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MJ: You are saying a reduction of the total amount of meat produced through less human consumption of meat is going to not work because we still have pets?
Solution seems obvious.
Cat. The other white meat.
Developing a strain of rice (or other crop) gene-spliced to thrive in salty water seems like an eventual necessity.
Prove that.Lets get real for a moment here. Everything ends.I disagree. Everything changes. Nothing has ever ended.
Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only change state or form.
Though an individual's life ends, life itself does not. Death gives rise to new life.
As for television shows, there's syndication, reruns, digital/dvd/vhs/other home media release, spinoffs, fan efforts such as fanfic, established fanon, & internet rants, and the ever present possibility of remakes, reboots, a movie version, a pre/sequel, or novelization.
Civilizations pass along ideas, language, artwork, and customs/culture that ensure that they are still a part of what comes after them.
Ideas, the fluid nature with which they can be exchanged, practically guarantee that no intellectual concept will ever end. Every idea that inspires another idea lives on through it.
To change the question: What would it take to destroy the human species? Well, you would have to put the ENTIRE WORLD through a serious combination of nuclear war, several diseases, natural disasters, and so on. The expected scenarios of nuclear war are quite simply not enough to destroy us ALL. And you know, pink goo (i.e. humanity) is pretty good at repopulating. It just takes two. There are enough isolated enclaves where people can survive, whether pacific islands, mountain valleys, or forests, to make the extinction of humanity quite infeasible.
Sometimes, though, I think it's an appealing thought to many that humanity will end and pay for its "sins". I guess it's some kind of response to some version of the white man's guilt, or a survivor complex, or whatever. And for things like this, we tend to put things in religious terms - like "sin".
Certainly, if things f%~~ up badly enough, it will be horrible. But so far, The End is far from within our reach.
I'm not a scientist...putting that disclaimer out there so you know I get my information from those science shows on PBS and other things as well...
But...I was always under the belief that total nuclear war would wipe us all out. the radiation clouds would eventually end all life on earth. At least that's what I was led to think (and the basic premise for on the Beach as well...a very depressing novel).
I was also under the impression that you need at least 50 for the genetic variability in order to repopulate, otherwise, with less genetic differences, the race dies out eventually?
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Lets get real for a moment here. Everything ends.I disagree. Everything changes. Nothing has ever ended.
Then what is Firefly called now? I'd like to contnue watching.
Firefly was overrated, and everybody on this island knows it!
I haven't actually seen it yet, I just needed something for the sake of the joke.
Probably should have said Invader Zim.
Hmph! I was told by several elected officials in Tallahassee and concerned citizens across Florida that the world would end on January 6th. Yet, here we still are, and everything seems perfectly normal (well, normal by Florida standards). Harumph! Now what am I going to do with all these MREs, investment gold coins, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition my cable gnus hosts told me to hoard?!
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Hmph! I was told by several elected officials in Tallahassee and concerned citizens across Florida that the world would end on January 6th. Yet, here we still are, and everything seems perfectly normal (well, normal by Florida standards). Harumph! Now what am I going to do with all these MREs, investment gold coins, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition my cable gnus hosts told me to hoard?!Sell them to the next sucker. ;-)
Look, I'll all for being prepared, but I draw the line at being invited to Doomsday Preppers. :P
Well, I think I'm going to hold on to them for when the graboids come. Where do you think all those sinkholes in Florida come from?
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Well, I think I'm going to hold on to them for when the graboids come. Where do you think all those sinkholes in Florida come from?Hmph! I was told by several elected officials in Tallahassee and concerned citizens across Florida that the world would end on January 6th. Yet, here we still are, and everything seems perfectly normal (well, normal by Florida standards). Harumph! Now what am I going to do with all these MREs, investment gold coins, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition my cable gnus hosts told me to hoard?!Sell them to the next sucker. ;-)
Look, I'll all for being prepared, but I draw the line at being invited to Doomsday Preppers. :P
BROKE INTO THE WRONG DAMN HOUSE, DIDN'TCHA!
I'm not a scientist...putting that disclaimer out there so you know I get my information from those science shows on PBS and other things as well...
But...I was always under the belief that total nuclear war would wipe us all out. the radiation clouds would eventually end all life on earth. At least that's what I was led to think (and the basic premise for on the Beach as well...a very depressing novel).
I was also under the impression that you need at least 50 for the genetic variability in order to repopulate, otherwise, with less genetic differences, the race dies out eventually?
