so the earth is F***ed aparently..

Patathatapon

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"Some old dead people seemed to have been disproven 8 ways to sunday and people aren't worried anymore"
"What should we do?"
"Well we've got a choice. Either let the world live without thinking we'll die, or-"
"OR?!?"
"Resort to our trump Card... The environment."
"We can't let people think they'll live. Lets go with the envrionment"

Edit: My opinion on the environment is that we seemed to have fucked it already, so lets just roll with it. I live on high ground so floods won't get me (For a while anyway) so I just got to find a way to grow myself some crops, get some cattle and- whats that? Oh ya... I live in Canada... Fuck.

'Nother Edit: Environmentalists are (usually) too narrowminded. This guy is an idiot. I'm not gunna bother explaining what everyone else already has said about his idiocy. Environmentalists don't realize that Green House G.'s are used to STOP people from dying. They look at it from a narrow persepective.

Environmentalist:"Kill the Alberta Oilsands!"
Me: "Great Idea! Are you gunna support Canada's economy after you do that too? Because if that thing dies, Canada's going to die as well, so you sure that's a good idea?"
E: Stop using fossil fuels!
Me: Ok, and use what? or should we just all freeze to death so you guys in California don't have to deal with a little more rain or heat? Fire gives off CO2 which is a green house gas, and your AC's aren't helping either, so what should we do exactly?

In all seriousness I'm open to an alternative as long as it WORKS. I'm not going to fuck myself over just so you can be happy.
 

Vault101

I'm in your mind fuzz
Sep 26, 2010
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Zen Toombs said:
]...Bwa? I like... told you what the solution is. If this whole problem is fixable, we need to reduce the bad stuff we are doing. We can do that by doing less bad things (e.g. drive less! burn less fossil fuels!), by making the bad things we do less bad (drive cars with efficient gas mileage! use renewable energy!), or, preferably, both. This isn't a "hippy" problem, it's everyone's problem. Any solution is going to be at least slightly unpleasant.
and its not working....people are too apathetic to do things that don't affect their imediet lives

what needs to happen is for us to be invaded by Aliens.If we can tap into our primal hate/fear of "others" then it will bring us all together and movtivate us to do whatever

"everytime you polute our atmosphere YOU are Xanondorphs *****.....DRIVE LESS!"[footnote/]a messgae from the UN council[/footnote]
 

Kafloobop

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Wouldn't all of these problems be solved if we
1) Went 100% renewable fuels
and
2) Mandatory recycling

Am I the only one who doesn't understand why recycling isn't a huge thing by now?
 

Ham Blitz

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TizzytheTormentor said:
Ham Blitz said:
TizzytheTormentor said:
*looks at article* Best headline ever!

OT: Seriously, people make these predictions all the time, once the 21st December doomsday thing passes, they will move onto the next date (Most likely 2016) Bring on the new doomsday predictions! My body is ready! (to debunk more doomsday theories)
I know this is semi off topic and seems random, but I am honestly curious and have to ask:
Why 2016?
Dunno, usually anything with an even number is a sign the world is going to end for some reason, people thought the world was going to end in 2006, then 2012, I guess 2016 just popped into my head.

Either way, I wonder how the people who are going to be putting themselves in bunkers are going to feel when nothing happens on the 21st.
I guess that's as good a reason as any. I am curious/worried about the people who might do worse than just locking themselves in a bunker.
Right now I am betting there will be looting. I don't know why, but I feel like looting will occur on the 21st.
 

Zen Toombs

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Vault101 said:
and its not working....people are too apathetic to do things that don't affect their imediet lives

what needs to happen is for us to be invaded by Aliens.If we can tap into our primal hate/fear of "others" then it will bring us all together and movtivate us to do whatever

"everytime you polute our atmosphere YOU are Xanondorphs *****.....DRIVE LESS!"[footnote/]a messgae from the UN council[/footnote]
Oh, I don't think it's working right now. I do think that the solution for the indifference of the populace is some sort of inter-governmental regulation, but I do not admit to be an expert on the specifics of what should be done. Somehow making it an "us vs them" thing would likely be the most effective though. ^_^
 

