[KaiserJeep]

I cannot disagree with what you said, Newfie. However, I have to point out that you are using hindsight - those 7.3B folks are here already and the ecosphere is dying already.

I happen to think that changing humanity is hard, probably the hardest thing mentioned yet. But it is possible to expand into space without doing so, while this planet dies behind us.

Then if we have not changed in the few thousand years before the number of space colonies exceeds the carrying capacity of this our first solar system, we expand into the galaxy, and after that, other galaxies.

[Shaved Monkey]

Im an Eco Doomer who believes permaculture can deliver a some kind of cornicopian dream for some in the transition and post collapse, but cant feed the billions already here, because if you do, they will breed some more, until you cant.
I love a good luddite solution,gravity fed watering,rocket stove,wood fired oven,solar hot water,collecting my own drinking water,growing mulch,making soil,growing food,catching fish.
Also a little fond of tech too,solar panels, computer,cruise control, power steering and air con in my car ,electric bikes,espresso coffee machine,fridges freezers,satellite TV,most electrical things in general.
Just enjoying it while I can afford it while preparing for when I cant.
If it doesnt collapse as bad as expected, then I got more money and tech to do what I want.

[SeaGypsy]

Neo Ludditeism anyone? Check out some of the closed loop fish farming technology for instance- brilliant in my book. There is still an enormous waste of resources of most kinds going on. Food production could still be much higher yield than average agriculture permits. If the captain and crew were to get their acts together- we might be enjoying a much happier journey!

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'T')ry 1 cellphone in 15 years - an old Motorola analog flip-phone. Problem was my boss kept calling me to make all his decisions for him. So I reduced my communications to E-Mail, I don't carry around a phone, and believe that those who use them in public are rude. Those that sit in public texting are doubly rude. Instead I carry around a Nook E-Reader that is WiFi-enabled, and check mail once an hour or so, when I'm not sitting at my desk. I do have a disposable prepaid phone in my Jeep, still with unbroken packaging after 3 years, because I have not broken down. (I used to carry pre-paid phone cards, when there were still public telephones.)

If you want to ignore technological progress, feel free. But an old analog TV uses 3X the power of a new HDTV of the same screen size, and twice the power of the modestly larger flatscreens most people replace them with. Just as old PCs used to come with power supplies such as 500 watts to 750 watts for power users, but most use 250 watt supplies today with spare power available.

In fact each generation of phones, TVs, appliances, etc. uses less power and fewer materials than the last - because me and my fellow engineers are working to those ends constantly. Hang onto your stuff as long as you want - but having an old furnace or refrigerator or in fact any major appliance is not doing you or anybody else any favors - it is consuming more energy than required for the task and could have been recycled into more devices, while removing toxic substances from the world around us.

Hang onto those old analog TVs long enough, and you will face a toxic waste surcharge to dispose of them, because they have solder containing lead. Presently there is free recycling for these items, but California has a bill to make a $500 toxic surcharge. All too often, where California leads, the nation follows. Still using an old CRT monitor? Same $500 for anything lacking the "RoHS" seal.

You people can avoid thinking about our real problems if you wish, but I call you on intellectual dishonesty. If you want to wear long hair, dirty jeans, and love one another, you are not helping to "save the planet", you are ignoring our problems while making them worse. Just as leading a pious life while obeying the instructions of the Catholic Pope or the Dalai Lama or Ron Hubbard is not gonna help solve our very real problems.

I think anyone who is a Forum member here knows that we have real problems needing real solutions. Our planet is now midway through the sixth major die-off of plant and animal species. We are losing the biodiversity faster than any time since the "Dinosaur Killer" asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula 65 Million years ago. 7.3 Billion humans are the cause. SOME of the possible reactions would be:

1) Ignore the whole thing, have a dozen kids, hundreds of grand-kids. Don't think about the deadly legacy your generation leaves behind.
2) The genocide of at least 90% of the human race to "save the planet".
3) The colonization of space, before, during, or after the die-off of the Earth.

There must be others. But first, you have to admit that there is a problem.

[KaiserJeep]

I know you are sincere in what you say, but the real transition was from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting. The two signal formats differed in resolution, screen shape, and audio formats. The new digital channels also allow multiple embedded sub-channels in the older 480i format. Here in the SF Bay area, the new HDTV channels (we had 25) followed the unofficial standard of broadcasting a standard definition version of the main High Definition signal on sub-channel #1, a convenience for those with analog sets and converter boxes.

