@newtboy,

If North America is to adopt the Amish lifestyle, how many acres of land can the entire continent support? The typical Amish family farm is something like 80 acres is it not? I believe adopting this nationwide as a 'solution' requires massive population downsizing...

If you want to look at the poorest conditions of people in the world and advocate that the poverty stricken regions with no access to fossil fuel industry are the path forward, I would ask how you anticipate selling that to the people of California as being in their best interests to adopt as their new standard of living...

You mention overpopulation as a problem, then invent the argument that I think we should just ignore that and make it worse. Instead I only pointed out that immediately abandoning fossil fuels overnight would impact that overpopulation problem as well. It's like you do agree on one level, then don't like the implications or something?

The massive productivity of modern agriculture is dependent on fossil fuel usage. Similarly, our global population is also dependent upon that agricultural output. I find it hard to believe those are not clearly both fact. Please do tell me if you disagree. One inescapable conclusion to those facts is that reducing fossil fuel usage needs to at least be done with sufficient caution that we don't break the global food supply chain, because hungry people do very, very bad things.

Then you least catastrophic events that ARE NOT supported by the science and un-ironically claim that it's me who is ignoring the science.

You even have the audacity to ask if I appreciate the impacts of massive global food shortages, after having earlier belittled my concern about exactly that!

The IPCC shows that even in an absolute worst case scenario of accelerating emissions for the next century an estimated maximum sea level rise of 3ft, yet you talk about loss of 'most' farmland to the oceans...

Here's where I stand. If we can move off gas powered cars to electric, and onto a power grid that is either nuclear, hydro or renewable based in the next 50 years, our emissions before 2100 will drop significantly from today's levels. I firmly believe we are already on a very good course to expect that to occur very organically, with superior electric cars, and cheaper nuclear power and battery storage enabling renewables as economical alternatives to fossil fuels.

That future places us onto the IPCC's better scenarios where emissions peak and then actually decrease steadily through the rest of the century.

I'm hardly advocating lets sit back and do nothing, I'm advocating let's build the technology to make the population we have move into a reduced emissions future. We are getting close on major points for it and think that's great.

What I think is very damaging to that idea, is panicky advice demanding that we must all make massive economic sacrifices as fast as possible, because I firmly believe trying to enact reductions that way, fast enough to make a difference over natural progress, guarantees catastrophic wars now. Thankfully, that is also why nobody in sane leadership will give an ounce of consideration to such stupidity either. You need a Stalin or Mao type in charge to drive that kind change.

No sir.
I even mentioned one group in America that never adopted petroleum...Amish...and I would counter your assertion with the fact that most people on earth don't live using oil, they're too poor, not too fortunate. 20-30 years ago, most Chinese had never been in a car or a commercial store bigger than a local vegetable stand.

Both customers and non customers are the victims.
Using (or selling) a product that clearly pollutes the air, land, and sea is immoral.

Yes, it's like our business is predicated on rebuilding wrecked cars overnight which we do by using massive amounts of meth. Sure, our products are death traps, sure, we lied about both our business practices and the safety of our product, sure, our teeth and brains are mush....but our business has been successful and allowed us to have 10 kids (8 on welfare, two adopted out), and if we quit using meth they'll starve and fight over scraps. That's proof meth is good and moral and you're mistaken to think otherwise. Duh.

Yes, we overpopulated, outpacing the planet's ability to support us by far...but instead of coming to terms with that and changing, many think we should just wring the juice out of the planet harder and have more kids. I think those people are narcissistic morons, we don't need more little yous. Sadly, we are well beyond the tipping point, even if no more people are ever born, those alive are enough to finish the biosphere's destruction. Guaranteed if they think like you seem to.

Um, really? Complete collapse of the food web isn't catastrophic?
Wars over hundreds of millions or billions of refugees aren't catastrophic? (odd because the same people who think that are incensed over thousands of Syrians, Africans, and or South and Central American refugees migrating)
Massive food shortage isn't catastrophic?
Loss of most farm land and hundreds of major cities to the sea isn't catastrophic?
Loss of corals, where >25% of ocean species live, and other miniscule organisms that are the base of the ocean food web isn't catastrophic?
Loss of well over 1/2 the producers of O2, and organisms that capture carbon, isn't catastrophic?
Eventual clouds of hydrogen sulfide from the ocean covering the land, poisoning 99%+ of all life isn't catastrophic?
Runaway greenhouse cycles making the planet uninhabitable for thousands if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of years isn't catastrophic?
Loss of access to water for billions of people isn't catastrophic?
I think you aren't paying attention to the outcomes here, and may be thinking only of the scenarios estimated for 2030-2050 which themselves are pretty scary, not the unavoidable planetary disaster that comes after the feedback loops are all fully in play. Try looking more long term....and note that every estimate of how fast the cycles collapse/reverse has been vastly under estimated....as two out of hundreds of examples, Greenland is melting faster than it was estimated to melt in 2075....far worse, frozen methane too.

You can reject the science, that doesn't make it wrong. It only makes you the ass who knowingly gambles with the planet's ability to support humans or other higher life forms based on nothing more than denial.

