I am actually talking about replacing the earth, or at least, replacing the bits of the earth that we depend on for survival which stand to be the most disrupted by global warming. We can deal with bad weather. People don't die in hurricanes or in heavy snow falls or in stupidly hot and dry summers, not in anything like numbers that would be significant anyway, it's our crops and our water supplies that get strained and when those go south, you get bad shit happening. So yes, I am talking about replacing the earth, only I'm going to take this metaphor one step further and say we should replace the alcoholic's liver with a mechanical one, a liver that does the same job as a liver, only it does it better AND is immune to the effects of alcohol.
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Is Solar Activity causing climate change?
- Thread starter Dean
- Start date
)O( Hytegia )O(
New Member
I think that life will do what it's always done -
adapt. Adapt. Adapt. Adapt. And then adapt some more.
Environment changes? Adapt again.
Rinse, repeat, and voila.
We might turn up a bit funny at then end, with some weird gills and some tentacles, along with thick skin and eyelids to filter out the terrible gaseous mess of a future we'd made for ourselves - then maybe we'll have crazies still babbling about some god's punishment or another instead of our own doing.
Do I think HUMANS will survive? Define Human - homo sapiens surely won't. But perhaps a future generation of life will come out of this mess with a new outlook on things and a yearnng for the Cosmos that we have all seemed to have forgotten in our petty human toils and troubles.
adapt. Adapt. Adapt. Adapt. And then adapt some more.
Environment changes? Adapt again.
Rinse, repeat, and voila.
We might turn up a bit funny at then end, with some weird gills and some tentacles, along with thick skin and eyelids to filter out the terrible gaseous mess of a future we'd made for ourselves - then maybe we'll have crazies still babbling about some god's punishment or another instead of our own doing.
Do I think HUMANS will survive? Define Human - homo sapiens surely won't. But perhaps a future generation of life will come out of this mess with a new outlook on things and a yearnng for the Cosmos that we have all seemed to have forgotten in our petty human toils and troubles.
)O( Hytegia )O( said:
I believe the jury is still out on environmental changes causing positive mutations. That said, even if the evidence was there, it takes millions of years of positive mutations for a species to evolve. I doubt most of the planet's species have that long before the environment becomes to inhospitable.
)O( Hytegia )O(
New Member
What the hell are you on about?tuxbox said:
Increased adverse environmental pressures cause a more rapid change than an ordinary stasis... In simply the years we've had Nylon, Nylon-eating bacteria has emerged due to a new source of energy via protein synthesis -
Mutations compound until it becomes something more profound, and then it will either make the life form unfit for survival or fit, and thus pass on it's genetic code because it's lived long enough to pop out a few children and attract the ladies.
Increased environmental pressures cause the species itself to look for something more stable and better to provide for them and their offspring, meaning mutations and niches that place a life form in those positions will become more desirable than, say, the hobo talking to himself on the street corner.
)O( Hytegia )O( said:
Evidence please, not speculation.
)O( Hytegia )O( said:
Flavobacterium does not eat nylon. It eats certain byproducts produced in the manufacturing of nylon-6.
)O( Hytegia )O( said:
I am not disputing mutations or evolution. The mutations are random and therefore not predictable. Saying the environment causes them, does not make it true. We know some environments cause negative mutations, such as radioactive environments causing cancer, but I have yet to see hard evidence that cold weather can cause a mutation, negative or otherwise.
)O( Hytegia )O( said:
The evidence would suggest that increased environmental pressures usually causes extinction, not mutations.
)O( Hytegia )O(
New Member
Are you serious?
It's the basic mechanism for Natural Selection and choosing the best mate based upon solid environmental pressures. The fact those better suited to their environment will pass on their traits in lieu of those who either die or are less appealing. The more pressure from the environment, the more stress becomes pressed upon life to meet the requirements for best suited-ness and continue to pass on their traits as opposed to a lighter environment, where this is not really so much of a necessity.
