Environment & the "tipping point"

http://erg.ucd.ie/arupa/references/gaia.html

Rather than sustainable development, Lovelock advocates sustainable retreat, predicting the Earth's population will dwindle to about 500M by 2100AD.

Interesting bedtime reading...

The humane way to population reduction is celibacy. I agree with that idea. I think a population of 100 million is a better level.

The Gaia hypothesis, that the earth ultimately heals itself, sounds correct to me. I suspect that we won't necessarily hit a wall so much as become increasing aware that the planet can not support any more population. If global warming continues as projected, there will be droughts and famine, and we will gradually learn to adapt. Eventually, people will be embarrassed to have more than one or two children, and eventually population will stabilize. I would not be surprised if that sustainable level is not too far from today's population -- I think 500 million is too low.

By 2100, I suspect we will know how things are going to end up: by then I think we will well along on the way to sustainability.

kkjensen writes: "die celibate and heirless?"

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Or celebrate and die hairless. Gloria! My toupee!

-e

With all the partisan posturing over this, I've never heard anybody even mention the human history of environmental holocaust.

Mohenjo Daro and Harappo both killed their cultures by wiping out forests to burn bricks, which starved them out of their cities. The Easter Island people, as far as we can figure it, ripped down their trees just to move their Moai. This killed them all.

We also have a rich, deep history of population-purging war. We routinely kill huge percentages of people this way.

I don't think we'll starve ourselves by overpopulating, as we have the technology to feed ourselves pretty well, and we have the aggression to kill millions at a time.

So I imagine a big one-two punch coming pretty soon. Sure, our environment is changing, and whether we're responsible or not, we'll have some serious problems of one sort or another that tend to get politicians on edge and looking for blame.

Everybody's mad at the Great Mercantile Empire right now, and rightly so. Ethnic European population is dropping like a stone while the numbers are more than made up by Mohammedan immigrants. Ethnic European population is also leveling/dropping in the USA; but those numbers are made up with south-of-the-border immigration.

Our traditional cultures (legal systems, common morals, etc.) are hanging by a thread, and what comes next is historically predictable.

I don't think we need to worry about population. That will take care of itself presently. And once that happens, the earth will heal itself.

No problem.

...unless you consider the excitement of our next chapter as a problem, of course.

Nature's law is "breed or die." Areas with native populations with low birth rates will eventually be populated by non-native people when they become unable to defend or utilize their territory. Whether the mechanism is war, immigration, or disease is unimportant. (See also european out-migration and recent in-migration.)

Another factor that seems important is the amount of resources available. Areas with lots of resources tend to be focusses of migration.

Look forward to continued migration from high birth-rate/resource areas to low birth-rate/resource ratio areas.

Malthus was right. Unfortunately, if a population becomes philosophically averse to breeding, for example through a belief in "sustainability", it will quickly become irrelevant as other groups move in to utilize resources.

Personally, I believe the government uses a few things to keep the population reasonably in check. Firstly, I do not believe for an instant that we don't have a cure for AIDS and cancer. It's a way to control population and make big bucks at the same time. Same thing for cigarettes. If cigarettes are so bad for you, why is it legal? Marijuana hasn't been known to kill anybody, but cigarettes apparently kill 20 times more people per year than murder. I wonder how much money the government makes from taxes on cigarettes... Just a thought.

Well, we don't have cures for AIDS or cancer, and outlawing illegal drugs has made them more dangerous and seductive, right? But you are right to question the motivation of our politicians...

Really? You think we have a cure for both AIDS and cancer and that the government is keeping it secret for population control? Do you have any idea the kind of political power someone could wield if they could claim responsibilty (or even that they helped in some vague way) for curing AIDS?

As far as tobacco and marijuana; I don't think we should be surprised to find a double standard somewhere where drugs and the federal government is concerned.

Ive said it before, I know, but it always amazes me that an essential pillar of the conspiracy theorist is the belief that the government, ANY government, can succesfully 'hush things up'. Just remember Clinton and the 'knee pad incident', that was only a 'small' thing.........

PlbMac recalls: "Just remember Clinton and the 'knee pad incident', that was only a 'small' thing..."

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It was staged.

-e

What, you mean like an elaborate set up? And Clinton fell for it? Hmmmmm.........

PlbMak asks: "And Clinton fell for it?"

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Well, no. Not exactly fell. Not exactly, anyway. You see, what really happened was this: when Bill reached for his..um..cigar, Monica...

-e

He he he he. Face it, he done it, got caught, changed the definition of a sexual act. Owned!

Totally.

