Sample rates, the insidious gap filling by the theist.
Offline I kept my mouth shut yesterday when my co-worker told me his cousin died from a heart attack. I gave him my sympathies of course. But when he described his cousin's last moments praying, I wanted to scream at him about how absurd that was.
He died, so that prayer obviously did a lot of good.
This insidious gap filling mind trap allows the believer to have it both ways. He would have also thanked god if his cousin survived.
FIRST OFF, no matter how long someone lives, or what they die from, EVERYONE WILL DIE! So prayer will never stop it and to falsely claim that it has power is STUPID.
On a planet where kids die every day from disease and famine, and where babies die in uterus or during the birth process. In a world where people die every day from crime, car accidents, disease, war, ect ect ect in all sorts of limitless ways, I find it absurd to look to ancient myth to find practical ways to delay the the end. But that is the only thing humans can do, is to delay death, you can not live forever.
He fails to take into account that there are 7 billion people on this planet and Christians are not the only ones who die from heart attacks or survive heart attacks.
And I would also guess that this poor guy's deep seeded indoctrination and fear of death probably made the situation worse and sped up the process because of the anxiety. And it probably distracted him from doing something practical, like calming down, taking an asprin. And my co-worker mentioned nothing about any aid to him after he went limp. I wonder if the people in the house had any training in CPR. And if they didn't because of their emotional reaction probably might not have taken good instruction from 911 because they were to damned busy praying screaming and getting emotional.
I am sorry that this guy's loved one died. It always sucks. But I am so fucking sick of the mundane reality of nature and the fact that death ultimately will never be avoided in the end, being turned into a cosmic comic book battle in which people, like the mentioned above, think that crossing their fingers and talking to themselves will prevent reality from happening.
I highly suspect that this guy, just like my grandmother, ignored the signs a bit to long and it became too late. That is what happened to my grandmother. She complained of chest pains, and my dad offered to take her to the hospital, but she passed it off as heartburn, so we dropped her off at her house only to return to find her dead.
Maybe if this guy went to the hospital at the first sign of trouble. Maybe if his family had been trained in CPR. Maybe if they knew their family history, they could have had layman's paddles available in the house. Something practical could have saved his life. But the prayer itself did nothing but waste his time and he still died despite the effort.
We think as a species, that our god/s favor us, and listen to us and will help us. But you cannot name one human that will live forever. Every president has died and every future president will die. Every pope has died and every future pope will die. Every rich man has died, and every rich person living will die. Every world leader in every country who has lived, has died. Every current living world leader will die.
EVERY FUCKING HUMAN WILL DIE!
"At least he died praying" A co worker commented outside during a break.
It was all I could do to stop myself from shouting at his superstitious logic "A lot of good it did him".
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
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According to one wiki article 58 million people died in 05. So extrapolate that into a decade, you are talking about billions of deaths per decade.
If anything proves that life is not based in ancient myth and the fact that everyone, all 7 billion will die at some point, should dispel the bullshit that an invisible sky daddy cares or even exists.
And any given ecosystem when overrun by a population of any given species, be it a plant, insect, bacteria, if overpopulated can ruin the ecosystem for all life in that system. If anything, because evolution isnt an apex or about perfection, the fact that there is not enough death in our population is no different than the fact that if a forest has too much dead wood, can make forest fires more likely.
We would love to think we are outside nature, but we are too fucking egotistical as a species that we fail to see that WE are merely one species IN NATURE and not outside nature.
Now here come the doomsday morons suggesting that because I don't believe in a god, that I am suggesting genocide as a solution, or that I am evil for stating the fact that the ratio of birth to death is lopsided.
PLEASE MORONS, get this through your head. My concern isn't to create a facist Joseph Mengla Hitler state in where we force people to have less babies, or create a future where we murder people to make room for others.
NO, I am saying our species lack of planing will fuck us over. Much like a colony of army ants can become efficient in taking over resources and exploiting those resources AND at the same time, be unaware that those resources are limited, and that we even see those insects build in a dry river bed not knowing the rainy season is around the corner and because of their inability to know that danger, can get them wiped out despite their efficient ability to reproduce.
