How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

[Guest svarg26]

again i am unimpressed with your theory and that is what it is, a theory. the cuban model is a perfect example of what humans can achieve when FORCED to. they did not crawl into a hole and die. they adapted. when the rest of the world is forced, they will also adapt. the scaremongering you resort to is blatant indoctrinated baloney and very few people these days care for your dooms day predictions (food shortage, global warming, carbon footprint) etc.

the cuban model works a treat and makes a few people on here with their elitist propaganda look quite foolish.

were the great pyramids built using fossil fuels?

poor old WoodDragon would have you believe so.

isn't it amazing what us little humans can do when we put our minds to it. so go and take your huge scary carbon footprint on a nice hike buddy. you need it.

common sense always seems to be nice, short and to the point. anyone else notice that?

[Rabaelthazar]

A wise man once said (in another thread on this forum):

alas, i dealt with an idiot and now i too feel like an idiot!

....jump ship whilst you can! before we all end up retarded from arguing with this tool of all tools!

 

So, I'm out of here. Last post in this thread. I can see I'm

[WoodDragon]

Svarg26.

You obviously have no experience at all of resource accounting in a finite system. Oh, you might bluster that you do - you, with your magic terraces and your vegan religiosity, but you haven't a clue about any of the essential substance of the matter. You're also operating with a severely compromised grasp of logic, which probably goes quite some way to explaining why the simple facts of reality-based resource limitation are completely escaping you.

So, let's start with logic; or, more accurately, your paralogism. You say that Cuba is an example of what humans can do when "FORCED" to. So what? In saying this you are committing several fallacies of logic, including hasty generalization, non sequitur, and false dichotomy, because there are many examples of humans being forced against the wall where they did not rise from the challenge, or did so very poorly indeed. Jared Diamond helps out here - from his book 'Collapse' consider:

1) the Greenland Norse (climate change, environmental damage, loss of trading partners, irrational reluctance to eat fish, hostile neighbors and most unwillingness to adapt in the face of social collapse)

2) Easter Island (a society that collapsed entirely due to environmental damage)

3) The Polynesians of Pitcairn Island (environmental damage and loss of trading partners)

4) The Anasazi of southwestern North America (environmental damage and climate change)

5) The Maya (environmental damage, climate change, and hostile neighbours)

The examples don't stop there though. There are Cahokians, the Maldens, the Angkor Khmers, and the Olmecs. And if one broadens the scope beyond largely environmental causes for societal collapse, there are dozens of other societies/countries/empires that failed to maintain their previous strength when put to the test, including:

* Sumer

* Ancient Egypt

* Babylonia

* Etruscans

* Ancient Levant

* Classical Greece

* Dacians

* Eastern Roman Empire (Medieval Greek) of the Byzantines

* Modern North East Asian civilisations, Hindu and Mughal India

* Qin, Song, Mongol and Qing China

* Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, ending with the Meiji Restoration

* Aztecs and Incas

But let's stick with your paralogic. Your use of Cuba is also a red herring, because the circumstances in Cuba are not a miniature version of the more general global circumstances. It also falls into the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc because you are assuming that Cuba's sustainability is solely a consequence following its embargo, where in actuality there may indeed be other factors that contribute to its current style of living, and factors that are unique or mostly restricted to Cuba. A dictator is one loose example, but there could be many others, including the geoclimatic conditions I mentioned in post #47, and more abstract reasons such as particular cultural bents and specific starting-point configurations. Your use of the Cuba example is a cherry-picking, and a composition fallacy, and it is also a fallacy of affirmation of the consequent, but I will leave it to you to get off your arse and figure out why.

Your comment:

were the great pyramids built using fossil fuels?

poor old WoodDragon would have you believe so.

is reductio ad ridiculum, as well as being the 'putting words into my mouth' subset of a straw man fallacy, because I never said anything about this. It's also more generally another red herring, as the method of construction of the pyramids has nothing to do with the exhaustion of current global resources.

You repeatedly demonstrate invincible ignorance (which, in doing so, leads to the fallacy argumentum ad nauseam), and your emphasis of the righteousness of veganism is a naturalistic fallacy, as well as a perfect solution fallacy. Your behaviour demonstrates the psychologist's fallacy, and overall, it is an extraordinary display of logical fail, fail, fail.

