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Humans Use 83 Percent of Earth's Surface
belloc writes "CNN is reporting on a Wildlife Conservation Society report that states that humans take up 83 percent of the Earth's land surface to live on, farm, mine or fish. The article rerers to a WCS human footprint map, but the WCS site seems to have been CNN'd. Funny: I just got back from a little road trip across the southwest, and from all the nothing you see out there, you would think that 83% is a bit high. I guess Arizona farmlands must look a lot like wild, untouched desert."
They use the Earth's surface to fish? Now that is a technological breakthrough worth discussing...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
What fish are they refering to that we use land to catch? Surely they didn't go out and count all the guys on the coast with a single pole and too much time.
95% of statistics are wildly inaccurate or out of context.
We've only got 83% of the globe? God must be disappointed.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Sally Struthers is responsible just for that!
Anything with a number like that makes me laugh. You sure it's not 82%?
love is just extroverted narcissism
That reminds me of the movie, "The Truman Show" where Truman wants to be an explorer and his teacher pulls down a map and says, "Awww, you're too late, everything's been explored already."
--
Lookerup.com - your technology resource.
In case of further CNN'ing (a new version of slashdotting?)
The Human Footprint
Human influence is driving conservation crises on a global scale. There is little debate in scientific circles about the importance of human influence on ecosystems. Scientists have shown that we appropriate over 40% of the net primary productivity (the green stuff) produced on Earth each year either taking it directly or keeping other organisms from using it through our agriculture and land use practices (Vitousek et al. 1986, Rojstaczer et al. 2001). We consume 35% of the productivity of the oceanic shelf, are fishing down food webs, and taking 60% of the available freshwater run-off. Although just estimates, these few statistics are testament to the unprecedented escalations in both human population and consumption during the twentieth century, resulting in entirely new environmental crises in the history of humankind and the world. E.O Wilson, the famous naturalist, claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if all humans consumed at the rate of the average North American. The influence of human beings on the planet has become so pervasive that it is hard to find an adult person in any country who has not seen the environment around her reduced in natural values during her life time - woodlots converted to agriculture, agricultural lands converted to suburban development, suburban development converted to urban areas. Think of your life, of your neighborhood, of the neighborhood you grew up in -- what it was and what it is now.
The cumulative effect of these many local changes is the global phenomenon of human influence on nature, poorly understood and needlessly destructive. Human influence is arguably the most important factor affecting life of all kinds in today's world. Yet despite the broad consensus among biologists about the importance of human influence on nature, this phenomenon and its implications are less appreciated by the broader human community, which does not recognize them in its economic systems or most of its political decisions.
Formerly it was difficult to visualize this influence across the entire planet, but recent advances in the quality of geographic data now allow us to systematically measure human influence on the land's surface. We used a series of map overlays representing human land uses, power infrastructure (based on lights visible at night to a satellite), settlements, roads and other access points, and human population density to map the "human footprint" on the land's surface.
Click here for a larger version in PDF format
The Last of the Wild
Analysis of the Human Footprint indicates that 83% of the land's surface is directly influenced by human agency. 98% of the areas where it's possible to grow rice or wheat or corn (maize) are similarly influenced. It is within the remaining 17% of the land's surface that some of the best remaining opportunities for conservation lie. We located 568 "last of the wild" places as targets for conservation action. Although these wild places vary enormously in their biological productivity and diversity, they represent the least influenced or "wildest" areas in each of their respective biomes on each continent. As such they provide a promising opportunity to conserve wildlife and wild places while minimizing conflicts with existing human structures and demands.
Meanwhile individuals, institutions and governments must find solutions across the gradient of human influence in order for conservation to succeed. Human influence presents a problem to the co-existence of people and wildlife, and human ingenuity is the key to transform the human footprint and save the last of the wild.
References:
Rojstaczer S, Sterling SM, Moore, NJ. 2001. Human appropriation of photosynthesis products.
Vitousek PM, Ehrlich PR, Ehrlich AH, Matson PA. 1986. Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis. BioScience 36: 368-373.
Wilson EO. 2002. The Future of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Humans breath air.
Water is wet.
Deserts are dry.
etc...
So why is this news? Ovously people going to use every resource they can; land, air and water. A few locations, upon the surface, are too difficult to use; high altitudes and deserts. Hence why it is not 100% Is it me.. or is this just common sense?
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
This is just so cool!
I had heard somewhere that humans only use 5% of the actual surface to live on. Now I have to ask myself what that means, if they counted the number of 1-meter squares it would take for each person... So much for my murky memory and weird statistics.
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
That sounds like it could be valid... even land that is not visibly being used for somthing often still has a use...
Fishing for LANDSHARK!!!
Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14 percent of all people know that.
>I guess Arizona farmlands must look a lot like wild, untouched desert.
Think ranching, dude. Where the buffalo don't roam no mo'.
"but the WCS site seems to have been CNN'd. "
Excuse me bub, but the term is Slashdotted, no matter where the people come from. That's patent infringement!
Huuuge tracts of land!
A few years ago, I read an article that you can fit every person/family in the world with their own house, and the area it would take would be able the size of Texas.
Overpopulation? Never! Unless you define overpopulation as 1%-Greedy Land Owners, 20%-Damn GOlfers, 79%-Everyone stuffed in a trailer park.
"Antarctica and a few Arctic land patches were not included in the study because of the lack of data and near absence of human influences"
isn't that the point..there's a whole continent that's basically uninhabited..but since that would lower their numbers, they threw it out.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
i got dibs on the other 17%
I just got back from a little road trip across the southwest, and from all the nothing you see out there, you would think that 83% is a bit high. I guess Arizona farmlands must look a lot like wild, untouched desert."
Where do you think they burry all the garbage and spent nuke rods?
Table-ized A.I.
I just got back from a little road trip across the southwest, and from all the nothing you see out there, you would think that 83% is a bit high.
Of course it's high. This is typical junk science from the special interests.
I used to drive between NY and AZ and can tell you there ain't shit between them until about MO. And what about the vast northern reaches of Canada....ain't nobody up there except elk and moose. Hell, look at Austrailia....as big as the US in land mass, and there are huge areas that are empty except for snakes, alligators, Dingos and Steve Erwin chasing them around.
WTF? Over?
I do not have square mileage of certain terrains, but this is poppycock when you consider several areas of land including deserts, mountain ranges, and even Antarctica, a sizeable land mass under ice. No this report is incorrect.
WCS? Biased? Pfffffft. Blasphemy!
http://sphinx.ms/LastoftheWild_v1.0.pdf
--Manuel
"I hate quotations, tell me what you think"
Considering the deserts of the Sahara, Mongolia, SW US, and Australia. Combine that with rainforest (shrinking) in South America, and the vast forests of Siberia. I have not yet read the article, but does it also include Antarctica, and the frozen wastes of Greenland? There's alot of land that just isn't useable out there.
Come on, what about an educated guess?
I stick to walls...
It very well may be true, but what point would there be for the Wildlife Conservation Society if wildlife was not in need of conservation? I couldn't get to the site, but it would be interesting to see their definition of land being in use. Aren't huge portions of the 2 biggest countries on earth, Canada and Russia, barren?
Son of a bitch! Now my ex is a moderator...
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
CNN is reporting on a Wildlife Conservation Society report that states that humans take up 83 percent of the Earth's land surface
This is not a good summary of what the rWCN report states. 83% of the earth's surface is "directly influenced by human agency" (their words). This does not mean humans occupy or farm in 83%; this measure could be anything as simple as "takes water from an aquifer that flows though land x".
To me, the more shocking claim is that humans appropriate directly or indirectly 40% of the NPP of world as a whole. That's a hell of a lot of caloric consumption by any standard.
Well - farmland and all that count too - rice fields, etc. So it does seem like a lot of space. Plus I dont think they count antartica since it is pretty much uninhabitable. I think this just further makes us realize how important it is for humans to start expanding into the universe in order to maintain the specis. A somewhat related article here
Neat trick since 2/3 of earth's surface is water.
And people wonder why environmentalists come under attack. It's bullshit reports like this that make absolutely no sense and assume a static technology level.
First of all, drive through Nevada some time. Mile after mile of empty space, but according to this report, humans have "appropriated" it. Technically, I'm sure they're right in the sense that someone owns it, but it's not as if the land is being used for anything.
Another thing that's stupid is that they claim that 98% of the land that can grow crops have been farmed. That is just ludicrous, and reminds me of the other wackos that claim that it would take 8 Earths or whatever to support everyone at the level of the US. There are numerous technological solutions to creating more farmland. Sheesh, how about irrigating the desert? How about huge multi-level greenhouses built in the middle of nowhere?
Sure, that would be more expensive than what we're doing now, but so what? The point is that very few resources are actually limited. Technology almost always fills whatever needs arise.
We'll stabilize population way before then, but this planet could support hundreds of billions of people.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
... bacteria use 99% of the Earth's surface for, er, bacterial purposes ...
I have some pretty serious environmentalist leanings, and I wonder about the sanity of those who don't. But at the same time, I wonder a little about this when it comes from these sources. They have a vested interest in seeing this report show very high numbers.
I mean, MS-backed studies show all kinds of strange crap. Studies that come out of pro-gun groups show that we should all have guns and crime would go away, and from anti-gun groups we get that we all have to be totally disarmed in order for crime to go down.
I always am pretty skeptical about reports from highly polarized sources.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
actually has very little "naturally wild" or virgin land. There is a lot of land that was used for something and then later reclaimed back to natural, but it still is not virgin.
humans take up 83 percent of the Earth's land surface to live on, farm, mine or fish
If they added sightseeing they could push the number to 99% (there are some things I refuse to even look at)
Much of the southwest land is under the control of the "Bureau of Logging and Mining" (BLM) and used for cattle/sheep grazing. Maybe they are counting all that BLM land.
Don't believe a word of what these people say. Their goal is to make sure that land is never used by humans. If they want that, they should buy it and put fences around their land, not have the government spend my money and your money to tell me what I can and cannot do on my own property.
Just cuz you ain't paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.
I appreciate that this is slashdot and the idea of a moment's thought before a smartass comment is utterly alien.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Being a private pilot i get to see lots of ground from high above.
To tell you the truth, i don't see *ANY* land that ISN'T marked by humans.
Even the most dense forrests and pristine areas are loaded with new houses, barns, trucks, trailers, roads, pipes, power lines or something that we have planted there.
In a way, i'm jealous of the people who got to see the wild west and walk across america and stake out a piece of the world. Now i can't even go to a public park after dark! Sure wish there was some "free" land somewhere!!
HAHAHA I remember that scene!
"Humans are number 1! Humans are number 1"
Feels kinda like a game of Age of Empires, duddn't it?
I find it hard to digest that humans are supposed to take a back seat to animals.
No, animals are not people too. Get a grip
This is offtopic, but I'm going to launch anyways...golf is a great game. It is an outdoor activity (something most folks in here need), it sharpens your focus and patience, and it is by-and-large environmentally friendly. Like few other activities, golf reveals the true character of a person.
I think this would fall under the "statistics" portion of "lies, damned lies, and statistics". I'd feel a lot less skeptical if:
A. The report was put out by a more impartial group than the Wildlife Conservation Society (that's like an endangerment study put out by a big-game hunting club),
B. they included their method and analysis, and
C. they did not preface their findings by "Scientists say..." which usually is shorthand for, "You're stupid, they're smart, we're quoting them, so believe whatever we tell you."
Is there any further information? How did they arrive at a figure of 83% and four Earths?
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
Just like nature intended.
It's actually infinite (coastline paradox).
83% doesn't compute.