In my case, I had been viewing DVDs since 1999 on a high resolution digital display - an LCD video projector driven by a PC - all I did was add a $140 tuner board to that PC, and I had a 90" high definition image. I had been a Home Theater enthusiast since I got my first projector in 1984, a used triple-CRT analog projector, and projected a 10' diagonal image on a queen sized bedsheet.

You sensing where this is going? I was an enthusiastic promoter of HDTV, I converted dozens of friends, neighbors, and relatives to the digital standard. I still have that projector and multiple flatscreens, although I understand your argument I would never consider analog displays "usable" for HDTV.

Also understand that all elderly electronics contains lead in the solder, many devices also contain mercury, cadmium, and other toxics, and people were disposing of electronics in landfills, which was polluting groundwater with difficult-to-remove heavy metals. California's new legislation is an intent to finally end this problem - the $500 recycling fee for old TVs or stereos or 8-tracks or whatever obsolete tech people are hanging onto will be heavily publicised, and you can buy a new flatscreen for half the recycling fee for the older set, hopefully most people will move at that time to avoid the recycling fee, and analog TVs can go into museums with Edison phonographs and film projectors.

One of my HDTV sets is 8 years old already. It replaced a completely functional analog 27" Sony VVega that I had paid $850 for in 1998. I hung on to the old set in a back bedroom, then realized I was never going to use it again.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')
I happen to think that changing humanity is hard, probably the hardest thing mentioned yet. But it is possible to expand into space without doing so, while this planet dies behind us.

[KaiserJeep]

Thank you for your thoughtful comments, Ibon. However this might be one of those topics where the US in particular differs from most other countries.

From the original Revolutionary War up until the beginning of the 20th Century, the US had an expanding Western border, and a Western frontier. This had a decided impact on US culture, if one were disadvantaged economically, one could pile all your possessions into a wagon and go West, homesteading Federal property which if you met some rather lax standards became owned by the homesteader.

After a couple of brief conniptions called WW1 and WW2, our new frontier was the state of Alaska. Alaskan homesteading continued until the 1970's, and is still possible after a fashion although now you must buy the land and all the best spots have been taken - by petroleum and gold prospectors as well as homesteaders.

We need a new frontier, and space is that frontier. I am certain that a large percentage of those that move into space colonies will be Americans. Note that - far from being a cultural change - this is a continuation of a 250-year-old cultural tradition.

[SeaGypsy]

The longer KJ hangs around here the more folks will understand why of the hundreds of posters in thousands of posts I have responded to here he is the only one I have wound up dismissing with a 2 word expletive.

[KaiserJeep]

The two of you both seem unhealthily obsessed with doom and gloom. I've noticed that about other Forum members as well. They appear to be about evenly split between those that hold out no hope and those that do.

I believe humans are the most adaptable animals on Earth, because of our intelligence and the present level of technology and knowledge that we possess. Yet I too believe that this planet - or at least the present set of species inhabiting it, are pretty much doomed. I don't think there is anything any of us can do except move elsewhere, and let the Luddites perish in their own wastes.

But the problem and the solution are both long term. I don't expect to deal with the impacts of the Oil Peak other than the slow escalation of the cost of living that started decades ago and continues today. My kid will deal with more, and her kids will have serious problems.

Now a message for both of you:

"Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before." - Gene Roddenberry, 1987

Some of us have never doubted the new frontier is space. We are going to make it work, in spite of the doubters among us.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')
We need a new frontier, and space is that frontier. I am certain that a large percentage of those that move into space colonies will be Americans. Note that - far from being a cultural change - this is a continuation of a 250-year-old cultural tradition.

[Synapsid]

Ibon:

"Our planet is not under any threat of total biosphere collapse."

Thanks for stating that. The impression I get from reading at this site is that this is not at all widely understood. We aren't going to destroy the biosphere, couldn't if we tried, but we are bringing about a world that will be a lot less comfortable than the one we've been living in, and that's for many species besides our own. Some won't make it at all.

(How many liters of blood did you donate, on that canoe trip, to our six-legged two-winged friends up there?)

[Newfie]

Synapsid,

Just to be clear, Some here do believe that we are facing total collapse of the biosphere. They can and do make some pretty strong arguments.

