this will be its inhabitants' failure to comprehend
two facts. These facts are (1) World food production cannot keep pace
with the galloping growth of population. (2) 'Family planning' cannot
and will not, in the foreseeable future, check this runaway growth."
"Agricultural experts state that a tripling of the food
supply of the world will be necessary in the next 30
years or so, if the 6 or 7 billion people who may be
alive in the year 2000 are to be adequately fed.
Theoretically such an increase might be possible, but it
is becoming increasingly clear that it is totally
impossible in practice."
Except, here we are in 2002 and those 6 or 7 billion people are eating better than any of their ancestors in all of human history, even in the poorest countries.
For more info, see The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon, and The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg.
Earth's natural resources may run out in 50 years, but there's years left of resources for those willing to "consume" humans themselves ... When it's do or die, immorality is a selective advantage.
On another note, I do take issue with the concerns for "overpopulation". The 1st world populations are not growing - it's the 3rd world that has the population problems; they are already existing beyond sustainability. The problem the 1st world encounters is consumerism, not overpopulation. One consumer in the 1st world can use more resources than hundreds of human beings in the 3rd need to survive.
Also, coming from Newfoundland (just off the Grand Banks), the cod fishery was the life-blood of the economy there, which they use as an example of devasted Earth resources. There is now a moratorium on cod fishing, which also devastated that economy. Since the moratorium was instantiated, it is widely believed that the cod stock has partly recovered, and will continue to. So I am not so sure I buy their verdict, given this choice of example with contrary information they conveniently omitted. This is a little salt to their bitter assessment.
Certainly, though, they are outlining important trends in the environment as a result of human presence.
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
On the other hand, you could look at it like this: if they hadn't done the research and made such predictions from it, it may very well have happened like that as we would have taken no steps to prevent it.
Similarly, the Y2K bug was hyped for a reason - to get people doing something about it so it actually went smoothly in the end. Without the hype, we probably would have problems much worse than automatic web pages printing '19100'.
Analyzing the future, and publishing the results, generally changes the described outcome as people do something about it.
Everyone knows that the answer to a question appearing in the headline of a Slashdot article almost always "No".
Steve
Maybe now, or after the geneva convention, our good ol' president Bush will sign the Kyoto Protocal. After all, he was the only one who didn't agree to the terms of this movement, you can read actual agreement here:r ming/st ories/treaty/e s/s33 6357.htm
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/global.wa
and here's a story about it:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stori
This message was brought to you by the death of 30 brain cells.
Sounds like more fear mongering from environmentalists. Carl Sagan, anyone?
I can't believe this article was posted. It is almost as bad as any troll. It isn't even an article, it is more the ramblings of a eco freak socialist. My god, we have been hearing these same apocolyptic predictions since the industrial revolution began.
These zealots unfortunately suffer from the same problems as all zealots. They are irrational, and unable to see reality.
Does any single sentence in this ridiculous article give any shred of proof to the assertion mankind can go extinct in 50 years? How did they come up with this number? Nothing but gobblygook to back up their outrageous claims.
If anything indicates this story was not based on sound scientific evidence it is mention that the evil Republicans headed by George W Bush will cause the collapse of civilization as we know it because Bushie pulled out of the Kyoto treaty.
Of course, the snivelling remark of every socialist was evidence the real nature of this article - and the environmental movement - in the following quote: "The report offers a vivid warning that either people curb their extravagant lifestyles or risk leaving the onus on scientists to locate another planet that can sustain human life"
This assertion does not give any indication who suddenly posseses the ability to see the future, to know which technological advancements will be available tomorrow to deal with this problems. This article is based on the absolutely absurd notion that a) current consumption of natural resources by britons increases at certain rate per year. b) this rate will forever remain the same for all humans c) this rate of increase in consumption will ultimately apply to all humans who indulge in the capitalistic pig fest.
Is it not logical to assume that history will continue to repeat itself? Technology will increase and solve these problems? As it always has? That we will ultimately kill the weaker persons who are stealing the natural resources to which we are the rightful owners?
Of course, as socialists, they don't understand nature. Nature always forces shortages on populations, the result of this is natural selection, competition. Those humans that can survive win, those they cannot die. But for all their clammoring about nature, they can't for a second realize the real problem in this world is we keep too many people alive who otherwise should die. Death, that evil word, sends chills down the spines of do-gooders everywhere. It doesn't matter, when the population competition does get that fierce, we will just have another war. Nothing really starts wars EVER other than competition for natural resources. Let the blood flow!!!!
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I disagree with what you did to that town, but you really need to admire your town's commitment to education. I personally wouldn't starve to death for anyone's homework assignment.
Experts say that seas will become emptied of fish while forests - which absorb carbon dioxide emissions - are completely destroyed and freshwater supplies become scarce and polluted.
This, of course, is based on 1960's factory emission averages, and projecting them 50 years down the track. 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.
Look at life in a positive light and we might finally stop bitching and get productive.
Ladies, form queue here -->
As I said above, it is more a matter of economics. This isn't like the y2k bug where there is a definite cutoff date. And the y2k bug didn't make current machines decrease in usefulness (right up until the cutoff date; not counting that the hardware would have to be changed at that time).
Land resources and several other natural resources will be conserved more/used more efficiently as it becomes economically advantageous to do so. Capitalism works that way, and the change will slowly happen with or without doomsday predictions. When wasting/using inefficent technologies becomes expensive, people will migrate on their own.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
The Earth will not expire in 2050. Simple economics will keep it from doing so. When certain resources become scarce, they will become expensive, and people will be forced to stop using them and seek alternatives.
Interesting they compare the United States' use of resources to that of Burundi. This comparison is truly startling. For those who enjoy startling statistics, allow me to offer a few others:
The population of Burundi is expanding at three times the rate of the United States. The percentage of people in Burundi infected with HIV/AIDS is 20 times that of the United States. The average lifespan in Burundi is 31 years shorter than that of a person living in the United States. The literacy rate of Burundi is 35%. 1 in 3000 people have Internet access. (Statistics courtesy of CIA World Factbook).
Are you still interested in reducing your resource consumption by a factor of 24? Personally, I'm not interested in selling my pickup, as I don't think it has any connection to the fact that the number of black rhinos has fallen from 65,000 to 3,100. Considering that my "extravagant lifestyle" doesn't involve poaching, I don't think I can help.
As an aside, this article brings one more thing to mind: every environmentalist needs to understand that he is not "saving the Earth." He is only saving himself and his descendants. The Earth will recover from every incosiderate act man has done to it in the blink of an eye (relative to its lifetime), and graciously replace us with other species if we destroy our way of life.
And Timothy, you might want to encourage your brother to go ahead and buy that new SUV. If his current car is more than five years old, that new SUV will be adding less pollution to the atmosphere.
As usage of resources like fossil fuels is largely about economics, things won't change much until there is an economic reason to change. For example, nearly running out of fuels and skyrocketing prices.
Which means that we may be better off with some of those economic reasons appering in a very real way sooner rather than later, pollution-wise.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I guess this wasn't as important 18 hours ago? Ahh well, that's Slashdot journalism for you... it must have been a slow news day today. Or maybe they're just gay. I suppose it's who's at the controls at that particular time --- oh wait, it WAS timothy!
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
Whether it's 50 years or 500, we are currently using resources faster than they are replenished. And the U.S. does consume a disproportionate amount of the resources in the world.
100% accurate or not, reports like this aren't going to change the way the U.S. lives -- we're too comfortable in our lifestyles to make big changes. It's going to take some catastrophic change that impacts the U.S. directly to get us to wake up. Unfortunately it's developing countries which are going to feel those changes first.
How are you so sure? Smoking companies denied the negative effects of sigarettes for years and years and now they have to pay bigtime for claims. Just think about it. Maybe the 'tree-hugging morons' are wrong, but if they are right, are you willing to take that chanse?
Taking public transport (or a bike) doesn't hurt me. Neither does using 40W lamps in stead of 60W. Or turning off televisions and monitors in stead of using the stand-by feature.
I know America (and Russia for that matter) isn't that happy with anti-pollution measures, but together the two nations are good for 50% of the CO2 (and other exhaust) production in the world.
Please don't say that because I'm from Europe I'm a tree-hugging freak. Europe also produces pollution. I know. But why are companies like Shell, Q8, Esso and Texaco looking for other alternatives and what is wrong with that?
But think of this before you mod me down: The effect of acid rain isn't local. Forests all over the world have to suffer the effects. Importing oil, wood and other products from the 3rd world leaves THEM with the effects while we have the products.
And even if, in 50 years the statistics turned out to be wrong, at leas it is good to be aware of the (possible) consequences of our lifestyle.
Privacy is terrorism.
Yep, I knew it! MS has now overdone it with their expiring betas.
......
Besides, version 1.0 never does work out.
Trust me, you are unique... Just like everybody else!
"The avalanche has already started. It's too late for the pebbles to vote." - Kosh
1) The highest per-capita consumption occurs in the first world. (see below)
2) The population of the first world is rapidly shrinking, and will amount to a small fraction of the total world population by 2050. (According to the UN. See this link for details.)
3) By 2050, even the 3rd world population is expected to reach equilibrium, so that the entire world population will actually begin to decline.
Taken together, it seems unlikely to me that the conditions stated by the WWF may actually come about, unless the 3rd world population increases its consumption dramatically, or the UN study is substantially incorrect. This is because, even though the world population is expected to increase from 6 billion to 9 billion by 2050, that additional growth will occur almost exclusively outside of Western nations. Significantly, the population of the first world will actually diminish. Now, the report itself states
"America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha. In Ethiopia the figure is 2ha, falling to just half a hectare for Burundi, the country that consumes least resources."
So if indeed the third world consumes a large factor (an order of magnitude!) less "footprint" than the Western nations, it would seem to me that the world might actually be better off by 2050 : they are, quite simply, more efficient at using existing resources.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
I don't know about the complete implosion of the human population, but we can already see how disease is going to be wiping out a big chunk of the population. Exactly what percentage of African citizens are infected with HIV again?
If nothing else, plagues of one kind or another will cull the population a bit.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I'm old enough to remember this non-sense "we'll over-consume ourselves into oblivion" theory that was so in vogue back in that depressingly nightmarish decade called the 1970's. Doomsdayers were wrong then just as their progeny of today are incorrect.
Back then these people predicted that we would not be able to feed ourselves due to over-population (wrong), that materials such as metals (Ti, Cu, Fe, etc.) would become prohibitively expensive (wrong again), and so on, and so on.
People in particular are, and the human race in general is, adaptable. Whenever these doomdayers say the sky is falling, by-and-large they are basing their predictions on models that are not dynamic in their ability to react to the compensative ability of society. As long as these predictions are based on 0th order analysis, we shouldn't take them too seriously.
Let us go to the stars, dream new dreams, and renew the embers of hope that have long since grown cold.
Makes you stupid.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
This article has no scientific statement only political statements. It should not have been featured in slashdot. It is pur flamebait -- propaganda
1) The US forest's are actually growing. Consider 100 years ago Pennsylvania's forests were used to build the east coast houses and then provide fuel. Today they have grown back.
2) An acre of corn traps 5 times the amount of CO2 as an old growth forest. MORE importantly CO2 is not polution it is natural by product of life. If you don't want CO2 then kill everyone and everything.
4) Methane is 22 times the "greenhouse gas" as CO2 and the article does not mention it at all. Methane is produced from bateria inside most animals -- (except kangaroos!!!!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacif
5) Water vaper is also a greenhouse gas but it is not mentioned.
6) Sure the US uses a lot of energy per capita. So what? Every other country is trying to do exavtly the same.
I believe the number usually quoted is "1 in 9". I mention South Africa because it's one of the few African countries with a government sufficiently competent to collect reasonably accurate statistics. But even if it was say twice this high, that's not going to be anything we haven't seen before -- in many parts of Europe, for example, the bubonic plague killed 10-20% of the population. Humanity can and has survived population-decimating diseases before. And AIDS is less dangerous to society functioning normally because it's less panic-inducing, since you can't get it from breathing the air near a sick person or corpse.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
a couple funny posts here and there is cool, some jokes even make me laugh (yeah, laughing @ slashdot jokes, im a loser, i know)..but cmon, there were like two hundred people posting the same joke one after another.
Take with as large a grain of salt as you think appropriate.
Aaaah, a beautiful example of the 'tragedy of the commons'.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that globalisation et al are wrong, as long as you take *all* aspects of it, not only the short-term ones like make-money-fast and the-next-generation-will-solve-this. If you go for a certain approach, take everything including the messy parts, not only the easy gains.
bash$
sorry but i dispute the fact that all 6 or 7 billion people in the world are eating well, it's more like half at best. Yes currently there is ample food (for the 1/3 of the world in first world countries), who knows about the rest...
it just may be that there isn't enough food for everyone.
This economist accurately predicted the current population of the earth, 200 years ago - thats pretty impressive i wouldnt discount his theories so fast.
Nuclear power seemed like a good idea not too long ago, but in the US we are having political problems about where to dump the waste. If someone could magically deal with the waste, then I imagine nuclear power would skyrocket. Until then, it is too darn expensive ($,politically,environmentally)
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I think even Malthus (see http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/malthus/malthus.0.h tml) would be turning over in his grave from this bullshit. His initial predictions from the late 1700s always gave "generations" until the human race would die from overpopulation and overplundering of natural resources. Of course, that hasn't happened yet thanks to technological advances and such. However, in this latest DOOMSDAY ALERT we seem to have around 48 years.
Is this just viral marketing for Lost in Space 2? Or maybe Odyssey 5?
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
They predicted that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and gas by 1993.
I did a Google to refresh my memory about the previous putative disaster-in-the-making and came up with a very relevant column written by Mark Steyn, get it from the Google cache.
(This sig intentionally left blank)
I agree that we should be concious of the envirouments health, but i hear too many scare tactics being used. The world was suppose to end ages ago according to yesteryear's biologists.
Unfortunately and perhaps ironically, it may be that the rapid spread of HIV will devastate the population enough to save us.
A great article from Aug 2001, if you have a subscription to the Economist you can read it here:
_ ID =718860
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story
Over population has a natural check. As people get richer, they have smaller families. (Italy, for example, is starting to shrink.)
Global warming, loss of biodiversity, and pollution are are all real problems, but they are exagaerated by some envrionmentalists.
But that's okay. Its what envrionmentalists do. Raise awareness.
Just off of the A.P. wire:
Chicken Little reports that the sky is falling.
-jerdenn
but I might get a girlfriend within the next 50 years too, and I'm not holding my breath.
The "assumptions" everyone talks about that the WWF doesn't consider are exactly what has kept humanity alive through the Industrial Revolution. The WWF doesn't take into account that animals outside of man also use resources. When push comes to shove, humans aren't going to fly off to Mars, we're going to shove the animals out of the way. That's what we've done for years and years.
Yes, technology has enables us to do what we used to without as much energy, but that's not the biggest factor here. Raising cattle and nearly eliminating American bisons in the process, that was a big one.
When it comes to sustaining life, Earth has a lot of give. As sad as it may be, humans will simply choke away less "efficient" animals on this earth. A perfect example, in Africa herders are beginning to raise domesticated versions of antelopes instead of cattle. They just make more and eat less.
Yes, we are running out of room, but c'mon, we're human beings. If there's one thing we do well, it's taking what we think is ours. We aren't going to leave, animals will.
And 50 years will go, and I'll still be single.
Take with as large a grain of salt as you think appropriate.
Salt lick.
~jeff
Econuts have been announcing the Earth's imminent demise forever. In the sixites there were TONS of these "scientific" reports proving the earth was gonna be dead before 2000.
We're still here.
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
why is the number of 'who cares' and 'they're talking crap' reactions so high?
people in africa don't die from aids.
rainforests never existed.
hunger is a state of mind.
and the forestfires in arizona is made up by cnn.
as much as I want people in arizona to keep their houses, I want prople in africa to have food and medicine.
Privacy is terrorism.
Highly placed sources within Slashdot have revealed on condition of anonymity that the news service has today put into place its new plan, developed after a reassessment of its target audience by their marketing research firm, to move into the supermarket tabloid space and compete toe-to-toe with the National Enquirer.
Stories soon to appear include:
Did Rapture Occur in 1979?
Study Reveals Green Beans Cure All Cancers
One Third of New York Population are Space Aliens
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Um, I guess you want to volunteer your backyard for a nuclear storage dump? No? I guess nuclear power is ok if someone else gets stuck with the waste. It is strange that you are calling someone an environmental hypocrite. By the same logic you used in your first line, everyone who can read/post here probably is approximately the same as far as pollution goes. I guess that might include you as well as me. :P
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Only catch is, each person would have 12 cubic feet, or six feet by two feet by one foot. Now imagine that you're at the bottom of the cube.
What is overlooked time and time again in the "you can fit x people into ____" argument is that just because you can fit a population into an area doesn't mean that area can support it. The most common example is Texas, at least in America. But what about arable land? As for space, let's say people will be transplanted to Mars by 2030. The world population will be 8.1 billion by then (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html). In order to maintain current population levels, we would have to devise methods to transplant 2 billion people within thirty years. At a round trip of two years to get to Mars at the optimal revolution of the planets around the sun, with 50,000 people making the trip each time, you would need to make 40,000 trips before you could transplant 2 billion people, over the course of 80,000 years, at which point you might see H.G. Wells and his time machine where London once was.
What's my point? Look for answers close to home. Keeping your head in the clouds can be fun, but not always productive. Rather than trying to find solutions to the effects of overpopulation, one should try to find solutions to the causes of overpopulation.
For those interested, let's say we started sending people now and wanted to make sure we were at 6 billion people in 2030; the number of trips that could be made is 15, at 133 million people per trip. The maximum number of people to send at today's capability per ship is about ten. That's 13 million ships being sent every two years, plus enough food and water to feed people for the ten to twenty years it would take to allow for food to be grown on Mars. Put the cost of sending each ship at 20 billion dollars (http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/world/360734
There is no World Wrestling Federation. The World Wildlife Fund laid the smack down on them in court, taking away their right to use the initials "WWF"
The newly renamed World Wrestling Entertainment now uses the initials "WWE", so there is now only one WWF of consequence in the world to deal with.
How is this guy extremely ignorant?
It's impossible to know everything. I think it's a valid request. After all there are far to many acronyms in this world.
BTW at least "pro-wrestling" tells you there full of shit. Unlike the World Wildlife Fund.
Yeah I know I used an acronym. hehe
Freak
Um, a little optimistic without looking at the whole situation?
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
I'm sure you knew that despite the technological advances in combustion engines, making them more efficient, we continue to consume more and more fuel every day? The point is that it doesn't matter if you have 1 engine and it consumes 1 unit of fuel and you modify it to only consume
How is nuclear waste a non-issue? Politics decide our environment; at least to the people living in towns near the roads they are going to be transporting the stuff. One truck accident and their environment will be very unpleasant indeed.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
In that case, though it leaves serious flaws, such as the ability to produce more, but considering that there are not going to be any more resources. give all the resources to me, and perhaps anyone that could help me fend off the others.
On the other hand, give everyone guns...or perhaps simply shoot them. Without the ability to produce more, they are going to die a swift death and everyone's lives will be meaningless and insignificant.
Are you sure you failed because it wasn't nice, or just because it had no basis in any means of survival?
There is still a sun in the sky, right? And last I checked the law that energy can not be destroyed still held true (entropy aside) so what's the big deal?
This is a decidedly one-sided article. Their two main points of argument are flawed.
1. The human population is choking the planet. If you take the total population of the planet, divide them up into families of six, give them a house and roughly a half to a full acre of land, the total area of occupied land is a little larger then the state of Texas. I hardly consider that a population emergency.
2. Natural resources are nearing their depletion point. New petroleum fields are being discovered in places where is was previously thought not to exist. The conventional idea that oil is produced by the fossils of long dead creatures is getting another look because oil is being found is deeper areas of the ocean, where fossils don't exist. Also, other evidence points that the planet may be actually be still producing oil.
Environmental groups have been raving that the planets forests are disappearing at alarming rates, when in fact there is more forests now then there were 200 years ago. I mean, just look at my backyard, I've been watching the woods claim more of it every year and I see more trees now then there were 20 years ago.
Carbon-dioxide, sulfer, ash, and other air pollutants produced by the largest factories over the course of a year are insignificant next to the amount of the same pollutants thown into the air of a single volcanic eruption.
I'm not against the environment, and I believe in standard conservation techniques, but the so-called science that the World Wildlife Federation reports is absolute nonsence.
In closing let me ask you one question: If the World Wildlife Federation issued a report that headlined: "Animal populations thriving, natural resources abundant, future looks bright for years to come." Would you be so ready to believe it?
Can't we just renew earth like how you renew a book from a library?
Nothing to worry about, really.
kawai
As a guy ... who has seen the scientific measurements
YES
Bullshit and bullshit. Care to back that up with some proof, coward boy? If you were who you say, you wouldn't be an A/C. And you haven't seen shit unless Canada is THAT fucked up. One of the points of having a car's emissions checked and maintained is to prevent the very thing that emission tests are supposed to detect. If the cars fail the tests in their district they aren't supposed to be on the road.
Should we instead be blaming Canada? I refuse to believe the whole country has their shit as fucked up as you do.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I realize that this is a sensational report, to say the least. However, it really scares me to see the ease with which most people will shrug-off environmental issues completely. Are natural resource and environmental concerns really secondary to military and economic considerations? I don't think so. What's a good economy going to do for us when we can't breath natural air? The public is very quick to accept reports which say, "Keep living the way you are. You don't need to change your lifestyle. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a radical tree-hugger!" (See this John Stossel report.)
I cannot understand how so many educated citizens can ingnore environmental issues, mock them, mock the people presenting them, or even actively fight against them with hopes of preserving The Economy. Yes, this specific report is over the top, but it raises a number of very valid issues (deforestation, extinction, etc.) which simply cannot be ignored. I know it's easy to change the subject (WWF jokes, anyone?), but one day these people may very well regret their overwhelming indifference.
...Take with as large a grain of salt as you think appropriate.
Isn't this the problem ?