How can you make the assessment that 83% of the earth is used by humans? If Billy bob manages to go to a remote Montana location to hunt, what kind of radius is used to determine the amount of area that was now used for hunting? More importantly, how would they ever know that Billy bob hunted in that particular area? I don't know how they could develop a sample size to accurately reflect global land usage for hunting and fishing without a ridiculously large amount of resources and budget. This study looks like BS to me, in fact most of these "wacky studies" featured in the mass media look like bs. I especially love "cigarette smoking increases SAT scores" and "coffee drinkers have better sex."
just how do you fish on the land surface?
"Funny: I just got back from a little road trip across the southwest, and from all the nothing you see out there, you would think that 83% is a bit high. I guess Arizona farmlands must look a lot like wild, untouched desert."
You think maybe Arizona is less than 16% of the world's land surface?
In other news, scientists determine that the plural of "anecdote" is not, in fact, "data".
a human footprint that takes up 83% of the earth's surface? Call the National Enquirer!
I hate to bring this up, but we are all still subject to laws of conservation of mass and matter, which roughly translate into an equilibrium.
I really have a tough time stomaching environmentalist arguments about "overuse" and "overpopulation", because those arguments invariably ignore any idea of equilibrium. There will be an equilibrium to everything humans do. If we eat too much food, one of two things will happen: we figure out how to make more food, or we die. Period.
So I have a serious problem with this being an issue. Also, if you look at the map, a good percentage of the land surface was left out of the equation because of "no data". So what, no data. Just because it's inhospitable doesn't mean you leave it out of your equation. Add Antarctica (artica? arctica? I can never remember...) and I'll bet that number drops a good bit. No one can really live easily in Death Valley or the Sahara, but people still do it.
Hell, looking at the green area of the map really tells me that only about 50% of the land on Earth is really being used or exploited.
This article is just more of the same sensationalist crap that we have come to know and love from our environmentalist whacko friends.
here
Won't keep it there for long.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
The main problem with Coca-cola is that it contains Dihydrogen Monoxide, a major component in acid rain.
and from all the nothing you see out there, you would think that 83% is a bit high
Yes, but you see the nothing. The article said "directly affected by human agency", it never said it was developed land. A 4 lane highway running through the desert is still human influence. Not to mention all the shit you can't see, such as military outpost, radio communications equipment, and ESPECIALLY all the dirt roads probably running through that, and every area of North American desert. Have you ever flown over the south western United States at night. I've done it quite a few times, and you can ALWAYS see some light down there, it's never completely dark. Be it a farm, a house, a ninja training camp, whatever. It's all developed, if even only slightly.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Obese Slashdotters Use 83% Of Earth's Surface.
if they came up with 83% then they must be counting any area of land that someone has surrounded by a fence as used.
I was in AZ in early Sept. and I was suprised by the arid land, but I found out from a farmer that the free range cattle farms often have a minimum of 40 acres per head of cattle. I wonder how much resources are used to feed all the animals we humans eat. Actuaqlly, I probably don't.
Belle: Do you realize you're wearing a grocery bag?
Homer: I have misplaced 83% of my pants.
It also appears 83% of /.ers commented about fishing on land!
I'm just back from a trip through China, and I was amazed at how much of the land is used. Granted, we were on trains and roads the whole time, but apart from tourist spots, I saw very few forests of trees. Just about all the land we saw was cleared for subsistence farming: rice paddies and the like.
I remember hearing on NPR the story of who I presume was Carl Bosch... who invented nitrous fertilizers. Without this invention, the world would not be able to feed its current population, and China is now the largest single consumer of them.
However this report is interpreted, it really does feel like the planet earth is on the brink... of something.
Ice fishing?
I can't imagine that those little huts on the frozen lakes take up that much space though.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
Humans are animals.
There are two types of people; those who divide people into two types of people, and those who don't.
Humans use 83 percent of Earth's surface, but only 10 percent of their own brains.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
The post is listed under "science", perhaps it should be listed under "space" since we are concerned with how much space humans take up...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Using similar methods, the Club of Rome predicted in the early 1970s that the world would run out of oil by 1992. They and others also predicted that the West would be hopelessly overpopulated by... right around now. Both predictions have proven to be wildly inaccurate, but they got a lot of press at the time, and they were taken seriously by what passes for "intellectuals" (whose only measure of "truth" is how well a given story dovetails with their ideology).
In other words, this kind of nonsense is a great method for people like the WWF to solicit donations and get their names in the paper, but you shouldn't mistake it for meaningful information.
This was covered in The Economist already, by the way. Old news. They've got some amusing observations about how slipshod the "study"'s methods are, and how many hidden assumptions it relies on.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
If everyone got rid of their SUV's, then the figure would immediately drop to 17%. Those SUV's are using 83% of all the oil, generate 83% of the pollution, and cause 83% of all the deaths in the world. They use 83% of all the worlds resources to manufacture, and are used by only 1% of the worlds population. And they don't even require drivers to do their evil deeds.
At least that's what I've been hearing in the news lately.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
When the subdivision on the other 17% is finished, it will have sidewalks on BOTH sides of the streets
"People Take Up Most of the Planet, U.S. Study Says"
That sounds materially different than "Humans have influenced 83% of the land that we chose to count." So if there are any roads or trails into a Wilderness Area, then it doesn't count as real wilderness. That is an interesting definition.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
2002-10-23 15:11:42 Surface Patch Chosen So Humans Use 83 Percent Of It. (articles,news) (rejected)
Businesses report that nature conservationists are attempting to erect impediments to human prosperity by viciously guarding 16.97% of the Earth's surface. When we asked one conservationist exactly how his radical "conservation" efforts benefited the human race, his brain locked up and he died right there on the spot. We plan to ask this question of as many conservationists as we can find. The 0.03% of surface area that is in dispute is the area covered by the state of Florida. Confusion with voting machines has left the state undecided..
Dupe posts are
Have a good time! bu-bye!
First of all, drive through Nevada some time. Mile after mile of empty space, but according to this report, humans have "appropriated" it. Technically, I'm sure they're right in the sense that someone owns it, but it's not as if the land is being used for anything.
Once your done driving, hop into a plane and fly over Nevada. Those same regions of "empty space" will be completely peppered with dirt roads, which I would qualify as "human influence".
And the roads are just something we can see. What about the pollution from the upwind chemical plant, the oil dripping out of one of those offroad trucks, residue from the meth lab that exploded 3 years ago.
You can't necessarily see those human influences from a car or a plane, but they're still there.
Where has the wilderness gone?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Their claim is not that we're using 83% of what we can use; their claim is that we're using 83% of everything. Of course, even their own well-cooked figures don't support that contention.
wait 'till we take to the high seas!!
Arggghh, matey!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
You'll also find it hard to digest food you don't have when our unmitigated over run of nature changes the climate and causes crops to fail in areas whose weather is changing as a result. Or to breathe when the things that put Oxygen in our atmosphere in the first place are wiped out to the point that their numbers can no longer sustain Human life in the numbers we currently enjoy.
But then, you could just subscribe to that school of "thought" that says that we can do whatever we want without any type of care or caution and nothing bad will ever happen. This would of course be in spite of a fairly detailed history of human beings bringing the worst tragedies on themselves, either through action, or through inaction.
But yeah, screw animals and the environment. They aren't humans!
Show me an effect without cause and then I'll believe in chaos.
This should be under "junk science"
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
I would think Bacteria would win humans many times over in this "who is covering more surface eh?" competition.
According to this guy, 83% of all statistics are made up on the spot. However, a broader Google search revealed that this figure is in much dispute.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Since the earth a land surface of roughly 148,300,000 sq kilometers and the current human population ow the world in about 6,228,394,430equals about .02381 square kilometers or 0.009193041 Square Miles = 256287 Square Feet per person.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
No the reason environmentalists come under attack is because of people like you.
Lets say there's a lake miles away from any people, but down wind from an XYZ factory thats 100 miles, pollutants from the factory can be found in the lake. So, humans have affected the lake.
If they were being perdantic chanobal left it's mark over most places on the globe as did necular testing.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Nah, you just don't see the cows grazing because the land is so crappy it takes acres and acres just to keep a single cow fed.
And all those 'wild' forests? Nah, they are tree farms.
As for fishing on land, read a little about fish farming and it's environmental impacts. Yes, we do fish on land.
But of course, many people who profit from business as usual would have you believe that this is all hooey, and people either have minimal impact on the environment, or some scientific fix will be found for the damage.
Just wait until we sell 1 billion Chinese their own cars and split level ranch houses. There is no way the rest of the world could live like the first world given the world's available resources.
But hey, we've got ours, so why worry? After all, we are (genetically superior/favored by God/better than those other people/take your pick) so it is right and just and good that we get more than them. We are (improving the gene pool/carrying out God's plan/just taking what we are due/take your pick.)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
At most I use a sqare meter. The problem is that during the day I happen to live in quite many different square meters.
reason defies logic
Squirrels tend to go for neutral colored lures, while birds like brightly colored lures, worms, and salmon eggs. Dogs will bite on just about any type of meat/meat byproduct, and humans, well, you just put a dollar on the hook and you see if you don't nab yourself a couple...
Show me an effect without cause and then I'll believe in chaos.
Okay everyone, off your butts. If we lose 2 pounds apiece I'm sure we can get under 80%........
But at least this explains why I can't get any leg room on the plane.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
That said, so what? The vast majority of that 83% is agricultural use or just because there happens to be a road in the area. Yeah, we've touched that area but we're using it to GROW crops, which is a good use of land and hardly means we've destroyed it.
If you look at the "About the Data" link on wcs.org, the first sentence reads: "The maps of the human footprint and of the last of the wild should not be read too literally." Wow, at least they open with a surprisingly honest sentence!
They then continue: "These maps are based on geographic proxies for drivers of human impact: human population density, land cover and land use mapping, lights regularly visible from satellite at night, locations of roads, rivers and coasts, settlement patterns, etc. However drivers are not inevitably impacts."
In other words, this shows where we COULD be impacting the environment. This is no indication of whether we actually ARE impacting the environment in these locations, or if the impact might even be good.
Like I said, it's a slow week for environmental news...
I'd say that most people posting here didn't really interpret this article very well, they'd rather scoff than think critically Essentially what this study says is that 83% of the viable Earth's surface is under the direct influence of man.
/Preaching
Example, the state of Nebraska, lots of Nebraska is unfarmed CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) land. But that land is still directly influenced by man, I doubt that very much of what grows their are native species.
What this group is saying is that we humans are crowding the Earth, that we feel the need to fence, farm, pave, mine, exploit the majority of the planet's surface.
WHY! Is it necesary to pave the planet, HELL NO, stay in the cities people, we need to keep some of the earth uninfluenced by man.
As my friend Edward Abbey once wrote: Wilderness is not a luxury, but a necesity of the human spirit.
Rule of Life Number 2: Remember, it can all go to hell at any minute. --Jimmy Buffet
Lot's of life lives in the Antartic. Just ask Tux.
BTW, the Antartic isn't that different from northern Russia, northern Canada, Alaska, northern Finland, and Greenland. People and animals are quite capable of living there. The key reason people and animals haven't colonized the Antartic is:
* there are a lot better places to be. Even the cold north is better since at least it's relatively close to civilization
* it's part of the southern hemisphere and that hemisphere is mostly neglected by most of the population of the world which happens to be in the northern hemisphere.
Notice to Cowboyneal:
;-0
The U.N. Security Council has determined you need to cut back.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Reading from the Sanderson et al article on their website ("The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild."):
Their figure of 85% may well be correct, but their methodology is suspect to say the least.
1) As you say, they ignored Antarctica and other islands.
2) They used nine datasets to plot human influence, of which two were RIVERS and COASTLINES. Given that they used independant plots for population density etc, I have to wonder exactly why they feel humans are responsible for the distribution of rivers and coastlines. They assume that the possibility of access by humans implies human interference.
3) They assumed that roads would affect the environment for 2 km to each side, when the highest estimate for ecological impact was 600 m!
