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Oceans Empty By 2048?
F34nor writes to mention a CBS news article about the depopulation of ocean species. According to a study by a scientist in Halifax, Nova Scotia and assisted by research from all around the world, the world's oceans will be emptied of large lifeforms by 2048. From the article: "Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% — a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries. But the issue isn't just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide. 'A large and increasing proportion of our population lives close to the coast; thus the loss of services such as flood control and waste detoxification can have disastrous consequences,' Worm and colleagues say."
This has to be correct. Aren't predictions of what's going to happen 40 years in the future always correct? No?
Are they ever? Even once?
There'll be plenty of Soylent Green to go around.
Of course someone named "Worm" would want to convince everyone to stop fishing. Typical Worm.
Sounds fishy to me.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Next time at the super, buy farm raised fish. Every little bit helps, and not supporting the trawler factories that empty the ocean is a good small step you can take yourself.
Um. Sea levels are rising. I know water conservation is a problem, but How is the ocean supposed to empty???
...our stale joke spewing slashbot overlords to say:
"I for one welcome our red algae bloom overlords"
catchpha: rotten (as in rotten whales and fish washed up on the beach)
Less Supply = Higher Price
Higher Price = Less Demand
Less Demand = Fish Population Increases
If a can of tuna went for $300 dollars because of a tuna shortage, I bet a lot of people would start cutting back on their tuna consumption.
Why? Because it's very unlikely we'll do anything about it and we'll just let it happen. It's sad to say but it's the reality of the situation.
I'd be investing in technologies designed to perform the ocean species' duties on a mass scale.
If we can build massive floating factories that sweep away the sea life, then maybe, just maybe, we can build ships to clear out toxins and drive back the red tide of algea. It seems like that's about our only hope.
We wanted to control our environment and Nature said: "Good, then you can do this stuff too! How about balancing ocean life? Would you like to maintain a protective ozone, too?" So far, our answer has been a lot of hemming and hawing.
Demented But Determined.
Start stocking up on canned tuna, especially when Safeway is having a sale. The person with the most canned tuna in 50 years becomes an instant zillionaire on the black market.
By 2048, won't we have most of the Ocean's life DNA on backup storage drives, so we can recreate any animal as needed per zoo? Nah, probably not 2048, more like we'll have the DNA, but won't be able to create animals until 2150 or so. I'm seriously not hopeful in this technology, just raising a dull point.
God spoke to me.
The study did not take into account the increasing consumption of emerging countries such as China.
Impending global warming and depletion of natural resources, we really f*cked up didn't we.
Running out of Fish.
The comments are hilarious, yet insightful.
Not only is the sky falling, the oceans are just emptying right out, too.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
So in 2048, we'll have 8 billion people and no fish. Time to buy stock in Soylant Green.
I remember one time when we had a dolphin on our line her/him loose. that showed me intelligence right then and there.
Whenever a net boat was close, we never caught anything. Nets should be illegal, even though Jesus used a net, it isnt in the same scope, he was in a row boat as compared to a fully mechanized boat using hydraulics and such. longliners catch fish yes, but it is much more civil. If u want to fight it, then stop eating Tuna! there are practical methods for fishing, and impractical...nets have no need to be here with our technology. they are old school ruining our world in the new day.
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
The solution is painful, but simple. Commercial fishing has to disappear. Already half of the world's fish consumption is fish-farmed. In the same way that we don't allow commercial hunting of land animals, we'll have to forbid commercial fishing. It's true that for now farmed fish is most of the time not as good as the hunted one, but its just a matter of time before we improve the technology enough to fix the problem.
Although I don't put a whole lot of stock in those numbers, I'm quite certain mankind will continue to plunder our world's natural resources just as we always have.
I think we need to focus on improving our fish farming techniques. Although netting is far more cost effective now, once supplies dwindle enough, the farming of fish will become more attractive. I believe most populations of fish will bounce back. I worry most about the sharks.
^^vv<><>BA
Stupid humans - running to the cliff. Consuming resources like yeast in a bottle of grape juice. Eventually we will die in our own shit. Leaving behind an intoxicating stew of death.
die you stupid fucks. make more babies. watch them die. "BUT I JUST GOTTA HAVE A BABY!" she cried. "I gotta have a pile of young'ns to inherit my world!" he yelped. DIE YOU STUPID FUCKS! And take your SUVs WITH YOU! Jesus AIN'T comin' for your sorry behind. Just gonna let you STARVE! And SHIVER! The natural gas will be gone soon enough so you won't be cookin' jackshit anyway. Stupid fucks! DIE! and you think nuclear fission will come to the rescue? Sorry, no - it's a finite resource too. And you think solar power's gonna save you? Think again, stupid fucks. Die stupid fucks. If solar power doubled in output year over year, it'll take decades before it even approachs half your needs, and by then, you're screwed.
Right around the time the fish run out. And you'll think you'll burn soybean oil for your cars? No way, stupid fucks. You'll be starving for that oil. you think you're going to finance your way out of it? Haha - jokes on you - stupid fucks. The USA is down by 9 trillion bucks - at a million a day it'll be sometime after the next ice age you stupid fucks pay that off. die you stupid fucks. you and your stupid babies - put your ear to rail and hear what's coming.
In the twenty-first century - you'll do the ghost dance.
die you stupid fucks. Die. Starve and freeze and murder each other for the few remaining resources - like a bunch of lemmings, like a bunch of yeast - you will over populate and DIE you stupid fucks DIE. you'll fry each other's cities with nuclear weapons, you'll be back in the stone age before you can say "four gigabytes of RAM", you'll be eating your neighbour's food after you kill him and dismantle his McMansion for the firewood.
you'll be crying like a bunch of babies because there's no energy for your playstation or xbox. Wah wah wah - I can't play my games! No world of Warcraft, because it will be a world OF WAR all around you, and you will weep like the spoiled rotten retarded bunch of fat whiners you are. die you stupid fucks. die.
Die you stupid fucks. Die.
RS
Stupid fucks will mod me a troll - the wise will listen to the last prophecy that ever mattered, and will make their plans accordingly.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Buying farm-raised fish is not the answer. To raise such fish, the farmers harvest other fish from the oceans in order to feed the fish on the farms. The end result is still the depletion of the wildlife in the oceans.
The only and correct solution is to stop growing the human population. However, no one wants to talk about over-population because talking about it usually elicits accusations of "bigot" or "racist".
The political mantra in the USA is that growing the population is wonderful. Both the "Wall Street Journal" (WSJ) and the "New York Times" (NYT) supports it. Both the WSJ and the NYT argue that unfettered immigration enriches everyone; talk about over-population runs contrary to unfettered immigration.
Over-population reminds me of global warming. Both are very serious problems, yet most people just do not feel the immediacy and seriousness of these problems. So, they hesitate to do anything that is substantive in fixing these problems -- until the day that the huge calamity (i.e. famine or environmental disaster) hits.
- Sea life is dying faster than it is being replenished
- The supply is finite
Wouldn't it seem painfully obvious that we'll run out? Do you think they're really relying on the "argument from authority" fallacy? Do you think that more sea life will just magically appear? Or do you just not care? People with your worldview really confuse me. I can't figure out if it's science you distrust, or statistics, or what. "Scientists are fallible" doesn't refute any single conclusion, much less one that you can figure out for yourself to be true. This isn't quantum mechanics or some other obscure field that requires a lot of expertise. If you cut down trees faster than trees grow, you'll end up with zero trees. Change trees to fish, and what do you get? How can you manage to have such scorn for something with such serious consequences?Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% -- a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries
A decline of 90% for any species surely means that the species is in chance of vansishing entirely. The gene pool of 29% of the ocens edible fishes has diminished (according to the article). The chances of those fishes regaining their former population is decreasing as well. Also, even if they do reach their previous numbers inbreeding is probably more likely (resulting in gene depression etc). If the data is accurate then I don't think it's FUD.
What is interesting about this, is that nearly all the govs. of countries who depend on the fisheries are quickly denying that this is an issue. Long before the fisheries are truely wiped out, we will see countries start invading each others fishery water. I suspect that large western govs. will very shortly start working on making sure that fisheries will be available for the future. But, their goal will be for local feeding. 20 years from now, should prove to be very interesting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As long as you don't over fish Leave some for the rest of us.
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
Some loony liberal pinko hippy commies will tell us that we are running out of oil ,and there is global warming looming? NONSENSE!
Less Supply = Higher Demand
Higher Demand = More profit for harvesters
More profit means you can kill off the last 5% of a species and be making tons of money
Read Farly Mowatts "Sea of Slaughter" to find out how capitalism works on cute fuzzy animals, a whole bunch of whom used to number in the millions and and now extinct.
Immigration doesn't affect world population, you know. Saying that you think there's too many humans isn't racist. Neither is being against unfettered immigration. However, saying that you want to limit immigration to avoid overpopulation is pure racism. It means that you want less of the "bad" kind of people proportionally. I agree with you that we need less people. The answer is to reduce birthrates worldwide, but then you run into entrenched religious interests and everything gets rather sticky.
So long and thanks for all the fish...
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Considering that we really don't eat too much fish in a modern diet anyway...wouldn't a lower fish population increase algae, which would be a positive for the atmosphere?