I posted this here in FA because I do not want a response from theists. I am tired of the excuses and superstitions used to ignore reality. And I am tired of theists coping out to superstition and clinging to it as if it really does something to solve humanity's real problems. And I am most certainly tired of the demonizing of atheists for merely pointing out facts.
If I die from a heart attack, it will solely be because I died from a heart attack. It won't be because I don't believe in a god. It won't be because I picked the wrong god. It wont be because god is angry at me, any more than mickey mouse can be angry at me.
Having superstitious fear about death is as stupid as praying to a volcano not to explode.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
As a first order approximation the number of deaths per year is the total population divided by the average life span.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
That prediction has been around for centuries. Enough centuries for the world population to have increased by a factor of ten. We are still here -- unless I missed a staff meeting.
The generic issue of running out of resources is really quite simple to test. If they become scarce their prices increase. It is not difficult to track commodity prices over the last two centuries. Prices have decreased always correcting for inflation of course.
The premise of running out of resources is implicitely a per capita decrease in resources as demand is per capita as in more people = more cars = more electricity.
Given prices decreasing while the population is increasing the price decrease is faster than the rate of population increase. Given this has been the reality since Malthus it is difficult to see why people still get into a sweat over it. But then, people sure do love their apocalypses.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
The signs are already here that 'Peak Oil' is imminent, or may have already been reached.
Prices are are not an indication of how close we are to actually "hitting the wall". Actual prices are subject to so many other factors. The increased population over the period has increased the total market in several items, increasing the production levels, allowing cost of production to be kept down, while accelerating the rate at which we are approaching the real limit.
An exponential growth of anything in a finite world is going to end at some point, despite how many previous predictions have been passed as new technologies and more intensive exploration have uncovered new sources. That is not gonna keep happening indefintely.
It's the old story of the guy who jumps of the Empire State. Everything's fine, going faster all the time. Right up to the point you hit the ground.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I sympathize with your frustration. I've never been in quite that situation, but I have had to smile and nod while listening to customers tell me how important going to church is, or held hands in a circle of people at some social function while someone prayed over whatever it was we were doing, or when I worked at that prison one time and inmates would "testify" about how God changed them or whatever. Hell, I put up with Jesus talk from my own family.
Try not to let it upset you, though. My guess is that the people you were talking to just believe that the dying man praying as he died meant that God was there with him, calling him up to heaven, et cetera. If that's what they need to cope, as obnoxious as it is for you and me and everyone else who can't find any evidence of a "loving" god around here, at least they're not out there lynching someone who's different from them. I like to think of it as their heavenly, invisible security blanket. :P
If one looks at the signs of imminence one discovers the have been around since the idea was invented. As with global melting the date advances to the future every year. You will note both follow the same pattern as does the "End of the World" just that robes and streetcorners don't come off as well as suits and bookcases in the background.
Prices over DECADES have to be a measure of availability. Both peak oil prices were political and the Jimmy Carter one still the worst.
The 'sky is falling' crowd, rather than accept any objective measure, play with estimates and projections choosing those which support their desired conclusion.
Even if, among all the fossil fuels, it is restricted to oil then the end of the world mongers find all kinds of reasons to refuse to consider shale oil, tar sands and very heavy crude whose proven reserves are greater than all the oil burned so far. If that fails then they project a growth rate for oil that ignores natural gas substitution for oil in power production. The proven reserves of NG in the US could support all the power production in the US for decades were it fully exploited.
The ability of journalism majors and public hysterics to forget the failed predictions of the past is overwhelming. The first melting prediction of "do something in ten years or it is too late" that I can recall dates from 1988. The same prediction has been made annually ever since. Just how many people realize that means all the ten year predictions from 1988 to 2002 have been wrong? false? flat out lies without explanation or apology?