4) They assumed that all settlements would also affect environments upto an arbitrary distance of 2 km, based on the error in *position*, not *extent* of map data.
5) Random assertions like: "Hunting no longer supplies a major source of in the Western world, but it does in most of the rest of the world." This is patently false. Very few communities use hunting as a major food source. The vast majority of people around the world are fed by agriculture. But the authors use this statement to justify scoring human influence as "moderate" (4) up to 15 km from settlements on this basis. (They estimated 15 km to be a day's travel.)
I'm sure there are more errors, this was a very cursory reading.
I'm disappointed that this was published in a peer-reviewed journal. This article is in no sense good science, although it makes a fine political manifesto.
My other sig is also a
It would be nice to think that people could make the argument that there is a limit to how many human beings should occupy this planet.
I happen to like people a lot, seeing as how I am one. Doesn't mean I want to live like an ant in a hive.
In my experience only scared people feel threatened by calls for population control. Maybe they know something....
I think explored area / fog of war type map would be better presentation for this propaganda.
this smacks of the type of eco-theist propaganda that will end up fueling bogus, misguided government policy in a few years.
ignore it! protest for the borg planet!
Great. Now they've published a MAP showing exactly where there is NO human footprint. All the filthy rich have to do now is look at the map, point at a green spot and say, "Build my new mansion right... THERE."
Don't they know that they'll do better if they keep it a great big secret. Then the dumb rich people will keep building and developing right by all of the other dumb rich people. But NOOOOOOOO. They have to go and make it easier for people to find and destroy pristine areas.
Dumb Filthy Rich Person: WHAT??? Nobody has developed Alaska yet??? Build me an oil derrick right... THERE. And... THERE. And... THERE. (etc.)
WCS: NO!
EPA: NO!
Sierra Club: NO!
Dumb Filthy Rich Person (to large lawfirm): Take this immense pile of money and make it happen.
WCS: Um...
EPA: Hey, give US some of that money!
Sierra Club: Crap! Stupid WCS idiots.
.sig wanted. Inquire within.
The main problem with Coca-cola is that it contains Dihydrogen Monoxide, [ndc.edu] a major component in acid rain.
That's right. Also, dihydrogen monoxide is odorless, colorless, and comes out of a car's tailpipe.
Or even anna nicole for that matter.
Some people claim reports like these show that environmentalists are biased. Maybe, maybe...
But what do they have to gain? Are they going to get rich making reports like this? I think not.
Now look at a business-person's bias. Do business people stand to lose anything if reports like this are accepted? You bet!
Follow the money.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Since they conveniently eliminated Antarctica from being considered "land area" (since they have "no data"..), I thought I'd figure it out with it included.
Supposed land amount used: 43,333,252 sq mi
Supposed total land (without Antarctica): 52,208,738 sq mi
Actual total land (with Antarctica): 57,308,738 sq mi
Their percentage: 83%
Actual percentage: 75%
Knowing the environmentalists are eating funny mushrooms: priceless
Not a huge difference, but this isn't including the other areas that had "no data".
"Truth is not decided by majority vote" consensus gentium -- Norman Geisler
My science teacher said that it contains hydrogen hydroxide which is an acid AND a base! Ha^4
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Arizona is not that void of human contact. With over *5,130,632 people living here, cattle ranches (Yes, cows somehow live out here), ATV trails, and people walking through the national parks around here, it's a wonder that not everything has been touched yet.
Here are some reasons to come over and put your human footprint on Arizona.
1) The Grand Canyon (A big hole in the ground.)
2) The Mine Tours of actual old mines. (A trip through a big hole in the ground.)
3) Kartchner Caverns (A walk through a big hole in the ground.)
4) Old Tucson Studios (A themepark-like place based on when people came to Arizona to dig holes in the ground.)
5) Sedona, Arizona (A beautiful city where you can take jeep tours to help disturb nature.)
6) Tombstone, Arizona and other ghost towns. (Where people use to live when they dug a bunch of holes in Arizona.)
7) Biosphere 2 (A big artificial hole above ground)
http://www.pr.state.az.us/parkhtml/kartchner.htmla me=DEC_2000_SF1_U&geo_id=04000US04&qr_name=DEC_200 0_SF1_U_DP1
http://www.oldtucson.com/
http://www.sedona.net/
* http://www.census.gov/census2000/states/az.html
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?ds_n
Losing faith in humanity one person at a time.
who is it?
land shark...
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
What does this have to do with the Beltway Sniper?
...if the Earth was an organism, each of us human beings would be one of its cancerous cells.
Happy people make bad consumers.
I saw a car on the road the other day with a bumper sticker that read:
"Cruel people eat animals"
So I pulled up along side her, and her car was, of course, decked out in leather.
99% of the 83% is used by Oprah and Rosie. narf!
Sweet! Why on earth haven't we seen any graphic Hilary Rosen fanfics(?) on /.?
This is a totally bogus and meaningless article.
Firstly, assumptions:
a) 80% of the earth is covered by water (after
you remove artic and antartica).
b) some weird reason we assume that 100% of the
non-ocean (land) has been touched by human.
Therefore approx ((83-20)/80) minimum 75% of human influence is attributed on the ocean...baffling.
Secondly, that assumes surface area is a meaningfull thing to check for. Lets think of this 3 dimensions - the ocean is pretty damn deep, as is the earth, and the atmosphere too.
This article is, quite frankly, pointless.
I hope these radical enviro-whackos never get Weapons of Mass Destruction. These people are more dangerous than SoDamm himself. I don't doubt for an instant they would unleash something to reduce the human population and "save the planet!" if they had an opportunity.
These people are dangerous.
BC
Find your ecological footprint
and then...
compare it to the rest of the world's
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
More information here.
Dihydrogen monoxide:
* is also known as hydroxl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.
* contributes to the "greenhouse effect."
* may cause severe burns.
* contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
* accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
* may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
* has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.
don't worry about fishing on land, 'case 'tsall good
man
The Wildlife Exploitation Society is reporting that an astonishing 17% of the Earth's surface remains untouched by man.
"17% is very wasteful. Native Americans used every part of the buffalo, the least we could do is use every part of our planet" stated the chapter president. Later this week he plans to find a remote area of Antarctica and pee on it. Bringing that number down to 16.9%
"God gave us the entire Earth, says so in the Bible. It's like spitting in his face if we don't use all that God gave us!" exclaimed one member.
- Land Area of Earth: 57,000,000 square miles
- Area of Arizona: 100,000 square miles
That works out to just shy of 2 tenths of 1 percent. I don't know if 83% is correct either, but presumably they employed slightly more rigorous estimating techniques than eyeballing the local terrain.Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
Someday, us Canucks will all be rich I say! :-)
Who else cares more about land and conservation and capping pollution than an owner of the property?
How many public parks and public nature areas do you see needing a continuous clean up effort to keep them free of litter? The reason for this is that the fact that nobody owns them, a good majority of the people that use the areas feel less inclined to keep things properly clean.
All in all this article is journalistic trash.
Eliminating two of the largest unpopulated land masses from the equation is simply ridiculous and illustrates clearly the political aims the article is seeking to achieve.
Let me guess how they figured this: .00001% .001%)
We fish the oceans - that's 67%.
They only had to makeup uses for the remaining 33%. Here's my guesses.
Farming - 10%
Cities - 2%
Managed forests - 10%
Airports, Roadways and Railroads - 1%
Nuclear power plants -
(ok, include the urainium strip mines
Gee I made it over 90% without even trying.
Don't know if this is really true but I have heard that:
Everyone alive could be given an acre in Texas and we wouldn't fill it up much less the rest of the world's land.
Supra et Ultra
Bill gates just printed out the windows source code.
You also forget that the statistical analysis is in reference to vegetation and animal displacement as well. Last I checked, Antartica didn't have any native vegetation nor animal life. So it's ok to toss out that land mass; although I do agree it should be included in statistical analysis if that were to emcompass amount of land taken/total land.
Not so much that it's mutually exclusive (animal/vegetation and land) but the focus is more on land that is sustainable to both humans AND animals/vegetation
blah
at the rate they're using up natural resources, the earth is going to be ruined in a few years. And knowing them they'll probably just inhabit and ruin some other planet until they use up the whole universe... maybe a few billion years after that some planets will recover and become ok for life again, hopefully life thats actually intelligent
"Animals" is not a subset of "humans".
"Humans" is a subset of "animals".
These are both true. What is your point?
that study is misinformation, i live in finland and here we have A LOT of unhabitant land, this is from CIA factbook:
Irrigated land:
640 sq km (1998 est.)
Area:
total: 337,030 sq km
water: 31,560 sq km
land: 305,470 sq km
Population:
5,183,545 (July 2002 est.)
that leaves 0.05 sq km per citizen, seems like here we use a lot of land per citizen, assuming 83% is used here leaves us with 253,540 sq km, that leaves us with 48 sq m per citizen, but how many of us actually owns any land, especially whats being used for something? perhaps 5%?
i doubt they are being accurate, so many of us lives in flats, the building itself uses like 200 sq m of land space but habitats tens of families (assuming building is 5 or 6 storey buildings.)
i didn't bother to check out any other countries.
proof me wrong if you think that study is being accurate.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
I agree that articles like this are silly and most likely unprovable. But I think George Carlin has it right about most hardcore enviromentalists.
"We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet? I'm getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me. " -- George Carlin
...will come from nuclear-powered desalinization plants in the Gulf of Mexico.
And, in a billion years, when we've drained the oceans dry, we'll have more farmland and de-orbit comets in the upper atmosphere for more water.
I just got a fresh batch of tracts that tell the truth about Christianity and I'm going to give 'em to all the little ones this Halloween along with chocolates.
And it's not just Sally Struthers hogging all the space. There's also plenty of blame to spare for Rush Limbaugh, Marlon Brando, and Cowboy Neal!
Maybe faking your figures is dishonest, and wrong in principle, and maybe even such sacred figures as professional environmentalists should (god forbid) be held to the same standards of integrity as the rest of us.
Maybe every time these people issue a terrifying pronouncement which turns out to be dead wrong, it further diminishes the credibility of environmentalism in general.
These people think of themselves as priests, and they take a similarly dim view of "heretics" who dare disagree with them, but they're more like witch doctors: However often their prophetic dreams and visions fail to pan out, the True Believers still believe.
Meanwhile, we've got damned few credible, responsible organizations actually keeping an honest eye on things and informing the public accurately. Since the oil, as you observe, really will run out one of these years, it would be nice to have access to some reliable information about the matter. Instead, we get circus acts from professional fund raisers.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
...and frequently very shrewd.
They're not required to agree with me on everything. Nobody else does either.
ZZZZZZ... go back to sleep. I bet those big words like "direct human influence" confused you. Don't worry your little head about the world's problems, puddin. You need your beauty rest.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I'd be interested in how much of that 40% we 'appropriate' goes not into salad bars, but into cows and horses and chickens and other farm animals. The average farm animal eats a lot more vegetation than the avarage human.
I'm also curious as to how much of that number comes from the 'opportunity cost' of humans being around - is a lot of that 40% just speculation about what the NPP would be if we had never developed into high level primates, and thus only affected the world as much as a gorilla does?
Does it take into account the positive human factor of adding technology to make infertile ground into very fertile ground? Would there be less green stuff if we had left those once-infertile lands alone?
$8.95/mo web hosting
Until these academics start talking about population growth they will have no support from me. Yes, North America consumes many times the resources per capita. That is bad. Outside North America, populations are growing at net rate of over 100 million a year. That is much, much worse. Population growth in North America is due primarily to immigration and NOT obscene birth rates. Address this and you have credibility with me. Otherwise, you're just another leftist with a collectivist agenda, and I'll continue to ignore you. I'm afraid that won't happen however. If ridiculous birth rates were brought under control and our population was actually sustainable, these folks would have nothing to beat you over the head with. You would be free to drive your SUV, build your house and take nice long showers without answering to them, and that's just not acceptable.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Read the article, look for this reference at the end:
Sanderson, EW. et. al.2002. The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild. Bioscience 52 (10).891-904.