First, "they" claim that the worlds fish population will be gone by 2048. How do they know? By the best evidence
Well
Hmmm
On a side note
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2006/10/31/21
Hmmm, news for nerds. I can't quite make the connection in this story.
Ok, let me try. Geeks like Japanese culture a whole lot, and Japan needs fish, so empty oceans will cause a decline in Japanese culture, and geeks will get upset.
It was news for nerds after all.
That people are considering this a little more dire than 'oh, gee, looks were not having grilled swordfish staeks on the ion-barbie tonight.'
No, but it does run NetBSD.
Kirk and crew will just bring some whales from the past.
Fish in the open sea are a classic example of a Boston Commons type problem. The problem is that no one owns the fish stocks but everyone takes from them. So its in each player's best interest to pillage as many fish as possible before the other players can get to it. Until someone owns the fish, this problem will only accellerate. For more info, see game theory in mathematics or the B.C. problem in economic theory.
... the appetites of all 6 billion people.
Hmm, I was always (back in Soviet Russia, really!) taught that these 6 billion people look forward every day towards some bread... Or rice... (In rare years we were not at war with -- equally "Communist" -- China).
What makes you think all of The World's Underprivileged People are going to go after the bluefish tuna tomorrow, if I may ask?
Paul B.
Kill the humans. All of them.
I'm no expert on this, but I am sure researchers can find a way to feed farm fish from sources other than ocean fish, and I'm sure it's already done today to a certain degree.
Over-population is not a problem in itself, it's entirely a human-made problem because we lacked the foresight to provide an infrastucture that allows for scalability when we built cities and communities. I've seen calculations that asserted that feeding the world's population would be no problem if all resources (both human and natural) were used in a sensible manner, and wouldn't be a problem for years to come. Of course, over-population will be a serious threat once a certain limit is reached, but we are far from reaching it.
The West thinks growing the population is wonderful because we're afraid of the East. China is huge and we can't control it, India is following quickly, and some day even the African continent might become a serious contender. Obviously, the Wests answer to this is grow as much as possible.
Yes, you are right, but to counter those problems, we must first analyse them correctly.
Really, explain: 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90%.
Numbers with no context are meaningless.
Mod parent up, but more importantly mod grandparent down. I wonder if the hospital he's staying at knows that he has internet access?
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Populations are declining in a large portion of the world. Japan, Russia, and most of Europe's populations have held steady or declined over recent years. The US would have a negative population growth if it wasn't for imigration.
d _territories_by_fertility_rate
Poorer nations will undoubtably go through the same population cycle as first world countries have. Once their economic and social situations improve, their populations will level off and perhaps decline.
Take a look at different countries Total Fertility Rate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_an
Any country with a TFR of less than 2.1 is in a state of population decline. There's quite a few of them out there. This is why overpopulation is not the hot issue it was 15 years ago...
Boris Worm? Fish?
This joke writes itself.
Limina.Log
Farm-raised fish, alas, have their own impacts. If the fish are high on the food chain (like salmon), somebody has to go out and catch fish to feed the farm fish. Plus fish farms cause pollution that impacts the wild environment. Finally, there's a lot of fear that farm fish will be hot zones for diseases that will spread to wild fish. No magic solution here.
The real solution consists of simple, common-sense resource management. You don't fish species that are obviously in trouble. You set aside zones for fish population to breed and recover unmolested. You ban practices like bottom-trawling that kill many more fish than get caught.
The problem is, any time you restrict people's ability to make a living, you get political resistance. So just as lumber companies insist that there's plenty of trees left, and car companies poo-poo global warming as nonsense, fishermen object that all these claims of collapsing fish stocks are nonsense. And countries that are economically dependent on fishing, like Japan and Norway, back them up.
The poster child for this situation is the Patagonian Tooth Fish. Twenty years ago, nobody heard of it. Then other species became hard to get, and somebody realized this dude cooked up nicely, and renamed it Chilean Sea Bass. Now, if this species lived in waters that somebody controlled and could enforce realistic fishing limits, it might have stood a chance. Alas, it mostly lives in antarctic waters, where enforcment is legally and logistically difficult. Should be gone in another 10 years. Thirty years to wipe out a species!
The way I see it in North America, it has more to do with how people waste ressources. Not so long ago, 12 ounces steaks were big. Now, I'm seeing 20 ounces steaks. Do we really need to eat that much when it's just killing us?
and think this was about the future of the George Clooney franchise Ocean's ??. My first response was, Ocean's Empty, that's a weird title, and 2048... George would be like 100, how will that work? I have to admit I was a little disappointed by the actual topic. :(
"The stupider people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them..."
Birth management along with computer-ruled socialism and a population-chart-based global sex/religion/race/creed-indifferent genocide to reduce population levels down to about 10%. Dismantle the empt cities and use the resources for engineering, eugenic and genetic experiments while figuring out how to cut probabillity of impregnation, bring it down to about 30%. Then take the shame out of sex, disease, and hygenics education and make two-way (put into Terra what we take out) green econoimcs mandatory. Dismantle the global socialism and have all the countries of the world re-write their counstitutions, and have all thrie laws undergo contradiction management.
Just rambling, don't mind me.
If we try to put 10 billion of so people on the planet, we should expect some casualties.
n/t
It's funny that these articles always need to justify the cause... They say things like "fish filter toxins from the water" and "we won't have any seafood to eat!" It's like they're letting us know that killing all the life in the world's oceans would actually be a bad thing. Oh, now I get it! I had always just assumed that all life on Earth was mainly just for decoration and for me to put in my mouth, until this article clued me in.
..the following:
"We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
the One who is and who was,
because you have taken your great power
and have begun to reign.
18The nations were angry; and your wrath has come.
The time has come for judging the dead,
and for rewarding your servants the prophets
and your saints and those who reverence your name,
both small and great--
and for destroying those who destroy the earth."--Revelation 11:17,18
I know most of you Slashdotters could care less, but it's rather interesting. Science has made us accountable to no one but ourselves, and my, haven't we utterly messed things up? Maybe we need a good divine eviction notice. We're terrible tenants.
Anyway, you may as well go back to your LCD TVs, your 401K plans, your exotic mortgages, "info"-tainment, and tainted elections, because a planet-wide shift is coming--divine or otherwise--sooner than you think. And you and I are powerless to stop it. All we can do is watch.
The first two are correct, but the third line should be
Less Demand = Fish Catching Decreases
Unfortunately, less fishing does not have to mean that population increases, only that is decreases less. That is no guarantee that catches reach sustainable levels, and it seems quite unlikely given the example of the levels in todays equilibrium.
If there was private ownership of meaningful parts of the ocean, the profit motive would ensure that only sustainable amounts be taken. I hear Iceland and New Zealand have systems like that. That will make those two nations very much money as the rest of the oceans run dry.
why is that so hilarious?
...and not a single Futurama reference.
We all know that this is being perpetrated by Mom.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
welcome our new Soylent Green economy.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
is to put frickin' laser beams on the heads of these species so that they'll be able to protect themselves.
The U.S. Feral Government has been busy telling us that fish is healthy, and that we should eat at least a serving a week. This ignores problems like mercury and PCB contamination, not to mention severe overfishing of the world's oceans. Also, farmed salmon just doesn't taste right, and is an ecological disaster in progress to boot. Search for 'salmon sea lice' for information on how salmon farms in Canada infect their wild cousins with lice, devastating the wild salmon runs in certain areas.
I've stopped eating fish - partially because it's expensive to get good wild salmon, but mainly because I think I can do better for less of a financial outlay. I figure that fish are best eaten for their Omega-3 essential fatty acid, and I can get that fat elsewhere. I buy grass-fed beef from a family farmer, and omega-3 enriched eggs when I can't find any eggs from local farmers. The omega-3 enrichment in eggs typically comes from flax in the chicken feed.
I'm currently growing purslane in my Earthbox, and am working on some Perilla seedlings too. Both are high in omega 3 (in the form of alpha-linolenic acid [ALA]), and I plan on eating them as salad greens. (Summer heat kills plants in the desert, so fall/winter/spring are the best growing months.)
And if I ever start raising chickens, I can grow Perilla and Purslane as feed for home-grown DHA and EPA-enriched eggs (letting the chickens do the ALA->DHA/EPA conversion).
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I always wonder who pays to "undo" the damage caused by tankers breaking apart because maintenance is one of those things that apparently can be ignored to cut costs. Every time we hear about oil spills in the news we're presented with those nasty pictures of dying seabirds etc. yet we never hear who is responsible for it, neither do we hear about anyone who takes or even whether someone is made responsible for this. And all the while the people running the oil companies make billions, increase their profits and couldn't care less.
The most recent one was the one near the Philippines, now people will have to work on the site for years to separate the oil from the water and soil while the whole ecosystem in the area and beyond suffers. Who is responsible? Good question...
One of the biggest disasters happened 1991 near the north Italian coast where a tanker loaded with 1 million (!) barrels of crude oil sank. The billionaire Stelios Haji-Ioannou, owner of the shipping company was charged but later acquitted! The French and Italian coastlines would have people working to clean up the mess for the coming 12 years.
