It’s the end of the world and we know it by 1kiki

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

It’s the end of the world and we know it

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 10:40
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VIEWED: 3395
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Monday, May 1, 2017 3:58 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Stephen Hawking - Now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together. We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans. Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it.

https://www.salon.com/2017/04/30/its-the-end-of-the-world-and-we-know-
it-scientists-in-many-disciplines-see-apocalypse-soon/

It’s the end of the world and we know it: Scientists in many disciplines see apocalypse, soon

While apocalyptic beliefs about the end of the world have, historically, been the subject of religious speculation, they are increasingly common among some of the leading scientists today. This is a worrisome fact, given that science is based not on faith and private revelation, but on observation and empirical evidence.

Perhaps the most prominent figure with an anxious outlook on humanity’s future is Stephen Hawking. Last year, he wrote the following in a Guardian article:

Now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together. We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans. Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it.

There is not a single point here that is inaccurate or hyperbolic. For example, consider that the hottest 17 years on record have all occurred since 2000, with a single exception (namely, 1998), and with 2016 being the hottest ever. Although 2017 probably won’t break last year’s record, the UK’s Met Office projects that it “will still rank among the hottest years on record.” Studies also emphasize that there is a rapidly closing window for meaningful action on climate change. As the authors of one peer-reviewed paper put it:

The next few decades offer a brief window of opportunity to minimize large-scale and potentially catastrophic climate change that will extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far. Policy decisions made during this window are likely to result in changes to Earth’s climate system measured in millennia rather than human lifespans, with associated socioeconomic and ecological impacts that will exacerbate the risks and damages to society and ecosystems that are projected for the twenty-first century and propagate into the future for many thousands of years.

Furthermore, studies suggest that civilization will have to produce more food in the next 50 years than in all of human history, which stretches back some 200,000 years into the Pleistocene epoch. This is partly due to the ongoing problem of overpopulation, where Pew projects approximately 9.3 billion people living on spaceship Earth by 2050. According to the 2016 Living Planet Report, humanity needs 1.6 Earths to sustain our current rate of (over)consumption — in other words, unless something significant changes with respect to anthropogenic resource depletion, nature will force life as we know it to end.

Along these lines, scientists largely agree that human activity has pushed the biosphere into the sixth mass extinction event in the entire 4.5 billion year history of Earth. This appears to be the case even on the most optimistic assumptions about current rates of species extinctions, which may be occurring 10,000 times faster than the normal “background rate” of extinction. Other studies have found that, for example, the global population of wild vertebrates — that is, mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians — has declined by a staggering 58 percent between 1970 and 2012. The biosphere is wilting in real time, and our own foolish actions are to blame.

As for disease, superbugs are a growing concern among researchers due to overuse of antibiotics among livestock and humans. These multi-drug-resistant bacteria are highly resistant to normal treatment routes, and already some 2 million people become sick from superbugs each year.

Perhaps the greatest risk here is that, as Brian Coombes puts it, “antibiotics are the foundation on which all modern medicine rests. Cancer chemotherapy, organ transplants, surgeries, and childbirth all rely on antibiotics to prevent infections. If you can’t treat those, then we lose the medical advances we have made in the last 50 years.” Indeed, this is why Margaret Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization, claims that “Antimicrobial resistance poses a fundamental threat to human health, development and security.”

Making matters even worse, experts argue that the risk of a global pandemic is increasing. The reason is, in part, because of the growth of megacities. According to a United Nations estimate, “66 percent of the global population will live in urban centers by 2050.” The closer proximity of people will make the propagation of pathogens much easier, not to mention the fact that deadly germs can travel from one location to another at literally the speed of a jetliner. Furthermore, climate change will produce heat waves and flooding events that will create “more opportunity for waterborne diseases such as cholera and for disease vectors such as mosquitoes in new regions.” This is why some public health researchers conclude that “we are at greater risk than ever of experiencing large-scale outbreaks and global pandemics,” and that “the next outbreak contender will most likely be a surprise.”

Finally, the acidification of the world’s oceans is a catastrophe that hardly gets the attention it deserves. What’s happening is that the oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and this is causing their pH level to fall. One consequence is the destruction of coral reefs through a process called “bleaching.” Today, about 60 percent of coral reefs are in danger of bleaching, and about 10 percent are already underwater ghost towns.

