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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.
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.
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
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.
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Fishing for LANDSHARK!!!
Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14 percent of all people know that.
"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 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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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!!
"Humans are number 1! Humans are number 1"
Feels kinda like a game of Age of Empires, duddn't it?
76.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot by an idiot.
Education is the silver bullet.
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.
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."
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.
Analysis of the Human Footprint indicates that 83% of the land's surface
if you would have bothered to read anything other then the title of the story you would have seen this..."Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
here
Won't keep it there for long.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
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.
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 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!
"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.
It's very easy, as long as you situate yourself next to a lake.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Won't somebody please think of the children!
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."
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.
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
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.
Well, according to the Gaia theory, a self-contained ecosystem will correct. People point to things like AIDS as examples.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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
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
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.
For sure: bacterial life dominates 100% of earth's surface. Why should we pride about 83%?
It's like, bacterial life is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It's kinda like CowboyNeal...
---
Don't mind if I quote The Matrix. Wait until Matrix Reloaded comes out, then I'll change my quotes.
reason defies logic
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
That statistic usually comes from anti-abortion activists in response to the claim that the world needs no more people on it. It is of course true (barely) but extremely misleading.
Texas comprises 262,000 square miles. Putting (circa) 6 billion people in that space gives 1184 square feet per person. Not entirely comfortable considering your house would butt up against someone else's on all sides but certainly livable.
Unfortunately, this is just LIVING space. Where are you going to get food? Growing enough crops for one person to sustainably survive requires at between one and six acres of land -- one acre is over 43,000 square feet! Cattle ranching and other "meat farming" requires far more space, because you have to feed the cattle. Then you need a water source. Power generation. Transportation systems. Buildings in which to work/create things. Modern conveniences.
Pretty soon you're up to 20-30 acres per person required in the US to keep things moving. America comprises 2.3 billion acres... do the math and you'll see we don't even have room in the US for the measly 250,000,000 residents we already have, much less the entire world!
Just a thought... it bugs me when people (and I don't blame you) overgeneralize how much space one person REALLY takes up.
Besides, I like to stretch out.
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
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.
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?
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.
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.
When they talk about an ecological footprint they calculate how much space each person takes up. Not just by standing in a spot, but by the resources they use. So most people end up taking up a couple square miles of space. But there are discrepencies, where the people of the US might take up 4-8 square miles, someone in a developing country might take up less than 1 square mile.
Those greedy American bastards.....
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
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
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!
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.
Ahh, the joys of belief in strong dichotomies. Either a person believes in no governmental regulation of any sort, or he believes that the government should be all powerful and control everything.
An article pointing out that resources are not infinite doesn't say that we should live in the hypothetical de-regulated utopia, so therefore it *must* be calling for totalitarian governmental control of everything.
There are positions between these two extremes. It is possible to both respect private property and the rights of private property, while simultaniously recognizing that some regulations and restrictions must exist. Its like the old joke "Your right to punch ends where my nose begins".
Recognizing that resources are not infinite is not equivalent to demanding that we go back to living in caves. Calling for increased efficiency and conservation efforts is *not* identical to calling for an end to industrialization and technology. The solution is to step back, abandon the urge to split things into "two sides", and look at reality. Any Rynd and Greenpeace are not the only two alternatives.
It is self evident that we have to maintain a technological society, increase our industrial capicity, and increase energy production. This does not mean that increased industrial capicity, and increased energy produciton must come at the expense of more environmental harm, and paving the world. Also, it is self evident that a continuiously increasing human population will cause shortages of scarce resources. By combining efforts, abandoning the urge to dichotomize, and looking for solutions we can all get what we want.
I want a world with vast forests, and a world with advanced technology. We can have both. But we can't get there by denying that the way we currently are working is causing problems. It is one thing to say "technology is good, let's keep improving it". I agree with that statement, and its fine. But when you say "technology is good, therefore let's wreck the planet" I think you've fallen victim to the belief that we can have one, or the other. Both is both possible and necessary.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
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).
well, it depends on your definition of populated. If I live alone in the middle of the wilderness, how much area do I populate? an acre? a square mile? the square footage of my log cabin?
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
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.
Like so often when figures and statistics are reported in the media, there's no error factor, and I would bet even money that they couldn't even come close to justifying the two significant digits they claim.
I'm filled with questions... how exactly do you define "wild" territories? How much of a human presence defines an area as being "used" by humans? I mean, population density in the Sahara is less than one per square km; Australia as a whole has a population density of about 5 per square km. Is a state forest that is not being logged but is open to visitors being "used" by humans?
Not that it isn't an interesting study to make but I'd find real data a lot more interesting than little sound-bite statistics with no possible basis in anything I'd call a fact. And what does it encourage? The bandaid solution of little wildlife preserves. If we waste the whole planet those reserves are not going to survive; if we fail to get it on with truly sustainable development and the modern economy and thrust of civilization goes to hell, you're telling me that resource hungry humans are going to stay out of that "preerved" land because somebody signed a piece of paper and some money changed hands N years ago?
I guess what I'm saying is, point made, old boys - we're taking up a damn lot of space. But personally, I would much rather focus on how intensively we are using the lands we do inhabit, how much impact we are having on habitats, and how ecology is holding up in the presence of our presence there. The fact is... we're here for the long haul. We're smart and damn hard to kill (as a collective). Rather than pine for some unspoiled world that is unlikely to exist again and stort working under the assumption that it would be nice to preserve beauty, health, and diversity in our ecologies DESPITE our presence. The all or nothing mentality (either land is being "used" by humans or else it is "pristine").