Ultimately, it seems, it is the coming generations that "pay" for our carelessness.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
The problem has nothing to do with people eating fish. It's more to do with the fact that for every fish caught for food, a hundred more are caught to be ground up and used in various animal feeds and fertilizers, as well as the fact trawlers destroy vast tracts of the seafloor ecosystem so thoroughly that regrowth can take centuries. Banning trawlers and other destructive fishing practices, as well as placing strict limits on overfishing, is the only way forward.
Besides the statement you quoted, I found this:
That's the problem with systems as mind-bogglingly complex as the ocean: you can't count on current trends continuing. I've recently been studying weather forecasting, and it sounds like they can't have any accuracy at all past like 14 days. They have learned that they can not count on the current trends continuing.
The wise course of action to take regarding this information is to watch it carefully and avoid jumping on bandwagons. I suppose, though, that if you have to take a step, it would probably be wise to err on the side of caution. That's easy for me to say, though, as my family's well-being isn't tied to my success as a fisherman.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
We don't even know how many species live in the oceans. See http://www.coml.org/ for details on the marin elife census. Last month, 100 new species were found by one expedition alone. Chances are that we are still only scratching the surface. So, how can these bozos predict the depletion of ocean life when they can't even count how many species, let alone individual organisms, are living in that habitat? The answer: they can't. More fucking scare tactics from the green fringe. Leave the real science to the scientists and go back tou your granola!
Man bad. Fish good. Eat fish bad. Eat hot dog good.
Guys.....start eating fish from now beofre it is too late.
I had to mention this. I thought this was some kind of promo for the last movie in "the series". Ocean's Empty. No? Sorry. I'll let myself out now.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Rock, man. Is it odd that I started hearing Slayer's "Raining Blood" in my head while reading this?
Yep, farmed salmon won't save us. The farms here in BC import pellets made from fish protein harvested in South America to feed the farmed salmon. It's NOT protein efficient. Imagine catching wild meat like deer or ducks and grinding them up to make food pellets to raise pigs or cows. We wouldn't do that, but for some reason it's OK to do the same for aquaculture. Out-of-sight out-of-mind, I guess.
Mind you, some types of aquaculture are better. I think the linked article mentions clams and catfish which feed much lower on the food chain.
This particular article doesn't make it clear, but the original paper describes a projection, not a prediction.
The difference? A projection is someone's guess at what will happen if current trends continue. A prediction is someone's guess at what will happen, taking into account changes in trends and feedback reactions.
For example, as others have pointed out, the paper does not take into account market forces, which will change the trend as prices go up in response to lower supply, which in turn will drive down demand. Besides market forces, the publishers of the original paper have made it clear that they believe that humans will take collective action (perhaps in response to papers like this) which will prevent, or at least slow down, the decline in species.
Cached version
Remove human decision from selection process. Start killing.
In case the sarcasm isn't clear, let me say: you're an idiot.
Many marine food stocks have already collapsed. Very few viable abalone fisheries remain. Whaling is completely impracticle for most species and some have such small gene pools that recovery is basically a fantasy. The atlantic cod and salmon stocks are less than a quarter the size they were in the 1940, and even the 1940s levels were vastly lower than those in the 1700s. The sturgeon and swordfish are critically endangered. But obviously the discover of some new invertebrates on the sea floor makes it all better, right? Even though they exist in tiny numnbers, we don't eat them, and we don't particularly want to start? I'll take huge, viable salmon stocks capable of feeding half the planet over some toxic molluscs any day. And all it takes is a bit of restraint and centralized management. Yet you act as if conservationists are asking you to cut off your own legs.
The scientists behind this study were credible. You just don't like it so you assume that they must be gay communists with AIDs just trying to ruin your life, you know, for fun or something. Notice how there are no actual scientists denying the validity of this study? Just economists, industrialists, and other people that don't know shit about how ecosystems work? Not to mention random message-board jackasses that are threatened by anything that has even the slightest inkling of a suggestion that maybe capitalism isn't the highest form of morality in the universe?
Given a workable renewable energy policy based on infinite area solar power satellites the Earth plus the neighbouring space could easily support about 100 trillion people. All you need is localized glass-bubble ecospheres seeded with life from Earth, and put these glass bubble rotating space stations in a daisychain following Earth's orbit, then make some more chains closer and farther to the Sun than Earth. There is lots of room out there, and lots of solar energy flying off into nowhere when the Earth is not in the right spot to absorb it. Lots of energy = lots of human flesh and biomass, no energy = no biomass. Even with solar panels out there and people all down here stacked into mile high highrises would be supportable. Question is do you want to live in such a world, and even if you let people multiply up to 100 trillion, which could happen in no time given exponential growth patterns, you still haven't avoided only postponed the problem of eventually having to stop multiplying so quickly and having the population level off.
Time to crank up the mass-cloning projects! We can genetically engineer heartier super-fish that can tolerate whatever chemicals we choose to dump into the oceans! Yummier, heartier, super-fish, that breed twice as fast and are happily drawn to large nets. Cloned super-fish with warm butter for blood... I sure hope those scientists hurry up! I'm starvin'!
Schatten Teufel
There is nothing "Common" about Sense
Seriously, I've seen clowns like you all over the peak oil websites and at creepy-ass websites like (mis)anthropik.com. Why don't you hire someone to take a baseball bat between your beady, hateful eyes and put the rest of us out of our misery?
Dog is my co-pilot.
It's so true! It's all so true! There's nothing we can do!
Or maybe, the world will, slightly later than it would be preferred, actually change. Society has already changed so much, and is now more environmentally conscious than ever, but we still have a long way to go. Are you that depressed enough to believe that we will simply continue this trend until the last human keels over and dies?
Our resources will shift focus to something less depleted. Our number one priority will be efficiency. If people start dying from starvation, all it means is more resources for the rest. We will survive, but times will be hard. Electricity, if it exists in the same form as it does today, will be considerably more expensive, like food and water. Our lifestyle may become completely different, depending on how quickly the world acts.
So while we try to save the world, you can keep sticking mental pins into yourself, agonising about this subject until you go crazy. By the sound of your post, that is in 3...2...1...
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"The US would have a negative population growth if it wasn't for imigration. "
No, that is untrue. It would have much less population growth, but it would still be positive, just like most of Western Europe apart from Italy.
"Any country with a TFR of less than 2.1 is in a state of population decline. "
Incorrect. Any country with a TFR of less than 2.1 will eventually be in population decline, but due to ongoing reductions in mortality rate may not yet be in such decline.
In terms of total world population growth, the rate of growth is slowing, but given reduction in mortality rates this will still mean that the world population will hit approximately 9 billion in 2050 before a reduction from that point onwards. The lag is considerable.
Imagine you own some farmland, but next to your property there's public farmland. Your sheep farm on ... exactly, the public farmland. As do everyone else's sheep. Until it's empty.
Politicians cry all the time, but nobody cares, as grazing there is free. The solution to this: let people auction sea property, and let them fish on it. If they want to have any fish on their property, it'd be their responsibility to raise it themselves. (if neighboring sea property is owned by others, they could probably get a right of way, but they wouldn't be allowed to steal others' fish)
Is why they're called C-B.S.
Personally, I'm suprised MSNB.S. Didn't run it.
I don't see what unfettered immigration has to do with overpopulation. If anything it reduces population growth. While it is true immigrants have higher birthrates than their those in their new country, it is also true they generally have lower birthrates than those in the country from which they came. I've heard the claim that people move to have more space so they can have larger families but that doesn't hold up empirically. People move for money, not space.
Immigration is generally from poor countries to a rich ones. Rich countries generally have lower birth rates than poor countries. While immigrants initially have birthrates like their country of origin, as their children become more wealthy, their birthrate drops to be similar to the rich countries birth rate.
I don't know if the overall effect is substantial enough to encourage immigration to reduce population growth, but I doubt it. There are plenty of good reasons to oppose unfettered immigration; population growth is NOT one of them.
I'm in New Zealand, where everything's clean and green.
Our "Ministry of Fisheries" is downplaying the report.
However, according to the "Best Fish Guide" published by the "Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand", no New Zealand fishery qualifies as "well managed, with low habitat damage, and/or bycatch".
In some way it does: an emigrant is a responsible person that leaves a country that has already hit its overpopulation threshold (starvation, unemployment,...) to a country which has not reached it yet (food abundance, vacancies in cheap labour). By leaving his country, an emigrant allows the less responsible people in that country to breed another kid.
You are wrong in 2 ways:
1) Overpopulation isn't really a global problem, it's mostly a local problem. Overpopulated Bangla Desh doesn't affect us a lot, now does it? Only mass immigration causes overpopulation in areas which otherwise wouldn't have any.
2) Of course it affects world population. If a country lives at or near the carrying capacity and is able to export it's population surplus, the remaining population will just breed more, because of the freed space. Just look at Mexico: Big emigration country, but still huge population growth.
There will be a lot of starvation because of soil degradation and lack of oil-based fertilizers. The immigration politics of the 1st world countries will decide wether those countries will join the 3rd world in things like extreme poverty, famine and diseases.
As I said, it's mostly a local problem. Of course it also has global effects, no doubt about that, but most effects (soil degradation, water pollution, ground-water level, etc.) are on a strict LOCAL level.