Well...there are bacteria out there that can grow on nuclear reactor cores. There are also bacteria living in rock pore space miles under the earth. So even a total nuclear war wouldn't render the planet completely lifeless technically. (and a nuclear war of that magnitude seems rather unlikely now)
As for population size, some of that is going to depend on how genetically diverse your founder population is, generation time, and whether they had the misfortune to get stuck with a lot of "bad genes" The population of Northern Elephant Seals was reduced down to 20 animals through overhunting, but there made an awesome recovery and now number something like 150,000 animals. It's possible that the genetic bottleneck they went to might hurt them in the future, or reduce their change of adaptation to changing environments, but it doesn't appear to have hurt them much in the last hundred years.
Of course the smaller and more scattered your population are, the more likely they are to go extinct, via environmental change, disease, competition, or just bad luck. That is why there is such a emphasis in conservation biology nowadays at trying to create habitat corridors to link isolated refuges together, so the populations are less vulnerable to stochastic change. So while there might be survivors of a nuclear war, those populations may end up fading away in a hundred years or so
Well...there are bacteria out there that can grow on nuclear reactor cores. There are also bacteria living in rock pore space miles under the earth. So even a total nuclear war wouldn't render the planet completely lifeless technically. (and a nuclear war of that magnitude seems rather unlikely now)
The question is more "what would destroy human life?"
Neat as bacteria is, very little of it qualifies as "human life". (Though it is highly important to our survival and function as a species)
Prove it.
You will find that this link Matter into a Black Hole proves my point. My theory is based on the non-rotating Schwarzschild black hole, because there is no way for matter to avoid colliding with the Singularity.
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Prove it.You will find that this link Matter into a Black Hole proves my point. My theory is based on the non-rotating Schwarzschild black hole, because there is no way for matter to avoid colliding with the Singularity.
From your link:
Once inside a black hole, beyond the Event Horizon, we can only speculate what the fate of captured matter is.
I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that speculation is not considered proof in the scientific community.
Prove it.You will find that this link Matter into a Black Hole proves my point. My theory is based on the non-rotating Schwarzschild black hole, because there is no way for matter to avoid colliding with the Singularity.From your link:
Once inside a black hole, beyond the Event Horizon, we can only speculate what the fate of captured matter is.I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that speculation is not considered proof in the scientific community.
OK, Iron Truth, now you are just being glib.
Well, I think I'm going to hold on to them for when the graboids come. Where do you think all those sinkholes in Florida come from?Hmph! I was told by several elected officials in Tallahassee and concerned citizens across Florida that the world would end on January 6th. Yet, here we still are, and everything seems perfectly normal (well, normal by Florida standards). Harumph! Now what am I going to do with all these MREs, investment gold coins, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition my cable gnus hosts told me to hoard?!Sell them to the next sucker. ;-)
Look, I'll all for being prepared, but I draw the line at being invited to Doomsday Preppers. :P
MRE's taste terrible, gold never sucks, and would your ammo happen to be 7.62x39mm?
And yes, keep some for the worms, my yard is developing a hole.
Well...there are bacteria out there that can grow on nuclear reactor cores. There are also bacteria living in rock pore space miles under the earth. So even a total nuclear war wouldn't render the planet completely lifeless technically. (and a nuclear war of that magnitude seems rather unlikely now)The question is more "what would destroy human life?"
Neat as bacteria is, very little of it qualifies as "human life". (Though it is highly important to our survival and function as a species)
I was responding to the poster who talked about life in general, not human life
I prefer to call these the Keeping On Times, rather than the End Times. I choose to believe that the human race will keep on keeping on, rather than exhaust itself in a biblical, end of days type revelatory event; YMMV.
There really isn't such a thing as a non-rotating black hole. The original angular momentum of the source star is still preserved. You're still going to be tidally compressed to a superheated fine mist, so it's rather irrelevant.Prove it.You will find that this link Matter into a Black Hole proves my point. My theory is based on the non-rotating Schwarzschild black hole, because there is no way for matter to avoid colliding with the Singularity.
Ok, LazarX, now you are being glib too.
OK, Iron Truth, now you are just being glib.
Ok, LazarX, now you are being glib too.
Sooooo... you're like the Mirror Universe Tom Cruise? Do you have the goatee too?
There really isn't such a thing as a non-rotating black hole. The original angular momentum of the source star is still preserved. You're still going to be tidally compressed to a superheated fine mist, so it's rather irrelevant.Prove it.You will find that this link Matter into a Black Hole proves my point. My theory is based on the non-rotating Schwarzschild black hole, because there is no way for matter to avoid colliding with the Singularity.
