PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: Little Joe on December 18, 2017, 06:10:26 AM
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Simple question. Some say that we (collectively) think climate change is a fairy tail. Is that true?
I could have put other options, but I wanted a yes/no answer to this question. If you have other comments or caveats, you can describe them in your post.
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Of course the climate is changing. It has been since the beginning of the Earth. I think we can safely say that. The question is how much, if any, is Man having an effect, and can limiting carbon, and taxing people for it can change any climate change.
From what I have read Volcanoes, the SUN, and many other natural occurrences have much more impact than Man.
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The climate is always changing, only now politicians are trying to capitalize on it.
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The climate is always changing, only now politicians are trying to capitalize on it.
Well Governor O'Malley of Maryland succeeding in having a Rain Tax passed with the rationale being the water runoff from the rain was affecting the Chesapeake Bay. You pay a prorated share depending on how much property you own. The probably use impervious surface to determine the area, and have a formula based on that. So you pay every time it rains.
Remember when people were selling carbon credits? Some got rich from it, like Al Gore.
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The question for the ages is if the climate is changing due to mankind influence. I think the answer to that is also yes, in undeniable ways the globe has changed due to mankind's existence. We have modified significant aspects of the surface, sub-surface, and seas. I will go further and postulate that not all of the things mankind has done have not been kind to mother Earth. The biggest question is - what should be done about it, and who should be in charge of the answers?
So far, the answer has been for the wealthy countries(mostly US) to give massive amounts of money to third world shit-holes as some kind of penance, or hush money. If the money given had been designated specifically for reduction in proven climate issues, then I might have been somewhat behind it. But - the money just went to line the pockets of third world dictators, who had no inclination to spend it improving the enviro.
Case in point, the EPA and more important, the state of CA tackled smog in a big way starting in 1971. I was growing up there at the time, and within 10 years there was a significant reduction in visible, and particulate smog from Pasadena all the way down to San Diego. All the while, the number of people and cars went up dramatically. This tells me that solutions can be implemented which will have a beneficial effect, but it has to be mandated and watched over carefully by a group which have specific goals, targets, engineering, planning, and implementation. Tossing billions of US dollars at pie-in-the-sky theories is worthless and may be counterproductive. Has Brazil reduced the acres of rain-forest they are destroying? I don't know, but I doubt it. There's money to be made there, and I'm guessing it's still going on. Has China banned coal fired heating and cooking within Beijing? I doubt it. London got rid of that back maybe 100 years ago.
There are ways and means to limit the damage to the enviro. Some of the actions have been had a direct and clearly measurable results. Many have not. The other case in point is the Ethanol mandate. I doubt there is solid evidence that any Ethanol added to auto fuel has reduced smog or improved air quality when the program is taken as a whole, including the added burning of fuels to grow, harvest, convert, deliver, and distribute the Ethanol to the bulk site. I know it actually reduces the mechanical and thermal efficiency of a IC engine because it has lower energy density. If Ethanol came out of the ground like crude oil, there might be value, but it doesn't, and a problem.
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it has to be mandated and watched over carefully by a group which have specific goals, targets, engineering, planning, and implementation.
This is where you lose me. Which group. What goals and targets? Whose engineering? Who is doing the planning? How will it be implemented?
My grief comes from the groups that tend to dominate this area come across as hostile to business, hostile to prosperity and frankly hostile to people. I have heard the idea promoted that we should "do away with people" (their exact words) in order to lessen the damage to the planet. That is not the person I want in charge of planning goals and targets for improving the planet. Granted, they are an extreme, but that person is out of college now and has a huge motivation to get into a position to be in charge of this process.
Understand - I am in favor of having a pleasant environment, I like drinkable water and clean air. I have seen the pollution in the LA area, had an early morning rain storm and the dramatic visibility change and I get that cars are a problem. I'm in favor of having electric cars, solar, windmills and hydroelectric power. What I'm not in favor of is having ONLY electric cars, solar, windmills and hydroelectric power, but that would be a compromise position for the groups who want to do away with all the people. We are moving in the direction of developing the technologies and what we need to do is unleash the markets to grow.
These technologies are the future, but they won't be developed in the United States for the very reasons they are needed - people are completely caught up in protecting the environment and in doing that protection, they are inhibiting the creating of the new elements. Nobody in their right mind would open a battery factory in the US right now because they would be so strongly handicapped by our laws, including but not limited to financing laws, EPA rules, trade restrictions, CRA and even the ACA. Open it in China, South Korea, India, Malaysia...anywhere else.
Rambling post....my view from the middle is that the left is inhibiting their own goals by being so extreme about it. How's that for a summary?
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This is where you lose me. Which group. What goals and targets? Whose engineering? Who is doing the planning? How will it be implemented?
My grief comes from the groups that tend to dominate this area come across as hostile to business, hostile to prosperity and frankly hostile to people. I have heard the idea promoted that we should "do away with people" (their exact words) in order to lessen the damage to the planet. That is not the person I want in charge of planning goals and targets for improving the planet. Granted, they are an extreme, but that person is out of college now and has a huge motivation to get into a position to be in charge of this process.
Understand - I am in favor of having a pleasant environment, I like drinkable water and clean air. I have seen the pollution in the LA area, had an early morning rain storm and the dramatic visibility change and I get that cars are a problem. I'm in favor of having electric cars, solar, windmills and hydroelectric power. What I'm not in favor of is having ONLY electric cars, solar, windmills and hydroelectric power, but that would be a compromise position for the groups who want to do away with all the people. We are moving in the direction of developing the technologies and what we need to do is unleash the markets to grow.
These technologies are the future, but they won't be developed in the United States for the very reasons they are needed - people are completely caught up in protecting the environment and in doing that protection, they are inhibiting the creating of the new elements. Nobody in their right mind would open a battery factory in the US right now because they would be so strongly handicapped by our laws, including but not limited to financing laws, EPA rules, trade restrictions, CRA and even the ACA. Open it in China, South Korea, India, Malaysia...anywhere else.