All the methodology is there, so quit whining about it being missing. The Wildlife Conservation Society article is just a summary of this peer-reviewed scientific paper. They didn't just pull the numbers out of a hat, and they include things like distance from roads. Also, they say that grazing lands are difficult to map, and most likely underestimated in this study. Even the American West isn't free of the influence of humans in the great "empty" stretches; it's almost all been roaded, grazed, logged and/or mined. Not to mention all the rivers being dammed.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
Yeah, artificial light is just a crazy technologist's dream. We'll never have anything like that!
The confusion over this figure was already discussed in another thread and while there are some nuts who disagree, the actual figure is only 79% (actually 7.9153 x 10^-1 probability) . The remaining 21% of statistics have some real basis in fact, or are based upon legitimate (non-fabricated) error. Your 99.723% figure is ridiculously high, and I suspect you just made it up.
Even if the underlying claim is sound, when it is presented in a way that is obviously desgined to exagerrate the effect (hasn't everyone read How to Lie with Statistics and How to Lie with Charts by now?) it ruins the credibility and undermines whatever (possibly valid) point they were trying to make.
For example:
True honest analyses are unbelievable rare, but there have been some uplifting ones memorable to me:
I remember in the late 80s when David Gaines was forming the Mono Lake committee to fight the drop in water levels at Mono Lake in California. The members were primarily biologists, and after some study, the decision was that the lake level should not be below x feet (I don't remember the exact value.) So the lawsuits were filed to prevent the lake from dropping below x. Some of the more political-type folks around were saying- "we should ask for x+50- that way, there is some room for comprimise when they don't give us what we want." All the biologists and science-types said "No, there is no compromise- our science shows the lake needs to be at level x, end of story. No inflated demands expecting comprimise- this is what needs to happen." That was a refreshing instance of increasingly-rare honest quantitative analyses of public policy decisions, and unfortunately such examples are few and far between in the public debate.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
And your point is?
My point is that our use of the Earth is a "problem" that will solve itself. Do you really think that there is anything anyone can do to "save" the Earth short of killing billions of people?
People live and die every day, it is one big happy competition, and I don't believe that you'll find very many existing people willing to give up any advantage they have over other "tribes".
While the article referenced above points out a "problem", it does nothing to suggest a solution either. And I'm afraid your analogies don't work either.
Equilibrium is precisely what will "save" us all in the end. Resources will not get used up, because once they become scarce, price goes up, demand will decrease. That goes for food/oil/water/dirt/anything you can think of.
So, instead of screaming "THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM" about the elephant sitting in the back seat of the car, perhaps looking to reasons and conclusions about our problem might help in a more productive way.
We could talk about the global corruption that constantly keeps un-industrialized nations under the collective heel of the West. We could talk about political problems between the different civilizations on the Earth that keep certain sections of the population subjugated to whatever corrupt influences that exist.
The CNN article and the paper that inspired it is bunk, clear and simple. It does nothing, says nothing and means nothing. It is to express the opinion of people who want large sections of the Earth to be uninhabited to satisfy their sense of esthetics. Nothing more, nothing less.
I would suggest the book by Canadian (woohoo!) David Suzuki: From Naked Ape to Superspecies (or something like that). Definitly not my favorite point of view and sometimes you have to force yourself through some of the crap, but he does make a few good points with regards to using up all natural resources. And it's always a good idea to read something that doesn't totally support your point of view but is well written (and he was a top geneticist for years so you can't argue that he doesn't understand a lot of the science).
The state of Texas has 261,914 square miles of land surface. Another 6,687 square miles of water which is ignored in this instance. That equates to 167,624,960 acres. For a rounded 6 million folks worth of planetary population, if everyone on the planet moved to Texas, the density would approx 36 people per acre. Each Acre is equal to 4047 square meters. Each person would have over 6 square meters each. Of course if only 1/4 were having a Texas BBQ at any one time with beef, beans, and beer some folks would have to move over to Oklahoma or Mexico depending on the wind direction.
This is using Texas, while a largish American state is not all that big on the planetary scale. Sorry Texas. I wish I weren't too lazy to look up and convert the total land mass of the earth, but I can't see where this can expand to anything like 85% without giving everyone thousands of acres each to cover that number. Looks like more FUD from the Greenies to me.
Not when you use scare tactics and falsified numbers to raise donations...
No one, no where, no how, is going to solve this "problem" on a global scale. People will address the "problem" of overpopulation and overuse of land on a local level.
No one government has the political (or financial) resources to subjugate every human being to its own idea of how the Earth should be managed.
Are you going to tell the starving people of the Sahel to stop increasing the amount of land that they farm because "we have to have national parks and free places for animals to roam"? No, because the people of the Sahel will tell you to buzz off and mind your business.
No one living there is going to listen to what you or I have to say on the subject at all (unless you happen to live in the Sahel, but if you did, you'd probably be all for expanding the grazing range of your cattle).
People will figure out their own problems and solve them or they will die. Unless you go to where they live and help them directly, they will not listen to you.
We will ex-ter-min-ate.
We will ex-ter-min-ate.
We will ex-ter-min-ate.
The article failed to mention that Janet Reno accounts for 70% of that.
The issue, of course, boils down to the fact that the logic methodology used in science pretty much precludes anything from being proven, in the sense that one can prove the pythagorean theory. Therefore, if one starts with truth, there is no hope that the relative facts of physical law will change your view. The current classic example is smoking. Reputable scientists say that the preponderance of evidence says that smoking is very dangerous, and at least significantly contributes to an increase in cancer, where the pseudo-scientist says nothing is proven and based on the research no action can be taken. Once again, all science can do is try find a very likely theory to match physical observable to within an acceptable degree of uncertainty.
The situations gets more complicated when science hits the popular press. Mistakes are made in quotes, ideas, statements of theory, and perhaps even in the original logic. Respectable scientists admit the flaws, and investigate to see if the problems are fundamental enough to damage the theory or just miscommunications. Pseudo-scientist, who already know the truth, grab on to these inconsistent data as proof that not only the researcher, but his family, university, sponsors, and anyone else who might come to his or her support is incompetent and should be flogged.
So not to be offtopic, this report has top level problems. A statistical error is not reported. The exact definitions of terms and methodology is not known. Does it make the research invalid? Is it in fact a 'bullshit report.. that make absolutely no sense and assume a static technology level.' With the infomation availablem, it is hard to say. People also site local examples to refute the paper, but the land area of the earth is over 57 million square miles, while the size of Nevada 100 thousand square mile. One could have 100 completely empty areas the size of Nevada and still not invalidate. And remember, those roads you drive on in Nevada, and the desert you walk on to take a leak, as well as much other 'undeveloped' land is affected by human habitation.
Notice how I refute an argument with observables instead of insults and circular arguments? The fact that a lazy worker want a year to be shorter, or a fascist manager wants a year to be longer, would not mean a whit to the observable that it take right about 365 days for the eartg to orbit the sun.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Wildlife Conservation Society discovers bigfoot. Film at 11 if we last that long....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I suppose that to the casual observer, a lot of the western US looks like barren desert. But nearly every square inch of it, with the exception of a few military installations and national parks/monuments, is used by ranchers. In fact, the primary reason that most of this land is degraded and less productive from a biological standpoint is precisely because of grazing pressure and the corollary activities (predator control, fire suppression, introduction of exotic plants, herbicide usage, clearcutting, etc.) practiced by livestock interests.
One case study:
The desert grasslands of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico supported herds of pronghorn, deer, elk and even the occasional bison prior to the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s. Historical accounts tell of grass that reached the belly of a horse spreading across the valleys, and perennial streams that held beaver, otter and enough fish to support a bald eagle population.
Of course, this was a perfect setting for Manifest Destiny to play its hand. Wealthy cattle companies rapidly overstocked the ranges with millions of head of cattle, which devoured the forage available. Then severe drought in the 1890s and a series of devastating floods from 1900-1905 carried away topsoil from the denuded land, and the greatly increased sediment load in the watercourses cut deeper channels which altered the drainage and aquifer recharge of entire watersheds. The rivers became dry ditches, cactus and tough scrub took hold where the grass once thrived, and the regional economy crashed hard.
Similar scenes to the one described above played out across the West. In fact, most places in the world that support vegetation but are not suitable for farming (everything except tundra, boreal forest, and virgin rainforest) are grazed and have been altered considerably from their pre-agricultural baseline conditions. So the figure of 83 percent is in fact very plausible, and may in fact be conservative.
It wouldn't be too tough to start turning this tide -- if Americans would simply cut their beef consumption by one third, there would be an economic impetus for the most marginal and habitat-damaging operations to cut back or ceases altogether. India, OTOH...how the hell do you fix that?
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Then birds and bacteria got 100% of it.
Uhh
The point of the exercise is simple: try to figure out those areas which are least impacted in order to more economically and efficiently practice species conservation.
What exactly is your problem with this?
Those whacky pinko environmentalists are at it again. Go hug a smokestack if you love Capitalism!
1. Immediate global thermonuclear war (right now). 2. Planetary exploration and a lunar colony. 3. ???? 4. Profit.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
From my experience working for an enviromental testing company, I agree that people have an impact on the enviroment around them. Of course the only ones that do not are dead. Many "enviromentalists" know little about the enviroment, many just dislike people or long for the days of little house on the prairie. I do not think the planet could support 6 billion hunter gatherers, we have learned how to better cultivate the planet to support the population. Technology, however, is a double edged sword. Along with our technological gain, has come some pain. Factories pollute, trees are cut down and species become extinct. This is where the evangelists linger, telling us how bad we are and how bad things are going to be. Economists may be more apt to predict the Planet's future more correctly. They understand the allocation of resources - supply and demand. Eg, The supply for freshwater goes down, the demand for more efficent desalinization goes up. Determining the World's needs is a lot more complicated than taking north american consumption and multiplying by Eight. Every period in history has had its own vision of the end of humanity, its human crisis. Still, humanity has endured. A number such as 83% is not an indicator of doom (if it is even accurate). It does tell us of our success and interconnectedness with the planet. We have consumed nowhere near 83% of the planet's resources, there is much more volume than surface area. We are just going for the easy stuff first. Yes the enviroment needs to be considered when planning for the future, but it should not hinder.
Instead of listening to these eco-terrorists, let's look at statistics put out by industrial lobbying groups. Unlike the near-communist environmentalists, corporate lobbyists are truthful 99.999% of the time. Most corporate lobbyists say that the threats of pollution and diminishing wilderness are pure fantasy, I'll trust the CEO of GE over some tree-hugger any day!
Remember when the liberals created that big scare about smoking causes cancer? The tobacco companies lost millions due to these lies, even though the tobacco companies had scientific research showing that smoking actually IMPROVES your chance of getting certain diseases after age 80.
Every time a tract of virgin land is conserved, one more child must do without adequate marketing opportunities. Don't let the liberals steal our children's future!
Talk radio, here I come!
There are two types of people; those who divide people into two types of people, and those who don't.
While taking flying lessons I was struck by the apparently small percentage of land occupied by humans. Even in a highly populated area like New Jersey. I think this is 83% exaggeration for effect. There are lies, big lies and then statistics.
I don't think it said "occupied", but more about usage. Although I see the potential for a lot of grey areas. For example, land that is used by hunters is "used by" humans, but that does not necessarily mean that it is *entirely* used by humans.
Table-ized A.I.
As long as the people of earth are not hogging up 83% of my bandwidth... i am happy!
--JonnyBlog
"What's a tortoise?" or "Do you like our owl?" or "Of course it's not real. Do you think I'd be working in a place like this if I could afford a real snake." Perhaps we will be able to artificially recreate the wilderness and the other animals that used to live here?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
No one can really live easily in Death Valley or the Sahara, but people still do it.
