It's insane that this was one of the original suspects in Colony Collapse Disorder, and only now, 10+ years into the decimation of bees (and many other insects) can the EPA admit it's a problem....yet they won't likely make ANY changes until the end of the year, ensuring another year of CCD for the bee industry as well as all other native insects that are effected.

Always a week late and $99 short seems to be the motto of our species these days. More and more I tend to think we aren't worth saving and that the collapse of the eco system is a strong, scorched earth type of chemo therapy the biosphere needs to remove the cancer that is man. It's delicious irony that we'll do it to ourselves, but unforgiveable that we'll also probably take 99% of life with us.
Where's a plague when we need one?

First up, it's not 500 million years. Nuclear waste (typically Plutonium 239) has a half life of around 24000 years, an eyeblink geologically. Even if it wouldn't be too flash for life as we know it for a while, the planet will be fine, and life will recover.

But yeah, there are undeniably problems with nuclear energy, which are addressed in the related video (http://videosift.com/video/Nuclear-energy-is-terrible).

We have essentially 3 choices:

1: ditch our energy rich lifestyle and go back to an agrarian economy with no cars, internet or whatever. This also means ditching lots of really nice stuff, like medical technology (drugs and MRI machines don't grow from pixie dust). Pretty unlikely, IMO.

2: Accept that the eco-system is basically fucked and learn to live with climate change. Depressingly, this is probably the most likely scenario.

3: Invest heavily into other energy sources. And, like it or not, that's got to include some form of nuclear. Renewable (solar, wind, tide) etc, will help, but they won't cover all of our energy needs and they have their own problems. So ideally, it's fusion, but practically, thorium seems the next best bet.

Adding video to channels (Eco) - requested by Zawash.

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Adding video to channels (Eco) - requested by Zawash.

@MilkmanDan, I get where you're coming from. I think that people should have a basic right not to implicitly support something they vehemently oppose, i.e. a eco marketing company shouldn't have have to support some climate deniers, or anyone at all shouldn't have to bake a nazi cake.

But as you pointed out with your race example, lines must be drawn somewhere. I don't support anyone getting to decide they won't serve people because of race or gender and for me, sexual orientation falls on the right side of the line? Don't want to bake a cake for a black wedding? Fuck you, if you fell that strongly, be prepared to be sued or imprisoned. And same for a gay wedding.

*eco

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It should be a felony to pretend to be a scientist without a degree in the field you purport to be involved in, with added special circumstances if you do it publicly.
Each of these fake scientists should be drawn and quartered for crimes against humanity. As I see it, they've already confused and delayed the issue of climate change (and others) so long that it's no longer a solvable problem, and barely one we can even mitigate, and they still shout from their bully pulpits that it's not happening, just don't worry about it, and even if it is happening, it's not a problem and will actually make things better....and some poor fools actually believe them.
Fake scientists really get my goat. If I run into the "I'm not a scientist, but I play one on TV" guy, I'll have to tell him "I'm not an eco-soldier, but I'm going to play one right now with this knife...but don't panic, there's no scientific consensus that my putting this knife into your skull is harmful."

Perhaps in some minor 'unknown' areas for unknown reasons that could be true, but overall it's far from true. The rotting material creates exponentially more methane than any mechanism could trap. You and they don't even mention the mechanism that traps methane at all, the methane being released is from bacteria eating thawed organic material.

EDIT: Actually, your study quote did not say that "they've identified regions up north where the soil absorbs more methane the warmer it gets"...it said "numerical simulations predict" they exist, "but the drivers, magnitude, timing and location of methane consumption rates in High Arctic ecosystems are unclear." This means places where methane capture outpaces release, or happens at all, have not been found-'location unclear'.

OK, you did say 'if we magically remove all the CO2 we've ever produced' (ignoring methane and other greenhouse gasses) in your second post. I missed the 'magic removal' part. My mistake, but that makes it a silly argument since we can't do magic. If we could, there would be no problem....and if I crapped diamonds I would be rich.

Well, in the context of talking to a person from 1912, if you explained to them that the 'progress' (by which I guess you mean population explosion and technical advancements) of the last century comes at the cost of the environment, nature, and may destroy the planet over the next century (at least for human survival), I would bet anyone with an IQ of 90+ will say 'selling (or even gambling) our permanent future for temporary industrial progress is a terrible idea, no thanks'.

Well, you must see that some of that great 'food production' is actually corn and grain for livestock, bio fuels, palm oils, etc., not human food stuffs. In order to make that 'food', forests are destroyed, removing entire eco systems that provided 'bush taco' (natural foods) which wasn't included in the equations about overall food production. Food HARVESTS of natural foods have declined rapidly worldwide, just look at the ocean. It may be unfishable in 15-20 years at current acidification rates. Kill the base of the food web, and the web falls apart. It's a rare place today that can support a human population without industrial agriculture and food importation, both of which have failed to solve starvation issues to date.

You can only be ignoring that data about it being catastrophic. I referenced it earlier. Just to mention ONE way, by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage. In most cases, there's absolutely no way to fix this. For instance, Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade, and that rate is expected to continue to accelerate. With no water, industrial agriculture fails instantly, and people die in 3 days or so. There's NO solution for this disaster, not a plan, not an idea, nothing. There are already immigration problems worldwide, how to solve that when the immigration increases exponentially everywhere?

The downvote was not for your opinion, it was for your dangerously mistaken estimations and conclusions, and insistence that, contrary to all human history and all scientific evidence, this time humans will find and implement a working solution to the problem in time (already too late IMO) that's not worse than the problem was, and so we should not be bothered by the coming massive shortages and upheaval that comes with them, because somehow in that upheaval we'll find and implement massive global solutions to currently insurmountable issues. We can't even slow down the rate of increase in CO2 emissions, it's unbelievable to think we'll turn that to a negative number in 20-30 years even if the tech is invented (which still leaves us in Mad Max times at best, IMO), much more so to think we could erase 100 years of emissions in that time. EDIT:...and I find that kind of dangerous unrealistic suggestion insulting.

*eco

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