The New Global Warming Thread

[marstein]

Humor me and name me only 1 that hasn't solved the problem of exhausting the environment by expansion? Really, I'd like to debunk the example.

What about the native americans in the mid-west? They controlled birth rates through frequent fighting and scarcity. Not that I know much about it, but it is mentioned in a book I once read.

[Kerostasis]

This isn't an adequate example. If a comet hits Europe today and halves it population, will it be a good example of a society that doesn't exhaust their environment? If a population stays stable because of a mix of external (plague) factors and human factors (e.g. agricultural advances) that doesn't been the basic tendency is gone. Just before the period you mention was a HUGE Roman expansion, then Africa and America were colonized. I'd hardly call that not expanding. I wasn't asking for an example of a population staying stable for some arbitrary period. There may be periods when the environment isn't exhausted, but soon the population rises and again exhausts the environment. Then the expansion starts again.

Look, if nine hundred years isn't a long enough time period to be an "adequate example", then lets jump straight to "the whole of human recorded history". So far, we have not exhausted our environment, and we haven't been expanding for a long time, since we've already colonized nearly the entire globe. That long enough for you?

[Morganan]

Interesting, from your link...





Interesting also... CO2 is plant food, or...



CO2... Not Pollution... It's life. But how much CO2 do humans put out, the majority right?



All fascinating stuff and the source of warming is the sun.

Lucky Shot

That's the same thing the documentary in the link I posted back on page 15 said, only it took over an hour to watch the documentary and 10 seconds to read your post!

Any future questions I need answered can I just refer to you? You answers take considerably less time to get to!

[Nikolas]

So a few thousand people on an island cut down all of their trees to make pagan statues, and that's supposed to mean that we're all screwed? That's the microcosm for our whole world?

Please, no one use the s word in here. I swear, if I see the s word again, I'm... well I'm going to be pissed, and I usually see it once a day. Thrice if I stumble upon an NYT.

[marstein]

Look, if nine hundred years isn't a long enough time period to be an "adequate example", then lets jump straight to "the whole of human recorded history". So far, we have not exhausted our environment, and we haven't been expanding for a long time, since we've already colonized nearly the entire globe. That long enough for you?

Humans don't understand exponential changes in the environment. Look at the plots for population, carbon emissions, cars, etc. They go up slow for a long time and then turn in a hockey-stick like shape upwards. That is when the **** hits the fan. In the worst case you get deserts up to Alaska in the best case a war over oil, water and other resources. Who wants to take that risk?
We are part of nature, if we destroy it we are dead.

[marstein]

So a few thousand people on an island cut down all of their trees to make pagan statues, and that's supposed to mean that we're all screwed? That's the microcosm for our whole world?

Please, no one use the s word in here. I swear, if I see the s word again, I'm... well I'm going to be pissed, and I usually see it once a day. Thrice if I stumble upon an NYT.

So what - if they managed to kill off their society with stone tools a couple of hundred years ago who says we can't do the same today with nuclear weapons?
You use the *P* word - isn't that the same?

[marstein]

Interesting also... CO2 is plant food, or...

When the temperatures go up the ability of plants to take up CO2 goes down. Double whammy. Then the forest fires caused by all the warming increase the CO2 output even more. We're screwed. Unless we cut down all the trees now and sell them for building more houses. The increased rains during the winter storms will then wash the soil away and agriculture will fail. Then we'll just import more food from China.

[Kerostasis]

Humans don't understand exponential changes in the environment. Look at the plots for population, carbon emissions, cars, etc. They go up slow for a long time and then turn in a hockey-stick like shape upwards. That is when the **** hits the fan. In the worst case you get deserts up to Alaska in the best case a war over oil, water and other resources. Who wants to take that risk?
We are part of nature, if we destroy it we are dead.

Your worst case: Not gonna happen.

Your best case: Thats not actually new. We've been doing that for the last four thousand years.

But you know whats so nice about hockey-stick type graphs? There's actually nothing unique about the up-turned end. You can zoom in on any portion of the line, and it looks exactly the same. You can zoom out a bit, and it looks like the up-turned end has moved down the line a few hundred years, when really nothing changed at all. That makes them really nice for propaganda purposes, because no matter WHERE you are now, catastrophic change is just around the corner on the hockey stick graph!

[Lucky Shot]

When the temperatures go up the ability of plants to take up CO2 goes down. Double whammy. Then the forest fires caused by all the warming increase the CO2 output even more. We're screwed. Unless we cut down all the trees now and sell them for building more houses. The increased rains during the winter storms will then wash the soil away and agriculture will fail. Then we'll just import more food from China.