Rambling post....my view from the middle is that the left is inhibiting their own goals by being so extreme about it. How's that for a summary?
Lose you? I said 'it has to be...'. I gave only examples where it worked, and examples of what does not work. I don't have those answers, which is why I didn't specify anyone, group, org, or govt. I guess for the smog in Beijing we can look to the national and metro govts of Beijing China. That seems pretty simple. That's how London took care of it back in the day. For the rest of the planet-wide 'climate change' question, I can only say that we inhabit one planet. But - we have hundreds of govts, of all shapes, types and styles. While I have no interest in listening to some crack-pot dictator in central Africa tell the US how much we owe, and should pay him for our pollution, I also don't want to shut down debate on the subject.
As for anti-business, hostile to people, etc - having watch the Cuyahoga river catch fire(more than once), I would guess the city of Cleveland and the state of OH along with some 'help'(I use that word with great caution) from the feds have made a world of difference. Anything in the way of regulation is hostile to someone making money. But - there's a need for regulation. Without it, We would surely have more stories like the Cuyahoga, and Hinkley CA(PG&E scandal).
One last thing. I've mentioned this before, and it bears repeating. The planet has a carrying capacity for every form of life. Including humans. I don't know what the upper limit is, and what will happen as we approach it, but I can tell something for certain. We will reach it in the absence of some kind of population control. Far more important than just climate change is coming to the next few generations. They will almost certainly face restrictions in birth rates. It could get far, far more ugly than the current 'climate change' wrangling. India will almost certainly be our test case. Arable land to support humanity is going to approach capacity, and India is a very large place.
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One last thing. I've mentioned this before, and it bears repeating. The planet has a carrying capacity for every form of life. Including humans. I don't know what the upper limit is, and what will happen as we approach it, but I can tell something for certain. We will reach it in the absence of some kind of population control. Far more important than just climate change is coming to the next few generations. They will almost certainly face restrictions in birth rates. It could get far, far more ugly than the current 'climate change' wrangling. India will almost certainly be our test case. Arable land to support humanity is going to approach capacity, and India is a very large place.
I know this is a sidetrack, but it is interesting. Humans have a wonderful propensity toward ingenuity. What was once a doomsday scenario often becomes just another hurdle for the human race to tackle and succeed. I wonder if we'll all be alright? We'll figure it out without too much issue, until such time as we're destroyed by the effects of a huge meteor, or we become a multi-plant species. Look at what we've done in just 100 years, and now we're planning trips to Mars.
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I'm no 'sky is falling' kind of person by a long shot. But some relatively simple projections on arable land use, fresh water exchange, and sea life reduction will show that there is some point at which the planet will no longer support more human life. We've hunted a few species to extinction. Saying that extinction happens naturally is not an answer. Don't laugh, but right now we are in a bee population crash. Who cares? Well, lose enough bees, and pollination declines. It's an interesting and a bit scary to think that something we take for granted could be in serious jeopardy.
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I'm no 'sky is falling' kind of person by a long shot. But some relatively simple projections on arable land use, fresh water exchange, and sea life reduction will show that there is some point at which the planet will no longer support more human life. We've hunted a few species to extinction. Saying that extinction happens naturally is not an answer. Don't laugh, but right now we are in a bee population crash. Who cares? Well, lose enough bees, and pollination declines. It's an interesting and a bit scary to think that something we take for granted could be in serious jeopardy.
We have had tremendous innovation, and advancement in food production over the past 60 years or so. We are able to produce much more food with much less land, and manpower now. Don't you think we will find ways to solve other problems with sustained growth? We can re-populate the bees, and other species if we need to, or a workable substitute. I see fresh water as an issue in some areas, also, but there must be a way to deal with that too.
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We have had tremendous innovation, and advancement in food production over the past 60 years or so. We are able to produce much more food with much less land, and manpower now. Don't you think we will find ways to solve other problems with sustained growth? We can re-populate the bees, and other species if we need to, or a workable substitute. I see fresh water as an issue in some areas, also, but there must be a way to deal with that too.
The most productive land on the planet is the central & Imperial valleys of CA. They are the most advanced ag place anywhere. They use gobs of water, syn fertilizer, DNA splicing, hybridization, and huge machines to be so productive. Also, the natural climate is very suitable for growing. As for finding ways to feed everyone on the planet, we already struggle with that today. Back 40 years ago rumors came out of China of a famine that killed something like 30 million people. I don't know if it's true, just something I recall hearing. India and central Africa have famines every decade. If you've ever been to a third world country, it would be astonishing how primitive ag farming is in those places. I've lived in some pretty rural places where they still use buffalo, and a tine spade to furrow the land, and all planting and harvesting is done by hand. Sure - with the right tools, chem, DNA splicing, huge machines, we can double or triple their yield. But it's not an endless supply. Like I said, the planet is finite. There is some number, some mega-population which will not be sustainable. How are primitive farmers in India, China, Korea, sub-Saharan Africa going to get their yields up enough to support the growing populations? What's more, we have to consider the waste product of humans. It's not very good fertilizer unless the intake is mostly silage, and almost no one wants to live purely, or predominantly on silage. Humans are also not good anaerobic digesters at this time.
It's a fairly complex calculus, but this pie-in-the-sky 'we can do anything' will meet the cold reality of planetary limitations on arable land, water, and sewage treatment. It - will - happen. We live in a nation where the population is under control, more or less. Our natural tendency to reproduce more than we replace(two kids per two adults) is the minority position in the world. In the ME, the muslim countries are having 3,4, 5, or more kids per couple. Even if not all of them make it to maturity, enough do that there is a serious population issue on the horizon. Do they care? I doubt it. I strongly suspect that India will be first to reach carrying capacity. However, there are a lot of smaller dense populations with very poor ag processes. I would guess that Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Sudan is two or maybe three bad harvests away from serious famine.
