Dying Oceans

[Hank49]

Pesticides and fertilizers have created the longest living, healthiest human populations in history.

That's true. It's the processed sugar, white flower, deep fried junk food that's killing people. At least in America....

 

[Doomnova]

Pesticides and fertilizers have created the longest living, healthiest human populations in history.

Forests are a renewable cash crop like corn or beans.

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Sure forest are replaceable but the species that live in them eh not so much. The topsoil they have beneath them is usually very very thin and easily displaced by rains (look of the amazon rain forest and how hard it is to keep its topsoil after removal of the jungle). The mass amounts of fertilizers are causing the formation of anoxic zones(some on absolutely massive scales at the exits of the mouth of pretty much every river that has run off from farms going into it the more and the larger the river the larger the dead zone that forms at it. Even Lake Erie now has an anoxic zone and it has very little primary production or how about the massive one off the coast of the Mississippi (varies between 6,000-7,000 square miles)?

We are not overpopulated in space we are overpopulated in what the planet can support. Its pretty simple math you cannot have exponential increase in population without an exponential growth in food to do that many places dump massive amounts of fertilizers to keep up with the food that is needed to support the people we have right now and to grow more food you need to cut down more forests and use their thin topsoils which get washed away easily and do not hold nutrients well and it gets washed into the ocean and causes eutrophication (due to the massive need of fertilizers need to keep those areas farmable along with the rest of the farmland) in areas it should not be happening.

I do not think that what is being done right now to the ecosystem which we require to live is a good thing. Muchless from a point of view of things I want to see on the ocean and on the land. Watching the starfish die off out here on the west coast and being able to do nothing about it is pretty damn depressing. Natural probably helped by us at this point and time we are not sure but I would put money down that we sure as hell are in some way helping it out. But then you won't think we are over populated until we have every inch of land with a person standing on it....we are not over populated...

@TMHeimer yes I know that as well but also look at the space each group needs to survive living off the land. If farming stopped this instant pretty much 99% of the populations in most cites would be dead within 3 months.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Exactly. Buy airplane ticket. Look down. What overpopulation? (Don't do this over Hong Kong.) Like famine, it is really a distribution problem.

If humans were robots that analogy might hold true ... but we're not. Ask yourself why humans aren't more evenly distributed on the planet. One of the most significant reasons is either a lack of adequate food or water ... we need both to survive. And increasing populations put increasing strain on the availability of both, purely from a consumption perspective. Now add in a decrease of available farming land due to development, an increase in water pollution due to things like stormwater runoff and human waste, and we have a rapidly growing imbalance in the equation of human sustainability.

Interesting that you should mention famine. Study history ... it's been one of nature's ways to maintain human population growth. In the world today we're losing between 20 and 30 million people every year to hunger ... and that's an awful way to die. As more and more people are produced, and more and more land is taken away from food production to accommodate those people, the number of people who die due to hunger or inadequate nutrition will only increase.

Our oceans are also becoming depleted. People who used to live on fishing are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain that lifestyle. Fish farms are replacing natural resources at an astounding rate. All of the world's most abundant oceanic fishing banks are depleted ... some to the point of near collapse. I personally knew people who were affected by the closing of George's Bank ... once considered the world's richest fishery ... because it was close to total failure due to overharvesting.

Yes, you could distribute people more by placing them in places where people don't currently live ... or where there are few currently living. But all you'd really accomplish is to extinguish what little resources currently exist in those places, causing a lot of death and environmental destruction. Why do you suppose it hasn't been done yet, after all?

Perhaps you need to spend some time in someplace like sub-Saharan Africa, to develop a better understanding of the real world and the consequences of human population beyond the ability of the land to sustain it. You're too used to living in a country where 1/20th of the world's population is allowed to consume 1/4th of the planet's resources ... at the expense of everyone else ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Hank49]

Dying? Or in a state of transition?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Transition might be a more accurate term, Hank. The planet's an amazingly resilient and adaptable ecosystem.

The question then is "transition to what" ... and how does it affect us?

Perhaps it will become as George Carlin once put it, "The planet doesn't need saving. The planet will be fine. The planet's not going anywhere. We are."

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Hank49]

I agree with George, Bob. We evaluate the reefs and what we see. But that's like.....0000000001 % of he ocean volume. And the reefs and similar systems have probably had mass die offs and transitions for millions of years. Climate change has had more drastic changes than what we're seeing now.

I have faith. I read somewhere that in the late 1800s, the biggest problem facing urbanization was what to do with all the horse ****. Now, it's CO2. But right now our company is working on the possibility of a 50 megawatt wind and solar power plant. There's a lot of bugs to work out but we always have diesel gen sets as backup. But if we could produce 65% using solar and wind it's huge. Cost saving and green.
We just have to get rid of all the politicians who are backed by big oil.

 

[agilis]

Pesticides and fertilizers have created the longest living, healthiest human populations in history.

Forests are a renewable cash crop like corn or beans.

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Pesticides and chemical fertilizers have made it possible to feed this planet's massive number of people. They have not contributed to health or longevity in any way, except in the sense of temporarily averting starvation. The effects on people who have to breath in these poisons have not been good. The epidemic of Asthma among Caribbean children has been demonstrated to have a direct connection to the fertilizers in dust storms that sweep across the Atlantic every year, poisoning the reefs as well.

Forests are not a cash crop. They are an ecosystem upon which the planet depends. Humans are only part of this planet's life. We do not own the planet, except in our own diseased minds. Religious texts that claim this planet for our species are so obviously self-justifying and fraudulent as to fall more in the category of dark comedy.

 

[Hank49]

Having talked a lot with these wind guys here, there is an interesting discussion as to whether power production will be centralized or every house will have its own unit. I have friends here using solar/wind and they don't buy any from BEL (Belize Electric) It's going to get interesting.

 

[live&dive]

Until the human species can learn to contain its own greed and avarice, I am not going to hold my breath.

 

[Hank49]

Yeah, well, the guys developing wind power aren't ALL about being clean and green. They plan on making a lot of money from it also.