Even more alarming, though, is the fact that the rate of ocean acidification is happening faster today than it occurred during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. That event is called the “Great Dying” because it was the most devastating mass extinction ever, resulting in some 95 percent of all species kicking the bucket. As the science journalist Eric Hand points out, whereas 2.4 gigatons of carbon were injected into the atmosphere per year during the Great Dying, about 10 gigatons are being injected per year by contemporary industrial society. Thus, the sixth mass extinction mentioned above, also called the Anthropocene extinction, could turn out to be perhaps even worse than the Permian-Triassic die-off.

So Hawking’s dire warning that we live in the most perilous period of our species’ existence is quite robust. In fact, considerations like these have led a number of other notable scientists to suggest that the collapse of global society could occur in the foreseeable future. The late microbiologist Frank Fenner, for example, whose virological work helped eliminate smallpox, predicted in 2010 that “humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction, and climate change.” Similarly, the Canadian biologist Neil Dawe reportedly “wouldn’t be surprised if the generation after him witness the extinction of humanity.” And the renowned ecologist Guy McPherson argues that humanity will follow the dodo into the evolutionary grave by 2026. (On the upside, maybe you don’t need to worry so much about that retirement plan.)

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists also recently moved the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to midnight, or doom, primarily because of President Donald J. Trump and the tsunami of anti-intellectualism that got him into the Oval Office. As Lawrence Krauss and David Titley wrote in a New York Times op-ed:

The United States now has a president who has promised to impede progress on both [curbing nuclear proliferation and solving climate change]. Never before has the Bulletin decided to advance the clock largely because of the statements of a single person. But when that person is the new president of the United States, his words matter.

At two-and-a-half minutes before midnight, the Doomsday Clock is currently the closest to midnight that it’s been since 1953, after the U.S. and the Soviet Union had both detonated hydrogen bombs.

But so far we have mostly ignored threats to our existence that many leading risk scholars believe are the most serious, namely those associated with emerging technologies such as biotechnology, synthetic biology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. In general, these technologies are not only becoming more powerful at an exponential rate, according to Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, but increasingly accessible to small groups and even lone wolves. The result is that a growing number of individuals are being empowered to wreak unprecedented havoc on civilization. Consider the following nightmare disaster outlined by computer scientist Stuart Russell:

A very, very small quadcopter, one inch in diameter can carry a one- or two-gram shaped charge. You can order them from a drone manufacturer in China. You can program the code to say: “Here are thousands of photographs of the kinds of things I want to target.” A one-gram shaped charge can punch a hole in nine millimeters of steel, so presumably you can also punch a hole in someone’s head. You can fit about three million of those in a semi-tractor-trailer. You can drive up I-95 with three trucks and have 10 million weapons attacking New York City. They don’t have to be very effective, only 5 or 10 percent of them have to find the target.

Russell adds that “there will be manufacturers producing millions of these weapons that people will be able to buy just like you can buy guns now, except millions of guns don’t matter unless you have a million soldiers. You need only three guys,” he concludes, to write the relevant computer code and launch these drones.

This scenario can be scaled up arbitrarily to involve, say, 500 million weaponized drones packed into several hundred semi-trucks strategically positioned around the world. The result could be a global catastrophe that brings civilization to its knees — no less than a nuclear terrorism attack or an engineered pandemic caused by a designer pathogen would severely disrupt modern life. As Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum put it in their captivating book “The Future of Violence,” we are heading toward an era of distributed offensive capabilities that is unlike anything our species has ever before encountered.

What sort of person might actually want to do this, though? Unfortunately, there are many types of people who would willingly destroy humanity. The list includes apocalyptic terrorists, psychopaths, psychotics, misanthropes, ecoterrorists, anarcho-primitivists, eco-anarchists, violent technophobes, militant neo-Luddites and even “morally good people” who maintain, for ethical reasons, that human suffering is so great that we would be better off not existing at all. Given the dual technology trends mentioned above, all it could take later this century is a single person or group to unilaterally end the great experiment called civilization forever.