This again confirms his theory though. Destabilizing a stable ecosystem leads to spurs of evolution and new species. During the hardest times on Earth, biggest leaps of development happened. Death of dinosaurs led to mammals taking over.
Your point being what, exactly? That we shouldn't bother to change our fishing regulations, because "life will go on"?
I'm not sure that's exactly a comforting thought, if the human species isn't involved in the 'life' that's going to 'go on.'
To certain species -- rats and cockroaches, probably -- a nuclear war or biowar catastrophe would be just terrific. Even a nuclear winter wouldn't wipe out all life; doubtless something would survive to repopulate the planet. It just probably wouldn't be homo sapiens sapiens, and that's kind of the sticking point.
Whether or not life will continue if it doesn't involve us, is a bit of an academic point. I'd much rather err on the safe side; the one that guarantees that we don't wipe ourself out, or make life more difficult than it needs to be, because of momentary thick-headedness.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Skeptical UW fishery scientist says there can't be a universal problem because some fisheries such as the North Pacific are intelligently managed. Collapse hypothesis proponent cites North Pacific as a success story.
Yes, this is what I ( and many others ) have been saying ( or thinking at any rate ) for some time now. There is just too many of 'us'. Now the problem is no-one wants to be in the cut as it were, but its a simple fact. That is why there are seal hunts. You can't have too many of one dominant species or it just takes over, consumes everything and eventually runs out of resources and dies. We don't have enough natural predators that we can't outrun at the moment. Our best natural predators are basically bugs ( influenza etc ) and our own stupidity ( war, obesity, darwin awards etc ). Until something comes along or we start controlling the population this state of affairs will only continue. While everyone loves to discuss and either support or discredit the sensationalist stories "We are running out of oil", "we are running out of fish", " we are running out of water"....etc the fact is that they are true to some extent. If we continue as we are, we will do exactly that. Run out of something or multiple somethings and the 'old way of life" is going to rapidly change. Hmm, I guess we are our own best natural predator, too bad it comes at the expense of the planet itself though.
Obviously, implementation of this one is difficult, but I read an article about fish farming in huge warehouses in urban environments. There were actually a lot of benefits, including separation of fish and less occurance of disease. I'm not a fish farmer, but perhaps a mechanized urban fish farm in every city would solve all this. Help us plan better for off planet living, too....
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
"29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90%"
Why! Why can't they just say 3% of editable fish! Nooo, they have to say 90% of 29% of editable fish...oh well, I dought it to be true anyways.
I couldn't agree more. I couldn't be bothered to write it myself, but this is EXACTLY how I feel about the situation. Hope you get modded Insightful, because that's what this is.
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
From the relevant Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus Malthus continues to have considerable influence to this day. One famous recent example of this is Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. Ehrlich predicted, in the late 1960s, that hundreds of millions would die from a coming overpopulation crisis in the 1970s, and that by 1980 life expectancy in the United States would be only 42 years.
The classic profile of a polluted "superfund" site (at least where I'm from) is a parcel of land that used to be a corporation's private property.
Physical ownership doesn't deter pollution and other forms of environmental degradation, because the bulk of it is committed by large and impersonal industrial players; they don't care about polluting the company's (or the public's) land when there is no awareness or risk that punishment and cleanup efforts may result. These problems by themselves often don't involve personal short-term risk, so self-interest works poorly as a behavior modifying agent here. What matters most is whether the damaging activities in question are regulated by government, such that punishment and fines can be levied against the perpetrators... it is one of the surest ways to raise awareness (and levels of self-control) regarding dirty and dangerous activities.
Fish lay a lot of eggs. When they do that in the wild, a large percentage of them gets eaten or destroyed. Eggs being hatched in tanks have a higher success ratio, meaning that less harvesting from the wild is required.
I find it highly interesting that we never see the actual study published publicly and distributed publicly even though the internet can do that kind of a thing. Seriously, I want to see the research myself.
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It's a global world. The oceans of the world are all interconnected with overlapping ecosystem. And food is transported by man all over the world.
As to population growth, it's not true that populations expand to make up for the people leaving a country. The main driver for large families is poverty. In poor countries they have lots of kids, in wealth ones they have fewer kids. Poor countries that are becoming overpopulated tend towards being poorer still and so the growth rate actually rises not falls.
The best answer to overpopulation, short of the obvious barbaric ones, is to reduce poverty in poorer countries. To spread wealth and resources around the world more more equitably.
In case that hasn't convinced you that you're not going to revolutionize the field of ecology by applying your free market ideals, take another look at the article, and read this quote:
That's right, an international team of ecologists and economists. You think that maybe, just maybe, they have already considered the laws of supply and demand?
.......commercial fishing in two periods of time, separated by roughly a decade. The level of decrease in fish stocks I personally saw was astounding. And this was quite some time ago, I can't imagine it has gotten any better.
It really helps to get a handle on this if you stop thinking of it as fishing, and no, I am not kidding. Just a little mental trick works well. Switch the term from fishing to "oceanic market hunting", then go back and look in history what market hunting did to wild terrestrial animal species, passenger pigeon, bison, migratory wildfowl, the dodo, etc. It did not take long historically speaking to see humongous stock depletion. Ocean fishing is market hunting, it will have the same effect eventually, there's no way around it. The time frame may be arguable, but the effect won't if let to go on like it is now, because there will be demand, even if it is only from the top 2% of thee wealthiest. I mean, they used to serve *plovers tongues* in restaurants. That's the sort of goofy market pressure that can happen, all the way to extinction or near extinction.
The only way we managed to even remotely save a lot of terrestrial species was with a total ban on wild game hunting for commercial purposes(I will only speak of the US now I really don't have much knowledge of this from other countries). We have personal sport hunting now and that has worked with a lot of good game management in place, and that only came about from enough people noticing "hey, where did all the animals go to???" It was an almost too late collective "duh" moment, and one would hope we have a bit more data and scientific sophistication to work with now than we did in the late 1800s. And even with game management laws in place, some times desperate times can negate those factors. If you go back and look at the great depression era, some species that are in good shape suffered near total collapse, eastern white tailed deer got hunted to severely low levels back then, even though the laws were there, desperately poor people just had to eat, so they did, and the laws were just flaunted.
I agree with another poster above, in the oceans, trawling is responsible because it is so deadly efficient in killing a lot of animals. In the US they used to allow "punt guns" for waterfowl hunting, basically short barreled boat-mounted small cannon, very efficient in harvestng ducks, so efficient that during market hunting times they about wiped out some species in short order, they had to be banned outright, and now shotguns are limited to 10 gauge maximum size. I think we as humans are going to need to address this sort of thing with wild ocean hunting of fish if we don't want to suffer the same fate we did with the land animals. Heck, there has to be some more older New England and Candian slashdotters here who can remember when cod was dirt cheap in the store, I mean rdiculous cheap, I sure can, because they were so abundant, and there were still a lot of other species that were abundant so cod was considered a second tier-class fish, now it ain't so, and cod is now in a decline state and expensive.
Stop mcdonalds, outlaw them, legalize dope, make cows 500% more expensive. Make fish only legal to sell on fridays, and
everyone else can eat vege stuff and insects, they are easier to grow and have lots of protein, and there are lots of
recipies on the net for insects too.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
In order to solve this issue, please line up 10 people you know, and kill one of them. Continue to do this until only 9 people in the world remain. Then there will be plenty of fish!
...for 15 years, I am judging each and every one of you damn fish-eaters! ;)
Buying farm-raised fish is not the answer. To raise such fish, the farmers harvest other fish from the oceans in order to feed the fish on the farms. The end result is still the depletion of the wildlife in the oceans.
Despite lawyers being the scum of the earth and directly responsible for most of the ills in the US, they're still perfectly good protein.
The solution here should be pretty obvious, particularly since the supply of lawyers is inexhaustable and their reduction would confer a huge social benefit.
Actually, there's over 6.5 billion people now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
Has gone up by a full billion or so since I last checked..
Privacy begins with
You can get the ball rolling! Kill yourself!
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Scientists thought that the area around Chernobyl would be a wasteland for decades. Instead, it's now a flourishing haven for wildlife (at least, according to Wikipedia).
The cause of this problem and so many others is obvious: there are too many people on the planet. There is plenty of oil, there are plenty of fish, the planet can easily absorb our garbage, but - the numerator is simply too big.
We don't need to slow the growth of the world's population, we need to reverse it. We are already past the tipping point.
Of course there is virtually no political will to do anything that drastic. Such action goes against every innate instinct evolution has imbued. It has happened, however, in China's one child per family policy. Say what you will about China's human rights abuses and totalitarianism; but it just very well may be the case that such action represents a more enlighted self-interest than the gluttony of the rest of the world. Perhaps we only lament China's human rights abuses because they are easier to identify. But what about all of the suffering that results from irreversable climate change, depleting the world's oil, and poisoning the oceans? Who, really, is responsible for most of the world's human rights abuses?
Before we look down our noses at China, perhaps we should ask ourselves what the alternatives are. In the long run, if nothing is done, we'll experience population decline anyway; but it will happen in a most horrific fashion, through wars and famines. Your children's children's children are going to live in this world. What are you going to do about it?