It's the basic mechanism for Natural Selection and choosing the best mate based upon solid environmental pressures. The fact those better suited to their environment will pass on their traits in lieu of those who either die or are less appealing. The more pressure from the environment, the more stress becomes pressed upon life to meet the requirements for best suited-ness and continue to pass on their traits as opposed to a lighter environment, where this is not really so much of a necessity.
)O( Hytegia )O(
Sadly, this seems rather doubtful.
The idea of a human (in a biological sense of the term) that isn't a member of Homo S Sapiens ... is hardly intelligible, is it? :? Perhaps you mean "person". "Person" is a far more vague and unqualified concept than "human".)O( Hytegia )O( said:
Perhaps we have the potential to transform into Homo Erectus Sapiens ("Man Walking His Brains Upright")??)O( Hytegia )O( said:
Sadly, this seems rather doubtful.)O( Hytegia )O(
As far as we know, that was driven by runaway sexual selection. Normal natural selection doesn't lead to antlers so big as to be encumbering, nor does it lead to fancy, eye-catching colours (to note another example), because that'd be really bad for the individual carrying them. Sexual selection is a special case of natural selection that can lead to traits that appear to be maladaptive, rather than optimally adaptive. It is for that precise reason that there exists the sexual dimorphism between male and female peacocks (among other examples) - wherein the male exhibits phenotypic traits such as it's vibrant colours, which could very well make it an easy target for predators .... So in actual fact, sexual selection can be a highly temperamental facet of natural selection (as you articulated it), and can result in grossly negative traits, with low efficacy. Evolution is not only simple, it is rich, which is why the 'selfish gene' is considered a limited caricature of natural selection. The selfish gene can't be literal but literary, more anthropomorphism or personification than anything. As is the idea that evolution is wholly about naturally selective pressures. Other factors such as Gene Recombination and Drift play just as much a role, among other factors.
Of course, this is in itself, a diversion from the intended purpose of this thread, which is to invite discussion on elucidating the facts of the common pseudoscientific cry that solar activity is the major contributor to Anthropogenic Global Warming. However: it is actually interesting to me that the subject of evolution was brought up in this conversation. It's weird, because as it happens, I was in fact considering opening a whole new thread exclusively dedicated to discussion of Evolution by Natural Selection ... just a discussion of the basics, like this. Would you like me to do it? Perhaps you should?
It's kind-of a fool's errand in one way, I guess. This is actually rather more of a contentious subject than you may think. The effect varies. Take "choosing the 'best' mate based on environmental pressures", for instance. "Mate"? Have you considered the extinct Irish Elk -- Megaloceros Giganteus?)O( Hytegia )O( said:
As far as we know, that was driven by runaway sexual selection. Normal natural selection doesn't lead to antlers so big as to be encumbering, nor does it lead to fancy, eye-catching colours (to note another example), because that'd be really bad for the individual carrying them. Sexual selection is a special case of natural selection that can lead to traits that appear to be maladaptive, rather than optimally adaptive. It is for that precise reason that there exists the sexual dimorphism between male and female peacocks (among other examples) - wherein the male exhibits phenotypic traits such as it's vibrant colours, which could very well make it an easy target for predators .... So in actual fact, sexual selection can be a highly temperamental facet of natural selection (as you articulated it), and can result in grossly negative traits, with low efficacy. Evolution is not only simple, it is rich, which is why the 'selfish gene' is considered a limited caricature of natural selection. The selfish gene can't be literal but literary, more anthropomorphism or personification than anything. As is the idea that evolution is wholly about naturally selective pressures. Other factors such as Gene Recombination and Drift play just as much a role, among other factors.
Of course, this is in itself, a diversion from the intended purpose of this thread, which is to invite discussion on elucidating the facts of the common pseudoscientific cry that solar activity is the major contributor to Anthropogenic Global Warming. However: it is actually interesting to me that the subject of evolution was brought up in this conversation. It's weird, because as it happens, I was in fact considering opening a whole new thread exclusively dedicated to discussion of Evolution by Natural Selection ... just a discussion of the basics, like this. Would you like me to do it?
