[kanon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '.') . . When you consider how novel our situation is of living without constraints, just a mere couple of generations, it shouldn't be surprising that we are failing as miserably as we are. One would think that it would take hundreds of generations to instill a set of cultural self regulating mechanisms around consumption. We have only been in this situation for a couple of generations. Come on, let's give Kudzu Ape the benefit of the doubt here! As I mentioned above the returning of constraints back into our collective lives, as a result of the consequences of overshoot, will create another novel situation for these past couple of generations that have been living without them. On top of that we will have the hindsight of our hubris and excesses. This creates the basis for change and transition. Nothing else will. That is the foundation of my thesis that consequences acting as constraints is the only catalytic force remaining to move our culture forward toward a direction of self regulation. That will make us a remarkable species if we succeed. The first species to use culture as a self regulating force. . .

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'E')xactly, an Opinion Editorial. Exactly how many of you read it through and considered the arguments inside? Show of hands, please.

[KaiserJeep]

kanon, I don't know who you are and I don't recall us ever exchanging comments here before, but I never saw anybody string together so many outrageous distortions and untruths in two short paragraphs. Sadly, I recognise this behavior as the epitome of the unthinking, closed minded AGW fanboy. For you I have only one question (already understanding your stance on most topics we have not even discussed). That question is how did you come to hate your fellow humans enough to want to withhold the necessities of life from them, while you wallow in an overabundance of those very same things?

Keith, you readily admit you still haven't read my first post, you imply that you understand every argument within that text, and you are belligerent about wanting to debate the topic of AGW with me. Thank you for making my point about how closed minded people are on this topic. I'm sorry to have misled you but I no longer debate climate change, because I have never changed anybody's mind and never observed anybody change their mind, and all that useless debate bores the hell out of me.

There were several points to Ripley's OpEd. One was that was that in spite of the actual temperature moving opposite to the predictions, those whose personal incomes depend upon producing climate models will not stop predicting Doom. They are entering the third decade of denial of that really inconvenient truth, which is that the globe simply isn't warming as predicted, instead it is warming precisely along the much slower rate predicted by the Milankovitch cycles. The thing that amazes me is that they deny the reality they exist in while calling AGW skeptics "denialists". They deny nature and abuse the principles of Science with their behavior.

I could go on and on, but it is approaching that time when I need to arise and prepare the wife's breakfast so that she can work another fourteen or sixteen hour day preparing tax filings. After that, I'll log on to my other computer and give another day's effort into caring for the computers that count all the forms of money the world over. I am starting to taper off my personal workload and spend an hour or so a day house hunting online.

Ripley's OpEd is an excellent summary of where we are and where we need to go. For those of you who have not read it even yet, I can only ask WHY NOT? Are you that afraid of the ideas it contains?

The most subversive concept in the whole thing is that giant elephant in the room, whispering that we can live and prosper with climate change, but when we run out of fossil fuels to burn, almost all of us are going to die. You all know this already, you just prefer not to discuss it.

[GHung]

KJ: "One was that was that in spite of the actual temperature moving opposite to the predictions, those whose personal incomes depend upon producing climate models will not stop predicting Doom."

Funny how those either in denial or on the fence regarding climate change will latch onto something like this but will invalidate mountains of evidence to the contrary. They'll ignore the very real processes of latent heat (it takes far more heat energy to melt ice than to raise the temperature of water. A glass of ice water can remain at the freezing point for a long time while adding enough heat to raise liquid water several degrees). The processes of heating the deep ocean waters and the changing thermo-haline cycle are also ignored as if they aren't important. Deniers accusing climate change folks of ignoring data is a clear case of pots calling kettles black. Over-simplifying extemely complex processes to fit one's world view reveals a weak, cowardly mind.

[KaiserJeep]

GHung, there are no cowards greater than those that deny that most basic truth: you can be an advocate for mankind, or for the Earth. I have confronted this simple binary choice and decided that I am a supporter of mankind. I consciously work to preserve BAU, even though I understand that humans are killing the planet faster than any other disaster the globe has faced in a couple of billion years. Seven billion humans on one planet is an extinction event.

We will as a race either die on the Earth or leave it and survive. In a geological age, the planet will be a nice place to live again.

True denialists will deny our approaching doom and pretend we can survive. You can't stand the truth.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ')I have confronted this simple binary choice and decided that I am a supporter of mankind.

[GHung]

KJ: "I have confronted this simple binary choice".

Reducing this to an either/or choice is creating a false choice. I find it rather absurd.

[kanon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '.') . . Sadly, I recognise this behavior as the epitome of the unthinking, closed minded AGW fanboy. . . . how did you come to hate your fellow humans enough to want to withhold the necessities of life from them . . .

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'K')eith, you readily admit you still haven't read my first post, you imply that you understand every argument within that text, and you are belligerent about wanting to debate the topic of AGW with me.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kanon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '.') . . When you consider how novel our situation is of living without constraints, just a mere couple of generations, it shouldn't be surprising that we are failing as miserably as we are. One would think that it would take hundreds of generations to instill a set of cultural self regulating mechanisms around consumption. We have only been in this situation for a couple of generations. Come on, let's give Kudzu Ape the benefit of the doubt here! As I mentioned above the returning of constraints back into our collective lives, as a result of the consequences of overshoot, will create another novel situation for these past couple of generations that have been living without them. On top of that we will have the hindsight of our hubris and excesses. This creates the basis for change and transition. Nothing else will. That is the foundation of my thesis that consequences acting as constraints is the only catalytic force remaining to move our culture forward toward a direction of self regulation. That will make us a remarkable species if we succeed. The first species to use culture as a self regulating force. . .