This is just a first step in ridding the world of it's number one killer, Dihydrogen Monoxide. Maybe this will help shed some light on this toxic chemical compound. I find it absolutely horrendous that there hasn't been any action taken against it for as many lives as it has destroyed.
... are going out of bussiness.
Complete depletion of life in the oceans for overexplotation has nothing to do with Malthus's theories, because fish is not the only source of food of the human population.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You are playing the daring skeptic, and surely people of your ilk will compare themselves to a prosecuted Galileo.
The fundamental difference is who is basing his arguments on verifiable evidence.
The other guy (and Galileo) is, you (and the Inquisition) are not.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You don't manufacture tuna.
ANd once the last tuna is gone, it will be impossible to get tuna again. Ever.
If a can of tuna reaches such price it may very well be because you are eating bits of one of the last ones....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The main driver for large families is poverty.
That's nonsense.
For thousands of years, the driver for population growth was wealth as you can feed more kids with more wealth. The introduction of contraceptives has changed this insofar as the responsible reduced their family sizes while the irresponsible continue to breed like there is no tomorrow. (It *IS* irresponsible to have kids if you cannot feed them, regardless of how many kids you already have. If you can support them, it's not irresponsible to have 6 or more kids, but it's irresponsible to have even one child if you are on welfare.)
Anyway, the situation we see in industrialized countries is the actual extinction of the middle class: Because of taxes you need 2 incomes to supoort 1 or 2 kids at an acceptable level so the middle class is far below replacement rate. The poor live off welfare anyway and the more warm bodies they produce, the more welfare they get so they logically have more children. The rich can easily support as many children (even with private school, etc.) as they want, so they too are also above replacement rate.
It's always a matter of resources: The state taxes the middle class to subsidize poverty. Because you always get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax, it's just the logical conclusion that you will have less of a middle class and more poverty in the long term.
The best answer to overpopulation, short of the obvious barbaric ones, is to reduce poverty in poorer countries. To spread wealth and resources around the world more more equitably.
Nonsense again. Spreading resources will only raise population growth - Billions are spread to Africa every year, with the only effect of having more people and more poverty.
Development aid should be striclty in the form of contraceptives and technology, never food. If everybody had access to contraceptives and is told that if they want kids they will have to support them themselves without any help from the state, poverty would be eliminated within 2 human generations.
But of course that will never happen. It just isn't sexy and it's too easy.
Do-gooders want recognizion, invitation to cocktail parties and of course donations. They would get neither for distributing contraceptives, it just isn't sexy. Do-gooders need emotional pictures of dirt-poor people, that is their business, that is what they sell, that is their businessm-model. And of course they pay their own salary and the salaries of their secretary and many others from those donations. They literally live off poverty. Without poverty, they would have to find a real job.
Do-gooders want to FIGHT problems, they will never do anything to SOLVE them. (If they would, they would be out of business. If things would actually get better in their target countries, they would no longer get any donations and all their dreams would shatter: No more parties, no more conferences, no more vacations all around the world, no more jobs as secretaries, assistants and office workers to give to friends and relatives. (You would be surprised how many people are needed to "spread money" who never leave the office. There is a huge buerocrazy involved, I sometimes wonder what they do all the time.))
Just look at all those social do-good organizations: "Fighting poverty", "fighting AIDS", "fighting malaria", etc. Everything they touch is getting worse in the long term, withoug exception.
Quite often they proudly state how many millions of donations they got in the last 10 or 20 years. I always ask: What exactly do they have to show for these insane sums of money? Did anything actually improve in the long term?
Of course the answer is that most things got worse: Instead of tousands starving you have now millions starving. And on top of that they are dependent on food aid.
So what is the answer of the do-gooders? They want even more donations to "spread wealth around the world", what a big surprise.
The great thing about something that is inevitable is that it isn't worth worrying about. Now where did I leave that remote...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Okay, take farm-raised salmon. These are grown in pens which generally sit in bays where the wild salmon migrate by. The farm-raised salmon, it turns out, being crowded in pens like that, are wonderful hosts for parasites. Those parasites then spread to the wild salmon migrating by with disasterous results for their mortality. The practice of "farm"-raised salmon is directly responsible for killing off wild salmon runs.
They also turn out to be collecting a lot more of our industrial toxins in their flesh, caged in the bays like that, rather than free-swimming far out to sea and upriver. It's a lot healthier to eat the wild ones.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
You know that word population is expected to peak by 2050 and start declining right? Almost all industrialized countries as well as China are at or below the replacement rate. The US is one of two exceptions to this and it can be almost entirely attrubuted to immigration.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
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...too many humans. Lets start a war.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
-but don't specific fish migrate within specific areas of the oceans?
For example: if China "clear cuts" the sea, and eats everything swimming in it, while the USA maintains regulations, won't the fish in our waters remain? H
Do the fish in our waters routinely migrate past "hot spots" of over-fishing?
I find it hard to believe that in 2050, there won't be a single fish hiding near some uninhabitted Pacific island somewhere. A century ago, legends of "Giant Squids" were mocked- until a few started washing up on shore. In an arena as large as our oceans, how much can we really cover?
I am a friend of fish, and enjoy fishing. Forgive the pun, something about this prediction smells fishy to me.
barack to the future?
This article is a rip off of the movie Soylent Green.
"Set in the year 2022, the film depicts a dystopia, a Malthusian catastrophe that takes place because humanity has failed to pursue sustainable development and has not halted population growth. New York City's population is 40,000,000, with over half unemployed. Global warming, air and water pollution have produced a year-round heatwave and a thin yellow smog in the daytime. Food and fuel resources are scarce because of animal and plant decimation, housing is dilapidated and overcrowded, and widespread government-sponsored euthanasia is encouraged as a means of reducing overpopulation.'
it was the ultimate tree-hugger's depiction of the end on the world because of man's evil consumptive habits..
dead oceans
global warming
air polution
no trees
ironically enough, the hero of the movie was Charlton Heston, in real life a gun toting, red-blooded conservative.
There's plenty of it.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Growing the population in the USA (31 people per sq km)is wonderful, if we had the population density of Germany (232 people per sq km) we would have 2,233,949,112 people, a far cry from the just turned 300,000,000 we do have.
Then again Germany had a couple slight problems last century do to living space.
But even allowing that we the USA doesn't quite want Germany's population density I think it can handle quite a bit more than it has now.
Figures were found on wikipedia, take them with whatever grain of salt you wish.
Ah. Maths teachers. Mine quoted an argument that he claimed was actually used:
Supply always increases to meet demand.
People demand Wilderness areas for recreation.
More People will demand more Wilderness.
So an increasing population will mean an increase in Wilderness areas.
I think that the conclusion is patently absurd, which just about wraps it up for Supply & Demand.
What do you think will happen when tuna sell for $3M per fish? Will the last couple be left to swim about unmolested? Or will large areas of ocean be quietly poisoned to bring them to the surface?
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
No, if Tuna went for $300 a can, no one would buy it. You fail at economics.
For example...
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You are right... $300 dollar tuna... food for the excessively rich American masses. Lets see here - New video iPod or a can of Tuna? You're right most people would choose tuna.
I'm going to visit Easter Island next week as part of a trip to Chile. I've always felt that it was a great little microcosm of mankinds tendancies. Specifically, the confusion between what's important vs. what's not (trees vs. Moai), the mistaken idea that lots and lots means infinite, and the illusion that we are not tied to the ecosystem. I'm sure anyone who could benefit from thinking differently about these things has already labeled me a fool and tuned me out, which is apropos and sad.
The fact is we live in a finite world on which our continued success is dependent. The world does have a capacity to deal with our exploitation, and as long as we don't overdo it we'll be fine. We can cut down trees and eat fish and beef. But we do need to understand the balance and take care not to overdo it. We absoultely have the power to irreversibly destroy things, as some of the human driven extinctions can testify. As Easter Island can testify. I don't know where the limits are, but anyone who doesn't at least recognize that there is a limit to the damage we can safely inflict on the planet is simply lying to themselves.
Cheers.
Sorry. Doesn't help all that much. Ya see, fish can't digest the most common type of protein - soy. So fish farms have to use downed animals (the cow feed market is denyed - prions) or bycatch.
Yup. Mine the sea, take the bycatch (from Omega protien) and feed it to your farm.
The major contravening factor is innovative technology. By 2048 there will be improved methods of producing fish. For example as profitability increases fish, beef, pork and other foods will increasingly be farmed and farming techniques will improve. It is likely that by 2030 or earlier all fish and meat shall be "grown" under controlled circumstances in factories. Once such a process is proven economical, the ocean-based fishing industry will collapse, the oceans will quickly recover and we'll be hearing the same people complaining about an "overpopulation of fish" and suggesting that we perform birth-control on sea bass.
In any case a prognostication to the year 2048 using the same maths (and undoubtedly done by some of the same people) who cannot accurately predict the economy 5 years hence, is sheer lunacy.
Even Bill Gates knows Malthus was wrong.
Nature is always trying to balance itself ... high population counts result in starvation for some percentage of that population which decreases the population. We humans have broken this natural limit by being able to transport food over large distances and nature can't react quickly enough. We've developed insatiable appetites and the means to pillage entire stocks. If the good professor is right and we're arriving at some kind of point of no return then again nature will do what nature does: eliminate the problem and restore balance. *Life* will go on on this planet ... just not humans.