And if you want to accuse me of ad hominem, you should take care to note that I am pointing out that your arguments are invalid not because you are an idiot, but because the are invalid, and that by the way you are an idiot.

common sense always seems to be nice, short and to the point. anyone else notice that?

Your comments are short because you do not ever address any substance, and whilst your comments might be (in your mind) "to a point", they do not ever present any relevant or substantive one.

You obviously wouldn't recognise hard fact if it kneed you in the crutch and turkey-slapped you with its elephant testicals.

Rabaelthazar's wisdom is certainly the most appropriate response to your childish adherence to your fantasy about the degree of difficulty that the planet is in. Unless you can actually address the many substantive points the he and I (amongst others) have put to you, I should probably follow Rabaelthazar's example.

So how about it - can you put forward a roadmap, with numbers, that actually supports your claims, and can you come up with any credible evidence that refutes the enormous body of science that is in diametric opposition to your cornucopian Nirvana?

I'm certain that you can't.

Edited January 4, 2011 by WoodDragon

[Guest svarg26]

it was the "intellectuals" who got us into the mess in the first place. WoodDragon would have you all trust in him and his "higher educated" rhode scholar buddies to get us all out of it. i for one am not that stupid. sorry for not buying your bung, pip squeak.

the cuban model works anywhere in the world and especially great in my backyard in poor old australia. most of the societies that woody mentioned lasted for thousands of years. most failing not due to lack of resources but from war or some other catastrophic event.

his doomsday prophecies are for the gullible and truly ignorant.

while woody was still thinking about it. i acted on it and LIVE it. he says it doesn't work, again, i LIVE it.

believe who you want to. it makes no difference to me.

common sense prevails! i simply can't lose.

bye bye

[WoodDragon]

Don't let the door slam on your arse on the way out, idiot.

If you actually read my stuff you'd understand that I am working to live sustainably myself. I started the process almost two decades ago, when I was a young bloke not wanting to leave the world worse off for having been in it. It's not as easy as planting a few spuds though, because unless a person completely eschews Western life it is difficult to avoid being caught up in the stampede of consumer culture.

As Rabaelthazar pointed out when he asked his questions of you, it is highly unlikely that you are actually sustainable in a comprehensive context. Even if you do grow every item of your own food (I'd be willing to bet that this is crap, coming from someone who is as clueless as you have demonstrated yourself to be), I am sure that you didn't build with home-grown hemp fibres and animal glue your own computer with which to log onto the internet, nor do you pedal furiously in order to generate the electricity that you use. Do you have, or have you ever owned, a mobile phone filled as they are with rare earth elements? Do you walk or cycle everywhere? And what about the clothes on your back? Do you raise your own sheep and linen and weave your own fabric?

Bullshit you do.

And if you use resources in much the same way that the rest of us Australians do, it's certain that there are elements of your life that are not indefinitely sustainable if 20 billion, or 9 billion, or 7 billion, or even 3 billion people live in that same way. Even if they did all grow their own food on magic terraces, because the subject of this thread goes far beyond growing one's own food. Far, far beyond, and this point seems to completely escape you.

Your last post shows the same rabid and unevidenced anti-intellectuallism that permeates all of your previous efforts. It also shows that you are not capable of reading and comprehending science or history, and that you are massively afflicted by the Dunning-Kruger effect.

You're a poorly-read, inadequately-educated, analytically-depauperate, ideologically-blinkered ideologue who wouldn't know truth if it ripped his arms off and slapped him in the face with the wet ends. If you disagree with me, then come back and formulate a measured, logical, and clear argument for your case, supported with numbers and verifiable facts. You've been challenged to do this repeatedly, and you've not once attempted to even feebly do so. That's all I ask for - testable evidence. It's not a matter of "believ[ing] who[m] we want to [believe]", even though that might be your strategy; it's a matter of looking for the best fact and the best science. Neither of these are at all visible on your radar.

Numpty.

