It's not just global warming!

[jverne]

From the sole begging i said that global warming is not the only issue.

What about this:

As of 1995, only 17 percent of the world's land area remained truly wild -- with no human populations, crops, road access or night-time light detectable by satellite, the authors reported.

http://www.physorg.com/news102259062.html


it's not just the fact that people have been there, but all the trash, destruction and death we leave anywhere we step.

Fish supplies going down the drain, forests destroyed, polluted drinkable watter.

The fact that there are few uncontaminated drinkable surface wells creeps me out.

I think that global warming is the least of our concerns right now.


IF theres some major global crisis (war for example,...) we would be unimaginably worse that in every war till now. At least back then (in the pre WW2 era) they had lots of drinkable water, ungenetically engineered crops that could survive on their own, more homogeneous wildlife (food). Basically they were better provided by nature than us now.
If something today happens we'd be pretty much screwed, because we depend so much on our industry.

I'm not saying we should move back to the middle ages, but the industry should be reminded it's not just CO2 emissions we worry about.

Natural selection has been supplanted by human selection, meaning that certain species -- such as companion pets -- thrive, while others -- such as river trout -- have been altered specifically for human consumption, often to their detriment.

In the African nation of Namibia, overfishing has allowed large jellyfish to bloom. Prior to 1970, fishermen rarely snared large jellyfish in the Benguela ecosystem off the northern coast of Namibia.

good day.

 

[-Psy-]

They are the cause of global warming.

 

[jverne]

They are the cause of global warming.

considering they outnumber humans, i guess the don't help either.

 

[Kyorisu]

IF theres some major global crisis (war for example,...) we would be unimaginably worse that in every war till now. At least back then (in the pre WW2 era) they had lots of drinkable water, ungenetically engineered crops that could survive on their own, more homogeneous wildlife (food). Basically they were better provided by nature than us now.

Pray tell what travesty would destroy enough infrastructure to screw us over? Generally speaking wars for instance only affect one area.

Meanwhile global warming my arse, 10-20 years it'll be global freezing again.

 

[jverne]

Pray tell what travesty would destroy enough infrastructure to screw us over? Generally speaking wars for instance only affect one area.

Meanwhile global warming my arse, 10-20 years it'll be global freezing again.

so i guess Iraq is doing pretty well, because war only affected some areas.

seriously, we are talking about large scale stuff.
With no electricity (that is one of the first things to go in a war) 99% of factories would be useless. Not even considering the resource supply, which would be almost non existent.

The solution (i'm guessing) for such a scenario is only the death of 60%-70% of humanity.

 

[Kyorisu]

Pfft stop being negative. "Oh noes what if...". What if everything is fine and there is no more war? As for Iraq and the general middle eastern area that's always been a hell hole of religious idiots.

 

[jverne]

Pfft stop being negative. "Oh noes what if...". What if everything is fine and there is no more war? As for Iraq and the general middle eastern area that's always been a hell hole of religious idiots.

Even if there is no war, if we don't begin applying conservative measures, we are going to end up eating, sleeping, building on trash.

Ask your local watter supplier how difficult it is to keep maintaining quality drinkable water with the same amount of financing.

Go ask your local land fill how many tonnes of trash arrive per minute.

Go ask your local food farm how many chemicals and other product are needed to keep a steady food supply.

I bet some if not all will be complaining in some form or another.


edit: our capital land fill is about to peak the capacity by 2010. If something is not found until then, they'll have to build houses of trash.

Oh and, land fills need to be in the vicinity of a city to be effective and practical. guess what that means.

 

[McGooTheWise]

Pfft stop being negative. "Oh noes what if...". What if everything is fine and there is no more war? As for Iraq and the general middle eastern area that's always been a hell hole of religious idiots.

Could never have been said better.

And as for the trash factor, we're sending our sinners to clean up those places, so don't worry about damn trash. But it is kind of odd that weather's been so violent lately. The entire U.S. has been ravaged by storms this whole last week. And Iran has a cyclone coming at them. (BLOW EM' ALL AWAY! HAHAHAHAHA!) I don't think it has to do with global warming, I think it's global cows farting ozone into the WIND!

 

[Stingey]

You still havent provided me that home-made fusion reactor

 

[jverne]

You still havent provided me that home-made fusion reactor

oh yeah...sorry, my hamster is ill at the moment, i don't have much time to spend on debugging the reactor.







on a more serious note, if we somehow get enough energy (fussion,...) we could power plasma gasificators that literally vaporise everything you throw into them to basic elements. that would mean the end of solid or liquid pollution problems.
but yea, until my hamster gets better there will be no fusion.

 

[MiccyNarc]

Pray tell what travesty would destroy enough infrastructure to screw us over?