This is why whenever I read something about how we're messing up the environment and people say: don't worry, it'll fix itself I think to myself "yup ... but you might not like how nature deals with the problem..."
imho we desperately need to return to a more natural way of living and make sustainability the priority, decrease our dependance on chemicals, and dissallow corporate externalization of environmental costs ... just a start, and just my 2c.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
I'm thinking of that ad campaign for Chik-fil-et...I think it is that shows a cow holding up a sign encouraging people to eat more chicken.
So basically, if these health-food freaks would knock off eating fish and eat some good old-fashioned red meat, the life (of the fish) you save may be your own.
And what's up with all this lean meat crap?!? I can remember when hamburgers had 30% fat and were delicious. Now it's like eating shoe-leather.
Same with pork. "Oh, you have to eat lean meat...it's good for you." Screw that. My parents are in their 80s and ate all that so-called "bad for you" stuff all their lives and they're healthier than most 30-40 year olds I know.
Well, both things are happening now, there is more oceanic market hunting, and also commecial fish farming, and you can see both results at most supermarkets.
The nature of the disputed report in the article is saying that it isn't working yet, that the wild fishing is depleting stocks to the point where they will suffer unrecoverable status, and some species would not take well to any sort of farming, the examle there might be the bluefin, I have NO idea how you could do that, you would need some pretty big tanks!hehehe but I guess at a hundred grand a pop, maybe someone will try it, or use the floating fish farm idea, huge self powered stations with suspended nets/cages the fish stay in, with on board caretakers up above, just floating with the currents. Actually sounds like a fun job if your quarters were adequate.....
Beyond that I can't really answer the question adequately. Farming fish has its own set of problems, but as a compromise I think it can work to a much greater extent than it is now, and it can be adapted to expand what is growing and provide additional income for the farmers, for example tiger prawns are grown in rice paddies, it's very common.. I'm doing it myself in a very small scale in our greenhouse, but I haven't put in a commercial (or freezer to be fair) sized crop yet, I am still playing with the how-to-do-its on tank maintenance and suchlike (in other words how to *not* make mosquito farms and algae pits, heh) with my available tools and expertise and resources. Hopefully soon I can gear up and have a winter (trout) and summer(catfish and bluegills) harvest.
Although it is still ridiculously easy to go up the dirt road to the pond and catch bass and bluegills... I still like the idea of having a little crop. The tanks of water help act as a heat source-sink for winter heating purposes and I would like them to be dual use..because I'm a geek and think it would be cool.
As to the open ocean, I would guess that pretty soon nations might agree on a furthering of the "market zone" off their coasts,to help protect their own fish stocks, and enforce it with coast guard action. They do it now but it is somewhat limited.
Previous posters have noted density-dependent reproduction effects as preventing the recovery of a crashed stock. Another is replacement by a competitor.
One interesting occurence in modern times is the number of Jellyfish population explosions that have been occuring. While the exact reasons are still a matter of speculation, one of those speculations is that they are filling the ecological niche vacated by fish (Most consumed fish species are predatory, as are the jellyfish that are replacing them). So, we have two groups of animals competing for approximately the same niche, except one is highly vulnerable to a predator (us), while the other is almost completely ignored.
The scientist who lead the group that published the study said that to read it as having no fish by 2048 is a mistake. It is a projection if trends go exactly as they are now, but he said that would be unlikely and that people should not see it as such doom and gloom.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Waiting, to weed out the weaklings.
Waiting, to smash in their windows and kick in their doors.
Waiting, for the final solution to strengthen the strain.
Waiting, to follow the Worm.
"If your parents never had children, chances are you wonât either." -Dick Cavett
Yeah, but as third-world nations develop, the average energy and resource use of their citizens shoots up. We may have "only" ten billion people after the next century, but right now not all of our six billion are driving cars, playing with plasticky toys, using computers, and talking on cell phones. A lot of the current population of the world doesn't even have electricity. What if all of the future Earth's ten billion people will have (say) on average half the disposable income of the average American today?
-b.
Thank God I eat beef and pork and chicken. None of these face being depleted by over-fishing.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Not exactly. The driver for families having 10 kids or so was that before modern medicine (even in the West, before 1900 or 1920) about five of them would survive. Of those five, two would probably leave the family farm to go seek their fortunes elsewhere. Three would remain as warm bodies to help run the farm when Mom and Dad got old.
Having a lot of kids is fundamentally a *peasant* tradition. And the fact is that infant mortality rates were until recently (or still are) high in the developing world, and it takes a time of a few decades at least to change an entire culture.
-b.
-b.
I bet babies are full of omega 3. 30 years of eating a baby each thanksgiving (realizing that infants taste the best but perhaps a toddler would feed the whole extended family better...) instead of a turkey and the fish problem will sort itself out.
True, but there doesn't need to be enough fish to feed 6 billion people. There are many other food sources, and as usual, a healthy mix does the trick.
Sorry dude... we are using everything else to make ethanol. Otherwise people might start looking for "alternative" energy.
Can't upset the apple cart, you know...
Gotta eat the fish.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
The researchers analyzed data from 32 experiments on different marine environments.
They then analyzed the 1,000-year history of 12 coastal regions around the world, including San Francisco and Chesapeake bays in the U.S., and the Adriatic, Baltic, and North seas in Europe.
Next, they analyzed fishery data from 64 large marine ecosystems.
And finally, they looked at the recovery of 48 protected ocean areas.
It would be nice to know what those experiments were and what kinds of areas the test regions amounted-to (in comparison to the whole of the oceans' area). I've tried to find somewthing in the way of a map delineating the areas they studied and don't see one available. Anyone else?
One quick thought would be: isn't it possible that, due to environmental conditions and changes, that the fish just went elsewhere? To think that they'll always be in the same areas (and migrate in the same patterns) just because they've been seen there for the last couple-hundred years on record that they've always been there and have never left forever-and-ever-Amen?
I'm not absolutely discounting their claims; I'd just like to see a little more of their methods and true results before fully accepting their "2048" declaration.
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
Not even solar panels are needed. Just design houses with appropriately-positioned areas of glass combined with thermal mass like masonry that stores heat overnight. It wouldn't heat a house completely, but passive solar heat does reduce the need for heating in winter significantly.
-b.
The question of which seafood is most ecologically sound is complicated. Probably your best bet is to follow the specific recommendations of Seafood Watch, a terrific education service from several leading aquariums and conservation organizations. You'll see that their recommendations are highly dependent on particulars: there's no simple rule for which fish is better. Fortunately, they provide a printable card you can carry in your wallet.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Wasn't there a star trek movie about this?
I don't understand the skepticism.
The collapse of the Grand Banks Cod fisheries and the west coast Salmon runs in Canada are historical fact from well over a decade ago. We know as a nation and globally that uncoordinated greed does far worse than decimate a crop species -- it takes the species to and beyond the risk of extinction.
We know what we're doing to the environment. Too many people, corporations, and governments just don't care to accept responsibility for what they're doing.
I've heard the term eco-terrorism bandied about. I don't think it's quite the same as the eco-genocide we're tolerating now.
There are no industry barriers or boundaries to what has and is being done: fisheries, former rain forests, former lakes, elimination of crop species due to invader and GMO species, wholesale targetting of natural crops to protect patented synthetic replacement markets, and an utter disregard for the long-term risks and impacts of those actions.
Say good bye to Lake Chad, the icefields, the Antarctic ice shelves, and the coastal population of most regions around the world. Hello, consequences.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
About fish stocks .. do you think humans let chickens go extinct when it got harder to find them in the wild? I wonder if the doom and gloomers of 10,000 BC decided that we would run out of chickens? The world should have run out of chickens a long time ago. How come it hasn't .. oh yeah .. FARMING! If there's an incentive there's a way. Humans don't let their favorite foods go extinct.
No worries; Africa's got it covered.
But, isn't it painfully obvious to everyone that the only people that dispute scientific studies that say convervation is needed, is the people who stand to lose money if conservation actually happened? Oil, fish, forests, clean air, water. Time and time again scientists, people who have dedicated their life to the subject tell us things, and Joe Shmoe fish factory owner says its bull shit because the 'ocean is big' or something like that. Seems like we're really easy to fool. Here we have a finite resource being depleted faster than its being replenished, yes people on slashdot argue that it will never run out like they don't understand the word 'finite'.
yes, they work quite well. My father has used two for tomatoes for 10+ years. This picture was taken mid-summer (June?), iirc. I didn't know to put a fertilizer strip on the top of the soil, so the plants ran out of nutrients by late July/early August and didn't produce so well thereafter.
:)
I ordered ten boxes for myself in September, and put them at my Grandfather's in the desert. See my Earthbox picture gallery.
I think the Tomatoes and Cucumbers are the best use of the box, with broccoli running a close third. The Red peppers would probably benefit from more heat - it's topping out around 80 right now, and getting down into the 60's/50's at night. Hopefully I'll be able to over-winter them under the grapefruit tree.
The company redesigned their boxes recently (my father has 1st gen models), and the new staking system is quite convenient for vine plants (cucumbers & tomatos).
Any other questions? I'm happy to share more about my Earthbox gardening experience.
