Cancun...is it gonna help?

[VisualDistortion]

personally i think we're fucked, and i also don't see how this planet could sustain 9 billion meat-eating humans anyway if one kilo of meat requires about 6 to 7 kilo's of vegetable's... I mean you'd need to grow enough vegetable's to be able to supply 63 billion people with proteins, right?

I think a majority of the population of the planet survives mostly on rice and potatoes and other various starches and vegies of that nature. Protein to most of the population is a very rare thing to find at the dinner table.
I'm no expert on global nutrition and what it takes to feed everyone....I guess all I'm saying is that it's not quite as bad as you say. I don't know where world population is nowadays but I would feel pretty confident in saying that only 10-15% of the population eat protein(meat, poultry, fish etc) daily. Maybe less...

Yeah, i know. But meat is becoming more and more popular for some reasons that probably lie beyond the scope of my grasp.

It's delicious

 

[Ice House]

personally i think we're fucked, and i also don't see how this planet could sustain 9 billion meat-eating humans anyway if one kilo of meat requires about 6 to 7 kilo's of vegetable's... I mean you'd need to grow enough vegetable's to be able to supply 63 billion people with proteins, right?

I think a majority of the population of the planet survives mostly on rice and potatoes and other various starches and vegies of that nature. Protein to most of the population is a very rare thing to find at the dinner table.
I'm no expert on global nutrition and what it takes to feed everyone....I guess all I'm saying is that it's not quite as bad as you say. I don't know where world population is nowadays but I would feel pretty confident in saying that only 10-15% of the population eat protein(meat, poultry, fish etc) daily. Maybe less...

Yeah, i know. But meat is becoming more and more popular for some reasons that probably lie beyond the scope of my grasp.

It's delicious

You know.....VisualDistortion, your statement just gave me an idea that may very well help humanities food shortage while satisfying our lust for meat.

CANIBALISM!!!! hmmmmmmmmm

and while we are on that subject

maybe even NECROPHILIA to help with our population control problem.

 

[BananaForeskin]

"meat is becoming more and more popular for some reason"

That made my day...

 

[Ayawasqero]

Exit planet dust.

 

[polytrip]

Our childern are fucked if WE don't act to change some fundamental ways of living. We don't have to give up all aspects of our modern living, but we have to stop treating the planet's limited resources as if they are limitless...right now. The global 'free' market isn't set up to do this, rather, it's set up to exploit. Meanwhile, we sit around and listen to blabbering politicians who believe that Noah's Ark is a fact and that Darwin was a heretic.

We need to act now on a large scale. This isn't just about avoiding meat, or recycling, or driving a fuel efficient car (even though all of those help). The global economic system doesn't punish CO2 polluters and doesn't reward CO2 eliminators. In the US, most of our electricity comes from coal, the dirtiest fuel. We have to stop that now and yet there isn't an economic incentive to make it happen. (Note: When you hear people talk about clean coal, they're talking about reducing heavy metals and sulphur emissions, not CO2.) Coal is the worst fuel.

China is building 1 large coal fired electric plant per month to sustain their economic growth. No matter how much we recycle, it's hard to offset that scale of CO2 emissions growth and the Chinese aren't going to stop building these power plants any time soon.

Meanwhile, the fossil fuel corporations spend about $150,000,000 per year to convince us that manmade warming is a theory and clean coal is real. The alternative energy research funding in the US is largely controlled by the US Department of Energy which historically is more interested in building nuclear bombs than solving our energy problems.

We have a way out of this mess which is to massively invest in solar power. The goal should be to develop solar power systems that produce energy at a lower cost than coal. If it has to include subsidies to get started, fine. The energy from the sun exists. We could put people back to work and also provide a future. It's a hard, expensive project but a challange to save humanity is a good thing. It sure is better than fighting endless war. But, we don't have the will. Someone has convinced us that fighting endless wars over increasingly scarcer resources is a better path. WTF?

So sorry to rant on like this. I'm done now.

We should be investing largely in all possible forms of alternative energy.
Solar energy but also nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fusion has huge potential and if we would have an abundance of cheap energy, wich is a completely realistic scenario with nuclear fusion, we could also solve the problem of water shortage, since purifying water costs usualy lot's of energy.

