There’s a lot more oil than that. A lot more than 10 years worth. That’s just what hippies wish.
[quote]Rational Gaze wrote:
Yes, it’s nonsense isn’t it, oil is clearly not a finite resource, and the fact that it hasn’t run out in our lifetimes is conclusive proof of that.[/quote]
Who said it wasn’t finite? What I said is that in 1990, they were saying “In 30 years…”. In 2000, “30 more years”. In 2010, “30 more years”. In 2020 they’ll still be saying “30 more years”. My point is, they have a terrible track record in predicting this shit.
Do you believe there will be NO oil in 2020?
[quote]Rational Gaze wrote:
Yes, it’s nonsense isn’t it, oil is clearly not a finite resource, and the fact that it hasn’t run out in our lifetimes is conclusive proof of that.[/quote]
No, what’s nonsense is people saying we only have 10-30 years left. There is more than enough oil left until a better form of energy can be developed.
Why isn’t anyone taking into account technological advancements whenever they spout this shit? What makes you think we will still use oil as a resource for most products 30 years from now?
[quote]sam_sneed wrote:
[quote]kothreat wrote:
[quote]sam_sneed wrote:
[quote]kothreat wrote:
IF we were truly intelligent and rational, we would gather about 200 000 people of diverse backgrounds, set them up with all that would be needed to keep shit running on a smaller scale, then kill the rest of us.
[/quote]
Great idea. Unless you’re not one of the 200,000.
[/quote]
Exactly.
That’s why I was saying ‘if’ we were truly rational animals we would be able to see this.
I’m pretty fucking useless, I’d volunteer to be blasted into the sun.
[/quote]
Yeah but I don’t think 200,000 would be even close to enough. You’d need a few million since you would want to spread it out geographically in case of a natural disaster or disease. Also you need people to maintain some of the useful infrastructure we’ve built. A couple million on each continent would do (except Antarctica).
[/quote]
That would be the way to do it if maintaining what is here now is a priority. My scenario was more of a starting from scratch one, but with all the cumulated knowledge at hand.
[quote]Sick Rick wrote:
Why isn’t anyone taking into account technological advancements whenever they spout this shit? What makes you think we will still use oil as a resource for most products 30 years from now?
[/quote]
There’s no doubt in my mind that oil will still be used as a resource 30 years from now. Hopefully by then we have found a more efficient form of energy to use. But, look at everything petroleum products are used for. It may not be used for energy purposes, but it’s still a main ingredient in a shit tonne of products.
For anyone who wants to lead by example with a solution to overpopulation-- then come talk to me.
[quote]sam_sneed wrote:
Who said it wasn’t finite? What I said is that in 1990, they were saying “In 30 years…”. In 2000, “30 more years”. In 2010, “30 more years”. In 2020 they’ll still be saying “30 more years”. My point is, they have a terrible track record in predicting this shit.
Do you believe there will be NO oil in 2020?[/quote]
I think the problem is that, for example, in the UK no-one in government wants to admit that we need to build more nuclear power stations, like France. Are we really doing enough to prepare for when we do run out of oil?
[quote]kothreat wrote:
[quote]Sick Rick wrote:
Why isn’t anyone taking into account technological advancements whenever they spout this shit? What makes you think we will still use oil as a resource for most products 30 years from now?
[/quote]
There’s no doubt in my mind that oil will still be used as a resource 30 years from now. Hopefully by then we have found a more efficient form of energy to use. But, look at everything petroleum products are used for. It may not be used for energy purposes, but it’s still a main ingredient in a shit tonne of products. [/quote]
Hopefully,we put more time and effort into Fusion reactors. Deuterium from ocean water can help fuel our energy needs for more than a 1000 years. Meanwhile,your right petroleum is used in alot of our products…for now. This is until we can find viable substitutions.
[quote]Rational Gaze wrote:
[quote]sam_sneed wrote:
Who said it wasn’t finite? What I said is that in 1990, they were saying “In 30 years…”. In 2000, “30 more years”. In 2010, “30 more years”. In 2020 they’ll still be saying “30 more years”. My point is, they have a terrible track record in predicting this shit.
Do you believe there will be NO oil in 2020?[/quote]
I think the problem is that, for example, in the UK no-one in government wants to admit that we need to build more nuclear power stations, like France. Are we really doing enough to prepare for when we do run out of oil?[/quote]
I agree with you there. We definitely aren’t. It’ll probably be a scramble when we actually do run out of oil or come near it. But there are plenty of alternatives and I don’t think it’s going to happen in the next 10 years or 30.