'sapientia potestas est'
Many here are pointing out that economic pressures will help limit consumption. The problem is that people often reject the market process as being unfair, immoral, etc and do all they can to substitute something else ala socialism.
You can bet that once prices start to rise to check consumption, the government will step in "in the name of the people" and fix prices.
Hell, it happened in the 1970's with Nixon's price controls on gas and gave us long lines at the pump and gas shortages.
The truth is that, when the market gives people economic information they don't like, they try to use the political process to make it go away instead of making changes in their habits.
When prices go up, instead of conserving, they'll bitch about those "evil greedy corporations." Hey, just like on Slashdot. The fact is, people don't change unless it hits them in the wallet, and they'll do everything they can to stop that from happening.
If the market suggests they be paid less for their out-dated skills because of less demand, they'll blame someone else. It happens over and over. People want it all for nothing.
I think what will happen ultimately is that the democratic process will force us all to drown together.
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Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
that these reports do not adequately take into account that populations adjust and evolve in response to changes in the enviroment.
:)
"Using the image of the need for mankind to colonise space as a stark illustration of the problems facing Earth, the report warns that either consumption rates are dramatically and rapidly lowered or the planet will no longer be able to sustain its growing population." [from article, emphasis mine]
While I understand that the article is trying to shock people into paying attention to a serious problem (and it is a problem), at the same time alarmists need to recognize that growing populations when facing a change in the enviroment change with that environment. No society is going to continue at break-neck speeds to oblivion, eat the last edible object, and then suddenly start think, "hey we need to change something here." While the issue we face now is on a more global scale, many times in history local communities have faced similar problems and they adapt. Birthrates drop, consumption drops, etc. Now that doesn't mean it's always pretty either -- such situations can lead to massive decimation of a population, but I doubt we're facing the end of human existance here.
My point is, while the issue raised is certainly an important and serious issue, it's not the end of the world. We need to worry and we need to do something, but we don't need doomsayers. (not that I wouldn't mind some terriformed land on Mars...)
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Strange, you called some other guy a hypocrite before and are calling me one now. I never said anything hypocritical here; I pointed out that both of us would be hypocritical for saying such a thing. It seems that you just say "I dont have a holier than though attitude like you do, you hypocrite!" whenever someone says something you don't like.
:>
Your lack of feeling guilty had nothing to do with what I previously said. However, if you didn't feel guilty why are you posting anonymously?
"All the nuclear waste produced since day one would fit into a single football stadium."
Now this was more along the lines of what I was hoping for in a response. It contains an actual answer to a question, rather than name calling. I haven't heard of that before, and I think that is an interesting point.
Be happy.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I'd need to take this article with a big grain of salt. A really, really big grain of salt.
;)
So much so that I'd deplete the earth of its salt reserves just trying to accumulate what would be equivalent to that one big grain of salt.
After reading this, I may as well just end it all and do my part to save the world.
Instead of helping the "third world" countries with infrastructure, stable government, and ways NOT to pollute, they want to take the "first world" countries and take wealth away from them and give it to the poorer countries (of course, they'll help do the redistribution ... one for you, one for me)
Go ahead and mod me down for this, because it is a different angle on this type of story.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
The battle to feed humanity is over. In the course of 1970s, the world will experience starvation of tragic proportions, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.
-Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968
There's a long history of vastly misguided prophets of doom by now- starting with Malthus, I guess, but the most revealing example is probably Paul Ehrlich, who's been writing books since the sixties (The Population Bomb, The Population Explosion, etc.) about how the world will be swamped by an exploding population and run out of resources, all in the (ever-postponed) near future. In the sixties he thought that we'd be starving in the seventies, and that Great Britain would no longer exist by the nineties. I don't know what he thinks now, but he's still writing along the same lines.
Ehrlich also famously made a bet with economist Julian Simon, in 1980, that five raw materials picked by Ehrlich would be more expensive (because they would be rarer, per capita) ten years later. In 1990 Ehrlich was wrong on every pick.
An awful lot of science fiction has been written along those lines, as well: Disch's 334, Harrison's Make Room, Make Room (filmed as Soylent Green). But in the real world, I'm not too worried. We may kill off all the black rhinos, white rhinos, sumatran rhinos.... And that would be unfortunate, but it would not constitute a threat to human survival.
Also, incidentally, shipping people to other planets is not likely to be an effective way of dealing with excess population. Can you imagine the amount of chemical fuel involved in lifting just the quarter-million people born every day away from the earth?
Whoa there cowboy! It's a BAD assumption to assume that gas mileage is equal to emissions.
It's not.
In ideal combustion, there would be only CO2 and water coming out of the tailpipe. This in itself is harmless. Plants take care of the CO2 and convert it back to oxygen, and water is, well, water. (It's also disturbing to note how the article makes it sound like trees account for most of the C02->O2 conversion on the planet, this also isn't true, algae in the ocean account for something like over 60%).
However, in imperfect combustion, like that in your car, other nasties come out the tailpipe, such as Nitrous Oxide compounds (Known as NOx, x for the various subscripts accompaning the compounds). There are others I can't think of at the moment. These other pollutants are the main contributor to factors such as smog and acid rain. New vehicles that come out this year, including most new SUVs, have much much cleaner emissions than that of older cars because they utilize state of the art catalysts, fuel injection, and other aftertreatments. Now, they might have MORE emissions, but the majority of that is of the less harmful gasses like CO2 and water vapor.
This kind of article is why it is ignored. Odd extreme reports that have no or little factual basis have caused the public to pretty much ignore such warnings. You could say that environmentalists have efficiently subverted their chances of having large public support. Of course, (mis)information from the 'other side' isn't helping either. Controlled media also helps; there are some VERY nasty ongoing environmental disasers in the US that most people simply dont know about because nobody tells them (for example, Oregon oil refineries used to dump wastes straight into a nearby river openly. The state made them pay large fees for each day that they did that. However, those fees were still much smaller than handling the waste properly, so they continued to dump openly and just pay the fines.)
As long as there are reports like this that are obviously bogus, the general population will pretty much ignore these issues. This article really shouldn't exist.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
living in giant doughnut shaped colonies fighting for domination of earth orbit amongst ourselves with giant robots? I didnt think we'd be doing that so soon. Seriously though, this is a pretty big problem.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
The thing that makes it bad, as I understand it, is that instead of killing mostly young kids and the elderly, it kills adults in the 20s and 30s - the people that do the work. It also kills much more slowly than the plague, smallpox and the like, and huge amounts of effort need to be devoted to caring for the sick and dying.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The Earth will not expire in 2050. Simple economics will keep it from doing so
You can't use economic arguments. Why? Beacuse our current economics don't take into account the cost of pollution (externalities) -- what makes you think that things will change in 50 years? Has current pollution made us change? Please.
What we need is reasoned leadership, not to keep running towards what everyone knows is a cliff. By the time we get there we may not be able to stop... how can we bring extinct species back? how can we stop global warming... Assume for a moment that global warming is like any force, just beacuse the change is still relatively small doesn't mean that the accelleration isn't huge. Once you want to "change" it's like stopping a car... it will take a while. A long while. If it took us 200 years to start serious warming, it may very well take us 300 years to do the cooling. And by then it may be just too late.
There are four types of people: those who are ignorant and know it; those who are knowlegable and don't; those that are knowlegable and know it; and those who are ignorant but think that they are knowlegable. You my fellow biped are in the latter category; and what a dangerous person you are beacuse of this. Why a moderator would mark you as insightful is beyond me. Spreading ignorance under the guise of wisdom is the worst of all sins.
I didn't say *ALL* people are eating well. I said people are eating better than in the past. Average caloric intake in poor countries has skyrocketed in the last century. They are not eating as well as rich countries, but much better than the poor countries of 100 years ago.
Plus, in the U.S. 100 years ago, poor people were all skinny. Nowadays, in the U.S. we actually have poor people who are fat. We even have homeless vagrants who are fat. This is completely unprecedented in world history.
There is still starvation of course -- but a lot less of it than there was 100 years ago when the world population was about 1/6 of what it is now.
The Earth will not expire in 2050. Simple economics will keep it from doing so. When certain resources become scarce, they will become expensive, and people will be forced to stop using them and seek alternatives.
Yeah, I can't wait to see you seek alternatives to food and water. How do you take your soylent green?
Interesting they compare the United States' use of resources to that of Burundi. This comparison is truly startling.
Yes, its is truly startling that you stuck on that comparison, and not on the better document and much more relevant case of the UK.
(The United States places the greatest pressure on the environment, it takes 12.2 hectares of land to support each American citizen and 6.29 for each Briton.)
And Timothy, you might want to encourage your brother to go ahead and buy that new SUV. If his current car is more than five years old, that new SUV will be adding less pollution to the atmosphere.
Wow! Totally unsuported wild claim...sweet!
Lets see, small car pollutes more than car that burns twice as much fuel. Suuuuure.
You can't take the sky from me...
Will Earth Expire By 2050?
Yes, because if you check the warrenty, the warrenty expires in 2049
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
FYI:
The WTO and World Bank have implemented in many 3 world countries strategies for opening up foreign capital and investment.
This happened due to the third world countries taking out loans in the 70's, interest peaking at the 80's, leaving them with an unpayable debt. So, the WTO and World Bank said, ok, we'll pay of your debt, if you redirect money from infrastructure, capital works and health services into buying foreign products and opening up the market for global conglomerates. So instead of these countries increasing health services, they're forced to pay premium money to buying overseas goods, and therefore their own market collapses.
Capitalism's great, isn't it?
(Skip the socialism arguments, Socialism is just as fucking bad).
Source?
Curtis and Taket 1996, p.276, as referenced in -
Promoting Health, The primary Health Care Approach pp 7 -16, Wass, A. (2000) 2nd ed.
Eat that, fuckwit.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Which economist predicted the current population of the earth 200 years ago? You can't be serious.
Thanks!
In the long run, the glaciers will return. Whether the mechanism is temporary heat-up, and resultant partial melting of icecaps cooling the oceans, or a more gradual cooldown, the geologic evidence says the current Ice Age ain't over yet.
When will the next glaciation start ? It may have already started, or may not start for another 50K years. But it will occur. . .
But the reasons are much different than they imply.
The bigest natural competitor to a typical songbir id a pigeon. I've been told (by someone who does research on penguins) that every pigeon tends to displace at least 20 native birds in Australia.
Pigeons where brought here because the sailors used to drink their boold as a cure for scurvy but now they idiots feed them in the parks and their populations are growing.
Its interesting that cats are getting a major blame for the decreasign numbers of songbirds when the pigeons are teh major cause.
Take that earthlings!
... *gnarf* ... DIRT!
That makes it so much easier to invade this fffffffffilthy pile of
Yes!
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
People interested in this subject might want to look at John McCarthy's Sustainability pages: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
Extrapolating a trend to 50 years is plain dumb when you are targeting an industrialized society. Frist, we aren't insect. If we start drowning in our own refuse, we'll adapt.
Second, God only knows what technologies will appear in the next half-century. Some of them could even be (gasp, argh!) beneficial to the environment.
As a reminder of past extrapolations gone all wrong, here is an excerpt from "The history of Taxicabs" -- note the reference to the next fifty years.
In 1900 there were 11,000 registered cabs in London and well over double that now (that's not counting minicabs) Motorised taxis appeared in London in 1904 and got the name 'taxi' from the taxometer that standardised the fares from counting revolutions of their wheels. A statistician about ten years before that had seriously predicted that, at the 'current' rate of expansion and increase of population, horse manure would cover every street in London from wall to wall, even covering windows, within fifty years. Thank you Henry Ford.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
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Claiming unproveable effects like "global warming" or depletion of earths resources in 50 years only serves to make the environmentalist community look like a bunch of fanatical tree huggers. Taking the middle road and working within the system is what is needed to make a real gradual change. Trying to force a dramatic change is never going to succeed. Too many people's lives depend on current economy. It takes time to train and change people's mind, because that is the only way to reach a balanced plan of resource consumption.
I'd rather take the chance. They've been proved wrong so many times in the past that they've lost all credibility to the point of what they say almost being a guarantee of what WON'T happen.
Taking public transport (or a bike) doesn't hurt me.
Depends where or when you want to go and how fast you need to get there compared to private transportation.
Neither does using 40W lamps in stead of 60W
Depends what you want to light up and where. I use 24W energy-saving bulbs to light up many rooms--because it saves me money, not out of any concern for the environment. And I use 60W bulbs where I need some good working light.
I know America (and Russia for that matter) isn't that happy with anti-pollution measures, but together the two nations are good for 50% of the CO2 (and other exhaust) production in the world.
And how much, percentage-wise, of the world GDP does the U.S. produce? Yes, we consume more and produce more pollution but that alone doesn't tell the whole story. You need to compare it to how much "gross world product" is created by the nation in question.
When you look at pollution from an efficiency standpoint, there are about 47 countries that produce less CO2 per dollar produced and about 150+ countries that produce MORE CO2 per dollar produced.
The United States is not the worst polluter in any important way.
But why are companies like Shell, Q8, Esso and Texaco looking for other alternatives and what is wrong with that?
Nothing, alternatives are great! Especially if some day my car can run on free energy stored from the sun on sunny days and I don't have to pay for gas anymore.
But don't come up with BS reports about the end of the world if we don't stop driving tomorrow. That's nuts and is misinformation.
Importing oil, wood and other products from the 3rd world leaves THEM with the effects while we have the products.
That's economics. If they are unhappy with the effects, stop selling the product.
And even if, in 50 years the statistics turned out to be wrong, at leas it is good to be aware of the (possible) consequences of our lifestyle.
In other words, "Even if they are lying or making absurd claims, at least they're making us aware of a (non-existant) problem."
Come on... It's misinformation and lies. At best, it's conjecture. The more educated can and will take this for what it is--the monthly quota of enviro-hype that must be published to keep the media from losing interest and maintaining their funding.
But to provide the general public, who believes most of what they read, with grossly inaccurate information is dangerous. It raises the risk that politicians will respond to the public's (un-necessary) concern by enacting policies that aren't based on science but on popular culture. That's when you get knee-jerk reactions not based on science such as Kyoto; luckily that's essentially dead since the U.S. has rejected it out of hand.
First attempting to explain to people who want to have more then 2 children why that is a bad idea.
and if that fails?
Could somebody PLEEEEAAASSEEEE legalize strangling the motherfuckers to death? PLEASE
Yes the adoption system in America needs to be revamped, but that is no excuse for having buttloads of kids! People who cannot love a child because of the color of the child's skin should NOT be parents at all.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Overconsumption is certainly a dangerous problem, but we cannot forget that:
a mpaign _id=3937
/
s /PDF/f ut0003/will_machines_take_over.pdf
m l
Mammals are almost extinct: http://www.abc.net.au/am/s560989.htm
Global Warming will kill us all:
http://www.greenpeace.org/campaigns/intro?c
Asteroid impacts are almost certain:
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/reports/aiaa
Machines will rule us all:
http://www.corp.aventis.com/future/download
Doom and gloom run rampant:
http://www.insteadof.com/doom/
The next Ice Age will kill us all:
http://unfccc.int/resource/iuckit/fact08.ht
Oh, and the sky is falling.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
new-cu-lar... it's pronounced new-cu-lar... (Thanks Homer)
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
Good point. I forgot that processed waste is solid. I feel stupid now; I actually toured SRS twice where they convert wastes into solid (their simplified explanation is that they are basically mixing jello into liquid waste; making it easier to clean up/contain but no less radioactive).
Also, as you say the chrud is all over the place. At the plant in GA that I visited they don't mind telling you that they routinely release chrud into the air, but they never tell the public exactly when it is released. One of the nastier things our gov has done is nuclear bomb testing on our own continent. Yeah, they don't do that anymore but they used to. My grandmother used to see a mushroom cloud in the distance from where she lived. She lived upwind and far enough away to be safe (or she wouldn't have survived to tell me about it) but there was another town about as far away as hers that was downwind. Needless to say, they wound up with ALOT of cancer problems.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say, hard cheese. 4F17
Everything that was once directly lived has receded into a representation. -debord
I know this is just one aspect of all the various problems, but you gotta focus on one thing at a time, right?
There are way too many cars on the roads in the USA and Canada. How can people justify driving their car two blocks to get to the local convenience store? Pure lunacy! In Europe (Stockholm, Amsterdam) I even saw elegantly dressed business women riding bikes instead of driving. It's not that crazy!
If the price of gas goes up, people will drive less. If governments tax the shit out of us, we'll drive less. The auto industry is friggin' huge in the states. That's why cities are designed exclusively for cars. But trust me, it's a different world now. Cars are on their way out.
If I can save a hundred bucks a month, and get daily fresh air, and increase my life span by bicycling I see that as the way to go.
Live longer and happier, reduce traffic congestion and help save our nonrenewable resources. Ride a bike.
i'm not much for organized religion or anything...
;)
;)
but i've heard about someone saying that all the pslams in the bible relate to the cooresponding year in the 20th century --- and there are 150 psalms...
could they be influenced by that rumor?
--- just an observation
then again.. any song/poem could be interpereted in any way --- especially given the length of a year and the number of events that can happen in that given year
p r m t h s
A third of the people seem to be making fun of WWF thinking it is Worldwide Wrestling.
Another third seem to be saying it is not a serious issue now and saying we will fight it when the time comes.
Another group seems to be justifying why this will not happen.
However, no one seems to be talking about the threat seriously. And no, I am not an environmentalist, nor an historian, though today I feel like speaking / writing like a historian.
We all know the forests are being fscked. We all know the population is increasing. We all know the species are getting extint. We are keep reading about the "sprawls" in US. We do keep hearing about the ozone layer too. And just last week I saw some news about Arctic ice melting to un-forseen levels. Are these by themselves serious issues? Maybe not. But for all you know, they are...
It is just mankind's tendency to put off serious issues till later. Till it blows over the head. We did nothing till Hitler took over the world. We did nothing till Osama did his trick. And my guess is we will not do anything until people start dying in hundreds of thousands on a yearly basis because of the environmental issues. And of course then we will act on a war footing and probably come up with a department of environment security at a global level. But will it be too late? How do I know - mankind has not seen an environmental change on such a scale in our lifetime. And will we be able to adapt quickly then? I just pray that we do.
Sorry for sounding too harsh, but sometimes the troll gets you.
hehe, 2050 is the mandatory retirement date for human civilization, damn, and i didnt get stealth yet.....:-)
Note the quote:
''... without the intense use of fertilizers and pest controls''
Thats ludicrus. What is the land needed per person if you actually *do* choose to use modern farming methods?
Thats like saying. `` We need XXX acres of land per person if we assume farming by hand, with no mechanized tractors.'' which is an interesting, but pointless statistic.
There's nothing inherently wrong with pest control or fertalizer. In fact, they're the foundations of modern society. To quote a radio commercial ``Never before have so few fed so many for so little.''
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa the sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Go hide in a box, Chicken Little.
There is no cliff. What the parent post means by "simple economics" is the fact that as we 'run out' of various important resources (say, oil), the price will get out of control and we'll have to move on to something else.
Also, Mr Little, one could point out the vastly reduced pollution a fully-developed country puts out per capita compared to any 3rd world... But such ideas run against your alarmist philosophy, so I'm really wasting my time with you. Oh well, if a wonderfully reasoned post like the parent can't make you think, nothing will.
I'll add a fifth type, people who think others who don't agree with them are ignorant, without giving other reasons. You make no significant points with any evidence, and then decend into an ad hominem attack, how convincing.
Do yourself a favor, llok at some real numbers in a Julian Simon book...
Spencer Ogden
Maybe not, then again, maybe it does. Certainly a 2002 Lincoln Navigator will pollute less than a 1997 Navigator (though I don't know if Lincoln made the Navigator back in 1997). It's interesting that the stats you chose to cite (MPG) have nothing to do with pollution. They are measures of resource consumption.
...as long as we pretend like nothing's ever going to change.
Let's be realistic here: Let's say that we know Petroleum is going to dry up a year from now. What's going to happen? We're either going Fuel Cell shopping, or we're going to get bus tickets. We'll get by.
We may 'consume' but we're hardly going to cause the race to go extinct over it. It's not like we're selling 'Perri-Air'.
"Derp de derp."
The earth is going to expire?
Quick! We better renew that license... The question is who do we call, the manufacturer or um... the reseller?
IIRC, there was a scene in Jurassic Park where they discuss the idea that bringing back dinosaurs could "destroy the world." Ian Malcolm puts it well when he says that us leaving (being eaten) won't end the world. The world will keep going for a long time regardless of what species are on it.
Or maybe I hallucinated the whole thing. I really can't remember.
They probably failed to (and could not) account for such things as genetic manipulation of crops to increase yields plus advanced pesticides, fertilizers, storage technologies and so on.
This both increases the amount of food produced per land area, and also reduces the amount of food decayed per food harvested.
Considering the animal species they used to illustrate the levels of decline are all valued in eastern culture for ivory, horns, or internal organs and are heavily poached, I question this articles validity. It seems more of a political peace with quite a different agenda.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
... Nasa has launched it's first space vehicle built to suck all the air off of an oxygen-rich planet and contain it in a giant bag for delivery back to Earth. In memory of 9-11, the ship was modeled after the Statue of Liberty.
Due to recent events, insiders at Nasa are publically questioning a last-minute design change where engineers added an external switch to the vacuum generator. One engineer, who refused to be identified, was quoted as saying "Anybody with a ring from a Crackerjack box could throw that switch. There's no way that ship's coming back full."
"Derp de derp."
So legislate it to "..under Allah", and see how many people chuck a shit.
A shitload of people, I bet.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Thats not what my econ teacher taught me. You can't sell 10 engines and then count on doubling fuel expense. That model would assume that all ten people drive the same distance to work, or have the same driving habits/style.
Assuming that they did drive the same, you can't just cut fuel economy in half and expect to sell more engines. That would assume that everyone would buy a brand new car just because of fuel economy.
