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

Frission

Until I get thrown out.
May 16, 2011
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xDarc said:
In your lifetime, possibly in my life time, there will be an event that will kill Billions of people.

There has to be such an event, or civilization will not continue.

People will starve, they will rebel, and those in control will push that button rather then risk losing that control.

It is simple. Too many god damn people in this world. Kill half, and everyone feels twice as wealthy, happy, docile, productive, easy to control.

It will happen.
Maybe. As long as you remember that you might be one of those people. It might not be some poor Ethiopian, or Malaysian or Bangladeshi. It might be some American.

One thing that people who advocate forced population or a scenario where a lot of people die, don't get is that they might be one of those people.

Food for though for the "pragmatists" in here, eh?
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
15,489
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No, that man is entirely stupid.

The Earth is not fucked. It will outlive both us and probably colliding asteroids and still go on to support life on its surface for eons. It is only WE who might be fucked, and only if the human race does something excessively stupid like play Fallout: The REAL Game. Any environmentally-consciencious scientist should be making statements about what means of PROGRESS we could pursue to stabilize our habitat, not throw it back to a world before the Rennaissance. Not everyone is suited to go Amish!
 

Vault101

I'm in your mind fuzz
Sep 26, 2010
18,863
15
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xDarc said:
In your lifetime, possibly in my life time, there will be an event that will kill Billions of people.

There has to be such an event, or civilization will not continue.

People will starve, they will rebel, and those in control will push that button rather then risk losing that control.

It is simple. Too many god damn people in this world. Kill half, and everyone feels twice as wealthy, happy, docile, productive, easy to control.

It will happen.
[img/]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m644llLyWk1rwcc6bo1_250.gif[/img]
uh huh...for sure

better make suke that Fallout Bunker is well stocked
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
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j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
Therumancer said:
Surely your argument falls into a logical trap?

You're arguing that you'd want to act for the needs of the majority over the needs of the minority. And yet, by definition, if you're killing off 90% of the world's population, that is the majority. You're killing off the majority, in fact, to serve the needs of the minority. The complete opposite of Utilitarianism.

Now, you might argue that killing off 90% of humanity now would work for the interests of future generations down the line. But that is an unquantifiable argument. Using the wellbeing of a hypothetical majority sometime in the future to justify the genocide of a real majority now is pretty fallacious reasoning. While I'm sure we could both agree that future generations will be fucked if we don't do something soon, I cannot see the logic that specifically making things worse for the majority of humanity now (by murdering them) somehow makes things better for the majority sometime in the future. Better in what sense? Better quality of life than we have now? Better life expectancy?

If we're going to argue for the needs of the majority, then let's argue for the majority who are currently living on this planet, rather than planning for some future majority who have yet to appear.
Your simply incorrect, and trying to play semantics to get around a point you don't like. That's fine, but this is about right and wrong, not a semantics game. You might not like the point that an "unquantifiable" majority of people take precedence over the people living right now, but they actually do, and a lot of ethical systems are entirely based around acting now purely for the benefit of future generations.

By my reasoning the survival and prosperity of the species outweighs the lives of anyone around right now. If we do not take the kinds of actions I'm suggesting, the continueing trends which we already see amount to everyone dying. Taking the actions needed to change those trends... massive population reduction followed by limiting growth only as we expand our abillity to sustain it, allows the species to survive an indefinate amount of time. As the species will continue to survive far longer it lasts for more generations and thus benefits more people.

The reason why an unquantifiable majority in the future trumps the people alive now, is because of the trends we already know are happening. A population that is already too large for the planet to sustain at a comfortable level, combined with the depletion of resources, combined also with the population continueing to expand when it's already hit the point of being unsustainable. The doom we're facing, and the fact that the numbers are going to wipe us all out, isn't really a debatable topic as much as people might want to put their heads into the sand. Once you realize our species is already dying out under it's own weight, any future at all that keeps any people around is a good one.

Truthfully, the killing of 90% of the population is easy to justify as being for the best for the species. To be honest it's more morally ambigious to discuss what comes after that, which is of course population control, since draconian measures are going to be needed to keep the genetic imperative to reproduce in line with our abillity to comfortably sustain the population. It leads to questions about who controls who gets to breed, and have how many kids, and whether you make a policy when kids can be conceived, and if you choose to practice things like Eugenics to ensure that with a stable population your trying to keep it populated by those with the best genes possible. All of those are FAR touchier subjects than getting to that point since as things stand now we're pretty much all dead as a species, we just don't realize it. In this case mass murder is actually a form of resurrection....
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
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Guilherme Zoldan said:
[

So youre a self-diagnosed sociopath who thinks he knows more then specialists? Thanks, you spared us having to take your opinion in any way seriously.
I admit that eliminating a huge chunk of the population would be rational(Though still a massive moral conundrum) -if- there was no other option. Theres no evidence that we are in such situation.
Who says anything about self-diagnosed? Also the key word is "tendencies" here, not that I've ever been called a clinical sociopath. I'd also point out that having been a forensics major I myself count as a specialist (of sorts) in certain areas having had formal training in things like abnormal and criminal psychology. I'm just saying. :)

That said, we are at the "no other option" point. It's like this, right now we have problems producing enough material for the current population to live at anything close to a reasonable level, and the current rate of production is already depleting the planet beyond it's abillity to restore itself, increasing production (more deforestation, strip mining, etc...) just speeds up the time that it takes before we use up and run out of everything. Consider that as things stand now only a tiny percentage of the planet lives at a reasonable, first world level, most of the human population lives in abject poverty, if you bother to consider the numbers you realize there is absolutly no way you could say turn every society into a first world one, and have everyone be happy, we'd run out of resources LONG before we could come close... and the population is steadily increasing, NOT going down in proportion to the resources.

Given that people can live like 80 years or more nowadays, a multi-generational solution is off the table as a few generations now can take centuries. Even if we somehow embraced population reduction we would have long since depleted resources before we could get the population down naturally, assuming we could even create some kind of global authority able to do it.

What this all means is that we're pretty much at the crisis point now, we can't wait for a magical solution that will prevent any unpleasentness, indeed hoping for a magical, perfect, solution and leaving the big issues that lead to this for future generations to deal with is how we got to this point. We had a chance to embrace population reduction or zero population growth when it would have prevented this, but we did not do it. The last time we had a chance, post World War II, we had a baby boom that was actually being encouraged by the powers that be, rather than attempts to keep the population low.

On a lot of levels a 12/21/12 apocolypse is like a happy fairy tale, a massive, unavoidable amount of devestation that will end these complicated problems, OR blamelessly reduce the population (in a scenario where we survive) giving ourselves a chance to get it right. Personally I don't put much faith in it happening, ditto for all of the apocolypses used in the backround of speculative science fiction which demolish the current mess to allow for better societies. In a sucky world, we have to do the crappy things ourselves and get ourselves dirty, that's pretty much why I think it comes down to us deciding to wipe out 90% of our own population. I pretty much think we should just stop beating around the bush and get the next big global war going, have the winners establish a global society, and use that global goverment to prevent another reactive baby boom, allowing the population to stablize to the point of comfportable living, when we gain the abillity to colonize other planets we can thus expand the numbers of our species in accordance with the abillity to support the population.
 

Toilet

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Feb 22, 2012
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Werner, sporting a neon green winter hat over bright pink hair, discussed the nature of interactions between humans and the environment, and what those interactions say about the future.
Yeah, not that he has released his input data or his model has not been peer reviewed I'm quite happy to say that this guy is probably full of crazy Hippie shit.
 

Trillovinum

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Dec 15, 2010
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the_dancy_vagrant said:
"Earth" here means "Earth with 7 billion Humans on it".

The planet was here long before us, it'll be here long after we're all gone. The point of the article isn't anything new, either...there've been many other studies done that have made the same assertions: when the resources run out, there's going to be a lot of chaos, a whole whole lot of death, and we're not likely to ever achieve the same population or technology levels ever again as a species.

Realistically, it won't play out like anyone expects. But despite the guy's anarchist/row row fight the powah comments, what he's saying is basically correct. Without oil, for example, you can't make any of the following on a large scale:

-cheap/durable plastics, which are used in literally every industry in some way, shape, or form
-synthetic fibers (nylon, rayon, etc)
-cheap fertilizer
-mechanized anything - diesel engines can run on vegetable oil, but they still need petroleum products for lube and any parts made of plastic
-basically all medicine that isn't one or two steps away from plants (morphine, aspirin, etc)
-industrial grade explosives for mining/military use

Anyhow, it's not the end of the world. Just the end of human civilization as it's existed for the past 100 years or so.
Turn the 60 into a 30-40 as far as life expectancy is concerned and you're pretty much spot on. (damn all those people that think going back to the past would be better. most of them would be dead if that was the case.)
on that side note, I myself would have died when I broke my arm in kindergarten and suffered from complications afterwards, if not for modern medicine.
 

Zack Alklazaris

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Oct 6, 2011
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" "Resistance is basically when people, groups of people, step outside the culture," Werner said. "They adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture."

In some ways, he says, this sends us back to pre-technology, pre-capitalist times, which promotes the stability we have otherwise lost. "

Sounds like a modern hippie to me, just saying.

------

He's right in a lot of ways, capitalist cultures are driven to better their lives. Not humanity, not the world, just themselves and mainly their individual selves. Here is a quote from a game that I think is a great example of capitalistic thinking:

"Chairman Morgan: Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."

So yes we are consuming way more resources than we need to survive, but I can not imagine us going to extreme resistance where we eat "nutritional supplement 14 beta 7" and turn our waste into drinkable water. There would be TV, but it would only broadcast educational/informal videos, pretty much your greatest entertainment would be sex... safe sex because needless babies would be aborted. I only say this because I can not picture a cost effective way to bar people from "recreational" sex... perhaps that suppression field from half life?

Anyway also there would be no need for money, because culturally we wouldn't be driven to better our lives. Resources would be traded as needed... wait a minute...

This is all a ploy to accelerate the "highly evolved" Vulcan race from the Star Trek universe. :|


Honestly though, I can not picture this happening to even a fraction of an amount mostly because when you tell someone they now have to live life by simply living and bettering humanity with statements like this:


Vault101 said:
it actually makes me angry

some F***er wants to take away my PC and stuff he can do so while I work a shotgun on his abdomen...fucking anarchist wankers have no clue *grumble* I need to calm down
So instead of concentrating on down sizing we should concentrate on more efficient ways to produce, refine, and use energy. I agree that we need to get into space though since star systems are so far away it would be better to concentrate on inner planetary travel first. We could mine other planets, asteroids, etc. This would greatly increase our resources, but only if we can make the travel more efficient. Currently we would actually lose more resources than gain by space mining.

The biggest thing however is our reliance on fossil fuels. They are not renewable on any effective level. They can be reproduced, but in small amounts. They also are heavy pollutants and are not likely to be found on other planets in our solar system. I think eliminating the need for fossil fuels would go far in our current world.
 

J Tyran

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Dec 15, 2011
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Vault101 said:
[quote/]In some ways, he says, this sends us back to pre-technology, pre-capitalist times, which promotes the stability we have otherwise lost. He went on during our conversation:

Because resistance cultures do replicate to some extent the long time scales and tightly connected time scales within indigenous cultures, we might expect that the influence of resistance, even without thinking about the details, would be to stabilize and promote sustainability.
now this I find absolutly rediculous, not only is somthing like this pretty much impossible without nuclear level widepsread destruction (oh god...don;t give this guy any ideas) but the Idea is that its somehow preferable to go back to the dark ageis in the name of the environment...thats F***ed[/quote]

It is totally ridiculous, the only solution now is technology. Cleaner energy production and advanced agriculture are two of the most important things that need to be developed. The you have less destructive and polluting industrial processes. Going back a pre industrial state is almost impossible, better technology us our only hope.
 

BrassButtons

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Nov 17, 2009
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Devoneaux said:
Species that die are replaced with new species. Entire ecosystems that are wrecked through extinction events or invading species are eventually replaced with new ecosystems. Equilibrium restored.

Planet earth is a regenerating self correcting series of ecosystems. When one dies off the remainders spread and adapt.
Isn't this a bit like saying that a seesaw which continuously tips back and forth tends toward equilibrium because each time it tips the other way it must first pass a point of balance?
 

xDarc

New member
Feb 19, 2009
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Vault101 said:
xDarc said:
In your lifetime, possibly in my life time, there will be an event that will kill Billions of people.

There has to be such an event, or civilization will not continue.

People will starve, they will rebel, and those in control will push that button rather then risk losing that control.

It is simple. Too many god damn people in this world. Kill half, and everyone feels twice as wealthy, happy, docile, productive, easy to control.

It will happen.
better make suke that Fallout Bunker is well stocked
I'm not going to prepare for it, who knows, it could be a disease that turns your organs into liquid shit. Then I might feel silly having built a bunker.

But that's one constant throughout human history; society expands too much, the people start to starve, people aren't happy, they rebel, society crumbles and props up elsewhere or rebuilds after war. The next time this happens, it's going to happen on a global scale, thank you globalization. Oh and by the way there are nuclear bombs now. Do you think if kings of the middle ages had nuclear bombs they wouldn't have used them to kill the starving peasants revolting to take them from their throne? Have you learned anything?

No, the only way it doesn't happen is the crisis does not happen in the first place. That would mean finding a lot of answers to complex problems. Birth rate needs to be reduced, production and distribution needs to be increased, distribution and production gaps to the top need to be leveled; and not just the ultra rich- it means everyone has to do with less; including America. If the everyone had the same consumption as America does, it would already be happening now. So yeah, good luck with that.
 

Kafloobop

New member
Nov 11, 2009
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RicoADF said:
Kafloobop said:
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?
Isn't recycling standard where you live? Here in Australia (Sydney specifically) we have 3 bins. Normal, Recycling and garden waste. Normal is the smallest of the 3 as recycling removes a large part of the waste and because the other 2 are picked up on alternating weeks.
Next your going to tell me you don't have grants to help pay for solar pannels, water tanks and help wind mill farms be established.....

EDIT:

The green lid bin is garden waste, yellow recycling and red standard waste.
Seriously!?

Ok that does it, I'm moving to Australia. I don't care how big the spiders are.
 

Ryotknife

New member
Oct 15, 2011
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funnydude6556 said:
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.
Where do we go though? Earth is the only planet we know that has a hospitable atmosphere and the furthest we've ever gone is Mars and that's not even with actual living people. Also the martians called dibs on Mars.
it is not going to happen in our lifetime that is for sure.

First we need infrastructure, a cheap and efficient way to get things from the earth into orbit. Once infrastructure is in place, we would need to find a way to make space profitable so that big companies/governments throw a whole lot of money into research (such as finding a way to mine asteroids)
 

Hagi

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Apr 10, 2011
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Guy is right though, though not actually through any scientific means.

He's right in the same way that your horoscope is right when it says that bad luck will befall you this month. Because what are the chances that during an entire month there won't be a single event happening that you consider bad luck?

Likewise, what are the chances that in the future say 100 years there won't be either be an event that can be considered the earth being fucked or an event that can be considered a mass resistance to capitalism?

The Earth is fucked. But it's been fucked a billion times already through a million different means so it's bound to get fucked again eventually.
 

Nero Akira

New member
Dec 12, 2012
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Vault101 said:
http://io9.com/5966689/after-extensive-mathematical-modeling-scientist-declares-earth-is-fucked

so some scientist guy is saying that environmentally the earth if F***ed more or less

however what I find interesting is that this guy in a green hat an dpink hair seems to be advocating some kind of "pre technology" society
[quote/]In some ways, he says, this sends us back to pre-technology, pre-capitalist times, which promotes the stability we have otherwise lost. He went on during our conversation:

Because resistance cultures do replicate to some extent the long time scales and tightly connected time scales within indigenous cultures, we might expect that the influence of resistance, even without thinking about the details, would be to stabilize and promote sustainability.
now this I find absolutly rediculous, not only is somthing like this pretty much impossible without nuclear level widepsread destruction (oh god...don;t give this guy any ideas) but the Idea is that its somehow preferable to go back to the dark ageis in the name of the environment...thats F***ed

also
[quote/]Capitalist society moves too quickly, and our connections to each other and the world have become too superficial, to avoid destroying the world. But resistance movements ? Werner cited the Arab Spring and Occupy movements as recent examples ? could disrupt our otherwise inevitable course of enviro-destruction.[/quote]
what the fuck is this^? hardly sounds scientific[/quote]



heads up bro, 90% proven the earths weather gets erratic every few thousand years due to closing proximity to the sun.
not say global warming's not a problem. just less of one then most people think.
not to mention we're nearing a time of mass tectonic plate movement. i want my spaceships tyvm.
 

Hakazaba

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May 1, 2009
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Seth Carter said:
Overpopulation of the Earth will get us (probably not all life) ages before most doomsday scenarios. Population control is just terribly unpopular and treated like some abhorrent concept though. Dropping back down to 5 billion and pursuing sustainabiltiy would probably work. A real trimming down to 3 billion or so might just manage self-suffiency based on current first-world lifestyles..
This is the real issue, though going back to the dark ages could possibly solve the problem, it would only be because a large amount of the population would die. I can see two other possible solutions that could help.

Limiting population through limiting birth rate. I think this is extremely unlikely to happen due to how unpopular it is.

Spending large amounts of money on scientific ventures and regulation that could improve the efficiency of our population vs environmental damage. It may be too late for this but there is the possibility of breakthroughs in this area having large effects. Although the chances are slim, its what i'm banking on and I'm dedicating my life to try to improve the chances.

The bonus with pursuing scientific research is that it also improves the population we could sustain when the environment becomes unable to sustain us.

Edit: We could also leave too, if we focus on creating technology that will let us survive without a planet(Basically the setting of WALL-E) but i don't think we have enough parties with enough money who care about this.

These views are so unpopular though, like you said.
 

Blind Sight

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May 16, 2010
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Reading up on a bit of the guy's position and methodology (watched a bit of his conference piece too) I question the validity of his model. From what I can gather his 'human-environment interaction model' uses the same techniques as two way interaction models that stimulate dynamic natural systems like permafrost and coastal landscapes. This is clearly a case of a scientist applying a 'one size fits all' model to incredibly complex problems without any consideration towards the greater scale of the issues. Plus there's some obvious political bias in his work. In what way did the Arab Spring or the Occupy Movement show any examples of a behavioural shift towards a resource reduction model? Really it just seems like he's equating populist movements with behavioural shifts, which is a bit nonsensical. Good luck developing a movement around the reduction of human comfort when the movements he sources are directly about increasing human comfort for the participants involved.

In regards to the actual issue of climate change, the problem is more to do with an apolitical wealth-energy issue then any damnation of a particular political or economic system. Simply put, the modern economy is completely driven by carbon releasing energy due to technological limitations. The fact is that the entire human economy has been tailored towards it over the past hundred and fifty years, regardless of capitalism, socialism, statism, etc. simply because it's the easiest method of producing energy in the short-term. The expansion of human society has typically been a constant, only limited by our technological progress. Humans, being naturally self-interested beings, also like to pass the buck. China, despite producing 29% of major emissions last year (figure from RealClimate) argues that they have a right to pollute in order to develop, since the West already had their chance to do so (India argues along similar lines). In turn, the West turns to these rapidly industrializing countries and sees their lack emission standards as a problem. Ultimately, it's the prisoner's dilemma, no one is willing to do anything that might disadvantage them and grant an advantage to the 'other'. It's a basic human survival condition, avoid being in a weakened position. Individuals themselves aren't much better. "It's the capitalists'/government's/etc. fault!" they cry as they sit at home on their laptop computers, eating their industrial agribusiness food and practicing the constant consumerism they complain about. Attempting to alter human behaviour on an individual level has largely failed. It feels like most of these people are still projecting their own energy needs onto elites, complaining about how we're all doomed but continuing the behaviour they ultimately claim is suicidal. Hell, if you feel that way, do something about it. Form groups or communities based on low, renewable energy requirements, grow your own food organically, reject plastic, etc. If you're concerned about overpopulation, voluntary offer to not have children. Prove your convictions, don't just jump onto an internet forum and push the blame around.

Population growth now is mainly a product of developing world countries, while most developed countries are actually experiencing rather minor population growth (once you deduct immigration) or, in the cases of countries like Russia, are actually experiencing population downturns. Not that I think government population control is a good idea, but how the hell do you people advocating for it see any way of actually applying it? I can see a voluntary model working fine, but good luck actively trying to force people to alter their behaviour in a way that goes against basic evolutionary principles. This is, of course, ignoring the blatant corruption and favouritism that could easily emerge from such a system.

Renewable energy resources simply aren't economic on a large scale at present time unfortunately, even success cases like Germany's one-third solar energy production this year comes with major issues (Germany is still reopening coal plants, particularly in the winter, to cover energy shortfalls). We're also learning now that renewable energy comes with its own pollution (the recent production of wind turbines in Inner Mongolia has resulted in poisonous, radioactive lakes as a byproduct of the rare earth minerals used in turbine magnets, one can almost see this as the West 'exporting' its pollution to the developing world). Regardless of fossil fuel subsidies (terrible policy, but they don't typically drive the consumer price down for oil) most renewable energies simply can't compete in a market dependent on cheap carbon energy. Once again, it's the easy solution as opposed to the hard one. Basically, in my opinion, the only option we can realistically push for on a large scale is the constant development of better technologies in renewable energy sources, possibly even looking into geoengineering and genetic modification as well. Because frankly, technological progression has always been humanity's strength, while behavioural modification is one of its greatest weaknesses.