Because this time we appear to be causing it ourselves, and because the ramifications for our descendents are immensely disruptive and expensive.
While many otherwise reasonable people seem to like to question the former point, the fact is that the best climate models we have predicted a certain amount of anthropogenic climate forcing. Observations are right in line with those predictions.
You know, I've been reading along through this story's comments and I've been getting more and more annoyed by the idiocy of the responses. Finally I reached yours, and guess what? You win the Must Respond prize!
Do you actually know anything about population issues? Food is not the problem, except inasmuch as we produce too goddamned much of it.
Producing that food, now that can be a problem - indirectly. Modern agricultural yields are based upon monoculture (environmental Bad Thing), petrochemical fertilizer (environmental Bad Thing, supply-limited), petrochemically driven planting and harvest (environmental Bad Thing, supply-limited), irrigation (often an environmental Bad Thing due to salinization and erosion), et cetera.
But even THAT is not the real issue. Increasing population means increasing demand for... everything. Not just food. And increasing demand for everything means increased industrialization, with attendant waste products - of which we already have too fucking much. It means increased land area cleared for agriculture and human habitation (take a look at China some time, where there is no land left for agricultural expansion and the cities are taking up agricultural land - meaning more people with less land to feed them). It means we continue to destabilize vast and crucial ecosystems by reducing biodiversity and eliminating key species.
As far as global climate change goes (and I know you specifically didn't talk about this, but there's an awful lot of ignorance being promulgated as "Insightful" around here), the news is fairly conclusive and bolstered every day. Global climate models have improved to the point of actual usefulness thanks to extensive baseline research. Climate change is real. More to the point, the best models available have been used to predict the effects of anthropogenic climate forcing. Guess what? The observed results are exactly in line with the predictions. There's a strong case for anthropogenic climate change; anyone who claims otherwise has, IMNSHO, a hidden agenda.
And for the record, I'm not a climatic scientist. My parents, however, are retired environmental scientists who initiated, conducted, or participated in seminal research in this and related areas. And (to reply to another poster) their funding never depended upon supporting climate change with their data. In my country, at least, funding largely depends on how much money the government and the universities have, not on a particular agenda.
Fuck. Next I'll see someone trying to claim there's no such thing as acid rain.:-(
I think it's mostly out love for analogy in general.
I think it's not just love - fundamentally, it's the way we work. Our brains (or minds, for those of you who think there's a difference) are comparative organs, so comparison is built into language and thought.
Obviously, comparative (analogical?) thought is immensely powerful. Where we seem to run into problems is in making comparisons and analogies that are just too broad and vague.
The good storyteller is, indeed, key. I'm lucky enough to play in a weekly game run by Steven Erikson (fantasy author), and it rocks. Been playing for years.
We use GURPS, which is more open-ended than AD mostly, though, the imaginations of the GM and the players are what make or break a game. Hell, we sometimes play through an entire evening without rolling dice.
Yeah, I knew that about the rice. I wonder if it's bleached or brown that they eat; probably makes a difference. I was thinking more overall insulin release from their diet, though.
Regarding average life expectancy, I wonder how the relative difference between the USA and Japan has changed as the Japanese diet has become more westernized. Maybe the exceptionally long-lived Japanese are those older folks who still follow a more traditional diet? Food for thought, anyway. No pun intended.;-)
That's very interesting about the sweet potato. I'd kind of been avoiding it; might have to reconsider. Cheers!
Hmm, this makes me think of long-lived individuals from Japan. Seems to me that the traditional Japanese diet would, overall, have a very low glycemic index, and that could in turn promote long life as in this mouse. Anyone know more about this?
Trucking is a lot cheaper than flying, considered on the basis of cost per kilo moved. That's why everything is expensive in the Arctic. Further south (by Arctic standards), parts of northern Manitoba are served by "winter roads" kind of like this. Once everything freezes up, it's a good way to move things.