Americans are somewhat spoiled. We go into the Piggly Wiggly, any time of year and we have a cornucopia of fresh veggies and fruits. Big ripe tomatoes, Strawberries almost any time of year, Pears, Carrots, Squash, etc, all in abundance. It's not like that in Djibouti. It's not like that in central China, and it's most definitely not like that in rural India. I would say - in about 30-40 years(maybe less) India is going to have food riots. Highly dependent on how they manage their ag and wastes. When food shortages start in a large city, then Katy bar the door, because 2 million very hungry people in New Delhi is going to be a hell of a mess. You heard it here first.
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My point wasn't that we'll never outgrow the planet. It was just to wonder whether we will figure it out long enough to populate other planets.
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My point wasn't that we'll never outgrow the planet. It was just to wonder whether we will figure it out long enough to populate other planets.
I don't think there is any chance we'll ever populate other planets. We will kill ourselves off from overpopulation/food shortage long before we have anything like the technology needed to survive on non-earth planets and if earth like planets exist in other star systems the distances are far too great to hope to get there, even if we do figure out where they are.
We have evolved to live HERE. Everywhere else is far too alien.
I too feel overpopulation is a much greater threat than climate change. Man has lived on earth through climates far warmer and far colder than what we have now; it is simply not an issue worth worrying about. Certainly not appropriate to make sweeping policy changes that damage our economy with no proven benefit other than lining the pockets of the corrupt such as the third world dictators you speak about, invflatspin.
I too have been following what's going on with bees. That is just one example of a single delicate thing that if upset could mean disaster and mass starvation. Clean water, food and shelter for all earth's multiple billions of humans is at some point going to become a major problem, more than it is already and in many areas it already is past the breaking point.
As long as man was in a natural balance with nature for millions of years the population was limited, but agriculture and technology have tilted the balance, we've become so successful a species our numbers are exploding far more than we really want, but we can't put the Genie back in the bottle, and go back to being cave men, dying by the time we're 40 because we didn't outrun the tiger.
The only pathway out as I see it, is the continued progress of technology, to increase efficiency of food and water production and most importantly, to increase the standard of living for as many people as possible, because with modernization and greater wealth, people tend to have far fewer children. In fact, if we make enough progress in this way, we may end up with the opposite problem, the threat of underpopulation.
Or we might just have another comet strike and wipe out 99% of us in one fell swoop, and the remaining survivors can start it all over again. There's that.
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I don't think there is any chance we'll ever populate other planets. We will kill ourselves off from overpopulation/food shortage long before we have anything like the technology needed to survive on non-earth planets and if earth like planets exist in other star systems the distances are far too great to hope to get there, even if we do figure out where they are.
We have evolved to live HERE. Everywhere else is far too alien.
Completely disagree. In less than 75 years we've gone from having put nothing in space to having put people in space including on an orbiting space station, having explored other planets, and currently have a craft exploring the interstellar medium after a successful test of correction thrusters that hadn't been used since 1980. Hell, in 1903 we had just officially theorized that we could even do anything in space, much less be planning space journeys to other planets.
We've evolved to have the necessary intelligence to dream of the unknown and then set off into it. There is no reason to stop now.
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We live in a nation where the population is under control, more or less. Our natural tendency to reproduce more than we replace(two kids per two adults) is the minority position in the world. In the ME, the muslim countries are having 3,4, 5, or more kids per couple. Even if not all of them make it to maturity, enough do that there is a serious population issue on the horizon. Do they care? I doubt it. I strongly suspect that India will be first to reach carrying capacity. However, there are a lot of smaller dense populations with very poor ag processes. I would guess that Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Sudan is two or maybe three bad harvests away from serious famine.
You made many factual claims in your posting but I don't have time to contest more than the aspects concerning population control. Around half of all countries (depending on whose stats are being used) now have a total fertility rate of 2.1 or less, which is the replacement rate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate)
So the U.S. is hardly a "minority" in population control. The color-coded map shows where the real population problem lies: central Africa.
India's fertility rate continues to fall as its per capita income rises (which is the case in all countries - rising fortunes lowers childbirths.) Indian rulers would need to continue to screw up their economy to cause it to exceed its "carrying capacity" (estimates which can differ by an order of magnitude.)
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Completely disagree. In less than 75 years we've gone from having put nothing in space to having put people in space including on an orbiting space station, having explored other planets, and currently have a craft exploring the interstellar medium after a successful test of correction thrusters that hadn't been used since 1980. Hell, in 1903 we had just officially theorized that we could even do anything in space, much less be planning space journeys to other planets.
We've evolved to have the necessary intelligence to dream of the unknown and then set off into it. There is no reason to stop now.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the pace of technology reach into space is not remotely linear. What has gone on since early rocket flight up to today is quite exponential. To maintain that exponential rate will require breaking some well established laws of physics. In fact, I would put the rate of expansion of our solar system by man at some impossibly high exponent. i.e. - to reach the Moon was X 1969 dollars and time. To reach Mars(by manned flight) will be X^10 in 1969 dollars and time. To reach Neptune will cost X^20, and so on(or something like that). To reach out into the cosmos we're talking about generational travel of decades, many decades. I'm afraid that humans are stuck here on planet Earth for the foreseeable future, unless there is some 'warp' capability in n-space that allows us to go faster than light. Barring time travel or the like equivalent, the meatsacks are stuck here.
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I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the pace of technology reach into space is not remotely linear. What has gone on since early rocket flight up to today is quite exponential. To maintain that exponential rate will require breaking some well established laws of physics. In fact, I would put the rate of expansion of our solar system by man at some impossibly high exponent. i.e. - to reach the Moon was X 1969 dollars and time. To reach Mars(by manned flight) will be X^10 in 1969 dollars and time. To reach Neptune will cost X^20, and so on(or something like that). To reach out into the cosmos we're talking about generational travel of decades, many decades. I'm afraid that humans are stuck here on planet Earth for the foreseeable future, unless there is some 'warp' capability in n-space that allows us to go faster than light. Barring time travel or the like equivalent, the meatsacks are stuck here.