Icehearted

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Vault101 said:
Icehearted said:
]You remind me of those multiple studies on the affects of social networking. Mostly the consensus was that people have crossed the threshold from using tech as a tool to being enslaved by it and needing it more than they do not. Our exponential growth in certain areas and "quick fix" methods of communication have lead to all sorts of psychological disorders.
I still don't buy this "technology is teh evil" thing...sure its changing us but for the worse? I don't see how things were better in the past
If you're under 25 you probably wouldn't have any idea of how much we've really changed. When I was a teen (lo the ages ago) computers were for nerds, dialup was blistering fast, and facbook and twitter didn't exist. Nobody took pictures of every little thing they did and post it, nobody gave status updates all the time, youtube wasn't a place to immortalize one's youthful stupidity, and people didn't have phones with them 24/7 (or the cameras we find in them now).

It's not evil, but it has drastically affected people's habits and social behaviors. Technology has outpaced people, and too many people have a hard time adapting mentally to it, breeding new kinds of developmental problems including new variations of old issues (addiction to mmos and the internet are real problems).
 

Vault101

I'm in your mind fuzz
Sep 26, 2010
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Icehearted said:
If you're under 25 you probably wouldn't have any idea of how much we've really changed. When I was a teen (lo the ages ago) computers were for nerds, dialup was blistering fast, and facbook and twitter didn't exist. Nobody took pictures of every little thing they did and post it, nobody gave status updates all the time, youtube wasn't a place to immortalize one's youthful stupidity, and people didn't have phones with them 24/7 (or the cameras we find in them now).

It's not evil, but it has drastically affected people's habits and social behaviors. Technology has outpaced people, and too many people have a hard time adapting mentally to it, breeding new kinds of developmental problems including new variations of old issues (addiction to mmos and the internet are real problems).
I understand it really has changed everything....we live our lives through facebook and phones, in fact you could say i ts changes relaity itself



but it seems we have reached a point of no return, you can't cut yourself off from technology completley, again to me its just change, I can't judge it as good or bad

when people like the guy in the OP say things like "weve become less connected,we are moving too fast" <-I mean really those are just vauge words without actual concrete ideas or causes, it annoys me particualy in this context where this guy is suposed to be scientific yet is coming across as "get off my lawn" not to say that taking a certain veiw is bad..but I'd prefer it explained better than "we are less connected"
 

BrassButtons

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j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
Objectively speaking, human technological advancement has been terrible for the environment. While technological advancement has brought you computers and video games, it has resulted in billions of tons of crap being chucked into the atmosphere, the decimation of the majority of rainforest in the world, and a collection of plastic rubbish the size of Texas accruing in the Pacific ocean.
1) If human technological advancement is bad for the environment, what does the environment look like when it's healthy? Please try to answer this without starting from the assumptions that humans are necessarily bad for the environment, or that the environment of the last few thousand years is automatically what the earth is supposed to be like.

2) If you're arguing that technological advancement (nitpick: we've had technology for about as long as we've been humans) is bad for the environment, can you tell me how much worse modern deforestation is than the deforestation that went on prior to the widespread use of electric heating methods?

3) Billions of tons of crap have been chucked into the atmosphere before, to the point where it permanently altered the chemical nature of the planet. It resulted in a lot of things dying, but then eventually life stabilized and now we have all kinds of creatures that could not have lived in the previous environment. So even if the crap we're putting into the atmosphere is terrible for the current environment (ourselves included) how are you concluding that it's bad for the environment in general? Perhaps the ecosystem that emerges in those conditions is healthier than earth has seen in the past few millenia.
 

Icehearted

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Vault101 said:
Icehearted said:
If you're under 25 you probably wouldn't have any idea of how much we've really changed. When I was a teen (lo the ages ago) computers were for nerds, dialup was blistering fast, and facbook and twitter didn't exist. Nobody took pictures of every little thing they did and post it, nobody gave status updates all the time, youtube wasn't a place to immortalize one's youthful stupidity, and people didn't have phones with them 24/7 (or the cameras we find in them now).