Peak Oil.

 

[Sliver]

I live in rural Montana, right next to North Dakota. Miles and miles and miles and miles of empty space. If take a train ride from Helena to Minneapolis you'll see what I'm talking about.

 

[jverne]

I live in rural Montana, right next to North Dakota. Miles and miles and miles and miles of empty space. If take a train ride from Helena to Minneapolis you'll see what I'm talking about.

wait till the 10 million people around you consider that place good ground for crops. you'll be overrun really fast.


on question? do you guys even comprehend how much is 1 million? start counting. you'll need 11.5 days to count to 1 million if you don't do anything else (not dring, eat, sleep,...nothing, just count), to count all the people in US you'll need 9.5 years (no sleep, no food, no rest,...).
to count all the world population you need 220.5 years.

now let's not count everything they produce...on second thought...lets:

Waste Production

* In the U.S., 4.39 pounds of trash per day and up to 56 tons of trash per year are created by the average person.
* Only about one-tenth of all solid garbage in the United States gets recycled.
* Every year we fill enough garbage trucks to form a line that would stretch from the earth, halfway to the moon.
* Each day the United States throws away enough trash to fill 63,000 garbage trucks.
* Almost 1/3 of the waste generated the U.S. is packaging.
* Diapers: An average child will use between 8,000 -10,000 disposable diapers ($2,000 worth) before being potty trained. Each year, parents and babysitters dispose of about 18 billion of these items. In the United States alone these single-use items consume nearly 100,000 tons of plastic and 800,000 tons of tree pulp. We will pay an average of $350 million annually to deal with their disposal and, to top it off, these diapers will still be in the landfill 300 years from now. Americans throw away 570 diapers per second. That's 49 million diapers per day.
* Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
* Every year, Americans make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas.
* The amount of glass bottles Americans throw away every two weeks would have filled both World Trade Center towers.
* Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to rebuild our commercial air fleet every three months, and enough iron and steel to supply all our nation's automakers every day.
* Throwing away one aluminum can wastes as much energy as if that can were 1/2 full of gasoline.
* In the U.S., an additional 5 million tons of waste is generated during the holidays. Four million tons of this is wrapping paper and shopping bags.
* Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail every year. Most of it winds up in landfills.
* The average American uses 650 pounds of paper a year.
* Each year, Americans trash enough office paper to build a 12-foot wall from Los Angeles to New York City.
* Americans toss out enough paper & plastic cups, forks and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times.
* The average American office worker goes through around 500 disposable cups every year.
* Nearly 44 million American workers purchase or eat lunch out every weekday.
* Americans make nearly 400 billion photocopies a year - about 750,000 copies every minute of every day.
* U.S. fax machines sent 30 billion faxes in 1990.
* U.S. businesses now use about 21 million tons of paper every year. That's about 175 pounds of paper for each American.
* Enough hazardous waste is generated in one year to fill the New Orleans Superdome 1,500 times over.
* New York City alone throws out enough garbage each day to fill the Empire State Building.
* In one day, Americans get rid of 20,000 cars and 4,000 trucks and buses.
* As of 1992, 14 billion pounds of trash were dumped into ocean annually around the world.
* Forty-three thousand tons of food is thrown out in the United States each day.
* Americans throw out about 270 million tires every year.
* Sixty-five billion aluminum soda cans are used each year.



Landfills

* Only two manmade structures on Earth are large enough to be seen from outer space: the Great Wall of China and the Fresh Kills landfill!
* Barges (which run 24 hours a day) deliver over 14,000 tons of New York City trash to Fresh Kills every day. (Notes: The Fresh Kills Landfills is closing soon and is only being kept open to receive debris from the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center Towers).
* In 1979, there were an estimated 18,500 landfills in the nation. In 1990 there were only about 6,300, and by 1995 it was estimated that only about 3,000 would still be open. In just 16 years the number of landfills dropped by 84%. During that same time there was an 80% increase in the amount of trash generated.
* Seventy percent of U.S. municipal solid waste gets buried in landfills.
* U.S. landfills are closing at the rate of 1 per day.



Incinerators

* 108,234 tons of waste per day is incinerated.



Waste and Natural Resource Use

* Every year, nearly 900,000,000 trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills.
* Each American exerts three times as much pressure on the natural environment as the global average.
* The average American, in one lifetime, uses: 18 tons of paper, 23 tons of wood, 16 tons of metal, and 32 tons of organic chemicals.
* America is home to 5% of the world's population, yet it consumes 1/3 of the Earth's timber and paper; making paper the largest part of the waste stream at 37.5% of the total waste stream.
* Every 4 quarts of oil discarded during an average oil change can contaminate 1 million gallons of water.
* People who change their own oil improperly dump the equivalent of 16 Exxon Valdez spills into the nation's sewers and landfills every year.