I am not usually so immoderate in my language, but when I encounter people like you who patently have no clue about what it is they pronounce upon, and when they are spreading potentially damaging falsities, I happily make an exception.

[Guest svarg26]

i am simply a man that grows his own food.

believe it or not.

i did it with my own two hands. if you have hands, try using them. you would be amazed with what you can achieve. with or without your scientific consensus.

i feel sorry for anyone who read woodies long and drawn out yawn fests and believed a single word of it.

clearly civilizations that survive 3500 years of isolation, are not at all examples of how we as humans can live self sufficient without destroying the environment.

you sold me, mate. well done.

[botanika]

i did it with my own two hands. if you have hands, try using them. you would be amazed with what you can achieve. with or without your scientific consensus.

 

What is this, pre-school? However you live here in australia won't make a droplet of difference. Move to Africa or India and LIVE it. The Indians will also teach you how to use the shift key.

[WoodDragon]

So, still so substance, eh? Evidence and coherent thinking are not your forté, are they?

I'm surprised that you actually grow any of your own food, given the amount of time that you occupy your hands with certain other activities.

Now, about that door. I wouldn't worry too much about making sure it doesn't collect your arse on the way out.

[WoodDragon]

Lest svarg26 somehow thinks otherwise, I was referring to him in my last posting, and not to Botanika.

It seems that he requires that level of explanation.

[Guest svarg26]

is that the same africa with enough fertile soil that could grow food to feed the entire planet three times over?

tell me, what is 3x6? we are getting close to my 20/30 billion and that is just from one continent.

you guys crack me up and to think i did all of this without using the shift key.

let common sense be your saviour.

Nine Breakthroughs In Alternative Energy

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/01/9-breakthroughs-to-boost-coming-energy.html

so much for your fossil fuel theory.

Edited January 6, 2011 by svarg26

[The Dude]

Food, Water, Energy.

Food grows from the ground thanks to that thing in the sky (which won't fall btw). Now don't worry; that thing in the sky (the sun) won't disappear forever, it just does that sometimes to scare you. Then those of us older than a day old remember it will come back again tomorrow. Water is some miracle and a half as well! It just falls from the sky! Together with the sun they grow food from the ground! Teamwork! The life which grows from the dirt goes back to the dirt and the cycle is complete. It keeps growing and growing, changing form but the energy never dies. I don't know where the energy comes from but something keeps the clockwork of the universe in motion.

Finite resources? closed systems? People need to think outside the box perhaps. The scientific method is brilliant for describing what's in the box. It won't be a doomsday description that invents a creative solution for this problem. Problem solving always involves thinking outside the box. I don't think it could be an authority of any sort that tells you to save yourself.

Growing food is a type of perpetual motion machine with a constant, effectively never ending power supply in the sun. Water will keep falling from the sky and all these other rare elements in our computers and mobile phones are only a necessity because of the market for fancy little toys. Does anybody really NEED an I-pad? Our lifestyle is what costs us so much. And the philosophy of capitalism and fake scarcity, and of course designed obsolescence to sell the next best thing, so also a throw away culture, where 20 years ago things were still built to last. And our addiction to the most dirtiest source of energy in fossil fuels is pathetic. It's pathetic that oil merchants are allowed to sell their wares let alone run the world with it (and every piece of shit product derived from fossil fuels). Alternate power sources would have been employed as the standard ages ago if we didn't need a villain to run the world so the hero can save the day!

It is the simple life of DIY that becomes exciting! Consumer culture is just boring, yet strangely hypnotic! So we must break this spell, all the other blocks will fall into place with that natural intuition of the survival instinct. Academics are well researched on the horror of the world. I still like to dream.

Of course being a scientist, ever the realist, if confronted with an idealist with the sunshine still in their eyes remind them that it is night and there is imminent doom, you have the facts and figures to prove it.

So what is so harmful about svarg26's apparently naive posts? All he does is promote growing your own to save the day (sure there are other factors like our whole dependence on the economy which strangles our energy and survival potential, but there's nothing at all WRONG about his point that we should grow our own). Perhaps such a "naive" exuberance to save the day "with my own two hands" and the contagious spread of such enthusiasm is more beneficial than the effect of your well researched, academically sound, totally cross-reference-able and conclusive proof that we are doomed would have on the collective state of apathy and inaction many of us find ourselves in today.