It is considerations like these that have led risk scholars — some at top universities around the world — to specify disturbingly high probabilities of global disaster in the future. For example, the philosopher John Leslie claims that humanity has a 30 percent chance of extinction in the next five centuries. Less optimistically, an “informal” survey of experts at a conference hosted by Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute puts the probability of human extinction before 2100 at 19 percent. And Lord Martin Rees, co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University, argues that civilization has no better than a 50-50 likelihood of enduring into the next century.

To put this number in perspective, it means that the average American is about 4,000 times more likely to witness civilization implode than to die in an “air and space transport accident.” A child born today has a good chance of living to see the collapse of civilization, according to our best estimates.

Returning to religion, recent polls show that a huge portion of religious people believe that the end of the world is imminent. For example, a 2010 survey found that 41 percent of Christians in the U.S. believe that Jesus will either “definitely” or “probably” return by 2050. Similarly, 83 percent of Muslims in Afghanistan and 72 percent in Iraq claim that the Mahdi, Islam’s end-of-days messianic figure, will return within their lifetimes. The tragedy here, from a scientific perspective, is that such individuals are worried about the wrong apocalypse! Much more likely are catastrophes, calamities and cataclysms that cause unprecedented (and pointless) human suffering in a universe without any external source of purpose or meaning. At the extreme, an existential risk could tip our species into the eternal grave of extinction.

In a sense, though, religious people and scientists agree: We are in a unique moment of human history, one marked by an exceptionally high probability of disaster. The difference is that, for religious people, utopia stands on the other side of the apocalypse, whereas for scientists, there is nothing but darkness. To be clear, the situation is not by any means hopeless. In fact, there is hardly a threat before us — from climate change to the sixth mass extinction, from apocalyptic terrorism to a superintelligence takeover — that is inevitable. But without a concerted collective effort to avert catastrophe, the future could be as bad as any dystopian sci-fi writer has imagined.

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Monday, May 1, 2017 4:35 PM

RIVERLOVE

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Monday, May 1, 2017 4:49 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I'm curious RL. Are you in denial, or are you really OK with it?

Care to try addressing the facts, again?

Or do you shoot nothing but blanks?

Originally posted by G:
"I coined the slogan "We Suck!"© many years ago."
G is an avowed Putin-loving, pro-Russian, anti-American troll.

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Monday, May 1, 2017 5:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

DeNial. It's more than just a river in Egypt.

Because, curiously, you CAN stop the signal! Especially the one between the ears!

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.

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Monday, May 1, 2017 8:49 PM

DREAMTROVE

Uh oh, Hawking lost it. End is nigh, huh? I prefer the Trumpian solution: colonize Mars.

The Malthusians have been singing this tune for a while. Truth is, conspicuous consumption is trending towards zero, population growth is skidding to a halt, and so called global warming is a media induced panic over a very natural phenomenon that threatens no one.

If we don't do ourselves in, then we should be okay, says the terminally ill guy. Srsly, not about to panic over the planet's situation.

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Monday, May 1, 2017 10:13 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:
Uh oh, Hawking lost it. End is nigh, huh? I prefer the Trumpian solution: colonize Mars.

The Malthusians have been singing this tune for a while. Truth is, conspicuous consumption is trending towards zero, population growth is skidding to a halt, and so called global warming is a media induced panic over a very natural phenomenon that threatens no one.

If we don't do ourselves in, then we should be okay, says the terminally ill guy. Srsly, not about to panic over the planet's situation.

What I noticed DT is that you made claims with zero to back them up. Conspicuous consumption as indicated by per-person energy consumption, is still going up. Population growth is still zooming skywards. CO2 measured in the atmosphere - which is carbon released from storage under the ground into the atmosphere - has gone up quite unnaturally in proportion to fossil fuel burning. And rather than being harmless, ecosystems that we depend on are already collapsing as a result.

Here's the results of a google search on per capita energy consumption:

Now, if each individual (per capita) is using more energy, AND the number of people is still going up:

then it means that energy consumption is one graph MULTIPLIED by the other.

You with me so far?

Can you present any evidence that disputes this?

So I thought I'd add this on. In the lab we measure ambient CO2. And in the decades that I've looked at results, it's been going up.

Here are official numbers.

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Monday, May 1, 2017 10:43 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

BTW

At one point - decades ago - people started thinking about global warming. They assumed it would be in the future.

But here we are now, decades later. And it's not just that the earth will get warmer in the future - though it will - it's that it's ALREADY WARMER NOW.

