Is the earth really dying?

[thes3raph1m]

i dont get it, i could solve the so called global warming with about 10% of the G8's annual spend on anti global warming xexexexe...

it would drop the temp at least... it wouldnt stop the emissions, however it would buy time that we dont need..


look, were gonna be out of oil in what... 30 years? great... global warming averted...

all that will happen is that 2/3rd of the human population will die (africa, india, undeveloped countries mostly) everywhere else will just get on as normal...

its laughable to believe that we have such power over the world when we dont...

[freefeet]

I really can't see that it matters much. Nature is going to f*** us up really badly before long anyway.

Whether it be climate change, super volcanos, magnetosphere collapse and reversal, big rock from space, global pandemic, doesn't really matter, there's simply too many human beings on this Earth and we're going to suffer for it when the time comes.

It's inevitable that the climate will change, and it's pretty clear that it is if people think back a few decades and compare the weather now. How much humans contributed to this change is irrelevant. What's relevant is what are we going to do when the pooh hits the fan?

To say it's happened before so it's fine is the most ridiculous position to take when one considers the difference in the global situation.

Last time there was an ice age you could count hominids in the hundreds of thousands and they were spread out over huge areas with incredible amounts of varying resources available to them, and even then you can bet your last penny that a great many were wiped out with the changing environment. This time the climate changes, whether up or down in temp, you have to consider that there's 6.5 billion humans with no space between them, millions packed into battery farms called cities with totally inadequate resources available. Nearly all our food is mass produced from a very narrow seed stock of species which is incredibly vulnerable to disease and pests, and most of that food is processed because a great many humans are no longer capable of processing natural food. Most people can't even take raw wheat and make a loaf of bread.

We've allowed our species to become conditioned to be totally reliant upon a system, capitalism, that is incapable of dealing with a global disaster such as climate change.

My personal view is that we don't have until 2050 to sort things out, we've already gone past the point of no return. Too many people are demanding too much from too little a planet and that is our undoing.

I do however believe that people will survive, some people at least. But if you look into the genetic record of our species, i believe we were beaten down to tens of thousands the last time the Earth had a tantrum - consider the environment having the power to make 6.5 billion people into 50,000 in a matter of years.

In its arrogance Homo sapiens has turned its back on the Natural world, thinking that it is the most powerful force on the Earth, i think we're in for a rude awakening when Nature lets us know just who the real force is here.

So what can we really do about it? Only one thing in my mind and that is to learn to live without the need for the capitalist system. Those who have removed all dependency upon the system will be the ones best equipped to survive when the system collapses - and it will collapse!

As Jesus once said, "The meek shall inherit the Earth". I believe he meant meek towards our environment.

[Ted Pearson]

Freefeet,
I have no idea where you live and what conditions you are living in, so I can not say if local climate change will be f***ing you up. I guess if you keep your eyes and ears open, you will have the opportunity to migrate or adapt to the extreme weather your area is prone to. Of course, if you are a quadriplegic loner living in a river basin, your pretty much f***ed. Big rocks from space are no more worthy to worry about than getting pancreatic cancer or spontaneously bursting into flames unless your EMO or really like worrying about stuff and things a lot.
Man has been predicting the end of the world ever since he realized he was on a world. Every time so far has been wrong and the prediction has been meant to glorify the predictor in some way. Religious nuts do it all the time and now politicians are doing the same thing in the name of science. Other than the contrived assertions of devisive scientists who manipulate calculations to show scarey models, be assured that there is no actual scientific data that shows CO2 driving temperature in any significant amount.

Be well,
Ted

[freefeet]

I don't think you read my post. If you did read it you didn't understand it, that much is obvious from your response.

[Ted Pearson]

My apologies Freefeet. I had mistaken your post for a depression driven ‘Cry for Help’. I truly did not understand the logic, but I do recall reading something similar in Dianetics. In fact, many parts of your post were so far down the rabbit-hole, I actually thought you were being sarcastic.
Now that I realize you are really, really, really serious, I wonder why you did not mention the irrefutable evidence of the Mayan calendar, Revelations and Nostradamus.
Ted

[freefeet]

You're very obviously flame baiting, and i really can't be bothered with that kind of attitude.

[Ted Pearson]

Originally Posted by freefeet

You're very obviously flame baiting, and i really can't be bothered with that kind of attitude.

The attitude is one of frustration when ideologies, (religious or otherwise), are injected into the scientific debate of climate change. If any ritual to heal our planet is to sacrifice tens of millions of human lives in Africa and India with the restriction of energy, I do have an attitude against that. Of course if you believe that genocide is the answer to any problem, you had better get accustomed to being ‘flamed’.

[Nightranger]

Originally Posted by Ted Pearson

My apologies Freefeet. I had mistaken your post for a depression driven ‘Cry for Help’. I truly did not understand the logic, but I do recall reading something similar in Dianetics. In fact, many parts of your post were so far down the rabbit-hole, I actually thought you were being sarcastic.
Now that I realize you are really, really, really serious, I wonder why you did not mention the irrefutable evidence of the Mayan calendar, Revelations and Nostradamus.
Ted

With respect Ted, this is just silly. We all know that religion has predicted various scenarios for the end of the world if, not the entire universe. However, a lot of these predictions were not really based on any observed events and it is questionable if they were based on calculations of timings from religious texts. In other words, they were just figures plucked from the air rather like Ussher's estimate of the age of the Earth. Nostradamus only works in hindsight so as a prediction of the future...it is next to useless.

The real grist of my reply here is that we have observed scientific data top work with and that means we can genuinely extrapolate into the future. I am well aware that the computer models do not always work as well as was thought 20 years ago or even a decade OK but that is not a surprise. The Earth is a dynamic system and it already deals with climatic extremes in its own way. However, that does not mean it does so with a sympathetic eye on the life the planet supports. Back in the Permian, we had one big continent sat straddling the Equator and this meant poor oceanic exchange and vast inland areas of desert. The result was a soaring atmospheric temperature that killed off around 75%-90% of ALL species and opened the door for the dinosaurs to evolve. 120 million years later volcanic activity, changing global weather patterns due to the continental positions and possibly/probably an asteroid collision did for the dinosaurs (estimates vary about the actual size of the extinction but it could have also been as high as 75%). In both cases, the Earth re-established an equilibrium for itself but at the expense of losing some of the biodiversity it held before. As Arthur C Clarke said, there is no telling whether human intelligence is really a positive survival trait so I am not sure we have the ability to get through if the Earth changes dramatically...I certainly have my doubts about civilisation. So Earth almost certainly is not dying but I am not sure we can definitely say the same for the human race.

Despite Isaac Asimov predicting human expansion into the universe, I suspect we may have less than 100,000 years anyway if we look at what happens with evolutionary trends...but that is a different debate.