I may not be that we will suddenly run out of oil and all die a terrible death. However, as cities get crowded the standard of living drops for everyone. For example, I live in Los Angeles, which would be an awesome place to live if 3/4 of the people here would roll over and die. But as it is, the freeways are crowded, the air sucks and we don’t have enough water.
What the world needs is an occasional plague. It would kill off a shit load of people yet leave the infrastructure intact.
Sounds like a crackpot old man to me. Too many statements on half assed human geography and little knowledge into biology, ecology, and insight to world resources and reasons for over population other that us fucking like rabbits.
We won’t “decline” as he puts it, we have yet to reach our maximum level of population before controls take over. Once we reach that number, some sort of control will occur and then the population will “level off”. and by that, lots die. We get a period of regrowth, so on and so forth.
It’s fear mongering as most will not look deeply into the issue.
What I don’t get is why people always look at this sort of thing from a disastrous perspective. There are going to be benefits from over-population, if it even happens. First of all, the Earth will self-regulate itself. Us humans are part of the natural process and while we may not be around forever, the Earth probably has several hundred billion years left. It’s unnatural for us to be around even remotely that long.
Global warming is a perfect example. Sure, global warming is happening, but all we hear are these disaster-type scenarios rather than the benefits of global warming. And some of these “disasters” aren’t even going to happen. For instance, I’m here in Santa Cruz visiting my parents, and my dad was telling me how everyone here is up in arms about global warming and people freak out because they think rising ocean levels will bury the town under water.
What they don’t realize is that it’ll NEVER HAPPEN. The tectonic plates out here are such that the North American plate is being pushed up by the Pacific plate at a rate far faster than the ocean’s levels are expected to rise in even the most drastic circumstances. The shoreline is rising faster than the ocean can. So what if a place like New Orleans is buried under water. It’s built in a fucking hole set below sea-level. Global warming may eliminate it, but it shouldn’t be there in the first place. Sacramento is the same way.
Also, with global warming people are growing all sorts of shit in places like Greenland or Siberia that was never possible before. This could be a boon to all sorts of places. Plus, with rising ocean levels in places that ARE susceptible to coastal flooding, such as the East Coast or parts of the western European coastline, the ability to desalinate water will become very important as natural waterways are inundated with salt water.
So now there will be a demand for desalinization plants and developed countries that are best-equipped to build these and that HAVE to build them will become the forerunners in a new, very viable industry. These countries could be at the forefront of a movement to bring more clean drinking water to places like India or the Sudan. Because THAT is what is threatened more than anything by over-population: access to drinkable water. 90% of India doesn’t have access to it and it’s the same in most of eastern sub-Saharan Africa.
Another benefit is the melting of the polar ice cap in the Arctic Ocean. With that thing melted for four months out of the year, ships can sail out of the Hudson Bay, over the North Pole and into Northern Europe or Russia without having to use all the extra resources necessary to ship goods across North America to the coast, across the Atlantic or Pacific and into these other continents.
That route hasn’t been open in centuries and when it does open, it will save on all sorts of fuel costs and thereby reduce carbon emissions. It will also make it easier to ship food to other parts of the globe, thereby further easing the strain of over-population.
I don’t think people realize any of this stuff. There’s all sorts of other potential benefits that I can’t even think of right now. So instead of all this doom-and-gloom talk about killing everyone off, let’s take the time to think about the possible benefits to global warming or over-population. Here we are worried about preserving the atmosphere and limiting carbon emissions because they’re unnatural and people forget that human waste and consumption IS natural. WE are natural. Our emission, our waste and pollution is just as natural as cows shitting in fields and releasing methane gas.
We aren’t going to be here forever, period. THAT would be unnatural. So I think we should embrace the benefits of global warming caused by over-population because there are some there. But to try to slow the whole thing down simply to prolong our stay here is what’s unnatural. Our over-population is natural and, short of killing everybody off, is unavoidable. In fact, even that wouldn’t work. If we reduce the globe’s population down to 200,000, assuming that current technological advances remained in place, we’d be right back where we are now in just a few generations or so.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
What I don’t get is why people always look at this sort of thing from a disastrous perspective. There are going to be benefits from over-population, if it even happens. First of all, the Earth will self-regulate itself. Us humans are part of the natural process and while we may not be around forever, the Earth probably has several hundred billion years left. It’s unnatural for us to be around even remotely that long.
