Bush to Planet Earth: "Drop Dead!"

Perfect! I like Ghoti. We are talking about a huge event that the industrial age is a nano second of. On a micro level yes we can pollute and be nasty, but for a macro effect, industrialization is just a gnat landing in the ocean (minimal effect at best). I believe we should take care of the environment. But to think we are the root cause of global warming is merely pompous conjecture. The world changes all the time. That’s how it works.
I grew up in the 70’s I remember how dirty the coast was. I see the same coast now and it’s pristine in comparison. We have taken steps to clean up, and we should continue. But to think that one US administration is the issue, and that if you ride a bike instead of drive a truck makes a difference is just not on target. Being so called “green” now a days is trendy and makes people feel good, but amounts to very little, all be it well intentioned.

BTW I heard that the US has more forest now than when the US was founded. If I am wrong on that I apologize in advance.

Be Good!
Pulaski Fizz

After hearing that part about you actually believing that hte us has more forest now then when it was founded makes anything you say invalid.

Id like to see true support of this - Even the ones the governement are trying to silence are not claiming billions will die. (I have spoken at length with people who read the unedited version of the report given the Bush administration)

Considering the US produces today many times the necessary food calories than it would take to feed every citizen.

And the Fact that the entire US population could live in a space the size of Indiana.

I would be reasonable certian billions will not die unless , possibly, we continue to ignore global warming as it gets worse.

This is not to say that the concsequences arent severe.

I am just reasonably certain of two things with reguard to this particular global warming as is in process.

Billions will not die.

Humanity will not become extinct.

Besides that its going to be a huge problem.

Thus I stated "I heard that" but was unsure. So if you have a fact otherwise great. Please inform me and I will stand corrected.

I do find it sad that you seem very quick to judge all I said based on one statement I had that I even stated I was unsure of.

Puli

That's going to be tricky since a wildly unstable climate means that the things you could try to live off of tend to die. You may be great at finding food sources, but you can't conjure them out of thin air with a wave of your hands.

But sure, any people with skills that enable them to find their own food and water (relying on absolutely no powered machinery) probably have much better chances of survival overall. The fact remains that the overwhelming majority are going to die.

Country boys have something of a difficulty synthesising human insulin. Purifying and refining penicillin. Medical grade water? Blood dialysis? X-ray machines?

Many people owe their lives to medicine and medical advancements that were never made possible by country folk. Many country folk owe their lives to those medical advancements. Country boys can survive, but can they survive in ignorance an STD that takes five to seven years to incubate and destroys the immune system? Can a country girl survive a sexually transmitted virus that induces a cancer in women that is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women? Country boy can survive an onslaught of contact-passed flesh-eating virus with a three day incubation period in a tight community?

Yes, humans survived the Middle Ages. Life expectancy then was 30 years - that's the /mean/ life expectancy, where fifty percent of the population could expect to die. Thirty was /old/, Sixty /ancient/. Today we live to seventy five on the mean.

We also have a lot of people alive who wouldn't be alive if it weren't for medical advancements, who have children who wouldn't be alive if not for medical advancements.

Unless you, your parents, and your grandparents survived their lives without major medical care, vaccinations, antibiotics - there's a really good chance that you are dependent upon some development of modern medicine, even if it's merely a vaccine. Chances are good your children will be too - and if they can't get that vaccine ...

never said they wouldn't sadly, just that humanity will not cease to exist since some of us have not given up our natural instincts for highrise apartments and Prada shoes

hmm you mention insulin, did you know I don't know a diabetic? Not a single one. STD's don't spread that well in the country due to a number of factors; distance, on average country folk aren't promisquos, we do create our own medicines from local herbs and such, purifing water is actually not required to survive, the list goes on. Now tell me what does adapting to the changes in the land have to do with medicine? Oh I know, you are offended by the fact that city dwellers are not as fit to adaptation. Tell me, do you know how to hunt an animal for food without doing a google search first? How to clean and make the most out of it?