Sadly, that stuff is News here in the States. Being a shrewd spinmeister (and opportunist) at heart, Mister Bill cleverly leveraged that chapter of his Presidency and spun it into a how-to chapter in his forthcoming how-to book, How To Have Sex Without Having Sexual Relations And Which Cigars Are Best.

How much do you wanna bet he'll be laughing all the way to the bank?

-e

The great thing about Clinton is that women still find him attractive, and lets face it, in this crap politically correct climate we are forced to live in, most men I know have a sneaking admiration for him.

Ahh. Clinton-Envy.

Ever notice how much like Elvis he sounds when he speaks? Listen especially for that 'z' sound where an 's' is zuppozed to be. Conversely, in Elvis' hit single, "Are You Lonesome Tonight," it sounds almost as if Mr. Bill himself is speaking to all those throbbing hearts out there in Radioland.

And of all the women he could've had, he picked Hillary?! Gawd! I mean, Jeeze! That's..er..Hillarious!

-e

Speaking of Politically-Correctism, remember Lookism? Throughout the 1990s it was a leading campus thought crime, or more precisely, eye crime and misdemeanor. It meant, usually, glancing at a woman with intent to commit aesthetic evaluation. You don't hear so much about it now, and it could be that we Lookists are no longer being watched. Someone, probably a Whisperist, must have whispered into an administrative ear, pointing out that most women actually like to be discreetly admired by passing strangers and go to some trouble to make sure it happens. In Milan Kundera's recent novel Identity, a Frenchwoman returns from a walk tearful and disconsolate because "Men don't turn to look at me anymore." Ha!

-e

Whoooo...thats a new one on me! Even my wife agrees to the dictum 'You can admire the merchandise but not touch'!

I note that a thread was started a couple days ago, entitled "Hose Connector." I wonder if it might be related to this discussion?

Oh yes!

I think nature throws a curve bal levery now and then, just to keep the population in check. AIDS, for example, was well on it's way to being a population check until we got the upper hand with the drug cocktails and all. But then again, I guess people in Africa aren't seeing much benefit from those cocktails.

I think nature will throw another curve ball soon - I hate to be alarmist here, but that H5N1 thing, if/when it mutates, is going to serve as a population check at least for a brief time until they get a batch of vaccine brewed up. The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918ish killed something like over 50 million people, and that was before we had global air travel that could distribute a virus in days instead of moths or years.

Yeah, we also didn't have modern medicine then either. Not to mention a federal emergency response organization.

I think a lot of this H5N1 stuff is blown way out of proportion. How many humans deaths have there been, total? 166 And how many of those in the US? 0. I'm not going to lose any sleep over if/when a virus mutates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5n1

JRocket writes: "Not to mention a federal emergency response organization."

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My fiance's daughter worked for FEMA. That outfit is, in a word: "dismal."

On a more cheerful note, The Onion assures us that FEMA has done a great job restoring New Orleans to its former squalor.

-e

Fair enough.

I still doubt we will ever have 50 million people die in a single outbreak of a disease in the modern USA. If we even broke 100,000 that would be amazingly catastrophic.

Even Hurricane Katrina only (in relative terms, I'm well aware it was a terrible disaster) took 2,000 lives and it's pretty much agreed that ALL levels of government bungled that one.

I agree about the probable cost in human lives. What concerns me more are viruses which can attack our genetically-homogenous crops.

-e

Yeah, a corn blight would hit us pretty hard. Other then that though, what else? Wheat maybe?

What does this have to do with engineering???????

Answer: zero. Censor this, just like you sensor other "political" posts... Double standard???

If anyone is interested in green building, and would like some help or ideas on to "green" their next building project, please visit www.greenbuildingtalk.com for a discussion.

Would love to see you there!

Jamie

www.greenbuildingtalk.com

"The construction and operation of buildings consumes over a third of the world's energy consumption, and 40% of all the mined resources"

Hi Jamie!

My fiance and I are planning to build a home near Austin, Texas, and one in West Texas, using Green Building techniques. Wilshire, KB Homes, and especially, Newmark, can't even come close to what we're planning. High tech (very), high quality (very), low impact (very).

(Why pick on award-winning Newmark, you ask? For one thing, Newmark had left the drywall out in the rain - and they used it anyway. Ever try mounting anything on a surface constructed of once-wet drywall? The drywall granulates and crumbles like raw sugar. Of course, the builders never said a thing.)

-e

Interesting ! Possibly the human race will descend into an animalistic phase because of selective breeding. It seems as though the more intelligent of our species are choosing either not to breed or to breed once or twice only. The less intelligent have multiple breedings and inevitably will become the dominant population. Ultimately the lowering of the population IQ will cause starvation & disease. The least intelligent will die off leaving the more intelligent to start the cycle all over again.