Global warming is a perfect example. Sure, global warming is happening, but all we hear are these disaster-type scenarios rather than the benefits of global warming. And some of these “disasters” aren’t even going to happen. For instance, I’m here in Santa Cruz visiting my parents, and my dad was telling me how everyone here is up in arms about global warming and people freak out because they think rising ocean levels will bury the town under water.
What they don’t realize is that it’ll NEVER HAPPEN. The tectonic plates out here are such that the North American plate is being pushed up by the Pacific plate at a rate far faster than the ocean’s levels are expected to rise in even the most drastic circumstances. The shoreline is rising faster than the ocean can. So what if a place like New Orleans is buried under water. It’s built in a fucking hole set below sea-level. Global warming may eliminate it, but it shouldn’t be there in the first place. Sacramento is the same way.
Also, with global warming people are growing all sorts of shit in places like Greenland or Siberia that was never possible before. This could be a boon to all sorts of places. Plus, with rising ocean levels in places that ARE susceptible to coastal flooding, such as the East Coast or parts of the western European coastline, the ability to desalinate water will become very important as natural waterways are inundated with salt water.
So now there will be a demand for desalinization plants and developed countries that are best-equipped to build these and that HAVE to build them will become the forerunners in a new, very viable industry. These countries could be at the forefront of a movement to bring more clean drinking water to places like India or the Sudan. Because THAT is what is threatened more than anything by over-population: access to drinkable water. 90% of India doesn’t have access to it and it’s the same in most of eastern sub-Saharan Africa.
Another benefit is the melting of the polar ice cap in the Arctic Ocean. With that thing melted for four months out of the year, ships can sail out of the Hudson Bay, over the North Pole and into Northern Europe or Russia without having to use all the extra resources necessary to ship goods across North America to the coast, across the Atlantic or Pacific and into these other continents.
That route hasn’t been open in centuries and when it does open, it will save on all sorts of fuel costs and thereby reduce carbon emissions. It will also make it easier to ship food to other parts of the globe, thereby further easing the strain of over-population.
I don’t think people realize any of this stuff. There’s all sorts of other potential benefits that I can’t even think of right now. So instead of all this doom-and-gloom talk about killing everyone off, let’s take the time to think about the possible benefits to global warming or over-population. Here we are worried about preserving the atmosphere and limiting carbon emissions because they’re unnatural and people forget that human waste and consumption IS natural. WE are natural. Our emission, our waste and pollution is just as natural as cows shitting in fields and releasing methane gas.
We aren’t going to be here forever, period. THAT would be unnatural. So I think we should embrace the benefits of global warming caused by over-population because there are some there. But to try to slow the whole thing down simply to prolong our stay here is what’s unnatural. Our over-population is natural and, short of killing everybody off, is unavoidable. In fact, even that wouldn’t work. If we reduce the globe’s population down to 200,000, assuming that current technological advances remained in place, we’d be right back where we are now in just a few generations or so. [/quote]
We may be able to survive, but we won’t thrive. And, neither will anything else (except disease etc) while we continue to use resources at an ever increasing pace.
It’s more natural for us to want to prolong our stay than it is to create and discard products that do nothing but waste resources and pollute everything. It’s natural for every species to want to prolong itself for as long as possible.
It’s not natural that we can be blamed for the unnatural extinction of many animals and other living things. I know, from what you wrote above you can argue that it is natural. But, I can’t see it that way.
Kothreat:
It IS natural for us to cause extinction through our own waste and consumption and so forth. That’s what humans do. We’ve always done that. The beginning of human civilization until now is nothing more than a continuous attempt to create a surplus of food. The reason civilizations exist(ed) where they did and where they do now is based on luck more than anything else. Look at where all the ancient civilizations were situated 2000 years ago. They all existed along the same basic latitudes where crops high in protein could thrive and where climates were best suited for beasts of burden that greatly increased agricultural efficiency.
As the ability to provide surpluses improved, civilizations could devote their time to other endeavors, such as technological advances in other areas such as the use of fire and metal, they pursued the arts, architecture, philosophy, science, etc. In areas where acquiring food in surplus is not an issue anymore, human beings have strived for advancement in some way, shape or form and this will never change. We reward progress, advancement, knowledge, ingenuity, entrepreneurship and so on. It will always be this way and it always has been this way because that is HUMAN NATURE. All the negative aspects that come with the nature of man are natural. If we accept that mankind is a part of the natural process, then we have to accept that virtually anything we do is also natural.