Interestingly, global warming is one possible culprit contributing to a recent problem: the weather "window" for winter roads is becoming more narrow. Bummer for the folks who live in places without alternatives besides air. At least in the Arctic, most places are accessible by sea-lift in the summer. Cheers!
Well, I've never been one to channel surf (nothing good on TV, so I'm going to look for more TV to watch?), but it might be nice to record shows I like and skip the ads. About the only thing I watch these days is live sporting events, though, and that doesn't seem like enough to justify the cost of cable. Or buying a TV.
Mind you, I saw _Trailer Park Boys_ a couple of times, and that is one seriously funny show. There IS good stuff out there. Cheers, and thanks for the explanation!
I hadn't heard of this Tivo thing before I started hanging out here, and I'm still not entirely clear on what they do - their website doesn't really get into specifics. I assume it's some kind of programmable video recorder that can strip out advertising? That's pretty cool. How does it distinguish between program and ads?
I'm still not sure it would make me want to watch TV, or have time for it even - but it's a step in the right direction. Cheers!
Heheheh. No, I certainly believe in Sturgeon's Law. The problem with Hollywood is that it's even higher than Sturgeon's 90%. Like, 99.9% or something.
I think what I was trying to say was that good written SF is much, much, MUCH better - and there's more of it - than the best Hollywood has ever done. SF (science fiction or speculative fiction) is the literature of the possible, and *can be* great brain food. Sci-fi seems to be a Hollywoodism for... well, bad SF. Cheers!
Heheh. No problem, I'm not even the person you responded to in the first place. And hey, I'd be lying if I didn't admit to watching the odd hockey game at a friend's place.
As I mentioned to the other fellow who replied to me, I grew up without TV, and it's kind of coloured my views on the subject. You're right about the soft approach, though - most of the time I actually avoid mentioning that I don't watch TV. Going on and on about it would be a bit too much like "reformed" smokers for my taste. Cheers!
I agree that the net can be full of the same kind of crap, but at least with the net, you can filter pretty effectively. Also, the advertising isn't as invasive, maybe not even as stupid.
And yeah, there can be good stuff on TV; every now and again, I'll go over to a friend's house if there's something I really want to see.
Maybe part of the problem for me is that I grew up without TV. I never learned how to ignore the damned things, so I find that if there is one on when I'm around, it sucks me in. And yes, I fully realize that that's MY problem.;-)
Raising my kids without TV was great, though. I hear a lot of parents talk about the pressure they get from their kids - go to McDonalds, buy the latest plastic crap, etc. I didn't have to go through that, and when gift-giving time rolled around, my kids had some really interesting and inventive ideas as to what they wanted.
Or maybe I've been living in granola-land too long; few of my friends watch TV at all, and I've probably become much too biased against it over the years. Cheers!
...find it a tad disturbing that pretty much all of the discussion in this thread is about movies and TV shows? People! The shite that Hollywood cranks out is not good SF! Read a good book. Sheesh.
Yeah, I saw that Onion item a while back, and I have to say it hit uncomfortably close to home... but stop and think about what you're saying for a minute. If The Onion wrote a story on Linux zealots, would you still be thinking "You people are a living joke"?
The reason those of us who don't have TV and don't miss it tend to talk it up is that we've found it to be a better way to live. Sure, it probably gets annoying hearing about it, but that doesn't make the basic message wrong. TV is vapid crap used to brainwash people into mindless consumerism and follow-the-herd politics. Especially if you have children, the best thing you can do is get rid of the box.
It's a pretty savvy crowd here on Slashdot, and I'm surprised by how many people seem to be obsessed by TV. Still, I'd bet real money that Slashdotters watch less TV than the average person, and that a higher than average proportion don't watch TV at all.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. Cheers!
...to get me an Audiotron (check it out at ThinkGeek if you don't know what it is).
Then I'm gonna get me a good-sized USB hard drive and rip all my CDs. Then I'll add all my dad's MP3s (he went Napster-crazy back in the good old days). And then I'll ship them to my brother.