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GHung', 'K')J: "I have confronted this simple binary choice".

Reducing this to an either/or choice is creating a false choice. I find it rather absurd.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'T')he information that the higher carbon dioxide levels of the atmosphere have caused an observed increase in greenery of 14% worldwide was news to me

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ')It is a dubious honor at best, to realize that humans are the deadliest thing to ever harm the planetary ecology so far. But you can only be an advocate for the planet by also advocating the genocide of at least 6.3 Billion humans, and I stop short of that position, and consider anybody who is a conscious advocate of "Mother Earth" or whatever other nonsensical term, to be both a genocidal maniac and a hypocrite.

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . . Good one Ibon . . .

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')elcome to KJ's vision of Homo sapiens next stage of evolution

[kanon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'I') never started a particular thread on this but since years I have stated that breaking the resilient status quo will require external inputs via consequences and that any real attempt at addressing the underlying causes are mainly futile. . . .
Constraints are coming back, . . . the descent will be accompanied with a hindsight of looking back at the damage we have done. Constraints will have the power to break through polarities. . . . Those that remain in deep denial will be weeded out of the gene pool where as those individuals / tribes / communities / nations that adapt to constraints will thrive. I am not talking utopic idealism here. It will be a messy combination of enlightened adaptation and quite primitive self preservation.

[PrestonSturges]

I suspect that in the next 20 years it will simply become to easy to commit genocide by bioweapon, even targeting specific ethnic or genetic types.



If you and everyone in your group is starving but immune to this new disease and all you have to do is press one button to get the rest of the world's stuff, how many people could resist.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kanon', '
') I don't think addressing the underlying causes is a futile or wasted effort.
I think there should be a concerted effort to develop and adopt cultural norms that are in harmony with the environment.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Scrub Puller', ' ')personally I believe we all take ourselves far too seriously.

Cheers.

[KaiserJeep]

Honestly, as much as I would like to believe that we could do it, think of what "limiting human population" actually means.

First alternative: We allow status quo to continue, we enter crisis mode when oil becomes too precious to burn for fuel to grow food. Then we are disappointed to discover that somehow every fourth city dweller is not interested in playing in the manure 40 hours a week by working on the old "Permaculture Plantation" and calling the person with the doctorate in Permaculture by his title "Massa". Therefore we abruptly cross over into savagery and make Soylent Green wafers. Seems a non-starter.

Second alternative: We consciously reduce the distribution of oil to developed countries, dehumanize the third World dwellers as Ibon suggests, and allow them to starve via their inability to buy the expensive fuel that the Americas, Europe, and Australia can afford. The First World countries I mentioned are still alive but can - barely - feed themselves. We will have to close our borders, put machine guns on the wall, and then put a "dead or alive" bounty on illegal immigrant scalps, if you follow the logic to the end here. This is while all of us have access to and are observing the suffering of these folks via the Internet. There is a risk that the third world countries such as North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, etc. will start nuclear conflicts. There are risks that India and China will start nuclear conflicts rather than quietly perish. There is a risk that we trash the planet in it's entirety. Seems (unhappily) to be all too credible.

Third alternative: We change our cultural norms, live in harmony with the Earth, freely share everything we have, and happily commit assisted suicide rather than consume the 90% of the modern medicine that today we consume in the final 10% of our lives. We spend a couple of centuries where we have only two children per couple, and the third child makes the whole family illegal (a plot point from a recent SF TV series called Terra Nova). Illegals are forcibly transported into space and become penal colonists, but are then free to have as many children as they wish. Meanwhile the total world population declines rapidly until the sustainable limit is passed on the downswing, and we end up at the agreed upon level, be it 1B or 125M people on the globe.

Other alternatives: Variations and combinations of the above. My head hurts and I'm going to go take a pill and try to sleep.

Whatever happens to the Earth, we have forced a viable portion of humanity into space. There they will enjoy effectively unlimited access to energy and raw materials and living space. The first generation of involuntary "transportees" longs for "Mother Earth" (wince) but the second and subsequent generations would not be caught dead on a dirty, nasty, dangerous, unhealthy PLANET (I mean Yech).

Let me say this: I do not believe - regardless of the incentives to do so - that any of the Earth's humans will modify their cultural norms. Those are the things we have traditionally gone to war to preserve. If that seems funny, then look at the alternatives faced in the middle of the 20th century by blond humans: they could become Nazis, or oppose Nazis. We chose to oppose Hitler and had WW2.

[Pops]

You guys really do have a serious death cult addiction.

The earth is shifting under your favorite cliches, hang on to your walkers! LOL

To some extent women succeeded (by one means or another) in having fewer kids at the onset of the industrial revolution because in the modern world, in a city apartment, more kids are a liability rather than an asset. When The Pill became widely available in the '60s, all of a sudden they found themselves able to control their own fertility completely, and the change was dramatic. You old farts might remember those days...


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he world's decline in fertility has been staggering (see chart 2). In 1970 the total fertility rate was 4.45 and the typical family in the world had four or five children. It is now 2.45 worldwide, and lower in some surprising places. Bangladesh's rate is 2.16, having halved in 20 years. Iran's fertility fell from 7 in 1984 to just 1.9 in 2006. Countries with below-replacement fertility include supposedly teeming Brazil, Tunisia and Thailand. Much of Europe and East Asia have fertility rates far below replacement levels.