Can you cite a source or are these just your guesses about the numbers?
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The only pathway out as I see it, is the continued progress of technology, to increase efficiency of food and water production and most importantly, to increase the standard of living for as many people as possible, because with modernization and greater wealth, people tend to have far fewer children. In fact, if we make enough progress in this way, we may end up with the opposite problem, the threat of underpopulation.
The unfortunate part of this - as proposed by Malthus - is to continuously increase food/water by an exponential rate forever. Obviously at some point that is going to fail and when it does, all that population that we've propped up forever is going to die of starvation.
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What good is going to another planet when it does not have the resources, nor environment to sustain human, or animal life?
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You made many factual claims in your posting but I don't have time to contest more than the aspects concerning population control. Around half of all countries (depending on whose stats are being used) now have a total fertility rate of 2.1 or less, which is the replacement rate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate)
So the U.S. is hardly a "minority" in population control. The color-coded map shows where the real population problem lies: central Africa.
India's fertility rate continues to fall as its per capita income rises (which is the case in all countries - rising fortunes lowers childbirths.) Indian rulers would need to continue to screw up their economy to cause it to exceed its "carrying capacity" (estimates which can differ by an order of magnitude.)
I'm glad to see that my studies in the 1990s when I last reviewed it has changed for the better, and I apologize for the mis-use of the word 'minority'. It shows we're making progress. India is still in trouble. China is making much better progress than I would have thought.
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Can you cite a source or are these just your guesses about the numbers?
They are wild guesses as my post stated (or something like that).
Rocketry has been conquered. It's not a matter so much anymore of 'will the rocket' but 'how much efficiency' can we gain. We're making advances all the time, which now allows the SpaceX rockets to return, and land for re-use. But, chemical rockets are only as good as the fuel we can lift. Since we have to lift the oxidizer as well, it's a game of ever diminishing returns once we reach a certain fuel load size. The Apollo program to the moon used the least efficient method(but the fastest) to get the job done. It was euphemistically called the "MISS" program for Man In Space Soonest. Each segment of the lift vehicles was left behind and disposed of(with a few limited exceptions) as the rest of the platform went on. Using this same method, we would need to carry a lot of fuel to land on Mars and then take off again, or live with a long, long, long mission profile at some reduced escape/transit velocity.
Whatever the numbers are to get out of the solar system and return, it is massively expensive.
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The concept of mass migration off of this planet is a myth that even science fiction doesn't support.
The vast, vast majority of people born on this planet will die on this planet.
Perhaps, one day we will send a small contingent of earthlings to another planet to form a self sustaining colony. We may even disperse to other planets, but the distances will require generations of space travel. Perhaps one day, in the far future, humans may establish multiple self sustaining colonies, that may even thrive. But the idea of you and me, or our children or grandchildren migrating off this planet to avoid eventual cataclysm and extinction is not even in the realm of fiction. And even if we do establish multiple independent space colonies, it will only be a short while before they all declare war on each other.
In MNSHO, our only hope is for drastic population reduction. But the idea of planned population reduction is so ghastly to the human mind that we will never do it on purpose. We will wait until war or plague or a natural catastrophe does it for us. Then it will take many generations for the remaining humans to adapt to the new environment, and then we will start the same old cycle all over and the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.
When this happens, I just hope we still have Scotch, assuming I am one of the survivors. Which is highly doubtful.
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The only time climate change is discussed on a governmental level is when ther democrats are seeking to grab more power, money, and control.
Period.
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The deal with population control(nee reduction) is that every country want's the other country to reduce their population. By correction shown earlier, we've made some improvements. The social idea of forced population reduction would I think be the most controversial effort known to man. I also think that humans will take the war/pestilence/misery/famine route to reduction rather than the logical method. Mostly because no national leader, whether elected, appointed, or by dictate would voluntarily reduce their own pop except in the case of a madman(Pol Pot?).
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I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the pace of technology reach into space is not remotely linear. What has gone on since early rocket flight up to today is quite exponential. To maintain that exponential rate will require breaking some well established laws of physics. In fact, I would put the rate of expansion of our solar system by man at some impossibly high exponent. i.e. - to reach the Moon was X 1969 dollars and time. To reach Mars(by manned flight) will be X^10 in 1969 dollars and time. To reach Neptune will cost X^20, and so on(or something like that). To reach out into the cosmos we're talking about generational travel of decades, many decades. I'm afraid that humans are stuck here on planet Earth for the foreseeable future, unless there is some 'warp' capability in n-space that allows us to go faster than light. Barring time travel or the like equivalent, the meatsacks are stuck here.
Made up numbers? The hurdles are great. But we're already planning missions to Mars. Launch costs continue to drop. I believe we'll see a manned Mars mission before I die. I could be wrong, of course.
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Notwithstanding the obvious socialist reference here, this article and the links within give a small window into the future of food production, availability, and famine.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2017/12/18/as-venezuela-collapses-scores-of-children-are-dying-of-starvationand-the-govern-n2423828
This can happen in most any kind of social structure, although the history of Thanksgiving would indicate that it's more likely and prevalent in a socialist/collectivist paradise.
Again, I don't want to be a pollyanna about this, but at some point in large social structures - food will trump all other wants or needs. What good is a 40' yacht if you are starving after 3 days of thin rice gruel and a piece of stringy chicken bone? Of course the nations around Venezuela and the US could ship in enough food for everyone to eat something, and survive. Why should we? It is the humane thing to do, but taking a long look at the problem, once the subsidized food source is running, people will start the re-population and we'll be right back in the same boat. Because, right after food on the list of important human traits, sex is a close second. We saw this in Africa in the 80s when many nations chipped in to feed massive starvation in sub-Saharan Africa. Once the women were fed just enough to begin menstruation again, the population boomed once more.