It's very specious to apply a thermodynamic principle to ecology -- these are different domains.
I note that millenia ago far more people lived and worked in the Sahara. In fact, some of the earliest domestication happened there. But what happened? The goats denuded the landscape and this, coupled with a climate shift, led to wholsescale desertification.
So it's not an equilibrium reaction. Sometimes things can be knocked so far out of whack they don't recover... or they go through an irreversible phase transition.
Da Blog
This study:
adds together influences from population density, access from roads and waterways, electrical power infrastructure, and the area used by cities and farms.
An influence of the infastructure is pollution and that touches everywhere.
So the study should show 100% but then everyone would know it's BS without reading it.
I guess we could eliminate mankind and make the world 100% wild lands.
I'd include wildlife but that implies humans
Really, if you fly, the idea is to land somewhere.
The fact that you most likely travel in a straight line would serve to reason that you will be crossing over other small bits of civilization before you reach your destination since things like roads etc. will also take the shortest reasonable path.
Fly off in some random direction say in North Central North Dakota or something. When you run out of gas and land on the prairie let us know how many signs of civilization you came across.
this planet could support hundreds of billions of people.
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and perhaps allow you to wallow in your own conceited ignorance, but this sent your diatribe over the top.
I am curious to know exactly how you would support these "hundreds of billions" of people, and at what subsistence level? Where will all their shit go? If they are eating meat, where will all the shit from their animals go? And where will you get the freshwater to irrigate the crops to feed the people and animals? At current rates, most freshwater aquifers will be drained within a few decades.
Da Blog
...from the terminally pragmatic camp...
:> ) to change the way things are done for the better. The technology and understanding of the way things work has never been more advanced (though it will get better). We have also never had such an incredible communication media at our disposal. Now, all we need is to stop the bickering long enough to see both sides of the issue.
It's typical of the "environmental camp" to skew numbers in the favor of their goals. For that matter, it's pretty much human nature for everyone.
The problem that I see, really, is not overuse, overcrowding, overreporting, or any of the above. What I see is a tendancy to OVERARGUE! We have, at this present time, an unprecedented opportunity (read terminally optimistic here
On the use of desert land for farming: "where's all the water going to come from?"... desalinization of ocean water. "what about the energy it will take to do that desalinization?"... solar power (deserts are great places for this!) "but you can't grow things in sand!"... try again! Start with plains grasses and plenty of chicken manuer (real cheap but potent stuff!), add cattle (of various shapes and sizes...), then start adding crops! Ask any organic farmer, it can be done!!!
Most of the unsolveables like this need to be tackled by the "tinkers", the folks who invent or apply existing technologies to solve problems. Don't say it can't get done." Just come up with an ideal and ask a "tiker" how can we get this done!
Each of us, whether a "liberal environmentalist" or a "radical right conservative" have a place and a purpose. we all feel so strongly about things because that is our particular area of responsibility. Just because we don't agree totally with each other doesn't mean that we have to fight it out. Let's learn that a "Democratic Society" really means neither "mob rule" or "argue till one side is burried". A little argument is OK, but when we stop seeing each other's values and valid concerns, we stop being a civilization and start towards the barbaric conquering of "the other side".
All sides should be scolded! But, on the other hand, all sides should be listened to with great attention and interest. Give a little, take a little, and, occasionally, just let someone else win for a change. When it all comes to a close, we really can trust the "other side" to pull with us. Maybe a little different than we would, but not usually any worse.
'Nuf said!
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
Pretty losely defined as it is, it would mean to say that anyone who so much as wanders on a piece of land is "using" it. And they're probably right. Even "undeveloped" area is typically used for farming. The farms are the first to go when the cities move in, but the land is there, someone owns it, and it rarely sits idle.
The the 17% of unused land can be easily taken up by Antarctica and the major deserts. There isn't much farmland or fishing going on in Antarctica.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
... confluence.org.
It's a good effort at a pseudo-random sampling of the earth using GPS.
It's amazing how difficult it is to find civilization pecking away at links at this site.
Shake a leg, get the lead out, you lazy maggots!
Let's get those figures up, Up, UP!
If we all work at it, we can get those inhospitiable arctic and antarctic zones as well. If we just melted off that antarctic ice cap, we could get our hands on some prime, untouched realestate.
Get motivated, people!
I live near the San Francisco Bay, and it's no suprise that around here affordable housing is a misnomer. The obvious solution is to pave the bay.
l
If we were to take the SF bay and build supports, much like they build for bridges, but instead a matrix of supports for "land" we could turn most of that land into housing.
What's more is that we could save lots of money on plumbing and trash pickup by just letting everyone dump beneath the platform into the bay.
NO MORE NATURAL BEAUTY!!!
Turns out I'm not alone...according to http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/1380/pave.htm
There are others like me
"On the One True Newsgroup[tm], alt.pave.the.earth, you will meet with like-minded individuals who are taking positive action to improve the quality of life for drivers everywhere. Simply, the whole surface of the Earth must be paved."
haha what a world.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
I am intentionally being provocative myself because the issue at hand (as it stands) is hardly worthy of debate. It disgusts me when people trying to argue serious issues do so from an illogical position.
:-)
:-)
I don't label all "environmentalists" as "whackos", it is mostly an inflammatory term that fits the type of mouths that are willing to perpetrate this nonsense on the public.
I would style myself an environmentalist. I "leave no trace" when I go back-country camping. I try to conserve my water use in a reasonable manner. I don't leave all the lights on if I don't have to. I own a fuel-efficient car...intentionally.
I don't buy many arguments against GM food. Most arguments against it are extemist and not rationalized well. Perhaps there should be and FDA for GM food, yes, but writing it off out of hand is wrong. We've been eating GM food since Gregor Mendel whipped it out in 1822 (and really since man realized that certain types of grains/animals are good to eat and others are not).
The thing about equilibrium is, there is no "third" option. You have two sides of a conflict that will find an equilibrium. A good example would be Europe, and specifically England, back in the Middle Ages. There was a specific point in time where local food production would only support a certain population, and I wish I remembered the specifics, but some technological advances were followed by sharp increases in population, made possible by sharp increases in food production.
People are not going to starve en masse (on the scale of millions and billions). What will happen is certain regions of the world can only support a certain number of people, and once that number is reached, the population will stop growing. The food there is not going to "run out", but its growth rate will...and so will the growth rate of the population.
While there is little scientific data I have to back up my next premise, but there are certain conditions that may inspire a decrease in population other than lack of food. Look to the West specifically.
Birth rates in the United States, Europe and Japan have been falling over the last few decades. In fact, there are several economists that believe that the future outlook of Japan's economy is dire due to the fact that population growth is an essential part of economic growth. Japan's population is in decline, due to lack of land, lack of resources, but probably more like cultural shifts.
As individuals and families are able to derive more resources for themselves, there becomes less of a desire to have many or any children. Very few families in the US are having more than two children, and you may be able to make a case down the road that, except for immigration, the population of the US will be on the decline within our lifetimes.
Do the democratic question: the world has a lot more problems to solve before treaties like Kyoto can truly be enacted democratically. Billions of people live in areas that have not industrialized and they will be hampered by rules made by people who don't live where they do. These societies are going to industrialize, whether you like it or not, and whether you try to shove emmissions controls down their throat from across an ocean.
You cannot view the productivity issue (GM food, robots, use of more oil, etc) from the viewpoint of a Westerner. You must view it from the eyes of a Bangladeshi, or Afghani, or Sahelian. They have absolutely the most to gain from cheap food, oil, cars, clothes, computers, communications, etc. Consumption in the West is nothing compared to what it will be in 50 years. Western consumption will probably decrease, as efficiencies rise, but that will be more than offset by the industrialization of our so called backwaters.
This issue isn't even a concern for Westerners, at least to the extent that anyone in the West is going to starve for lack of home grown food.
Okay...blah, blah, blah, I'm done!
The few remaining wild areas include the northern forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia; the high plateaus of Tibet and Mongolia; and much of the Amazon River Basin.
Yeah. And the area between Tucson, AZ and Phoenix, AZ isn't 'pristene' or something?? What about most of Nevada? Or parts of Northern California? Sheesh -- this is just the stuff I can name off the TOP OF MY HEAD.
"The map of the human footprint is a clear-eyed view of our influence on the Earth," Eric Sanderson, a landscape ecologist for the WCS, who led the report, said in a statement.
I don't know what's worse -- the guy that makes statements like this, or the company (CNN) that publishes them. This is just irresponsible! 'Clear-eyed view of our influence on the Earth' ... more like a 'clear-eyed view of our influence on idiots with half a brain'. Give me a break.
I don't believe I invoked thermodynamic principal, I was just noting that because a particular part of the earth is inhospitable, you cannot remove it from a "surface of the earth" claim and be reasonable at the same time.
I'd also argue that the number of people and the technology (goats) being used to defoliate the landscape in the Sahara probably had about a percent of a percent of an effect on the landscape change, while the climate shift probably did just about all of the work there.
ACK, it would be 24%, because land masses take up 29% of the earths surface.
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
They should mark my garage as taken back by nature. The spiders have taken over and last time I was in there I barley escaped with my lawn mower. I plan to send in an extraction team soon for my snow shovel as we just got the first snow of the season here in ME.
-G
... goes like this:
98% of all the people who have ever been born are already dead.
So.. chances are, you're dead!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Wow did you sum /. up. Mod this guy up. He speaks the truth and not just another witty retort from the l33t. Slashdot does seriously suck.
Lets see... the rainforests, deserts, the entire midwest.. it's more like 60% in my opinion. sheesh.
with 1500 square miles to spare given one square yard to stand on. Assumes 7 Bllion of us.
"The cumulative effect of these many local changes is the global phenomenon of human influence on nature, poorly understood and needlessly destructive."
There's a telling sentence, "We don't understand the effects, but we judge them anyway"
I metamoderate, therefore I am
The "Hydrogen Monoxide" makes up the "rain" portion of "acid-rain", not the "acid" portion. You cannot have acid-rain without rain.
Another interesting thing about H2O is that one molecule contains 3 atoms, which matches your IQ of 3.
I think the idea, let alone the paper, is full of logical holes through which one could drive an oil tanker or two. :-)
:-)
I also don't believe that species conservation is possible on a global scale, nor is it a worthwhile cause (when the end result of such work is detrimental to human life).
I won't whip out the "god created man to be master of all beasts" on you, but I do find human life to be superior to that of animals. It's only a position, no more or less.
In my opinion, the paper is sensationalist tripe. i.e. E.O Wilson, the famous naturalist, claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if all humans consumed at the rate of the average North American. Not only do I find this type of quote offensive, I think it is a lie/untruth/bullshit.
Just because someone "claims" something, even if they are a famous naturalist doesn't make it true. Putting tripe like this in print in a major news outlet is irresponsible. The paper is obviously biased and does not even begin to touch on the reasons why man has touched "83%" of the surface of the Earth.
It almost seems to suggest that this wouldn't be an issue if we killed about three billion people, which is really what it would take to accomplish the goals of the publishing author. Slightly offensive if you take the time to read between the lines for the agenda.
That is my problem with this.
Uhh ... the paper, at least, is simply an effort to quantitize the percentage of a (clearly defined) subset of the earth's surface in terms of human impact
But is it realistic? You continually state that all this open land people are seeing is "effected" by humans. This study and your statements try to sensationalize this use as having some detrimental effect on the land. So your "feral horses" graze on it.... what negative effect does that have on the land? Is it really that bad that their poo stinks? Your arguments hinge on the a closed system... that the water used from the rivers to water the grass magically disappears... and can never be heard from again... WRONG! For someone who says they know science so well you missed the lesson they teach in first grade on the water cycle.