Further the people who made the ten year prediction in 2002 SHOULD BE saying "only one year to go or it is too late" but they are not. They are still saying ten years.
It is the same with the peak oil doomsayers.
I also find it amusing that people who could not give me a simple mathematical expression of an exponential function are so willing to say exponential growth.
More specifically the "exponential growth" crowd for population was at the forefront of "we are running out of everything" back when the world pop in 2050 was to be 50 billion and have gotten even louder now that the projection has been lowered to under 12 billion. A rational person might expected a round of self-congratulation on a job well done and going on to more productive activities. But they moan more loudly that the end is neigh -- two neighs even.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
Ideas of the imminence of running out of easily available oil may have been around for ages, but they were put on a more rigorous footing by Hubbert in the 50's, and have successfully predicted various individual peaks, such as the peak production in the US oil fields.
Prediction of peak oil production are not invalidated by successful substitution of another energy source such as natural gas.
Neither are reasonable warnings of such peaks invalidated by referring to the more extremist and pessimistic variations.
Coal resources are expected to peak twenty years or more after oil.
Peak doesn't mean we are about to run out, but cost of extraction will rise more sharply.
Exponential growth is what happens naturally with reproducing populations, with a given average number of children per family, or per woman, until they start running out of resources. Availability of resources such as food and fuel are more likely to grow in a linear fashion, hence the problem.
Cultural change and growing prosperity, leading to reduced infant mortality and other factors has lead to reduced fertility rates in many countries, so largely defusing the 'population bomb' except in places like much of sub-Saharan Africa. I was saddened to hear recently people in Africa interviewed on a BBC news program proclaiming "Allah wants them to have many children" - this in a nation already strained for food and other resources (I forget which one).
I hope you are not implying I don't understand 'exponential growth'. An 'exponential function'? You mean like a 'multiplication function"? That is a strange way to refer to a basic math operation.
Over-optimistic 'predictions' of the continuing availability of economic fossil fuel energy are retarding the development of alternatives, and hence of measures to minimize global warming because of the associated CO2 production.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
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Nony, I can partially agree with you but only to the extent that actions have consequences and we need to have plans in place for those or we will face them the hard way.
Sure, there is plenty of fossil fuel in untapped resources. One that you did not mention was methane hydrate. You get that in the ocean below about four miles deep. Kind of hard to get to but not impossible.
The thing that you are not taking into account is that whatever you get has to take into account the energy returned on the energy invested (EROEI). There is plenty of fuel to be had but at the cost of a much smaller EROEI.
So no, the sky need not fall but that does not mean that the party will continue indefinitely. Yet there are going to be some bad things happening in the future if we do not wise up. Really, sub Saharan Africa is an AIDS infested sewer largely because of unchecked population growth far beyond what any potential economy could ever hope to sustain.
As far as the global warming thing goes, I think that it is relevant to observe that all predictions for the future have error bars and the longer your view is, the wider they get. Really, I can say that the temperature in 24 hours will probably be the same as what it is right now. Tomorrow we can find out for sure but that statement is probably going to be accurate to within a couple of degrees. On the other hand, if I say that the temperature in six months is going to be a good deal colder, that will bear out but with an error bar of something like 20 F.
Sure, ten years ago, we had the hockey stick graph, which disappears when you use slightly different assumptions. We had people telling us that the past three years were the hottest on record and all the other blatant nonsense. Clearly that trend has not continued or we would be hearing about it daily.
Still we have data that does not paint the best picture on the matter. In the age of sailing ships, it was assumed that an attempt on the North West Passage required a purpose built ship which could hold sufficient stores to assume that it would be frozen in for a winter with no chance of resupply. Today, it has been done in a couple of moths in a canoe.
Something is happening. Will it be a global catastrophe as the doom sayers predict or will it be rather less? I don't think that we can really say for sure. However, things are going to continue to head in that general direction for the foreseeable future. While that is going on, world leaders are using the opportunity to have state dinners with expensive wine and totally failing to come to any real agreements on, well, anything that might actually help.