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
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
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.
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?
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.
As long as the people of earth are not hogging up 83% of my bandwidth... i am happy!
--JonnyBlog
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 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
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
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 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!
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.
... 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?
"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
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!
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!
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.
couldn't they argue that penguin lands are being exploited by humanity since they use penguin likenesses to market such useful things?
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
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.
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.
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.
Because just determining the criteria for land use would take up a huge volume at work. When you base a statistic on a shakey/unproved/undisclosed methodologies, your accuracy is going to be off. It isn't like we are talking about the number of red marbles in a cup.
This is as silly as saying that 22% of the earth is covered by clouds. You mean right now? What about yesterday? How thick are the clouds? How accuratly are we measuring the irregularities in their shapes?
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
Theoretically those who were rich enough to fortify their domicile and smart enough to stay inside would do well too :)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Living systems _tend_ to self correct, or at least the one example we have has always done so. But guess what, if it had failed at some point in the past, we wouldn't be here to talk about how cool and self-corecting it is, would we?
Just imagine that two dozen life bearing planets fizzled out for every earth-like planet that has (so far) suceeded, and the ghosts of their inhabitants are bitching about how the Gaia theory is a crock of shit.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
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.
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
Anyone who could have figured out how to produce more grain at the end of the Roman Empire would have become very rich and powerfull indeed, but despite the demand, no on managed to pull it off.
Just because people _want_ to produce more of a certain resource doesn't mean that they'll _suceed._ Technology helps, but only so much.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
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.
As you mentioned, Texas would house 1,184 people per square feet. The ironic thing in all of this, is Tokyo has a much higher density through the city. Now, Tokyo as a whole (each individual district) is not inhabited, per se. There are many office buildings, and unusable land through the area of Tokyo. Take into account the Emporers palace in the center, it's not all that bad. Yeah, living area is small but it's definitely livable.
;)
Now, it's true that this is merely living area. Not supporting area. Some areas are very well suited for certain things, like cattle or growing fruits. If you had people that enjoyed that life doing this, that basically got a free ticket on a regulated "monopoly" (think of a contract, "You provide us beef at this rate, and we provide you with everything you need.) Then the entire population could live in a land area the size of texas, be supported by another set of areas much smaller than texas, and have the rest of the world to play on and let rebuild itself so we can expand and conquer that properly too
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
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
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!
In 2000, Manhattan had 2.3 million residents living on 23 square miles of land. That works out to 270.4 square feet per person -- only 1/4 of the put-everyone-in-Texas rate, and actually not bad considering the average building size in Manhattan has got to be AT LEAST 5 vertical floors...
That's why Tokyo is a great example, because the population density is higher than the Texas example.
It's all hypothetically great, like communism. Would never work in the real world, unless you tiered the living quarters (higher up = more money) and obliterated the necessity for cars, where they became a luxory item (racing, scenic driving as vacation packages and what not). I bet we kill ourselves before any system of this level of organization happens.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
"Earth is 83% full... Please delete anyone you can."
"...you take some standard estimate of the land area of the earth, come up with some method of estimating human land use..." [Emphasis Added]
I doubt it is much of an estimate. Of course these are baseless claims, but I would be willing to bet that they can "estimate" to the first or second decimal place. GPS alone could take care of that. Estimating human land use is a bit trickier; you address that in the rest of you post.
"how [sic] exactly do you define "wild" territories? How much of a human presence defines an area as being "used" by humans? I mean, population density in the Sahara is less than one per square km; Australia as a whole has a population density of about 5 per square km."
Did you even read the article? I am directly quoting here:
"Analysis of the human footprint map indicates that 83% of the land's surface is influenced by one or more of the following factors: human population density greater than 1 person per square kilometer, within 15 km of a road or major river, occupied by urban or agricultural land uses, within 2 km of a settlement or a railway, and/or producing enough light to be visible regularly to a satellite at night."
The map is useful as well (see link in article). The Sahara is marked as desert and is not considered populated by man. Much of Australia is also considered to be wild.
"I'd find real data a lot more interesting than little sound-bite statistics with no possible basis in anything I'd call a fact."
And you could do a better study than the experts? These people gave a detailed analysis of the state of Humans on the globe as it stands now. Perhaps you should ask them how they did their research or, God forbid, RTFA before you make such accusations.
"personally [sic], I would much rather focus on how intensively we are using the lands we do inhabit, how much impact we are having on habitats, and how ecology is holding up in the presence of our presence there..."
Again, quoting from the article:
"...human influence is not inevitably negative impact -- in fact conservation organizations, including the Wildlife Conservation Society, have shown remarkable solutions that allow people and wildlife to co-exist."
Granted, this is badly lacking in details, but it makes a good point for the laymen. If they were to use environmental jargon I wouldn't have a clue what they were saying. I'm sure they have a whitepaper on the topic if you're so inclined.
Please read the article before passing judgement. And to think, I've wondered how rumors get started before...
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
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
Actually, that was exactly (China) what I was thinking of.
Quite interesting reading. Kept me up an extry half hour!
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.
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.
Given the extreme number of posters who have laid into this report without even reading it, I'd be surprised if the deaths of all slashdotters would have a negative effect on IQ.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
Don't propound the Gaia theory myself; as far as I'm concerned, humans are doing exactly what evolution taught/predisposed them to do. Humanity will perservere, even if it has to alter the environment to unrecognizable levels to do so.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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".
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!"
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
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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