Edit: We are at approximately 1C rise from pre industrial records today, expected to be 1.5C in as little as 11 years. Even the IPCC (typically extremely conservative in their estimates) states that a 2C rise will trigger feedbacks that could exceed 12C. Many are already in full effect, like glacial melting, methane hydrate melting, peat burning, diatom collapse, coral collapse, forest fires, etc. It takes an average of 25 years for what we emit today to be absorbed (assuming the historical absorption cycles remain intact, which they aren't). That means we are likely well past the tipping point where natural cycles take over no matter what we do, and what we're doing is increasing emissions.

I think that, considering the long term massive if not apocalyptic damage done along with the temporary gains, it's undeniably a big negative for humanity and the rest of the planet. Groups like the Amish get along quite nicely without it.

Edit: Now will you please answer my question?

I grew up in Amish country in PA and I know for a fact that all of those pesticides that the Amish aren't using (they use them) ended up polluting the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. General manure runoff is a problem as well.

Regardless, of organic or not - many problems crop up out here in the West in the form of water consumption. Obviously, we don't have much water to spare - but CA is always taking more and more water to grow crops that require enormous amounts of water, like avocados. One avocado takes about 18.5 gallons of water to grow - that said, an average american shower costs about as much a day if it's 8 minutes long (17.5); which I also see as a problem. Not to mention that CA also produces a shit ton of America's beef (#4). 80% of all of CA (which is like a country) water use is agricultural. I just think that CA (it might all burn to the ground anyway) needs to stop supporting the grocery needs of america (spread it out!) and stop wasting so much water that a lot of other states in the west need. It's a whole other Chinatown film that should be created to represent what is going on.

If the original is close enough as to be a backup(which id say it is) then this is a *dupeof=https://videosift.com/video/Slim-Jim-Amish-Buggy-Ride

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by eric3579. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

Amish mouse trap they put a coffee can on a stick in the middle of the bucket with peanut butter on it, mouse reaches out, can spins, mouse drops. Works perfectly.

I don't mean to detract or lessen this, but the only philosophical material here was the last 20 seconds where he basically said "Don't blame and don't hold grudges." Otherwise, the entire video was like a wide-eyed kid in a candy store. It was not really all that stark, and kind of reminds me of an Amish that decides to leave his enclave. Perhaps the quality people see is the dreaming they believe they experience? Perhaps it is the fact that free people waste more on hate and frivolous, benign shit than this guy did locked up. Perhaps the video is really just pointless without our injection of a point.

Look @shinyblurry, nobody sane wants to mess with religious viewpoints regarding marriage. Your religious community gets to decide who can marry in your church and that is how it should be. Don't like it? Leave the religious community. Don't like, for example, the rules of the Amish? Stop being one. It's as simple as that.
The government can not afford to pick a religion. It needs to stay neutral. Would you like your government to simply endorse and act upon what the pope says? Imagine the government turns atheist and bans going to church. Nobody wants that.
That's why the government should stay the fuck out of who I or my children can marry. It's none of their business. As long as I want to marry a legal person that is neither a close blood relative (incest is bad, mmmmkay), married or underage, it shouldn't be their business. Neither trees nor dogs are legal persons.
I don't want big government to control my life. Why is that hard to understand? Why is this something that needs debating?

I'll wait for the games "Need for Amish" and "Grand theft Amish"

@newtboy
i totally understand my friend and i dont necessarily disagree,but what do you think makes a greater impact?
banning an intelligent person,who may cause some controversy from time to time but is VITAL to human discourse.
OR...
as we are seeing here,a community coming together to admonish that person for breaking the rules?

which is the point i was trying to make.i want trance to acknowledge that what he did was out of an emotional,ego-driven response,but i dont want his voice silenced just because we may disagree from time to time.

and i am willing to bet that trance gets the point.he is no fool and understands full well the implications.the community is telling him:
bad trance..baaaaaad....

shunning is a FAR more powerful tool than clicking a button to silence someone.
just ask the amish.

not everybody fits into this category.there have been some who were deliberate in their offensiveness.those people SHOULD be banned from civil discourse but trance has something to say.we may not always agree but to silence him over an emotional over-reaction is a tad harsh..in my opinion.

and thats all it really is..my opinion.

i also dont think it fair to drag dag into becoming supreme overlord to pass judgement.i dont think he created this site with that in mind.i think he wanted a community driven enterprise that self-regulated without the need for moderators.

which is exactly what we are doing here..yes?

remember siftquistions?
good times my friends..good times.

Your video, Good Ol' Amish Barn Raising - 10 Hour Timelapse, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I don't re(call/member) much of Amish, but a lot of old houses, big lands, snow, nature, etc. I only lived there for a couple years in the mid (19)80s.

I lived there for 19 years. As far as I know it has only improved. I don't mind being down-voted for having wanted to and being proud of moving as far as possible away from my "home" as I possibly could. It's all about adventure and challenging concepts; getting out of your comfort zones; it paid off nicely. I doubt I would have found one of the most confounding experiences of the Universe that a human can have if I had not begun challenging everything I was taught in such a closed-off, conservative place. I grew up close to Amish country! It actually took some willpower in order to start shedding and rebuilding a lot of ideas about the way thing's actually work as opposed to the ways the media tells one how it works.