And even if you did assume that people would buy twice as many cars if fuel was cut in half, then the actual emmisions would decrease as people would be giving up their smog causing cars for more efficient, and ecological ones.
just my 2.5 cents
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
The fact of the matter is not that we will somehow 'run out' of resources - the stuff we have used is all still here, simply in a degraded form. Where's the carbon in those fossil fuels? In the atmosphere as CO2. Where's all that plastic? Landfills.
Certainly, the easy to use resources will run out. Things like petroleum, fresh water, timber and such - but with enough energy we can replace those things. Sure, it's costly to such CO2 out of the atmosphere and use it to make petrochemicals, but with enough energy it certainly can be done. Sure it's hellaciously expensive to run a de-salination plant instead of diverting another river - but with cheap enough energy it becomes cost effective. Sure, we may eventually run out of easy to exploit copper mines, but all the copper we have ever mined is still out there - it might be hard to find and convert, but again, with enough energy it's doable.
It's all a problem of energy. If we have enough of it we can keep recylcing the natural resource that are already here, indefinitely. Instead of shipping our idiot progeny off to space, we should be sending up orbital power stations. If they captured just a minute fraction of the solar energy that passes between the earth and the moon's orbit we'd have absolutely no resource problems and the only waste product we'd have to worry about in the long run is heat.
-josh
Sigh,
Didn't Malthus say this, oh, a century or so ago, and we're long past his date.
There were also predictions that London would be burried 2 feet deep in horse dropping by the 1930s, becuse they would not be able to get rid of them. Of course, those evil scientists invented the car, which ended that problem
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Sure we might run out of resources by 2050, and if we don't prepare then we will be in trouble.
However, if we save enough of those resources to create new REPLACEMENT technologies by 2050 then we'll be fine.
I like to think of this like an RTS. If your base gets destroyed, you're fine as long as you have enough gold to build a new base and at least one peon. If you didn't save those ahead of time, then you're truely in trouble.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
As the grantparent poster said: "Spreading ignorance under the guise of wisdom is the worst of all sins."
Amen.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
good point.
Jeremy
if you look at the resons that there is starvation, it has nothing to do with resources. the famin in the wortld is all political in cause.
True capitalism = lots of similar companies = jobs for everyone who wants one.
...but, the inevitable doom of humankind has been delayed until 2050.
We apologize for the inconvenience of not being able to fix the year exactly.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
You forgot to mention that Tax-payers didn't spend a dime on this ship. It was funded through sales of 'Perri-Air'. Heh
Funny stuff =)
Lets keep in mind that if such a crisis were to actually occur, a LOT more (of the remaining) resources would be devoted to finding technological solutions. Heck, that's how it works now : the only reason we don't use solar power, ect is not due to inflexibility, its that for the power providers burning coal is still cheaper for THEM (although they don't have to pay the true costs of increased lung cancer, ect).
Keep in mind that using simple fission power with fuel recycling we could easily produce enough energy, even if it were necessary to use vastly expensive machines like desalination plants and other devices to get all our water, for thousands of years. This is with known uranium deposits and 30 year old technology.
The energy is THERE, it just isn't needed yet.
Looking farther down the road. Developement of a true artificial intelligence would likely make all of the following issues moot. While its tough to say what exactly would happen, I don't think resource shortages will be on anyone's minds. After all, exponentially reproducing machines would likely be able to utilize all manner of resources currently unavailable to humans.
Will the EARTH expire by 2050? No. Will humanity? Maybe.
As George Carlin once said, the Earth doesn't mind all this non-biodegradable plastic, only we humans do. The Earth doesn't mind it at all, it will simply create a new paradigm: The Earth + Plastic.
"And like that
i know this will sound like something from some sci-fi channel production, but nature will find a balance with us, i'm personifying nature slightyly, but it will find a way to check our numbers and even things out, probably something in the form of a plauge, currently the aids epidemic is expected to kill tens of millions of people in africa in the next few decades, but thats hardly a dent in the world population of what will soon be 7 billion. the densest populated area of the world, southeastern asia would be a likely place for some form of a common virus to mutate into a deadly form, i'm not saying it should happen, human life is good i guess, blah blah blah, but a 3rd of the worlds population is living in an unequivalent percentage of the landmass and a plauge in that are would even things out, but before that happens, maybe we should just learn to concerve our resources and start looking for alternatives
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
He had a couple of scary hits: "President Kennedy will not run for re-election in 1964 because of something that will happen to him in November 1963" and "A blonde bombshell will die a tragic death in Dixie" (Jayne Mansfield's weird death by decapitation) were the biggies. But since his "prediction" career went on between the 1950s, through the '60s and into the '70s, you'd expect him to get a couple right just by chance. Kinda like Nostradamus and his "Hister" quatrains.
He predicted doomsday on August 18th, 1999. Heh.
Anyway, basically what I am saying here is that it is very easy to pull broad, sweeping predictions out of your butt. Criswell certainly could do it, so can the World Wildlife Federation.
However, if this gets some people interested in reviving the space program... ;-)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Mankind is arrogant to assume we can make the earth uninhabitable such that we would be forced to colonize another planet. Yes I'm interjecting some religion here, but the Bible speaks of Judgment Day and men still being on earth, so all this worrying is all for nought.
Sure we can make it difficult on ourselves to where we end up shortening lifespans, end up with more diseases & such, but not to the point of having to totally leave Earth.
Absolutely not. The "third world" countries are NOT whining about getting money from the "first world" countries.
What it is, is an attempt to go "back in time" to the "good old days" before the industrial revolution. In other words, NOBODY should be prosperous.
What would happen, if Burundi was brought up to "first world" status, and was a major global player?
These same people who currently admire (possibly worship) the way these people live on such "frugal" means would instantly condemn them for wasting precious natural resources.
BTW, my predictions were correct, and the parent is getting modded all over the place ... job done.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Wouldn't the plan be to put all of the environmentalists and conservationists ^W^W^W hairdressers and telephone sanitizers on the first ships out? I think that would solve the problem nicely, and we'd only need one wave of ships...
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Much less that the majority of people who did know believe that global warming is "junk science" and that running out of finite resources of known size is impossible based on pronoucements of well known scientific authorities like Rush Limbaugh, George Bush, and Pat Robertson.
Reading the posts to this thread, I wonder if there shouldn't be a basic.science.slashdot.org or a regular series of "Science 101" postings for the people around here who either cut or managed to avoid any science classes that didn't start with the word "computer".
However, I believe that most slashdotters who are ignorant of everything but computers take pride in their ignorance and really don't want to do anything about it. The good news... when they post on public policy issues of any sort, it's generally apparent that they are noise, not signal.
Tech Public Policy stuff
how can we stop global warming... Assume for a moment that global warming is like any force, just beacuse the change is still relatively small doesn't mean that the accelleration isn't huge. Once you want to "change" it's like stopping a car... it will take a while. A long while. If it took us 200 years to start serious warming, it may very well take us 300 years to do the cooling. And by then it may be just too late.
There are four types of people: those who are ignorant and know it; those who are knowlegable and don't; those that are knowlegable and know it; and those who are ignorant but think that they are knowlegable. You my fellow biped are in the latter category; and what a dangerous person you are beacuse of this. Why a moderator would mark you as insightful is beyond me. Spreading ignorance under the guise of wisdom is the worst of all sins.
Then you might want to put yourself in that last category, and as one of those horrible people that spread mis-information. You might find a good look at the NASA satellite data, for temperature, enlightening. And before you complain about the fact that this only goes back to the late '70s, and that the "real" picture only shows up when we look at the average temperature since the late 1800's, I would suggest looking up the Pacific Decadal Occilation, which is really where the "warming" in the past century has come from, though most envirometalist extremists conviently smooth the data over and forget to mention that this is the only real source of warming over the past 100 years. And, as a last note, the PDO has been determined to be a natural phenomena, though I am sure the next argument will be that humans are somehow changing it as well. My advice, accept it, we are not that important and don't have that large of an impact on the Earth, its just arrogance to assume that we are the cause of every little fluctuation.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
That's 48 BILLION people in 150 years, which most would agree is a number completely unsupportable, not without some extreme reductions in the standard of living for western cultures, to the level of 3rd world countries.
It will not reach that number in 150 years. Just like bacteria slow down their growth as their supplies dwindle so will human populations. I'm not saying you should go ahead and have 7 children. There are a lot of animals that grow to the maximum supportable population and then starve whon there is a long draught.
This has happened to humans too. With a global economy this is less frequent since global food shortages only happen when there is a huge volcano eruption or some other planetary disaster. There are things like farming subsidies in Western Europe and the US and Japan that affect the distribution of farmed land negatively, but still the entire northern hemisphere would need to be affected.
Population growth is already slowing the growth is likely to peak at some point and stay steady at some level between 10-20 Billion for the forseable future.
Perhaps in a 1000 years when we're farming everything in greenhouses and colonizing the moon the population will be at levels we couldn't imagine now, but lets just figure out fusion first.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/ 4_16/vs.html
In a new study by the EPA, the average fuel efficiency for cars made in 1999 was only 23.8 miles per gallon, the lowest it has been since 1980.
The study found that average fuel economy was highest in 1987 and 1988, when it reached an average of 25.9 miles per gallon. The figure has been falling since then, and has accelerated its downward rate in recent years.
The 23.8 miles per gallon figure for 1999 cars represents a 0.6 mile per gallon drop from 1998 models - the steepest decline since the EPA began keeping records in 1975.
We do indeed have the technology to lower fuel consumption, however, the SUV craze and a disregard for the enviroment in general have nullified whatever science has given us.
The fact is, unless we undergo a radical change of mindset, we are going to experience a very different world within the near future. Science and technology will not be able to save us. In many cases, technological achievments only hasten
our doom.
But we won't be able to destroy the planet. It is really far more resilient than most people believe. Surely we will destroy ourselves and we will have instigated some major enviromental changes, but we won't end the planet. The Earth will regenerate and new species will flourish.
That's not really true. Some famine is political in nature, but the much of the problem comes from areas that are simple overpopulated and have insufficent infastructure to support relief efforts. Frequently both factors are combined and you have areas with no food, no roads, and a government hostile to foreign aid. Sadly there is little we can do for these people, however as their population decreases they will exert less strain on the local agriculture and hopefully recover (assuming the drought isn't extended--extended droughts (changes in the local climate actually) have killed off entre civilizations before).
I read the internet for the articles.
The WWF's science, figures, and publicity tactics are all way open to question.
It seems the world is in fine shape.
A really interesting book that also deals with the same subject but on a socialogical and demographic plane, is the book by Patrick Buchanan "The Death of the West". It is filled with Buchanan's theories (yes, he does have some *interesting* political views, but his proclamations here are all based on UN statistics) on how certain countries will lose their native populations and other races will take them over. More and more, Europe will loose its identity as a predominantly "white" society. Here are some key points the book highlights:
.
Relying upon the most recent UN population studies, Buchanan declares:
By 2050, only 10% of the world's people will be of European descent. One third of Europe's people will be over 60, and one-in-ten over 80. Involuntary euthanasia has already come to Europe.
Between now and 2050, Asia, Africa, and Latin America will grow by three to four billion people -- 30 to 40 new Mexicos! -- as Europe will lose the equivalent of the entire population of Germany, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
By 2050, 23 million Germans will have disappeared along with 16 million Italians and 30 million Russians.
Russia will lose Siberia and the far east to China and be pushed out of the Caucuses and Central Asia, where Islamic populations are exploding while Russia's is dying.
Either Europe must effect a radical cutback in pensions and health care for seniors, or Europe must import scores of millions of Arabs and Africans to care for the elderly and pay the taxes to sustain their welfare states.
The 4.2 million Palestinians in Israel and on the West Bank and Gaza will explode to 9 million by 2025, and 15 million by 2050, when Palestinians will outnumber Israel's Jewish population two-to-one.
America's "Dual Containment" policy in the Persian Gulf seems unsustainable. In less than 25 years, Iraq will have 42 million people and Iran 94 million people, more than any European nation except Russia.
The Islamic invasions of Spain and France in the eighth century, and of the Balkans and Central Europe from the 14th to the 17th centuries, will be reenacted in the lifetime of most of those now living. Islam has already surpassed Catholicism as the largest religion on earth.
It is the Christian nations -- Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox -- that have begun to die. In a chapter titled, "Where Have All the Children Gone?" Buchanan explains why, and why it is unlikely the West can solve the demographic crisis before it leads to The Death of the West.
In his chapter La Reconquista, Buchanan contends that an invasion of the United States is taking place and that America now harbors a "nation within a nation."
There are 30 million foreign born in the U.S. today, and between 9 and 11 million illegal aliens, or as many undocumented aliens in the U.S. as there are people in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Mexico is exporting its poor and unemployed for U.S. taxpayers to employ and educate. Radical and militant Hispanics and Mexican leaders alike believe this will lead to the cultural and demographic recapture of the Southwest from America, reversing the results of The Mexican War.
By supporting open borders, the GOP is committing suicide. First-time Hispanic voters chose Clinton 15-1 over Dole. Of the seven major immigration states -- Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, California, Texas and Florida -- Mr. Bush lost five, and perhaps six. Of the 10 states with the smallest share of immigrants, Bush won all 10.
European-Americans are a minority in America's most populous state, California, and by 2004, will be a minority in Texas.
The political agenda of California Hispanics includes race welfare for illegal aliens, racial preferences, bilingual education, open borders, dual citizenship, Cinqo de Mayo as a California holiday, and, in one case, replacing a statue of an American hero of the Mexican War with the Aztec god Quetzacoatl.
White Americans are fleeing California at the rate of 100,000 a year.
MeCHA, the student organization that claims chapters on hundreds of campuses has a program that reads like a Mexican version of the agenda of the white-supremacist Aryan Nation.
In 2001, an Office for Mexicans Abroad in Mexico was providing survival kits with everything from dried meat to anti-diarrhea pills to condoms to Mexicans setting off to break in to the United States
As of 2000, there were 8.4 million foreign born in California, as many foreign born as there are people in New Jersey, a primary cause of the state energy and schools crisis.
Among Third World immigrants, poverty rates and incarceration rates are double and triple what they are among native-born Americans.
Shooting up the flares and waving the flag, Buchanan argues that the 1960s "counter-culture" has become America's dominant culture, and the iconoclasts of that counter-culture are systematically demolishing America's history and heritage.
Under Political Correctness, America's greatest heroes -- soldiers, explorers and statesmen from Columbus to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson -- are under savage attack as genocidal racists and exploiters of indigenous peoples.
The history books of American public schools are being rewritten with the old heroes ignored or trashed and Western civilization disparaged and demeaned.
When Mel Gibson's film, "The Patriot," came out in 2000, it was savagely attacked for presenting black Americans as fighting patriots in the Revolutionary War.
With the assault on Confederate books, symbols, flags, heroes, and holidays almost complete, the attack is now proceeding against the Puritan fathers, soldiers who fought in The Mexican War, and, in New Jersey, even against the Declaration of Independence itself.
In some school districts, Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, and any realistic portrayal of the America South, including Harper' Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, are now forbidden.
Even the great museums on America's Mall, to introduce school children to the greatness and glory of America's past, are being used to indoctrinate children in how wicked and evil our forefathers were.
In his chapter, "The De-Christianization of America," Buchanan argues that the death of the Christian faith in Western countries is a primary cause of their dying populations. Whenever faith dies, the people die. A new atheistic civilization is arising, he argues, and is using its dominance of the culture and the courts to drive Christianity out of the temples of our civilization.
Secular Humanism, widely mocked and disparaged, a few decades ago, is now the dominant faith of the nation's cultural elites. The moral tenets of humanism are replacing those of Christianity in our public life.
Even Christian churches are rewriting their hymnals to make them acceptable to the dominant culture.
Anti-Catholic films and filthy and blasphemous anti-Christian art are the deliberate insults of a triumphant pagan and secularist faith.
He does bring up very valid points that we can all use to change our lives. He stresses faith, family and a return to a more moral society. His right wing ideals shine through on some points but others are applicable to all beliefs.
Culminating these two sources, the future does not look very bright. But humans have always evovled to survive their elements, and I think we will continue to do so.
100% Insightful
"Likely, it will be done through the private sector. The space tourist thing could get them lots of money. (for some dumb reason NASA refuses to get involved with this)."
At $10,000 a pound, I'm somewhat skeptical that the private sector is going to be able generate enough revenue from current 'space tourist technology' (aka, Soviet equipment) to justify a huge investment into new propulsion, etc..., to bring the price down. These types of revolutionary ideas cost revolutionary prices and, with an investment climate as it is now, there is no way investors are going to front the cash for a very speculative venture such as new propulsion tech.
NASA has sort of blown it. They turned something that was a Buck Rogers fantasy into a mere government bureacracy with all the sexiness and cache of the United States Postal Service.
I agree that NASA is messed up - that it's broken and seriously needs some fixing. However, there is a great deal of knowledge in that organization. If you get rid of NASA, you need to replace it with something. You have to remember, government funding has made modern telecommunications, travel, and lifestyles possible. Where would we be if there was no initial investment in the railroads or in satellite technology or radar or airports. If there is one place that the government does have a place, it's infrastructure. Yes, they may blow a bunch of money, but even so, much of the time these investments pay off over time. Think of the US highway system. I once read that the Fed has spent 6 trillion on roads over the last 100 years (don't know if it's accurate). That's one hell of a lot of money but if you look at it in terms of the amount of money it has generated, hell, most of the goods sold in the US are shipped by truck!
Anyway, I just think we need to have some sort of serious government investment in the relevant space technology (need better term). It doesn't need to be NASA (and hopefully not only the military), but I think we need something NASA-like (of course, without the bureacracy).
Well, as for evidence, the EPA, EU, UN, and even the bush administration disagree with you on that one. The provisions for certain countries are not so damning as you might suggest. China and India do not pollute as much as the US does, for one. In addition, the costs of reducing emissions would be much greater for those nations than America. For example, according to the NRDC, the average American uses more than fifteen times more electricity in a month than the average person in China, and thirty times more than the average person in India. If you hypothetically cut the US's energy usage in half, we would still be doing pretty good. However, doing so in those other countries would be nothing short of disasterious.
Oh wait, he was WCW...
Lack of cheap energy is at the root of so many of the world's major problems, it's a wonder we're still pumping petrochemicals around. Lunar-generated solar power could be beamed to Earth via microwave and easily solve our energy shortage. We could have more power than we'd know what to do with AND begin colonizing our solar system at the same time. What could be better?
As a side note, I wonder, too, if orbitally-generated solar power couldn't solve some of our political problems here on Earth. If we could destroy the oil economy, we'd destroy most of the funding that Middle Eastern terrorist organizations depend upon.
Even as Bush prepares to attack Iraq we continue to import millions of barrels of oil from Iraq every month -- as much as they will sell us. Our oil money directly funds terrorist organizations like Al Qaida and the regimes that harbor them. Dry up the oil economy and you dry up their funding -- it's an interesting hypothesis, at any rate. In my opinion, instead of national ID cards, so-called Patriot Acts, and new cabinet-level Terror Czars, we ought to be spending our money in a much more productive way -- solving the energy problems that fund terrorism in the first place.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
I think folks who think we'll run of oil very soon are deluding themselves.
The problem with the alarmists who think we'll run out of oil are only considering the idea that the last deposits of oil will be in the Persian Gulf.
How wrong they are! Considering the following factors of the last 12 years:
1. The oilfields of the former Soviet Union are now being exploited on a very large scale by Western oil companies. There are massive oilfields in Siberia and Kazakhstan have barely been touched, not to mention we haven't even begun to exploit the Caspian Sea oilfields on a large scale.
2. China has large oilfields in Xinjiang Province that haven't been exploited due to transportation issues.
3. Afghanistan is potentially sitting on top of a big oilfield.
4. The Gulf of Mexico--according to British Petroleum engineers--have an amazingly large amount of oil yet to be exploited. The only reason why we haven't gotten more is the high expense of drilling for oil well into the Gulf of Mexico.
5. Canada has huge tracts of oil tar sands that could yield enough oil to equal all of the Persian Gulf states combined.
6. The Saudis are only concentrating their oil production on the oilfields near the Persian Gulf, not yet exploiting oilfields in other parts of the country. Tests by ARAMCO engineers have shown there are large oil deposits in the southern part of Saudi Arabia (called the Empty Quarter), but the Saudis have yet to tap these oilfields.
As for the issue of food production, the very rapid development of farm machinery, agricultural chemicals and better means to store and transport food has increased the amount and variety of food available to everyone on a scale that is mind-boggling. Think about it: compare what is available at your local food market in 1902 versus 2002, and you can eat foodstuffs today from literally all over the world.
In short, the alarmists don't know what they're talking about--a classic case of junk science.
Many European countries have declining indigenous populations, and the overall populations are only kept from declining by immigration.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This is just like the 50s when US enviros were screaming that the 1/4 mile-wide clear-cutting in the Rockies would ruin the forest forever. Thanks to their lack of forsight these 1/4 mile "fire barriors" were nowhere to be found this year. We lost far more wooded acres this year alone to forest fires than would have been clear cut in the last 52 years (and this summer is just getting started).
Then you start thinking about all the unused lumber that went up in flames that would have been cut down (usable)...which really would have saved many more acres and you just get sick.
Thanks to them I'm personally out five acres of personal land and the nice camping trailer that was on it.
I'm sure the smoke was great for the air too...yah, that reminds me. The old-lady neighbor of my parents died the day after the worst forest-fire-smoke day and complaining about breathing problems.
They're extremests and nothing more. There needs to be compromise and smart management of forests...and we've been letting these whacos (with strange ideals and no knowledge of logic, reasoning, and cause-effect) tell us how to manage our natural resources.
If we continue to listen to groups like the WWF we probably will do something stupid to make the earth expire by 2050.
I vote for common sense.
somehow i keep getting this image in my head of, 50 years from now, tina turner coming to kick my ass for fuel.
not fun, although i suppose we get to wear cool jackets.
I'm curious...do you take requests?
Or, in this case, they know more about it than the wackos who concocted the latest fad climate theory when they really know nothing about it.
The EU, UN, EPA, the Bush administration, and any number of enironmentally oriented groups (although it is to be expected, that doesn't inharently discredit their research) disagree with you. Look here for example : look at this.