It's not evil, but it has drastically affected people's habits and social behaviors. Technology has outpaced people, and too many people have a hard time adapting mentally to it, breeding new kinds of developmental problems including new variations of old issues (addiction to mmos and the internet are real problems).
I understand it really has changed everything....we live our lives through facebook and phones, in fact you could say i ts changes relaity itself

but it seems we have reached a point of no return, you can't cut yourself off from technology completley, again to me its just change, I can't judge it as good or bad

when people like the guy in the OP say things like "weve become less connected,we are moving too fast" <-I mean really those are just vauge words without actual concrete ideas or causes, it annoys me particualy in this context where this guy is suposed to be scientific yet is coming across as "get off my lawn" not to say that taking a certain veiw is bad..but I'd prefer it explained better than "we are less connected"
There is a plethora of information that already elaborates on how we've become less connected because of our technological dependency. It's more than merely a subjective position, it's been demonstrated, in some areas proven, that we have as a collective taken things too far. There are elements of subjectivity and personal responsibility, but in a lot of cases there are also areas where there really isn't a lot a person can do but get swept up in all of it and pay for it dearly. Children (THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!....sorry) that grow up wired to something, be it the computer, their phones, video games, and so on, develop differently than adults that have not, which leads to a lot of coping issues with things like the gratification affect people feel with gambling. You know the old joke about people, usually women, getting hooked on a slot machine until it ruins them? The internet, cell phones, facebook, video games, they feed that same part of the brain, so there is a chemical/physical/psychological element to this that makes it hard for people to see what they use as a tool and not a necessity.

And that's where it's a problem; it's a thing people grow too dependent upon beyond it's practical usage, and they need it. That kid that's freaking out and screaming because his mom cut him off from World of Warcraft, that's essentially not very far from an addict freaking out about not having any more crack. I could rattle my bone-box on this for hours, but there's already tons of information much more eloquently delivered out there that have made the case for me and a large number of others.

I won't dispute it's irresponsible of people to blame technology for their personal or professional shortcomings, but it's not like Blizzard didn't actually design their game to have psychologically addictive properties, they freely admit to it, and they are not alone.
 

Ravinoff

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Yabba said:
Alright first off "and nature in fact hates us", it does not hate us, it created us and we destroy it with pollution. So, please explain to me how nature hates us if it gives us almost everything that we need
We humans have practically no natural advantages. We're not strong, we're not big and we're not fast. Our one and only advantage over apex predators (ie. the things that would naturally snack on us) is intelligence. That's the only reason we came to rule the world instead of being wiped out by any number of diseases or disasters. The natural world continues to create things that could wipe us out in one stroke, but we just barely edge them out every time (so far).

And of course "We should be proud of our superiority over all other life on the planet, not ashamed of it." Jesus Christ man, so your saying we should be proud how industrial and civil runoff contaminate water and destroy ecosystems, we should be proud that are extremly close to annihilating the ozone layer, we should be proud that we are destroying the very thing that made you me and everyone else on this planet just for the sake of our own pleasure and gain. Well then sir, I guess there is much to be proud of when our own race is exploiting without thinking of the reprucusions.
First off, the ozone layer is fine. Atmospheric halocarbon (CFCs, freon, etc.) levels topped out in 1994 and have been dropping ever since. By 2060 the Antarctic "hole" will have disappeared completely. Second, while pollution is definitely an issue, we can and do usually notice and react to its effects very quickly. Notice we're not using DDT, dioxins and PCBs anymore. Carbon emissions can be normalized by technologies that exist today but are considered "too expensive" for use. Many carbon sources will in fact become completely moot in the future with the advent of viable fusion power, which is the greenest energy source in the universe that we know of.
 

Vault101

I'm in your mind fuzz
Sep 26, 2010
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Yabba said:
Alright first off "and nature in fact hates us", it does not hate us, it created us and we destroy it with pollution. So, please explain to me how nature hates us if it gives us almost everything that we need
.
Nature hates everything

Mother Nature is not a kind nurturing mother...she is a cold sociapathic ***** who WILL drink your milshake and boil your pet rabbit,

oh yes..she is beautiful no doubt, and some peopel are fooled by her beuty and aparent nurtering ways.That is a lie.nature is pure chaos, nature has no concept of morality, life in the wild is short and brutal at best unless your some kind of lower lifeform

Nature provides yes, but to what end? so she can enjoy watching her creations kill and eat each other in an endless cyle

Mother Nature sits...watching us patiently...she knows in the end she will have the last laugh
 

Luca72

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Here we are, once again. Someone comes up with a theoretical model for why we should change our behavior, and people make fun of him for his hair.

