I don't think anyone's advocating forced population control here.

I only think that people are advocating that a greater emphasis on family planning be incorporated into your prescription for everyone to "control his own activities and teach his neighbor the virtues of his infinitely sustainable choices."

Doing this too fast would be demographic suicide for a lot of complicated reasons, I don't think anyone is denying that, but a very significant organic reduction over the course of a few centuries would be beneficial for humanity and could be reasonably attained. It's certainly less far-fetched than mass colonization of Mars or Venus in the same timeframe.

And that's an important distinction here. We aren't really concerned about the environment here. We're concerned about what's best for us.

The environment is going to shrug us off and incorporate all our plastic, CO2, and evidence of narrowing biodiversity into a few more strata and continue doing its thing. It has survived mass extinctions before.

It's ridiculous to think that we can even destroy the environment. Our population size and its destructive effects would be reduced to insignificance long before we hit a point of no return and the biosphere's existence is even slightly threatened.

We should be framing the argument in terms of how to achieve an environmental equilibrium in which humanity can live in a comfortable and humane manner.

I think we're a lot closer to a point of no return with regards to achieving that goal.

For my money I'd say that exponential population growth isn't pointing us in that direction, and living - as I do - in a rapidly modernizing "second world" country tells me that bringing all eight billion of us to affluence too quickly poses its own significant dangers.

Let's not forget that this videos two main points are that we are demonstrably in a period of exponential growth, and that exponential growth from the limited perspective of the inside can be deceptive. Points of no return that seem far away are in fact very close.

Hi A10ANIS,

Could you please address the heart of my argument, that the principle of parsimony (occams razor) states that we should consider the theory of a Creator over the multiverse theory? Thanks.

To address some of your points:

Regarding your "fine tuner" argument; Such is the fine tuning of your "creator" that 98% of all life that has existed, is extinct. Which, apart from being incredibly incompetent and wasteful, points logically to random
selection/evolution.

It also points to a global flood which wiped out nearly all life on Earth around 4400 years ago. The speciation which occurred up until that time was lost, but new species have been created since then. The mass extinctions going on today have everything to do with human development and bad stewardship rather than any design flaw.

Also, your "a painting therefore a painter" point is a non-sequitur for if there were a "fine tuner," there would, by your own argument, have to be a creator of the fine tuner and so an inevitable regression.

We as Christians do not believe in created gods which are a delusion by definition; we believe in an eternal God who was not created. The infinite regression stops at the feet of the eternal God who has always existed. This line of reasoning is a problem not for Christians but for those who believe in the multiverse theory, because whatever the mechanism is which generates all of these Universes would be yet another Goldilocks zone, and so precisely finetuned as to be statistically impossible. You may as well posit a Creator at that point. I mean just ask yourself the same questions; what created the multiverse, what created it, etc.

No, Science has thrown off the shackles of myths and gods. Had they not, our lives would be controlled by theocratic dictators and we would still believe earth was the centre of the universe.

Interesting you would say this considering that in its infancy, pretty much all of the important discoveries were made by professing Christians. It was actually the environment of Christian Europe which nurtured science into what it is today.

Another point is, Christians don't believe in myths; Jesus Christ is not a myth, He is a real person who died for our sins and rose from the dead. He told us about who God is, because He was with God and He is God.

We no longer use the god of the gaps argument. We may never know all the answers but, just because we don't, we no longer lazily, ignorantly, insist that; "Hallelujah, God must have done it."

It is not a God of the gaps argument when the theory has greater explanatory power than what is being proposed. When even apparent fine tuning as been observed, which it has, the principle of parsimony would prefer the theory of a Creator to multiple unobserved universes.

Fluctuations in the magnetosphere are most likely to disrupt telecommunications, not cause mass extinction from cancer. At least, in the past, magnetic minimums have not correlated with mass extinctions, that I know of. I've been watching that for over a decade, it has not failed as quickly as expected, yet.
You lost me in the second paragraph. "Need" is subjective. Do you mean need to live, need to live well, or need to have anything we want? I agree, we should limit the third and try to limit the second, but some of your examples are required to keep the (over) population alive and somewhat productive. There simply isn't enough energy produced without fossil fuels to produce enough food to feed the planet, and not enough farmable land to grow enough naturally to feed everyone at this point. At least that's how it seems from here.

I'm back Chingalera...I took you off ignore. It didn't seem to work anyway.
And actually yes, I can deny that... you accidentally proved the point that climate change is possibly the MOST important thing to cop to (or deny). Contrary to popular belief, the dinosaurs seem to NOT have gone extinct due to the impact, they were already in MAJOR decline and mostly extinct when it hit. The proof of that is that, in the KT boundary layer, there is not an abundance of dinosaur fossils, they are conspicuously absent. In fact, the fossil records show they had been in decline for centuries (eons?) before the impact and were mostly already gone. Climate study indicates that a climate change was likely happening to them long before the asteroid hit, this was apparently the same thing that caused the first mass extinction as well. I wish more people knew this.
To me, that means that it's not so important if you think climate change IS man driven now, one should think it's happening, it's dangerous, and it's controllable to a point, and we should probably work towards either preparing for it's effects or minimizing them, or both.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
This shouldn't be surprising really, when experts were called in to talk about how fukushima wasn't going to cause the death of all humans, they wouldn't air them without some loony talking about how it was a mass extinction event.
We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth,
and there is a vast ignorance of science.
James Lovelock
Perhaps it will end sometime in the future, I don't see when, why or how though.