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The deal with population control(nee reduction) is that every country want's the other country to reduce their population. By correction shown earlier, we've made some improvements. The social idea of forced population reduction would I think be the most controversial effort known to man. I also think that humans will take the war/pestilence/misery/famine route to reduction rather than the logical method. Mostly because no national leader, whether elected, appointed, or by dictate would voluntarily reduce their own pop except in the case of a madman(Pol Pot?).
Um, as has been pointed out raising the standard of living cuts population growth not only to zero, but below replacement level. Because humans are K strategists (like other long-lived large mammals - e.g. elephants) rather than r strategists, their population growth self-limits as it nears the carrying capacity of its ecosystem. Too many people don't realize biologists have identified different models for population growth among species. Here's one primer (note that there are theories that supersede r K selection theory, but the essence is retained in the newer theories):
http://www.bio.miami.edu/tom/courses/bil160/bil160goods/16_rKselection.html (http://www.bio.miami.edu/tom/courses/bil160/bil160goods/16_rKselection.html)
It appears the exponential growth of humans in the last few centuries is more the result of the carrying capacity growing at an exponential rate. If technology had caused the carrying capacity to grow at a linear rate then the population would very likely have expanded linearly and not exponentially.
In 1972 someone mistook humans for r strategists and envisioned one idea of your "forced population reduction" 50 years later (think that will suddenly happen 4 years hence?):
(http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Soylent_Green_quad_movie_poster_l.jpg)
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The problem with type K strategist reproduction if taken in a large enough context, they act almost like type r populations(no, I don't mean we have litters of humans). We will fight for needed resources when those resources become scarce. I agree that human population has grown at the rate of improved ag, reduction in infant mortality, and improved general health. But - we are outstripping all other species in favor of our own. Any of the world population charts tell the story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
The change in population is a logarithmic increase, that just can't be sustained. We are making progress, due to improved social conditions. But even if we cut down by half, we are still working on some exponential growth in population. And - what's worse, the greatest increases in population are the locations which can least afford, or support those increases. I've seen first hand in places like Burundi and SA. It's amazing that they are hundreds of years behind the US in ag. Improvements are incremental, and small. Sometimes things actually go backwards. If the towed plow breaks, they'll yoke a couple of teens and pull the harrow with that!
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Yes, the climate changes. Ice age? Dust bowl of the 30's? Question is, does man influence climate. Unknown.
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And now it's to blame for more snow!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/climate-change-driving-record-snows-alaskan-mountains-study-100623399.html
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And now it's to blame for more snow!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/climate-change-driving-record-snows-alaskan-mountains-study-100623399.html
There is nothing climate change can't do!
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Yes, the climate changes. Ice age? Dust bowl of the 30's? Question is, does man influence climate. Unknown.
Climate does influence Man.
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That's why the cabal changed it from 'man-made global warming' to 'climate change'. They can always be "Right". Which sort of makes it a lot more like religion. Everything can be blamed, or credited to a(sic) 'god'.
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Yes, the climate changes. Ice age? Dust bowl of the 30's? Question is, does man influence climate. Unknown.
Of course, that is the obvious and correct answer.
But where I was going with this poll was that sometimes people claim that we all believe that Climate change is a fairy tale. My first response is to say that NOBODY believes climate is a fairy tale, only that the cause of climate change is being debated. But first, I wanted some assurance that I was correct when I said "nobody". There may be a few people that actually believe the climate is not changing and I don't want to speak for them.
But now, I will say this: "Nobody believes that climate change is a fairy tale", in spite of what some liberals say.
The climate is changing. It has always been changing and it will always be changing.
Man probably does have some impact, and 6 billion people are going to have more impact than 6 million. But to say that climate change is "man made" not reasonable. If that were the case, then what caused the glaciers? And then what caused them to recede?
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Of course, that is the obvious and correct answer.
But where I was going with this poll was that sometimes people claim that we all believe that Climate change is a fairy tale. My first response is to say that NOBODY believes climate is a fairy tale, only that the cause of climate change is being debated. But first, I wanted some assurance that I was correct when I said "nobody". There may be a few people that actually believe the climate is not changing and I don't want to speak for them.
But now, I will say this: "Nobody believes that climate change is a fairy tale", in spite of what some liberals say.
The climate is changing. It has always been changing and it will always be changing.
Man probably does have some impact, and 6 billion people are going to have more impact than 6 million. But to say that climate change is "man made" not reasonable. If that were the case, then what caused the glaciers? And then what caused them to recede?
This is a pretty good summary. The truth is we simply do not know. We don't really understand the solar effects which is a big huge problem, because the Sun is the number one source of heat, except what's left inside the Earth, and speaking of that, volcanoes and other heat and gas release from under the crust is also an area of extremely incomplete understanding. We have nothing like a grip on these things, and these two things are the biggest influences on our climate. I'm sure man does also have an effect, but without any true understanding and measurements of all of these factors, we simply cannot say that man is the biggest problem.
There are no "climate change deniers". Your poll so far is demonstrating this. There are only those who admit we don't fully understand how the climate changes, and those who arrogantly insist they do know, and furthermore you need to comply with all their proposed solutions.
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I'm with rush. Even if I were to grant that man makes significant changes to the enviro, and not all of them are good(burning Cuyahoga), the big solutions still evade us. Of course, localized control and mitigation is pretty obvious, once it leaves the realm of point-source resolution, the whole global warming or planetary solutions are way too variable to start making decisions about.
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But now, I will say this: "Nobody believes that climate change is a fairy tale", in spite of what some liberals say.
The climate is changing. It has always been changing and it will always be changing.
Man probably does have some impact, and 6 billion people are going to have more impact than 6 million. But to say that climate change is "man made" not reasonable. If that were the case, then what caused the glaciers? And then what caused them to recede?