Jesus Christ. You people are so cynical that if a meteor the size of the moon came screaming down into the Atlantic, you'd cite some comment from Michio Kaku or whoever is popular lately as a reason why we'll all be fine. Stop trying to look smart and think for yourselves.
 

Tiger Sora

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Well... anyone wana help me put a for sale sign up on the moon. I'm sure some salvagers will still pay a good price for her.
 

Therumancer

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Climate change is the left wing doomsday theory of choice, a little smarter than most because it tends to make more nebulous predictions rather than setting a specific date. Ultimatly it all comes down to embracing their specific socio-political philsophy and belief structures which get into goverment, heavy regulation (to protect the enviroment), and ultimatly into anti-capitalist socialism as the solution. You see predictions based on vague time tables, and if nothing happens by a certain point they can always claim that it's because of the efforts of the followers who are involved, but they still need to keep going and force their agenda... etc...

Guys like the Unabomber represent the extreme fringe of this school of thought.

That said, like most things of this sort there is a grain of truth in it. The bottom line is that there are simply too many people out there for the planet to sustain at a reasonable, first world standard of living. We're already having problems with deforestation, strip mining, and other problems trying to meet the demands of the people we have. With third world countries like China (which represents roughly one third of the human race) demanding higher standards of living and more resources it puts an increaing strain with what's out there and also increasingly diverts resources that would otherwise have been going to the Western World which have traditionally been holding the highest standards of living. It all comes down to a "we want to live as well as possible" (everyone does), and "if it's between yours and ours, we pick ours" which has been fueling a lot of the global chaos recently as well. People point fingers at the US and Europe for the global financial problems, but due to our own morality and peace at any price attitudes we tend to overlook the "robber economies" that basically lend money they steal from us, back to us, in order to maintain the peace (which is a whole discussion in of itself).

The point of the rambling is that the basic trends do exist, but rather than embracing real, unpleasant, solutions which involve wars and unheard of numbers of people dying followed by far more strict population controls, this basic philsophy argues that instead people should be willing to give up their lifestyles, technology, etc... and use less resources. The basic idea being that if we sacrifice all of these comforts and live at a very basic level, everyone could in theory live at that level without any need for wars, goverment could then be used to maintain that status quo. It does more or less lead into an anti-capitalist/highly socialist point of view, in many cases in the US harkening back to Jacksonian philsophy, and the view of people properly existing as a loose confederation of peasant yeoman farmers who work for substinance with little in the way of luxuries or comforts.

To be honest I find it kind of ironic that a lot of the philsophies similar to the one mentioned above (there are a lot of them, all vageuly similar, that go to the same basic place) largely tend to thrive in social media, yet as a sticking point try and act like capitalism and the same infrastructure that spawns them has lead to increasingly little value being assigned to humanity by other humans, socially or otherwise. To be blunt people are probably a lot more interconnected than ever before, however that same level of connection has lead to a lot of those problems since it presents an enviroment where everyone's differances can come out to the forefront, where they otherwise might not be as easily noticed. That, and we begin to see the dark side of tolerance, when you argue that everyone and everything should be accepted the lowest human denominator sinks incredibly low, and there is little in the way of social force making people try and improve, there is no real "darwinism" (all jokes about awards aside) within society anymore, no matter to what depth you might sink society is expected to adapt to you. This creates increasing numbers of divides and what amounts to elitism on the part of those who can claim even average amounts of intelligence. Something like Youtube or Facebook kind of illustrates exactly how far humanity without standards continues to sink.... not to mention again, simple overpopulation. When humans are literally everywhere and we're all that heavily connected there is little value to contact, and the simple laws of supply and demand make it so that competition is going to become increasingly fierce.