Thing is that we should have been acting much earlier. Now the whole train of climate change is already set in motion, like so many other environmental problems. There are so many species that are going to be extinct anyway, no matter what we'll do now to try to prevent it. Tigers and tuna's are already a thing of the past, like the dodo and the dinosaurs. There's too little bluefin tuna's and tigers of any subspecies left in the wild to realistically sustain a stable population and then there is that mysterious but most likely pesticide-related bee-problem....Oh, and if that bee-problem escalates we're in real deep shit btw.

 

[polytrip]

"meat is becoming more and more popular for some reason"

That made my day...

Liking meat is realy a habitual thing. I used to love meat as a child, but it's more than 20 years ago now since i last ate meat and my body has grown out of liking it. As a matter of fact the smell that would have made my mouth water 20 years ago is now a terrible stink to me, nearly as bad as the smell of fresh vomit. Eating meat would be like eating shit or vomit to me..last summer i ate a piece of italian bread that had little pieces of ham in it, wich i didn't know before i took a bite, and had to spit it out immediately. It literaly felt as if i had just shoved a dogturd into my mouth.

 

[Ice House]

We should be investing largely in all possible forms of alternative energy.
Solar energy but also nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fusion has huge potential and if we would have an abundance of cheap energy, wich is a completely realistic scenario with nuclear fusion, we could also solve the problem of water shortage, since purifying water costs usualy lot's of energy.

Thing is that we should have been acting much earlier. Now the whole train of climate change is already set in motion, like so many other environmental problems. There are so many species that are going to be extinct anyway, no matter what we'll do now to try to prevent it. Tigers and tuna's are already a thing of the past, like the dodo and the dinosaurs. There's too little bluefin tuna's and tigers of any subspecies left in the wild to realistically sustain a stable population and then there is that mysterious but most likely pesticide-related bee-problem....Oh, and if that bee-problem escalates we're in real deep shit btw.

That is an outstanding idea polytrip but, just about all of the major ecconomies out there are busted, broke. Who is going to finance this? Europe? USA?

The Chinese are screwed, they have lent most of their money to nations who cant even pay the intrest of the loans.

We still have an issue with the current CO2 emissions levels that are only increasing. That must be stopped.... Like 10 years ago.

Our Oceans and seas are becoming toxic for the very marine life that inhabits it, slowly, but its happening.

Call me doom and glooom if you like. I am the voice of reality. Its not if anymore, its when.

 

[Ice House]

Something like over 75% of the people who responded to this poll voted that its not too late. I would love to hear some of them chime in with their reasons for voting this way. What this thred could use is a little optimism.

 

[cker]

If we choose to act now, it isn't too late. The historical peak CO2 is 300ppm and we're around 330ppm now. There will be significant warming effect in our grandchildren's lifetimes but humans will be able to survive. Meanwhile, CO2 levels are climbing ever more rapidly. It takes 3000 years for CO2 to be depleated after it enters the atmosphere.

If we do something serious now, we will be OK. If we wait for the problem to show it's ugly head, we've got a long 3000 years ahead of us.

There's some optimism. If we act, things will be fine. It's 'our' decision.

 

[cker]

I said I would stop ranting so I'll just add a few comments:

polytrip wrote: "We should be investing largely in all possible forms of alternative energy.
Solar energy but also nuclear fusion."

The problem with fusion is that we are out of time. In a lab setting, we are capable of achieving near breakeven in a fusion reactor today. That isn't close to where we need to be to generate fusion power commercially. No one knows what technology would work to generate fusion power commercially and the timescale for fusion research is so long that even the research won't be finished by 2050. Add to this the fact that fusion generates lots of fast neutrons and fast netrons turn powerplants into mush. No one knows how to build a fusion generation plant that would last long enough to make a profit. It may not be possible.

The only reason I support solar is because we know how to make electricity from sunlight today. Most people live under a roof and that is a good place for solar panels. If we are going to solve the CO2 problem by 2050, we need to start now. We could do this with solar.

The problem with solar is cost. Right now, solar power costs about 4X the short term price of coal fired electricity. The solar costs will go down, but, are we willing to spend more for electricity today to allow our grandchildren to survive? This is a hard question.

 

[clouds]

I don't think its too late, but I also think 2 things should happen first.

1) Drug policies should be reformed.
2) Political boundaries should be softened.