The truth is that those countries are overpopulated based on their own resources and require outside assistance from countries like the US.
/.
Your view on "assistance" and "resources" is vague. The U.S. including many other nations exploit these poorer nations. The aid that these nations receive depends on the nation, but can include anything such as food, water, medicine, clothing, etc. Yet, you have to ask yourself where the U.S. and other nations get all their resources. A lot of resources these more developed nations get are from these poorer countries. Also, how many Ethiopians are driving around in vehicles, using washers, dryers, dishwashers, vacuums, electronics, etc.? How many of them are building these items, which happen to require resources? Next time, please think about the problem before posting a comment. I hate reading through all the garbage on
rzbx
Question everything.
Everyone starts running out of resources. The poorer countries get hit harder, but eventually all countries are effected, and there is rioting and marshall law everywhere. And, people from a space colony orbiting the earth have to try to save the day without being corrupted by the same power structure that threatens to destroy the earth. Anyway, it was a good read. I recommend it, though it wasn't as good as Mars.
Not sure if this is what you mean with "resources are created, not found", but one interesting way to look at things is to observe that until the explosion motor was invented, oil was mostly a slimy substance that nobody wanted on their land.
Or in other words, oil, as a resource was created a little over 100 years ago, by a human invention.
we can't keep growing forever. We are continuing to chip away at our ecosystem and eventually we will either settle into a ?no growth scenario? or push the ecosystem over the edge and all die.
The real question is will our wisdom grow fast enough to balance out our intelligence? I'm betting that it won't.
Anyway, we may have already crossed the point of no return. That's the way it will be. We will bicker about not being the ones to make a sacrifice and rationalize about how we don't really have concrete data until things start to get really bad. Then we'll pass all sorts of laws to try to reverse the situation but it will be too late.
The ecosystem will begin to collapse causing dramatic climate changes which will cause the ecosystem to collapse at an ever accelerated rate. Entire species will die, man being one of them.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
He didn't say all, and data f rom the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization disputes your claim that it's only "half at best". They estimate that a total of 790 million people in developing countries are undernourished, and that the number is declined by approximately 8 million per year. They state that a further 34 million undernourished people live in developed countries.
That's well under a billion people in all. Still alarmingly high, but nowhere near as bad as you would make it out to be.
One thing to understand is that there is no shortage of food on the planet. (The other night a friend and I were discussing this, and we looked up some numbers and determined that the current agricultural production of the U.S. alone could easily feed every person on the planet, if everyone were vegetarian; meat is pretty inefficient way to deliver calories.) It's just that the food is not always in the hands of people who need it, whether because those people are living on poor land, or they don't have the money to purchase it, or their government is corrupt... but it's not that the earth can't provide enough food to support all these people or for that matter twice as many people...
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
a) environmentalists can in fact sometimes be right
b) but being critical of them does not involve insulting their intelligence or calling them names.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Ah the expected response from a coward liberal with mod points. Anything that dosen't agree with their PC viewpoint is a flame. They are less open to views crictical of their view than Stalin and Hitler.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
I'd wager dollars to donuts that the fires in the US West are outputting more pollution than all the SUVs sold in the past 3 years.
Not a bad rant there buddy. I have one moderator point left and I would give it to you if there was a 'Cool Rant' moderation choice...
OTOH I often find that people who are true believers in natural selection figure that it doesn't apply to *them*. I tend towards that myself. But then my motto is 'Live forever, or die trying'.
Jack William Bell
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
You're still a moron Canada boy. Stop posting when you have no idea what's going on. The point is still valid that the studies can't take into account everything that's going to happen in the future. And even without genetic manipulation the USA can provide enough food for the whole world. The only reason they don't is because the government pays farm subsidies to keep prices up.
There is no way that a billion+ people are going to be transported to another planet using today's technology. Colonization will happen gradually and probably by local reproduction.
(* Experts say that seas will become emptied of fish *)
Most neurishment comes from farming anyhow, not the sea. Fish-farms are the wave of the future anyhow.
(* while forests - which absorb carbon dioxide emissions - are completely destroyed *)
Houses will then be made of bricks and iron.
BTW, I heard there was a plant that could be turned into paper, and was more productive than tree farming. What ever happened to that?
(* The study will also reveal a sharp fall in the planet's ecosystems *)
A changed planet is not necessarily an unlivable one. True, there may be some unpleasentries ahead.
(* Figures from the centre reveal that black rhino numbers have fallen from 65,000 in 1970 to around 3,100 now. *)
Humans are doomed because there are no Rhinos or Hippos? How logical. Just put fat chicks over there to replace them. Nobody will know the difference, and there are plenty of them, as the study complains.
(* The report, which will be unveiled in Geneva, warns that the wasteful lifestyles of the rich nations are mainly responsible for the exploitation and depletion of natural wealth. *)
Perhaps, but it might also contribute to increased human wealth. Imports to the US keep the world economy going. The dictactors cannot find any other way keep their citizens alive.
Contribute to the Condum Fund. Besides, why fuss about per-person consumption and not about cranking out humans at incredible rates? Bigots!
We got our population growth under control, what about you? US men discovered that they don't need to get married to get some booty. (Well, some of them at least.)
Table-ized A.I.
The earth will replenish until the plate tetonics stop, or if we pull a Venus with runaway global warming.
Mass starvation and disease will cull the herd before we get to the point of using everything up. Africa is already getting hit hard with AIDS. Add to the the destablizing effect that will have.
As a species we always used up our local resources and moved on. Looks like we are running out of places to go.
photosMy Photostream
There was a guy in the '70s named Paul Ehrlich who became quite popular making these sames claims: the Earth would be destroyed by pollution and overconsumption before the next century. Ehrlich relied on the same Malthusian theory: that a population growing at a geometric rate would outstrip its resources growing at an arithmetic rate. The thing Ehrlich (and Malthus) didn't consider was human ingenuity. Ehrlich thought we'd all be starved by now; instead we're all too fat for our own good. Sure environmental problems can be devastating and tricky to solve, but the sky is not falling. Humanity enjoys better material conditions now than ever before.
The best resource for countering doomsayers is the writings of Julian Simon. People who get a perverse pleasure from proclaiming doom hate him. A good introduction to "doomslaying" is Wired Magazine's interview with Julian Simon.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
First things first: It IS known for a fact is that many species are dying and becoming extinct. The WWF is a non-profit organisation, they are not in this to make money but to preserve the earth for future generations. They are not doing this to get more funding and if there wasn t a problem, they would not be there in the first place. Also if there were no more threat to wildlife anymore the WWF would just close and they would be happy about it. but nowadays most of the population doesn t give a Marsbar about extinction. People are not sensible enough about the global effect that we are having on the world. I once went to see a friend working at the London zoo. he showed me the last of a species of rare frogs. two weeks later that specie was extinct, they couldn t save it and even if it was a freaking frog I felt bad having witnessed its extinction. Anyway, I am not going to spend too much time on this but any of you who sincerely say that there isnt any problem with species becoming rapidly extinct in the last 50 years because of us is an idiot...period. You can use all the sarcasm you want but Endangered species are a fact and any organisation that fights to preserve diversity on the planet is good. i for one want my granchildren to be able to see a living tiger, not a picture of one in a book.
As the report points out, many species have declined precipitously over the last century or so, and if this trend continues, a lot of wildlife is headed for extinction. In addition to the rhinos, elephants, birds, and fisheries mentioned in the article, the numbers of many African primates have gone down dramatically, to the extent that some have predicted populations of chimpanzees and gorillas may be at non-viable levels within 5-15 years. (Also try a google search for "bushmeat"; another good site for more general conservation issues is conservation.org.)
Does this mean that humans are going to go extinct? I doubt it. I'm pretty sure that we could wipe out most of the wildlife on the planet and still support human life. However, I doubt that many people want to live in that world. I sure don't. The WWF could get a lot of support, probably more support, by highlighting the problem of species loss without claiming that the world will end if we don't colonize Alpha Centauri. [Although that does mean we get a space race victory.]
Sure, lots of complicated factors go into determining an individual's weight. But access to enough food is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for being fat.
In the past, not all rick people were fat, but practically no poor people were. I once saw in an early 20th-century book, "skinny" given as an antonym for "rich." In those days, a poor portson who was lazy would be in danger of starvation, not fat.
(BTW, I wish I could eat 30% less than you an weight only 30% more!)
This is the classic Liberal's delimma. The liberal screams and shouts that something is very wrong -- people open there eyes a bit and things get quite a bit better. Then the conservatives come along later and say: "Gee, the liberal was wrong, see we're ok now."
About 15 years ago I remember the "Skeptical Environmentalists" saying that the temperature of the earth won't even go up one degree by 2050. Well. It appears as if they are wrong. In some parts (the artic regions) we are anywhere from 4 to 7 degrees warmer. As I remember, it may have even been Julian who made these predictions (or who re-quoted them).
It's clear that we are seeing an acceleration in global warmth which is going to dramatically change our climate (and is doing so as we speak). What are you going to do about it? Close your eyes and say that we humans will adapt? Do you have that much faith in technology... I don't. How can you be sure it doesn't warm even faster?
I don't know about you, but I'd rather err on the "conservative" side of things and take action now rather than wait till it becomes a crisis. No?
humans are so stupid. Time and time again we'll be at the brink of famine because of overpopulation, and some genius will find a way to make life better, feed us all, etc....and then we'll reproduce until the NEXT breaking point. The cycle begins again. Stupidity.
What we need is a massive campaign to wipe out short sightedness. I suggest a reverse lottery: you go to the covenience store, stick your hand in a device that will most likely give you a dollar (or a pack of cigarettes, or a shot of heroin), but there's a one in a 500,000 chance that you will be killed on the spot.
That should help with overpopulation pretty quickly. for only $500,000 per head. But less, really, if you count the damage that the cigarettes do.
This is the question anyone will ask. Nobody cares about the world their kids will grow up in (okay, I'm not speaking for all the responsible parents on Slashdot), but really, people don't care. Their kids will, sure as shit. My kids will care. Their world will be going to shit and I and my generation will be largely responsible.
Show me how to get others of my generation to take responsibility and fix this mess. Otherwise, you're wasting my time with and OLD issue.
"These "near disasters" are so common"
Name ten.
Since they're so common it should be easy.
It turns out that all this fuss is over nothing... it seems that it was just Verisign sending out another one of those fradulent "renewal notices". You think people would have learned to read the fine print on the back, by now...
-- Terry
Actually, this is going to happen, and sooner than most people think. Points 1 and 2 in the above post are simply wrong, and point 3 may be irrelevant. First of all, fuel efficiency, although it roughly doubled since 1975, mostly because manufacturers reduced engine sizes, has been slowly but steadily decreasing in the U.S. since 1987.
As for the claim that more fuel is being found, it is simply not true. Oil discovery peaked in 1960 and has been steadily declining ever since. The current rate of consumption exceeds new discovery by a margin of 3:1 and demand is increasing at a rate between 2 and 3 percent every year. New technology does not solve this problem, at a certain point the laws of thermodynamics kick in and standard economic paradigms fail. at some point, it takes more energy to recover the oil than the oil contains. after that, there is no longer any point in trying to recover more oil.
In 1956 a geologist named M. King Hubbert published his prediction that U.S. Oil production would peak by 1970. Most people in the petroleum industry ridiculed him, but he was right. Oil production in the U.S. has been declining since 1970, Dr. Hubbert was spot-on in his predicition. Recently Dr. Hubbert's theory has been applied to estimated worldwide reserves. One study estimates that global oil production will peak by 2010. This study has also taken some heat from the establishment, but even if you accept the most wildly optimistic estimates of the people doing the ridiculing, peak oil production is only pushed 20-30 years into the future. After the peak, production declines every year, until it becomes uneconomical to produce more oil. When production peaks, demand will exceed supply permanently, a situation that will get worse every year from then on. For a good example of what happens to prices when demand for a commodity exceeds supply, check out the prices for real balsamic vinegar these days. Prices would skyrocket so quickly that the average person would no longer be able to afford to run a vehicle, not even a hybrid one.
What about alternative fuels and energy sources? What about them? they aren't being developed. politicians pay lip service to alternative energy, and cut funding. We don't need them right now, oil prices are still cheap. The killer here is that oil prices stay cheap, right up until it becomes clear that production is decreasing. after that oil prices climb. So does the price of everything else. Suddenly, the economy is too weak to support the development of other energy sources, even if we wanted to.
What about coal? there's like 1000 years worth of coal left. What about natural gas? Well, the 700 million automobiles in the world today don't run on coal or natural gas. neither do the airplanes and railroads. and neither does the equipment used to mine and transport the coal and natural gas. heh heh.
Our economy is based on oil. in a very real sense, at this point in human history oil is food. oil is everything. and it's running out. there is no good substitute for it, and we don't seem all that interested in finding one. we're all gonna die. really. it's probably too late already, so no point in worrying about it now.
Moving heavy industry off earth would make it possible to turn this planet into a garden.
An space business infrastructure means it will be possible for ordinary people to go to space, meaning there will be jobs up there for everything from network admins to fry cooks.
The US "powers that be" aren't going to move by themselves on cleaning up the environment or space colonization, given that the horizon of the CEO of a publically traded company is next quarter's financial results.
Encouraging public panic and channeling it into towards the solution that the WWF (WORLD WILDLIFE FUND!!!) apparently thinks impossible might actually work in getting some money thrown at the technological problems that mostly remain to be solved with respect to space industrialization.
Tech Public Policy stuff
except for the people in africa that are eating as little as ever and plus dying by millions of aids and molaria
In other news, the .Earth zone was found to have its $TTL set a few billion years early and will expire in 2050, leaving billions of authoritative slave servers querying the soon to be lamely-delegated master .Earth zone for a massive update of the .Earth domain. This will overrun our current DNS infrastructure. Al Gore, creator of the internet, stated that, "this is quite opportune as it will force everyone to update to LDAP, a brand new protocol I have just released."
ICANN was not available for comment citing international security and the terrorist threat.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Creation Scientists aren't scientists, their religous nuts pretending to be scientists so they can pass nonsense as fact.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
At any one time there are about two dozen active volcano's spewing 30x more CO2 into the atmosphere than all human activities combined. Perhaps we should require discharge permits before allowing volcanism.
STAMP OUT VOLCANISM. LIFE ON EARTH DEPENDS ON IT!
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Wackernagel's research which this is all based on doesn't take into consideration the rate of increase in effeciency that technology has and continues to create in production and utilization of resources.
For an in depth look, read this rebuttal at Reason Online.
I find it more than ironic that this forum misses the fact that technology is the enabling factor that makes this argument specious.
You know what's most ridiculous and illogical about these types of predictions? They assume that technology does not or can not change. And in fact, they don't even look at current technological developments. In 25 years, let alone 50, almost everyone will be driving a fuel-cell based or other non-polluting vehicle. Roofing tiles and mirror windows will be commonly made of ultra-cheap photovoltaic cells, supplying 30% or more household energy needs. Photonic computers will be so small that they'll require only miniscule amounts of resources to produce and negligible energy to run. More people than ever will work at home thanks to massive telecommunications advancements, 3D immersion technologies, etc. Paper will be nearly forgotten. Materials research will have replaced most of todays use of wood and steel with a diverse assortment composite and organic plastics. Advances in agricultural science, such as hydroponics, combined with a growing desire for organic foods will multiply the efficiency of production by at least an order of magnitude. At long last (mostly due to computer modelling), we will figure out human dietary science once and for all, quickly transforming the American diet into one with lower intake, greater nutrition, and paradoxically greater enjoyment. The same advances will carry over to properly feeding nearly all of the world, albeit with less emphasis on taste. Who says the world's gonna end in 50 years because of resource shortage? Not I. Although there are other issues that may render the same effect. See Revelation for vague details. (-:
I will list what I know of population dynamics, in order to show you my point of view.
Even if a 50-year limit seems like an alarmist position, many conservative scientists agree that 100 years looks like the maximum timeframe. Change must happen quickly for us to save a habitat that humanity can live in.
Some possible research materials for you:
http://www.ku.edu/~hazards/foodpop.pdf
1 02 6074943.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/10/01
http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Science/
---
Jt
crulx@iaxs.net
We're sweet. The expiry date on the bottom of the packet says July 3050 - heaps of time! Best before date says September 1550 though - bit worrying.
See, the problem with using "modern farming methods" is that they end up causing an upward cycle of utilization. It gets to a point that you end up spending more to produce than you are getting back. That is why so many independant farmers are going out of business these days. They can't afford the increased cost of having to put a little more fertilizer on each year, and having to upgrade to the latest farm tractor, etc etc. Not only that, but it ends up burning the land out, causing massive erosion and other problems, causing less and less production.
I don't buy into the WWF's doomsday warning, but I do think that we shouldn't just ignore all environmentalist reasoning. We ARE causing damage to the earth. Can we stop the impact? Not unless we cease to exist. But if we can do our best to highten the quality of life for every living thing on earth, why not? It pisses me off that people have to be one extreme or another.. neither helps us in the long run.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
The fat part is genetics and laziness more than eating a lot.
While it's true that genetics and physical activity have a lot to do with body weight, bear in mind that in order to build that much body, you need food to build it out of.
The very fact that we have poor people who can be idle and still get enough food to build a large body with says a lot in my opinion.
Mark my words, the Left won't be satisified until there's mobs of 'Green Guards' (ala Mao's Red Guards) roaming the streets, dragging SUV owners out of their cars, and beating them to death. I wish I was kidding.
I agree, the population must be thinned. Let the Funny, and the Informative live! Kill the Trolls and Flamers!
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
I'm building a biodome and arming it with heavy weapons. Screw the poor countries.
- money_shot
Judging by the fact that most americans are overweight these days, I'm not so sceptical about these numbers ;-)
And where do you think the US's tradedeficit originates from? The US imports much more than it exports, so why not food? Even so, 3,5 times the area of the US itself is a bit overdone.
Supplies!
On a similar note - seen that onion.com article "M$ copyrights ones, zeroes"?. Fscking hilarious
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
Yah, the 'out of food' thing was a big joke-- take the U.S. government for example. I saw a story recently on CNN.com (can't find the URL, but hopefully someone else can find a story based on it, it was pry an AP story) talking about how the government is buying surplus food from farmers in order to artificially inflate the prices. The government has SO much stockpiled that it was said that it could feed the entire U.S. for a rather lengthy period of time.
All that, and we're supposedly running OUT of food?
Now I'm not one to totally ignore their statement, because in all honesty we as a people SHOULD try to tone back our consumption of natural resources, and specifically, tone back our destruction of natural forests and other growth areas. As for finding inhabitable planets, this should be our goal anyways, if not finding Earth-like planets to colonize, finding ways to colonize planets such as Mars. (In another hundred years, this stuff probably won't be the thing of movies, but real-life-- eg: cnnmars.com, for example.)
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
The problem is that these things grow (or slow down) at an exponential rate, so a LOT can happen in 50 years. Just look at what the Internet has grown into in just the last 10!
So while they may have been saying that for the last 100 years, the fact that it can happen in the next 50-100 years is VERY real (provided the exponential growth rate continues).
Now, hopefully prices for stuff will increase, which will cut down consumerism, starve some unproductive countries, and establish some sort of balance.
The horrific thing is chaos, which makes it kind of hard to predict what may happen. We may never achieve this 'balance' and may simply run ourselves 'dry', at which point most of the world will be destroyed in a global war for resources (or something like A.I. [movie] version of events - without the aliens of course).
From a more pragmatic perspective, nobody knows how the climate works, and they will NEVER know! The earth could enter an ice age in the next 50 years, without us intervening or not. I think the issue these scientists (form the article) are pointing out is that we've destabilized the balance in the ecosystem, which is probably a bad thing (but nobody really knows if that destabilization may actually save us from something even more horrific).
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
--snip--the average American uses more than fifteen times more electricity in a month than the average person in China, and thirty times more than the average person in India. I
Of course the average american uses more electricity. The average American has hot running water, owns a automobile, a computer, a TV, and lives in a sturdy house. The average Chinese or Indian has no plumbing, never seen a telephone or TV, let alone a computer, and lives in a house that cannot with stand a magnitude 4 earth quake.
Should the American public go back to the stone age? That would make Chomsky happy.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
You're forgetting that with cheaper fuel efficiency, people will also drive more. Probably not so much as to completely eliminate the benefits of the fuel efficiency on oil reserves, but certainly quite a lot. Also, people who couldn't afford to own cars at all will buy them.
Not only that, the U.S. government has been buying food to inflate prices since the 1920s! Also, for some crops they just plai make it illegal to grow more than your quota, and you have to destroy any excess. Western European governments do the same sort of thing, too.
We could feed the entire world, easily if it weren't for political problems. And that's on both sides -- a lot of African countries with starving populations ban food imports!
Did someone forget to pay the upgrade? I just hope the company does not cease support for earth.
This sig is a true statement, but I cannot prove it.
Most people with objections to the article seem to be doing so on the basis that people have made similar predictions previously that didn't actually come true.They go on to assert that the WWF is just coming up with junk science to prove its hysterical points. While that may have been true in the past, it's not now. Population biologists agree with the central premise of the article. They describe the current trend as the "6th great extinction"(E.O. Wilson and National Geographic have both written on the subject). So it's not junk science by any means. Also, addressing the argument that the humanity will be self-correcting. Population biologists disagree. They argue that we're nearing a point of no return, a time at which the damage to the ecosystem becomes a self-perpetuating downward spiral, the death of a few species will cause the rest of the ecosystem to fall apart(the biological version of a deflationary spiral in economic terms). The UN FWIW agrees with the WWF.
who cares?!?!?! i am by no means a damned hippie, but this is the way things work in the natural world. species die out every day, some through our "work", some from their own. why should we be any different?
deal with it!
"Asshole" is what the loosers call the winner who figured out how the game works before they did.
So by your definition, yes, assholes win the world.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
OOOOOOOOHHH, you really cut him to the quick didn't you?