He's already ripped all his CDs, and a bunch of his buddies are doing theirs. We're talking about folks with good taste in music and larger collections than mine, and I have somewhere around 500 albums. Even with dupes, there's gotta be a lot of good material in there. Varied, too; I'm into folk, my brother's heavily into blues, another guy has a huge classical collection...
Then we put them all together on a server and point our Audiotrons at the server. Bingo, instant online music library. I'm really looking forward to this.
It's a good thing these people are all friends, 'cause here in Canada, we can share music with our friends. As my GF would say, "That's... just... great." Anyone else thinking of setting up something similar?
Old once over 25? Not among hunter-gatherers, I don't think. Perhaps among agriculturalists. As to being lucky if two children survived, I think it's better to have only replacement levels than a steadily increasing population.
None of which really matters to the sense of my post, which was that pre-agricultural people (and people from non-agri. cultures up to current times) were better off IN MANY WAYS than we are. I'm not suggesting that they were better off overall, though it makes one wonder to think that most hunter-gatherers demonstrated a preference for death over living the way we do.
Humans have been around for (depending on your definition of human) something like a million years. We have these things called cultures that are basically cognitive toolkits for living. The ones most people on earth use now are very good at some things (technological progress, growing more people, wars of annihilation or absolute conquest, creating material wealth and concentrating it in the hands of the rich). They're not so good at other things (promoting happiness and mental health, protecting and sustaining the environment, limiting our own population, promoting cooperation between all humans).
It just seems to me that it's worth looking at other cultures to see what we might learn about doing things we don't currently do so well. Cheers!
You're right, technology should never be brought to war. We should go back to carpet bombing instead of laser guided munitions. We should go back to sending scouts in instead of video cameras, so they can get shot. Hell, let's go back to hand-to-hand bloodbaths.
That's really not such a bad idea - limit war to symbolic hand-to-hand combat between a small number of elite warriors. But I think we need to go even further back. Say, before agriculture, when there was no need for wars of annihilation at all. Imagine it - many thousands of little tribal groups, each playing "Erratic Retaliator" to work out where and how often they rub elbows with their neighbours... Actually, it was probably better than what we have now in many ways.
Now if we could just manage to combine it with low population and high technology, we'd be getting somewhere. Cheers!
Yeah, Slashdot helps for sure. I also like to check out news sources from other countries - the Beeb comes to mind. 'Course, here in Canada we like to think our news is a little more unbiased, but I'm not sure how realistic that is!
Re the Jane Akre / Steve Wilson thing, their website is here:
http://www.foxbghsuit.com/
Interesting reading. The hormone in question is banned in Canada and Europe. Cheers!
Sometimes the problem IS censorship. Look at the story of Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, fired from Fox News for trying to get out an important investigative piece on bovine hormone technology from Monsanto.
That being said, though, I agree that often the news is lost in the noise. I've wondered whether that's part of the reason for all the negative stories one sees on US news - pure distraction.
Free vs. controlled markets are a matter of economic philosophy; I happen to lean more toward Hawken than Friedman. I don't believe the current energy market is "free", either; both supply and demand are subsidized in a variety of ways. This might lend less credence to your argument.
Further, I think petrochemical supplies are already running too low, hence my support for the alternatives that are appearing. That's beside my original point, though: when you count the real costs (environmental/sustainibility) of current energy technology, this sort of thing may well prove more "affordable". Cheers!
I don't know much about the initiative in question, so please don't read this as an unqualified endorsement. However, one factor that needs to be borne in mind when looking at the "affordability" of an alternate power source is its sustainability.
Energy from petrochemicals is not sustainable. It might be cheap - right now - but it's not going to last. Moving to sustainability while we have cheap petrochemicals to help us get there makes sense. I think it's high time that environmental costs, lack of sustainibility, and other "externalities" were factored in when comparing "affordability". Cheers!
Slashdot Mirror
Because this time we appear to be causing it ourselves, and because the ramifications for our descendents are immensely disruptive and expensive.
