Is the Earth F**ked?

[whitewind]

http://io9.com/5966689/after-extensive-mathematical-modeling-scientist-declares-earth-is-fucked

After extensive mathematical modeling, scientist declares “Earth is F**ked”

Dave Levitan

Brad Werner has a simple question: Is the Earth fucked? He also has a remarkably complicated methodology yielding a very simple answer: yes, unless people start a serious global rebellion.

Werner, a complex systems researcher at UC San Diego, spoke on Wednesday at the huge American Geophyiscal Union conference going on in San Francisco. This is a meeting where a typical talk might be called "Status and potential capacities to sequester carbon of China's terrestrial ecosystem," or "The significance of the opening angle of pyroclast ejection during explosive volcanic eruptions." Werner's talk really was called "Is Earth Fucked?"

AGU Executive Director/CEO Christine McEntee told ScienceNow, "Our program committee evaluates the scientific merit of the abstracts and accepts those that meets their criteria. Our scientists are free to create the titles of their sessions."

Werner, sporting a neon green winter hat over bright pink hair, discussed the nature of interactions between humans and the environment, and what those interactions say about the future. His argument goes something like this: modern culture, with its emphasis on money and economics, is far too focused on short time scales. Capitalist culture tends to encourage decreases in "dissipation of transactions" – it is much easier to get food now than it used to be, or to talk to someone not next to you. These changes reduce friction within our system, and a reduction in friction "promotes instability." So we're in the process of destroying things thanks to that instability, and even when we engage in environmental management efforts, we couch them in capitalist terms, like cost/benefit analyses as efforts to deal with climate change. This, Werner says, will inevitably lead those management schemes to fail over a long enough time frame. And he actually created a computer model to study all of this… stuff. Broadly, the result is discouraging.

"What happens is not too surprising: the economy very fast chews up the environmental resources, depletes those reservoirs, resulting in a significant amount of environmental damage," Werner said during his talk. He is still finishing up the model, so no details on the inputs and the final simulations are available. Still, I asked him afterward to clarify if his model had answered his baseline question. Is Earth fucked? "More or less," he said.

But don't worry! There's a solution: resistance movements. It was extremely unusual to hear this in a talk given at one of the biggest and most highly respected environmentally-related scientific conferences in the world. "Resistance is basically when people, groups of people, step outside the culture," Werner said. "They adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture."

In some ways, he says, this sends us back to pre-technology, pre-capitalist times, which promotes the stability we have otherwise lost. He went on during our conversation:

 

Because resistance cultures do replicate to some extent the long time scales and tightly connected time scales within indigenous cultures, we might expect that the influence of resistance, even without thinking about the details, would be to stabilize and promote sustainability.

 

Capitalist society moves too quickly, and our connections to each other and the world have become too superficial, to avoid destroying the world. But resistance movements – Werner cited the Arab Spring and Occupy movements as recent examples – could disrupt our otherwise inevitable course of enviro-destruction. That's a hard proposition to gather evidence for scientifically, but Werner didn't seem to mind. The abstract for Werner's invited talk at the AGU went even farther, stating that the an important solution is "Environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups."

I asked him if his conclusions double as a call to violence. "I'm not calling for anything, I'm just trying to understand the system," Werner says. "I think it's important, though, to say, if this is what happens, then this is what we expect. And if people engage in resistance, then the general impact of it is likely to promote sustainability."

So, to sum up: even our best efforts at environmental management are doomed to fail, unless massive scale resistance movements start springing up and send our cultural personality back toward a pre-technological era. Science has given you your mandate, people: Go blow some shit up.

 

[goneski]

Good riddance. Humans are fucked.

[CβL]

Without doing any modelling, I think the Earth is fine* - but humans are going to have to pull many miracles in a row to not end up extinct.

*HOWEVER - I think that without humans, the planet may also be doomed*, as we need to move to other planets and life-systems as soon as we can do so to avoid becoming space-impact debris.

*HOWEVEREVER - the timescales that give a large probability of the Earth being struck by a large-enough space object could also be long enough to almost ensure that another dominant intelligence could rise, so maybe it will be ants that end up saving all of Earth's lifekind from extinction and bridging the gap to far-away galaxies. I for one, welcome our new ant overlords.

