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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.'"
This is a call for sanity. We need to appreciate, accept, and design for the best and the worst that human beings are prone to and for. The genius of the American form of Government was checks and balances (before greedy self serving people removed them.) We need to understand that there are conflicting interests, belief systems and human enterprises and we need to account for them all.
There must be a sane position between human desire and human need. We need to find and develop that position. We need to evaluate our behavior and our beliefs against hard physical reality and abandon philosophies which are fundamentally bankrupt and ideologies which are inherently self destructive. We can't react our way out of this problem. We need to come together embracing our differences and honoring our distinctiveness. Together we must pick a target, an inspiring and achievable future that serves both the human condition, and the future condition for life on the planet. The problem is not and has never been about life. Life can't be stopped. Its about a world capable of sustaining complex higher lifeforms capable of intelligence. We are an apex species. Destroy the habitat and our numbers will collapse (its happened before, at one time the human population dwindled to less than 5,000.)
That said, we must not let the Plutarchs push the vast majority of humanity off the edge. There is clear indication that education is transformative. Bring knowledge to superstition, starvation, plague and famine, and life improves instantly. Where there is education the natural environment is seen as a value outside of its ability to be burned or eaten. Where there is education, there is social change, contraception, medicine, increased health and lifespan and decreased reproduction rate. We need to educate the developing world and we have amazing new tools to accomplish this. We need to remove the false gods and dangerous superstitions from our midst. Starting with Profit and Endless Material want. Its time to discover what is good for us as human beings and pursue that with passion and joy. It is time for us to honor the miracle of our world and protect it, because until we can leave it, it is the only home we know and we are unfit for any place else. It is time for us to appreciate the miracle of being human and put an end to strife and hatred, fear and war, xenophobia and discrimination.
This is a call for sanity.
"Science just allows you to be right about 20% of the time rather than 1% of the time."
Oh, really? Then you'll probably want to reconsider ever flying again. Or taking medicinal drugs. Or...
The whole idea of science is objectivity. Sheesh.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
The positive feedback loop of a previously sequestered source of greenhouse gas causing yet more release of same.
The mass die off in the seas of the base of the food chain and the sudden follow on of all other species that depend no that food chain.
The outbreak of nuclear or biological war as a result of governments toppling under food and or water scarcity pressures.
The breakdown of civil order owing to the bankrupting of nearly all nations in a now-too-late, and ultimately futile effort to avert climate change. A tipping point is reached regarding the human acceptance of climate change and all it entails, including any and all of the above. Just as in the stock market, the full event doesn't even have to happen before the force of the disaster is felt - that happens as soon as a tipping-point consensus understanding of what is inevitable takes hold amongst observers.
It's not too late now, or at least , it's not certain it's too late now.
By the time the symptoms become indisputable, then.. then it will really be too late.
The Princeton Stabilization Wedges concept. An idea we can all benefit from, however you feel today about the certainty of climate change:
http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/
The relativity of wrong - Asimov
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
And how is declaring "engineering solutions will be found" not just simply passing the buck to the future?
Well, of course, it has to be in the future, because we've so resolutely refused to solve the problems in the past. ;-)
But various others have pointed out that the "engineering solutions" may not be very far in the future, if we want to implement them. One of the consequences of the accumulated evidence that the recent climate changes are primarily due to human activity is that we know that we're capable of pushing the world' climate around, and we know how we've been doing it. So from an engineering viewpoint, pushing it in a different direction (e.g., stability or slower change) is within our capabilities. Granted, the "Further Research is Needed" mantra applies, but we know enough to take effective action now if we want to.
The major questions aren't scientific or technical; they're economic, political and religious. That is, it doesn't do much good to convince the engineers that there's a problem that they can fix. They already know about it (and are looking for funding ;-). We also have to get the go-ahead from the leaders of our governments and major corporations.
The outlook isn't necessarily good. We do have documentation about various major disasters throughout human history, including many that were caused by humans who understood that they were causing a disaster. History says that humans often don't act on such knowledge, even when their society is collapsing around them.
We saw a good small-scale example of this back in 2005. Before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the US Government ran a simulation study of such events. Google "Hurricane Pam" to read all about it. Katrina was pretty similar to Pam. The US Army Corps of Engineers produced a thorough report on the physical infrastructure of the Mississippi Delta, which listed all the places where the levees would later break during Katrina, plus estimates of the maintenance required to fix the problems. Congress turned down the applications for funding. Everyone involved knew that it was just a matter of time until the disaster hit, but the government didn't fund the maintenance, and the disaster followed the engineers' prediction practically to the letter.
This is a local example of the sort of disasters that our political systems have historically perpetrated with full knowledge beforehand. It looks like the climate-change story is a repeat performance. Some of the scientists involved decided to try to publicise it a couple of decades back, on the grounds that it was a growing problem that we could probably fix if we want to. But history says that we probably won't do anything about it, although we know how to.
(If you want a bigger example, look up the history of ozone depletion. That's actually a fairly good example of partial success. The depletion is known to be almost entirely due to chemical compounds added to the atmosphere by human activity. Our dumping of those compounds has been radically decreased, and the depletion has nearly leveled off, though it hasn't been reversed. But it is an interesting example of human governments cooperating on a global level to deal with a global problem. So there's some hope. We don't always fail when facing such large-scale problems. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Ignoring them? We very successfully mitigated the acid rain problem, water pollution problems and dioxine pollution problems of the 70s and 80s. In my youth, forests were full of dead trees and swimming in large rivers was a big no-no. Nowadays forests are back to being green and nearly all surface water is ok to swim in again.
In the mean time China is rather successfully countering the growth of its population, Germany recently ran a full day on 50% solar power, other countries are producing their energy by durable means with an ever increasing pace, water desalination is slowly replacing natural sources, cars are getting more efficient every day, recycling is quickly becoming a profitable industry and in some countries forested area is actually increasing.
We're slowly but steadily steering to towards the right path, partially because it is economically sound, partially by not ignoring scientific predictions of apocalyptic scenarios. If we successfully counteract the massive deforestation going on in rainforests, there's actually a chance of humanity getting on a sustainable track before it really is too late.
0x or or snor perron?!