What level of confidence would need to accept that man-made activities are detrimental and accept that action needs to be taken?? 10%, 50%, 90%??
Suspect you would agree that it is absolutely true that man-made activities can adversely affect the climate on the micro scale, ask anyone living in Beijing or Mexico City or even in certain areas in the US in the 1950's or 1960's. Do you find it that far-fetched that if our activities can effect things on the small scale, there is a measurable probability that larger global effects are also likely?
Certainly there are some that believe we are doomed and the sky is falling, conversely, there are some that believe this is all hog-wash. Personally, believe neither are correct. Granted, we do not have a full and complete understanding of how man-made activities, climate, solar and geophysical factors all relate to each other, but we are not ignorant of those relationships either.
It comes down to a risk-management decision. Do we take action based on incomplete (but IMHO, compelling) information -or- take no action, try to gain more insight, understanding that delaying that decision may have very unpleasant consequences and be potentially irreversible.
As has been mentioned, most things in nature have a certain balance , and that is easily disrupted by small events. The introduction (by man) of a small zebra mussel to the Great Lakes certainly had a huge impact.
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"Give me a half a tanker of iron and I will give you another ice age." - Oceanographer John Martin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_(oceanographer) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_(oceanographer)))
There are possible inexpensive engineering solutions to any human-caused changes to the climate due to CO2 - one of which is simple fertilization of ocean phytoplankton:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizing-ocean-with-iron-sequesters-co2/ (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizing-ocean-with-iron-sequesters-co2/)
If the engineering systems we rely on for our civilization are causing a problem to our environment, the solution should first be sought in the engineering realm since that is where it started, not the political. Low-cost engineering solutions should be explored and considered before political choices are made that require enforced reductions in our way of life.
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The mmgw crowd has forever ruined any possibility of being taken as anything but a new way for liberals to pick pockets and amass power, just like the racists of the democrat party have forever lost the right to lecture us about race division, just like the forever fake feminists have lost any credibility and right to lecture us about sexism.
It is all a game to capture power, take money from others and pretend that they are pure and humanitarian and really care about anything but crushing those who refuse to be manip[uated by their lies and bullshit.
Take Steingar. Look at the speed with which he goes from lecturing to damning. The second someone catches him out in one of his rants, he hates us all and we can go Fuck ourselves. His pattern is typical of uninformed, fake scientists, fake feminists, fake humanitarians. Liberalism is a fake place where people to lazy and self centered to work at making the world a better place, gang up and place all the blame on those who actually do those things.
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Regardless if we colonize other planets or not, the planet has a finite limit on food production and therefore a finite limit on population. Regardless of the amount of food available, population grows exponentially. These are two facts, which mean that there must suffering related to population growth. Starvation, disease and predation are the natural controls to population. Man extends predation to add war to that list.
Overpopulation is the condition where the environment cannot support the population. This can come about through either a change in the environment (ex, less food) or by population growth. Either way, nature will fix it with suffering and death.
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IF the planet were to warm up a little, then food production should increase based on favorable climatic conditions.
However, mmgw whores, like Al Gore, would find their ocean front property slightly less valuable and that would be a crisis.
Every twist comes with a bit of turn back. Liberals see everything as a zero sum game and can't imagine anything beyond a static environment where it is easy to chart every factor, by ignoring the facts about human interaction.
It's like the fake arguments of liberals about the tax bill. If taxes lower, then many people spend more, causing increased demand, increased production, increased hiring, which leads to increased tax revenue.
Liberals can't imagine a world where this is possible because it doesn't fit their agenda, just like a climate that does whatever it chooses fails to fit their agenda and therefore is inconceivable.
Honestly, the whole thing is just another democrat scam.
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Regardless of the amount of food available, population grows exponentially.
Oh really? Then how to account for the 8 consecutive years of declining population of Japan? It is not losing population to starvation nor to war or to disease or privation.
“Japan's population is falling faster than it ever has before”:
http://www.businessinsider.com/japans-population-falling-faster-than-ever-before-2017-7 (http://www.businessinsider.com/japans-population-falling-faster-than-ever-before-2017-7)
These are two facts, which mean that there must suffering related to population growth. Starvation, disease and predation are the natural controls to population. Man extends predation to add war to that list.
Overpopulation is the condition where the environment cannot support the population. This can come about through either a change in the environment (ex, less food) or by population growth. Either way, nature will fix it with suffering and death.
Um, Malthus’ made a fundamentally wrong assumption about the factors that higher longer-lived animals apply when choosing to reproduce.
Contrary to overpopulation fears, current projections show an S curve on population growth and it isn’t caused by any of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
“During 2010-2015, fertility was below the replacement level in 83 countries comprising 46 % of the world’s population.” From: https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-population-prospects-the-2017-revision.html (https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-population-prospects-the-2017-revision.html)
Pessimists operating on fake news - whatever is to be done about them?
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Pessimists operating on fake news - whatever is to be done about them?
I find it amazing that you cherry picked some population data from less than half the countries to reach the conclusion that the population is not increasing, then called my information “fake”.
The effects are always localized. Just because one area is not facing a famine does not mean someplace else is not. The four horsemen (well three of them) are a fact of nature and result in the S curve for animals, a fact that Malthus quoted. But mankind has consciously and artificially propped up population above the natural levels meaning our misery has been delayed. Not that any of us expect it to happen in the US, but can you imagine how many people would die if our national food distribution network collapsed? Our obligation now is to perpetually maintain that capability because without it, hundreds of millions in our own country would starve. Can we confidently state that it will continue forever? Absolutely not. One day there will be a reckoning. Will that happen in our lifetimes? It is unlikely to.
That is pragmatism, not pessimism. I simply acknowledge our dependence on a food distribution network and recognize the consequences of failure.
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Regardless if we colonize other planets or not, the planet has a finite limit on food production
Explain this to me.
I have seen hydroponic and aeroponic gardens that can grow incredible amounts of food in a very limited amount of square footage. by going UP.