[Distracted]

The Earth isn't fucked, we are. The Earth will be here a lot longer than we will be, unless hit by space debris as CBL said.

edit: one liners aside, i'd like to see his computer model.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Distracted

[santiago]

what about the eventual death of our sun? in much future time that would be my big bummer not an asteroid.

[Bigred]

im more worried about the return of Jesus and the whole rapture thing

[Stillman]

George Carlin always makes me smile.

 

[qualia]

i think it's interesting that the people who say "the earth will be fine it's humans' who're fucked" seem to be middle class westerners who have basically everything they want (at least more than 80% of the worlds population). i should think if you and your families very existence relied on the following years crops, which were being wiped out by drought followed by flooding rains you would feel differently. same with the type of people who say "all humans must die", i don't see them volunteering to lead by example.

[qualia]

[BentoSpawn]

middle class westerners who have basically everything they want (at least more than 80% of the worlds population)

I personally find it extremely difficult to believe that 80% of the worlds population are middle class westerners

Sadly with a bit of googling i wasnt able to disprove or prove this figure however.

I did however stumble upon that:

20.25% of the worlds population is white.

20% are Chinese

17% are Indian

15% are African

Given these statistics that i pulled from wiki answers/Wikipedia i think its pretty safe to assume that your statistic is grossly overstated.

Edited January 4, 2013 by BentoSpawn

[Stillman]

I wasn't taking any sides or making any statement by putting up the Carlin clip. He just makes me smile. Which is good when there's no easy answers. And I would have thought that us bourgeois would make up say 15% at best.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Stillman

[teonanacatl]

Nothings fucked, its all normal, we are just so egocentric we want to believe its fucked so we can save it.

Edited January 6, 2013 by teonanacatl

[qualia]

I personally find it extremely difficult to believe that 80% of the worlds population are middle class westerners

Sadly with a bit of googling i wasnt able to disprove or prove this figure however.

I did however stumble upon that:

20.25% of the worlds population is white.

20% are Chinese

17% are Indian

15% are African

Given these statistics that i pulled from wiki answers/Wikipedia i think its pretty safe to assume that your statistic is grossly overstated.

 

indeed, as what i meant to say is that middle class westerners have more than 80% of the worlds population (going by statistics that ~80% of the wolds population lives below $10 a day).

[bullit]

indeed, as what i meant to say is that middle class westerners have more than 80% of the worlds population (going by statistics that ~80% of the wolds population lives below $10 a day).

 

can i borrow 20 bucks

[Yavimaya]

indeed, as what i meant to say is that middle class westerners have more than 80% of the worlds population (going by statistics that ~80% of the wolds population lives below $10 a day).

 

That still doesnt make alot of sense, if you meant 80% of the money / power, i think you'll find china has 100% of everything these days.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Yavimaya

[gtarman]

Buh. You don't need a scientific study to tell you that, it's everywhere you look

Barring adequate social change, population constraints and technological advances I think we are most unequivocally and irredeemably fucked. What remains to be seen is whether we, as a species, can put aside our petty bullshit and bickering and do what needs to be done.

I'm not optimistic, but if I were superstitious I'd have my fingers crossed...even though a large part of me wants to see many aspects of this ugly, hollow, beige and plastic modern world we've built collapse, I would rather we rise to the challenge and earn the right to change it for the better on our own terms.

Edited January 6, 2013 by gtarman

[bullit]

fuck me!!! i love this world!!! i am alive and have a fucken cool family !! we cant control the world, motherearth will do it for US!!!

world fuck mayb? chinalongachindongdong ????????????

charity starts @ home !!

Edited January 6, 2013 by bullit

[gtarman]

fuck me!!! i love this world!!! i am alive and have a fucken cool family !! we cant control the world, motherearth will do it for US!!!

world fuck mayb? chinalongachindongdong ????????????

charity starts @ home !!