You can prove that all objects in the universe have angular momentum?
The correct physics answer is that 1. I can state with good confidence that the answer is most likely yes. The collapse of nebulae into stars and planets by necessity imparts angular momentum to the resulting products, just as an ice skater speeds up by pulling in her arms. 2. In order to have a non-rotating black hole, you would need to account for the disappearance of the angular momentum of the collapsing star. Like other forms of energy it can't just disappear.You can prove that all objects in the universe have angular momentum?There really isn't such a thing as a non-rotating black hole. The original angular momentum of the source star is still preserved. You're still going to be tidally compressed to a superheated fine mist, so it's rather irrelevant.Prove it.You will find that this link Matter into a Black Hole proves my point. My theory is based on the non-rotating Schwarzschild black hole, because there is no way for matter to avoid colliding with the Singularity.
I didn't ask whether something was likely or not. I asked if you could prove that all objects in the universe have angular momentum.
All objects that can collapse into black holes... yes. In that it's impossible as far as we know to make a star, or a galaxy without angular momentum. Every object we've observed, whether comet, asteroid, moon, planet, or star, has rotation, thus angular momentum. When a star collapses into a black hole, the following is preserved, mass, angular momentum, and net charge as observed in the event horizon. Schwarzschild's model was the first proposition of a black hole, presented as a theorectical ideal, like absolute zero. The math in that paper had not been worked out to take into account rotatation, and of course, it was some time...I didn't ask whether something was likely or not. I asked if you could prove that all objects in the universe have angular momentum.The correct physics answer is that 1. I can state with good confidence that the answer is most likely yes. The collapse of nebulae into stars and planets by necessity imparts angular momentum to the resulting products, just as an ice skater speeds up by pulling in her arms. 2. In order to have a non-rotating black hole, you would need to account for the disappearance of the angular momentum of the collapsing star. Like other forms of energy it can't just disappear.You can prove that all objects in the universe have angular momentum?There really isn't such a thing as a non-rotating black hole. The original angular momentum of the source star is still preserved. You're still going to be tidally compressed to a superheated fine mist, so it's rather irrelevant.Prove it.You will find that this link Matter into a Black Hole proves my point. My theory is based on the non-rotating Schwarzschild black hole, because there is no way for matter to avoid colliding with the Singularity.
I agree with you, a Schwarzschild black hole seems highly unlikely.
You haven't actually presented anything that could conceivably be considered PROOF that they don't exist. You are merely putting forth evidence on how likely it will be to find.
Overall, this is a pedantic conversation. If you insist on claiming PROOF of it, I'm certainly happy to continue it with you. I have no interest in defending Schwarzschild's model, but so far you haven't actually proven it to be a false one.
...All objects that can collapse into black holes... yes. In that it's impossible as far as we know to make a star, or a galaxy without angular momentum. Every object we've observed, whether comet, asteroid, moon, planet, or star, has rotation, thus angular momentum. When a star collapses into a black hole, the following is preserved, mass, angular momentum, and net charge as observed in the event horizon. Schwarzschild's model was the first proposition of a black hole, presented as a theorectical ideal, like absolute zero. The math in that paper had not been worked out to take into account rotatation, and ofI didn't ask whether something was likely or not. I asked if you could prove that all objects in the universe have angular momentum.The correct physics answer is that 1. I can state with good confidence that the answer is most likely yes. The collapse of nebulae into stars and planets by necessity imparts angular momentum to the resulting products, just as an ice skater speeds up by pulling in her arms. 2. In order to have a non-rotating black hole, you would need to account for the disappearance of the angular momentum of the collapsing star. Like other forms of energy it can't just disappear.You can prove that all objects in the universe have angular momentum?There really isn't such a thing as a non-rotating black hole. The original angular momentum of the source star is still preserved. You're still going to be tidally compressed to a superheated fine mist, so it's rather irrelevant.Prove it.You will find that this link Matter into a Black Hole proves my point. My theory is based on the non-rotating Schwarzschild black hole, because there is no way for matter to avoid colliding with the Singularity.
Lazar does prove it, just look at the words. There exists no system from which a black hole is produced that has no angular momentum. That is a proof statement.
Just as much as me stating that the probability of rolling a 7 on a standard d6 is 0, lazar is saying the probability of finding a black hole without angular momentum is 0.
{observes thread collapsing upon itself into a derail hole from which the original discussion cannot escape}
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Your point was that without something like industrial farming the world could not possibly feed itself.