Life expectancy numbers have always been grossly over simplified in the study of History.

30 wasnt any older in 2000 BC , the Middle Ages , or Now - It was simply the numerous way you could die to disease made it less likely you would statistically see 30.

A big influence in those statistics was the fact so many died before reaching adulthood.

60 year olds were far more uncommon but in a healthy person they were no older or less fit than they are now.

Most 30 year olds in Modern Society have never benifited from life saving treatments. the same is True for a good portion of 60 year olds

In fact in many cultures living 30 year old and 60 year olds were potentially healthier than those living now in the US - due to our horrible american diet and lack of exercise.

Sure. Here's a primer on overpopulation and carrying capacity: http://dieoff.org/page112.htm. I invite you to read that and educate yourself.



Oh, I was really sidetracking to address overpopulation. Of course, the effects of global warming (and we're only seeing the leading edge now -- the impacts of our relatively benign early behavior) certainly stand to hasten things, but it's hard to say which factor will get us first. There's also the energy crisis to consider, after all.

Still, on global warming, a fun fact: the last time this planet saw emissions comparable to those humans have generated was 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when eruptions in Siberia pushed the global temperature up 10 degrees (this kind of thing is relatively rare, but obviously it can happen). What happened that time was that the polar ice and tundra melted, releasing gas hydrates that then caused runaway warming. Almost everything living died, and basically, biology took a 10-million-year "time out."

So in other words, the one other example of a time with emissions like we have today resulted ultimately in a near total extinction of the entire planet.

I try to avoid speculation. My reasonings are based on research and factual information. I may be wrong in any given instance, but I do try to avoid being wrong simply because I said "I think ..." without really having any clue what I was talking about.

This is terrible, but I feel life is such a bitch getting from day to day that all this seems totally beyond my power. I hate multi-nationals and I blame them for stripping the world's resources for cash, it's only them and their share holders that have the power to stop it and that ain't going to happen. I drive a small car and use public transport, I recycle and don't waste electricity in my home but it's still happening.

I have read other studies that do not agree with the one you sited about a maximum carrying capacity. True carrying capacity is influenced by economy and technology, of course.

Additionally as global warming got worse it is not unreasonable that population controls (which can be done, obviously, there is evidence) will become stringent.

Actually they are not sure what cuased the Permian Extinctions there are many theories, some point to warming and others to evidence of cooling.

http://park.org/Canada/Museum/extinction/permcause.html
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Permian/intro.html#cause

What other sources? The paper I referred you to specifically explains why neither technology nor (especially) the economy determines carrying capacity. Did you honestly read it? It's really just common sense that a finite planet can support finite people, but the paper specifically addressed what you just mentioned.

Name your sources. I'm not going to just take your word for it.



Good. Actual named sources. I don't have time now, but I'll peek in later to read them.

What people are overlooking is this:

What man will do to his fellow man will be as tragic, if not moreso, than the immediate natural results of global warming, once those effects have taken place. Panic will set in, anarchy will reign, and billions WILL die; if not solely from the effects of Global Warming, than the collapse of the civilized world under the strain of an entire planet of people, helpless to stop what they started.

I have plenty of data that testifies to the fact that rural populations have the same or better rate of STD spread as urban populations - and that the rate of infection is directly attributable to lack of education, not to religious affiliation or piety. Promiscuity isn't any different in rural populations than urban populations - it's merely less talked about and more under societal pressure to keep quiet about, which hinders - significantly - efforts to track down infected individuals to inform them of their status. Ignorance as to methods of preventing the spread of STD's - because of a refusal to discuss them or condone them - costs tens or hundreds of thousands of people their health and lives even now, in a relatively open and free discussion-tolerant society because pockets and subcultures perpetuate myths, superstition, and ignorance.

Herbal medicines have never yet dealt with HIV, nor HPV, nor Ebola. Ebola is contact. HIV can be transmitted through a simple open wound or by an emergency medical transfusion. Science has handled more effectively and with far greater success major epidemics than applying herbal remedies has.