Mechanical and chemical advances can also greatly increase food production/acre.
So give me an idea of what you think the limit is and why?
And have you never heard of "Soylent Green"? :o
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Liberals see everything as a zero sum game...
Emotionally, they never got past the 3 year old's stage of "Billy got a bigger piece of cake than I did!!", ignoring that there's more cake in the kitchen.
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And have you never heard of "Soylent Green"? :o
I was wondering when this subject would come up. It's taboo to talk about and people wrongly believe it is taboo to do it but in reality when pushed to the brink, we do it. It happened in the Irish famine, it always happens in survival situations such as the Andes plane crash or countless cases of being stranded in a lifeboat.
It's true that population decline is happening in local areas but as far as I know it's the highly developed countries which is why the solution to overpopulation is to raise the standard of living in the less developed countries. Ideally this will happen and we'll reach a stable replacement rate with everyone enjoying lots of food and good quality of life. I won't hold my breath though.
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I find it amazing that you cherry picked some population data from less than half the countries to reach the conclusion that the population is not increasing, then called my information “fake”.
The effects are always localized. Just because one area is not facing a famine does not mean someplace else is not. The four horsemen (well three of them) are a fact of nature and result in the S curve for animals, a fact that Malthus quoted. But mankind has consciously and artificially propped up population above the natural levels meaning our misery has been delayed. Not that any of us expect it to happen in the US, but can you imagine how many people would die if our national food distribution network collapsed? Our obligation now is to perpetually maintain that capability because without it, hundreds of millions in our own country would starve. Can we confidently state that it will continue forever? Absolutely not. One day there will be a reckoning. Will that happen in our lifetimes? It is unlikely to.
That is pragmatism, not pessimism. I simply acknowledge our dependence on a food distribution network and recognize the consequences of failure.
I think his point was to argue one of the primary facts that you based your post upon - that "population grows exponentially".
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Explain this to me.
I have seen hydroponic and aeroponic gardens that can grow incredible amounts of food in a very limited amount of square footage. by going UP.
Mechanical and chemical advances can also greatly increase food production/acre.
So give me an idea of what you think the limit is and why?
And have you never heard of "Soylent Green"? :o
Moving a few people off the planet and providing "new pastures" will not significantly reduce the current population, nor will it enhance our current ability to constantly improve the food source.
I think there must be an upper limit because ultimate the amount of plant material that the planet can support is limited by the available sunlight. Regardless of what that limit is, if we ever fail at improving the food sources or fail at food distribution, then we unleash devastation and the amount of that devastation gets stronger each year. Our society is actually rather brittle
None of which has to do with global warming...
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I think there must be an upper limit
That might possibly be the case, but I think there will always be methods developed to raise more food.
And I think that as the population begins to outstrip the food supply, nature, peer pressure or martial law will step in to slow that growth down.
None of which has to do with global warming...
Except that if the planet warms, a huge amount of arable land will be unleashed, increasing the ability to produce much more food.
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There are issues with advance methods of ag improvement. Not that they can't be overcome, but they are currently not ready for prime time. Hydroponics, and a few other super high density growth methods just don't scale well. It's kind of like solar electric. What is great for an off grid, battery supplement, small home system just doesn't scale up well to the metro grid. The number of batteries involved becomes ridiculous.
I don't want to keep harping on it, but we in the US are so conditioned to advanced scientific and heavily mechanized ag farming. If anyone were to drop in to central Korea, or N Africa, or China - the primitive level of ag would just blow your mind.
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Regardless of the amount of food available, population grows exponentially.
Absolutely untrue. Population grows exponentially ONLY when food supplies are plentiful. Nature has seen to that.
Humans have a distinct proclivity not to let people starve, in general. But when we send rice and powdered milk and such into countries where starvation is always imminent or in progress, we keep those people alive, and even reproducing, but not thriving. The leaders of those countries are obviously not concerned with correcting the situation, and we help keep their victims alive.
I would like to see more of our focus as a race of humans on making decisions that create HUMAN FLOURISHING, not mere survival.
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Moving a few people off the planet and providing "new pastures" will not significantly reduce the current population, nor will it enhance our current ability to constantly improve the food source.
I think there must be an upper limit because ultimate the amount of plant material that the planet can support is limited by the available sunlight. Regardless of what that limit is, if we ever fail at improving the food sources or fail at food distribution, then we unleash devastation and the amount of that devastation gets stronger each year. Our society is actually rather brittle
None of which has to do with global warming...
The bolded parts: distribution is the real problem. My contract job involves looking at the freight logistics of some of our major food distributors. If Americans knew how few mega producers and distributors there are in charge of the majority of what they eat every day, and how much they rely on only two major infrastructure systems (rail and highway) which are too neglected and insufficiently secured, they'd worry about their next meal every day. A third distribution system is of course the seas for getting food from the big producers to countries all over the globe. ALL of these systems rely on fossil fuel with the irrelevant exception of one or two nuclear powered cargo ships.
Without fossil fuels there will be mass starvation in very short order. The continued production of fossil fuels is crucial to support this planet's human population. It would take time for local communities to ramp up heir own production again. The movement away from locally produced food and toward mass distribution has resulted in economies of scale but at the cost of becoming dependent on those very distribution systems.
We are perhaps decades or even centuries away from developing an alternative energy source for freight transportation. Electrified rail, hydrogen fuel cells, etc. all rely on fossil fuels or alternatives to produce and we are a long way away from having the non-fossil alternatives in place to support such schemes. Money and time it will take and in the meantime we are vulnerable to the delicate situation we're in now. Massive amounts of food rotting in one location while people starve elsewhere is a very possible outcome if we don't stay on top of continued fossil fuel production to bridge us to that future.
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Made up numbers? The hurdles are great. But we're already planning missions to Mars. Launch costs continue to drop. I believe we'll see a manned Mars mission before I die. I could be wrong, of course.