 

Don't get me wrong, there are definitely people and things about the modern world that I really really love. But there are also many things I really really don't. But meh, complaining about it ain't gonna change it...they tell me we need politicians for that

[santiago]

the core reason the earth is f**cked is money. is that ever going to change - no. at the moment earth people are so systemised by being slaves to the capatalist system, whilst communism isnt really much better in reducing waste and pollution, whats worse is being in the middle as socialists. thats all a bit confusing but tomorrow the kids of tomorrow will go to school to be eductated and then thrust into the evr repeating cycle of working for the man, to earn a buck so we can go buy the shit from kmart that drives the economy that stuffs up the planet. even worse is this nancy pansy approach to the so called 'green' recyclable and modern age renewable energy movement.

we can all pat ourselves on the back when we buy our solar hot water systems and prius cars. i suppose at best what were achieving is slowing down the destruction, where as i believe the powers should be saying, the world is already fucked lets not slowly delay the inevitable, lets assume the world is already fucked today and stop wasting time defending the multitude of countries from each other with a drain on labour, skills and money ie the Australian army and friends. Whats the point of protecting NZ from China when if the world ends due to the mismanagment of priorities, we all die together. For that to happen, the world needs to learn peace. Lets get the world together and get the armies working together to fix the planet. I single out defense forces but that is just an example.

Fortunately or unfortunately how you look at it, its not really our problem. We can at least die and escape the ever so so, strangulation of the planet. So yeh, i dont have the answers but i think the best way to solve the growing problem is to actually admit the future is doomed and start working on it today. The government needs to cap, capatalism. How many Hungry Jacks stores do we really need, 50 - 100 -200. Why? Because we are greedy pigs. I say - 1. That may upset the fat people of Perth, but get those kids out of burger flipping and get them into government cadetships. What would a unskilled burger flipper do you say? All kinds of things. Planting plants, cleaning rubbish, recycling, streamlining, building simple things. But then of course if we dont have 200 franchises of Hungry Jacks, how will the economy survive? Hungry Jacks and Coca Cola etc and the multiple bunnings and coles all sustain and drive the economy by providing the wages that flow down the pegs of society. How could the government afford to pay 4000 out of work hungry jacks kids. Firstly, the true gift is by releasing them from economic slavery and a low skill future. Imagine the self esteem a 15 yo kid would attain being a government cadet, so long as a cadet had a positive contribution to the planets health. The whole point being remodeling the doomed franchise type capatailst system. Possibly the only way that might work is credits. Forget Orwellian inspired 6th amendment freedoms, your not a slave to the government, your a slave to the system and the system is based on the fragile guessing game of printed money. Printed money, gets washed, lost, burnt, buried. I believe that the folly of this is an estimated calculated game of roullette where money must be carefully reprinted as to avoid inflation. That doesnt mean much to you and i, except that we are manipulated by money.

Shock horror - what if instead of paying those cadets with money from the government "pool", they are issued.....credits. The credits are dollar for dollar as valuable as real money but exist as controlled numbers. The controlled credits are counted by the mint computers and the money cannot ever be erased. What i basically mean is that the economy wouldnt need to be propped up by protecting big business which is essentially the engine that drives the economy so that the money flows down to the poorer people. But thats a false belief. If your honest you will say that big business is once again the capatalist theory that is destroying the planet as a by product by such things as pollution and wastes to name 1 and STILL only a mechanism in the guessing game of printing less money to void off economic collapse. Now lets "assume" an infallible credit system was created and controlled by a global algorithm. The credits are issued from 1 to 20 zillion but thats it. Firstly. Saves a bit of plastic waste and labour, wow. Secondly - Credits cannot get burnt in the fire, which means that the monetary system goes from a guessing game to a science. The whole point being taking control of the worlds wasteful money and resource sytem. That is how the governments of the world can pay for fixing the planet.

But the freedom of speech kinda mentality and fear of control probably wont allow that to happen. Orwell freaks will proclaim slavery, failing to realise that they are already slaves. How will people buy illegal shit with controlled credits. Barter. Black currency, there will be a bootleg system of course. No need to fear losing the ability to buy something off the back of a truck in the pub.