The point of the exercise is simple: try to figure out those areas which are least impacted in order to more economically and efficiently practice species conservation. What exactly is your problem with this?
Nothing if that was the real point of the study but its not and you know it! The point is that certain groups feel that the average American is nothing more than a waste of THEIR precious resources and space and there high minded goal is to control these people so that the can continue to practice these feel good ideals!
Well private property maybe, but not quite firm property. How many firms did simply drop their dioxine in water ? Bury cyanide and other polluant ? Remmember Seveso ? What cares cow cattler or goat/pig herder that the water under their farm is undrinkable due to various polluant concentrateed by their cattle ? What you say is *ONLY* true of people living on their land. The rest (farmer or even worst , firms which do not exploit the land but have to be situated somewhere) usually won't care unless the govt rub their nose in it by health law on maximum polluant tolerable in earth/water. And IMO, that is why current Bush's politic to make pollution and reduction of polluant a desisater. A lot of firm have simply no incencitive at all to reduce their pollution , because they have no direct link to public (so PR don't work) and it would simply eat at their benefice without bringing them anything on the plus side.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Here's another post probably nobody will ever see, but the whole population of the world can fit in Texas. http://www.pop.org/students/texas1.html
see? do the math. Even if you use a huge overestimage that the world has 8 billion people in it as opposed to 6 or 7 you still get more than 900 square feet of living space per person.
That's assuming single story living space with "paper" walls in-between. If you expand to nearby states like Oklahoma and you make two story houses you can have room for roads and yards.
The US is 15% of the worlds population using 75% of the world's resources. We pay our farmers to make less food. There is no such thing as overpopulation. There is only poor distribution of resources. There are only fat people in the US. I wonder why? I wonder why terrorists hate us.
Using 85% of the surface of the earth? Some people are taking more than their fair share and some people aren't getting enough. So in the end there's no room for the trees.
Oh well.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Guns don't kill people snipers kill people. You really think that if he couldn't get a gun he wouldn't use something else? People kill people, whatever they use is just a tool.
Fish naturally spin about a foot off the surface of the earth naturally... They're worth about 100 points and when you catch one it makes an amusing noise.
On another note that first map looks extremely bogus. Download and look at it... PDF file. I think it gets the general trends right but I'd like to know EXACTLY where all this data is coming from. The chart lists quantities which I assume to be people per square mile or kilometer... Also the accuracy of data that you collect in third world nations is suspect because they have more things to worry about than counting people accurately...
Also city regions like Miami and LA are made to look sparse compared to Cuba... The ENTIRETY of Cuba is ~11,200,000... Just looks odd...
I don't believe that pointing out human use of land as a "problem" is an ethical way to satisfy one's sense of esthetics. Because that's what it really boils down to, esthetics.
Everyone knows that eventually human beings are going to cover as much of the planet as possible. That's just how bacterial multiplication works. You multiply until you've reached the limit of the food source. Nice and simple.
Except there are quite a few people out there that view a few acres of trees to be more important than human life. Even a miserable human life.
I happen to love real conservation. You know, more doing things and less bitching about it. You should check out what Ted Turner is doing. He's been buying up ranch land and returning it to what he calls "pre-anglo" form. All the while trying to figure out how to make it profitable, and therefore, sustainable...and the entire time, 100% touched by human hand.
Hi!
My group of sophisticated scientists and researchers have discovered that the WWFs statistics are entirely too low.
Of the entire surface currently inhabited by man, 99.99% has been used by man! These are INCREDIBLY HIGH and ACCURATE numbers!
I do also admit that there is a 0.01% margin of error.
The WWF is flawed and I have proven this. I recommend reading news supplied by the WWE over the WWF. They have much more valuable and influential things to say.
In your chicken article, you forgot to mention that you can stack the chickens up in multiple levels ala condo/high rise style. As well as the humans.
Let me tell you about arizona farms.
They are mostly used to raise dirt and rocks. Sometimes scrubs, as they are worth a lot in the black market. But, we arizona farmers are after the ripe harvest of dirt. Good, clean dirt, too. None of this wet 'mud' stuff everyone else seems to prize. Sure, it doesn't grow much, but that's exactly what we want. We can then harvest it, and then lay it down in front of our houses for a wonderously rocky/sandy type of look. Oh, and don't forget, it brightens things up a bit, too.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
In response to the "looks like a whole lotta nothing"... actually, it's fenced into small pieces so that it is useless to much wildlife. Much of it is grazed by cattle and much of what looks like desert used to actually be grasslands before overgrazing and overfarming (and the dust-bowl).
The Club of Rome may have been premature saying our cars would run out of gas. But we might to pay a high price. Last week, the UK minister, Peter Hain, thanked the US taxpayer for protecting the West's oil supplies at a cost of $15 per barrel.)
Today's Club of Rome worry about global warming and they may be right this time see this CO2 rise.
If the whole world lived like the affluent then to achieve sutainability in CO2 (with enough plant growth to reabsorb our pollution and stabilise the climate) we would need the area of several earth's to live on. Calculations of this "ecological footprint" have been done for York and London. The citizen's of York and London are living as though there were three Earths.
Remember, the woolf did eventually come!Except "these people" haven't issued a terrifying pronouncement. They're simply making an effort to identify those untouched areas where conservation efforts can get the most gain for the buck.
Oh, you didn't RTFA? Gee, big surprise.
Humans breath air.
Water is wet.
Deserts are dry.
According to this map, people live on lakes! Looking at where the huge Great Salt Lake should be in Utah, it says there's humans on vritually all of it. (Er, human footprints at least). It also looks like Lake Okeechobee in Flordia still has people living on it too (not as many as Miami, but its not a dark green).
Environmentalist science...gotta love it
One post stating that environmentalists are "wackos" gets a 5:Insightful, one saying Earth can support "hundreds of billions of people" gets a 4:Interesting, while a carefully written post pointing out grazing patterns and water supply issues is labeled a "Troll". Go figure.
This is a fine forum to talk about tech, but a tough audience to talk about the non-artificial world. I suppose that too many are born, live, and die in cities where a lawn qualifies as "nature". Use /. for its strengths, and don't sweat the rest.
There are two kinds of societies: sustainable and doomed.
Daniel Quinn has a nice write up as to why we're consuming 200 species a day at Ishmael.org
The problem isn't population control, it's food control. What are you made of? Moonbeams? Dust? Think for a second. Or even better, go and read Dan's address to the Houston faculty of Health Science at the URL above.
Cheers,
uwe
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
Easter Island.
Actually, much less than the grazing of cattle, though they compete with cattle and ranchers are among those who'd like to see them eliminated from public land.
However
Note that the report doesn't say "human impact is bad". What the report says is that "we can get more bang for our conservation buck by identifying those lands which are least impacted by humans and concentrating our efforts there." It's not saying "grazing by feral horses or cows is intrinsically bad." It's saying "it's easier to attain conservation goals by concentrating on ungrazed rather than grazed habitat." Except it says it more broadly, of course, they're looking at human impact as a whole, not just narrowly at particular types of impact.
So, for instance, if your goal is to conserve native sage-steppe habitat you're better off focusing on places like the (now protected) Hanford Reach. This was minimally impacted for the past several decades due to all stock and other ag use being kicked off in favor of our nuclear weapons program. The nuke infrastructure only occupied a very small area of the reserve due to safety concerns.
A dollar spent there will be better used than many dollars spent on trying to fix up some grazed-to-hell patch of sage/greasewood that's lost all of its native bunchgrasses.
No, I don't know that it isn't. In fact I have no reason to suspect they're being dishonest. I've worked in conservation organizations for about twenty years, and the study makes perfect sense when measured against their stated reason for making it: prioritization of effort.
This is typical of how conservation organizations work, whether or not you want to believe it. Conservation organizations tend to be heavy in biologists.
For instance the board I served on had the a retired head of the USFW Region One, the retired USFW refuge manager for the states of California and Nevada, and the person who managed the endangered species for the entire country under the Carter Administration.
That's fairly typical, actually.
It is a beautiful example. Though I doubt they all died. Probably moved on eventually. Besides, the culture of Easter was a fishing culture, so they wouldn't have eliminated all food sources (though I have no idea what the annual climate shifts are like...no wood to burn for warmth...that's a problem).
Take into consideration, though, that Easter Island is not a good foil to my stance. The relatively limited number and variety of resources there do not make a good model of the Earth.
Is it just me or is this new?
grab1
grab2
There is more to the Earth than land and oceans. Perhaps the fishing refers to lakes...?
humans take up 83 percent of the Earth's land surface to live on, farm, mine or fish
How in the world can we fish on land???? I expect more from environmentalist wackos.
I think the general concensus is that fishing isn't something that can really be considered "using" land. If I use the pond behind my house to fish for a couple days a year, am I really "using" what probably amounts to almost 10,000 square yards? Am I using all of it or just the couple yards around where I'm standing? Is it then pro-rated for the amount of time that I actually stand there, or is it all-encompassing for the entire year?
I'm all for conservationists, but reading a statistic on human land "use" from the World Wildlife Fund is like reading a statistic on gun control from the NRA or Jim Brady... there's lies, damn lies, and statistics, so take it with a grain of salt and try to understand some of the cynicism.
Don't get the WSJ's right-wing maniac editorial pages mixed up with the rest of the paper, though. If one of their editorials really riles you up, the first place to look for facts that disprove it is the rest of the WSJ. It's not unheard-of. There often seems to be real disconnect between the left and the right hand there (so to speak).
The Economist often shows weird signs of independent thought, too, but mainly, it's entertaining. I never believe anything I read anyway.
Let's leave out "others of their ilk", though. You can't prove that I (for example) believe something just by saying that "others of my ilk" believe it -- not when said "ilk" is defined by commonality of belief. That's, like, circular, dude. And just because you can demonstrate that a view is a knee-jerk conservative view and then list three or four other knee-jerk conservative views that happen to be horrifically off-base (slavery, de-seg, etc.), that doesn't prove that all knee-jerk conservative views are wrong (any more than all knee-jerk liberal views are wrong, even though some of those have proven to be stone-cold loony, too).
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
I looked at their map. I don't believe it. There are many square miles in the Adirondack park which have zero permanent residents (been there, saw that), and yet they don't show up on their map.
Fly over the USA some time. You'll be amazed at the vast quantities of land which have no sign of being touched by humans.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I'm just quivering... ALL OVER! And I am truly scared, in the very sweetest way.
Fiery flaming pits of rectal punishment... MMMMM!
It's destroyed for whatever animals used to graze, hunt, etc. there and for all the plants that used to grow there.
Just because it provides a short-term good for humans does not make it overall good. It sure ain't good for ecological diversity, which BTW is very good for humans.
Yes, I agree. Thermonuclear weapons should be available for purchase at Costco, 'cause nukes don't kill people, people with nukes kill people.
Fly over the midwestern US(or much of western/central Europe) and count the hours you fly over nothing but farmland.
Okay...econ 101 here. 100% of the world's oil production fills 100% of the world's demand. If the rest of the world demanded more oil, there would be more oil production and therefore the United States would then use less than 25% of the world's oil production. If oil production were cheaper, worldwide usage would increase, but it isn't, so it doesn't (though it will down the road).
Now, also take into consideration that 100% of the world's oil production does not mean 100% of the world's oil. Not all the oil that the world contains has been discovered, or, that which has been discover is not being harvested. Think Alaskan National Wildlife and Animal Refuge (ANWAR, I think that's what it stands for). Oil we know about, but is unused because the demand for it is not high enough to make it economically feasible to bother drilling for.
So, unless you know, for a fact that all the currently exploited oil wells in the world account for every last drop of oil hidden underneath the Earth's crust, you cannot tell me that we need five more Earths.
Can you not see the flaw in that argument? It's a commonly used argument, but flawed nonetheless. Now, shift your argument to a different resource. Food. The United States produces X% of the world's food, but only consumes Y% of the world's food. Same argument, different resource, equally useless.