If everything is so connected in the ecologist view and there are all these variables that us laymen will not understand have you ever considered the ever elusive and completely hidden variable of the psyche? What effect our state of mind (faith/doubt) has on the physical manifestation of our hopes and fears?

It is good to spell out the pitfalls but advocating doom is pure silly. You don't say, "listen we have a tough road ahead of us these are the problems" you say, "yeah we got to cull the population". We'll go for the easiest yet most brutal option (like we have been for our whole history on this planet it seems - sacrificing lives to the god of superstitious or scientific belief, either way just man made delusions).

Making such a conclusion, especially if shared by our demi-gods the scientific community, this feeling of doom could lead to apathy and inaction within the collective which will lead to an exacerbation of the issue and ultimately a dramatic cessation to the problem (wars / eugenics / mother nature kicking us out.)

Perhaps our beacons of all true knowledge (in the western mind), the scientific community could provide some kind of future trajectory to take, engage the right hemisphere a bit in some kind of creative solution we can all get behind. Doom maybe a popular idea but it just sucks the energy out of everyone. Hope energises everyone to take the necessary steps to survive, instead of just waiting to die.

The Dude's 5 step plan.

1. Grow your own

2. Collect and filter your rain water

3. Generate your own power (this is the tough one)

4. Tell your neighbours

5. Tell the world.

Before commencing any of this be sure to switch off your tv and stay away from the consumerist temples. Be mindful of any bullshit and remain eternally vigilant when confronted with the scary face of doom. You can do it!

If you believe you can or you believe you can't, in both cases you are right - Henry Ford (paraphrase)

Edited January 6, 2011 by The Dude

[bℓσωηG]

agree with the dude!

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Choice? Locked in boxes with tiny patches of dirt ,not enough room to grow food for our families, compost our own excrement.

Certainly the governments are not handing out solar power panels ,rainwater tanks ,or even encouraging the use of clean energy technology at all.

They fuck the earth, and say it's up to us to change, blame us for doing it.

I don't need their fossil fuels, I don't need their chemically treated water ,I don't need them to bulldoze a trillion hectares so i can eat burgers at MUCKdonalds...I have no need for mining corporations, sewerage outfalls, monoculture, deforestation etc...etc..

I have no need for a government at all and definitely no need for a military , but do we have a choice?

Forced to witness the destruction of our mother Earth ...Fed distractions, television brainwashing ,celebrities, and sports (oh so important). Made to slave away at a dead end job to pay for things we don't need, never ending payments to banks/landlords .

More and more useless junk that's what makes one happy, haven't you learned anything from watching television commercials? sheesh...

When the financial crisis hits world wide , it also will be ''our fault''. No food ? Oh dear, you should have put in a garden instead of wasting all your time working to amass a stack of bricks and that big ol' plasma screen...

The black agenda of the fascist control freaks in government is what constructs the invisible walls that prevent us from living a simple nonpolluting existence.

Grobal warming? I'd be more worried about the military's messing with the ionosphere (haarp) than some subtle climate variations myself.

If the ionosphere ruptures it will send a pulse of energy through the earth from top-to-bottom, north pole to south pole through the center of the earth, and that would melt the ice....

Then there is tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, rising seas, and of course the financial crisis, which looms on the horizon , engineered viruses,BP killing the ocean and nukes. So don't worry population Nazis, you will get what you want , less people

but it wont be from leaving the light on too long.

[WoodDragon]

You're still struggling with the presentation of actual evidence, aren't you svarg26?

Provide one, just one mind you, credible source that demonstrates that Africa can actally "feed the planet three times over", and that it can do so without compromising its unique ecosystems. Can it do so without cultural upheaval of its own population? What foods exactly can it produce in such globally-flooding abundance? What inputs are required to sustain this level of productivity, assuming that it exists at all? Are these inputs themselves sustainable over an indefinite period?

Get the picture? You're talking crap, without a clear and explicit body of evidence to back up your claim.

As to the issue of energy replacement...