I agree. Deep down inside, men are instinctively animals (I'd prefer a comparison with Lions for this discussion). Most if not all men can agree that 99% of the time, our drive for a connection with a female comes not from the heart or the brain... but the "special place." And all men and women, though more advanced than our predecessors, still subconsciously single out our mates based on natural instinct (i.e. facial symmetry, balance, pheramones, etc...) What separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom though is that even those lower on the mating latter are still gettin some. If you have a three legged lion out in the jungle with half a mane, odds are that dude isn't getting any for the duration of his life. But Joe redneck (no offense to anyone, I'm a redneck too) can go to the local bar and probably get lucky if he tries hard enough or lowers his standards greatly. That's the other difference between men and animals in regards to mating... alcohol (making men and women look attractive since 4000 BC). That's is the reason we overpopulate ourselves into some catastrophic event, then repeat, is because there is no such thing as natural selection in regards to humans, and there never will be unless procreation was enforced by the government (if you haven't read Orson Wells' 1984, you need to). So ultimately the fate of our kind rests within a finite loop of overpopulation followed by epidemic disaster, over and over again, until finally we screw up so bad that we wipe out the entire planet (or God takes matters into His own hands). It's an interesting problem to analyze and discuss, but ultimately, not worth fighting because there's really no stopping it.

Your reference 'special place'. Like it. How is it that men where given a brain and a penis but only enough blood to operate one of them at a time? Maybe I should start a thread?

I favor such a thread. In it, we might also discuss the inadvisability of locating playgrounds near septic systems.

Also, we could discuss one of my favorite paradoxes: sexual activities in which only 10 percent of the population participates are by definition, abnormal, and by extension, deviant. Statistics show that 90% of people are not virgins when they marry. Therefore, "abstinence education" is promoting deviant sexual behaviour.

That or adolescents aren't paying attention during sex education because all the videos used were made in the '60s.

Yeah, my fave from that era has got to be Dr. Strangelove.

-e

Straw poll in the office - Dr Strangelove voted Sellers best! As regards New Orleans, I saw a program last week that totally shocked me, not the scale of the distruction, but how little has been done!

PlbMac writes: "but how little has been done!" ----- How can you tell?! (Put Smiley here) We just got a new Mac, and CR4's editor is totally bonkers on it. My other machine is a Linux box and it works great on that one, and works only so-so if I boot up in WinDoze. But who cares. -e

I was just thinking (it happens) that if the scale of destruction were far larger - say, if we suffered a disaster on a national scale - the results would be the same: nothing done. If we can't handle something on a single-city scale, like NOLA, we'd up sh!t creek without a paddle if the destruction were on a far larger scale. This country is sitting on it laurels and the urban areas have not decayed to the point NOLA is now simply because of inertia. My opinion. -e

I'll put it this way - USA = wealthiest nation on Earth.

Action taken to put New Orleans to rights = Inadequate.

Conclusions Drawn = New Orleans doesn't matter.

You are being too diplomatic when you say "inadequate." Abysmal or disgraceful come to mind.

Imagine how different the situation would be if we put as much effort into supporting our own people as we do into dominating the middle east.

Wellllll...I was trying to be diplomatic....I have a very good freind who was on the beach in Sri Lanka when the tsunami hit, who lent a hand in the makeshift hospitals. He is an RAF medic, and his squadron now go back to the area whenever they can to lend a hand, although he says you can't tell what happened, the reconstruction has gone so well. At least in that area.

Bingo. You can generalize that to Poor(er) People = Don't Matter. This nation not only ignores its poor, it actively despises them. If there is a God in Heaven, you can bet he must be pretty damn livid. I am, and I'm only Human. -e

Uh, I think you mean George Orwell, not Orson Welles.

You are right, that's my fault for trying to work and participate in forum discussions at the same time .

Participating in forum discussions is a lot of work, I admit. Especially when you're trying to get something done.

-e

taejonkwando predicts: "Ultimately the lowering of the population IQ will cause starvation & disease. The least intelligent will die off leaving the more intelligent to start the cycle all over again."

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See Cyril M. Kornbluth's sci-fi short, The Marching Morons. Poor John Barlow.

-e

Has anyone written a story depicting the dreadful scenario where mercenary poor people war against class-faithful poor people?

I believe that sort of story is called a Newspaper.

-e

What do you mean "descend"? We are animals as we can be neither vegetables nor minerals, those being the other two choices. Yeah, I can hear you thinking "but we are self aware, we are sentient".... Really???