It's not just that the oceans will acidify in the future - though they will - it's that they're ALREADY ACIDIFIED NOW.

It's not that glaciers will melt in the future - though they will - it's that GLACIERS HAVE ALREADY MELTED.

It's not that the oceans will get warmer in the future - though they will - it's that oceans are ALREADY WARMER NOW.

Global warming isn't a theory about something that might happen in the future, IT'S A FACT RIGHT NOW.

Originally posted by G:
"I coined the slogan "We Suck!"© many years ago."
G is an avowed Putin-loving, pro-Russian, anti-American troll.

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Tuesday, May 2, 2017 9:59 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

One Hillary nuclear bomb will ruin your whole day.

You have to get past the immediate threats in order to deal with the less immediate ones.

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Wednesday, May 3, 2017 2:19 PM

6STRINGJOKER

Quote:
Originally posted by Riverlove:

lol

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Wednesday, May 3, 2017 2:22 PM

6STRINGJOKER

I don't, and won't, have any kids. Immediately my carbon footprint is reduced by a fraction of the number of kids you have.

I barely buy anything besides food, and I recycle whatever I can. I just found out from my insurance agent that in the last 4 1/2 years I've driven less than 7,000 miles in my car.

I sleep okay at night.

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Wednesday, May 3, 2017 2:38 PM

THGRRI

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
One Hillary nuclear bomb will ruin your whole day.

You have to get past the immediate threats in order to deal with the less immediate ones.

It's amazing how deceitful you are. Hillary starting world war three is subterfuge. Deceit used in order to achieve one's goal. In your case to get people to vote for Trump. We still see you spewing the same shit today because of Trumps absolute incompetence.

Here's an idea. How about focusing now on Trump and forget Hillary. After all, it's Trump that is in the White House. It's what he does that matters.

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Friday, May 5, 2017 1:49 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
One Hillary nuclear bomb will ruin your whole day.

You have to get past the immediate threats in order to deal with the less immediate ones.

Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
It's amazing how deceitful you are. Hillary starting world war three is subterfuge. Deceit used in order to achieve one's goal. In your case to get people to vote for Trump.

It was GEEBERS who brought up the election: "... so let's vote for the one candidate who doesn't give a shit about any of it 'cuz that would be doubling up on the stoopid (and completely in character) - check.", and doing his usual strawman shtick by misrepresenting my position. AND LOOK HERE! Not only are you misrepresenting my role in this thread - which is really stupid because anyone can easily scroll up to find the truth - but you're strawmanning as well!

Gosh.

Do you NEVER get tired of lying?

Quote:
We still see you spewing the same shit today because of Trumps absolute incompetence.

Only in response to your buddy troll-in-arms, GEEBERS.

Quote:
Here's an idea. How about focusing now on Trump and forget Hillary. After all, it's Trump that is in the White House. It's what he does that matters.

You know, I tried moving the discussion into a proactive direction. But all the Hillarities just kept pissing and moaning about Trump and how Hillary was done wrong, and no one was at all interested in what should be DONE about any of it.

They still aren't.

And neither are you.

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Friday, May 5, 2017 2:06 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

So, this seems to be a dull topic. I don't know how that could be. In the near future life will get difficult and very expensive, and then a lot of people will die horrible deaths. What could be more gripping than trying to figure out how to stop this terrible destruction?

But I've come to realize that people just want to be left in their personal bubbles with their comfortable kvetches.

So let's discuss Trump some more, because everyone just has to watch to see if the plane's going to crash at the airshow.

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Friday, May 5, 2017 8:57 AM

6STRINGJOKER

People have been predicting the end of the world my entire life... especially religious people. I still have a Jehova's Witness pamphlet I found in my grandma's basment dated 1985 called "AWAKE!" that has a picture of an atomic mushroom cloud on the cover.

I'm not saying that we aren't destroying our atmosphere, but the world will be just fine without us if we do indeed make it unfit for human life.

I'm all up for discussion about it if you have anything new to bring to the table. What do you propose to do about it? I have very little influence over anybody and even less power. All I can do is laugh about it when I hear these predictions of the end of the world, whether it's from religious nuts, conspiracy theorists or left-wing lunatics that would see us wiping our ass with our hands and washing our clothes on rocks.