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AiGS,
you do need to distinguish between variation/uncertainty of temperature at any given location and time (part of 'weather'), and averages over a season or a year (at least), for a given region, ie 'climate'.
More recent figure, from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/:
Does seem to be a trend...
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }
Bob, you seem to have misunderstood me. I used local weather as a convenient way to introduce the idea of error bars in prediction of future trends.
For global warming, see my point on the North West Passage. Since my earlier post, I checked wikipedia and it seems that they can now get cruise ships through during the end of the summer. Also, the North East Passage has opened up enough that a couple of groups have been able to do a polar circumnavigation.
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Yeah I get what you were trying to say about error bars, I just don't think it was a good example. With daily temperatures, the error bars are not going to increase much with time beyond a day or so in the short term. On a seasonal range, they will increase, but again settle down to the long term annual cycle range. There is just so much 'noise' in short-term weather predictions.
I would prefer to give an example where we can make pretty good predictions, like the orbit of an asteroid. As you go further down the track, the uncertainties in measurement do indeed lead to progressively greater range of uncertainty in the estimated position at any given time in the future. Maybe that's going a bit far in the other direction, but I hope you get my point.
There are two distinct problems with predictions, limited precision of measurement of the current state, and then the amount of intrinsic complexity and consequent tendency to chaotic behaviour in the particular context. Weather is particularly problematic in both areas, long term climate not so much on the chaotic variation.
And I do acknowledge your reference to the trend of reducing Arctic ice, which tends to point to the actual large scale temperature changes being toward the high end of the IPCC's 'error bars', at least in Polar regions. This is a problem for deniers - yes, the predictions are uncertain, but they as likely, 'a priori', to under-estimate the problem, as the events in the Arctic suggest.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Depends upon your definition of what is true. Yes, the peak production of light crude oil fields was succesfully predicted. But if you mean oil in general instead of just light crude, there are oil shale deposits which were opened for exploration just a couple years ago that as a minimum have many times more oil than the US has produced so far. In fact some estimates put the total greater than in all Saudi Arabia.
But it is reasonable to let me point out the type of oil for which the prediction was made, no? Besides that heavy crude is being produced by those walking donkey pumps in California at nearly the same rate they did 50 years ago. Half a century later Santa Barbara still has rallies against the off shore oil leaks even though they occurred before there were wells.
And were you to be talking about peak natural gas predictions if they had ever been made we have about 50 times more available now than were proven reserved even twenty years ago. Proven is a key word here. Oil has been so plentiful that new drilling to "prove" more reserves has been at a minimum for nearly 20 years.
Speaking of oil, here is Florida the law prohibits any search for oil so proving reserves here is not possible. If you look at the continental shelf where oil should be you find it would more than double the size of Florida in width. Were it nor for tourism Florida could likely be the largest producing state in the country and perhaps in North America.
Then there is the price of oil. Increasing the price of oil increases the economically recoverable oil at a greater rate than the price increase. A 10% increase in price means a more than 10% increase is recoverable oil. It is the same with all resources.
The oldest "running out of oil" prediction I have read was in Scientific American in 1927 in a "50 years ago" short. The first attempts to drill in Texas were ridiculed because everyone knew oil could not be found in those geological formations. Then Texas became the world's largest producer of oil. Just a few months ago my favorite criminal country, Israel, found itself with so much offshore gas that it was threatening war with Lebanon over it.
Excuse me but peak oil occurred in 2002, 2008, last year and now you tell me it is in the future? How can peak oil be put off so many times and still be of serious concern? It sounds to me like global melting, it is always Manyana, always ten years in the future.
But that is not the way it works. There is no "sharply" in the equation. There is only "sharply" if you add "by the same methods." The methods have always improved not just in quality but in method.
Take off shore oil. In the old days drilling a new well meant building a new rig. Look west off of Santa Barbara to see what I mean. Today a single rig slant drills to other deposits saving the cost of many entire platforms.