Perhaps you should? )O( Hytegia )O( said:
Are you saying... that we should just sit back and evolution take over, or...?
Not sure what you're getting at with this post, to be honest.
The "Rinse, repeat, and voila." comment makes you sound as if you're taking the problem of climate change very lightly, though.
)O( Hytegia )O(
New Member
The "Rinse, Repeat, and Voila" is what they say on the side of soap bottles in order to get you to buy more shampoo - implying that eventually your hair will look like the person's on that one television commercial... Eventually it will occur.
I'm not taking anything lightly, but I am saying that if worst comes to worst life will do what it does best - adapt and survive. The entire point of that post was that if we do fuck ourselves over there is, at least, that trim of hope that it will carry on.
In an unhospitable wasteland? Yep.
Thank you for the correction, Dean. But, as also observed, this particular strain of life died out. There are still many varieties of that strain - I love hunting Elk. The less fit was overhunted into extinction because they were large, had serious meat on their bones, and couldn't get away from hungry wolves and humans.
I'm not taking anything lightly, but I am saying that if worst comes to worst life will do what it does best - adapt and survive. The entire point of that post was that if we do fuck ourselves over there is, at least, that trim of hope that it will carry on.
In an unhospitable wasteland? Yep.
Thank you for the correction, Dean. But, as also observed, this particular strain of life died out. There are still many varieties of that strain - I love hunting Elk. The less fit was overhunted into extinction because they were large, had serious meat on their bones, and couldn't get away from hungry wolves and humans.
Sorry for the thread-necromancy, but I felt that this thread may be worth reviving so that I could bring this point up that seems to have been missed, somewhat. I.e. the fact that it is not just global warming that we need to worry about. And while that IS the intended purpose of this thread, it is also worth remember these points, so here we go ...Gnug215 said:
The issue(s) of overpopulation and ecological carrying capacity, e.g. the volume of biological organisms that can be supported on this planet by the resources as well as the land area. So I thought I'd introduce some of my calculations (rough) here. Good for estimates, at least:
- 1. Radius of the Earth: approx. 4000 mi
2. Human population of the Earth at present: approx. 7000000000
3. Area of a sphere = 4*À *R[sup]2[/sup].
Now in the case of the Earth ,all other things being equal, the last calculation there will give you a figure of somewhere around ...
201088000 mi[sup]2[/sup]. That's the approximate surface-area of the Earth. Except, we know that only about 30% of that area (at best)-- is land area. Thus, to calculate the available land-area on this planet, you must do: 201088000 / 10 = 20108800. 20108800*3 = 60326400 (mi[sup]2[/sup]).
Now this calculation shows that the surface-area of Earth's land (per se) is about 60326400 mi[sup]2[/sup]. However, arable land, e.g. the area of land that you can actually produce something valuable on, is approx. ~ 11.61%. This one is rather more complicated...
60326400 / 100 = 60324. 60324*11.64 = 702171.36 mi[sup]2[/sup].
Now ... using these figures, this means that there is roughly ... 700,000 miles-squared, or e.g. 1126540.8 km[sup]2[/sup] if you prefer metrics.
Even assuming that ALL spaces of arable land are producing well, which is not necessarily true, it's also been estimated that the destruction of arable land , on which 99.72% of human-food is grown , is currently occurring up to 40x faster than it is being replenished. And over the past 30-40 years or so, 30% of that land area has become unproductive. It is of course also worth mentioning that hydrocarbons are also the backbone of modern-agriculture and farming, and as they decline, the food supply to 7,000,000,000+ humans will also decline. Bare in mind that the human-population growing far faster than the land that can support it is, and as it increases, there will be a higher demand for food, which means -at least looking at these numbers- that there will ultimately just be an even larger chunk of people on this planet who are starving in the long run. Fresh water is also on the decline , and in fact , is showing shortages for the best part of 3 billion people, and that will become 4-5 billion within the next 50 years.
