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Earth Approaching Tipping Point Say Scientists
Hugh Pickens writes "The UC Berkeley News Center reports that a prestigious group of 22 internationally known scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation. 'It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,' warns lead author Anthony Barnosky. 'The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.' The authors note that studies of small-scale ecosystems show that once 50-90 percent of an area has been altered, the entire ecosystem tips irreversibly into a state far different from the original, in terms of the mix of plant and animal species and their interactions. Humans have already converted about 43 percent of the ice-free land surface of the planet to uses like raising crops and livestock and building cities. This situation typically is accompanied by species extinctions and a loss of biodiversity. 'My view is that humanity is at a crossroads now, where we have to make an active choice,' says Barnosky. 'One choice is to acknowledge these issues and potential consequences and try to guide the future (in a way we want to). The other choice is just to throw up our hands and say, 'Let's just go on as usual and see what happens.'"
I'm sure we're going to pick Choice B, "throw up our hands and say, 'Let's just go on as usual and see what happens.'" Choice A would require some serious coordinated effort from all the world's industrialized nations, and there's absolutely no way that's ever going to happen.
No really, it really IS reaching a tipping point, no matter what your energy company overlords are saying. The problem is the denier class didn't take chemistry and physics in high school and they know nothing of how peer-reviewed science works. And I say that as a general contractor that did get some science education well after high school, while the deniers were at Bible study.
How greedy must a religion be to try to breed more members by banning birth control when we have soaring population growth? Makes me think that the leaders of churches banning birth control or some of the most morally corrupt people on the planet for all the unwanted births they have caused.
FYI,
They showed us a movie in Jr High, about this same thing. We were being warned of the immenent human-driven catastrophe that would subsume our civilization and imperil human existance.
That was 1977.
I suggest that if 1% of the planet's human inhabitants did not disproportionatley gobble and discard 90% of the wealth, resources and energy, that there'd be plenty to go around in a reasonably sustainable way - and quite comfortably.
Watch out when you are propagandized like this. Once you accept that this is "Science" - they will present you the "solution". It will be a complete horror.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Thanks for the broad sweeping generalizations, it was highly informative.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Good luck with that. Humans will continue plodding along exactly the same as they always have, until they start dying off suddenly once the reserve is gone and some minor catastrophe or other strikes that is just too much to deal with, pushing everyone over the edge. After all that's how disease happens. You're fine until the day you're not. This will happen because everyone thinks it's someone else's problem. Witness people - not even only lower class uneducated peasants but middle class supposedly educated people - gladly boasting of having 5 or more kids even today. Now consider the undevelopped world parts of which are still growing at rates like 6% (which means doubling in size every 12 years). I'd say a few generations is too generous.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Hey, we're still here, aren't we?
Apocalyptic visions of the future seems to be a human pastime. Ignoring them seems to be the other human pastime.
The report cites "explosive population growth" [citation needed] and "rapid temperature increases" [citation needed].
While I'll agree that there is a lot of harmful stuff that humans do to the environment, I don't agree with this whole "tipping point", panic now, panic often, "the sky really IS falling this time!" message. It doesn't help.
Because people listen to that hyperbole and then find out the population growth isn't "explosive" and the temperature rise isn't "rapid" and that invalidates the whole message.
Do they really think they can still sell their "Oh God! Panic now!" message?
Everything will correct itself. Once things get real bad, there will be large scale fighting which will kill off a fairly significant number of people which should bring us to the balance needed. Nature is self-correcting after all.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
We don't believe in evoltution. Your phrase implies a faith that is not necessary. We merely understand evolution. For example, we understand that evolution is a biological mechanism, not an all encompassing silver bullet that guarantees survival of the human race regardless of the behavior of the planets inhabitants on a global scale. It is called an ecosystem for a reason, which leads to a need to understand entropy. Note that you don't need to believe in entropy. It is going to happen even if you become best friends with the flying spaghetti monster. The question is, can we dynamically counteract it. Some of us believe we can, and so it matters how we behave. Others don't believe it is necessary to change our behavior as a species, and will keep ignoring any evidence that is contradictory to their comfortable world view.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You do realize the universe doesn't give a flying fuck about liberal vs conservative, your way of life or the price of tea in China. This idiotic obsession with trying to turn any science you don't like into some ideological position is bizarre. Not everyone in this world is motivated by simplistic dogmatic positions.