While many otherwise reasonable people seem to like to question the former point, the fact is that the best climate models we have predicted a certain amount of anthropogenic climate forcing. Observations are right in line with those predictions.
You know, I've been reading along through this story's comments and I've been getting more and more annoyed by the idiocy of the responses. Finally I reached yours, and guess what? You win the Must Respond prize!
:-(
Do you actually know anything about population issues? Food is not the problem, except inasmuch as we produce too goddamned much of it.
Producing that food, now that can be a problem - indirectly. Modern agricultural yields are based upon monoculture (environmental Bad Thing), petrochemical fertilizer (environmental Bad Thing, supply-limited), petrochemically driven planting and harvest (environmental Bad Thing, supply-limited), irrigation (often an environmental Bad Thing due to salinization and erosion), et cetera.
But even THAT is not the real issue. Increasing population means increasing demand for... everything. Not just food. And increasing demand for everything means increased industrialization, with attendant waste products - of which we already have too fucking much. It means increased land area cleared for agriculture and human habitation (take a look at China some time, where there is no land left for agricultural expansion and the cities are taking up agricultural land - meaning more people with less land to feed them). It means we continue to destabilize vast and crucial ecosystems by reducing biodiversity and eliminating key species.
As far as global climate change goes (and I know you specifically didn't talk about this, but there's an awful lot of ignorance being promulgated as "Insightful" around here), the news is fairly conclusive and bolstered every day. Global climate models have improved to the point of actual usefulness thanks to extensive baseline research. Climate change is real. More to the point, the best models available have been used to predict the effects of anthropogenic climate forcing. Guess what? The observed results are exactly in line with the predictions. There's a strong case for anthropogenic climate change; anyone who claims otherwise has, IMNSHO, a hidden agenda.
And for the record, I'm not a climatic scientist. My parents, however, are retired environmental scientists who initiated, conducted, or participated in seminal research in this and related areas. And (to reply to another poster) their funding never depended upon supporting climate change with their data. In my country, at least, funding largely depends on how much money the government and the universities have, not on a particular agenda.
Fuck. Next I'll see someone trying to claim there's no such thing as acid rain.
I think it's mostly out love for analogy in general.
;-)
I think it's not just love - fundamentally, it's the way we work. Our brains (or minds, for those of you who think there's a difference) are comparative organs, so comparison is built into language and thought.
Obviously, comparative (analogical?) thought is immensely powerful. Where we seem to run into problems is in making comparisons and analogies that are just too broad and vague.
It's like... nevermind.
Humans -> Reality
...but nice try. ;-)
as
Klingons -> Fiction
The good storyteller is, indeed, key. I'm lucky enough to play in a weekly game run by Steven Erikson (fantasy author), and it rocks. Been playing for years.
We use GURPS, which is more open-ended than AD mostly, though, the imaginations of the GM and the players are what make or break a game. Hell, we sometimes play through an entire evening without rolling dice.
Cheers!
Yeah, I knew that about the rice. I wonder if it's bleached or brown that they eat; probably makes a difference. I was thinking more overall insulin release from their diet, though.
;-)
Regarding average life expectancy, I wonder how the relative difference between the USA and Japan has changed as the Japanese diet has become more westernized. Maybe the exceptionally long-lived Japanese are those older folks who still follow a more traditional diet? Food for thought, anyway. No pun intended.
That's very interesting about the sweet potato. I'd kind of been avoiding it; might have to reconsider. Cheers!
Hmm, this makes me think of long-lived individuals from Japan. Seems to me that the traditional Japanese diet would, overall, have a very low glycemic index, and that could in turn promote long life as in this mouse. Anyone know more about this?
Trucking is a lot cheaper than flying, considered on the basis of cost per kilo moved. That's why everything is expensive in the Arctic. Further south (by Arctic standards), parts of northern Manitoba are served by "winter roads" kind of like this. Once everything freezes up, it's a good way to move things.
Interestingly, global warming is one possible culprit contributing to a recent problem: the weather "window" for winter roads is becoming more narrow. Bummer for the folks who live in places without alternatives besides air. At least in the Arctic, most places are accessible by sea-lift in the summer. Cheers!
