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  #1  
Old 10-19-2008, 05:58 PM
TirexMan TirexMan is offline
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Default What we are doing to the planet we are living on?

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum. I have a question and would like to see where everyone stands on this.Lets compare the world as a whole to a smaller place in an ecosystem. Lets say the maximum amount of deer in particular alloted, closed off forest, is 200. This forest supports 200 deer stability for a long period of time because of the self supporting ecosystem. Lets say a huge amount of food is dumped in that forest that only the deer eat. So the deer breed out of control and eat all the food, that food is gone and with a population of 2000 deer all the rest of potential food will be gone also. So the deer starve and die in huge quantities and after the damage they did on the environment, it supports only 20 deer now. Since this same logic can be applied to humans and the world, why would we be worrying about something as seemingly trivial as abortion being legal or not? shouldn't space exploration be a bigger priority? Or at least more of an attention to what we are doing to the planet we are living on? I really ask this because I do not understand your positions on this. Please help me here.P.S. Sorry If wrong place!
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Old 10-20-2008, 06:36 PM
TirexMan TirexMan is offline
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Default What we are doing to the planet we are living on?

Yes. I know it.
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  #3  
Old 10-26-2008, 02:18 PM
IDKFA IDKFA is offline
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I'm not going to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity

Perhaps better is the image http://www.newlook.com.sg/img/skinlife1.jpg - specifically the 'no treatment' curve. Note how there is a long slow buildup, known as a lag phase, leading to a sharper uptick - the spot between the two would historically correlate to the industrial revolution, arguably the first technological singularity in recorded history. The advent of language could also be one, but predates recorded history, being a prerequisite to recorded history. Right now, we're at the top of the peak, where it's slightly overshot the sustainable level on the graph, and dips down to that point (or often, a bit below, in bacterial populations the number spikes, and dips, and comes back to a sustainable level from slightly below). Current population trends suggest that the rate of growth is decelerating, and the population will begin to trend slightly downwards over decades. What makes this different from bacterial population studies is that we have a vested interest in not having a population crash that may destabilize the infrastructure and make the crash self-sustaining.

Yes, abortion is probably a bad issue to focus on compared to ... preventing the largest mass starvation event in the history of history, (and it gets worse when you bring up the abortion-as-population-control argument and worse still when you bring up China's implementation) but I am convinced that the problem requires a gentler hand than many advocate. I also believe that technological solutions can provide a lot of the change we need, boost the ailing economy, and provide other benefits if we can invest wisely where it is needed. For example, improved HID lamp ballasts that eliminate warm-up times would allow commercial and industrial lighting to be turned off when it's not needed, instead of leaving it on so as to avoid half-hour warmups and lost productivity. It saves businesses money, the planet power, and those are only the two most immediately obvious benefits. Streetlights that come on immediately in a storm could perhaps save lives otherwise lost to auto accidents? I dunno. Commercial lighting uses 5-10% of global energy, and this single development could probably shave a couple percent all by itself.

I mean, you hear all about behavioral solutions - and I'm not saying they're actively bad, so much as they're not enough and might direct attention away from where it really needs to be. I'm sure you've heard that you should unplug your phone charger in order to cut its' vampire current draw. That's all well and good, but the draw at idle on a representative SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAM charger is less than a twentieth of a watt, according to Kill-A-Watt tests. Contrast this with something like 2,000,000 watt hours per person (at least in the UK) and you see the perspective of these little things.

I'm not writing off vampire power as a problem, but it's one better solved by engineers than unplugging your home entertainment center (this might draw as much as a hundred watts while 'off'! Not only do you have to pay for that power, but you have to cool that waste heat away with air conditioning in hot climates) and having to reprogram it every time you then want to watch TV.
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Old 10-27-2008, 07:37 PM
IDKFA IDKFA is offline
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Turns out that I'm accidentally advocating so-called "Bright Green" environmentalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_...vironmentalism
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Old 11-09-2008, 11:21 AM
luckyduck luckyduck is offline
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I have a feeling you'd really enjoy the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Ignore it's seemingly insane plot and look to what it's saying. Get on it, you'll like it.
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