And how is declaring "engineering solutions will be found" not just simply passing the buck to the future?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Given my downmods, no. :-)
But /. is a game with elaborate scoring - and Karma is not the sole scale for measuring this.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Since there are a slew of climate scientists who claim the IPCC is making many absurd claims, you come off as the real denier for cherry-picking who you pay attention to. You just can't stand being wrong so you've doubled down on your cultism.
You are ignoring the work of REAL scientists, not those backed by governments that stand to gain hugely by the changes they wish to force upon us.
Sorry pal, but the world has woken up to the massive scam you nearly succeeding in pulling over on the world - now the earth will go on just as it did, in some centuries warmer, in some cooler. But 20 years hence when there's not a problem to be found YOU and your puppeteers will not be able to claim credit for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Earth's load limit is 5 billion and we're over 7 billion already. There aren't enough resources to go around no matter how you divide it.
What kind of "science" gave you that conclusion?
Recent estimates indicate that there are enough raw materials in the earth's crust to last another 10,000 years of advancing civilization. Just because we have historically only mined the top ½ mile of the earth's crust does not mean that we will not develop new ways to reach natural resources. The beauty of the future is that it does not have to be restricted based on our current technological inabilities. It is organic, adaptable as situations change. In 1950, nobody thought we would be able to sustain a planet with four billion people. By 1980, not only had we surpassed that number, but we also improved world average life expectancy and were agriculturally productive in places that had been barren wasteland before. Do not limit the potential for our children based on the archaic limitations that we face today.
The reason to state it is to point out the stupidity of trying to insist science you don't like is just some opposing political/ideological claim. If the science is right or wrong it is because of the data, not because one is conservative or liberal.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No other solution.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Albert Bartlett's anaysis is miguided because he ignores that while problems can grow exponentially, so can solutions, especially when you have a lot of people to think them up and implement them. Julian Simon's take on things in "[The human imagination as] The Ultimate Resource" was much better in that regard. That's one reason aluminum used to cost more than gold, but now it is so cheap we throw it away. Soon we will have dirt-cheap solar panels and maybe even hot and cold fusion power, all thanks to all those "too many" people using too much stuff that people like Bartlett or William Catton might just as soon be rid of because they use resources and make places crowded, ignoring that people also produce resources and make places worth being in. Same for robotics, 3D printing, and someday self-replicating space habitats. The solar system may have limits to growth, but we are nowhere near them. Carrying capacity is a function of both lifestyle and technology, both of which are affected by imagination.
The main problem humanity faces right now is more the other direction -- highly educated and affluent people tend to stop breeding; you can see that in the demographics. Having so many modern distractions just makes the Peak Population crisis problem worse due to "The Pleasure Trap" of "Supernormal Stimuli". Contributing to that is also a scarcity mythology, made very dangerous because people will then ironically fight over perceived scarcity with the technologies of abundance like nuclear power, rocket ships, robotics, and nanotechnology...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
We were being warned of the immenent human-driven catastrophe that would subsume our civilization and imperil human existance. That was 1977.
When a problem is described as "irreversible within a few GENERATIONS" then talking about it as something that's happening now, even over a 30+ year spread is perfectly valid.
You're referring to a single research paper. If you pick any particular research paper, it has a decent chance of being wrong. Any scientist will tell you that one research paper is only the beginning. Actual science requires reproducibility.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The problem is that there are no "smart solutions" on the horizon to the energy problem, to the global warming problem or to the biodiversity problem. We are also running out of most finite natural resources, and we have no viable replacement options. You can dream all you want about thorium reactors, fusion power plants or asteroid mining, but none of these will be a realistic option for the next two or three generations that are a topic of the article.
The parallels with the English industrial revolution ignore the worldwide plundering that has gone on since then and has brought the world to where we are now. Also, the fact that there is not much left to plunder.
Yes, because planet Earth is just like Hollywood, and changes to the planet don't actually happen over a period of centuries, they take place over a period of a week, with massive tidal waves and reverse hurricanes freezing people solid in three seconds flat.
[End Of Line]
They showed us a movie in Jr High, about this same thing. We were being warned of the immenent human-driven catastrophe that would subsume our civilization and imperil human existance.
That was 1977.
On a geological timescale, that was about 2 seconds ago. Just because nothing much has happened in that 2 seconds doesn't mean it was wrong.
The beauty of the future
will be the five mile mining pit where your national parks used to be, apparently.
.: Semper Absurda
Do not limit the potential for our children based on the archaic limitations that we face today.