I'm all for replacing fossil fuels and reducing the pollution of the planet (I'm an ecologist for pity's sake), but human energy use is a complex beast, and the source of energy is but one aspect of the whole problem. One of the greatest hurdles is Jevons' Paradox, which implies that increases in efficiency are more than offset by subsequent increased use. Leibig's Law of the Minimum, which you don't seem to have grasped yet, still operates as well, so even if all of humanity's energy woes were somehow addressed it does nothing to ameliorate any of the many other resource bottle-necks and environmental pressures that the planet faces, and indeed fixing energy availability alone would exacerbate the other pressures.

Nevertheless, let's look at the activist site that you think is a trump. Sorry, but it's not...

1) "Motion-to-energy" is not a new concept: it's as old as the hills. Wind, wave, water - we've been harnessing them for æons. I ceratinly believe that we can potentially derive most of our future energy from such sources, apart from solar, but in doing so we need to have front and centre in our vision the inescapable consequences of Jevons' Paradox and Leibig's Law of the Minimum.

Further, the idea that motion-to-energy processes can harvest energy from moving vehicles and such ignores the laws of themodynamics. Where energy is harvested from another energetic process, the original process must use in addition more than the harvested amount in order to maintain the original useful work derived from energy. Many folk have difficulty in understanding this, but it is easily demonstrated by using a car's air conditioning as an example - turning it on increases the car's fuel consumption, even though the conditioner is run off the 'waste' torque of the engine. The thing is, that if one attempts to drive and a non-air-conditioning level of fuel consupmtion, one would be driving more slowly - assuming that such efficiency can actually be acheived with the air conditioning engaged. And the extra fuel used to drive the air conditioner embodies more energy than is actually used in the air conditioning itself.

Thermodynamics. Learn about it, and understand why motion-to-energy is very context-specific.

2) Ethanol, biodiesel, and other biomass energy sources cannot replace humanity's current appetite for energy.

We've already removed a sizable chunk of the planet's vegetation for fuel, and thisa is whilst we have been using in a couple of centuries the fossil energy that was captured from millions of years of photosynthesis. If biomass could, today, replace fossil fuels, then we would probably not be using fossil fuels today.

We are, because they can't. Even if you cut down every last tree and obliterate every last terrestrial ecosystem to try to do so.

3) Ha! Solid oxide fuel cells.

They stumble at several hurdles, not the least of which is that although they are more efficient than conbustion at converting chemical energy to electrical energy, they still have a limit of efficiency, and it is nowhere near enough to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions. In order to do so they would need to be many times over 100% efficient, which is physically impossible. Heck, even a simple 100% efficiency is physically impossible.

Another problem is that not only do Jevons' Paradox and Leibig's Law of the Minimum operate in the context of SOFC-generated energy, Leibig's Law probably also applies to the catalyst used in the cells. There is no guarantee that the Bloom box does not rely on limited-availability metals, because the company will not reveal its alloy's composition. And even if it is not the weakest link, there are other concern's about its feasibility, and last but not least is the fact that it uses natural gas - a finite and carbon dioxide producing resource. Running all of the planet's natural gas through a stack of Bloom boxes will still release the same final amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, and it will still be vulnerable to the using up of a finite fossil fuel.

4) Flow batteries are nothing new, and they are not a source of energy, they are simply a store for energy. Quite frankly, humanity's problem is not that we do not have technology with which to store energy (we do - there are many options besides flow batteries), it is just that we are reluctant to pay the price it would take to move to storing renewable energy. And there's the supplementary issue of the fact that we do not yet have the scale of infrastructure required to store energy, but that's just a technical problem, although one vulnerable to Jevons' Paradox and Leibig's Law of the Minimum, just as other parts of the chain are.

5) Thorium? Right...

Contrary to the some of the hype, thorium can be used to make uranium. And contrary to claims that it can't be used to make 'dirty b0mbs' or similar, it is biologically harmful, which is a feature that can be used by an agency so inclined. Big issues if you're going to power the world with it.