At any rate, all this rambling aside, the bottom line is I tend to be an extremist of sorts myself. I pretty much think killing off 90% of the population would be a good thing, it's one of the reasons why I think little of suggestng wars, atrocities, mass murder, etc... when conducted for the right reasons. Getting rid of people can be in of itself a worthy objective from my point of view. Sometime walk into a crowded store, mall, etc... or on packed streets full of traffic or whatever and imagine if 9 out of 10 of those people were gone. There would still be a lot of people around, but a lot more space, resources would be stretched a lot less, and everyone would have more room to live. Less competition and more space would also make people more social. Keep things at roughly that level until we manage to develop the technology to colonize other planets and spread out our population and I think people would generally be a lot happier, and the benefits over say a thousand years of that would be incredible. Of course a lot of people don't really want to look at things that rationally, especially seeing as there is always the question of cost.

Right now the bottom line is that few people are going to agree with me, or the extreme other view (like in that article), which is why the current degenerative cycle continues, and things get worse and worse. Nobody wants to live in a neo-Jacosonian "back to nature" socialist Utopia, they like the creature comforts they have now (like this Internet thing), at the same time while a lot of people might like the idea of a world with less people, killing off 90% of the population is something most people aren't willing to embrace simply because they don't want to be the ones to die, or to lose their loved ones (many of which would die). That said, things are going to get worse before they get better, and to be honest I'd expect enviromental scare tactics to be used by the whole "regression" movement with increased vigor as time goes on, not that I expect it to go anywhere, after all the bottom line is the enviroment WILL get worse as long as the population stays where it is now, or continues to grow, especially if people want to live with anything approximating the standard American lifestyle (which is pretty reasonable overall).
 

vasiD

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Angie7F said:
I dont have kids, my dog will only live for another ten years.
SO, as long as the earth is not ending in the next 30 year, I am not concerned with what happens to it.
Ryotknife said:
time to speed up our space program so we can colonize other worlds. The sooner we get off this rock, the sooner we dont have to worry about some random event wiping all mankind out.
These two thought processes are HORRIFYING. Either A) Whatever, not my problem man! or B) Whatever, we'll just move on and strip mine other worlds, no biggie.


Both thoughts are absurdly selfish, the first being "Why should I change my life because future humans will suffer? I mean it's not me!", which seems to miss the concept of humans being part of a whole rather than just individuals. And the second is not only short-sighted (as it's not that likely we'll even make it off earth, given that would require terraforming technology, which we're not even sure is possible. Example: the word isn't even in this sites dictionary.), it's terribly selfish because then the concept is that we destroy this planet and move on to destroy other planets (in other words missing the concept that all of reality is part of a whole which humans are included in) Again: Horrifying.

"Angie7F", you could use some more compassion, and "Ryotknife", you could use some more logic. No offense intended, just trying to show you guys how both of these 'don't care' attitudes are both toxic and come from a place of seperation from our reality rather than being in sync with it. Because we perceive, at the moment, only our own lives doesn't mean that only our own lives matter to us or that they are the only lives we'll live.

Angie, imagine if rebirth is a very real thing. This means that when you die you'll move on to live the life of one of those suffering humans who is unfortunate enough to live in the age of desolation that we're creating with our current age of greed.

Ryo, what if we find out there is no way to terraform other planets and as such the nearest inhabitable (as in we can grow food on it and it has natural oxygen and water) is so far away we could never hope to reach it before earths end? Or worse yet, we do forge such a space-station but it takes ages to get to that new world, ages of inbreeding and suffering on a cold ship floating through space, and if we even make it is a harsh impossible world... I think we'd be much better off putting all our effort in to the planet under our feet that has nurtured us from the very beginning.


Sadly, most people agree with one of you two, which is why we're in this current state. Mind you, I'm not talking about just everyday people. Everyday people are able to think what they want without it affecting the world, the people I'm talking about who would agree with your views are our leaders and politicians sadly.


OT: Not sure about this guy's science but a lot of what he is saying is just common sense. What I'm saying is I agree with him, but I doubt he has hard evidence.
 

Vault101

I'm in your mind fuzz
Sep 26, 2010
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Therumancer said:
90%?...a good thing?

its not just about me or my loved ones...its the fact I find killing inocent people a rather awful concept..anyway, HOW would you make people regress tehcnologically and to what extent?

anyway...I think capitalism "works" (in that it gives us all thease amazing advancments) because fundamentlaly we are selfish, it harnesses that selfishness and chanels it into somthing productive

EDIT: [quote/]Of course a lot of people don't really want to look at things that rationally,[/quote]
genocide is not rational...its barberic