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Earth's Resources Used Up at Quickest Rate Ever in 2016 (france24.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In just over seven months, humanity has used up a full year's allotment of natural resources such as water, food and clean air -- the quickest rate yet, according to a new report. The point of "overshoot" will officially be reached on Monday, said environmental group Global Footprint Network -- five days earlier than last year. "We continue to grow our ecological debt," said Pascal Canfin of green group WWF, reacting to the annual update. "From Monday August 8, we will be living on credit because in eight months we would have consumed the natural capital that our planet can renew in a year."
it is all bullshit.
To calculate the date for Earth Overshoot Day, the group crunches UN data on thousands of economic sectors such as fisheries, forestry, transport and energy production.
Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, it said, are now the fastest-growing contributor to ecological overshoot, making up 60 percent of humanity's demands on nature -- what is called the ecological "footprint".
I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?
Well, it's based on empirical data. You'll have to provide your personal definition of "real science" for me. Because, there's no double blind study where we instantiated multiple Earth's on January 1st and then removed all humans from one to use as the control variable. I can't believe I have to explain this but Slashdot is just getting more and more conservative lately so ... it's based on data from prior years and what is reported by country. No, it's not truly falsifiable -- then again you don't have multiple runs at this. No, nobody's actually measuring all the carbon in the air. No, nobody's actually testing that we've saturated the rate at which our resources are being replenished. We're making intelligent estimates. Well, those of us concerned with this stuff are (evidently you aren't).
The part where you said "climate activism" means you're just going into confirmation bias here anyway so even though it won't help, I'll do the very little googling required to find their their numbers here. Just for you. Even though it doesn't matter because you've clearly already made up your mind.
http://collections.dartmouth.e...
Some of the items are scary spot on (like the amount of carbon dioxide we would see in the atmosphere).
A bunch of MIT types calculated that based on total assets in the earth (not just available to extract), we would hit several "limits to growth" between 2020 and 2100.
For example: We used as much chromium in 2014 as we did from 1900 to 2000 combined.
here's a summary of the 30 year update.
http://www.unice.fr/sg/resourc...
Many of their projections are following.
Food is a little higher- but so is population.
Here's the unavoidable situation they said we would hit.
Using so many resources that we overshoot the carrying capacity of the earth and then permanently lower it as a result. So if 6 billion were what it could carry for a very long time, by going to 12 billion, we might reduce the capacity to 3 billion.
And it projects a very rapid population reduction. 70 years to fall from 12 billion back to 1950s level populations.
The projection is we'll run low on multiple indusrial metals at the same time and prices of those metals will skyrocket.
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Now the fun bit. It's too late to do anything about it. We passed the point of no return back in the 1990s. It's a genuine "bend over and kiss your ass goodbye" situation.
And the good news... Many of us will be dead by 2040-2050 when it starts to get nasty tho we may see some signs as early as 2035 (I'll be 74 then-- my most likely lifespan is to 2038).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
To calculate the date for Earth Overshoot Day, the group crunches UN data on thousands of economic sectors such as fisheries, forestry, transport and energy production.
Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, it said, are now the fastest-growing contributor to ecological overshoot, making up 60 percent of humanity's demands on nature -- what is called the ecological "footprint".
I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?
Well, it's based on empirical data. ... Because, there's no double blind study where we instantiated multiple Earth's on January 1st and then removed all humans from one to use as the control variable....No, it's not truly falsifiable -- then again you don't have multiple runs at this.
Well, obviously, but falsifiability and such apply to theories, not empirical observations.
...(evidently you aren't). The part where you said "climate activism" means you're just going into confirmation bias here anyway so even though it won't help ... Even though it doesn't matter because you've clearly already made up your mind.
You need to get your internet mind-reading device recalibrated. You could have just posted the link (which wasn't in the article for some reason (a pet peeve of mine regarding science reporting)) without the snark: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/public_data_package.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
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It's you who are mistaken. As long as the first-order derivative of the population growth rate is a positive number, then it is correct to say that population growth is 'accelerating.'
You needn't worry. It will always be cheaper to make water than go to war for it.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
First derivative is velocity, second derivative is acceleration. Second derivative is negative.
[citation needed]
You see population growth is rapidly decelerating, albeit still positive. Hence our impact is likely to be decelerating too.
Population is one factor, the other is per capita emissions and resource usage. It's the latter that's increasing. A common theme in the news recently has been the alarm expressed by scientists at the rapidity with which changes are happening. Nobody is saying that things are progressing at lower than expected rates. They're all shocked at how fast it's hitting home. People can make cute comments about Malthus to imply that there's nothing to worry about, but that's not what we're seeing. Just because Malthus wasn't right in his lifetime, that doesn't make him wrong. Malthus died in 1834: that's really not that long ago.
soylentnews.org
Plants are evolved in a given CO2 level and their response to rapid changes is highly unpredictable - it isn't all good for plants.
Gee, maybe someone should do some experiments to find out. You know, use some actual science. Then we can make predictions that actually work, rather than extrapolations of something so complex and untestable it's easier just to spout a bunch of alarmist propaganda.
TL;DR plants not only grow faster and produce more biomass in higher CO2 concentrations, they are also more efficient in the use of water.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia