The End of Man

[dragonrider]

I think we are on a knife edge of ecological and societal collapse, but we might just make it through.

Most of the problems we face here on earth are of our own making. They are related to overconsumption of resources, and that is mostly related to overpopulation and greed. There are too many of us, and we are using up the resources faster than they can be replaced. If nothing changes, and critical resources run out, what will follow will be degradation of the environment, resulting in failure of agriculture, leading to famine, then starvation, then war, and finally canibalism ---- complete collapse of society, no more online forums.

In that scenario, I don't think humankind would go extinct. Society would collapse, and everyting we know and care about would be destroyed, but some vestige of the human species would survive to live on in a greatly diminished world. The kinds of things that would lead to extinction are impact by a large asteroid, all-out global nuclear war, or some kind of runaway global warming that would make the planet uninhabitable. Short of that, I think the human species is tough and smart enough to survive, even if it means living like rats for a few thousand years.

I think that aggressively moving into space is part of the solution. We need to find new resources in space, especially energy, so that we don't continue to degrade the planet. We need to find some room to offload some of the overpopulation. We need to get some people into safe places other than our planet so that if things go bad down here, we've got someene to keep it going out there.

In addition to moving into space, we need to get a grip on what we are doing to this planet. We are like the inhabitants of Easter Island who expereinced their own ecological and societal collapse. We are isolated and we are focused on building our idols while we run through the last of our resources. We need to realize what we are doing, stop stripping our island of the trees that make life possible, care for our environment, keep our population in balance, and find a way to spread beyond our island. It would be a shame to end up like the Easter Islanders did.

I think we are basically in a race to save ourselves. We are definitely speeding down a path to destruction, but we also have the knowlege ans skill to save ourselves. The only question is whether we will act fast enough.

[Quantummist]

I see it a bit differently. I don't see that we are ecologically doing much damage. We have what you call critical resources up the Wazoo.. We have enough oil for the next 500 years at projected rates of use and by then I see no reason that technology will not find a replacement. Global Warming is a new hyped desaster created to scare but if you actually look at the Facts you see that its not what the news has made people think. Thank about this.. Since America got a press we have had a reverse of Global Warming or Global Cooling every 20 years or so. 20 years ago the press was all abuzz with the next ice age.. 40 years ago articles told how the Ice Caps are meltin, 60 years ago the Times stated that the earth is about the have a climate shift to an Ice age.

Today we here there is consensus that Global Warming is man made.. but Facts now.. That consensus is of 300 scientist and they made all the news.. But.. there is also a list of over 500 scientist that say its a normal cycle due to sun out put variations. But those you never see on the evening news.. and if you stand and say Global Warming is not as stated you get scorned and degraded in the press.

Its a created view of the environment by some that seek political positioning and the gullible fall for it and actually never check to see if the Fact fit the hype.

Remember the Hole in the Ozone? Haven't heard much of it since it was found.. Remember what happened? We had to cut CFC's and put new gasses in our air conditioners, Require more emission controls and all this caused a wind fall for many companies and people. Our cars cost more and you have to pay way more for A/C and refills. But The fact is 1 lighting storm anywhere on the planet produces more Ozone than could be destroyed by CFC's in 20 years. The hole was always there.. it was just seen for the first time because we stuck a satellite in polar orbit and looked for it. Its cause is the magneto sphere drawing charged particles from the sun into our upper atmosphere and burning off the ozone .. But look all you want and you will be hard pressed to find even a mention of the hole that was going to kiss us all a few years back.. But you still can't get freon and all the stuff done to protect us from the destruction of the ozone is still in place.

So when you look at the news and how the world will crumble under the weight of the people on it you should look back in the Historical record and you may find that its been coming to and end since 2000 years before Christ.

When some take to the soap box to save the world, stop and look at the details before you believe a word they say.. You may find that their reason for gloom and doom are more for Power, Control and Cash than a concern for their fellow man.

[dragonrider]

I would agree that climate change is not fully understood and the ozone layer is not fully understood. But I personally believe that both are legitimate problems caused by human activity.

I think the ozone depletion was something that no one expected when we started releaseing so many CFCs into the atmosphere years ago, and it is a disaster that was just narrowly averted. Ozone depletion was not an obvious consequence of using CFCs, and the role of the ozone layer in protecting us was not fully appreciated. Once we realized that we were depleting the ozone layer and that the ozone layer was important, we took action to stop damaging it. I think that one nearly got past us, and we were lucky to figure it out in time to do something about it. I think you don't hear very much about it now, because the problem is considered to be "solved." I would not conclude that we don't hear about it now bacuse it never was a legitimate problem.

Climate change is definitely not fully understood. Some of it is certainly due to non-human factors such as natural fluctuation in CO2 levels, variations in the earth's orbit and angle, changes in the output of the sun, and probably other things that we do not understand.

But I do not think you can discount the fact that human activity has changed the composition of the atmosphere. All of that carbon was under ground and we have dug it out, burned it, and put it into the air. The processes that took it out of the air in the first place and put it undersground in the form of fossil fuels took many millions of years, and we have reversed that process in a hundred years or so. It's a very rapid rate of change to a system we do not fully understand, so it seems like a dangersous thing to do. There is a lot of evidence that in the geologic past, periods of higher temperature climate corresponded to periods of higher CO2. So there is a lot of evidence to suggest that chaniging the CO2 content of the atmosphere could change the climate. Even if the evidence is not conclusive, you have to wonder how much we should be willing to gamble.

One of the factors that comes into play when you talk about changes to complex systems is the idea of equilibrium and the resiliency of the status quo. Complex systems like the climate have thousands of inputs and feedback loops that keep the system in relative equilibrium, with minor variations. So maybe adding some CO2 would encourage plant growth that would pull that CO2 back out of the air and restore equilibrium. Or maybe a small increase in temperature might somehow change the pattern of cloud cover, and reflect more heat away into space, and restore the equilibrium. But in many complex systems, if you apply a large enough or constant enough new input into the system, the system will suddenly fall into a new and different equilibrium. Often the system goes through a period of chaotic change before it finds it's new equilibirum. Sometimes it remains in a chaotic state and never finds a new equilibrium.

My fear would be that the climate and systems dependent on climate, such as natural ecologies and agriculture, would change suddenly into a new equilibrium. Even worse than a new equilibrium would be a period of chaotic climate fluctuation. I'm not really worried that the planet would experience a runaway climatic disaster and become as hot as venus. I'm more worried that we could experinece several years of crazy weather that would cause massive worldwide crop failure and begin a cascade of famine and war. Our population is so high, so well armed, and so interdependent, that I think a disruption in food supply could trigger a collapse of our society.

If you move beyond the question of climate change, there are a lot of other human activities that cannot be sustained at current levels. There are many historical examples of different societies that collapsed because intensive agricultural techniques destroyed the long term sustainabity of their crop land. Generally it is belived that these collapses occurred suddenly with very little warning.

Regarding your last point about people motivated by greed and power --- well, I agree that people in power often use fear to get what they want. But most of my experience with poeple invloved in environmental debate has not led me to believe that people concerned about the environemnt are seeking power. Maybe some are, but not most. It seems to me like it is more common that people who resist changes designed to protect the environment are motivated by their own vested interest in the status quo. So it is important to look at the details of both sides of the debate.

[Quantummist]

Again I have a differing view. What you Believe may be the issue that separates our views.
You see I follow the view that I believe in nothing ever. I Know, I Think I know or I Do Not Know but I never Believe. For once you follow a view where belief over rides facts you now have a religion.

So I'll debate facts, Fact. The Ozone layer has never been very much different than it is right now, at least in the last 10,000 years and the CFC's and other hydrocarbons had almost no impact what so ever. It sounds as if you have fallen for the Hyped " Doom and Gloom" version. The quantities of ozone lost as its whisped away by solar winds is many times the amount that hydrocarbon molecules contact and steal a O molecule. And each thunder storm anywhere produces enough ozone to replace all thats lost to charged particle stripping from the sun. The Science shows that the only reason we had the Doom scenario is that we place a polar orbital sat up that was looking at the Ozone layer in that region for the first time. The Historical Record shows then some scientist did studies and figured that it was due to hydrocarbons were interacting with Ozone and destroying the ozone. The Press picked this up and many started jumping on the band wagon, for lots of reasons, and the religion of Ozone Hole was created. To this day many like you still think that the priest of this religion saved us and now we need to follow them blindly into the next incarnation of global warming.

The same thing is now happening. Some one sees a process, gives a theory and the game is on. If the view fits the story line the media likes ( gloom and doom sells papers) it hypes said theory. A bunch of folks see dollar signs from grands to study the theory and find if there studies say were OK then its never spoken of in the press or worse is attacked by the press where those that produce studies that say were all going to die are touted as word coming down from on high and just being supplied to the masses by the speakers of truth as they hand down the stone tablets of said Theory.

But when we fiqure out that what was thought truth was in fact totally incorrect the same seekers of truth seem missing in action. Think about the last time you heard stories on the ozone... Did we fix the problem? The last word was that if we stopped all CFC's and destructive processes it would be at least 2050 before it would stabilize. So no its not because anything we did had any effect. Its because its the way it was before and the way it will be later. The Hole was always there and the variance in the ozone layer had not changed enough to worry about in 10,000 years.. But they did get their hands in your pocket in the mean time .

[dragonrider]

I don't think I'm the dupe you are making me out to be. Or if you would rather I phrase it as a fact: I am not a dupe.

The fact is that measurements of stratospheric ozone show that it has decreased about 4% per decade since 1980. So the problem does continue even if it is not such a hot topic in the news these days. I think that probably has a lot to do with the fact that the call to action is over. We may not necessarily have fixed the problem, bacause it will take decades to stabilize and reverse, but we have stopped most of the major activities that were causing the problem.

I don't agree that ozone depletion was all just a bunch of hype. And I do not think that it would have been possible to get so many countries to agree to ban such useful substances as CFCs based only on hype. In general I think government tends to take the side of industry, and it would be nearly impossible to make so many governments side against industry on this issue if the danger was not real.

I feel the same way about global warming. I think it is a real problem, not just a bunch of hype. We can measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere now and historically (ice cores and such like). The fact is that measurements indicate the amount of CO2 has gone up since the begining of the industrial age. The amounts now are higher than any we can find in the historical record going back 650,000 years. And they are increaseing more rapidly than at any time ever measured. Global temperature has risen since the begining of the industrial age. CO2 is known to have heat trapping properties, as do many other atmospheric gasses. Once you get beyond these kinds of measurable facts, you get into the realm of hypotheses and theories. So sceptics can always say that the cause and effect relationship between the rise in CO2 levels and the rise in temperatures is not conclusively proven. On the other side you have many scientists who have studied the atmosphere and have modeled their understaning of how it works who have theorized that the global increase in CO2 is causing climate change. I tend to agree with these scientists, even if their theories cannot be conclusively proven at this point. In any case, it is ridiculous to think you could change the composition of the atmosphere without some kind of effect --- whether that effect would be catastrophic or not is up for debate, but you have to accept there would be an effect.

Anyway, you and I are not likely to agree on whether ozone depletion and global climate change are real, or dangerous, or caused by people, and I am fine with that.

Even without these two problems, I think we have plenty of other dangers of our own making to face in coming years. The fact is that any given ecosystem has a finite carrying capacity for the number of creatures it can support. I think we are close to reaching the carrying capacity for the number of humans the earth can support.

[WaZ]

The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking said today.

Hawking: Space exploration a necessity (Googled to find a news site with the story)

[psychocat]

If we are wiped out then so be it, bollocks to worrying about anything.
The human race will evolve or die, but I doubt very much that any of us will live to see that day. I don't believe all the enviromental mentalists, I don't believe the religious nuts predicting the Apocolypse, I'm happy to watch the insanity that passes for people and live my life as I please.