So if we carry on eroding this "carrying-capacity" , so to speak , baring in mind that the Earth's human-population is on pace to reach 8 billion by 2030, will mean that by 2030, about 50% of the world's population could be dying of thirst, and a further 30% dying from lack of food because of the rate that arable crop and farming land has been destroyed, and because hydrocarbons are on the decline, because they come from oil, which is also in decline ... I think you get the picture. But ultimately, it seems that we may end up with only a small percentage, e.g. 5-10% of the world's population with sufficient food and water, and those numbers will continue to decline.
Unless we can find food through other means, e.g. artificial environments, and/or the ocean, in the case of water , which we CAN do, but it would be absurdly expensive, especially considering the economic and financial train-wreck that many 1st-world countries seem to be on , then we will be more-or-less F***'d in the long run. Not only is climate change caused by humans creating problems for the earth's ecosystem, humans are directly depleting the Earth's ecosystem, as shown above...
It should be noted that 'arable' is defined as being able to support (with proper management) sustained cultivation. There is roughly 10% more land under cutivation than what is considered "arable" land area ... which is a worrying sign in and of itself in my opinion, as it indicates something of a desperation to grow new food ... and to find new food supplies. There are typically two possible ways that this process can work:
- 1. Planting new crops on land that is otherwise typically seen as unarable in the hope of attaining at least some new forms of growth out of it ...
- 1b. that, and / or forced fertilization & irrigation of the land, e.g. basically hydroponics on a very large scale.
- 2. It's also worthy of note; that humans can live, just about anywhere(ish) on the planet's land-surface, given the right resources, and enough time to develop ... remember our European ancestors survived glaciation with apparently no more technology than - perhaps - crude animal skin coverings, and small nomadic groups which still survive in various deserts in the present day. But practically; large concentrations of humans are always near arable landspace... and our cities and suburbs are built right over and displacing what would potentially be some of the richest croplands on the planet (e.g. alluvial plains). Were we a genuinely intelligent species we would have built cities in the scrub- borders just outside flood and silt fertilized river-plains rather than on the rivers themselves. But economics will out ... there's more money to be made in the short-run putting raping the commons for economic gain and nobody was over concerned about intelligent conservation of soils thousands to hundreds of years ago as our cities were founded, as sad and despotic as that might sound...
Nonetheless, even at the most generous land numbers, we (homo s. sapiens) are populating the earth approximately 1-order-of-magnitude more densely than other large mammals in the wild*. Comparable in our global land(s) opposed to land spread to the most dense wilds in some of their richest habitats, and none of that indicates the privations upon the planet born of our use of technology. At our density, just the use of fire for cooking and warmth would be ecologically disastrous. Heh.
*The link is specifically a reference to land area in Africa, and the wild-animal populations that live there. And I realize that this is rather an obscure reference, but it it the only real reference I could dig out of ze webs that wouldn't involve perma-linking sub-categories of great big tables on even more obscure websites ...
The numbers they give are in accord with some of what I can vaguely remember from secondary school, i.e. larger herd-animals , such as Wildebeest & Zebras in the case of Africa , take something like ... 15-30/mi[sup]2[/sup]. But of course, animals that are mainly, or wholly carnivorous; are naturally , for obvious reasons , far less densely populated, and much more sparsely distributed than their prey. Perhaps only 1 or 2 per square-mile, and it's also conceivable that animals that hunt in groups could have territories of ... 2 or 3 mi[sup]2[/sup], Then again, in Africa, lions when there's no food around can have territories of up to 150 square miles, heheh...
So I hope I've summed up these issues well enough.
All the best.
KittenKoder
New Member
While I disagree with climate change being man-made, though I do agree environmental change is happening but argue that it's not necessarily a bad thing, this kind of saturation with kook theories annoys me. Though what bothers me more is that I see it on both sides yet no one bats an eye when their side does it.