And whilst there are certainly centuries worth of thorium, especially if renewables are used as well, it is still a limited resource. What are humans 500 years hence expected to use if we burn all of the fissile elements in the interim? Are we more entitled to it than they? And if we do use thorium en masse, where will the global scales of technology and associated resource-use come from? Remember Leibig's Law of the Minimum? Oh, and that bloody inconvenience pops up again ecologically if we power the whole of humanity with thorium the way that we power ourselves now.

It's a bit of a pest, that Leibig's Law, isn't it? You also have the matter of how thorium-derived energy is converted to non-electric forms, such as for transport fuel, and hey, did I mention Leibig's Law of the Minimum...?

6) Space power?

Grow up.

7) Spray on solar cells are a nice idea, subject to the constraints of technical considerations, Leibig's Law of the Minimum (including latitude and night, in this case). They will not save the world though.

8) Plastic into oil.

Yeah, I had a friend spam me last week with an email about this. Sorry, but no panacæa here. Plastic into oil = plastic into carbon dioxide, which... oops. Also, plastic comes from oil, which is only in finite supply, so we're back to... oopsie, again.

You just can't cop a break, can you?

9) Magnetic generator? Erm, see energy from motion, and see thermodynamics, and see '100% effficiency' and over-unity, and see any number of other constraints on the practicalities of magnetic generation.

And if you're going to post links to other free energy sources of the magic sort, I have a bottle of snake oil that'll cure you of your stupidity...

And speaking of such, your link (of which you must be so proud - you actually submitted some homework!) is simple another demonstration of logical fallacy - this time the definist fallacy, a few permutations of red herring (again), and bordering on square logic. Do some background reading, dude: you're still not understanding what the point of this whole thread is, it seems, and you're ill-equipped to make any point at all...

This thread is not about your lovely terraces, or even about global energy supply itself. It goes far beyond these considerations. It's about what the planet can sustainably carry in terms of human load. And humans are much more than their food and their powerpoints.

No matter how much you try to dodge the bullet, at some point you and your ilk, and indeed all of humanity, has to face the fact that either we keep the numbers that we have and live much more simply, or we reduce our numbers. If we do not do it ourselves, ecological inevitability will do if for us, and in a much less pretty and in a far less humane fashion.

And that is simple fact. Not doomsday prophecy or intellectuallism...

Just. Simple. Fact.

[WoodDragon]

The Dude.

Perhaps our beacons of all true knowledge (in the western mind), the scientific community could provide some kind of future trajectory to take, engage the right hemisphere a bit in some kind of creative solution we can all get behind.

The thing is, science isn't about telling people what to do. That's politics, and cultural discussion, and even the sort of thing that we're doing on this thread.

What science does do is to explain phenomena as best as it can, and to inform of alternatives in a context. It is not up to science to decide what society should do with knowledge, it is up to society itself to do this. Science can certainly inform about what the trajectories resulting from alternative choices will be, but in the end it is the choice of people and not of scientists that has to be made.

As a scientist myself I can say that most of my fellow scientists, along with me, are extremely concerned as people about the path that humanity is taking, but as people we are a tiny minority of the overall population.

I certainly agree with your five step plan. I implement it myself as far as I am able, and I strive to ever increase my ability to do so. I also try to reduce my consumption to an absolute minimum, whether it is of useless 'stuff' or of travel, and I try to remediate as much as I can. I do this as a person, not as a scientist.

I am involved in education and research in the real world, and I try hard to communicate simple ecological facts to as many people as possible. I do these things as a scientist, but what people do with the information is their business - it is not mine to tell them what choices they should make. I simply make sure that they are as well-informed as possible.

[random]

Well I stumbled upon this thread and walked into a war of words or so it seems. Can I say this simply as I have only limited intelligence... Being articulate and intelligent and able to think ahead so as to out manoeuvre with facts and logic is all well and good but if the world is being degraded to the point of destruction then who cares what is being said here and why are you mob arguing about it? Is this thread changing the world with its *voice of reason* or is it an attempt to ridicule others who have differing views? Whatever the case may be, it's been real. Real funny actually and gave me a good laugh so cheers guys and best of luck with your bitching

[WoodDragon]

Meeka.

If you think that this is a war of words you should read the "Getting high off HIV" thread!