My point is that in industrial farming:
1) a significant portion of the crop goes to non-food purposes
2) even some of the "food" purposes are indirectIt is a myth that industrial farming is NECESSARY for human existence. Feel free to counter with some data. Corn is by far our largest crop in the US. Currently some 87,000,000 acres are used for growing corn (which is a little smaller than the state of Montana). Only 12% of that corn goes to feed humans.
Source = National Corn Grower's Association
They're not some sort of ironically named anti-corn group. They are a lobbyists for corn farmers. Here's a list of their donations in 2014. I provide that not necessarily as an indictment, but rather proof that these numbers are their attempt to make corn look like the best thing ever. They don't claim that corn feeds the world.
Industrial farming isn't about feeding people.
I apologize for the delay. There was a medication switch due to unfortunate side-effects from my last meds that left me hospitalized for a day.
I also needed time to dig out the original version of the report you linked to. I have to agree with them; the orange really does make it look better than the green I originally suggested. But then, I wrote it. One of my better-paying "consultations."
Yeah, that paper is somewhat bunk. Certain sections of it I simply made up at the time. In particular, I'm proud of the fiction I wrote under Everyday Sustainability.
And, actually, it's biologically impossible for corn to feed the world; humans don't possess the correct enzymes to digest corn. So, to be perfectly accurate, the wasted portion of the corn output is the portion humans eat.
Finally, my stance is not that factory farming is necessary, but that industrialization is necessary for farming to feed the world; there's a difference. Industrialization is, effectively, the entirety of modern civilization; it's the car you drive, the roads you drive on, the trucks and ships and trains and planes that transport food, the processing plants that sort it, the stores that sell it, the mechanisms for producing and transporting fertilizers and water... Even most organic farms rely heavily on industrialization to feed the world.
So when I say that we cannot feed the world without industrialization, I'm talking about a shutdown of everything, including the transport mechanisms that allow that food to be shared.
For smaller and or drier nations yes. Mauritania for example has sand dunes slowly burying the arable land, and the sahara has merged with the beach.
Larger nations can either move water around or just let the populations move as the water prices rise. I don't think theres a scenario out there where seatle needs to worry about water supply.
I agree: I know there is an ongoing water crisis in the Southwestern states, but nothing I have read suggests it will come to some sort of tipping point in 5 years. There are certainly other parts of the world that in the long run are going to suffer some adverse impacts, but I think first world nations will largely have to change aspects of life style and may need to shift there economies away from agriculture that requires lots of irrigation. And I certainly agree with TheJeff that a water crisis doesn't mean we stop worrying about any other environmental issues.From sources like this that show up to two-fifths of the world suffering water shortage, with it only getting worse over the next 20 years.
Nations are already squabbling over water supplies in some regions. Making water troubles worse is very likely to lead to open warfare as time passes. It is not likely we will make it to 2040 without widespread open warfare, and questionable if we'll even make it beyond 2020.
For smaller and or drier nations yes. Mauritania for example has sand dunes slowly burying the arable land, and the sahara has merged with the beach.
Larger nations can either move water around or just let the populations move as the water prices rise. I don't think theres a scenario out there where seatle needs to worry about water supply.
According to the very papers I'm citing, the United States is one of the dryer nations in trouble.
And moving around people is all nice and good, but the problem just moves with them. It just delays the problem and is not even remotely addressing it. Moving around water is going to be more difficult; the draining aquifers are becoming increasingly incapable of supplying water to be moved. Again, according to the papers I cited.
So, really, the science itself says otherwise.
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I see no concrete signs that would indicate this particular era to be any closer to Rule by Biker Gangs than any other (asides from the invention of biker gangs, that's it). There's no reason to expect a Malthusian Catastrophe any time soon, while political stability is at an all-time high.
Even though past information cannot be used to predict the future, there is a reason every demographic collapse proclaimed in the last three centuries has been wrong: Per capita productivity as a result of continous innovation has been increasing at a regular rate since the early stages of the Industrial Revolution (for comparison, it is estimated average per capita productivity changed almost nothing in the preceeding three-thousand years), which has allowed human population to become incredibly resilient and adaptative to changes in resource availability.
It is not so much about absent-minded optimism in technomagic as it is the unreliable nature of most apocalyptic predictions, which rarely factor growing productivity properly (which is reasonable, though, as most attempts to actually predict said growing productivity tend to be mistaken. Flying cars, man, flying cars).
Could The Humongous be just around the corner? Aye, that's a possibility. But I don't think the current world-wide situation could be interpreted to make such scenario a realistic choice. Won't be betting the lottery on that, for certain.