You put a quote in without quotes. You are bad at posting and you should go to jail!


"Ill just quote myself next time, kind of like a double quote to make up for it" -GeeSussFreeK

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

This shouldn't be surprising really, when experts were called in to talk about how fukushima wasn't going to cause the death of all humans, they wouldn't air them without some loony talking about how it was a mass extinction event.
We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth,
and there is a vast ignorance of science.
James Lovelock

Perhaps it will end sometime in the future, I don't see when, why or how though.


You put a quote in without quotes. You are bad at posting and you should go to jail!

This shouldn't be surprising really, when experts were called in to talk about how fukushima wasn't going to cause the death of all humans, they wouldn't air them without some loony talking about how it was a mass extinction event.

We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth,
and there is a vast ignorance of science.

James Lovelock


Perhaps it will end sometime in the future, I don't see when, why or how though.

yeah somehow we've idly watched this go down. not everyone of course, but a very large percentage of the populace, whether through propaganda or socialization, is both complacent and stuck on warped ideas of status and achievement. We've idolized the rich, even though they mostly schemed their way to the top at the expense of everyone. But "consumerism" as a psychological movement has really supported these notions...and has really helped keep us self-focused and self-indulgent....and our focus on our own individual accumulation of goods, status, and wealth blinds us to what is happening all around us. we erect our own psychological barriers to higher awareness.

and there seems to be a vast difference between awareness and what we normally consider to be intelligence. what do you think?

Consumerism continually tells us how smart, special and awesome we are in order to sell us goods. They don't sell on the quality of the good. they sell to the emotional side of us. Like religion, they convince us that we're special, and entitled.

i think the problem with that is that when we buy into how smart, special, and awesome we are, our self-centered psyche then misses what is happening around us.
How smart are we when mass extinction is occurring on this planet, global warming threatens our very existence, and crooks are stealing our future from under our noses?
i think we need to get over ourselves
imho

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

They complain about Wallstreet greed---but isn't mainstreet evil too? (@NetRunner and @dystopianfuturetoday) The 99% must change first, me thinks... (P.s., I will still respond to the other thread--hopefully tonight. This comment was just a musing of mine.)

Systems of government essentially reflect the consciousness of the populace. In other words, government won't change until people wake up. We are self-centered consumers. Our government promotes and feeds that mindset. It blinds us to everything.

The power and money grab by the top 1% can be seen simply as greed, but also as a realization that resources on this planet are dwindling fast, and those who control those resources are reinforcing their positions. With the emergence of a world market (cheap overseas labor) and automation, the large labor pools formerly encouraged in this country through a variety of means, are now irrelevant.

@shagen454: the government controls the force.

@mikus auralius: laws are written by lobbyists. the vast majority of them are corporate. this is not a democracy. it has the illusion of democracy. but that's it.

i think the question is whether change will occur because of an emergence of rationality, or whether it will follow the incredible suffering we are setting in motion through mass extinction and rapid depletion of the ecosphere.

the battle is in the mind.

I honestly dislike this pascalwageresque risk assessment argument. To me its as simple as:
a)There is overwhelming evidence supporting anthropogenic climate change.
b)Outcome of higher Co2 levels is complex and difficult to ascertain. - This, I feel, is the major sticking point.

I don't buy the end of the world scare stories. The history of life on this planet suggests its capable of surviving a very different atmosphere and abrupt changes. I also think Humans will find a way to adapt. I do however believe that changes over very short periods of time will result in quite profound levels of suffering. Land will be lost to the sea, dramatic changes in weather will ruin agriculture. Many species of plant and animal will likely die out. The last couple of centuries already looks like a mass extinction event. Humanity will be stressed, resource wars will occur with more frequency and ferocity. The developing world will be hit hardest, but the west will become less comfortable.

To me its just whether we collectively choose to inconvenience ourselves now, or suffer later. Given the wests lack of leadership and the general apathy of the population I think its probably going to be the latter. You can all me Malthus.

What reeeally killed the dinosaurs?!

Shocking new evidence reveals that it wasn't a Meteor that caused the KT mass extinction but possibly..

..a Meteor!!

>> ^JiggaJonson:

So wait, you're telling me that, with barely any assistance from a mature animal, these barely multicellular baby octopuses survive on their own to become THIS???

That's pretty damned impressive.


In most cephalopods, the majority of energy from food intake goes straight to promoting rapid growth until the day they die.

Short-lived, extremely vulnerable, and as an evolutionary result, highly intelligent, they are paradoxical little blobs of manipulative protein with potential for near unlimited growth relative to other animals; had the parameters for their selection been slightly different (favoring longer lifespans over super short, super fecund ones) they may have been the dominant intelligent aquatic lifeforms on this planet. Considering the circumstances, I'd say they do pretty damn good for themselves.