I don't want to drag this thread down that path, but if you are interested look for the methane thread.

runaway-global-warming-has-arrived-pt-7-t66638.html

I'm not interjecting a personal opinion one way or the other, just saying it is still open to debate.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Synapsid', ' ')We aren't going to destroy the biosphere, couldn't if we tried, but we are bringing about a world that will be a lot less comfortable than the one we've been living in, and that's for many species besides our own. Some won't make it at all.

(How many liters of blood did you donate, on that canoe trip, to our six-legged two-winged friends up there?)

[Newfie]

Cool stuff Ibon. I've read some about that land, quite amazing.

I really like Farley Mowat.

Which brings me meandering back towards topic.

I would suggest all to read Sea of Slaughter by Farley. It is a detestable tale of how Western culture has stripped, depleted, destroyed every resource it has come across.

This destruction was only possible because of various advances in technology. While the tales told go back over hundreds of years it is always the same tale repeated, and being repeated again today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_o ... od_fishery

One example, not in the book, is the Bison. Nearly eliminated because of our misuse of guns and the railroad.

Within our lifetime is the similar depletion and near extinction of Atlantic cod, due to the development and deployment of trawls. Boats were paid a premium for large fish, so they threw back any fish below premium size. Thus the wastage was something like five pounds of dead fish for every pound delivered to the dock.

Canada declared a moratorium on cod in 1992, but our over exploitation was so great that there has yet been only very small improvement. Somehow we mucked up the whole eco system balance.

Somewhere I read a quote from a Canadian, back around 1870, when the first motor powered boats came into use. It was along the lines of "This is not good, with these boats we will be so efficient we will ruin the fishing." It took 120 years, but he was right.

The technology is just wood and steel and plastic and silicone. The hand on the wheel is human, pure human.

The tragedy of the commons is our prevailing meme. Until we can do otherwise, AS A SPECIES, we have screwed ourselves. In Europe, in North America, in Australia, or in space.

[SeaGypsy]

I approve your engagement with this troll Ibon- but that's what it is. Even Rune seems to have switched meme's to be more focused on one which carries a lot more credibility than his previous one. Maybe in time KJ will change- but at 62 years old, I doubt it. He wants to live in a fantasy which he has no chance of being a part of even in the extremely unlikely event. There is still a heck of a lot of wilderness in some parts of the world, going there and hooking up a camel or 2 and a home made buggy is doable, people do still- disappear into the bush. It's a very long way from dead and will be long after KJ.

[Synapsid]

Newfie:

Of course it's still open for debate, but the debate that matters for our understanding is going on in the professional literature, not the BBC or the New Yorker. Look in Science, and Nature Geoscience instead.
A good nonprofessional source of information is Science News, which reports on the professional literature.

As to the New Yorker, I've been a subscriber since Winter 1963. The science articles used to be top flight, and those occasional ones by John McPhee still are, but Elizabeth Kolbert uses secondary sources of information (like Diamond's [superb] book Guns, Germs and Steel) too uncritically. She's often leaning toward being alarmist.

The BBC's science coverage is more often than not abysmal in quality.

Methane release is a potent factor, yes. I've been concerned about it since the early 1980s. We need to know how much the permafrost can yield, and just what conditions will cause, and allow, the release. These are subjects of research right now and will continue to be. Canada's boreal forest is expanding nicely northward into the tundra, and we're seeing that there is not a simple pattern to the ecological responses to this expansion. There hasn't been too much Oh-My-God-ing from the workers on these problems except from the team that announced the methane bubbling out on a huge scale on the East Siberian Continental Shelf, and even that has not been widely echoed by other workers.

Try looking through the website Skeptical Science for pieces on methane release. There's a strong requirement that references be provided in comments there.

[SeaGypsy]

As that particular polarity does Synapsid, I'm with you well and truly. Somehow these utter doom through climate wipeout people seem to think the economy will tootle along just fine until the last scrapings of FF's are pulled from the Earth and burned. The meme 'peak oil' is intrinsically connected to trouble getting going at peak, not when the stuff runs out. We are at peak, plateau nonetheless. Trouble has begun big time. Those pretending otherwise are just pretending- if there was no connection there would not be QE Infinity going on and a few technical fixes after the 2008 crisis would have sorted things out by now. Even with QEI and more than a few bailouts, technofixes and money printing near frenzy- trouble never ending. That's peak oil. Arab Spring- ELM- peak oil. Pump and barrel price- peak oil. Who said "It's the economy stupid!"?

I'm not discounting climate science or the many ecological calamities in our era. I am totally discounting the idiocy of people who think Mars is starting to look good compared to where the Earth will be in any conceivable time period.