Other animals do not fall into the same category as humans simply because we can reason, we can think about who we are, why we are here, what our nature is and so on. Horses and rabbits and tigers and birds can’t think about these sorts of things. So other animals don’t have the ability to change beyond the evolutionary process. We can’t look at whales and say “well, they don’t ruin their environment and neither do any other animals on the planet, so the fact that humans DO is unnatural.” It would be unnatural for other animals to do so, but not humans.
Kothreat, you say that it is more natural to want to prolong our stay than it is to create and discard products that do nothing but waste resources and pollute everything. But what is MOST natural is for individual humans to make their own personal stay on this planet as comfortable as possible, because we CAN. This necessitates the “overuse” of certain resources. I would argue that it is much more unnatural for us to purposely live in less-than-ideal conditions, by our standards, in order to prolong future generations’ existence, because that is contrary to what humans have done since the beginning of civilization.
And because humans are a natural part of the globe, faults and all, any sort of extinction that occurs at the hands of humans is natural. If humans are natural, then virtually anything we do in terms of its effect on the globe/environment/ecosystem as a whole HAS to be natural. Our striving for technology, even nuclear technology that could potentially blow the Earth into a billion pieces, is natural.
[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:
Love conquers all, Oleena.[/quote]
Did you succumb to my peer pressure and guilt tripping? You vamps are so sensitive. Blade would have told me to go fuck a goat.
V
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
I thought global warming was supposed to kill everybody except people who love the earth and buy green labeled products.
You mean that plan has changed?
(actually, this reminds me of the “peak oil” arguments from a few years ago. Same premise.)
[/quote]
when I started college in 2001 they said by 2020 all oil would be gone. Then someone did some real calculations and it showed we had over 200 years of oil based on continued linear growth (which never happens, its less). so the oil thing is a bunch of BS.
Global warming and the whole green thing are the way comunists realized they could control the free world. They have to control us to save us !!!
Also, has anyone noticed the canadians around here are all about killing off everyone in the name of saving the environment??
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[/quote]
Yeah, I can agree with that. But, I can also disagree. Just because it’s human nature doesn’t mean it’s natural. Humans have evolved themselves out of the natural world. Being that we are self aware makes it seem to me that our world destroying abilities are even more unnatural.
Natural to me would be to live in harmony with the things that allow you live. Not destroy them. True enough that we didn’t know what we were doing was disruptive until relatively recently, but nothing has stopped our negative development.
The way we live may be consistent with human nature, but is sure isn’t consistent with the natural world.
Alright, typing all that out gave me the time to think, I suppose. If anything, I would agree with people like Joe Rogan who think we have more in common with viruses then we do with anything else. Viruses are only trying to survive, yet destroy that which gives them life. Viewing it that way, I guess it is natural. Yeah, alright.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
I thought global warming was supposed to kill everybody except people who love the earth and buy green labeled products.
You mean that plan has changed?
(actually, this reminds me of the “peak oil” arguments from a few years ago. Same premise.)
[/quote]
when I started college in 2001 they said by 2020 all oil would be gone. Then someone did some real calculations and it showed we had over 200 years of oil based on continued linear growth (which never happens, its less). so the oil thing is a bunch of BS.
Global warming and the whole green thing are the way comunists realized they could control the free world. They have to control us to save us !!!
Also, has anyone noticed the canadians around here are all about killing off everyone in the name of saving the environment??
[quote]Ratchet wrote:
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
I thought global warming was supposed to kill everybody except people who love the earth and buy green labeled products.
You mean that plan has changed?
(actually, this reminds me of the “peak oil” arguments from a few years ago. Same premise.)
[/quote]
when I started college in 2001 they said by 2020 all oil would be gone. Then someone did some real calculations and it showed we had over 200 years of oil based on continued linear growth (which never happens, its less). so the oil thing is a bunch of BS.
Global warming and the whole green thing are the way comunists realized they could control the free world. They have to control us to save us !!!
Also, has anyone noticed the canadians around here are all about killing off everyone in the name of saving the environment??[/quote]
Not just to save the environment, but ourselves as well.