Just remembered - they sent me a mailing about half-price shipping for the Christmas season... (Shipping begins on December 4th).
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Yeah. We need to start euthanizing the human race to protect the little fishies. I vote that we start with people that think like you--the double benefit is that the average IQ of the human race will go up.
I blame Jesus.
(this is just a joke... don't get your panties in a wad)
Some quick googling turned up this page where you can buy a 1 pound tin of paddlefish (a relative of sturgeon) caviar for $553, or for you cheapskates 2 oz for $72. A second page has Caspian Sea sturgeon caviar for $600/lb, for a mix of Osetra and Sevruga eggs, or $1600/lb for Imperial Ossetra "Malossol" caviar. I don't pretend to know jack about caviar, I've never had any and never will (alergic to fish--tastes like itching), but it's insanely expensive. The reward for such high priced, apparently tasty eggs is that most species of sturgeon are critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable, according to the entry on almighty wikipedia, or you can look up sturgeon on the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) website.
over population of humans is the problem.
kill on all the climate change deniers kill all the republicans kill all the fundamentalists
then kill the poor.
then the rich.
and the retarded
fuck it kill them all let god sort them out.
but I have a special layer of Hell reserved for anyone whose first solution to every ecological problem begins with the words, "die, humans, die!" Those who call for genocide to solve any problem deserve nothing less than a share of the violence they propose in return.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Good point. Looking at evidence brings the opposite conclusion. >with less species there is less competition. with less competition other species flourish. without evidence, my theory is just as likely. To get a paper published in one of the most highly respected journals of science requires a great deal of high quality evidence. Things like data from the rates of fish caught by fishermen. Data like fish stocks skyrocketing during the second world war when fishermen were afraid to venture far from port. etc. Of course simple common sense shows many examples of fisheries collapsing and not recovering for years. Things like the cod fisheries in Newfoundland. There are many other examples. The news isn't that fish stocks are collapsing - the fisheries already very well aware of that. The new is that the drop is much more universal and to a greater extent than expected. Almost every kind of marine life is at surprisingly low population levels. And don't compare this to climate change, it shows total ignorance. They are completely different fields. This area has far more reliable predictive ability.
Having heard these alarms going off in the early 1970s, and listened to people scoff about them -- it's finally becoming clear to even the deaf and blind that we -- all of us -- are headed for big trouble.
... species in and out of the oceans disappearing ...
Melting icecaps
I see a dysfunctional family living in a house with a basement full of water and a cupboard full of molding wheat to eat, arguing about what color the new wallpaper should be.
Nay-sayers and black-and-whiters: when we see an asteroid approaching the earth, it will be much easier to deflect it when it's far away. The longer we wait, the greater the risk, the great the cost, and the greater the loss of life.
They're YOUR grandchildren. Best luck.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Totally agree and I say this everytime we have another conservation or "things are getting bad post".
TOO MANY PEOPLE.
I thought if we had 3 billion people the world would be okay but the last time I looked this up, I saw research saying that 2 billion is really the sustainable number with current technology- over 2 billion humans, the world starts wearing down.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If game meat were cheaper than corn, we probably would feed it to pigs and cows. That's not even as bad as the practice of feeding slaughterhouse waste to the very cows being raised for the slaughterhouse. This was extremely common until people started worrying about mad cow disease.
And if you ever watch Deadwood, you'll know that pigs are not very choosy...
There's a fish called the tilapia. Never heard of it until a few months ago when it started appearing in my company cafeteria. Turns out it's suddenly popular because its easy to farm — and a herbivore. Not as tasty as salmon, though.
Nature has no balance. It is a dynamic system where some states persist for a while, but eventually they will always change into something else. This whole idea about "balance" in nature is nonsense and meaningless besides: just what does it mean that nature is in "balance" ? What is balanced against what ? Why is that particular state somehow more "balanced" than some other state ?
Continents move, mountains rise and get reduced back down, seas are born and dry up, glaciers extend and contract, forests grow and burn down, lakes turn into swamps and dry up again, species come and go... And that's ignoring things like asteroid impacts, changes in Sun's activity, Earth's magnetic field reversals, possible nearby supernovas, volcanic eruptions etc. Face it: nature is not resting in some tranquil balance that only gets disturbed by the eeevil human beings. It's never still.
As tool-using intelligent omnivores human beings are amongst the most adaptable species on the planet, and thus amongst the most likely survivors for any such situations. Having a population that's spread accross the whole globe doesn't hurt either.
These doomsday scenarios are really pretty ridiculous. Humans survived in the burned-out rubble piles most European cities were reduced to in WW2, they aren't going to go extinct because tuna runs out.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If this had come from any other network besides I Can't Believe Shit then I might have a cause for concern. But since the story was reported by CBS, the network who brought you flipping Corvairs, Exploding GMC pickup trucks and Bush National Guard stories.... Yawn now excuse me I have to go finish cooking my Sea Bass that I am having for dinner.
Call this a radical idea, but how about fruit, grains and vegetables?
Another few centuries of eating that kind of food probably won't do us much harm...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The population growth rate in the first world isn't high at all. In fact, this generation has seen a lot of populations where fewer humans are being born than are dying in many places in the first world, resulting in a net loss. Immigration offsets this somewhat, but we really need to give some Africans and Asians some condoms.
It's been a long time.
I remeber a young guy who drove too fast, we all told him repeatedly he would crash and hurt someone but he just shrugged it off and tried in vain to crack jokes about it. He worked with us for six months, even though he had his seat belt on the force of the impact threw him out of the drivers window, his father who had also lectured him recognised the car as he drove past the smash on the way home from work. The kid didn't die but he spent a year in hospital and AFAIK still requires full time care, nobody needed or wanted to say "I told you so".
TFA: They didn't pick the number, it is simply the point where the trend line cuts the X-axis, also it wasn't really the aim of the study to come up with a number it was simply a by-product of their survey. The study took current trends in fish catches and found we will run out of commercial fish stocks IF we continue our current fishing practices. In other words: Behaviour has both predicatble and unpredictable consequenses, think about them before shrugging the warning off as a computer glitch.
Disclaimer: I appreciate humour as much as the next bloke but I find it hard to laugh at the "soylent oceanographic servey".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's pretty substantial (millions of avoided births a year), but a much smarter idea would be to stop spreading pronatal views to the developing world.
We should clearly exterminate the human race so the fish don't run out......
Is this chicken or tuna?
What does immigration have to do with global overpopulation?
Shipping as many people as possible into the first world (where people have fewer babies) seems like a pretty decent partial fix.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
This is the latest example of the politicization of science -- the production of political scientific predictions that lack actual scientific merit. The "scientists" involved in this one all but openly state that that is what they're doing. There is no science where there is no objectivity.
I don't oppose the politics of taking better care of our fisheries, but I do oppose the science of making crap up that isn't true.
These days the only scientists whose opinions you can trust without thinking twice about it, are those who work in fields that no one cares about. Sooner or later there will be scientific evidence of an actual impending catastrophe, and no one will believe it because of all the global warming and empty ocean crap they've had to put up with.
If there's no fish left in the oceans, the displacement factor ought to be good news for combating rising sea levels.
obviously not.. maybe a select few do, but thats not enough.. not enough to fix the damaging affects of society and humans raping the planet.
just for the info.. it's not "OUR" planet.. any given day the planet can be destroyed.. our lifes are borrowed.
Um, actually they feed them CORN. Speaking of which, how come we have 300 million people in this country eating more corn products than is probably even sane, and we haven't depleted the plains of corn yet? Oh, yeah, because it's FARMED!
Funny, me too. The ratio of food supply to people has never been greater than it is today, even with 6 billion people. Through 99% of human history, you'd have had a heckuva time convincing people that there could exist such a thing as an "obesity epidemic" or (not to belabor corn) that people would burn dried corn for heat (as many do in the plain states) because it's more plentiful/economical than wood or coal or oil (or electricity).
The complaints about population growth are nonsensical. Besides, the period between ice ages are brief; and when this one is over, the human population will probably quickly get pared back down to a few million, so it will be a moot point. (Not that I'm calous about it, I'd be all for a scientist or two looking into preventing that instead of finding more "effects of global warming")
Consider:
... = 1 > 0.
Initial (finite) supply of rainforest: 2
Rate of deforestation in year k: 1/2^k
Rate of afforestation: 0
Forest left after infinite time:
2 - 1/2 - 1/4 - 1/8 - 1/16 -
Yep, just pass a law and all the overfishin will stop.....in the USA that is. All we will do is to
hand the resource away on a silver plate to the Chinese. They will take what is left, happily, and fish
their gonads off until ALL the fish are GONE! They have over a billion folks to feed, and need the money to
buy weapons to kill us in the rest of the world for our land and water. Looks like our republican politicians
are happy to provide them with both. The only way to stop the Chinese or anyone else that wants to ensure
an 'Easter Island' scenario for the whole human race is to go to total war. No other way will be effective.