 

[Big Inhale]

Something like over 75% of the people who responded to this poll voted that its not too late. I would love to hear some of them chime in with their reasons for voting this way. What this thred could use is a little optimism.

We are able to do anything we want. When it gets to that point we will fix it. We are procrastinaters.Theres scientists with phd's and garage scientists working on this problem all over the world. What are all you negative nancy's doing to help besides posting in this thread.(seriously not trying to be a dick) Check Cheeto's new thread he is trying to help. What does Cancun have to do with this anyway?

 

[cker]

^^^^ Big Inhale wrote: "When it gets to that point we will fix it."

The only thing I know how to do is try to live gently. I'm trying to communicate a subtle truth. The politicians and media have poisoned the debate on CO2. With deepest respect I offer the following: Your comment above is the problem.

You see, we are at the point where we can fix this without too much destruction. There is a time delay between when we emit CO2 and when the earth's temperature peaks. If we stopped emitting all CO2 today, the planet will continue to warm. We now have more CO2 in the air than ever before. We now are increasing the rate we emit CO2. It takes 3000 years to naturally eliminate what we have emitted. There's lots of CO2 frozen beneath the oceans. Once that is released, then it's really too late. It's a 'run away' effect.

Once we've reached "that point" it is too late.

OK, now I'm really done. Sorry for the ranting. I apologize for being a pest.

 

[Big Inhale]

How do you know its to late? I hear arguments that all this CO2 production talk is politicians trying to get us to pay more taxes and another form of control. I also see arguments like yours so who am I to believe? Im sure I can find stats for both sides. I guess its just try to live clean respectful before the whole shit house goes BANG.

 

[BananaForeskin]

I said it's not too late because, well, it's not. We may enter "Water World", but we'll still survive... I have my lemon tree!

As long as you live the best way you can and slowly help people come about to do the same, even if it's not enough, it's something. What would be ideal is if we really could slowly work towards bringing down more of the institutions which keep society running the way it is... Given the importance of America in the world's economy, I think it's a fine place to start. If, say, Obama hadn't bailed out the banks and they had all gone under, or if he hadn't bailed out the auto industry, I think there would have had to have been a major positive lifestyle change on the part of most people...

The one big problem is that going in the direction needed to save the planet is what most people would call "going to hell in a handbasket". When, ironically, not going in that direction is going to make the planet a lot more hellish.

Been pondering for a while what/how to bring changes about.

 

[ElusiveMind]

Been pondering for a while what/how to bring changes about.

As I see it we wont change in time unless something drastic and on a global magnitude happens....im talking about nature kicking the shit outta us before it delivers the finishing punch.

We as humans are too slow for change right now. If a situation is not affecting our money, the food on our table, or the house over our head in any drastic way, then there will be no change.

 

[polytrip]

I said I would stop ranting so I'll just add a few comments:

polytrip wrote: "We should be investing largely in all possible forms of alternative energy.
Solar energy but also nuclear fusion."

The problem with fusion is that we are out of time. In a lab setting, we are capable of achieving near breakeven in a fusion reactor today. That isn't close to where we need to be to generate fusion power commercially. No one knows what technology would work to generate fusion power commercially and the timescale for fusion research is so long that even the research won't be finished by 2050. Add to this the fact that fusion generates lots of fast neutrons and fast netrons turn powerplants into mush. No one knows how to build a fusion generation plant that would last long enough to make a profit. It may not be possible.

Hmm, high energy-yielding fusion devices for military purposes have been in use for almost half a century now. I think that if the same effort would be made as has been made for staying ahead of the soviets in the crazy armsrace that kept the world hostage for about 50 years, something may actually come out of it.
Maybe putting some scientists in a bunker and telling them that the russians are way ahead of them would be a good motivational tool. It worked then.

 

[sonofsnow]

We are all part of a whole.
So maybe the earth have to be destroyed so the rest of the universe can continue function as best possible.
And if it is to be destroyed, maybe it have to happen at the exactly right time.
Some try to save the Earth and some dont give a shit, but together we will make the destruction happen at the exact correct time. I am glad to be one of those who try save it.

 

[VisualDistortion]

Just to clarify the OP's question. Is the planet to fucked up to be saved from what?

 

[1992]

Its not too late. The current iteration of mankind will be long gone before the end of the earth.

We could have easily had enough power for the entire planet just using solar panels by now, but the petrol companies make far too much money to let it happen.