When I said that I meant a math function. Can you do it without looking it up?
AND the current population projections are for a peak of 12 billion around 2050 with a declining population after that. In my lifetime starting in 1945 the world popluation has increased from 3 billion to the current 7B with an increasing standard of living around the world. If that can be done then at worst we can weather the 12B peak with a modest decline until the population starts falling again and standard of living can start increasing again.
Food and fuel have NEVER increased linearly and there is no basis for assuming they will suddenly start doing so. Since the Industrial Revolution food and fuel have always increased FASTER than population. In recorded history human population has increased AFTER food production has increased. And that is the Malthus fallacy. He put population before the food when in fact history has shown the food comes before the population.
Infant mortality is largely an uninteresting factor. It is the ability to feed infants that governs their survival. Certainly not dying of things like small pox is dramatic but without good nutrition simple infection and the flu are just as effective in controlling the population. Before modern medicine childhood diseases were always with us yet population always tracked food supply.
Since when does Sarah Palin speak for Muslims? Why does Israel pay hundreds of thousands not to work and to have large, uneducated families? Why pick in Muslims when men wanting to fuck is ubiquitous?
Yes, I meant that exactly as it no longer applies to present population increase yet you used it.
As we are not going to give up electricity the worst case is nuclear power which will be built despite the Jane Fondas of the world. Yes, I know they may not survive a magnitude 9 earthquake followed by a tsunami and a Stuxnet worm. I can live with that and the world will AT THE WORST.
In the best case there is wind, wave, solar and even fusion all of which will be economical by the end of the century. Photovoltaic solar is presently compatible with high end natural gas.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
The world never planned to replace coal with oil. Nor did it plan for nuclear power. A planned economy is a Soviet economy. Do you really want that?
One that did not exist twenty years ago was fracking methane underground which now has enough proven reserves to provide half the US energy requirements for the next fifty years. Proven means only what is known which has always been far from what there is. In fact no effort to find more reserves has failed because sources from other places have been cheape than further exploration.
The higher the price of an energy source for any reason always increases the amount worth producing at a rate higher than the cost increase. And the higher the prices the greater the production of alternate sources. Take just Saudi for example. One the price of oil was high enough it was economically feasible to build the entire infrastructure of liquid natural gas instead of just burning it off at the wellhead.
That required creating an entirely new infrastructure from well head to distribution at the delivery port around the world. That was not cheap. But once oil got over about $50 per bbl for keeps it was an affordable investment. Not only was any a wasted resource moved to the PROVEN column but ... wait for it ... it produces less CO2 per BTU to keep the melters happy -- even though they are still griping. Melters are an ungrateful lot.
No one invited me to a party. I have no idea how sub-Saharan Africa gets into this discussion. AIDS has nothing to do with energy resources. They are people. They make their own choices. They are their own people not White Man's burden. The worst case is an AIDS resistant strain of humans will appear.
I realize you may be a youngster but you might want to look into some of the predictions from the 50s and 60s and even 70s on the SAME dire consequences for China and India because of their rapid population growths. I have heard it all before. I have seen reality intrude upon the apocalypic curmudgeons' Schadenfreude.
That is the way it is supposed to be. It is a measure if the uncertainty of the prediction not of the possible outcome. It would be the same wtih any stock prediction at any time.
Fifty years ago a prediction of the value of IBM would be from bankrupt to owning the world. The error is of the prediction not of the fact.
In fact England is now having the coldest summer in decades. Must be warming. But I have identified at least 13 years of lies or junk science with the "10 years or it is too late" predictions.
The worst of it is the theology of it all. We live in "the best of all possible worlds" in regards to climate. Any change is for the worse. Question is, when was it the best? 1870? 1900? 1950? 1990?
A canoe is not a cargo ship which still cannot do it. But in a world which is not the best shipping time from England to China is reduced by 75% or so. But that cannot possibly be an improvement as we presentely live in the best of all possible worlds.