You can make the same analogies for many different types of resources...concrete, dynamite/tnt (very useful stuff, if you want to build/mine anything), steel, pollution, etc., etc.
Pollution might be the best example of all. The United States has a GDP that dwarfs several of the next largest GDP countries, and pollutes much less and countries with GDP's much less (China, Russia, et al). So in that situation, the ratio is the exact opposite.
One cannot just make blanket statements such as those made by the paper/essay in question and take them as fact/truth. It is a convoluted use of statistical information...you know, the three kinds of lies, "lies, damn lies and statistics"? (Disraeli)
I had a great histroy teacher in high school that emphasised reading between the lines. The author of this paper has an agenda. That agenda is to further the sense of esthetic that he/she and his/her comrades hold. They want to convince you that the effect of humanity on the Earth is a bad thing, but in this circumstance he/she is using "lies, damn lies and statistics" to try to win your heart.
I've flown cross country a few times, mind you, on commercial carriers - but let me tell you this, most of Canada is E M P T Y. M - T.
Would you want to live there, well, that's another issue.
..don't panic
I wouldn't be surpirsed if a major source for their map was taking the NASA image and changing the color palette.
Though we may be impotent in the field of international politics, that has absolutely no affect on the ability of our women to carry children to term and give birth. We are _not_ barren.
:)
I can't speak for the Russians, though
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
The earth has finite limits to what you can take out of it and finite limits to what you can return to it. Using resources generates waste - and I'm not talking about toxic waste or nuclear waste or anything like that; CO2 and O2 are both waste from different processes that happen on Earth, for example. Given that raw material + energy in = useful material + work + material waste + waste energy out for any system:
Using technology to maintain the rate at which raw materials and energy flow into the system means maintaining the level at which waste materials and waste energy flow out. There are two major theories about the potential outcome. One is that everything will be fine because we'll find a way around the problem using technology and ingenuity. The other is that wastes will build up and eventually the system will reach a breaking point. I doubt the former because waste has to go somewhere. I fear the latter because people are selfish.
--
Todd's Law: All things being equal, you lose!
Not that it makes a tremendous difference in terms of ecology, but there are people who performing "logging" (collecting deadheads) on lakes. They're looking for waterlogged timber that sank during logging runs. The timber is used for custom work like guitars, flooring, or custom home building. The advantages come from wood that has not been exposed to oxygen for years while it sat at the bottom of a river or lake. Here's another link if you're interested.
Here is a very good article related to this topic:
Congress Can No Longer Ignore Corporate Control of the Media, by U.S. Rep Bernie Sanders
After reading that, if you think you'll see any dissent from the major U.S. purveyors of knowledge, you're wrong..
Hmmm....I wonder if they included Antartica, Greenland, central and northern Asia, the Sahara, northern Canada, Brazil....
500 previously undiscovered species are becoming extinct each minute in the Amazon. Yup.
World reports have shown that subsistence farmers, those that farm for food to live, are all ready working on marginal land which in sub-Saharan Africa is becoming desert due to erosion and mineral exhaustion.
As for deserts, they aren't the No. 1 choice for many people....except when you get old and want to live in a furnace like Palm Springs.
As for Arizona, they grow a lot of oranges there, dorkboy.
California girl,
c.
Gentleman, our leading scientists have announced today that 17% of the earth's landmass is still available for discovery, development and colonization. Who's with me on the conquest?
The Earth has a radius of some 6300 kilometres and a surface area of 510 million square kilometres. The population of the Earth has recently exceeded 6 billion people. This means there are on average 12 people for each square kilometre of the Earth's surface.
The surface of the Earth is 71% sea and 29% land, with 3% covered in ice and snow.
So for each person on Earth there are 2.5 hectares of land, the area of a square 158 metres by 158 metres. There are also 6 hectares of sea. That is the area of a square 245 metres by 245 metres.
3 feet is, approximately, one metre. If you are allowing a one metre square for each person, 6 billion square metes are required. That is just less area than a square of side 80,000 metres or 80 km(80,000*80,000 = 6,400,000). This is a square of side approximately 50 miles.
You didn't happen to WTFA did you?
All kidding aside, its obvious to me that at least one of the following must be true:
1) This paper was written purposely to fool an ordinary reader (such as a journalist) into believing that human influence extends further than it really does.
2) The journalists who wrote the headlines and articles describing this paper clearly intended to fool readers into believing that the paper describes human influence accurately, even though it does not.
3) Journalists are idiots who don't know their head from their ass, and are incapable of descibing a paper such as this accurately.
I say this because the headlines and articles all describe this paper with inaccuracy, and the fault must lie somewhere. Most people posting here obviously believe its option #1. Its obvious to me that you either believe that journalists are either environmentally biased or complete morons (Options #2 and #3, respectively).
Frankly, I believe all 3 options are true to some extent.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
Ever wonder what percentage of the U.S. is covered by shit from Ted Turner's buffalos?
Because the American Southwest is such a large chunk of the world!
The atmosphere is very shallow compared to the size of the earth: It is less than one hundredth of the diameter of the earth. In proportion it is more akin to the skin of an apple than to the peel of an orange. The atmosphere thins with height and there is little atmosphere above 100 kilometres.
If all the atmosphere could all be kept at Standard Temperature and Pressure (ie at normal atmospheric pressure and at room temperature) it would be about 7700 metres in depth - little less than 8 kilometres. The main gasses would have depths of:
In 2002, CO2 is the equivalent of a layer 2.85 metres thick. In 1790 this layer would have been 2.16 metres thick. It has thus risen 0.69 metres since then.
By the year 2100 the lowest increase predicted by the scientists of the IPCC would give a rise of 2.00 metres and the highest a rise of 5.32 metres. The average prediction is for more than a doubling of CO2 from 1790 to 2100.
This is not business as usual for the Earth's atmosphere. And we are making the difference.
"Earth is 83% full... Please delete anyone you can."
You really think that if he couldn't get a gun he wouldn't use something else?
Snipers kill from the distance, what else could they use but guns? Bows and arrows? Spears?
This "guns don't kill people" stuff is simply ridiculous. A lame excuse for people who don't want to recognize the facts.
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
Oh man, mod this one up. I just sneezed ice tea all over my keyboard.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I'd also argue that the number of people and the technology (goats) being used to defoliate the landscape in the Sahara probably had about a percent of a percent of an effect on the landscape change, while the climate shift probably did just about all of the work there.
You're wrong, according to most students of ecology. You're probably thinking of sopmething along the lines of the Charney Effect. The gross effects on the Sahara were anthropogenic, not physical. Teh Sahara is prone to periods of hyper-aridity, but the geologically recent massive enlargement coincicides with the introduction by humans of domesticated animals: goats, sheep, and cows. These alien species tipped the land over into its modern incarnation of super-desert.
Da Blog
dude you're making shit up.
yes the article should have put more explanations into it, in fact if they said USABLE SPACE it would shut up half the raving comments thus far.
its all about usable space. you cannot farm in the australian desert. you cannot house communities in antarctica. if they said "humans take up 83% of productive space" then they would be more on the money.
irrigating the desert. great idea braniac. so where is all this water going to come from?? here in perth (australia) we can hardly supply our needs as is let alone coming up with fanciful ideas of just spontaneously creating gigalitres of water to turn the wasted space of desert into lush green farmland. hey why don't the turks irrigate their unproductive land with the euphrates? oh they have to dam it? no problem! i'm sure all downstream countries wouldn't mind. regional conflict anyone?
i could go the hemp solution though govt would never buy it
multi level greenhouses in the middle of nowhere? hello? logistics? transport? power supply? labour and support costs? nutrients? water?
resources ARE limitied. technology DOESN'T almost always fill whatever needs arise. its attitudes like that which people use to justify pissing resources up against the wall as if there is no tomorrow and expecting us to develop some amazing army of super nano-robots that can go around and clean up our environment and keep us all in the lifestyle to which we are accustomed after we have fucked everything up. wake up to yourself.
peace
This reminds me of the classic fractal question, "How long is the coastline of Britain?" Basically, the coastline of Britain, though quasi-linear, can't really be described with a linear measurement, because (assuming infinite detail on the shoreline, which there isn't) the perimeter is infinite. Kind of the opposite is happening here. How do you define if a given spot of ground is used? Matter is mostly empty space, so is the space that I occupy defined in terms of the amount of (say) water that I can displace, or is my volume the sum of the volumes of the electrons and protons and neutrons that comprise my body? You run into similar problems when you talk about the area that I take up; is it the size of my footprints, or the projection of my body (standing) upon the ground? The way that the WCS defines the measurement is ludicrous. If there's one person per square kilometer, then that area is "occupied". Yeah, right. I'm in a dorm room, the area of which is occupied by 8 people (2 people per room * 4 floors). It's not like we're stifled, or anything. The population density of my room is far above 1 person/square km, yet I'm quite comfortable. Things get worse. Any point "within 15 km of a road or major river" or "within 2 km of a settlement or a railway" is counted. Given a loose definition of "major river", a fairly hefty chunk of the Earth's surface could be counted as part of the "human footprint", even without any people here! What we're looking at is a "statistic" that is poorly defined, simply due to the difficulty of measuring anything like this. It's not just that it's a difficult problem to define, but the WCS did a really horrible job with what they had. Their assumptions are clearly biased, and they obviously aren't counting the oceans, and evidently not counting Antartica. Bah! The bogosity of this is stunning.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/2 3/210222
'nuff said....
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
hell, i grew up on the wwf, and now it is the wwe? wtf? hell, the rock is doing movies, stone cold went home, kane is speaking. wtf? well, at least they do put on good t&a.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Actually, that was exactly (China) what I was thinking of.
Quite interesting reading. Kept me up an extry half hour!
so 6 billion people use 83% of the surface, eh? So that means i have 1,38*10^-8 % all to myself, right?
That's the other 17%
Even the most crowded of cities aren't that crowded!
In fact, I'd bet that if one were to take all the crowded cities in the world into account, much less than 10% of the earth's surface would be covered.
Judging from views of our planet from space, 10% would be way too much.
That being said...
I am assuming that the WCS does not, in fact, plan to buy up the "unused" 17% of the Earth's surface and privately conserve it. I am betting that their plan has more to do with spending their precious privately donated money to lobby governments to spend taxpayer dollars to conserve publicly owned lands. In which case, agree or disagree, the "stupid socialist dweebs" are, in fact, looking for ways to spend my tax dollars.
I just couldn't let such a crass insult against the man who coined such a delicious gem as "stupid socialist dweebs" go unchallenged.
P.S. -- I absolutely love the sound of "stupid socialist dweeb." I'm going to use it at every convenient opportunity from now on.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
One of their definitions of 'occupied' is that the land is within 15km of a road. I don't know about you, but a couple paved roads through a 10,000 acre forest don't make it 'occupied' to me.
I'd be interested to see how much area is considered occupied if you remove the roads from the equation... does it drop a scant few percent, or does it drop through the floor down to 50%-60%?
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
how could we not and still remain the dominant species on the planet? /CF
Maybe faking your figures is dishonest, and wrong in principle, and maybe even such sacred figures as professional environmentalists should (god forbid) be held to the same standards of integrity as the rest of us.
Exactly how are they faking the figures?
As far as I can tell, your just making this up (just like your earlier Club of Rome post), so perhaps you should think about this "standards of integrity" thing.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
Most scientists agree that the reason the ozone hole is starting to reduce in size is the 1976 ban on CFCs in aerosol cans. This was by far the largest source of CFCs ending up in the atmosphere.
Yeah! You get him! He's a big dumbhead! I'm with you all the way!