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I see no concrete signs that would indicate this particular era to be any closer to Rule by Biker GangsMore like Walker Gangs, because when civilization goes, so goes the easy access to gasoline and spare parts.
My extensive and in-depth analysis of the movie Battletruck indicates otherwise. Cars will clearly be powered either by random gas pipes sprouting up in the middle of the desert or by colossal amounts of chicken poop.
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OTOH, that very growing productivity, and the resources that drive it, are the root of the problems that we face now. More productivity won't grow us out of climate change or water crises or even Peak (Cheap) Oil, silly as that last might look today.
We might work out a revolutionary new power source that doesn't add carbon to the atmosphere or use up water and use that new source of cheap power to bootstrap past our current limits, but I don't see it yet. And cleaning the atmosphere and the oceans will still be a monumental task, even with near free energy.
I'd say instead that productivity is the solution, rather than the source of the problem. Productivity is not just about the output (ie, how much you produce), but also about the throughput (how many resources you need to produce). It's all about efficiency, which is precisely what we need to face such problems as global warming, water crises, and availability of cheap fuels.
It's is not a new phenomenon. Early in the Industrial Revolution, modernizing european societies were facing a critical depletion of fuel sources, as forests began to disappear, until advances in technology allowed for an efficient and practical mining of mineral coal.
Coal itself started to become a problem in the late XIX century, prompting a quick development of alternatives such as solar power, though the appearance of cheaper and more efficient oil derivatives halted progress in those areas.
None of those scenarios had evident solutions at first; both coal and oil were long known to be useful sources of energy, but we were simply too inefficient at getting them in economically-feasible manners. Both times, it was an increase in productivity that allowed not just to avoid the crisis, but open the gates for even higher increases in life quality.
Now, I'm not saying we should just sit tight and wait for Black Mesa to create a new wonder fuel made out of endless amounts of YouTube comment bile, but we need to keep in mind that increased productivity is what is going to get us out of this, and thus focus on efforts to promote that (always, in my opinion, with the ultimate goal of human dignity driving it, however): Know-how, logistics, and R&D. And that basically boils down to education, better distribution of resources, and the promotion of innovation. And so far, we're doing those three things better today than we have done so in quite a while.
So that's what drives me to think we are not living in the End Times.
Your point was that without something like industrial farming the world could not possibly feed itself.
My point is that in industrial farming:
1) a significant portion of the crop goes to non-food purposes
2) even some of the "food" purposes are indirectIt is a myth that industrial farming is NECESSARY for human existence. Feel free to counter with some data. Corn is by far our largest crop in the US. Currently some 87,000,000 acres are used for growing corn (which is a little smaller than the state of Montana). Only 12% of that corn goes to feed humans.
Source = National Corn Grower's Association
They're not some sort of ironically named anti-corn group. They are a lobbyists for corn farmers. Here's a list of their donations in 2014. I provide that not necessarily as an indictment, but rather proof that these numbers are their attempt to make corn look like the best thing ever. They don't claim that corn feeds the world.
Industrial farming isn't about feeding people.
I apologize for the delay. There was a medication switch due to unfortunate side-effects from my last meds that left me hospitalized for a day.
I also needed time to dig out the original version of the report you linked to. I have to agree with them; the orange really does make it look better than the green I originally suggested. But then, I wrote it. One of my better-paying "consultations."
Yeah, that paper is somewhat bunk. Certain sections of it I simply made up at the time. In particular, I'm proud of the fiction I wrote under Everyday Sustainability.
And, actually, it's biologically impossible for corn to feed the world; humans don't possess the correct enzymes to digest corn. So, to be perfectly accurate, the wasted portion of the corn output is the portion humans eat.
Finally, my stance is not that factory farming is necessary, but that industrialization is necessary for farming to feed the world; there's a difference. Industrialization is, effectively, the entirety of...
Your defense about industrial farming is that you made stuff up to make it look better, therefore it's vital to our self-preservation.
The indigestible portion of corn is called an insoluble fiber.
Insoluble fiber is important for your digestive tract, even though it isn't digested. It's very good for you, even though it isn't broken down by the body.
Studies regularly reinforce the fact that high fiber diets (which includes both soluble and insoluble fiber) reduce your chance of coronary disease, stroke, hypertension, gastrointestinal diseases, diabetes and obesity. This of course applies to unprocessed corn. Processed grains involves removing the fiber, which of removes the "indigestible" portion, but also removes the health benefits of fiber as well.