I have had a running joke from the early 80s when global melting started to replace the coming Ice Age from the same causes. It is not very funny. It is simply that I claim to have purchased the palm tree franchise for Washington DC where I lived at the time. Therefore I want melting so I can get rich selling palm trees in DC.
More practically a study of gravity effects on the oceans indicates that the global average sea level will rise if the Greenland glaciers melt. But if they do the sea level around Greenland will decrease 70 feet and it gets all that dry farmland with a temperate climate. So any rational resident of Greenland is all in favor of global melting.
That sure beats selling palm trees to congressrats. So which is the best of all possible worlds and why do we live in it and in which past year was it the best of the best all possible worlds?
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
The TREND for world pop was 60B in 2050. Where is it now?
From mid 20th c. we have 1 degree Fahrenheit. We all have greater fluctuations per day not to mention per month or per year or per half century. So what? More people die from extreme cold than extreme heat. How many people did not die because of this increase? Why do you have a problem with them not dying?
You can't just throw up something and say WOW! Explain your work as you were told in grade school. What the hell is it supposed to mean and why do I care?
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
What is the economic value of the tourism?
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
@ A_Nony_Mouse
While in theory you are correct, the purchasing power of gov/corp and the occasional need to sell of inventory scews the numbers. Did you know that (at least a year ago, not sure what's happened since) the US has almost all the Helium left on Earth, and is looking to get rid of it at ridiculously low price just so they don't have to keep storing it?
That is just one element we are running out of. There are many metals that are supporting the technology we enjoy today that are also running out. Oil isn't even the biggest problem. Yes, we depend on it significantly, but it wouldn't end all society to run out of it or pay more per barrel. If we run out of certain metals though, there's nowhere left to get them except space. But we need those metals to get to space.
Btw, here in the so-called great white north, we had the warmest summer since 1926. That more than counters Britains cool summer. I mention this not because either fact actually means anything, but because you seem to think it does
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Yep, 'global warming' is about the total heat content of the ocean/atmosphere system, which cannot change significantly in daily or seasonal terms, and is not in any way contradicted by any local or short term variations, so referring to such variations utterly misses the point, whether it is happening or not.
The problems are not particularly about hotter days stressing people out, but about geographical changing patterns of climate shifting the viability of species of animals and plants in a given area, as well as rising sea-levels due to thermal expansion. One worry is that large areas of currently productive land, especially closer to the equator, will progressively get warmer and drier and less viable for food crops.
And the problem of rising CO2 is not just climate, but ocean acidification, as more CO2 dissolves in the ocean, which is having measurable effects on the ability of life in the sea to form calcium carbonate based shells and structures of all kinds, so impacting corals and all kinds of shell-fish, among others. Interestingly, if the temperature doesn't rise as much as predicted, and the oceans don't warm so much, acidification due to CO2 will get slightly worse, since gases dissolve more readily in cooler water.
And of course population is going to be sensitive to a whole different set of factors, so referring to 'failures' of predicted population trends is, again, utterly irrelevant to the potential reliability or inevitability of climate change predictions.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Let me just preface what I'm about to say with a little dose of where I'm coming from. I know people are going to assume I'm a tree hugger etc after this, so let me just say that's not the case. I'm a city dweller, not a member of green peace or PETA (someone please shoot me if I ever join) I don't wear birkenstocks or drive a Subaru Outback. I spend most of my time inside, tho I like to get outside and experience the world on a semi regular basis.
If we're going to DOUBLE the population from just a few years ago (ASSUMING that's as far as we go) it seems like there are going to be some severe effects on this planet. What about the effects on nature? Habitats for animals are disappearing all over the world at our current rate. This may sound alarmist, but to my eyes humans are creating a mini mass-extinction that will most certainly stretch out over the next hundred years at least. I'm sure someone will put up a bunch of studies and figures showing how I'm wrong, but to me this is just common sense. It's something that you see all the time if you watch the news, and nature shows on discovery, and Nat Geo. Humans ARE having an adverse effect on thousands of species of animals already. Once the population booms even more and we spread out further and further into what used to be their habitats, we can only expect this to get worse.
