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Changing Planet Revealed In Atlas
ring writes "The United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) has released a new atlas 'One Planet Many People: Atlas of our Changing Environment', to mark World Environment Day (WED). It compares and contrasts spectacular satellite images of the past few decades with contemporary ones." From the BBC article: "Among the transformations highlighted in the atlas are the huge growth of greenhouses in southern Spain, the rapid rise of shrimp farming in Asia and Latin America and the emergence of a giant, shadow puppet-shaped peninsula at the mouth of the Yellow River that has built up through transportation of sediment in the waters."
Where can I find more picture comparisons?
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Unlimited population growth has nothing to do with libertarianism.
Though a libertarian would know that population growth slows as economic freedom and prosperity grow.
A libertarian would also know that care for the environment increases as prosperity grows. And that more efficient farming and GMO plants will decrease the water and landspace needs for a population. Smaller farms providing more food than traditional farming means more land goes back to a natural state.
I'd like to see those same satellite images for the United States. There was a recent story on New Hampshire, how only 20% of New Hampshire was forest covered at the turn of the 20th century. Now it is 80% forest.
I'm a nuclear engineer and physicist and I can tell you we're quite a long way from developing profitable and useful fusion power. We've made amazing leaps in the last few years, but getting the technology anywhere will take decades.
"I want to see this happening on a global scale"
This shows a fundamental lack of understanding.
I was curious to find that 5th picture, talking about using insects to control a green swirl of something that appeared somewhere.
I wish they could visit our lake. Last year it had a huge crop of lemna, shown here.
What you see is not a tennis court but a big piece of the lake being covered in the thing. This lake is lake maracaibo in venezuela.
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Hah, I love the amusing hippie consipiracy theories. It seems as though some people really beleive that environmentalists are making all this stuff up. That myopic view wasn't chosen, it's all we have. Try not to see motives where you should be seeing circumstances.
In North America at least, the trend has been going largely in the opposite direction. We are seeing REforestation rather than DEforestation. This is in despite of an increasing population.
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It can be a little tough to find good data given all the bullshit flying around but here's a map that shows the amount of forest land in the US from 1620 onwards:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/gg96rpt/chap7.ht
The interesting things is that we are see a dramatic resurgence of forest land here in the US. A big part of the reason, apparently, is more efficient farming practices which have allowed us to restore a lot of farmland back to forests. Here's a map showing the trends from 1982 to 1997:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/LandUse/Gallery/
A move to more densley packed cities is also a contributing factor to reforestation.
Article such as the one Zonk cited are a favorite of the hard left environmental movement. These 'studies' cherry pick data to paint an alarmist picture. The media usually swallow these article whole with little crtical thought. In the end, these distorted pictures don't do anything to help real environmental progress.
I think common sense is evidence enough. This is happening on a world scale, unless you can point out areas of the planet's surface that have been devoid of human interaction over the last 20-30 years. As far as seasons go, the effects that the study concentrates on tend to be long-term rather than seasonal, so seasonal evidence would be pointless.
Look at the basic facts; we are on a planet with finite resources. World population is growing, and human consumption of resources is growing.
Long term, the math doesn't work out. It's not a case of if we screw up this planet, it's a case of when, and more people equals acceleration towards that point, more space used, more fuels used, more products consumed.
The main problem is that as a planet, we all have to act to make it a sustainable environment. This means actually reducing what we use, not slowing down, or keeping it the same, but actually reducing the amount of resources we use. If one country *cough* decides to ignore this fact, it undermines the point of the exercise.
As far as your comment about hippies who want the developing countries to starve to death; well, they already do starve. But if world poverty was wiped out tomorrow the world over, the developed world would have to change its consumptive habits overnight for the world to sustain itself.
At the end of the day, everything on this planet is not okay, and all of our eggs are in one basket.
To see more photos than the BBC offers, you can either order the book here (and murder another tree), or view some of the images in these PDF reports.
All of the cities in India that have a Coke plant blame part of their water shortage on Coke.
Coke in India has toxins in it.
Coke's defence is, well it is a drought, and the USDA doesn't have a problem with what we are selling. They have never challenged (to the best of my research) the fact that their is lead in the soft drinks, just the fact that it is unsafe
Coke is trucking water into the villages that it has plants, as a good will gesture
Coke offered Coke as fertilizer to farmers, but it turned out to have lead in it that made the land unfit for farming.
We don't use up the water. We contaminate it. and while extracting plutonium from water is fairly stright forward, it is very expensive due to the fact that you really do have to get essentially all of it not 99% of it.
Most farmers vote on a single issue. Water rights.
So yes we will not run out of water, but we may well wind up with far less potable water than there is demand for.
As a bit of indirectg evidence that Humans are the problem. The only place on the planet that has a healthy eco system of large mammals is in the areas of Cambodia that have so many land mines that pochers refuse to go, and large crocs only exist in the war torn regions of Africa.
The statement that there are enough resources for humans, falls apart if you asume that we are to be living in an ecosystem and not trying to manufacture everything we need.
Back to water. Have you noticed the number of public drinking fountains lately? They were everywhere thirty years ago. Now They are almost extinct. Do you pay a water bill? Have you pulled on up from twenty years ago?
Why do you think that Intel recycles 3 million gallons of water a day, and puts it on their website?
I am not someone who is anti-development. 500,000 people are going to move to California next year, and I am one of those lobbying that we should be building housing for these people, and that the new housing should be near the city centers.
Yes, many of the Indians that are objecting to Coke are Marxists, and Coke is doing a lot to sanitize thier image. But, that does not change the fact that their is a big fight over potable water, indicating the potable water is indicating that it is a limited resource.