Yes, that's the whole point of TFA, degredation of the environment is a limiting factor not just for our current civilization but for all forms of life. The question is, do we continue to act like fermenting yeast in a jar, or do we use our brains and do something about it?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Well I was referring to drawing conclusions from one experiment which I guess is roughly equivalent to one research paper. Also, obviously some papers are better quality than others. The point is that data can be interpreted (and manipulated, e.g. publication bias) in multiple ways, science tests each theory until one is clearly the most plausible.
The parent referred to "the data", which is what it is. The interpretation of the data has a social aspect and is inherently subjective, many theories have lasted for centuries until finally disproven.
Don't get me wrong, science is the best way to figure things out by far, but we shouldn't pretend it is a completely objective endeavor.
That lack of change is normal, desirable, or even possible.
Since they start with these proven untrue postulates, the whole thing is a worthless mental exercise in what things might be if things weren't as they are.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Bullshit. Food and water are it. Who cares about uranium when you are starving to death? The reality is that all our food is currently produced by using fossil fuels which Hubbard's curve indicates are either past their peak or approaching it rapidly. His math for the US was spot on and the best predictor of future performance is past performance. Watch "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" by Al Bartlett. Your estimates do not account for growth. Also watch or listen to David Suzuki's talk about growth and resources; anything that grows will double, anything that grows will exhaust its resources, even if we could quantumly duplicate earth twice one more doubling and the second earth is exhausted, the second doubling and all four are exhausted. You have no fucking idea what you are talking about and are not the least bit insightful. The argument that past scientists were wrong about the date is in fact a straw man argument and not deserving of any consideration. Math is the master here and she is an unforgiving mistress.
No, think about it. You wake up, expect to see your tooth brush in the medicine cabinet, it's there. You look outside and it's light, you expect to see the sun shining, you're right. you turn on the stove, expect heat to come out, and your right. You turn on the light switch, and expect the light to turn on, and it does. You move one foot in front of the other and expect that to get you across the room, and it does. In the first five minutes of a day, each person is right hundreds of times.
It's not surprising then, that it's hard for people to see their blindspots, because they are relatively rare.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This "wealth" is an illusion - conjured up by the ponzi-scheme of debt, coerced with state violence.
Are you for real or am I being trolled?
Are you against barter as well? That's all "wealth" in currency is. It's a means to barter without carrying around chickens, cows, etc or fixing a computer or digging a ditch on the spot in order to exchange it to someone else who spent their time/effort/skill to make/grow/create/build something that you need or want. Wealth itself is simply goods, services, or other valuable/useful things you have earned through labor, created, or can provide.
People won't work for nothing or just hand over something they worked and put materials into creating/building/growing. Oh, unless one goes back to that old standard solution that's eventually been employed every time such utopian ideas have been tried through history, and to which I referred to in one of my previous posts: At the point of a gun/sword.
Just like the Soviet farms. Production was extremely poor until the farmers were offered a way to benefit from what the farm produced.
Capitalism is terrible. However, it's STILL the best, most successful system that's ever been created in all of history by any reasonable standard.
>Capitalism is the only system ever created where wealth is a renewable resource for everyone and anyone willing to work and/or come up with an idea, skill, or invention that is useful or valuable to another person that you can then trade with for something you need or want.
>Capitalism has raised more people from poverty and dramatically raised the standard of living of more people than any other system ever created.
>Capitalism has allowed more people to live in more freedom than any other system ever invented.
>Capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance to those in need around the world than any other system or country in history.
Now, the second part about government-run Ponzi schemes, crushing debt, and coercion by the state through the threat of violence I agree with to a great degree.
"I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." - Thomas Jefferson
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." - Thomas Jefferson
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy." - Thomas Jefferson
The root of the government corruption and the power the big corporations and ultra-rich wield originates and is enforced by a too-large and powerful central government. Corporations and the rich don't have military or civilian police forces. They don't pass laws or regulations. It's the government that passes the corrupt laws and regulations and enforces them, sometimes quite selectively, to the benefit of those with power and influence. It's the government that will kick in your door, shoot your dog and terrorize and threaten you and your family at gunpoint.
Any power you give government, you give to those who have bought government influence. The only real protection is to keep government small and tightly restricted to only those few powers actually granted by a plain-language reading of the Constitution without "lawyering" the meaning of plain words to twist their meaning to suit a political agenda.
"How strangely will the Tools of the Tyrant pervert the Plain Meaning of Words." - Samuel Adams
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." - Thomas Jefferson
A large government makes hiding and/or obfuscating corruption and other improper behavior and guilt/blame easy.