I have 535 people in mind that I’d like to send on a one way trip to Mars. Where can I get them signed up?
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I have 535 people in mind that I’d like to send on a one way trip to Mars. Where can I get them signed up?
Why are you so eager to fuck up Mars?
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I have 535 people in mind that I’d like to send on a one way trip to Mars. Where can I get them signed up?
Right here (https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/423817000)!
However, they may be better suited for the cargo hold instead of the cockpit.
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Right here (https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/423817000)!
However, they may be better suited for the cargo hold instead of the cockpit.
Ah. Thanks! However, I don’t think my nominees will make it.
Conditions of Employment
-Position subject to pre-employment background investigation
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Except that if the planet warms, a huge amount of arable land will be unleashed, increasing the ability to produce much more food.
And other land will be ruined. There are those who say that as the earth warms, sea levels will rise and we'll lose a large amount of arable land near the coasts.
There's about 3.5 billion acres of arable land today vs 7.5 billion people, a bit less than 1/2 acre per person. Can we double food production and push the number down to a quarter acre - 100'x100' per person? That's not a lot. I'm thinking about my first house, which had a yard that was 100'x50' and I have a strong visual about how much land that is. This is the ratio that determines how many people can be supported.
I'll note that we already see these mechanisms in place. There are reports in China of starvation in the rural areas because all the food is taken to support the cities. China has instituted mandatory population control in order to bring down the number of mouths to feed - it is struggling to feed them all. That is starvation at work, there isn't enough food. China has around 335 million acres of land, but they say that 20% of it is polluted. So if we say they have 268 million usable acres for 1.4 billion people, about 1/5th of an acre and they're starving. So it seems that maybe the answer is between 1/2 and 1/5 of an acre per person. Under that rule, our 3.5 billion acres of land could maybe barely support 5 people per acre in starvation mode, putting a top number around 17.5 billion people.
If you want to guess at the net loss or gain from global warming, that's your adjustment.
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The five costliest years for weather related disasters -- 2004, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2012 -- have all occurred in the past 15 years. And this year will top them all, I think its worse than all the ones in the 2000s combined. Climate change in action, pretty much what they were predicting in the 90s. OF course, you guys will blame liberals, or elves, or something.
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OF course, you guys will blame liberals, or elves, or something.
I blame Crack Ho's.
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I never thought of it in those terms but that dos make a lot of sense.
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The five costliest years for weather related disasters -- 2004, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2012 -- have all occurred in the past 15 years. And this year will top them all, I think its worse than all the ones in the 2000s combined. Climate change in action, pretty much what they were predicting in the 90s. OF course, you guys will blame liberals, or elves, or something.
...ummm... how about incread COSTS and increased services attached as part of the recovery efforts?
More people assigned and paid to do more, provide more, repair more and do so at lax levels of cost oversight ALWAYS. Leads to higher costs and reduced efficiencies, but you wouldn’t understand any of that. You live off the same taxpayers funding those same inefficient recovery efforts.
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...ummm... how about incread COSTS and increased services attached as part of the recovery efforts?
More people assigned and paid to do more, provide more, repair more and do so at lax levels of cost oversight ALWAYS. Leads to higher costs and reduced efficiencies, but you wouldn’t understand any of that. You live off the same taxpayers funding those same inefficient recovery efforts.
He just purposely posts stupid stuff he reads on Huffpo, then goes back to doing his Origami. It is just to stir the pot, not have a meaningful discussion. He admittedly just wants a reaction. I only post the absurd in response to him. :)
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The five costliest years for weather related disasters -- 2004, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2012 -- have all occurred in the past 15 years. And this year will top them all, I think its worse than all the ones in the 2000s combined. Climate change in action, pretty much what they were predicting in the 90s. OF course, you guys will blame liberals, or elves, or something.
How about blaming rich D voters who insist on building expensive homes in low lying flood zones, along oceans known to be targets for hurricanes, and in near-desert areas that frequently burn wild due to lightning strikes and high winds?
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He just purposely posts stupid stuff he reads on Huffpo, then goes back to doing his Origami. It is just to stir the pot, not have a meaningful discussion. He admittedly just wants a reaction. I only post the absurd in response to him. :)
Mental masturbation in the faculty lounge.
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The five costliest years for weather related disasters -- 2004, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2012 -- have all occurred in the past 15 years. And this year will top them all, I think its worse than all the ones in the 2000s combined. Climate change in action, pretty much what they were predicting in the 90s. OF course, you guys will blame liberals, or elves, or something.
I blame inflation and more development in risk prone areas. There is more expensive damage because there are more expensive things to be damaged.
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He just purposely posts stupid stuff he reads on Huffpo, then goes back to doing his Origami. It is just to stir the pot, not have a meaningful discussion. He admittedly just wants a reaction. I only post the absurd in response to him. :)
Can't recall whether it was Science or Nature. Yeah, liberal news rags, or some such.
Oh, and I do have a great piece of Origami for you guys:
(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5125/5342063181_1326af85a3_z.jpg)
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And the immaturity comes out once again.
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How about blaming rich D voters who insist on building expensive homes in low lying flood zones, along oceans known to be targets for hurricanes, and in near-desert areas that frequently burn wild due to lightning strikes and high winds?
And the environmentalists who won’t permit smart logging and thinning of forests of the deadwood fuel that these fires need to persist.
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And the environmentalists who won’t permit smart logging and thinning of forests of the deadwood fuel that these fires need to persist.
Good point.
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Forest fires can actually be beneficial for the environment and long term sustainabilty for the forests.
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Forest fires can actually be beneficial for the environment and long term sustainabilty for the forests.
They are actually NECESSARY, unless you systematically log a certain age, and portion of the forest.
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Forest fires can actually be beneficial for the environment and long term sustainabilty for the forests.
I wonder how much CO2 these Forrest fires release?
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I wonder how much CO2 these Forrest fires release?
Not enough to drown to coastal "elites".