I guess under this scenario I could always move to China since it's clear they won't be affected.

Lucky Shot

[CingularDuality]

This runs contrary to basic scientific and environmental logic. I find it very hard to believe that there is zero risk of human pollution have any noticeable effect on the atmosphere, and therefore the climate.

It does not run contrary, as the basic scientific and environmental logic that is being spouted all over the world right now is based on an assumption (or is it a presumption?) that simply doesn't have enough data to be proven.

To me, it seems akin to saying global nuclear war is survivable - sure, you could theoretically survive, but if the planet does not survive the near term effects, how could anything else truly survive?

I'll go along with that. Especially since global nuclear war would be quite survivable. Knowing roughly the amount of nuclear weaponry that exists in the world, and assuming that they will be directed towards urban centers, I think we might be able to assure that humans no longer are at risk of causing global warming, but the world, and civilization (if you want to call it that), would survive just fine. Nukes aren't that powerful...

[BigGaayAl]

What about the native americans in the mid-west? They controlled birth rates through frequent fighting and scarcity. Not that I know much about it, but it is mentioned in a book I once read.

You have a good example I think. I also said these societies get pushed away by the less environment friendly ones. This would be the colonization of America. Many if not all animals become very aggressive and even cannibalistic (as on the islands) when their living area becomes too small to support the population. Massive death due to war is a possible way the population could be capped. That doesn't mean the earth will survive the still ongoing exhausting of natural resources by the "winners" of the war.

Look, if nine hundred years isn't a long enough time period to be an "adequate example", then lets jump straight to "the whole of human recorded history".

*I don't know if your claim as I understand it that there was no expansion of CIVILIZATION for 900 years is correct, I don't feel like looking it up, but I bet there was.. What "Europe" are you talking about anyway? Either you say western civilization, you name a country, or a people. Europe was nothing more then a piece of land at that time, and I agree, that probably didn't expand for millions of years.

So far, we have not exhausted our environment, and we haven't been expanding for a long time, since we've already colonized nearly the entire globe. That long enough for you?

Contrary to what you assert, we HAVE been expanding for a long time. You seem to forget the only moments ago (historically) we discovered The New World. Man has been expanding out of Africa for quite some time, and only very recently have we reached all habitable areas of the earth.

You are right, when you say nearly. We have discovered all of the earth, but haven't colonized all of it yet. We still have enough space to keep expanding for now. When we run out, that is when the massive dying starts, unless we find more room somewhere to keep expanding. That is why need need to start mining asteroids asap, but in the mean time, buying ourselves some time by taking measures like Kyoto is in my opinion very much the wiser choice.

[leejo]

Well, they were cutting down ALL the trees and subsequently died out (actually not quite). They could have left some trees and survived. Lesson learned is that you should be careful about destroying your environment.

I don't get this at all, so please help me understand. Are you really saying that the reason why these people died off is because they cut down too many trees? It seems to me that they died off because their source of food required boats, and their boats required trees, but the boats didn't last as long as the trees took to grow, or their fishing techniques were not efficient enough to make do with the number of boats they had. They could have lived longer by chucking the weak children and old people into the sea, thereby keeping their need for food at a "sustainable" level, I suppose. Is this your vision for our future?

It seems to me that inventing "farming" or "navigation" might have been a better use of their time and intelligence than determining that, despite the fact that a boat was required, it was more important to tighten their collective belts and let the tree grow another decade.

Let me put it another way. You're an Easter Islander Chief back in the day. There are trees, and there are some boats, but there are not enough boats to collect enough fish to feed the village. What is your solution?

[Nikolas]

They could have lived longer by chucking the weak children and old people into the sea, thereby keeping their need for food at a "sustainable" level, I suppose. Is this your vision for our future?

Leejo, of all the people! Of all the people to use the "s" word, I never would have suspected you. At least you were using it ironically.

[Nikolas]

Leejo, from what the Wiki seems to say, the Easter Islanders had sufficient trees for boats. It was cutting down the trees to build, move, and support their famous statues that put them over the edge.

Can someone say "Darwin award"?

[AMosely]

Leejo, of all the people! Of all the people to use the "s" word, I never would have suspected you. At least you were using it ironically.

Humor me and explain why you have such an issue with the concept sustainability? I wrote my undergraduate thesis on sustainable architecture and design. Sustainability is misunderstood about as much as it is overused, and is completely relevant when discussing things such as resource consumption, pollution and environmental degredation. It's unfortunate that some people's kneejerk reaction is to laugh off such critical concepts.