That being said, the solar idea is too much of a stretch, as it would run contrary to why 2012 is, well, stupid.
That being said, the solar idea is too much of a stretch, as it would run contrary to why 2012 is, well, stupid.
australopithecus
Active Member
KittenKoder said:
Based on what may I ask?
KittenKoder
New Member
australopithecus said:
Well, the carbon aspect was much the killer, though I'd wager it was more hype than actual studies I just gave up bothering to verify everything at that point. However, it's the macro versus micro argument. While on a large scale it's feasible, there are naturally occurring drastic changes in the climate which we would have to be fighting against as well. Climate itself is extremely fluid, we have seen this in the past, going through periods of extreme changes on it's own, so our effect is possible, but only if there is no effect countering it as well. However, as my strongest contention with environmentalism today, it's quite possible that even if we are just accelerating a climate change, working with the tide, it could be a good thing.
But then to expand on this whole thing, take into consideration of every aspect, since what we are using is already here, and thus natural, the worst case scenario is that we are mixing things up a bit again. Ultimately this would be a good thing anyway.
I'm an old school environmentalist, we wanted clean stuff, but forgot that to clean it we'd have to use things that would make matters worse in many cases. I admit having a lack of details in the matter, but every single argument used as proof for global climate change being "man made" just keeps falling short. Keep in mind, we are natural, everything we do is natural, it's not the same system that governed the world prior to us, but it is natural.
Laurens
New Member
KittenKoder said:
I'd like to ask, do you think that digging up organic matter that has been buried for millions of years, and burning it at an alarming rate to release CO2 into the atmosphere (which has been known to have a warming affect since the 1800's), whilst simultaneously destroying vast swathes of rainforest (which absorbs CO2) does absolutely nothing bad to the environment at all?
KittenKoder
New Member
Laurens said:
There is one of the flaws, you are ignoring the fact that I said there's a difference between environmental change and climate change. You are also using a reverse logic there, if the food of an organism increases then it is unlikely that would be the cause of the decline in the organism's population level. That's where your entire argument falls apart. Rainforests thrive in high CO2 and high heat environments, add water vapor to that and you have the perfect environment for the plant life, which in turn creates the perfect environment for the other life forms.
There's a favored phrase tossed around by both sides of the debate: correlation does not equal causation. It fits this instance too well.
Now if you said that we were destroying the rainforest through construction of cities and destruction of the resources, and if that was the cause of the increase in CO2, due to a lack of absorption by the part of the system which absorbs a lot of it, you'd have a possible point on the matter. But we are not destroying it in such a manner, so you have to reverse logic to make it connected.
There was an algae that appeared here in Seattle recently, it was deemed "bad" because it was a mutation that was capable of surviving in a toxic environment. Algae is responsible for most of the CO2 absorption and O2 production in the world. Probably because of the amount of surface area it can grow in. They destroyed it, all of it, because it may be harmful to other organisms. However, the algae itself was not tuned to the toxic environment, it was just capable of surviving it. Which did mean that other organisms would have to eventually adapt to a change in the food system as well. However, my point being, we deemed this "bad" because it was different than we had seen, yet it fit well within expectations of biological science, it was another evolution of the algae in the area.
When you consider only one aspect at a time, you can make anything look bad, but when you act on just one fact without examining all other options, possibilities, or even sciences you lose sight of the real effect. This mutation was not caused by toxic chemicals, it just helped the organism survive in a harsher environment, one we helped to create. You don't need a purpose to fulfill a purpose, and evolution does not happen without change in the environment. So even if we are the primary cause for such changes, perhaps it would be a good thing and not a bad one. If anything, it will help to finally shut up the ignorant religious zealots when they try to say evolution doesn't happen.
Also note: I love the concept of renewables, because we will run out of the others eventually so we need something to replace them.