If the Earth were to undergo another mass extinction, wiping out all mammals, my bet would be on these guys eventually taking over.

I don't know. We know global warming is real, but no one can accurately say it's man made. Over 95% of the carbon emissions are naturally made, the majority of emissions coming from volcanoes. These things were around long before the industrial age, and life on earth seems to have evolved just fine. We also know our earth has experienced global warming in the past, so this may be a cyclical event man has no influence over.

You really should read more about what climate scientists who study this say. For one, the massive climate changes in the past coincide with mass extinctions. For another, study of how the environment responds to differing levels of CO2 shows that small changes in total CO2 output can cause significant changes in climate (as in, the kind that causes mass extinctions). Then there's also the whole idea of multipliers, where small warming causes a change like the melting of permafrost, which makes that part of the earth less reflective (and also amounts to a change in climate).

In the 70s "they" said we were facing an ice age. Did we? Remember acid rain? Another 70s scare that turned out to be a red herring for environmentalists. Good science always prevails, and there's probably a good reason why Al Gore is being sued for fraud.

Did "they" say that? From what I've read on the supposed new ice age, there was a small minority scientists who said that, and the media amplified it completely out of proportion.

It's funny that you bring up acid rain though. You know why that went away? We implemented cap and trade for sulfur dioxide emissions, and it essentially eradicated the problem.

As for the "good reason" Al Gore is being sued for fraud, it's because there's a tremendous amount of right-wing political groups and corporations that want to discredit the entire environmental movement. A cost-effective way to do that is to try to tarnish the movement's most recognizable representative.

I can give you the Libertarian perspective: you solve it with lawsuits. If you pollute and it affects the health of others, then they have a right to sue for damages. There's no corporation limit to liability in a free market, and class actions would prove to be silly. People individually would sue the company and that would deter them from damaging the environment.

Ahh, so that's how you completely disguise all responsibility. If I get killed in a road accident during a freak snowstorm caused by global warming, mintbbb has to choose between using the life insurance money to settle affairs and pay off debts she may not be able to service without my income, or gamble it by trying to engage in a lawsuit against a coalition of oil, gas, coal, and power companies?

If we were talking about someone pissing in my water supply, would I really have to drink it, and then later prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it did some harm to me before I could expect law enforcement to get involved? Couldn't I just say "I don't consent to have pee put in my drinking water!" and get the police to stop people who wouldn't comply?

In reply to this comment by blankfist:

I am all for ending all subsidy of energy, oil, coal or otherwise! I would LOVE to see technology finally take government out of energy production. I would love for every house in America to be its own power generator. Could you imagine stopping off at someones house to "fill'er up"! That would be so cool to me! We still might want to keep "the grid" around, but it would fulfill a totally different function. I am hopeful that a combination of solar power + hydrogen fuel cells will give us this ability. Solar seems like such a cash crop of energy, and fuel cells give you the mobility aspect. Time will tell if this comes to be, but it seems pretty promising now with solar cells reaching 50% effectiveness!

I know of studies that talk about feedback loops for weather, and while intellectually intriguing ( I love all things dealing with Apocalypse!), it seems to be without any real historical evidence. Most mass extinction due to weather change that we have any real evidence of are due to catastrophic events such as massive volcanic activity or comets and meteors. While I don't doubt that human CO2 levels could do something that equates to those, I question if we produce the amounts necessary at this point in time. I have tried with little success to find ice and CO2 levels of the Mesozoic era. However, I have read somethings to the contrary of the capacity of the ocean to stabilize the temperature better than ice. Liquid water has a very high specific heat, by increasing the volume of water, you could have an even more effective heat dissipation system than that of reflective ice. I lack any real education into which one is more true. Interestingly enough, CO2 levels were most likely 10% higher than today during the Cretaceous period. There might be slightly more elasticity in the climate than most people have come to understand.

I disagree that the government needs to "create a market for something". If it is one thing governments are very poor at doing is creating markets for things. People do this better and faster than government think tanks. I do however support new understandings in pollution in how it interacts with property rights. If you clog my air with filth, there has to be some legal ramification to that. It is due time to assess how property is defined in terms of air, water, and the like, I welcome that conversation.

(edited: Spelling, dear god man spelling)

I was mostly referring to the northern megafauna, and mammoth in particular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth#Extinction
A definitive explanation for their mass extinction is yet to be agreed upon. About 12,000 years ago, warmer, wetter weather began to take hold. Rising sea levels swamped the coastal regions. Forests replaced open woodlands and grasslands across the continent. The Ice Age was ebbing. As their habitats disappeared, so did the bison and the mammoth.

Whether the general mammoth population died out for climatic reasons or due to overhunting by humans is controversial. Another theory suggests that mammoths may have fallen victim to an infectious disease. A combination of climate change and hunting by humans is the most likely explanation for their extinction.
---
Exactly the point I've been making all these posts. It's just not sure yet, need more work. So you could still be right, but a real scientist would say WE JUST DON"T KNOW YET. Okay he might not shout it, but I will.