That aint gonna happen. We are too weak a society. We take a few casualties and we will run like the
French. So prepare to get the 'cell from hell' (look it up if you dare) if you live near to the sea, or
even to a lake or a river. The only fish left will be sharks and Chinese snakeheads. Look at the movie
on sci-fi "SnakeHead Terror" to see your future. Only your dad will not be there with his boat and his
big gun to rescue you and take you away in his boat. The 'cell from hell' will kill you in your house, and the snakeheads will eat your remains when they walk in on their little fins. Persoally there would be more
honor to die in a huge war to save the planet than to be eaten alive by carnivorous mutant mold and our
bodies disposed of by trash fish.
As someone who's from the faming belt (MN), one of the things that's discussed in many of the agriculture classes/around the farms I've been on is that while in some places the topsoil was around 12-18 inches when settlers moved in, now it is closer to 8-6. So while the corn is not running out, other things (like those that support the corn) are. Oh, and considering the size of the dead zone at the end of the mississippi, it's probably not a great idea to just keep packing on the phosphorus used to keep the corn crops high.
That would be a lot easier to do if the U.S. President would stop defunding the United Nations Population Fund.
To the whole world would be even better. The developing world (a misnomer, as a great many of these countries are backsliding rather than developing) may have the faster growing populations, but their people consume far less resources per individual. When laying blame for the destruction of the world's oceans, one must look to the developed world's insatiable appetites as well as to the poorer countries' prodigious breeding. Both together are destroying the planet, and to condemn one without addressing the other is foolishness (or racism, but I'd rather not assume that).
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
when it's no longer commercially profitable. This isn't like global warming where it is a side effect of some other activity... it's a direct one-to-one relationship.
The fishing will stop and survivors will re-populate in a few generations. It isn't possible to 'catch the last living fish' or to hunt them to extinction. The oceans are too big and at a certain point it becomes unprofitable to go out and hunt for fish on the scale that we are still seeing currently.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
sweet. no more fat guys in speedos wading around at the beach!
ôó
But how are we going to stop growing the human population? War? A major epidemic that kills off a huge fraction of the human race? Mandatory limits on two children per family?
How about this better solution: move as much of the human population off the planet as possible. Imagine building space colonies with each colony holding perhaps 200,000 or more people; the raw material to build them is readily available on the Moon.
But seriously, when Thomas Robert Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, he assumed that there would be little change in food production technology. But since his time, thanks to dramatic improvements in agricultural technology and food storage technology, the food supply has grown at a hugely exponential rate, so much so that the only reason why we have mass famines nowadays are either deliberate political policy or war. And with improvements in desalinization of water, the world's deserts could literally explode in agricultural output. After all, what was then called the Salton Sink (now the Imperial Valley of California) was desert land, but thanks to tapping into the Colorado River for irrigation this area has become one of the world's most productive farmlands on a per hectare basis.
I don't know about you, but I get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I am sitting on the train tracks and I see a fast approaching locomotive that I know won't reach me until I'm either 80 years old or dead. In the end, it doesn't matter since the train will either be tearing my senile or dead body to shreds and it won't matter anymore. Right? The other passengers (wife, kids, friends) in the my stalled car will have to fend for themselves to get out of the train's way, but hell... my wife and friends will be just as old as me (and we all know getting old sucks) and my kids are going to be little super geniuses who will make good and kick the train's ass at the last minute. And if they don't become supergeniuses, then it's their own goddamn fault that they didn't take up the personal responsibility to do so and I really can't shed a tear. So, in all honesty I don't see any reason to do a damn thing to move my car off the tracks since my big fat bloated and stinky American ass is pretty comfortable right now where I'm sitting. And I can safely say this because Ayn Rand told me it's a good and moral position to take. Man I love this "rational self interest" thing, it's SOOOOOOO liberating! Or is that libertarian?
(The subtext for the thicker readers: Good God man!!! Wake the fuck up and live life like you mean it or something!!! Don't just sit there with that smug smirk on your face when death is approaching! It makes you look like that moronic reject president, eh... what's his name?? Oh yeah, Dubya! Fight for the lives of the people of this planet otherwise you have no right to live here yourself!!! Now make yourself useful or go kill yourself. Those are your only options.)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Just how stupid do you think I think you are??
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
"The administration and the director of the CIA made up their minds that iraq had WMDs despite the declarations of people who know better."
You are giving the Bush Administration more credit than I. I for one don't think they believed that there were WMDs in Iraq. I think they had multiple reasons for going into Iraq; none of the reasons really being in the interest of the average citizens of the USA.
I believe that there are a few people making many, many millions or even billions off of the illegal invasion of Iraq.
I believe the Bush wanted this invasion so that he could claim to be a "war president" because "war presidents" have a much better chance of re-election. So our sons and daughters are being used in a "Blood for Votes" campaign. A campaign that worked. It got a mental midget re-elected.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Oh really? Let me guess - this was predicted using the same computer models that predict a huge rise in "global warming," no ice caps in 20 years, the singularity also in 20 years, and that in 2014 we'll have razors with an infinite number of blades.
I predict that we are forcing evolution on the fish. We will extinct species after species until we force nature to breed a huge army of fish-humans who are unable to be caught in a net and kill us with their mind rays. Survival of the fitest. It took us a billion years to get on top, and man it's nive to be on top. Enjoy it while you can.
or else!
I was referring to a specific thing (the USA's foreign aid policies), and in that light, the developing world is where the effects of those policies are felt. There are a lot of other things that should be done by all countries, but this is some very low hanging fruit and completely in our control.
honestly, i can't believe the number of people here saying "this is just bullshit and fearmongering"...
in canada, for hundreds of years, the cod fishery supported a large percentage of the population of eastern canada, in food and jobs. the grand banks area was one of the most fertile in the world, fishing boats from all over the world were harvesting hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cod each year.
despite dire predictions and "the sky is falling" warnings, first by local fishermen and then finally by scientists by the mid-80s, the canadian government downplayed the reports and did virtually nothing to protect the fishery. it was too important to the economy, investment, industry profits, and jobs.
one other slashdotter noted that the cod fishery is currently "in a state of decline". that's like saying john f. kennedy is a little under the weather.
THE FISH ARE FREAKIN' GONE!
in the mid-90s, the cod fishery collapsed utterly and completely. the canadian government finally instituted a complete ban on cod fishing - because there were no more fish! the stock is nearly completely wiped out, only a few thousand tonnes left, and shows no sign of recovering.
massive unemployment ensued, and economic devastation in the whole region. hundreds of small communities became ghost towns. the federal government has had to put in billions of dollars in relief funding. people are slowly trying to move to a different economy, for example a lot of call centres have been set up in newfoundland, with the government subsidising their construction, and the cheap labour available because of such high unemployment. but it ain't quite the same anymore...
i have to say this is one of the most shocking things i've ever seen happen in canada (ok, so canada isn't the most exciting place in the world). how could canada, despite adequate warnings and predictions, allow the atlantic cod fishery - one of the defining aspects of canadian culture, not to mention the economy - to simply vanish? how could we be so short-sighted? such idiots?
so you all can put your fingers in your ears and say "nah nah nah, i can't hear you, this will never happen". well let me tell ya bye's, it already has...
the tradgedy is that it could have been prevented, if appropriate fishing quotas had been in place. hopefully this study will motivate that, to prevent future eradication of other ocean stocks. i mean, even george w. "global warming is a myth" bush has just signed on to the moratorium on deep-sea trawlers. so you know, this isn't just "the sky is falling" bullshit. the sky is actually falling. but it's not too late to prop it up.
Since when does "dynamic" disallow "balanced"? Balance need not be static. Think gyroscope. More balanced *because* it's moving.
As tool-using intelligent omnivores human beings are amongst the most adaptable species on the planet, and thus amongst the most likely survivors for any such situations. Having a population that's spread accross the whole globe doesn't hurt either.
Those are certainly points in their favor. But humans have strikes against them too. They're quite fragile creatures. They take a long time to reach maturity. They kill each other en masse at the slightest provocation. And of course even if some of them do survive in a poisoned, overheated world of "rubble piles", is that really something that an "intelligent, tool-using" species should strive for? Mightn't it be better to pay more for tuna and pseudo-crab nuggets that been sustainably harvested so that our collective children and grandchildren can live in a world with viable oceans?
Humans survived in the burned-out rubble piles most European cities were reduced to in WW2, they aren't going to go extinct because tuna runs out.
From the post:
No, humans are probably not going to go extinct any time soon. But some of them will die (as they did in post-WW2 Europe, to steal your example). And the survivors will lack a lot more than tuna.
I'd just like to say that immigration has nothing to do with over-population on a world-wide scale (unless of course you are on about all of those damned Martians!). Over-population should be countered by education, contraception, etc. (never abstinance!)
It is not a problem; I don't think the world would survive 2047 attack from aliens.
What seems to be neglected in this discussion -- and I won't even touch the global warming part of it, having been modded Troll for politely questioning it before -- is aquaculture.
I'm studying this topic now for a substantial research paper. Instead of focusing on hunting and gathering over the earth's oceans as we do now, wouldn't it make more sense to farm the seas? To some extent various cultures have been artificially breeding aquatic plants and animals for millennia. We could do the same with our more advanced technology as a way of increasing the world's food supply without destroying the marine environment. From what I'm reading so far, the obstacles seem to lie more in excessive and confusing regulations than with innate feasibility.
Revive the Constitution.
...
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I'm sure we can just start eating Soylent Green, made from plankton!
No, I will not work for your startup