Let me put a little of my personal experience into this discussion. When I was a kid I moved around quite a bit (military brat) and had relatives spread out across different areas of the eastern US. I remember living near Baltimore as a kid (from 3yo til about 8yo ) and though we lived in a suburban area, it was a sleepy little suburb, with lots of trees, and open areas. Every time I go back, I'm struck by the fact that all those woods we used to play and get lost in as a kid are GONE. Where everyone used to have a minimum of a half acre of land in our neighborhood, and we were surrounded by woods, now it's ALL been built on. Where there used to be more woods than people's property, now it's typical suburban McNeigborhoods, and strip malls as far as the eye can see. Traveling all around the US I see this every time I revisit some place I went as a child. People just keep on building shit where there used to be nature. Even half way up the population ladder towards 12b.... it's already sad.
So obviously here I'm talking about urban sprawl. Obviously the bulk of the world's population is going to be concentrated more in the areas where things are good. Take a look at a map of the US, now look at satellite photos of the world at night... it's easy to see where we're all concentrated. Now imagine all the people spreading out into the countryside. Taking up a LOT of that green land that's left. I can imagine taking my great grand kids to a state park before I die, and having to explain to them what nature is, and that it used to be all over the place. Now it's fenced off, and all we have is the spots we thought to preserve with national parks and the like.
I think after seeing recent advances in genomics, and listening to the scientists talk about what we can hope to prevent and cure in the near future, this population growth may get even steeper. Life expectancies are about to take a leap forward. I don't think that's a good thing. Give me 75 good years and I'm good. The ONLY reasons I would want to stay alive longer is to be there for/see what happens to loved ones, and see what cool technology is in the works. I remember hearing a scientist making a guess as to what's possible in the near future as far as life expectancies, and he said he couldn't see any reason that it wouldn't become common to see people living to 120! That's frickin ridiculous IF true. Even if that's an inflated number I see serious problems coming. Where are we going to house all these old ****ers? Who's gonna take care of them all? Who could possibly pay for it all? They sure as hell won't since they'll have been past viable working age for decades longer than normal by the end. If we can't pay to house them all as a society they will be cared for by severely undermanned, underfunded facilities. Conditions in many nursing homes now are appalling. I've seen it with my own eyes working closely with that field for a while. Imagine how much worse it will get. The baby boomers are just now getting ready to explode the nursing home / assisted living population. It will only get worse if life expectancies go up a good 10 years or more. Factor in the uncertainty surrounding social security and there's a good chance ALL OF US AND OUR CHILDREN WILL BE THOSE OLD FOLKS BEING CARED FOR IN THOSE CONDITIONS!
In the end I think it's obvious to those not blinded by Right wing drivel that humans are having a profound effect on the world and our environment. Much of it negative. I think it's monumentally, profoundly stupid to do anything other than assume that won't come around to bite us collectively in the ass. I'm not saying the sky is falling, I'm saying the future as it stands without some form of population control measures put in place soon, is bound to lead to some very undesirable outcomes. Those outcomes will probably come in the form of a combination of things already talked about here and some others that haven't even been discussed. We may start running out of resources like certain metals, and having to resort to desperate measures to mine them back out of our landfills, maybe climate change, maybe other things. Maybe a peak then a fall of population, so that a lot of the urban sprawl that gets built then is abandoned and unused. That way it can sit and rot where nature should have been in the first place.
I think at some point some unpleasant discussions are going to have to be had, where we collectively decide what are ethical and practical solutions to the problem before it gets bad. I foresee some form of the 1 baby rule, like China has, being instituted nearly world wide at some point. I would actually be for it now. You can't depend on people to control the population themselves.
"They always say the same thing; 'But evolution is only a theory!!' Which is true, I guess, and it's good they say that I think, it gives you hope that they feel the same about the theory of Gravity and they might just float the f**k away."