Jesus, get a life. Because he showed some ingenuity and problem solving skills you think he's some kind of monster. Where, in your small little mind, do you get to judge him by the actions taken in a high school class of all places. Maybe he saw the futility of the exercise and decided to play the ame better than everybody else. This automatically makes him a bad person? Grow up and perform some self-examination before cutting on people for actually engaging their brain.
"It's hard to be a man when there's a gun in your hand"
Just predict that in five years there will be everywhere enough food for everyone, and since food grows faster than predicted, there will be more than enough food for everyone in five years. Now we only have to predict the same for all time, and famine is a thing of the past. Hooray!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
What I find alarming is the attitude of a lot of people posting here, something to the effect of "Yadda yadda, heard it before. Didn't happen then, won't happen now!". I don't think the Earth will die by 2050, but don't people realize that WWF are trying to raise consciousness here? They are trying to get people to think. Apparently that didn't work with the majority of posting slashdotters (who seem to think the acronym is funny). It's clearly not John Doe's credit that some people take alerts like this seriously and actually do something about it. We live in a generation where kids eat beef, but cry when they see a cow getting slaughtered. People need to be educated about how things work and how to live more efficiently. I'd suggest reading a bit about the projects on journeytoforever.org for a different view.
Or, we could try to decrease our numbers.
May we live long and die out
Some famine is political in nature, but the much of the problem comes from areas that are simple overpopulated and have insufficent infastructure to support relief efforts. Frequently both factors are combined and you have areas with no food, no roads, and a government hostile to foreign aid.
The point is that the Earth can support these people. In the past, they just moved to better pastures. Look at a current example in Zimbabwe, which is currently in the middle of a drought, and there is widespread famine.
But neighboring, poorer Zambia is doing okay under the same drought. The only difference is a government that ruined the means of food production and distribution.
Listen, the question if the world is going to go bust in 2050 or not is not very important. That's the future. The important thing now is to treat the earth as the valuable thing it is; the most valuable on earth for each human isn't on earth, it's the earth itself.
If you had this really nice new computer, and you knew you could overclock it to make it even nicer, although that overclocking would reduce the lifetime of the computer so much that you wouldn't have the money to buy a new one before this one runs out, would you do it?
I know I wouldn't, and I think the same thing goes for the earth, and that all we westerner should be very aware that we should be the leaders in reducing pollution, because in the coming years the pollution from developing countries will increase manifold, and they don't have the money nor the interest yet to do something about it. Reduce your energy and material consumption!
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Dude, everything you say here just strenghtens their point, and I think it's pretty arrogant of you to assume they haven't taken into account your objections to their method. They calculate in the one resources that doesn't replenish itself and is constant: land area. Pretty smart huh?
And until we find a reasonable way to colonize planets, this will be a constant.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Except, here we are in 2002 and those 6 or 7 billion people are eating better than any of their ancestors in all of human history, even in the poorest countries.
This is bullshit! People are starving in Africa every day. Did you know that on September 11 2001, 38000 babies died of hunger in Africa! There is a big problem, and ignoring it like you would like to, will not make it go away.
Oil production in the US peaked in the 1970s, as predicted by the people (not WWF) who predict that global oil production will peak real soon now. Prices will increase. This will be more noticeable in the US than in the EU since fuel taxes in the US are so low, which means the price is more volitile in percentage terms.
Yeah, and the fact that a number of these countries ban food imports doesn't exactly help. In any case, AIDS is going to make things a lot different over there in a few years.
Near disaster? Tell you what, you tell me what's better: an estimated 2 deaths, none direct, through the entire history of nuclear energy, or hundreds and hundreds of thousands from coal--real safe there, chief--from massive toxic smog and fires.
Of course the trucks they use for tourists travelling cairo...capetown are quite meaty, when I've seen them at shows (lots of ground clearance, sleeps 20 people).
You're thinking of Los Angeles.
Then came the black choppers and Dustin Hoffman was chasing a monkey.
Good movie...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or perhaps we should take realistic measures, such as cutting human caused CO2 levels (which does make up a significant proportion of atmospheric levels, and also does have a significant effect on the enviroment)?
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
"Using the image of the need for mankind to colonise space as a stark illustration of the problems facing Earth, the report warns that either consumption rates are dramatically and rapidly lowered or the planet will no longer be able to sustain its growing population."
No Pun intended! (Think of the Ben Elton Book)
There is no place to go. If we can't live sustainably on earth, how could we colonize another planet, a place where the slightest mistake or waste means instant death? We either make it here on earth or we don't make it at all.
And don;t start with the " is a distribution problem, not production" lame excuse.
The reality is that people are starving or going hungry every day, it is of no use to tell the hungry that we are producing enough food but we can deliver it where is needed (as the Afghanistan campaign showed it, where ther is a will to get things done, things get done).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We can only blame ourselves, using planets whose licenses expire after some time. We should all be building an open source alternative to Earth, named for example FreeEarth or OpenEarth. Sure, if we have to move in less that fifty years, FreeEarth may still be unstable then, but I can stand the sky falling down once a week, if the planet if truly free. Also, I know that if the planet suddenly blows up, the maintainers will be hard at work to fix the bug that caused it. I mean, has God offered any bugfixes for Earth? We'd all be much better off.
Oil and gas fields are finite, idiot. One day they will be empty. Moron.
The methods of exploration have become very sophisticated, but that was necessary because little by little it is more difficult to find oil.
Even countries like the Gulf States are beginning to worry about what are they going to do when the oil dries out. Not to plan for that certainity (it is not a matter of if but when) is most cavalier and irresponsible.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Perhaps what is confusing you is the way in which those consequences play out. People who can't feed themselves where they live don't just quietly die, they move around, they burn down rain forest, they overgraze their land, they settle in mosquito-infested areas, they fight wars, they become economic refugees, etc.
The consequences for the planet have been devastating. Foremost, the number of species going extinct is unprecedented in earth's history. We are consuming resources far in excess of sustainable levels. And human activities have already had profound influences on weather and the environment, and this will only get worse.
As long as the West has a strong military and know-how, we will be able to continue to live comfortably. Deterioration of our environment happens slowly enough that we don't really notice it day-to-day and don't really miss much. Global warming won't kill you or me, although it may start making life uncomfortable in half a century. We're well separated from the starving and sick masses of the third world. Well, at least it's a fairly comfortable way to go to hell.
What do we do once all tha oil is gone?
Which much of what you said is BS anyway, but would be nice to hear your solution...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The UN performs thorough studies regarding the state of the environment. They recently released a new report. (The link goes to the press release, with a link to the full report at the top) It's really something you have to read to realise how much we've screwed up the planet. Some quotes:
"Twelve per cent or 1 183 of birds and nearly a quarter or 1 130 mammals are currently regarded as globally threatened."
"Just under a third of the world's fish stocks are now ranked as depleted, overexploited or recovering as a result of over-fishing fueled by subsidies estimated at up to US$20 billion annually."
"The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that forests, which cover around a third of the Earth's land surface or 3 866 million ha, have declined by 2.4 per cent since 1990."
Not all news in there is bad. In fact, a lot of it is good. But it should be better, a lot better.
Anyway, I strongly suggest reading the full report. It's very educational.
They all predict we will run out sometime.
And as for:
"The world as we know it will likely be ruined before the year 2000
and the reason for this will be its inhabitants' failure to comprehend
two facts. These facts are (1) World food production cannot keep pace
with the galloping growth of population. (2) 'Family planning' cannot
and will not, in the foreseeable future, check this runaway growth."
I think we live in a prity fucked up world, look at the spread of AIDS and the lack of family planing. It may seem fine to some people who've been brain wased and have a different set of rose tinted glasses for each day, but the the rest of the world it's all fucked up and getting worse.
Don't forget that the average American has an IQ of 100.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Geologists are near unanimous that oil is produced from the decomposition of plant remains (only Thomas Gold seems to hold out for an abiotic source, but his 'evidence' is lacking). We understand how these remains are converted into oil by heat and pressure. There is a minimum depth to which sediments must be buried before the oil generation process starts. We also understand that there is a maximum depth after which oil molecules are thermally cracked into natural gas. This 'oil window' allows us to demarcate areas of the planet where oil could have formed.
We understand traps that hold oil. The planet has now been pretty much entirely surveyed for such structures. There are very few provinces where undiscovered oil is likely to exist in quantity - the Central Asia, Middle East and South China Sea are the most likely regions for more discoveries.
We have mathematical models showing the distribution of sizes of oil fields. Put bluntly, the big ones are in the Middle East and there is next to no chance of finding large new fields in the US and Europe. We can predict the size and distribution of new fields with some accuracy.
Therefore we can start to draw up models of oil reserves for the entire planet. Indeed this has already been done by geologists, starting with Doctor M King Hubbert, whose 1956 model predicted US oil production would peak in the early 1970s (it peaked in 1970). His model has also been used to predict production in Europe and global production. In each case the model seems to hold.
Hubbert predicted global oil production would peak in the 2000 to 2010 range. Most geologists now concur with this figure - but some are arguing that the World reserves have been grossly inflated by countries trying to maximise production quotas, (some estimates put the inflation of reserves at 180 billion barrels - about twice the reserves of Kuwait) and production may peak in the 2003 - 2004 time frame.
If the Hubbert model is correct, then we are in a nasty situation, even grossly increasing the amount of oil in recoverable reserves, say by 500 billion barrels (that's more than twice the reserves in Saudi Arabia), only defers maximum production by ten years. And there is no belief that these sort of reserves exist.
On to your other points. We are using more fuel each year. Whilst an engine of a given size is becoming more efficient, more people are driving cars, more of them are driving cars more frequently and more vehicles are being built that have larger engines consuming more fuel. World fuel demand is rising. And the fastest growing section of demand is air travel which uses prodigious amounts of (untaxed) fuel.
Hybrids are a good idea, but they require liquid fuels. Oil is the best fuel - it is incredibly energy dense and convenient. Alcohol is less energy dense (and may not make economic sense when you factor in the energy costs of production) and the alternative fuels are environmental disasters. Oil shale and oil sands need huge amounts of energy to become usable, consume vast amounts of water in the process and pump incredible amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
We will have to get really radical. But first, the problem is that the developed economies are being forced to import more of their oil from the Middle East. It is the single largest reserve in the World and will become increasingly important as the Alaskan, Texan, Mexican and North Sea fields run down. In a few years the UK will become an oil importer once again (with god knows what consequences for our already horrendous trade deficit); imported oil is already the US's single largest bill and will continue to rise no matter what happens in the Alaskan National Reserve. China is demanding more oil imports as is India, and we all know what happens when things start to get scarce...
Best wishes,
Mike.
I suggest you read E. O. Wilson's book "The Future of Life". Wilson is one of the top biologists in the world.
As for your points, we are clearly not running out of oil, and Americans are at no risk of starving. What we are running out of is habitats and species. 10 billion people may be able to eke out a living on earth, but it won't be much of a life, and it won't be much of an earth either. And at some point, growth has to stop anyway--why not now?
I had a 91 Escort that was the best car I ever drove in the snow. I used pick my Jeep Grand Cherokee friends when the got stuck in the snow all the time. Back when we used to have Winter in NY.
I even wrote this song about Snowpig:
SNOW PIG
W&M LM
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED POUNDS OF FURY AND STEEL
SPEED IS LIFE AND DEATH'S BEHIND THE WHEEL
INCHES OR FEET IT GETS ME WHERE I'M GOING
YOU JUST LET IT SQUEAL WHEN IT STARTS SNOWING
SNOW
PIG
SNOW
PIG
NINETY ONE HORSES FROM MY ONE POINT NINE
EATS FOUR WHEEL DRIVES AS THEY SLIP AND SLIDE
YOU SEE MOUNTAINS OF SNOW BUT I SEE HILLS
THIS IS THE MEANEST ESCORT FORD EVER BUILT
CHORUS
SOLO
STARTS EVERY MORINING NO SNOW CAN STOP IT
EVERY DENT AND DING IS A BADGE OF COURAGE
FIVE ON THE FLOOR AND SO DAMN GUTSY
MY FRIENDS CALL FOR RIDES WHEN THEIR CAR IS BUSTED
CHORUS
This
In places like Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand people regularly have to use masks that allow them to breathe, specially during the burning of fields in Indonesia (look for "haze" and the name of each country).
In places like Chile and Argentina people have to use UV blockers regularly to avoid skin cancer thanks to the destruction of the ozone layer.
So I think the fake is you.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
...using all that non existen petrol....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yep. You hit it right on the head, you summed up our culture perfectly. Makes me sick to my stomach. This is the exact opposite type of behavior that a super power should have.
Everwhere in this discussion I see this sort of attitude: (a) I've got the money and therefore I am right. If I wern't right, I wouldn't have the money, now would I? (b) Everyone is cooked, if I'm not I'll get screwed; ooh, look at that poor idiot with ethics (c) I can do what ever I want with the world beacuse its mine, if you think that I'm hurting it, prove it; it's not my responsibility to prove that I'm not going bad (d) I got all of the statistics and research to back what I say, never mind that the scientists making the reports were paid very well for their opinion (e) everything is opinion, there isn't a right or wrong, everything is relative (f) well, we are animals afterall... what do you expect?
Good lord.
Most of the "western world" is too fat for its own good. That certainly doesn't apply to the majority of humanity, who are just as important as you and your world.
Why is this being posted as science when it's actually science fiction? Anyone who's really in that part of the science business knows that it would take a minimum of 100 years before we could leave earth for new in any signifigant numbers. Even then those numbers wouldn't be large enough to make an impact......
If you believe that enviromentalist wacko crap.
No, here again we see "enviromentalists" pulling at peoples emotions. If they were really concerned about the enviroment they would use some actual science and come up with some real answers.
Sorry but camping in trees, jumping nude in front of logging trucks, or posting sci-fi stories on the internet doesn't make anyone appear knowlegable. It certainly doesn't do anything towards presenting a solution to whatever you think the problem is.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
> Should the American public go back to the stone age?
/ car/ ch6.pdf
the article says:
America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha. In Ethiopia the figure is 2ha, falling to just half a hectare for Burundi, the country that consumes least resources.
The UK does have hot running water, automobiles, computers, TVs and sturdy houses _and_ it is also an industrialised nation..
Germany also does quite well if these figures are to be believed..
So does the EU want to 'cripple' the US so it can 'catch up'? (see discussion above)
I find the US patriotism in these discussions
a bit scary - does any criticism of the US have to be dismissed as an 'Unamerican' threat?
what does the US EPA think?
US Climate Action Report 2002 - chapter 6:
http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications
"Based on studies to date, unless there is inadequate or poorly distributed precipitation, the net effects of climate change on the agricultural segment of the U.S. economy over the 21st century are generally projected to be positive"
I live in Australia which is following the US lead not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and is also up there with the US in the per capita greenhouse emissions.. & I don't interpret environmental concern as an "attack" on my country.
Seems that prophets of all kinds are prone to getting ahead of themselves, aren't we sposed to be on Mars now?
Doesnt mean it wont happen though does it?
What is it about you rabid anti-environmentalists? Are you a Troll or mindless Fool ? I'm going to assuming the latter even though I strongly suspect assume the former.
You choose to believe the obvious propaganda of entities that clearly a vested interest and seek to belittle these FACTS of global climate change and environmental damage.
Yet simply ignore the counter or impartial evidence, (http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Issues/E
I constantly wonder how somebody could be quite so greedy and short sighted, to ignore the evidence of massive damage to the environment and ecosystem, from the most trustworthy sources in the world, Science, EPA's, Governments, NGO's, etc.
It should be a simple matter of the application of Occams Razor, 'who is more likely to be telling the truth' the vested interests of global Polluters like Monsanta, Exon, Shell, or the UK Metrological Office (http://www.met-office.gov.uk/corporate/annualrep
I cannot help drawing a parallel with the the myopic mindless creationists, they too unable to see what is plain to everybody who has a brain.
Perhaps you might be able to understand this
'Global warming for 12-16yo' by DEFRA, the UK Governments Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechan
'The problem with Lomborg's conclusion is that the scientists themselves disavow it.'
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F
For more info, see The Ultimate Resource [juliansimon.org] by Julian Simon [juliansimon.org], and The Skeptical Environmentalist [cambridge.org] by Bjorn Lomborg [lomborg.com].
Frankly I'm much more inclinded to believe this list of Research/Studies from Oxford University. Than some lacky for the Petro-Chemical industry. Simple application of Occams Razor
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/
"This trial version of Earth 1.0 will expire in 50 years. Click OK to continue, click Order to go to the order webpage or click Register to enter your registration code."
Yep, someone has to make a crack or a keygen.
Christ on a bike. I understand your main point, but your details are pretty inaccurate. Antibiotic resistance is a very large and very rapidly growing problem across the world and is killing many people every day. While necrotising fasciitis (flesh-eating disease) is unlikely to kill you, HIV is reducing life expectancy across Africa to rates not seen since the 19th century, and Strep A (which is the cause of flesh-eating disease) is a huge killer, responsible for scarlet fever and rheumatic fever. Less than a hundred years ago, influenza killed between 20 and 40m people, more than had died in the first world war. Microbes thrive in a huge range of circumstances and are opportunistic, exploiting change wherever possible. Infectious disease remains the world's number one killer and will do so for the foreseeable future. While improvements in technology, both low (eg sanitation) and high (eg sterile conditions in hospital theatres) will help, other changes will lead to the increased spread of disease (travel and urbanisation are particularly important) and it is important to remember that we are engaged in an evolutionary arms race with bugs--i.e., fighting disease is a continuing process, not a one-off that you can "win".
Disrupting the economy because himans MIGHT be affecting the natural cycle.
When I was young, my grandfather told me to always return something that I borrow in better condition than I found it. During each human's life time we borrow the land and our environment for a short period of time. If we are going to modify the envionment (in many many ways) we should always be asking if our changes are reversable and at what cost so that when that human's life is over, the resources he/she borrowed can be returned so that another human can use them.
We know that polluting the land (while ecnomically advantageous) runs counter to this general idea. Putting alot of carbon dioxide in the air may very well also be problematic. In short, if we are changing the environment we need to look carefully at what we do.
Claiming that I have to prove that your changes are going to cause harm is just bunk. You should have to prove to the community that your change is harmless. You have it exactly backwards. You are putting a short-term economy ahead of long-term environment that our children, grand children, great-great-great grand children will have to deal with.
If we continue to act irresponsibility then the burden will fall on our children... oh well, at least we won't be around to suffer. Or will we?
Do you know that 1 volcanic eruption emits more "greenhouse gases" than the entire earth's population has produced in the past 30 years?
That's interesting...honestly. I've never heard that before. Can anyone back this up or show me a repuatble source for this info?
I for one, believe that the Earth can survive anything we do to it. But I think we should start taking responsibilty for what we have been doing to the environment...if not for the Earth, then for our own health and well-being.
"I strongly urge both the faint of heart and the faint of butt to leave the room at this time."
- Strong Bad
Oh, man, this is getting to be too much. Seems like the earth comes to an end every twenty years or so.
Hey, somebody explain something to me... why is it that an SUV is a threat to the planet, but the same vehicle with different bodywork is just fine when it's called a pickup truck or minivan? Why is a housewife who drives her SUV around town for 5000 miles a year more of a threat than the guy who drives his Civic 30,000 miles/year? Why are movie stars who fly halfway around the world for a weekend getaway exempt from criticism?
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL your 2 funi I laf at ur joke!
Well sorry for being Finnish and using a ',' as the decimal point.
Okay, let me try this one more time for all you Americans: When scientists take random data, they sometimes get more accurate values for sqrt(2) than 1.414.
Did you get it now?
Everyone, quick, run for your lives, the enviornmentalists who've been predicting the end of the world for the past 60 years are right!
Oh... wait... they're not, nevermind.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Save the Planet, Kill Yourself!
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
Though surely the Rock can save us from the Undertaker's evil plan...
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
COINCIDENCE DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSALITY
Assuming that just because humans are doing things implies that the results of those things are the primary cause of climate change is alarmist thinking. We are here, therefore we are the cause is sloppy thinking. It comes from humans arrogantly assuming that they are the center of the universe and therefore are the cause of everything.
Similarly, the thinking behind Kyoto appears to be:
Where is the proof?
Now, I am not advocating open season on resource consuption -- minimizing our impact on the environment is just good thinking (and therefore will never happen in north america), while minimizing our polution levels reduces ugly things like smog.
But claiming that rising sea levels are a cause for alarm ignores the fact that sea levels are already three hundred feet above where they were fifteen thousand years ago. I bet if some of these nuts were around then, they would be running around claiming that maybe this "fire" thing was having a greater impact on the environment than could be controlled!
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
One additional fact I forgot to mention: the 1918 'flu pandemic saw the infection of one fifth of the entire world. It was bigger than any previous pandemic, and the trend remains in upwards, not downwards direction.
Facts about this article that are hard to ignore:
1. Most of all of the industrialization of the planet has happened during the past 70 years or so. Look at how much pollution, desicration of land, and global warming has happened during that period of time!
2. 50 years may seem like too short of a period of time - but again - look at all that has happened in the past 50 years!
3. Not all ameriacans are fat, lazy slobs - some of us actually DO care about the planet - don't chastise ALL of us.
4. Do YOUR part! WRITE your congressman to stop accepting money from big buisness. STOP DRIVING AMERICAN AUTOMOBILES - The big three detroit auto manufacturers REFUSE to play catch up to import auto makers. The fact of the matter is, the technology to create a more environmentally friendly auto exists TODAY - not 10 years from now as THEY would WANT you to believe.
It can still be stopped! But it requires the help of everyone - next time you decide u want that SUV - THINK! Or better yet, next time u decide to eat at a fast food restaurant - remember where the food comes from (such as McDonalds) - farmers who have savaged the land from the rainforest for their damn cattle - all because of our insatible appetites for "quarter pounder's with cheese" for christ's sake.....
I think every five or so years some pinhead comes out and declares the end of civilization in x number of years. Total crap. I remember reading a paper in like 1980 that predicted that we only had about 8 years of oil left.
The actual emissions put out per second might be lower. But that doesn't change the fact that the vehicle uses a LOT more gas to go the same distance, which means that it is indirectly causing more pollution, as it requires more crude to be refined into gasoline.