Somebody once calculated that you could fit the Earth's entire human population into Texas, on suburban-sized lots. The idea was that this was supposed to "prove" that overpopulation was a myth. Well, y'know, even if the math is correct, it's gibberish: Half of Texas is uninhabitable, and all of it is full of Texans. Besides, it seems far-fetched to imagine that there's enough land there to feed everybody. But there are people who take it seriously, which ought to give one pause.
People take all kinds of crazy shit seriously. And True Believers have always had a wonderful facility for making the math come out just the way they want it to.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
Note that the report doesn't say "human impact is bad".
Really? Let me quote the report for you:
"The human footprint is a global driver of conservation crises on the planet."
"Crises" related to crisis meaning: "an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty". Sounds damn negative to me.
"...we need to find ways to moderate the negative impacts of human influence...
Can't even say they are implying that we have a negative impact. They flat out say it.
"Part of the solution is becoming better stewards of Nature across the gradient of human influence..."
Implies we are not good stewards!
"But the most important part of the solution is for human beings, as individuals, institutions and governments, to choose to moderate their influence..."
Implying once again that we do not moderate ourselves.
And that's just one section of the study and doesn't even mention the "sky is falling" spin CNN applied.
In fact I have no reason to suspect they're being dishonest.
I've seen at least twenty other posts pointing out flaws in their methodology. If the average slashdotter can find that many, that quick, I'd say there are issues with the report.
This is typical of how conservation organizations work, whether or not you want to believe it. Conservation organizations tend to be heavy in biologists.
Ah that's how you want them to work and if it was I'd be all for it. I have no evil goal of destroying the world here. But the fact remains that "greenies" are mostly undereducated knee-jerk reactionaries. i.e. First Earth day: "Global Cooling!!! Another ice age is only years away!". Todays: "Global Warming, We are all going to bake!". Or this report. Or my personal favorite the dam beavers.
So you see I have no problem with the goal of conserving nature, but I am skeptical of most groups that promote it because most feel that the majority of humans are a waste of space and would love to see them "just go away".
[applause]
A very nice demonstration of the ignorance of "modern" man, typical of a Western, Christian indoctrination. "Hey, I am better than nature... I am the top of the food chain...". Whoo boy. That was funny.
Can we move on now? Last time I checked my calendar it was 2002. Alarmist? Have you no rational mind? Wake up!!!! Unless you're a lemming. Lemmings don't really need to wake up cause they are letting others make the call for them...
Do you have a solution or alternative to offer on this topic? Or is it easier to attack those issues that will eventually affect even you, sitting at the top of your food chain? Or is it easier to repeat the bs and propoganda of others designed to prevent rational discussion and keep you lemmings from thinking? Or are you just out trolling? I somewhat doubt that.. If you truly think that humans are the most benevolent animals on Earth I feel pity for you and those who concur. But remember, its the lemmings that suffer in the end.
There is more 'wild' area in US than there is in Africa. I bet this doesn't count Sahara desert but still counts for the waste of land in USA...
Offtopic, I know... but just off the top of my head:
:) )
Blowgun/dart (probably poisonous)
Slingshot
Compound bow and arrow (pretty good range on those, you know)
Remote triggered device (bomb, dart/spear/whatnot payload, etc.)
Virus
Bomb on a timer or a tripwire
Pungi sticks (of couse, digging the pit is a little conspicuous..
Radio controlled airplane with small missiles/bombs/whatnot.
Vicious animals trained to attack N yards/miles away (dogs, probably... heck train a chimp to conceal a knife and attack)
I'm not saying all (or many) of those are particularly likely or as efficient as a scoped rifle... but let's be honest. Humans have been working out new ways to kill from out of range of their target for millenia -- removing one weapon from a list of possibilities will NOT make the task impossible, or even make it impossible to not get caught.
The reason that the rate of discovery of new wells has gone down is primarily due to new technology available to increase the "lifetime" of current wells. Exploration for new wells is expensive, and oil companies are going to put old wells back in service before they try to find new ones.
Traditionally, only a percentage of oil found under the ground has been able to be removed due to whatever reason, geological, mechanical, etc. Technologies that have arisen recently (i.e. the last two decades or so) have allowed currently tapped wells to produce more oil than what was "budgeted" for. Also, wells that had previously "run dry" have now been re-tapped using the new technology.
I also debate your 50 years idea. I'd say that quite a few people understand that humankind really has no idea how much oil is left, let alone how it is produced. There are a few theories that oil is constantly being replenished due to unknow geological action....not that I subscribe to those theories, but I believe the ball is still up in the air on total supplies of oil.
I really wish I had the quote with me, but I leant the copy of Foreign Affairs (article entitled "The Myth of Alaskan Oil") to an environmentalist buddy of mine and have yet to get it back, but my favorite quote was from a prominent Saudi government official, "We will be finished with oil before it is finished with us." Basically meaning that other, cheaper sources of energy will arise before the oil runs out (because they don't think the oil is going to run out any time soon).
Okay, I did the math. Check it out here. One quote:
Do you volunteer to be on the bottom layer?PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
...try looking at this:
9 5/ amory-b-lovins-l-hunter-lovins/fool-s-gold-in-alas ka.html
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20010701faessay49
It's a fascinating article, and unfortunately, you can only read part of it, but if you do get hooked, you can buy the article, or possibly find the back issue somewhere...library perhaps?
Maybe you should have won the nobel prize for economics instead. You didn't even read the linked article. Any half way smart person can come up with a decent-sounding argument, but last time I checked, this guy won a nobel prize for his ideas. What have you won by parroting Ayn Rand recently?
People will attempt to subvert any system. In order for a system to be robust, all security holes should be patched. Despite your simplistic refutation, "the lemon problem" is a real security hole in the free market model. Claiming it isn't won't patch it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Now there is an intelligent argument: "Since you didn't win a prize for your idea you must be wrong!"
Lucky for us you were not around to tell everyone that Einstein was just a patent clerk and didn't get good grades in math, so he should be ignored.
I did read the article and in fact refuted the example it cited. You see that's how intelligent discussions happen: you cite an example; if we disagree I refute it. Then you must state an example of how my analogy failed to address the your argument (which you did not do!). But then I'm not the one relying on others works to back up my social beliefs, without any thought of how they all fit together.
I do not parrot Ayn Rand. We do agree on a number of things but I disagree with some of her proposed solutions. Indefinite copyrights being one of them.
In order for a system to be robust, all security holes should be patched.
What exactly are these holes? Are they not loopholes in the regulations that are found by a limited number and used to their advantage? Without the regulations there are no holes.
"the lemon problem" is a real security hole in the free market model.
I disagree. Its not a problem at all and is instead a symptom of another problem, Rationalizing Understanding of a Domain. You see you rationalize that you know something about cars and since you see no problems with the car, then there must not be any. You solution and the problem I pointed out to you is that the government cannot make everyone and expert in every field. So how exactly do your regulations address the problem of uneven knowledge between buyer and seller. As a bonus question how does the seller know everything about his supply? Double Bonus points explaining how the buyer knows that the seller is not blowing smoke up his ass?
I think I'll make that my new sig and maybe one day I'll be famious for it: "Just because a Nobel Laureate said so, doesn't mean that he is right!"
Well, they are right, but...
Yes, every transaction is going to be one with inequality of information. However, the free market has come up with answers to that that the government bureaucrats haven't.
Here's an example of products and services that have sprung up to remove market inefficiencies...
GM Certified Used Vehicles - GM certifies that the vehicles meet certain criteria. While the program is mainly a rubber stamp of a dealer inspection, the average price of a CUV is much higher than uncertified.
Consumer Reports - an independent agency that makes money through audits of different vehicles. They have yet (I believe) to be sued successfully by people whose products they rate poorly.
Internet - there is a ton of information out there waiting to be harvested on various products, etc.
Stock Market - this is an entity whose sole purpose is to provide a meeting place for buyers and sellers.
Universities and Degrees - provide degrees to people with certain qualifications - doesn't remove all doubt, but selectivity and product can be observed pretty easily.
Now, here is the government idea on how we ought to provide this "efficiency"...
Government "certification" - You name it - doctors, engineers, teachers. The government stamp of approval puts their customers/patients/students in a position of having very little knowledge about their qualifications. How has government certification prevented malpractice? Basically, it doesn't. It guarantees that the practitioners have taken certain classes and passed certain exams. That's about it, and yet many states are trying to sue Microsoft for using "Engineer" in MCSE certification, for example. Schools are even more interesting because it is basically a government-enforced monopoly and the teachers have successfully lobbied against just about any method of providing "information" about their qualifications (e.g. standardized tests)
Government safety organizations - these basically provide huge barriers of entry into markets so that you need lots of lawyers, or lots of money to create a product. You need to crash X cars in order to create a production car, etc. Yet, we don't find them taking action against car manufacturers, etc., unless the evidence is pretty staggering. And, since they're paid government bureaucrats, they are not being "compensated" for the quality of their work.
As you can see, private market solutions to the inequality of information have proven to be much more effective that legislation and government certification. Proving that there IS inequality of information (which I agree with!) does not prove that government information and not free market economics is the way to solve it.
Excellent points. Wish you had not posted AC. I'd love to read some of your other posts.
It's amazing that in a topic such as "Do the math" everyone assumes a 2-dimentional space. Must not have gotten much further than geometry and basic trig...
For whatever reason, if you really zoom that map in, it looks a lot more realistic than otherwise. The western US shows up (at least to me) unzoomed as predominantly the lightish yellow color signifying 10-20 inhabitants per square kilometer... but if you zoom down in to about 400%, in actuality most of it is the green or light green signifying 0-1 or 1-10. I find that a lot easier to believe than what it appears to be on the face of it.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Did someone forget that humans can eat other humans to survive?
What garbage. The fact that this got moderated up at all is very telling of the number of fools who're, like sheep to the slaughter, buying the "it's all ok!" line. This is pure, unadulterated, garbage. I guess it's just more to put in your landfill though.
You're obviously a smart person, Gigs. I didn't mean to sound insulting, but I'm sure I did, and I apologize.
;-)
Let's back up. Can we both agree there is something wrong with the current economic system? Not necesarily the theory, but how it is carried out in practice today.
The way I understand it, humans, as a group have decided that we will all play by a set of rules in our interactions. We decided on rules that we thought would provide the greatest benefit to all. If you think we did and should set up a system of rules that benefit some more than others, regardles of merit, then we really have no common ground on which to discuss things. But I don't think you think that way.
I see several exploitable weaknesses of a free market system. If I gain a position of dominance in a market, I can use my power, influence and wealth to unfairly restrict competition in a market. I can do so with predetory pricing, by forcing unfair agreements on mutual suppliers, and a number of other well known dirty tricks.
One way is by restricting access to information. By cornering the market in media through monopolistic practices, I can extend my power by entering into agreements with other monopolies or oligopolies in other markets, helping them restrict access to information about those markets.
I can also shift the actual cost of doing business off onto others. If my business causes polution and cancer, but regulations don't force me to pay for people's medical bills, a legitimate cost of my business must be born by others.
Regulations can adress the problem of uneven knowledge by setting certain standards that all must adhere to. I don't have to be an expert in a field if I can rely on other experts to report on the actual qualities of goods and services.
Is that a better argument?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If you've got a lot of sand, you can sell it to us poor dupes who live where it used to be sea. :)
-l
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I said it years ago, rap is the new rock & roll. Not that I like it as much as I like rock (I do like plenty...really!), but it had the danger/white-parents-hating-that-their-kids-listen -to-it thing going.
I admit now that rap probably doesn't have the legs rock did/does, but it sure was fun for a while!
Thanks. Now more than ever, and thanks to you, I hope for the extinction of humans everywhere.
Im thinking they havent taken Australia into account, if we use more than 25% of our land ill eat my hat... is anyone sure they didnt just compare geographical area to population density and average it????
Im thinking that the research was done by Chinese scientists... this would explain a few things.... The Chinese think their world is THE world, and its overpopulated as hell..... well.. you draw your own conclusions