Well, I've never been one to channel surf (nothing good on TV, so I'm going to look for more TV to watch?), but it might be nice to record shows I like and skip the ads. About the only thing I watch these days is live sporting events, though, and that doesn't seem like enough to justify the cost of cable. Or buying a TV.
Mind you, I saw _Trailer Park Boys_ a couple of times, and that is one seriously funny show. There IS good stuff out there. Cheers, and thanks for the explanation!
I hadn't heard of this Tivo thing before I started hanging out here, and I'm still not entirely clear on what they do - their website doesn't really get into specifics. I assume it's some kind of programmable video recorder that can strip out advertising? That's pretty cool. How does it distinguish between program and ads?
I'm still not sure it would make me want to watch TV, or have time for it even - but it's a step in the right direction. Cheers!
Heheheh. No, I certainly believe in Sturgeon's Law. The problem with Hollywood is that it's even higher than Sturgeon's 90%. Like, 99.9% or something.
I think what I was trying to say was that good written SF is much, much, MUCH better - and there's more of it - than the best Hollywood has ever done. SF (science fiction or speculative fiction) is the literature of the possible, and *can be* great brain food. Sci-fi seems to be a Hollywoodism for... well, bad SF. Cheers!
Heheh. No problem, I'm not even the person you responded to in the first place. And hey, I'd be lying if I didn't admit to watching the odd hockey game at a friend's place.
As I mentioned to the other fellow who replied to me, I grew up without TV, and it's kind of coloured my views on the subject. You're right about the soft approach, though - most of the time I actually avoid mentioning that I don't watch TV. Going on and on about it would be a bit too much like "reformed" smokers for my taste. Cheers!
I agree that the net can be full of the same kind of crap, but at least with the net, you can filter pretty effectively. Also, the advertising isn't as invasive, maybe not even as stupid.
;-)
And yeah, there can be good stuff on TV; every now and again, I'll go over to a friend's house if there's something I really want to see.
Maybe part of the problem for me is that I grew up without TV. I never learned how to ignore the damned things, so I find that if there is one on when I'm around, it sucks me in. And yes, I fully realize that that's MY problem.
Raising my kids without TV was great, though. I hear a lot of parents talk about the pressure they get from their kids - go to McDonalds, buy the latest plastic crap, etc. I didn't have to go through that, and when gift-giving time rolled around, my kids had some really interesting and inventive ideas as to what they wanted.
Or maybe I've been living in granola-land too long; few of my friends watch TV at all, and I've probably become much too biased against it over the years. Cheers!
...find it a tad disturbing that pretty much all of the discussion in this thread is about movies and TV shows? People! The shite that Hollywood cranks out is not good SF! Read a good book. Sheesh.
Yeah, I saw that Onion item a while back, and I have to say it hit uncomfortably close to home... but stop and think about what you're saying for a minute. If The Onion wrote a story on Linux zealots, would you still be thinking "You people are a living joke"?
The reason those of us who don't have TV and don't miss it tend to talk it up is that we've found it to be a better way to live. Sure, it probably gets annoying hearing about it, but that doesn't make the basic message wrong. TV is vapid crap used to brainwash people into mindless consumerism and follow-the-herd politics. Especially if you have children, the best thing you can do is get rid of the box.
It's a pretty savvy crowd here on Slashdot, and I'm surprised by how many people seem to be obsessed by TV. Still, I'd bet real money that Slashdotters watch less TV than the average person, and that a higher than average proportion don't watch TV at all.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. Cheers!
I think I'll look into that. Cheers!
Heh. If I was worried about "cool", maybe. I just like the idea of a big free music library. Cheers!
...to get me an Audiotron (check it out at ThinkGeek if you don't know what it is).
Then I'm gonna get me a good-sized USB hard drive and rip all my CDs. Then I'll add all my dad's MP3s (he went Napster-crazy back in the good old days). And then I'll ship them to my brother.