...than beatup old cars with horrible emission-control systems. my old car, a 1988 Subaru GL, had at least three holes in the exhaust /before/ the catalytic converter, the thing spewed black smoke every time i ran it. i'll bet a year's earnings that the crap that came out of that 2.0-L engine was MUCH worse than what comes out of the tailpipe of a brand-new Ford Excursion with fresh, working dual cats and a much more advanced engine management system. THINK before you speak...he did say "more than five years old"...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Secondly, you are not a very smart American. It takes a *special* kind of person to believe that just because a date is wrong something catastrophic is going to happen.
No matter what the Slashdot front page says... No matter what the people with vested interests in panic said, Y2K was not a problem at all... Only the USA spent great gobs of money on upgrading systems. The rest of the world didn't do a damn thing about it until afterwards, and the rest of the world has not had any serious problems.
No Russian nukes automatically launching, no pacemakers shutting down, no toasters attacking people... NOTHING. NOTHING HAPPENED, NOTHING WAS AVOIDED.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Damn, I was waiting until 2063 to see if Odyssey 3 would in fact come true. Now I will never know.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Wood ash and smoke are different kinds of pollution, and typically stay airborn for a far shorter period of time than the chemicals that make up "smog"
But that's not the point.
He was talking about oil consumption, not air pollution, and the fires in the US West aren't consuming (much) oil.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
And my grade? I got a D. Why? Because, in the words of the teacher, "I wasn't being cooperative and participating in a constructive manner.."
You should have gotten at least a B. Maybe not an "A" as ethics is a part of what any polisci education should include, even if our country has degenerated to the point where they are seldom, if ever, apparent (with economic results like Enron et. al. to show for it).
Why would I give you a B, and perhaps an A? Because you probably single handedly not only provided the rest of the class with a solid, realistic lesson in what politics in America has become, you also probably disillusioned most of that class and insured they would never consider a career in politics.
20-30 less potential politicians in the world...that alone would earn you an "A" in my gradebook.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I've said this before: Everyone on earth could live in nice single-family houses on quarter-acre lots in a subdivision-style neighborhood a little bit bigger than Texas.
People starving in Africa are doing so for political reasons, not ecologic.
Back in the 50s they predicted that massive planetary starvation would begin in the 70s. In the 70s it was predicted that starvation would begin by 2000. The last time I checked, the government is still paying some farmers not to produce to keep the overproduction of food at a minimum.
Both my father & father in-law are farmers and trust me, the US products much more food than it needs despite the fact that there are fewer and fewer acres being farmed. Advances in pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer, & seed genetics are very impressive. For example, there are soybeans now which are resistant to Round-Up. Round-Up will kill a tree if you spray enough on it. This allows for better weed control which allows for better yields. They are also chainging the way they farm. No-till drilling & other method changes are becomming the norm now. There is much less soil erosion & farmers seem to be much more conscious about crop rotation to preserve the quality of the soil which also increases yields. The funny thing is that farmers are in a catch-22 situation. They produce so much that their product isn't worth much. To make a living they need to increase yields so they have more of an income. When they increase more they produce more of a surpluss which drives the prices further down, increasing the need for more bigger yeids to make a profit.
As for the forests, most people don't realize that there are more trees in the US than there were 100 years ago. The reason for that is urban areas around cities. Before the 'burbs most of that land was farm land. The first thing the farmers did was cut down the trees because it is difficult to plant in a forset. When a new house is built in the 'burbs, the first thing they do is plant trees.
I don't think that better fuel economy & preservation is bad, but let's look at the whole picture before we sound like chicken little. I'd also be highly sceptical of any group like the World Wildlife Fund. Groups like this are no different than any business sponsored research. They survive by private funding, so the best way to increase your funding is to shout alarming reports and gain attention.
Most people disregard studies that Windows is better than Linux if they are sponsored by MicroSoft. Why should we treat this any different?
Everyone *knows* that SUVs are horribly inefficient and expensive to run. Everyone knows that a fancy home theater set-up eats more power than a plain ol' TV. Everyone knows that all of the packaging in a McDonald's meal cannot be recycled (the wrappers, the plastic cup lids and straws, the Happy Meal toys, the wax-coated cups). Everyone knows that old computers and video cards end up in the landfill, but that doesn't stop Slashdotters from upgrading annuallly.
So I don't know what the points of stories like this are. It's not like you're going to get people to do things that really matter if you can't even get them to stop doing the obviously bad things.
Oh, that's what it's called in english! Yes, you're right.
i have to wonder about population growth in general. we all know that the larger things get, the harder they are to handle. for instance, roads. do we have enough roads? yes. are the roads tough to drive on in rush hour? yes. can roads handle MORE people? yes.
.... no. it would suck.
would that be GOOD?
i don't see a big problem with the way the earth changes; i believe people think they have a larger effect on their environment than we really do. however, when it comes to how people affect other people and the society we make for ourselves, i see a large problem - too many people make SOCIETIES crummy to live in. that's something to wonder about.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
Why is it that the suggested fix is always to bring down the 'haves' instead of finding ways to help the 'have nots' become 'haves'. The 'solution' is always to put an end to businesses and increase government interference. The ultimate result being communism.
More proof this is a crackpot report: Man is much more likely to colonize the seas (you know, the remaining 75% of Earth) than the planets within 50 years. My guess is either NASA or the Communist Party USA sponsered this one....
Note his figures on depopulating Earth via space migration and the market for depopulation. If you don't have a market for depopulation you won't get it to happen short of massive die-offs.
It is wrong to argue that Earth will continue to have sufficient resources for the population for the foreseeable future because people have been prematurely predicting resource crises for centuries.
The correct argument is over proper measurement of the probability that critical resources will become unavailable within a given time period multiplied by the down-side of such a loss. This number tells us something about the degree of present investment that may be wise to make as an insurance policy on the chance that something does limit technological civilization's viability.
Seastead this.
I find it hard to believe that because African elephant numbers halfed over a 20 year period means that we are all doomed in another 50. Not to say we don't need to be concerned, I just don't think we need to put half the population of the planet on rockets just yet.
The earth isn't going to go anywhere (to die), WE are.
The earth will not "expire", though many invaluable species will die, invaluable habit will be destroyed, and so forth. What WILL happen is the human population will crash in a very ugly way. The 3rd World would be less affected by a collapse as they are already close to rock bottom. It is the developed nations, with the US at the pinnacle, that are going to have a very nasty crash.
It is unacceptable to waste/consume/waste resources at the rate we in the US do and it will lead to irreparable harm on the overall world ecosystem BUT the ultimate, and much deserved, outcome will be collapse of human "civilization". The human population will drop precipitously (maybe not by 2050 but it is absolute certainty that without substantially change in practices it WILL happen in the not distant future), below preindustrial levels, because the environmental damage and depletion will support much less and it will take a long time for earth to recover...perhaps longer than the human species lifetime because evolution will act to reproduce a new biodiversity without regards to what is best for us. Empty niches, depleted and descimated by human overconsumption and greed, will be filled - that is what evolution and life does, it fills available niches. It will take a long time and I believe that humans will not recover to anything remotely like today's tech levels before it all comes to a end (there are two articles out there - can't presently find the refs - dealing with the "useful" lifetime of earth. One gives life 1 billion more years before the oceans are fully subsumed into the earth's mantle based on the current rate of ocean water loss due to subduction. Complex life like horses and dogs and humans will be dead LONG before the last oceanic water is lost to the mantle. Another study gives the earth 2 billion years tops based on the changing sun - it gets hotter and hotter all the time and LONG before it goes Red Giant stage, the earth will be rendered dead).
This may be why we detect no radio signals from advanced tech alien lifeforms in the galaxy. By the time they are approaching the means to be able to do this, they have totally screwed up their own nest (like us) and drive themselves into ignomie instead.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
well said.
an old game called Hamurabi that used to be installed on Prime [what used to be called mini-]computers. Any Slashdotters old enough to remember those boxen?.
Yes, but other countries are shrinking. And as countries become more developed there fertility will decrease.
Spencer Ogden
You forgot to mention the fact that "modern" farm practice does more harm than good. Heavy fertilizer utilization pollutes water. You also heavily deplete the soil you are using such that you have to use more and more fertilzer as time goes on. You also left out that pesticide means increased toxins for you to consume and for the environment to absorb. Then, there is the ever present evolution problem...insects and other "pests" DO develop resistance to the pesticides.
So, poison the land and water with nitrogen from overused fertilizer. Poison the water and yourselves with pesticide (and "weed" killer chemicals). Good plan.
Then there is the simple fact that it would be a miserable existence for people to be packed so tightly. No privacy, no quiet, no solitude, no peace. It would become a rapid breeding ground for mass murder and other violence.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
The solutions to overpopulation have been proposed in many ways:
Steve Martin - "The death penalty for parking violations."
Logan's Run - Kill everyone by their 30th birthday.
Charlton Heston - "Soylent Green is made of PEOPLE!"
Armageddon - "Houston, you have a problem."
Chris
I wouldn't worry, if only because Africa will be mostly dead of AIDs in under 50 years (bonus: end of the expansion of the Sahara!). That's where most of the population growth is going to be projected to be. And the Chinese, G-d bless 'em, are being kind enough to totally destroy their demographics to keep their population down. Now, if we can kick some sense into the Arab and South Asian world, I bet all of those projections by the WWF will be so out of whack that we'll be able to laugh at them.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Very true, and that was what I was eluding to.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
The solution to the problem when viewed as "THE BIG PICTURE" is to fence off California as an environmentalist preserve.then all the bunny huggers,forest faeries and prof.knowlittles can
cavort with all the other liberal antiques and leftover hippies.they then can be preserved in a place where they can cause no harm to anyone but themselves and remain for generations of our children to taunt.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Ahh, yes, please stop buying SUV's, if that makes you feel better. And stop using so much gasoline and electricity. Don't buy as many computer parts, and definitely stop buying up our precious coastline.
That should lower the demand enough for me to be able to get a cheap SUV with cheap gas, a nice new computer, and beach home. So now we're all happy!
2 + 2 = 5 (for sufficiently large values of 2)
Of all that faces us in the next 50 years, resouces is our least worry. As other posts have pointed out, economics will take care of that.
What will hit us sooner? Blindness to the nature of man combined with continued technological advancement will get us.
Things like the development of computers small enough to carry around and powerful enough to perform multimodal analyses on those we talk to in order to determine with a very high degree of fidelity whether or not they are lying. Our societal structure cannot survive without the ability to at least bend the truth. All of the basic research has been done for this device. 9/11 has tremendously accelerated actual development of many of the basic components. It should be widely available in no more than 20 years.
Or, maybe the sheer number of people on the planet combined with modern travel will get us. In a early '90s issue of Omni, a mathematician was purported to have calculated the chances of a global killer virus (deadly + slow incubation + fast transmission) randomly developing and spreading through travel before lockdown of borders. The odds go up as the population (and thus the number of incubators) goes up. He showed us having a 50% chance per year by the year 2030. This calculation may be off now due to decreases in population growth, but I'd bet it still comes out to
Another danger is the simple advancement in the ease with which people can help this process along. As technology continues to advance and spread beyond control and more and more people become capable of developing world killers, eventually the ability will reach a suicidal someone willing to use it. Mass destruction no longer requires government backing. The first few attempts will likely fail, but someone will eventually succeed on a wide scale. 9/11 was a very small hint at what's to come in the next 50 years.
I distrust the science of most environmental groups. Most of them are more committed to thier ideology then science.
i ve/news/projects /environment/index02.htmlhttp://www.sacbee.com/sta tic/archive/news/projects/environment/index02.html
l news/13 4384915_lynx30m.html0 2/0110/p2s2-uspo.htmlv /2002/pd030702b.html
Here's an interesting investigation:
http://www.sacbee.com/static/arch
Also, there's the lynx fur planted in the wild to try to close acres of land:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/loca
http://www.csmonitor.com/20
http://www.ncpa.org/iss/en
we consume fish but we piss in the bathtub, so to speak. resources have been able to sustain a growing population do to a combination of ingenuity and a willing infrastructure. how long we can continue to eliminate infrastructure through rape and a lack of management is anyones guess. our "material condition" is great, historical co2 levels are low compared to the distant past... but, we are living through a dust bowl, and massive droughts in this country at the moment, and i wish we weren't putting our childrens lives on the line.
Doesn't UNIX time run out at about the same time?
We REALLY need to change it to 64 bits now!
Can anyone say Soylent Green?
You assume incorrectly, I'm from and I live in the UK. And it was hyped over here too.
.. pacemakers shutting down .."
Note also that "problems much worse than automatic web pages printing '19100'" did not equate to "nukes automatically launching
Although I didn't mention it in my comment, I was primarily thinking of financial institutions when writing that.
The WWF retains the right to choose from any of the wrestlers it will have in 2050. Some may be horrific and terrifying results of human cloning and tissue engineering experiments. Others may be the wrestlers you enjoy today, cryogenically preserved in giant buckets of ice water to deliver their maximal smackdown power in the distant future.
Who will deliver the smackdown is a mystery, and won't be revealed until July 4th 2050. What we do know is that Mother Nature is going down and she ain't coming back up. Triumph will be complete and eternal. Tickets available at Ticketron and local ticketing agencies. Mastercard, Visa and Discover accepted. All ticket sales are final and non-transferrable. Ensure your grandchildrens' participation in this historic event today!
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Yes, it is a ridiculous idea, but the site is entertaining and occasionally informative.
On a different note, I noticed a few people taking about how things will settle down after there is a scramble for resources. Sure, billions might die, but in the end, homeostasis will be achieved, right? The problem with that line of reasoning is the assumption that there will be something left after we are done fighting. We aren't ants, folks. We use big scary bombs to fight for resources. And those bombs have the capability to destroy all of the resources.
Just remember, radioactive wheat isn't so appetizing.
What they're forgetting is that by 2050 there are going to be so many episodes of "Friends" that people will never have to leave their homes. They can stay glued to the tube 24/7 and by doing so will greatly lower their metabolism. This will help extend the food supply for an indefinite period.
We should all thank the makers of "Friends" now for saving the people of Earth.
In the 70s they said we had 30 years left. In the 2000s they said we had 50 years left. The predicted lifetime of the earth is getting longer and longer! Just wait and see - come 2050 they'll be predicting that the world will end by 2150 if we don't change things. By 2150 they'll be putting the end around 2500!
More seriously though, do they really advocate us trying to move to another planet? Launching a space ship is one of the most polluting things we do. Seriously, the indsutry required to build and launch enough space ships to colonize other planets would dramatically increase the pollution (and presumably hugely accelerate the death of the earth). It would seem that they really haven't thought through this at all, but are just using it as a scare tactic and give them something to do.
They tend to do that a lot. If we were to listen to all the environmental groups, we'd quite cutting down trees and start making all our buildings out of metal and concrete, which require far more pollution and resources to produce than does timber. One of the former heads of green peace actually admitted that timber is our most renewable resource and perhaps the one we least have to worry about. But save the iron just doesn't have the same appeal as save the trees!
Um, yes? Two things, first, you CAN use economic arguments. Materials have been getting cheaper and cheaper. It's not like we just run a pipe from the river to our homes. That water already goes though a lot of processing.
Second, we have far less pollution around than when I was a kid. So, by using the WWF logic, we'll have no pollution by 2050!
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Don't bet any money on these predictions.
Can you imagine the off-road possibilities of Mars?
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Poisoned eh?
Well, seeing how everything is growing really well on that "Poisoned" bit of land. Maybe your definition of poison isn't the same as the rest of the world.
1 A substance that causes injury, illness, or death, especially by chemical means.
2 Something destructive or fatal.
Remember, English is the language of Slashdot.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
It really warms my heart to see those as cynical [intelligent] as I.
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
however increasing rates of generational overlap (people living longer) means that population keeps going up even with only 2 new offspring for every pair of adults in each generation.
Really there should be no death control without birth control.
Eh, I'd like to make an adjustment to "So stop worrying!"
It's ok to worry, but stop freaking out. It's not constructive.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I don't know if this has been mentioned since there are a 1,000,000 commments to look through, but does anyone find it interesting that the gay percentage is being rasied with the earth population? Could this be our way of evening things out, since gay people don't have offspring.
>Oxfax either doesn't exist or they're not letting on.
I meant Oxfam, of course.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
But modern farming methods include crop rotation and the practice of leaving land fallow for a cycle to allow it to regenerate.
The problem with your statement is that you are assuming that the only way a modern farmer can increase crop yields is by increasing the levels of fertilizer. Simple practices like crop rotation and leaving land fallow have been show to 'recharge' the land. Google for details.
It has also been show to reduce weeds.
You're all ignoring something: systems with exponential growth always stop growing, and rather quickly. I figure we've been growing at such rate for roughly 20,000-10,000 years. Now, if you know your math, that means if we keep at it we'll be up and out across the entire universe in like another 1000. That ain't that long, folks. This nice little trip the human species has been on for a tiny bit is going to end real soon. By friggin definition, you science nerds, it has to. And once we stop growing, what do you think will happen? You think scientific progress can keep at this crazy rate of expansion when the population stops expanding and everyone has to spend 3/4 of their day just trying to find enough space to sleep for the night? Who will build the next biggest partical collider? Africa will be too busy trying to stay alive to mine your metals for your newest computer chip. Moore's stupid little 18 month law only occurs in the rich countries, and when we stop expanding, even that will slow down. Face it, we're stinking chimps, with the only difference is that we have exponential growth and they (our ancestors/brothers/etc) don't.
Read this link. I read about Thomas Gold's theory a few years ago. Seems he is about to be proven correct again.. http://abcnews.go.com/onair/CloserLook/wnt_000316_ CL_oilheretic_feature.html
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Fortunately, smaller rocks have a lot more surface area than the same weight of large rocks. We can use a bunch of asteroids instead. Flatten them for more surface area (no, not Ringworld -- we don't have a material strong enough for that).
Y2K may have been overhyped, but it was a serious issue. If all the problems I fixed in 1999 had hit all at once in Jan 2000, maybe the world wouldn't have ended, but what passes for my social life would have.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
perhaps, but the cheaper eficiancy will cost more. A hybrid prius is 6** a month on a three year loan. This is an astronomical price for a poor/lower middle class person to pay.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
You think The Rich are rich because they work harder and are smarter? May I present People's Exhibit A: The Hilton Twins. These are the poster children for what is wrong with no estate tax.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
meat may be pretty inefficient at delivering calories, but it's much more efficient at delivering protiens. The dirty little secret of Vegans is that there are some people who simply can't survive on veggies alone (for every example of a healthy, happy vegetarian, there's an example of a person who has tried, and was sick and miserable, and went back to eating meat) - surely, I'll buy the argument that we (Americans, in general) can survive, and even live happy, healthy, rewarding lives with far less meat than we consume today - I'll be willing to bet that if you took every man woman and child and put them on a strict vegan diet, 20% would simply die within a month.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
No Russian nukes automatically launching, no pacemakers shutting down, no toasters attacking people... NOTHING. NOTHING HAPPENED, NOTHING WAS AVOIDED.
My company just discovered a Y2K bug two months ago in one of our customer databases. 50,000 contracts with no valid start date. Ugly. We went through our stuff with a fine toothed comb in 1999 -
To say that nothing happened is false.
In fact, you could even blame the dot-bombs on the drop in IT spending caused by post Y2K era corporate budgets.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Most of the rich are rich due to their own work
No. Most of the very very rich are due to laws which favor them (the incumbants) over newcomers.
It works like this. We have a two part system, democracy and capitalism. Democracy is our social system it defines the rules for the economic system (capitalism). The basic tenant of Democracy is one person one vote. Why? So that the economic system is a level playing field. Thus, this requires equality in the social system, but not necessarly in the economic system.
Now here is the problem. Those with lots of money in the economic system get more "political speech" than those who are doing poorly in the economic system. Thus, even though there is one person one vote; you only get to vote for whom has the money to advertise and put themselves on the ballot. Thus, the people being elected are skewed towards those who have money (half of representatives are worth over 10 million). And these people, in tern, have a vested interest in keeping their money (and the money of the people who put them there). Thus, they write laws that help those with money and hurt those without money? Doubt me? Check your history books.
So, there are two possible outcomes. First, the people in the middle wake up and make the democracy more of a level playing field (which it should be). OR... the wealth keep getting wealtheier. In the latter case, eventually we will end up in an Economic Dictatorship which will transfer over to our social system.
So, for all of those people who are defending the very rich beacuse they think the rich work harder and are smarter than average (perhaps due to their own arrogance that they think they can join the very very small circle) are in for a rude awakening as they get older and understand that the rules are stacked against them.
So what are you going to do? Let the surge in wealth continue? Note: I'm not talking about people with a few million dollars. I know lots of hard working capitalists who bust their asses and deserve this. I'm talking about billionares here... ones that have one million times more net worth than average. A few thousand I can deal with... but a difference of a million means one thing to me -- a broken system.
It has nothing to do with "hard work", it has everything to do with "might makes right" and courruption.
One of the big reasons many people buy SUVs is their perceived safety. As you have already pointed out, SUVs really are NOT safe, because they handle and stop so poorly. They also are more likely to roll over. Nevertheless, people confronted with the facts will cling unwaiveringly to the belief that SUVs are safer. They like the "command view seating" and the advantage of larger mass in a 2 vehicle collision. Sadly, these "advantages" disappear when most everyone else has an SUV too. and make things much less safe for the cars left on the road.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
...it was found that every being in the galaxy has 2.4 legs and owns a hyena.
D.Adams will be sorely missed.
Bush has proposed no cuts in Superfund
1 08 78-2002Jul1.html
Perhaps. I'm talking about the rolling-back of Polluter Pays a few years back (under Clinton actually and then with continued support of Bush).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
Anyone who knows what square root is, knows that no way in hell is sqrt(2) 1414.
There is a difference in claiming that humans breed exponentially while supplies increase linearly, and claiming square root of 2 is 1414. The latter is just so retarded that no-one can make that mistake.