Pure water is required to irrigate a wound or incision - granted, really pure water is easily made from a solar still. It's also necessary for intravenous transfusions, cleaning, washing, rinsing...

If you don't know a single diabetic, you're the exception and not the rule.

And - I caught with my own walking stick, handled, killed, skinned, stripped, cleaned and gutted, and cooked an Eastern Diamondback when I was twelve - hooray Explorer Scouts! My father taught me to field strip and clean a modern pistol, I can field strip and clean most rifles and shotguns and have measured and packed my own ammunition and know better than to handle shot with bare hands. I know where to put the arrow flight to humanely drop the hart and have my own recipe for venison chili. I've slaughtered a pig and dressed it with my own knife (I own about five and sharpen them myself).

I can run a trot line, trout line, snare, trap and hunt. I have my grandmother's sewing machine and have and can make my own clothes, spin and weave, card, dye, preserve or tan leather, have worked a bellows, know how to forge iron and can teach it (but I can't lift that hammer - that's for strong men, and I'm neither) - have swordfought and made armour, built shelter, built a house, raised a barn, and contradanced in it afterwards. I can engineer "simple" machines (if compound and simple bows are simple machines, if trebuchets are simple machines). My favorite country song is John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" - and I have more book-larnin' education than %99.95 of the population. My childhood was spent in both my mother's world of countryfolk and my father's world of modern academics.

I can more than meet you halfway. Can you more than meet me halfway? Now that we've established the "More Goth^w Country than Thou" credentials ...

hehe you are alright in my book
<places check mark beside nice AND naughty >

Oh, absolutely. I agree, and please forgive my saying so, but I took that into account, too. It's meaningless to try to convince people of that, though, when they're still in "it's not that bad" mode.

Yes I read it it doesnt mean I agreed with the assertions.

This was a topic in both Envronmental goology and Earth Science I took in college those sourses were print (before internet)
There was a good article in Time about 15 years ago -
Ill find some others. (recent electronic internets ones) - it may be surprising but research didnt start in 1996.

Of course technology and Economy matter. Do you honestly beleive, for example the US is producing its limit of food at the current time? Or that 1500 years ago we could have supported the number of people on earth we do today.

Especially when prime farmland has shopping malls and airports sitting on it?

I thought I was absolutely in love, reading all this.

Until the John Denver part.

That, plus John Denver was a Country Boy, too.

A lot of that would depend on how fast the warming takes place, how fast disasters increase and how fast food shortages happen.

Additionally on if there was an ordered response to the issues.

If for example 20% of all arable land disapears in 1 year and major cities flood in a similar time - Panic will be huge as you suggest.

If it takes 20 the panic will be much more controlable.


I am not a person saying its not all that bad - I am trying to say the Earth dying or billions dying simply from global warming is an extreme veiw.

It does not take into account there may be solutions to survive reductions in food production and relocation from inhabited coastlines.

Note I consider those major issues .

He was. He loved nature and the country. He didn't write that song - the man who played the fiddle for him wrote that song. I wish I could play that song. *laughs*

I'm pretty handy with a blade, familiar with edible flora and how to prepare certain fauna. I'm handy with a bow, experienced with herbal medicines (comes with being Pagan) and have a bit of a gift for jury-rigging something out of nothing.

But, I wear contact lenses. Sure, my glasses will last longer, but what if they break?

L$2

there, I put it my L$2

I never even thought of going that route. A huge percentage of our population has hereditary myopia or astigmatism or needs visual correction by the age of twenty-five. I couldn't see a squirrel to shoot it if I didn't have my glasses. I can't even read the office name sign ten feet from me without them. I've needed them since I was sixteen and I have mostly astigmatism and I refuse contact lenses. Grinding and polishing lenses isn't terribly technically hard, unless you're correcting astigmatism.