I'm actually asking myself why I'm bothering to argue here, but on that thread I did so very deliberately - because poorly-informed people can put other people's lives at risk.

The difference there is that I actually have respect for most of the people who disagreed with me, because they were willing to question and to learn. With a certain individual here, on the other hand, I suspect that it's Stupid all the way to the bottom...

[Guest svarg26]

"It is a massacre of the world's poor. The problem is not the production of food. It is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis." - hugo chavez.

"we're speaking of men making decisions, based not on people's needs but on pseudo-scientific, amoral mechanisms like supply and demand, commodity exchanges, grain futures, selling short, selling long, and other forms of speculation, all fed and multiplied by the proverbial herd mentality - a system governed by only two things: fear and greed; not a rational way to feed a world of human beings." - William Blum.

"it's the financial elite of the world who have gained control of the most basic necessity of life, guided by a long-term strategy by international finance to starve much of the world's population in order to seize their land and control their natural resources." - Eric Walberg.

clearly food and its production is not the problem. the problem is the elite, with their mouthpiece WoodDragon included.

i knew it wouldn't take long before like minded people dropped in to explain what "common sense" is and how to apply it. i knew that WoodDragon wouldn't listen and i was right. time well saved.

the amount of time and negative energy that WoodDragon uses to attack me is laughable, considering i am "naive" in his eyes. why bother to respond at all? i simply posted that link to save me the hassle of typing and i don't feel the need to defend it. there are many more alternative energy sources. do some positive research and see what you can find. there must be something you can believe in that doesn't need a scientific consensus stuck to it.

with all his insults, attacks and flipping me the bird aside, i am sure woody is a nice fellow. is he a shill who gets paid to spread disinformation? or is he just one very confused and manipulated stooge? i encourage him to use his energy in pursuit of something positive. say for example, building a wind turbine from recycled washing machines. i have three of my own. it was great fun, mate. you should give it a go.

in the end, the mayan civilization proves me right, unless human sacrifice was an early version of a eugenics program. cuba also proves me right and is a shining example of community spirit overcoming adversity and the fact that i live it, is enough for me.

to borrow the words from mr icke.

i am me and i am free.

and i'm loving it.

[botanika]

You can never escape technology though svarg. Your as bound as the rest of us.

[WoodDragon]

Yes, you're free, svarg26, and that's a wonderful thing. You're even free to believe rubbish, and as long as you don't hurt anyone else by doing so, I don't give a rat's arse what you think. The problem occurs when your muddled thinking is spread to others, to the extent that it can interfer with social and/or political progress based on the best science.

You mention Hugo Chavez. One of my population biologist colleagues (yes, my PhD work was in population biology) is an ardent fan of Chavez, and not without good reason, because Chavez is bang on the money when he says things like the quote you use. [Edit: I forgot the first time around that my colleague is also a strong promoter of the fact that humans are living unsustainably on the planet, and that the Earth cannot sustain current numbners or great indefinitely. My point being that population science and the politics of egalitarianism are not mutually exclusive.]

The trouble is, you make several red herring errors again in your reference to Chavez. It is entirely possible - and indeed, it is actually the case - that Chavez can be correct about Western politico-economics and its damaging efect on the Third World, and that the planet can simultaneously still be under pressure from the number of humans living on it. Quite simply, they're different things. And yes, it is currently entirely possible to feed everyone in the world... but in the near future, if such numbers are to be sustained, and at Western living standards, then that ability will disappear.

You see, we're using up the planet's capital, just as you could live a Monte Carlo lifestyle for a year or two on a $500 thousand inheritance. But use it at too high a rate, and you spend it all, exhausting it, rather than potentially living forever (but more simply, and splurging on fewer friends) on the sustainable 'interest'...

As I have said before, in order to live the way that we (or at least, some of us) are living, humans are using in several centuries the energy that was fossilised in coal and oil over hundreds of millions of years. We are depleting in several centuries the stocks of topsoil that take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to form. We are draining, in less than a century in many cases, fossil (aquifier) water that takes thousands to tens of thousands of years to recharge. We are wiping out within several centuries biodiversity that provides us with essential ecosystem services - biodiversity that will take tens of millions of years to re-establish given the rate at which we are now obliterating it. All these reasons underpin the fact that we currently could, if we so chose, feed the entire population of the planet adequately, but they are also the reasons why we cannot do so in the long run without something giving.