Recycling Works!

* 1,500 aluminum cans are recycled every second in the U.S.
* Recycling an aluminum soda can saves 96% of the energy used to make a can from ore, and produces 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution.
* It takes the energy equivalent of half a soda can of gasoline to produce one soda can from bauxite ore.
* In 1986, 48.7% of all aluminum cans were being recycled. In 1990, that percentage increased to 63.6% and, in 1996, 63.5% were being recycled.
* The amount of paper recycled annually by the average American in 1995 was 301.8 lbs., increasing in 1996 to 329 lbs.
* Recycling one ton of cardboard saves over 9 cubic yards of landfill space.
* One ton of paper from recycled pulp saves 17 trees, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 7,000 gallons of water, 4,200 kilowatt hours (enough to heat your home for half year), 390 gallons of oil, and prevents 60 pounds of air pollutants.
* Producing recycled white paper creates 74% less air pollutants, 35% less water pollutants, and 75% less process energy than producing paper from virgin fibers.
* Sixty percent of the world's lead supply comes from recycled batteries.
* It takes 90% less energy to recycle an aluminum can than to make a new one.

http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html

if you don't want to comprehend the numbers, you are a retard.

 

[MiccyNarc]

Fresh Kills [...] receive debris [...] World Trade Center Towers

:|

 

[jverne]

:|

apparently. so?

 

[The Brick]

Lol about the recycling thing. Recycling only works with aluminum. For all the rest is't just a waste of energy and more polluting than just burning it dumping it on landfills. Trees are cut down a lot but grown a lot more. They're cutting trees for paper, correct. But those trees were planted to be cut down for paper in the first place. There are a lot more trees in the world than 50 years ago.

These are the most important points I learned from Penn & Teller in the recycling episode of Bullshit! Those things you posted are incredibly biased towards greenpeace bullshit.

 

[jverne]

Lol about the recycling thing. Recycling only works with aluminum. For all the rest is't just a waste of energy and more polluting than just burning it dumping it on landfills. Trees are cut down a lot but grown a lot more. They're cutting trees for paper, correct. But those trees were planted to be cut down for paper in the first place. There are a lot more trees in the world than 50 years ago.

These are the most important points I learned from Penn & Teller in the recycling episode of Bullshit! Those things you posted are incredibly biased towards greenpeace bullshit.

yes recycling is not so efficient currently. when other type of trees are planted to be harvested, you destroy most of the native enviroment.


you are still missing the point, it's not about recycling, but for less consumption. why the hell did you even started on recycling?

even if those data is biased, it's cant be that much, and even if those numbers are frightening in every form. personally i don't think they are biased a bit. even underestimade, considering how much illegal waste is being dumped all around.

you simply got no excuse to defend this amount of resource spending.

 

[SIGbastard]

 

[Asus]

These are the most important points I learned from Penn & Teller in the recycling episode of Bullshit! Those things you posted are incredibly biased towards greenpeace bullshit.

Recycling

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

Just tooting my own horn here. I produce about one-quarter the waste (material, energy, etc.) of an average American, which is less than the world average apparently.

I estimate I produce maybe 1lb of raw trash every couple of days.

If I can do it, you can too.

 

[Nate_90]

OP doesn't know what he's talking about.

you cry about genetically modified food? you realize that actually helps alot country's and the crops are actually more self sufficient that before we modified our crops.

and whats so bad about us Humans living on the whole planet and not some tiny spot?


"oh no there is light at night time buhuwuwu"

 

[jverne]

OP doesn't know what he's talking about.

you cry about genetically modified food? you realize that actually helps alot country's and the crops are actually more self sufficient that before we modified our crops.

and whats so bad about us Humans living on the whole planet and not some tiny spot?


"oh no there is light at night time buhuwuwu"

of course i know that genetically altered food helps, but the US and similar nations definitely don't need that much help. you are way over your food needs. that is actually not the point, the thing is that when we end up with no pesticides, fertilizers,... there'll be trouble.


some people like to go out hiking, mountain biking, camping and don't have to worry about cutting yourself on a tin can or stabbing on a needle.

it's not just that, with the culture we have now it's a bad thing to spread around the planet, we destroy pollute everything.

and yes, i hate lights at night time, it obstructs the view of the stars with a orange mantra. it's bad for astronomy and romance.

so STFU and go back to your room, and stay there.

 

[Beerdude26]

so STFU and go back to your room, and stay there.

Can I leave my light on?

of course i know that genetically altered food helps, but the US and similar nations definitely don't need that much help. you are way over your food needs. that is actually not the point, the thing is that when we end up with no pesticides, fertilizers,... there'll be trouble.