When my brother starts talking about Nibiroo after watching too much Alex Jones, I just laugh and tell him that if I see a second sun in the sky tomorrow at least I'll die with all of my teeth.

I think Sheryl Crow said it best when she said....

My friend the Communist...
Holds meetings in his office...
I can't afford his gas...
So I'm stuck here watching TV...

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Friday, May 5, 2017 9:16 AM

RIVERLOVE

Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

People have been predicting the end of the world my entire life... especially religious people.

Predicting the end of the world has been an annual crackpot event for centuries. The only difference today is that you can make a living at it.

Quote:
I think Sheryl Crow said it best when she said....

My friend the Communist...
Holds meetings in his office...
I can't afford his gas...
So I'm stuck here watching TV...

She also said everyone should wipe their behind using just one sheet of toilet paper. Funny thing is, risk taker that I am, I'm not ever gonna try that.

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Friday, May 5, 2017 9:24 AM

6STRINGJOKER

Quote:
Originally posted by Riverlove:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

People have been predicting the end of the world my entire life... especially religious people.

Predicting the end of the world has been an annual crackpot event for centuries. The only difference today is that you can make a living at it.

Quote:
I think Sheryl Crow said it best when she said....

My friend the Communist...
Holds meetings in his office...
I can't afford his gas...
So I'm stuck here watching TV...

She also said everyone should wipe their behind using just one sheet of toilet paper. Funny thing is, risk taker that I am, I'm not ever gonna try that.

LOL... yeah. She did say that.

I bet you could try that with the triple ply clouds she's wiping her royal ass with. Try wiping your ass with one sheet of the 2 ply sandpaper you buy in bulk at Costco.

I'll refer you to my recent post on the thread about Joss and how celebrities should keep their political opinions to themselves.

Soak up the sun is a good song though.

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Saturday, May 6, 2017 3:37 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

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Saturday, May 6, 2017 4:07 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
People have been predicting the end of the world my entire life... especially religious people.

And?

Would you count on religion to land men on the moon? Because as deeply as they believe, their religion just doesn't have the tools to get it done.

OTOH the scientists, physicists, astronomers, and engineers do have the tools. Their mathematical models of how things work allowed them to model the observations of the world and predict what they needed to do.

It's those same tools that scientists use today to understand the workings of climate, and predict the future.

If science could build rockets to transport men from one moving object to another moving object over vast distances, why do you presume it to be a failure regarding climate?

Quote:
I still have a Jehova's Witness pamphlet I found in my grandma's basment dated 1985 called "AWAKE!" that has a picture of an atomic mushroom cloud on the cover.

I'm not saying that we aren't destroying our atmosphere, but the world will be just fine without us if we do indeed make it unfit for human life.

With or without all the other species that will be extinct? Are you so misguided that you think humans will perish and everything else will stay miraculously intact?

Quote:
I'm all up for discussion about it if you have anything new to bring to the table. What do you propose to do about it? I have very little influence over anybody and even less power.

OF COURSE you have very little power by yourself. Guess what? I have very little power by myself, too. But how about raising enough concern to join others to change humanity's course? If enough people get together you can end up with Brexit. OTOH if enough people cower you end up with Greece. If nobody does anything - nothing changes. If enough people do something, you can change the world.

Quote:
All I can do is laugh about it when I hear these predictions of the end of the world, whether it's from religious nuts, conspiracy theorists or left-wing lunatics that would see us wiping our ass with our hands and washing our clothes on rocks.

Are any credible scientists suggesting that, by any chance?

Quote:
When my brother starts talking about Nibiroo after watching too much Alex Jones, I just laugh and tell him that if I see a second sun in the sky tomorrow at least I'll die with all of my teeth.

Well, if you think all the observations and all the measurements and all the mathematics by all the scientists over all this time around the whole globe are JUST LIKE Alex Jones ... you're pretty scrambled.

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Saturday, May 6, 2017 4:16 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Originally posted by Riverlove:
Predicting the end of the world has been an annual crackpot event for centuries. The only difference today is that you can make a living at it.

So you're saying that all scientists are crackpots?

You know who you remind me of? An ISIS adherent. Despite that modern science has located the oil to run the vehicles designed by modern engineers, and metallurgists made their modern guns possible, while physicists, engineers and mathematicians make their cell phones possible, and Einstein's theory of relativity corrects for the time dilation to make their gps accurate ... they haven't left the medieval world of magical religious beliefs.