He's already ripped all his CDs, and a bunch of his buddies are doing theirs. We're talking about folks with good taste in music and larger collections than mine, and I have somewhere around 500 albums. Even with dupes, there's gotta be a lot of good material in there. Varied, too; I'm into folk, my brother's heavily into blues, another guy has a huge classical collection...
Then we put them all together on a server and point our Audiotrons at the server. Bingo, instant online music library. I'm really looking forward to this.
It's a good thing these people are all friends, 'cause here in Canada, we can share music with our friends. As my GF would say, "That's... just... great." Anyone else thinking of setting up something similar?
Cheers!
Old once over 25? Not among hunter-gatherers, I don't think. Perhaps among agriculturalists. As to being lucky if two children survived, I think it's better to have only replacement levels than a steadily increasing population.
None of which really matters to the sense of my post, which was that pre-agricultural people (and people from non-agri. cultures up to current times) were better off IN MANY WAYS than we are. I'm not suggesting that they were better off overall, though it makes one wonder to think that most hunter-gatherers demonstrated a preference for death over living the way we do.
Humans have been around for (depending on your definition of human) something like a million years. We have these things called cultures that are basically cognitive toolkits for living. The ones most people on earth use now are very good at some things (technological progress, growing more people, wars of annihilation or absolute conquest, creating material wealth and concentrating it in the hands of the rich). They're not so good at other things (promoting happiness and mental health, protecting and sustaining the environment, limiting our own population, promoting cooperation between all humans).
It just seems to me that it's worth looking at other cultures to see what we might learn about doing things we don't currently do so well. Cheers!
OK, I tried googling Skynet and didn't get any results that made sense in the context of your post. What did you mean?
You're right, technology should never be brought to war. We should go back to carpet bombing instead of laser guided munitions. We should go back to sending scouts in instead of video cameras, so they can get shot. Hell, let's go back to hand-to-hand bloodbaths.
That's really not such a bad idea - limit war to symbolic hand-to-hand combat between a small number of elite warriors. But I think we need to go even further back. Say, before agriculture, when there was no need for wars of annihilation at all. Imagine it - many thousands of little tribal groups, each playing "Erratic Retaliator" to work out where and how often they rub elbows with their neighbours... Actually, it was probably better than what we have now in many ways.
Now if we could just manage to combine it with low population and high technology, we'd be getting somewhere. Cheers!
Yeah, Slashdot helps for sure. I also like to check out news sources from other countries - the Beeb comes to mind. 'Course, here in Canada we like to think our news is a little more unbiased, but I'm not sure how realistic that is!
Re the Jane Akre / Steve Wilson thing, their website is here:
http://www.foxbghsuit.com/
Interesting reading. The hormone in question is banned in Canada and Europe. Cheers!
Sometimes the problem IS censorship. Look at the story of Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, fired from Fox News for trying to get out an important investigative piece on bovine hormone technology from Monsanto.
That being said, though, I agree that often the news is lost in the noise. I've wondered whether that's part of the reason for all the negative stories one sees on US news - pure distraction.
Free vs. controlled markets are a matter of economic philosophy; I happen to lean more toward Hawken than Friedman. I don't believe the current energy market is "free", either; both supply and demand are subsidized in a variety of ways. This might lend less credence to your argument.
Further, I think petrochemical supplies are already running too low, hence my support for the alternatives that are appearing. That's beside my original point, though: when you count the real costs (environmental/sustainibility) of current energy technology, this sort of thing may well prove more "affordable". Cheers!
I don't know much about the initiative in question, so please don't read this as an unqualified endorsement. However, one factor that needs to be borne in mind when looking at the "affordability" of an alternate power source is its sustainability.
Energy from petrochemicals is not sustainable. It might be cheap - right now - but it's not going to last. Moving to sustainability while we have cheap petrochemicals to help us get there makes sense. I think it's high time that environmental costs, lack of sustainibility, and other "externalities" were factored in when comparing "affordability". Cheers!