Without even putting more than one hours work into the computer on a quiet night, whether they are hair brained or sytematic problem solvers, firstly we have PEACE. Not those woodstock ideals which amounted to nothing but a true full co-operation between all countries on earth. Once PEACE is established and proven, slowly the defense forces of the world can be re-assigned to projects that benifit the world, if that is cleaning the oceans of tsanami plastic, the so be it. The rationale to that is as clear as we established earlier that, when the world dies eventually, we all live on the same planet so 1 million paratroopers from US and CHINA die together. Why not work towards creation of good. If that guy joined the army to shoot guns and feels that killing and death is his job, and helping save humanity isnt, that is the kind of brainwashing bullshit that needs to be rectified. We can free up valuable resources which will free up ambitious ideas like credits for every child born on the planet. This will help or completely control the financial problems of the world of which CONTROL is established. By controlling the SYSTEM, we can reduce the CAPATALIST system which will reduce the amount of business creation, which will help to CONTROL the waste that is a million duplicated Mcdonalds wrappers flying about our streets. Once this frees up all the workers they can be absorbed into the system, the system being essentially the government and redeployed to a network of projects that now due to a stable SYSTEM, allows for financial freedoms, if given the choice a utopian vision can be seen where it may not be the case of working at all. What if we could choose to retire. Working per se would mayby become a stale relic of a failed ideal. If you want to work well then you get rewarded with PRIVELAGES, not overtime. Privelages being a high form of organised barter, representing more freedoms from the new controls and also what is a loosely clad 1st/2nd/3rd classes of society which may still be required to avoid a pure communist ideal the CREDIT system of controlled money will scarily for some have close resemblance. But this isnt about Tiger Woods anymore vs a hungry orphan living in a box in an indian slum. Yes Tiger deserves the spoils of his victorys and a 4 million appearance fee just to play for more money, but for all his talent does tiger really deserve to win in one day what 90% of people may never earn in thier life. Does that kid in the box in india deserve 500 credits as his birthright any less than Tiger deserves a hooker, i say that kid deserves 500 credits. If that is a kind of communism then we must alter our beliefs. If that kid in india gets 500 credits because, we didnt have a misguided sense of personal freedoms, we dont like to be controlled. We think we are free, but controlled by poverty.

I know thats very long, sometimes i cant stop. Whats the answer? Realistically you and i will probably go to work tomorrow and get crushed by the current system and come home too tired to have energy left to even think about the future. We all are stupid, misguided, brainwashed, dirty, selish, dreamless, unmotivated petty little cogs, in the petty system you think is your life, then you pay off your shitty overpriced house in a belief that is the meaning to life. In the meantime your stuffing the pockets of the obesely rich and they will keep that system going to there heirs and the select few will have everthing. Obviously Royal Family's are the glorified shopfront versions proving that the secret has probably been going for 2000 years. I dont believe in illuminati and all that crap i just believe that some clever family in a village figured out how to simplistically become rich apon riches by working a simple model on the people. Much to behold, the system worked so well that they fooled the village, gave the riches to the kids who expanded. Expansion needed labour, being the only thing most people have to offer the system was refined to the point that 2000 years later, the system is now the world we live in. Illuminati my ass, clever theifs and manipulators more like it. The Royal Family is such as a monument to the people, to remind the people that you are inferior. If that fantasy is true, who knows but if it is well then our lives are already planned. We are born to work, it is no haphhazard mistake, no fluke that we just do what we do. It is very conceivable that this economic slavery we work towards, was formulated in the past and then built apon to be foolproof. Ok if these hundred or less Illuminati exist today then how do you get rid of them, and how do they keep the secret a secret and what do they get out of it.

