A Subtle Reminder of What's Coming

[bean fidhleir]

[lostnotforgotten]

1. Yes We Have Too Many People - Over Population Is Our Gravest Problem

eom

[Deja Q]

3. As in humankind's? I haven't even made one child, much to the chagrin and delight of my parents.

Don't hold me responsible.

[lostnotforgotten]

5. Childless Here As Well - I Am Not To Blame Either

eom

[glowing]

4. Over consuption and not having access to family planning techniques is

killing us. We all need to share better and take care of family planning better.

[Deja Q]

2. Well, some whackos said that the 2008 elections would be canceled...

Ditto for 2006, 2004, and 2002.

All this gloom and doom nonsense compels me to put up a picture too:

[judasdisney]

7. Let me quote you on that

The historian Chalmers Johnson is one of your "doom & gloom whackos" who has forecast (a) bankruptcy and economic collapse, or (b) military takeover & overthrow of democracy is inevitable for the U.S.

Somehow, I have more respect for Johnson than anyone on DU

[bean fidhleir]

8. Dr. James Lovelock, who was the first to realize that Earth is a single system

also believes we're in for a mass extinction event, that around 2100 Earth will have perhaps 20% of the current population, and we'll be struggling to survive, most of us clustered in the Arctic Circle.

He's quite a smart man, and has predicted the changes we're seeing. He's been more accurate than the scientists using computer models because, he says, he looks out the window at what's really happening. The modelers can't believe that things are as bad as they are, so they keep their models conservative and fail to predict the correct magnitude of change.

To Lovelock, it's "simple" on some level: Earth acts to maintain homeostasis, for example by growing more trees to keep the oxygen level high and the temperature down. But we humans have disrupted Earth's ability to maintain homeostatic conditions in which we ourselves can live. We've deforested most of Earth, so now the chief mechanism for carbon capture is gone. This has the knock-on effect of, first, forcing the excess carbon into the oceans, which become acidified and start killing off fish, and second, changing weather patterns and increasing desertification, killing off more forest as is happening to the Amazon rainforest. Both the loss of fish and the increased desertification reduce our food supply, which will cause starvation, disease, and human extinction. Which will eventually let the forest cover come back and Earth cool down again. But without humans and, probably, most other species above the level of bugs. (This of course is a highly abstracted and incomplete picture, but nevertheless a correct one)

[tavalon]

9. As someone who has held the Gaian theory for quite a while,

I know Lovelock. If I look at it from a micro level, it's really sad, but from a macro level, it's beautiful. We have become the Earth's cancer. That she can just throw us off is quite a feat and quite a beautiful reminder that we are really not as big as we think we are.

[bean fidhleir]

10. I know what you mean

I really do *not* want it to happen and am doing all I can to stop it, but if it does happen it'll mean at least that we, in our eagerness to stay hag-ridden, stupid, and ignorant, are getting what we asked for.

But I pity all the other, innocent creatures whom we're going to take with us, as though we're arrogant kings ordering from our deathbeds that all the palace servants and animals be killed too.

[hobbit709]

6. Wonder what it will be

Big rock from the sky, giant X-ray pulse from close supernova, supervolcano, or will we accomplish it all by our lonesomes?

[lunatica]

11. Reminds me of the massive garbage avalanche in Idiocracy

as our extinction moment. Although we may be gone but our garbage will remain. It also reminds me of the Pixar movie, WALL-E. Unfortunately it looks like our legacy will be garbage. Literally.