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Tuesday, May 9, 2017 10:40 AM

6STRINGJOKER

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
And?

Would you count on religion to land men on the moon? Because as deeply as they believe, their religion just doesn't have the tools to get it done.

OTOH the scientists, physicists, astronomers, and engineers do have the tools. Their mathematical models of how things work allowed them to model the observations of the world and predict what they needed to do.

It's those same tools that scientists use today to understand the workings of climate, and predict the future.

If science could build rockets to transport men from one moving object to another moving object over vast distances, why do you presume it to be a failure regarding climate?

Well first of all, to answer your question, climate change is a highly politicized topic compared to space exploration and as such I don't believe what they're telling us about it. Second, I've seen scientists give compelling evidence that even the moon landing was staged and we've never actually stepped foot on it. I'm not a denier of the moon landing myself, but I don't necessarily believe it either just because they told us it happened.

I think I've already stated that I believe that we're not doing the environment any good with how we treat it. Once again, overpopulation should be taking the front seat in the conversation. You're NEVER going to get people to willingly give up the little "luxuries" in life to save the future. Sad but true, but it's not going to happen. It's why J0 and I agree that he's a scary dude when it comes to his presidential election bid. Things are going to have to get a hell of a lot worse and people will have to see immediate things hurting them like a sun that gives you cancer in a day if you're not wearing a burka or black rain that creates lesions and blisters your skin on contact. By that time it would likely be too late.

I feel the only answer to this and many other problems is depopulating the planet. Hopefully we can figure out a way to incentivize it so it's voluntary, but I think the real answer is going to be something much more sinister.

Quote:
With or without all the other species that will be extinct? Are you so misguided that you think humans will perish and everything else will stay miraculously intact?

Of course not. These types of questions are why I don't enjoy debating with you 1kiki. There are many shades of gray. I don't deal in absolutes.

I believe we have already wiped out a large amount of species since we've "mastered" nature. There's probably more species we've already killed that we don't know about than ones we've cataloged. Assuming we are to believe the history of the world as it is taught to us, this planet has suffered at least one cataclysmic event and yet, here we are.

When we're gone, the planet will go on without us, and in time will likely thrive again without us. Maybe none of the life as we know it will ultimately survive and whatever takes its place would seem alien to us now.

Quote:
OF COURSE you have very little power by yourself. Guess what? I have very little power by myself, too. But how about raising enough concern to join others to change humanity's course? If enough people get together you can end up with Brexit. OTOH if enough people cower you end up with Greece. If nobody does anything - nothing changes. If enough people do something, you can change the world.

Yeah. And if we all say we believe in fairies, we can save Tinkerbell.

I'll refer you to my thoughts on that issue above.

Quote:
Are any credible scientists suggesting that, by any chance?

Asking what? Your question here could have referred to a lot of different things I said.

Quote:
Well, if you think all the observations and all the measurements and all the mathematics by all the scientists over all this time around the whole globe are JUST LIKE Alex Jones ... you're pretty scrambled.

Maybe I am.

I'm going on 40 years old now and I still don't know of Milk is good for me or not. Maybe when the brilliant scientists can crack that question I might get on board with some of their other theories.

Until then, I think I'll give them just about as much of my time as the guy in Kansas that wants to teach kids that God created us or the suicide bomber who believes that he's got 72 virgins waiting for him in the clouds or Rachel Maddow.

EDIT:

You should read "The Liberation of Earth", a short story by William Tenn.

http://www.worldlibrary.org/articles/the_liberation_of_earth

Quote:
"The Liberation of Earth" is a science fiction short story by William Tenn, written in 1950, first published in 1953, and reprinted over a dozen times in various anthologies and in 1955 in the William Tenn collection Of all Possible Worlds. The story, which Tenn described as having been inspired by the Korean War,[1] portrays Earth as the battleground between two powerful alien races, the Troxxt and the Dendi, who repeatedly "liberate" it from each other.

At the time the story begins, the Troxxt and the Dendi have long since abandoned the (literally) shattered remnants of Earth as being too dangerous for civilized people; humanity is nearly extinct, with the few survivors having descended into starving savagery as they struggle for air.

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