If the government doesn't have the power to r
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I understand your scepticism however we know that we are far away from hitting any hard physical limits. We know, that we don't exploit fraction of the energy we receive from the Sun. We know, that fusion is possible. We know, that space travel, hence, spreading in the solar system is possible. This is not a belief or optimism, we know for sure.
Take for example the drinking water problem. It is not that we don't have enough H2O on this planet, quite the opposite. To purify the sea water is not just possible, but we are doing it already. The drinking water problem hits those countries that haven't got the means to do so, which is due the distribution of wealth and has nothing to do with science or technology. If people are dying from the lack of water it is because their areas are excluded from the overall wealth of the human race.
Everywhere I look, food shortages, drinking water problems, even Earth-quakes, I see social problems, not technological or hitting the limit of some physical constrain. The density of population is governed by house prices, and not reasonable organisation of life. Why would people leave the rural areas with plenty of living space for a cramped little place? Lack of work and house prices. Why would people starve in countries where there's large scale agriculture? Because the the crops are sold for higher prices to people with higher earnings thousands of kilometres away only to produce enormous amount of food waste. I can go on...
The problem is that while our population grew in proportion of our technical advancement, our social organisation did not develop as much. We are still stuck with capitalism, ideologies of work ethic, while the automation of production is steadily growing. Our political establishment in the developed world is committed to keep things as they are with every means possible while it is clear that the organisation of the human race can not be tied to the timely structures of nations, ethnicity, while capitalism in the last 200 years acts as a global force already (that is, there's no "globalization" as such). Democracy, at least as it is today, does not serve the population better than any previous oppressing political establishment. Competition is idealized by many while it is nothing but wasting resources on pointless redundancies, all thanks for the bourgeois ideology of "free market" capitalism, which was never really true, and which can not be really true anyway.
My point is in short, that while there's no evidence of hitting our natural boundaries any time soon, we are pretty much like a zombie when it comes to our social system. And the social factor is already causing massive disasters on a never seen global scale.
It has been demonstrated time and again that education decreases birth rate, partly by decreasing religious membership, as the people who are breeding the fastest in particular are overwhelmingly members of a religion that tells them to be fruitful and multiply... but partly because people understand the consequences of their actions.
I am not sure any such things has been demonstrated.
It is more likely in my mind that as you educate people you also usually improve their overall standard of living and health at the same time. This means a drop off in infant mortality and that means people do not need to have as many kids as they actually start expecting them all to survive to adulthood.
These things are all wrapped up together and interrelated so separating them and deducing which causes what to happen is much harder than you seem to imply.
I dont read
Dear Scientists: The earth is changing. Get over it. Study it, and have fun doing so. Your recommendations however, are just ego driven and likely wrong. We know you smart and all, but really, not as much as you think.
Dear Everyone Else: If you really think we have sufficient engineering and scientific knowledge to keep the planet from changing, to bend it to our will, then you are hopelessly stupid. Get back to your partying, soaps, reality TV, or whatever. Or get a bit of an education so that you understand what a crock of BS the well meaning, self-infatuated scientists are feeding you.
The climate change debate is simply an ego driven load of claptrap promoted by selfish, opportunistic business and political motives. When nature ceases to surprise scientists, then perhaps their pronouncements will be credible. Until then, all they have are educated guesses.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Overpopulation alarmism is just that - alarmism.
Some countries - such as Japan - are already facing population aging and decline, which
is bad for their economy. Other countries - such as most of Europe - already have
sub-replacement fertility rates, and only keep marginal population growth because of
demographic lag and immigration.
Even in the countries that still have over-replacement fertility rates, such rates are declining
fast. Mankind is predicted to increase only 2B until 2045, and then start declining.
Meanwhile, saying that nothing good is being done to the environment is insane.
Ecological problems are already being addressed, with heavy investment in solar/wind
energy, biofuels, next-generation nuclear, emission regulations, and more. Photovoltaic power
is getting cheaper at an exponential rate, and it is predicted that it will start to become economically
viable _without subsidies_ by 2015. Meanwhile, Photovoltaic production growth has averaged 40%
(thus doubling every two years) per year since 2000.
Agricultural yields continue to grow fast, thus being easily able to feed a growing population without need
for additional deforestation. For example, Brazilian ethanol productivity (per hectare)has grown at a rate
of 3.77% per year between 1975 and 2004, thus doubling every 19 years. And there is revolutionary
technology in the queue - cellulosic ethanol, algae-based ethanol.
Similar prospects hold for other crops.
In short, the world is not ending, move along.