No matter the correctness of Chavez' or Chomsky's or Walberg's observations, the underlying principles of ecology still stand, because they're two different beasts. Get it?! You're confabulating two separate issues. Heck, I even agree with William Blum, because the "commodity exchanges, grain futures, selling short, selling long, and other forms of speculation" that form the issue of "supply and demand" that so irks him are economic in nature, and as far as I am concerned economics is a pseudo-science because it is based upon opinion and upon meta-stable past practices, rather than upon testable and verifiable science. The economists' idea of supply and demand is a bugbear for ecologists, because it actually assigns many things to the category of "externalities", and it does not acknowledge the fact that the planet is for all intents and purposes a closed system. When economists and ecologists speak of "supply and demand", they are speaking about very different things.

You speak of common sense. The thing about common sense is that it is often wrong. Attributed to Einstein is the quote:

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Wickedpedia says it well though:

Common-sense ideas tend to relate to events within human experience (such as good will), and thus appear commensurate with human scale. Humans lack any common-sense intuition of, for example, the behavior of the universe at subatomic distances [see Quantum mechanics], or of speeds approaching that of light [see Special relativity]. Often ideas that may be considered to be true by common sense are in fact false.

Add to subatomic distances and speeds approaching that of light the complexities of global ecological and climatic systems...

In the past it was common sense that the earth was flat, that the sun circled around the earth, and that heavier objects fell faster than lighter objects. If you're enamoured of common sense, it might be time for a reality check. The end few paragraphs are telling...

Or you might consider this essay on science and common sense that was drawn to my attention by another colleague some time ago.

Another quote often cited in the same context as Einstein is one by Don Wood:

Stupid is forever, ignorance can be fixed.

I've been trying to elicit from you an indication that you're prepared to address your misunderstandings of resource limitations, but you have to this point shown no capacity for doing so. Seriously, svarg26, there is an enormous body of data and fact out there supporting the subject of ecological constraints, in both the scientific and in the lay literature, and that has withstood all feeble attempts such as yours to contradict it. If you disagree with me, stop throwing red herrings and strawmen into the thread and actually produce some numbers that back up your claims.

It is telling that you can't.

If you are struggling with understanding where to start in such homework, might I suggest that you begin with a study of water requirements and availability? In particular, work out how we could deliver adequate water to 30 billion (a number that you suggested) people and still maintain any semblance of a Western lifestyle. Heck, work it out for a globe living a Cuban lifestyle! There is a plethora of information available to help you - it's about time that you did some self-development: as you yourself have pointed out I have already expended far more energy on this thread, than is advisable, dealing with you.

Edited January 7, 2011 by WoodDragon

[Guest svarg26]

my common sense says, burn it all down and start from scratch. a return to balance is in order.

i don't need some einstein to tell me what my definition of common sense is.

my best advice is put down science weekly and take control of your own life. when enough people remove themselves from the system, the system crashes and burns. we are the currency and slavery will never solve our problems.

go off grid and stop fanning the flames.

“Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” - Mahatma Gandhi.

that's all i need.

[random]

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act". - George Orwell.

[WoodDragon]

"You're a poorly-read, inadequately-educated, analytically-depauperate, ideologically-blinkered ideologue who wouldn't know truth if it ripped his arms off and slapped him in the face with the wet ends." - WoodDragon.

Edited January 7, 2011 by WoodDragon

[WoodDragon]

my best advice is put down science weekly and take control of your own life.

.

Edited January 7, 2011 by WoodDragon

[botanika]

Time for the Galaxy song

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving

And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,

That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,

A sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see

Are moving at a million miles a day

In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,

Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.

It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.

It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,

But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.

We go 'round every two hundred million years,

And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions

In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding

In all of the directions it can whizz

As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,

Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,

How amazingly unlikely is your birth,

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,

'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

[synchromesh]

Wickedpedia says it well though:

 

Why do you keep calling it that? Misinformation and censorship isn't cool at all...