Firstly i am a non conspiricy theorist and a non believing sceptic. If this is true that this so called illuminati exist, where are they? According to many a class warfare author, then the classes will rise against each other, create a simplistic reshuffle new order and once the dust settles everything returns back to normal and so do the classes. The only way for for the poor to rise, is to have a big ass rebellion and steal power but thats the whole point. Class warfare provides also a fundamental backdrop to the clever Illuminati manifest. Meanwhile whilst this big war happens, as little as 10 Illuminati remain in power as usual. Its pretty much foolproof and will remain so forever. The question i have is what can you do with 999 trillion dollars. Well i suppose the simple answer is ANYTHING. This gives them the so called SECRET. You must of all heard that before...................THE SECRET. Da Vincy, Raiders of the lost ark, dead sea scrolls, resurrection. holy grail. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Of course over the period of thousands of years some blabbering idiot illuminati family member fucked up and gave clues. These bcame the mythical searches to the meaning of life. Unfortunatelly the secret is the blueprint of economic control, improved gradually and steadily over centuries using an ecomomic system most likely resembling capatalism. Its not brain surgery, its just a clever idea, probably created by a very intelligent thinker and mathematician, and historian who figured out why empires failed. He then wrote the blueprint, experimented on some poor people, to his amazement it worked but it was actually a good theory so he decided to turn it into a legacy. He formulated the illuminati and never imagined it would keep going so well. The illuminati with so much money, probably paid enormous sums to the pope and kings, perhaps they had to expand into outside family unit to infiltrate power places and now they have 999TRILLION. (and counting). Obviously they know the system is terrible for the plebs and will destroy the plant with industry, and they have a master plan to escape on a 999TRILLION spaceship will L RON HUBBARD and tommy. As you can see, scientology may now be part of the puzzle too, slowly controlling the celebs who would be good looking DNA providers for when the illuminati and scientoligists and friends escape into space and colonise the next place we bump into. If that is the case then my soul purpose in life is to work, to provide the weath for a new super-race of wealthy fuckheads to escape into space. There you have it, i explained the holy grail to you. No need to wonder what the secret to life is or what your purpose is. Perhaps delving into science fiction, is Earth the first time this has been done. Is the secret, many thousands of years old and the illuminati are actually pre huminoid aliens using us as they hop around. If so, then the vested interest would be for human extinction and global death as they are trying to get away from the sun before it blows.

So in summary - The earth is fucked.

[Yavimaya]

"Possibly the only way that might work is credits. Forget Orwellian inspired 6th amendment freedoms, your not a slave to the government, your a slave to the system and the system is based on the fragile guessing game of printed money. Printed money, gets washed, lost, burnt, buried. I believe that the folly of this is an estimated calculated game of roullette where money must be carefully reprinted as to avoid inflation. That doesnt mean much to you and i, except that we are manipulated by money.

Shock horror - what if instead of paying those cadets with money from the government "pool", they are issued.....credits. The credits are dollar for dollar as valuable as real money but exist as controlled numbers."

Credits are dangerous. It is what banks use these days to give you your home loan.

 

 

[Bigred]

[Bigred]

with all these new virus's evolving soon one will come out and kill millions perhaps billions . the planet is getting pretty

crowded maybe mother earth trying to reduce numbers

[qualia]

Lets get the world together and get the armies working together to fix the planet. I single out defense forces but that is just an example

interesting, but never will happen, not while people are plugged into the system. coincidentally i was reading something which states US "war on terror" is designed to be neverending, as a huge part of their economy is reliant on the military-industrial-complex. more than 2.5 trillion in 10 years spent so far on the WOT, public funds. that money didn't just vanish into no where.

[qualia]

it's interesting when put in the context of pax americana, there's nothing new happening, just the same old shit with better weapons.

[santiago]

Credits are dangerous. It is what banks use these days to give you your home loan.

so the only concievable way to get a home is through a home loan your saying, sounds as if the system you are part of is perfect, but then we are looking at reasons why the hunger for making money to pay off that enforced loan for most is contributing if not the singular reason that the earth is a flawed place. credits could be dangerous yes, probably only for those that dont work within a defined set of rules. i understand people dont like to work to rules because this gives the perception of freedom, perhaps that is the illusion needed for you to be brainwashed by the current system, which you are not free in fact at all.

that video attached was a prime example, bright little intelligent girl representing some background advertising firm of a child with a toy, that toy representing carrying away wealth. all smartly set up by a association of bankers. prime example of simple brainwashing and propaganda simply set up to re-affirm the current system. the similarity continues, the emotive poor children speil, the holes in productivity that must be patched by more labour, the end view is that "to solve all the worlds money problems-we need to make more money".

i really cant see how this whole facet of life isnt blatenly obvious and we dont question the very fundamentals of our manipulation every day, from tv to advertising, questioning the very peculiar way most are indifferent and ignorant to who and where they are and the product they have become and will actually defend this system quite vigerously when so prodded.