You seem to give us only those 2 choices, now or never. But it won't operate this way. For example, some day there will be giant wind power arrays down both sides of the Columbia gorge, where the wind blows often and hard. Right now there are test plants of limited size, but energy is too cheap to make these a good bargain right now. As soon as the price of energy justifies the expense of the wind farms, more will be built. Meanwhile, technology advances and so there is an advantage to waiting until the need arises before we build these. I agree with you that the "market solution" is often short sighted and will not yield the best thing for long term. There is ample evidence in California's power crisis, which seems to have been caused by a lack of planning, and a "market solution" that left the people who should be building power plants with an incentive to NOT build them, and then profit off the scarcity. OTOH, I don't think it is time to go build a giant orbital solar power collector for fear that we will run out of power.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
A: No. Humans might, but the Earth will be around for a long time to come. Next question.
Nathan's blog
gets 24 mpg
has 210 bhp
accelerates like at bat out of hell (will beat a lot of sport sedans in a 1/4 mile).
Stops real quick 4 wheel disc brakes and abs.
Do you know what you are talking about?
Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
well we all know when the world will REALLY end. It will end on July 5th, 2003. X-Day. And remember, if he hasn't seen your $30.00, your still "Pink" to "Bob"!
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
You are blinding yourself. It matters not a whit if the wheat on the plot is growing well, what matters is the runnoff from all that fertilizer and pesticide is entering the water table and poisoning the water. The water is choking on nitrogen and other toxins such that there more algae blooms (toxic to humans and fish alike), less oxygen in the water (toxic to fish, crawfish, etc)...poison by any other word is poison.
Have you never heard of the problems involved in hormone mimetics? That's right, many of the pesticides used mimic hormones like estrogen and testosterone which affects human and non-humans that ingest it (via water or eating the treated foodstuffs). It leads, to among other things, extra limbs and other deformities in frogs, screwed up sex ratios in alligators and turtles, probable increase in breast and testicular cancer in humans (male and female), more rapid sexual maturation in girls (not a good thing for them physically/biologically). Problems from pesticides are legion and take longer than a few months to show in many cases. Humans being idiots and basically selfish, don't care if they aren't being obviously hurt RIGHT NOW. "F*ck future generations. F*ck my kids. F*ck ya'll because at least I'm getting fat off food NOW - I'll worry when it's too late and I have cancer or my kids (or their kids) have developmental abnormalities". This is the attitude which is the problem. It needs to change.
You don't solve a problem by throwing ever more tonnages of chemicals at it. You solve it by having less children, using less, expecting less. You can easily be comfortable without consuming everything in site. Leave a little for others (human and non-human).
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Well, there is just no argueing with that kind of logic. Well done. And thank you for illustrating my point about people who "cling unwaiveringly."
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Sodium Cloride is one of the most toxic, corrosive chemicals in existence, next to Carbon Dioxide. If you don't believe me, pour saltwater on a plant -- it will die. Plus, if you drink lots of salt water, you will throw up. If that isn't proof enough, look at people who eat meat (a majority of Republicans admit it eating meat) -- guess what the primary ingredient used to season meat is? You got it. Sodium Cloride. It's close chemical relative, monosodium glutemate, has been proven to cause cancer in lab rats. Or at least to make them hungry for Chinese food again only a half hour after eating. I forget which.
Yes, you were inconvienced until you dealt with a problem. I did not mean a literal "nothing"... What I mean was, nothing on the grounds of serious problems were avoided by the billions in Y2K hype and spending.
This includes the changing of ammounts in bank records (e.g. You loose your life savings), the disabling of water, electric, or natural gas services, security systems from failing to function, our computer programs scrambling our financial records and documents, or our toasters rising up and killing us all.
I did not mean that nothing adverse happened as a result of Y2K, only that no serious damage was done. Indeed, if you go back to all the propoganda on TV, in papers, or even if best selling books, you will see tons of 'experts' claiming many of the very things I mention above. Any way you look at it, I seriously doubt you can justify the money spent on Y2K perpared-ness by private companies, and the government.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I didn't read most of the replies on this, but I don't have to, really: /. readers are a pretty predictable demografik...
The problem with the article is not with its alarmism; it's with its too-typical assumption that capitalism -- the total 'collective' culprit here -- is somehow with us forever. It is not. It is a passing historical phase of human relations which may have initially provided us with the industrial means to rise above sleepy peasant feudalism -- but which has now entirely overstayed its welcome, like some doped-up crazy who started out as the life of the party...
This crisis is part of the very death rattle of this system of hyper-exploitation.
EON condensed matter distributed-computing project.
You're absolutely right. The Club of Rome has been predicting the imminent depletion of our resources for quite some time now, yet their predictions never come to pass. The reason? They don't take technological innovation into account. Paul Zane Pilzer has a lot to say on that subject.
Technological advances will continue to buy us "just a little bit more time" until nanotechnology kicks in. After that, I imagine that the only practical limitations on physical resources will be artificial- the haves deliberately keeping the have nots from having access to the means of fabrication and the freedom to use it.
It's gonna be a hell of a ride, folks. Hope that organizations like the Foresight Institute succeed in intelligently shaping policy before it's too late.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
According to the Mayans, who had an *extremely* accurate calendar (up to the point where they could determine astrological charts thousands of years in the future), the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012AD. If this is true, it won't really matter if Earth will expire by 2050, since it'll be gone, or everyone will have died, or both.
Read more about 12/21/2012 here, here, or any of these places.
The fact that their calendars and astrological charts were so correct gives a certain authenticity to this over, say, "THE WORLD IS GOING TO END IN 2000! OH MY GOD!@#$!@#$" and other more conspiratorial claims.
[insert witty comment here]
The bet you're refering to was canceled. South and Simon had agreed to nullify the bet if government price controls on timber were imposed.
When logging regulation and timber import restrictions from Canada artificially inflated the cost of timber, the particular issue that they were betting on became moot.
When government regulation increases the price of a commodity, it isn't the same issue as whether Earth's resources are being depleted. Sugar prices are much higher in the US than they need to be because of regulation, but that doesn't mean Earth is being depleted of sugar canes.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
But why was it wrong? All the statements you quoted say "if this continues like it is now then we will be in problems". It did not continue like that BECAUSE there are people who say it!
Again this prediction hopefully will have as effect that people start to think and try to avoid it! If other people start to think like you then the next prediction might become true and the world might end.
Better change it soon.
Is this simply the WWF's way of drumming up fear in the public since GW Bush is not one of their biggest supporters. Yes, we need to muffle pollution better, and we need to increase recycling efforts and start using alternative fuels, but we'll die from new war before we'll all die of pollution and resource exhaustion.
fusion power generation could change all this.
The reason small farms are in trouble is that farmings become TOO efficient and too good at producing foodstuffs. The price of foodstuffs has been falling, in real dollars, for decades.
When the product you sell is a commodity and goes down in price by multiplicative factors.. That hurts.
This is especially evident for example, in milk subsidies. The US Gov't has millions of TONS of dried milk powder in storage, because they have subsidies to prevent the price of milk dropping below a certain level.
Obviously, the correct solution is to remove perpetual farm subsidies, and let the least productive land go fallow. Yes, its true, farmland has been decreasing for YEARS since 1900.
Of course, this'll hurt the 'small independent farmer' who doesn't have economies of scale.
FYI: Repeat after me; matter can neither be created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction. With nuclear power supplying sufficient energy for millions of years... with todays technology.. How much soil could we manufacture a year if we had to?
There are a lot of homes that use fuel oil for heat, it's just not all homes. Find a cheap sub for Fuel oil and the Oil Companies will expand the service.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
HAHA :)
i'll bet 1000EUR right away!! :) get my contact information on my web site.
Slashdot is taking lessons from the World Wrestling Federation on when the Earth will expire? The end must truly be near...
The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC
I hope you find this discussion as interesting as I do because I really took some time to write a reply.
... rather than politics and fear, I think you will see that a vast majority of Americans will take action without someone forcing it on us.
/. is total denyal of the article we were reacting to. I've seen reactions like "We have a damn near infinite supply of oil..." (this person forgot the 70's oil crisis) and others talking about "treehugging extremists", not even willing to think about the possibility and the implications if even part of the story turns out to be true. The question that interests me is why the US is completely refusing to participate in Kyoto. Perhaps you can help me out?
:) But why are big industrials asking $60.= for an AIDS medicine in Africa. The people there can't afford it, while prople here can. There it is. Health. Only for the ones who can afford it. I would say something like health is a right, not a privilegde. Remember the Bayer(?) medicine against Anthrax? Suddenly the government ordered that the price should be, I can't remember how much, but much lower than the official price. But if in Africa they BEG for cheaper medicine suddenly the same medicin companies are protected and not forced do reduce the prices. Health. From the ones that can spare it.
Perhaps to the Chinese a reduction in freedom is a small price to pay. They don't have a very large tradition of "freedom." Overpopulation also isn't a problem in most of the developed world, so imposing those kinds of reductions in freedoms would be unnecessesary.
I think this particular reduction of freedom is not yet necessesary in most countries, but it "solves" the problems for China. Most countries don't have a huge population like China, with all the problems coming with it. But these kind of situations (hunger, overpopulation, desease) also have effect on the rest of the world. Just like the economy in the US has effect on the economy in the EU. I'll come back this subject later on.
I'm sorry, my freedoms are not negotiable. As the saying goes, "Those that give up freedom to ensure security deserve neither."
Can you specify 'freedom' for me. To me absolute freedom doesn't exist. I have the freedom to drive a car, but not to speed. In a very direct way that is a limitation of my freedom to use a car the way I could want, but we all agreed to accept that limitation. To me responsability is a duty that comes with freedom. We can apply that to nature too. We have the freedom to do with it whatever we want, but we have to do it in a responsable way.
The concept of freedom and responsability is interesting. I'd say freedom a universal right. Or is freedom a privilege for the ones who can afford it? And what gives one the right to take advantage from another person or country? We already spoke earlyer about investing in poor countries. Do we have the right to force poor farmers to buy our seeds for a high price by refusing to buy their regular product if they don't? Is it right to cut rainforests in other countries because they hardly have any other resources? Even if it supports OUR economy?
No. Those countries can't do anything about it. They're with their backs against the wall. They have no other options that to do what we want them to do. That is no freedom for them. They're working for us. In the case of sweatshops even in circumstances that we wouldn't accept here. Compared to what their work is worth we pay hardly them. That is slavery. The only difference is that it's not happening in our oun countries, but far far away so that we don't have to think about it. (This is no attack on America's history. The Dutch also have a slave history.)
If environmentalists ever present a convincing case based on science and logic...
Isn't it safe to assume that something that has bad effects locally, also has bad effects globally??
The problem with these things is that it is so damn hard to proove. And worse, scientific proof is based on measurements and facts, but in this case it's impossible to conduct a scientific experiment. Firstly because it would require two testsets to compare with eachother and we only have one earth. And secondly because to proove beyond any doubt that the way we live and use the earth will cause a disaster is TO CAUSE that desaster. If you're using a mathematical model there will ALWAYS be someone saying that the model is flawed.
Example. The Marlboro man. All the tabacco companies for years denied smoking is bad for your health. How many people have died of cancer before FINALLY they admit it is bad? You see, if companies don't have any short term interest in ecological measures, they'll deny the facts, but sadly, we don't have thousands of worlds to proove the way we live is wrong. We have assumptions and theories.
On the other hand, there are enough signs that indicate that the way we use the earth isn't the right way. For example cutting down trees to make skiing possible. In the Swiss Alps there's a lot of skiing going on. Lot's of trees are cut down to make place for the ski pistes. As a result the rain washes the soil away because there is no vegetation left to keep the soil in place. Without the soil an inportant buffer for the rain is gone and the rain will flow directly in the Rhine.
Down the Rhine in Germany the same thing is happening. The result is that with heavy rain and in the spring (melting snow) the amount of water in the Rhine has increased and causes floods in Germany like in Kohln (Colonge) and the Netherlands.
[Background info on the Rhine is found here]
Now what's the point of this water story? There are three points. 1. Just cutting down some trees CAN have big (unforseen) ecological effects. 2. Assume Swiss has the right / freedom to cut down their trees. Does this give them the right to cause floodings and damage in Germany and the Netherlands? 3. The economical profit the Swiss makes with tourism is good for them, but has a counterside in enormous (economical) damage in other countries. Do they have the right / freedom to cause (economical) damage in other countries?
I don't know about the cause of the floods in Texas, but the economical damage is enormous and I'm not even talking about personal tragedy. The way we treath the earth IS backfiering on us.
I tried to point out that small actions (cutting down trees) can have big unforseen effects many miles away. This is a PROOVEN fact, and there are big discussions going on about CO2 and NO.
Is it a good idea to dispute the assumptions until they ARE prooven, and take the risk in the mean time that we do irreversable damage to the environment (quitting smiking can be too late to and cancer still is hard to cure), destroying human life and therefore destroying economy? Or is it better to play it safe and take measures?
Ofcourse it's about how efficient we pollute--or, more clearly put, it's about how efficiently we can generate wealth with the least amount of pollution.
Actually there is a very big difference between the two statements. The first statement implies polution is a goal, but it isn't. In the end it's a TOTAL amount of polution that will kill a man or damage the environent.
Something like "If you have to pollute, make sure to maximize profit, but if you have to make profit, make sure to minimize pollution."
Thinking about your and my arguments, I see that it contradicts what I said earlier about pollution/habitant (new insights are always nice). What it comes down to is the TOTAL global amount of polution that counts. Not the amount of pollution relative to something.
That left me with the question why pollution/habitant is used. What does it measure? It measures how polluting one's lifestyle is, I guess.
You can do some good for society without polluting, but for you to be able to do those things you--and the economy around you--have to be in sufficiently good shape to support those activities. If you don't have food, medicine, shelter, etc. you won't be spending much time helping society, I can assure you. And for you to have your food, medicine, and shelter certain activities much take place--and those activities create pollution.
Completely true, and I wouldn't want to do without those activities, but there are many ways to reduce the amount of pollution in the proces of conducting those activities. There are ways for example to produce energy with less pollution like wind- and solarenergy. But it takes research, investments, money to make things like solar panels profitable. It CAN be done, but one has to want it.
So what we can do is try to increase the efficiency of inefficient countries. We can try to increase our own efficiency as long as doing so provides a net gain in efficiency. If, by implementing a given policy, our GDP/pollution efficiency is reduced we've actually moved in the wrong direction.
Increasing the efficiency suggests an inproovement, but it also implies that if you find a very very profitable way to make a product which produces more pollution than a profitable way to make a product the GDP/pollution is increasing, but also the total amount of pollution is increasing. Again, what's the use of a very high GDP/pollution if the high amount of pollution will kill you. In the end it is about enjoying a good life in an economy and not about a good economy and no life at all.
"Investing" (spending) on these products needs to reduce the amount of pollution per dollar. The problem is, many times the policies actually would INCREASE the amount of pollution per dollar--although overall pollution may be reduced.
Again, the "per dollar" is not the issue. Pollution per dollar is only interesting to point out (in)efficient industries. The GDP/pollution of the US probably is higher then the GDP/pollution of Russia. This only says there is room for improovement in the Russian industry. It says nothing about the total amount of pollution produced.
Investing money in anti-pollution measures will indeed reduce the profit, but I think that is a small price to pay. In fact there are many ways of MAKING money with those investments. Underground heat storage will decrease the amount of gas used for heating and cooling a building. So therefore will safe money. At the moment such an investment already pays back in 4 to 5 years. Also solarpanels is getting more efficient by the year.
What that means is that, yes, you may have less pollution but you've also created less wealth in the world. Those that look at ONLY the environmental side of the equation without looking at the economic side are as shortsighted and out-of-touch with reality as those businesses that dump their toxic waste into rivers.
But what's the use wealth if that would cause floodings, desease and hunger? As I see it, all your agruments are ONLY based at wealth, money and economy. There are many ways that you still can make a profit, of course it's smaller profit WITH environmental investments. But take a look at your own life. Is it that bad that you need to get (much) more wealthy?
It's about both. But if we can improve our efficiency, the total amount of pollution will tend to decrease for a given amount of "social good" (wealth).
I'll stop repeating that it's a TOTAL amount that will kill you, not a relative amount. Pff. Okay, one more really silly example. What would you prefere. To die from getting wealth in 5 years, to die from getting wealthy in 10 years or get wealthy and stay alive? The second ratio is way better than the first one, but I prefere the third one. Ok, it is a silly example, but I hope you understand what I mean.
People don't like seeing the word "wealth" or "money." But these people simply don't understand that in the real world there is a very real relation between "wealth/money" and "standard of living" and "societal good." Sure, we can clean up our environment 100%--and all live like Ethiopians. But despite the fact that we'll have a cleaner environment, few would argue we've served the good of society.
Hmm. Yes and no. I think nobody with a piece of common sense will argue that money and wealth are bad. Au contraire. I would say everybody should have enough money and wealth, not too much. A big difference in wealth and money is a problem. Especially is one has way less than a certain minimum. In fact above a cartain amount of money the amount isn't imporant anymore. What does Bill Gates do with his money? Buying an even bigger villa perhaps, but I don't think he would be very unhappy about having 30,000,000 less than he does now. He'd probably even wouldn't notice it. would you miss, say $100.= a year? Same thing for a company. Many companies can perfectly function with a smaller profit and invest that in exhaust filters or other measures. Cleaning the environment for 100% is unrealistic, but refusing to do anything is rediculous.
Those few that WOULD suggest we live like Ethiopians, if that's what it takes to clean the environment, are just as extremists and without merit as those businesses that think that dumping toxic waste in rivers is ok. Neither extreme is acceptable.
I totally agree. Fortunately we're not talking about a total reduction of exhaust, but the whole concept of CO2 reduction seems out of the question. And the general reaction on
What you and many forget is that our health AND our quality live are very tightly linked to "hard bucks." I know it's an unpopular view, but it's the truth.
They are linked, but having $10,000 or $100,000 doesn't make me 10 times healthier, while at the same time there are many who have to do with less than $1.00 a day. We ARE wealthy, we even have time to worry or discuss the environment while others have to worry about food. No, making just a little less profit shouldn't make us unwealthe and poor. Most of us (1st world) can do with a little less.
Without the hard bucks, we will not have the money to support medical research to produce new medicines that save millions of lives per year. Or reduce the pain and suffering of those that are sick. Or distribute food to those that are starving.
I could have said the same
These are ALL aspects of health and quality of life that cannot be addressed without a thriving economy ("hard bucks") to support it. If certain policies that "save our environment" but destroy our economy are implemented, any potential gains in quality of life and health due to a cleaner environment very easily will be overshadowed by the decreases in our ability to address other issues of quality of life.
Without hard bucks, we're nowhere, but I seriously doubt that environmental friendly policies will destroy the economy. Without a doubt here will be less profit, but healthy companies are resourcefull and a bad company will go bankrupt one way or another. In Europe the environment gets quite some attention, but is our economy destroyed by it? Economy ALWAYS will find it's way. That's economy.
So it's ok to let developing countries pollute the world for money, but developed countries cannot? I don't see the consistency in that argument based on the rest of your post that seems to imply that the environment is more important than "hard bucks."
Good point. First of all, I would say that you're almost right about the base of my argument. They're both important. But I would say in the end "hard bucks" are less important than a healthy environment. I want to be healthy, wealthy, have food and have a roof over my head. I have those. I don't want more food, more wealth and a bigger roof over my head if that is for account of the smell of a forest after a summers rainfall. A strong economy results in more wealth, but wealth is more than a strong economy. A healthy environment also contributes to more wealth.
But the argument goes like this. Stimulating economy will pay back. I think you'll agree. Stimulating the economy in the developint countries will eventually benefit us. Just think about Taiwan. The last time I saw a 'made in Taiwan' watch is long time ago. Now they produce high tech products. It takes 20, 30 years, but it will pay off. Therefore I say we have to invest in the developing countries. They need to grow to a point where they can compete with our industry. Helping eachother getting to higher standards will in long term benefit us all. Look at Taiwan.
Our economies won't be destroyed by implementing cleaner techniques and filters. We have the money for it. In the developing countries they don't. Then need to grow, with our help, first. We were the ones buiding the factories in Taiwan, we will build factories in the developing countries. But with our possibilities we can build cleaner factories there. We can spare more money on environmental measures than they can so that's why we should start implementing those techniques first.
Pledge of Allegiance: One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all...
I think I get the idea. But maybe you can tell me a little more about it. About the history of it and the deeper meaning for America.
Let me try to make a globalized version of it: One world, respecting race, religion and each other, because we're all in it together, striving for equality and equal opportunities for all in a healthy world.
Which brings me to an other subject: Anti-globalisation. The short short version. The movement got the international interest with the riots in Seattle and other riots gave them a really bad name, but their intentions are clouded by the term 'anti-globalists' which doesn't cover their ideas the right way. Mainly they're against THE WAY the globalisation process takes place.
Privacy is terrorism.
I do. I had been checking for your reply periodically over the last two days. :)
To me responsability is a duty that comes with freedom. We can apply that to nature too. We have the freedom to do with it whatever we want, but we have to do it in a responsable way.
I agree with you 100%.
I'd say freedom a universal right.
I again agree with you 100%.
Do we have the right to force poor farmers to buy our seeds for a high price by refusing to buy their regular product if they don't?
I'd say we have the right to set terms for our business deals just as they have the right to take their business elsewhere. There are few products that can only be obtained from a single country.
Whether the above is ethical or even good long-term for the rich country is another story. I'm personally in favor of 0% tarrifs on everything worldwide. "Customs" should exist only to make sure nothing illegal or dangerous is coming in, not to levy taxes.
Is it right to cut rainforests in other countries because they hardly have any other resources?
It's not our RIGHT to cut rainforests, but it is our right to look around the world for the resources we want. It is the right of the country that owns the rainforest to decide whether they want to satisfy existing demand.
Those countries can't do anything about it. They're with their backs against the wall. They have no other options that to do what we want them to do. That is no freedom for them.