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It wouldn't be so bad if people in first world countries didn't waste so much resources. Everytime I see someone commuting to work in an SUV, I think, wow, what a a waste of resources. There's no reason they couldn't be driving a smaller, more efficient vehicle, except that driving an SUV makes them feel special. Which they aren't, because everybody has one. There's a lot of other waste going on too. With energy and all that. There's no reason to have the A/C on to 15 Degrees Celcius. You can live in 30 degrees. Just drink more water. Oh, and in the winter let it be 15 Degrees in your house. Just put a sweater on if you are cold. I'm not a saint when it comes to the environment, but at least I try. I use public transit, and even ride my bike when possible. At least give it a little effort. Most people don't even try to help the environment. It almost seems like they are trying to see how much damage they can do to the environment.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Hi, may I react on this, as i think i know where i am talking of.
I am wanting to preserve some 50 square KM, yes KM of forrest down in the chaco Paraguay.
However everyone calls me a nut.
The problem is that it is almost impossible to control. to get there is a 2 to 3 day travel. up and down a week.
It is not people in paraguay cutting there but bolivians and yes your beloved argentinians stealing the trees. As they have good roads on the other side of the borders. (check the maps)
A big problem is that the border ad forest police is so coccupt and it is very easy to steal trees.
Then there are the farmers without earth. That always claim new land. Funny that they alwas claim a forest and never an empty farm land. Well if it is not cut while they are present there, it is very fast cut after they got their will and then they are gone again. A better name would be farmers without trees
Luckely the politics here are slowly shifting their position on these matters
I even thought of hiring several of these farmers to replant trees, but they rather don't it takes effort.
Then there is another maybe bigger problem
Soja delivers a 10 times higher profit then forest, meat (cows) a 5 times. Unless people will pay the real price for wooden it will be cut and not replanted
Well so if you are not going to invest from ideology, likely loosing your investment anyway through stealing, having a lot of headacke yes i have to agree with them, I would be a nut.
One way to balance the cost would be payment for greenhouse reduction, but polluting countries see saving trees not as a way of reducing greenhouse gasses. (I do monitor the COP Conference of Partys on these issues)
But if you have a 100.000$ laying around be my guest and save the world, yes 50 square KM of naitive forrest is likely cheaper then your house you are living in.
Do your calculus
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ing. John van der Pol
If people want more info feel free to reply and i will answer
There are no stupid questions, Just a lot of inquisitive idiots. (from a good friend)
We passed the point of fully "sustainable" around 1850 or so - every year after that we produced more waste products that can be broken down by natural processes in a year. I'm not talking about CO2 or iPods here - I'm talking about vegetable matter and human waste. Heat is another consideration as well - our current use of energy produces significant amounts of heat and not all of it is radiated into space.
To consider a "sustainable" environment and a closed system you are going to have to look at how things are going to be in several hundred years. Recycling is going to be a big deal, because the energy required to smelt ore into "new" metal isn't going to be around. Nor would any right-thinking individual let someone produce the waste products and heat from lighting up a forge. Why would you anyway, when you can just go over to the dump and pick up something ready to be "reclaimed"? Remember, that if we really want "sustainable" we better start thinking about some significant population reductions. Quickly, too.
Pollution and waste management are but one side of the equation - the other is input resources. We can spend money today on the future and building our ability to obtain resources from elsewere, or we can spend money today on reducing the population so we don't have to later. There is a third alternative - let everyone keep knocking up their Significant Other and having 14 children. Especially popular in third-world countries. We will, of course, drown in our own waste products if we don't bake from our own waste heat.
The population in 1850 was less than 100 million people. At that level we can be 100% fully "sustainable" and the natural processes on the planet will recycle all of the waste products. Waste heat won't be a problem either. We just need to decide between "open" or "closed" system and plan for the future. Should we decide on "closed", we better start reducing the population, drastically, and soon.
Maybe the point to be highlighted is one of judgement. If you're crossing a rope bridge, over an abyss, and, you think it's showing signs of giving way, do you sprint for the other side or do you go gingerly, testing as you go, looking for more proof of what's happening? In the first world, the infrastructure that maintains our lifestyle is not ruggedly robust, or, highly redundant. Redundancy as a concept is, historically, only yesterday's news. The internet is an example of an infrastructure built with redundancy in mind. So, if the biosphere is showing signs of change, do we hope for benign change and/or for science to sprint to the rescue? Sir Francis Bacon, one of the fathers of deductive reasoning, suggested we had to wrest the secrets of life from nature, like a mythological hero wresting a prize from some monster. I think many, maybe all of us, are subject to living, in part, in the heroic age, and, I think that is the greatest danger. The ancient Greeks fostered the idea of hubris as one of mankind's greatest weaknesses. The philosophy of the heroic age doesn't hold in an indeterminate universe and science shouldn't be seen as the ultimate big stick that will beat back the threats of nature.
Life, as we know it, is characterzed as an non-equilibrium, open-system. The sun rains down ~10^24 calories per year on the biosphere. Carbon based life forms, in the perfect mileu of water, harness this energy in various ways.But it's a system of systems and subject, as much as we know, to Systems Theory. If we know change is in the works do we risk positive feedback and trust in science to carry us past any threat?
There is a strong consensus that climate change is happening. Will climate change force a parameter shift that will invite a runaway state? The concept of key species tells us that specific species are necessary to maintaining the ecology of an eco niche. Could climate change destroy key species and cause collapse of ecosystems. This brings on the old bogey man of the domino effect.
Change is inevitable, so it's really a matter of placing your bet on science as the ultimate super hero, or, do we begin to exercise caution now to mitigate against change. After all there's no place like home.
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