So can't we just give the genetically altered crops to Africa, Middle East and so on so they can grow it, effectively eliminating the need for more crops in further developed nations (thus stopping the problem of pollution of the entire planet) AND giving Africa some goddamn food?

 

[jverne]

Can I leave my light on?

So can't we just give the genetically altered crops to Africa, Middle East and so on so they can grow it, effectively eliminating the need for more crops in further developed nations (thus stopping the problem of pollution of the entire planet) AND giving Africa some goddamn food?

no you cant leave the light on, it wastes energy, grow a ****ing sonar like bats do!



we already give them genetically engineered plants. Honestly i don't know the solution to famine, but it would defintely help if the developed nations used resources more rationally.

i'm talking about national laws.

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

About the genetically altered food thing, I think it was proven somewhere that for exmaple an average tomato only has 1/6th the total nutritional value of a tomato grown in the 1950s.

No wonder people are so hungry.

 

[The Brick]

People only eat tomatoes? Hmm...

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

The point is crops are being altered so they grow and "ripen" faster but that fact is they are not truely ready to be harvested.
It's like using bronzer. You're brown, but you don't actually have a tan.

 

[jverne]

About the genetically altered food thing, I think it was proven somewhere that for exmaple an average tomato only has 1/6th the total nutritional value of a tomato grown in the 1950s.

No wonder people are so hungry.

nice point, i didn't even realize that!

one point for nature

 

[Mutley]

P a r a n o i d .

 

[Nemesis6]

an average tomato only has 1/6th the total nutritional value of a tomato grown in the 1950s.

Who cares? Tomatoes taste like crap unless they're turned into tomato-sauce and slapped on pizzas, and at that point, chances are very slim that the person wonders about the nutritional value. Who eats them in salads, etc, anyway? :cheese:

Don't bother getting more examples... I hate all vegetables! Except potatoes of course because they equal quite a few delicious junk-food products!

 

[jverne]

P a r a n o i d .

concerning how much we destroy and pollute the earth, there you can't be paranoid, that's a fact, deal with it.

Who cares? Tomatoes taste like crap unless they're turned into tomato-sauce and slapped on pizzas, and at that point, chances are very slim that the person wonders about the nutritional value. Who eats them in salads, etc, anyway? :cheese:

Don't bother getting more examples... I hate all vegetables! Except potatoes of course because they equal quite a few delicious junk-food products!

no comment.

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

Who cares? Tomatoes taste like crap unless they're turned into tomato-sauce and slapped on pizzas, and at that point, chances are very slim that the person wonders about the nutritional value. Who eats them in salads, etc, anyway? :cheese:

Don't bother getting more examples... I hate all vegetables! Except potatoes of course because they equal quite a few delicious junk-food products!

You must be a walking heart attack waiting to happen. :|

 

[Mutley]

concerning how much we destroy and pollute the earth, there you can't be paranoid, that's a fact, deal with it.





no comment.

I seems pretty obvious to me we won't be running out of water in the next 100+ years.

Since you can buy it in every shop in a plastic bottle, don't you think the supply would be limited otherwise? Isn't rain water clean?

 

[MiccyNarc]

I seems pretty obvious to me we won't be running out of water in the next 100+ years.

Since you can buy it in every shop in a plastic bottle, don't you think the supply would be limited otherwise? Isn't rain water clean?

I hear the same thing when I talk about peak oil. "How could it be scarce, I can buy it at any gas station out of a pump. Besides they just found x number of barrels in the gulf of mexico!"

*sigh*

 

[Mutley]

Good point.

I'll go sit in the corner now.

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

Not all rain is clean. Any rain you get over an industrial city will be slightly contaminated. Rain collects / is formed around whatever particles are persent in the air after all.

 

[Beerdude26]

About the genetically altered food thing, I think it was proven somewhere that for exmaple an average tomato only has 1/6th the total nutritional value of a tomato grown in the 1950s.

No wonder people are so hungry.

I don't know about what genetically modified tomato you're talking about, but if you're talking about the one that had carcinogenic tissues removed from it using genetic modification, well, let's just say I'd rather eat a bit more than die of colon cancer. Of course, that particular tomato group isn't good for the mass feeding of large population groups.

 

[jverne]

I seems pretty obvious to me we won't be running out of water in the next 100+ years.

Since you can buy it in every shop in a plastic bottle, don't you think the supply would be limited otherwise? Isn't rain water clean?

first of all 100 year for such an event is not that much.

you see, the quality of watter goes down every day and the price goes up.

actually paying 0.30 EU for 0.5l of watter is a rip off, don't you think.

how much water do you use a day?

water from rain is as clean as rain which is as clean as the vapor it came from, which is a function of environmental factors (pollution too)