I agree they are in a hard place. I'm sure it is very tempting for them to go ahead and chop down rainforests to earn a few bucks. But to say they have no choice isn't correct. As you said, everyone has rights and corresponding responsibilities. That applies to everyone, not just the rich.
In the case of sweatshops even in circumstances that we wouldn't accept here. Compared to what their work is worth we pay hardly them. That is slavery. The only difference is that it's not happening in our oun countries, but far far away so that we don't have to think about it.
Believe me, I'm not in favor of sweatshops nor exploiting child labor. That's bad and regardless of what company I happened to own I would never do it--that's a question of ethics.
But those practices are all tacitly "approved" by their local government. The local government should look out for their own--in fact, that is there RESPONSIBILITY. If they lived up to their responsibility, the problem of child exploitation and sweatshops would go away. Sure, the company might leave for another country--until that country also lived up to its responsibility to its citizens.
Again, I think it is unethical for companies of rich countries to knowingly support child/sweatshop labor. But at the same time I can't help but thinking if Japan were to start a sweatshop in Los Angeles and Americans willingly went to work there--even if those Americans were penniless homeless people--should the world complain about Japan looking for the best deal or about the U.S. that isn't enforcing labor laws within its territory?
Isn't it safe to assume that something that has bad effects locally, also has bad effects globally??
I'd say that depends on the issue. Something bad locally may or may not have bad effects regionally or globally.
If you're using a mathematical model there will ALWAYS be someone saying that the model is flawed.
In the case of the environment, the model can be applied to a past scenario to see if it is able to reproduce the current scenario. If it does, you're half-way there. Then, if it continues to get it right for a reasonable period of time (perhaps 5 or 10 years? Depends on what you're modeling I guess) then you can consider it proved.
At the same time, I don't think a model has to be 100% right. I would be willing to accept a model that was 90% right 90% of the time. But so far we have don't have anything remotely close to that--and therein lies the problem. We don't have a second earth to do experiments, and the models haven't been able to successfully reproduce todays environment based on past scenarios. That puts the environmentalists in a tough place selling their case to the public.
For example cutting down trees to make skiing possible... The result is that with heavy rain and in the spring (melting snow) the amount of water in the Rhine has increased and causes floods in Germany like in Kohln (Colonge)
Wow, do they completely remove every tree from the mountainside? I'm an avid skier (Ski Colorado!) but we have "ski runs." It's kind of like a narrow road through the forest, and that ski run has grass on it so that when the snow melts it doesn't take the topsoil with it.
Assume Swiss has the right / freedom to cut down their trees. Does this give them the right to cause floodings and damage in Germany and the Netherlands?
That's a tough one. I admit I haven't read about the Swiss Tree/German flood scenario but unless they are downing an ungodly number of trees I would truly have to think that the floods are caused by varying precipitation levels--not solely by the lack of trees. That is, I can accept that the trees are an aggravating factor, but I find it hard to believe that the downed trees are the only cause of the floods.
I don't know about the cause of the floods in Texas, but the economical damage is enormous [usatoday.com]
I currently live in Monterrey Mexico, about 5 hours south of San Antonio which is where the major flooding occurred. In fact, we were hit by the same storm. The flooding was due to an unusual storm that just camped over Texas and rained. Floods happen.
Something like "If you have to pollute, make sure to maximize profit, but if you have to make profit, make sure to minimize pollution."
I'd say both of the above are true. What it really comes down to "Make as much wealth as possible with as little pollution as possible."
Pollution per dollar is only interesting to point out (in)efficient industries.
And I'm 99% sure (I'm participating in multiple threads) that that's what I said at the beginning. The pollution per dollar analysis is useful in determining what countries need to have their efficiency improved.
Many companies can perfectly function with a smaller profit and invest that in exhaust filters or other measures.
If that's all it was, I'd agree with you. Unfortunately, the demands of many environmentalists are so extreme that we're not talking about installing filters--we're talking about building entirely new plants, or perhaps terminating production completely.
That's the question. I'm not against taking logical steps to reduce dangerous pollution. Dumping chemicals into rivers is not acceptable. Throwing nuclear waste into a garbage dump isn't either. I don't, however, believe that CO2 production is "dangerous pollution." That's far from proved. Regardless of how much we pump into the air, it won't kill us. The worst possible scenario is the indirect effects from global warming--but that hasn't been proved beyond a reasonable doubt yet. See paragraph above concerning how to test models and how much accuracy is needed to make the case to the public.
And the general reaction on /. is total denyal of the article we were reacting to.
Most everyone discounts the report because its absurd. But believe me, my Karma has taken a hit for my "I don't believe the whole environmental crisis story." /. might not agree with the report (because it IS absurd) but believe me, the majority would side with you, not with me.
"We have a damn near infinite supply of oil..." (this person forgot the 70's oil crisis)
That was due to purely human/political reasons, not because of any real lack of oil.
The question that interests me is why the US is completely refusing to participate in Kyoto. Perhaps you can help me out?
First, it assumes that we have concluded that not only is global warming happening but that humans are the major cause of it. That is far from proven.
Second, it assumes that even if there is global warming that it must be bad. That is also far from proven. In fact, I read an article yesterday that stated that a slightly warmer winter last year saved the U.S. economy over $21 billion and saved lives from severe winter storms (sorry, I'm not going to hunt it down right now--feel free to google it).
Third--and I think this is the biggest--it makes no sense to apply Kyoto restrictions/reductions to the developed world and not apply them to developing countries--especially when two of the exempted countries (India and China) account for nearly 50% of the world population and one of them is even less efficient than the U.S. on a GDP/Pollution basis.
First, it doesn't take an economics degree to understand that if labor is cheaper in India and China *AND* they aren't facing Kyoto restrictions, that polluting companies will simply moved to those countries. That will cause more employment in India and China but it will also cause more pollution there AND cost jobs in the developed countries.
Second, it doesn't take a climate science degree to understand that since the above is true you really haven't reduced pollution on a global scale--you've just moved the pollution to developing countries where we can't see it.
My conclusions (and I speak for myself, not the U.S. as a whole or the U.S. Senate, etc.) are that Kyoto will NOT reduce global pollution, period. What it will do is 1) redistribute wealth to developing countries by moving jobs there at the expense of developed countries. 2) redistribute pollution so that we can feel squeaky clean in the developed world while the developing world becomes even dirtier.
A better question is: Why does anyone think that Kyoto will actually help the environment?
But why are big industrials asking $60.= for an AIDS medicine in Africa.
I would like to think because they spent 40 billion dollars (made up number) on research and only by selling the drugs at these prices can they recoup their investment to (hopefully) research and deploy even better drugs in the future.
That said, I personally think there should be some limits to what companies can charge for medical goods. They definitely need to recoup their investment, they definitely need to make a reasonable return on their investment... but milking the market once they've recouped their investment is unethical.
It's a tough question. You don't want to put so many restrictions on profits from medicine that no-one researches it. At the same time, I have a hard time swallowing (literally) my asthma-control medication that costs $1 per pill. At some point they've recouped their investment and the price ought to come down.
Stimulating the economy in the developint countries will eventually benefit us.
I agree. I'd like to see every world be a 1st world country. Remember, I currently live in Mexico (a 3rd world country).
Therefore I say we have to invest in the developing countries.
We do. Unfortunately, it is often painted as "exploiting third world countries" but the fact remains that we do invest in developing countries paying the local prevailinng labor rates.
They need to grow to a point where they can compete with our industry.
I agree. Hopefully some day my asthma medication will cost $0.02 per pill instead of a dollar.
Helping eachother getting to higher standards will in long term benefit us all.
That's capitalism. With zero tarrifs, companies will go in and exploit (i.e. invest) other countries. Over time, developing countries will develop and their wealth should become on par with the "rich countries."
That will happen all by itself without us making an "effort" to invest in developing countries. It requires no action on behalf of governments. The problem is that all governments that I know of currently impose tarrifs and THAT is what causes developing countries to not advance.
We were the ones buiding the factories in Taiwan, we will build factories in the developing countries. But with our possibilities we can build cleaner factories there.
Exactly. Which is why Kyoto should apply to everyone, not just the developed countries.
Back in the 90's, the U.S. Senate voted 99-0 that they would not sign on to any Kyoto treaty that applied to us but not to developing countries. That's reasonable. And that's the main (official) reason the U.S. would not participate in Kyoto.
Mainly they're against THE WAY the globalisation process takes place.
Whatever. I think they are hoodlums myself. The way globalization should take place is like this: Today we have tarrifs, tomorrow we don't. Done.
Sorry that it takes so long. work, friends etc. and a bit of RSI :(
But a new reply will come soon.
Privacy is terrorism.
I'd say we have the right to set terms for our business deals just as they have the right to take their business elsewhere. There are few products that can only be obtained from a single country.
;) and the plant is improved. Those are perfect moments to think about less polluting methods and measures, but a company must be willing to do so or nothing happens.
... I don't, however, believe that CO2 production is "dangerous pollution." That's far from proved. Regardless of how much we pump into the air, it won't kill us. The worst possible scenario is the indirect effects from global warming--but that hasn't been proved beyond a reasonable doubt yet. ...
/. might not agree with the report (because it IS absurd) but believe me, the majority would side with you, not with me.
;)
;) Quoting http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ us.html: "Environment - current issues: air pollution resulting in acid rain in both the US and Canada; the US is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels; ..."
;) But it's true what you say. I would even go as far as saying that the 1st world should be opened for the 3rd worlds' products. You should have _some_ protection for your local products, but it would be good if there was some (more) money to flow to the 3rd world and not the other way around. This also means the 3rd world has to be protected from our products. At least until the 3rd world has become more like the 1st world and they truely can play their past in the global trade game.
Often it's a take it or leave it deal. Allow this product on your market or we stop all trade with your country. And being a poor country, this hardly leaves an alternative.
Whether the above is ethical or even good long-term for the rich country is another story. I'm personally in favor of 0% tarrifs on everything worldwide. "Customs" should exist only to make sure nothing illegal or dangerous is coming in, not to levy taxes.
Again this is a measure that will benefit our economy, but hardly benefits theirs. We require them to open up their markets for our products, while we still have all kinds of measures to protect our market and effectively keep it closed for their products. An other effect by opening their markets for our products is that their money will flow to the 1st world while it should be invested in their own countries. Effectively this makes them poorer.
It's not our RIGHT to cut rainforests, but it is our right to look around the world for the resources we want. It is the right of the country that owns the rainforest to decide whether they want to satisfy existing demand.
I agree they are in a hard place. I'm sure it is very tempting for them to go ahead and chop down rainforests to earn a few bucks. But to say they have no choice isn't correct. As you said, everyone has rights and corresponding responsibilities. That applies to everyone, not just the rich.
Personally for wood I would prefere a model where the wood prodecers spend a part of their income to plant new trees. The 'no alternatives' argument applies to the trees too. Do those countries really have an alternative or is it a theoretical one? Knowing they hardly have an alternative it would be extortion to 'ask' them for their trees.
We HAVE the freedom to ask them for their wood, but knowing they have no alternatives, that makes us the responsible ones. Planting new trees would be our responsability.
Believe me, I'm not in favor of sweatshops nor exploiting child labor. That's bad and regardless of what company I happened to own I would never do it--that's a question of ethics.
A poor country is just as defenseless against our economy as a child in a sweatshop.
But those practices are all tacitly "approved" by their local government. The local government should look out for their own--in fact, that is there RESPONSIBILITY. If they lived up to their responsibility, the problem of child exploitation and sweatshops would go away. Sure, the company might leave for another country--until that country also lived up to its responsibility to its citizens.
OTHO our companies could tahe their responsability and refuse to buy the products if child labour is involved. Luckily this is happening more and more.
An other thing that companies can do is invest in their welfare. Build schools and educate their children to give them opportunities in the future. A higher level of education will also pay back.
But at the same time I can't help but thinking if Japan were to start a sweatshop in Los Angeles and Americans willingly went to work there--even if those Americans were penniless homeless people--should the world complain about Japan looking for the best deal or about the U.S. that isn't enforcing labor laws within its territory?
The effect of last option is to say to your poor people "sorry, we know you desperately need the money, but you can't work in that Japanese sweatshop". I'd rather see that the foreign company in this example would see it as a moral duty to offer a working environment that stands up to their own standards with working and safety conditions in which they would let their own employees work too.
I'd say that depends on the issue. Something bad locally may or may not have bad effects regionally or globally.
But how about a continuous production of exhaust? Remember the effects on health of the population during the beginning of the industrial revolution.
At the same time, I don't think a model has to be 100% right. I would be willing to accept a model that was 90% right 90% of the time. But so far we have don't have anything remotely close to that--and therein lies the problem. We don't have a second earth to do experiments, and the models haven't been able to successfully reproduce todays environment based on past scenarios. That puts the environmentalists in a tough place selling their case to the public.
A few weeks ago I read an article in a newspaper regarding the growth of the world population. They discussed four different models on energy consumption. A model by one group or fesearchers was based on continuation of the present situation. An other group made a model assuming energy reducing measures would be used. The outcome of the four models were quite different and it's likely that neither of the models would fit the future outcome of energy use for 90% in 90% of the time, but they all agreed on an increase of energy use (roughtly between 2.5 and 3.5 the amount we use now if I remember well).
We don't know exactly how much more energy there will be used. There are just too many scenarios. Tha same applies to pollution. The amount of pollution and the effects that they will have are uncertain, but my impression is that we generally agree that pollution WILL have a bad effect in the long term.
That's a tough one. I admit I haven't read about the Swiss Tree/German flood scenario but unless they are downing an ungodly number of trees I would truly have to think that the floods are caused by varying precipitation levels--not solely by the lack of trees. That is, I can accept that the trees are an aggravating factor, but I find it hard to believe that the downed trees are the only cause of the floods.
You're right. It's is very likely that there are more factors involved. But it's hard to say cuttimg down trees contributes for xx% of the flooding problem and global warming for yy% etc.
And I'm 99% sure (I'm participating in multiple threads) that that's what I said at the beginning. The pollution per dollar analysis is useful in determining what countries need to have their efficiency improved.
How would you improve that efficiency? If you decrease the pollution your ratio ALSO goes up. That ratio doesn't say anything about the total amount of pollution. If the total amount of pollution is high, you need to reduce THAT and thereby, as a mathematical result, your ratio will go up.
If that's all it was, I'd agree with you. Unfortunately, the demands of many environmentalists are so extreme that we're not talking about installing filters--we're talking about building entirely new plants, or perhaps terminating production completely.
In many cases plants don't have an eternal life and improvements have to be made anyway. In certain cases a new production method prooves to be cheaper (more efficient, but says nothing about the amount of pollution
In other cases, Tjernobyl, it is quite clear that plants are not safe enough or pollute too much. Safety if a reason to shut doen a plant. Let pollution be an other one.
Well, what can I say. I'm happy that there are many counties think that there are enough clues pointing to the effects of CO2 that they willing to address the CO2 production, even if the effect isn't 90% prooved.
Having with 'only' 250.000.000 inhabitants and being that influencial also carries responsabilities to listen to others. I just don't like to see the U.S. to go their own way in this matter.
Most everyone discounts the report because its absurd. But believe me, my Karma has taken a hit for my "I don't believe the whole environmental crisis story."
Haha. Ane of my posts' score yoyo-ed with interesting and flaimbait mods
I've been tought that there are always more sides to a story and to ask questions. I the 'crisis story' will a piece of truth in it. The figures are dramatic. I actually can't tell if they are really true, but to put the story aside saying it's bullshit is ignorant.
The story reminded me on a simulation of a population of foxes and rabbits I had on my ZX-Spectrum, 15 years ago. But this time the simulation is called 'humans and resources'...
First, it assumes that we have concluded that not only is global warming happening but that humans are the major cause of it. That is far from proven.
Ok.
Second, it assumes that even if there is global warming that it must be bad. That is also far from proven. In fact, I read an article yesterday that stated that a slightly warmer winter last year saved the U.S. economy over $21 billion and saved lives from severe winter storms (sorry, I'm not going to hunt it down right now--feel free to google it).
Interesting (+1)
Third--and I think this is the biggest--it makes no sense to apply Kyoto restrictions/reductions to the developed world and not apply them to developing countries--especially when two of the exempted countries (India and China) account for nearly 50% of the world population and one of them is even less efficient than the U.S. on a GDP/Pollution basis.
AAARGH!
Ok. You're not sure about CO2. Enough others are. But please tell me why it so important to look at other countries instead of looking at our own? I believe we agreed that developing the economy of a 3rd world country is important for them to achieve wealth and money and in the ling term for us for trade. Imposing all kings of regulations on their industry will withhold them more than it will us. Sure eventually they have to live to the restrictions, but they need to develop first and with our help they can do that in a 'good' way. In the mean time we need to look at ourselves and do what we can. At least that's what I think.
First, it doesn't take an economics degree to understand that if labor is cheaper in India and China *AND* they aren't facing Kyoto restrictions, that polluting companies will simply moved to those countries. That will cause more employment in India and China but it will also cause more pollution there AND cost jobs in the developed countries.
The same thing as my sweatshop example. Responsible behaviour from the companies would restrict that from happening.
Second, it doesn't take a climate science degree to understand that since the above is true you really haven't reduced pollution on a global scale--you've just moved the pollution to developing countries where we can't see it.
More responsible behaviour...
My conclusions (and I speak for myself, not the U.S. as a whole or the U.S. Senate, etc.) are that Kyoto will NOT reduce global pollution, period. What it will do is 1) redistribute wealth to developing countries by moving jobs there at the expense of developed countries. 2) redistribute pollution so that we can feel squeaky clean in the developed world while the developing world becomes even dirtier. (and with that in the end the whole world...)
Well, the 1) isn't bad. It will pay off. The 2) is a problem that requires a lot of attention.
Let me ask you an other question. With freedom came responsability. But would you agree that responsability also comes with power and wealth?
A better question is: Why does anyone think that Kyoto will actually help the environment?
I think CO2 IS accepted as problem by many countries, and it's assumed (to play it safe) a reduction of CO2 WOULD help the environment.
The influence of european governments on the market and companies is bigger than America's government. Blackmail by companies is occuring here, but there is a climate here that consumers demand more and more responsability from companies. Consumer behavior and governmental regulations have effects on companies. My impression is that the US government is run/bought by industry or lobby groups. Therefore they are very influencial on the american politics. Perhaps in Europe it's easyer to enforce Kyoto and force responsable behaviour on companies.
I would like to think because they spent 40 billion dollars (made up number) on research and only by selling the drugs at these prices can they recoup their investment to (hopefully) research and deploy even better drugs in the future.
It's very safe to assume that. But how much money would they make in a poor country where prople have less that $1,00? They will make their biggest income in the 1st world. It would suit them right to make it possible for the 3rd world to procude cheap medicine. BUT the 1st world's market would have to be protected against the cheap 3rd world medicine.
That said, I personally think there should be some limits to what companies can charge for medical goods. They definitely need to recoup their investment, they definitely need to make a reasonable return on their investment... but milking the market once they've recouped their investment is unethical.
If you milk a society that can afford it I'd say that's economy. But with medicine it's a little more complicated. I think people deserve to be healthy. Health souldn't be a priviledge for the rich.
It's a tough question. You don't want to put so many restrictions on profits from medicine that no-one researches it. At the same time, I have a hard time swallowing (literally) my asthma-control medication that costs $1 per pill. At some point they've recouped their investment and the price ought to come down.
Or they develop a new medicine which can be sold at a higher price and take the old one off the market...
Therefore I say we have to invest in the developing countries.
We do. Unfortunately, it is often painted as "exploiting third world countries" but the fact remains that we do invest in developing countries paying the local prevailinng labor rates.
There are things we can do to prevent exploitation. It's a very bad idea to pay people a salary that would be very much higher (but probably still nothing compared to our salaries) than the average salary. The difference in wealth would instabilize the country. I'd rather see a fair salary, and invest in things like education, healthcare, infrastructure. That too will benefit the economy, will help to build up the country and increase wealth. While on the other hand, it can't be accumulated (like money) by just a few.
I agree. Hopefully some day my asthma medication will cost $0.02 per pill instead of a dollar.
Would be nice. Also it would do me pleasure if others also have the chanse to live in wealth.
Helping eachother getting to higher standards will in long term benefit us all.
That's capitalism. With zero tarrifs, companies will go in and exploit (i.e. invest) other countries. Over time, developing countries will develop and their wealth should become on par with the "rich countries."
That will happen all by itself without us making an "effort" to invest in developing countries. It requires no action on behalf of governments. The problem is that all governments that I know of currently impose tarrifs and THAT is what causes developing countries to not advance.
I thought it was socialism
We were the ones buiding the factories in Taiwan, we will build factories in the developing countries. But with our possibilities we can build cleaner factories there.
Exactly. Which is why Kyoto should apply to everyone, not just the developed countries.
The thing is that WE can afford the live up to Kyoto. Developing countries, at the moment, hardly can.
Back in the 90's, the U.S. Senate voted 99-0 that they would not sign on to any Kyoto treaty that applied to us but not to developing countries. That's reasonable. And that's the main (official) reason the U.S. would not participate in Kyoto.
Do what you can. That's responsible.
Whatever. I think they are hoodlums myself. The way globalization should take place is like this: Today we have tarrifs, tomorrow we don't. Done.
But then the poor countries would be overrun by our companies?
Privacy is terrorism.
No, I was not trying to say that people will buy more because the fuel usage decreases for any given engine. I was saying that we are buying more and more cars anymore, anyhow. How many 16 year olds had cars back in the 1950s, none? How many 16 year olds have cars now, all of em? The local high school is jam packed with kids parking there anymore. I see kids driving beat up junkers that they picked up for a couple hundred bucks and other kids driving pimped cars that their parents bought for them. Again, back in the 1950s how many families had more than 1 or 2 cars? Not too many. How many families today have a car for every person in the family or more? Lots. Not only does everyone have their own, but nowadays a lot more people are driving cars just for fun, off-roading etc.
I was saying that every year people buy more and more cars, and cars are running more and more of the time, and that emissions released will actually still increase despite the fuel usage of engines being decreased. No economics here, just social trends.