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posted by janrinok on Friday August 14 2015, @09:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the living-on-borrowed-time dept.

Earth Overshoot Day is the day when—according to estimates—the total combined consumption of all human activity on Earth in a year overtakes the planet's ability to generate those resources for that year.

How is it measured ? "It's quite simple," says Dr. Mathis Wackernagel of the think tank Global Footprint Network. "We look at all the resource demands of humanity that compete for space, like food, fiber, timber, et cetera, then we look at how much area is needed to provide those services and how much productive surface is available."

Here's his bottom line metaphor. Earth Overshoot Day is like the day you spend more than your salary for a year, only you are all humans and your salary is Earth's biocapacity. Ideally, Overshoot Day would come after December 31. It wasn't too far off in 1970, when it occurred on December 23. But Overshoot Day creep has kicked in ever since. August 13 is the earliest yet—four days ahead of last year's previous record.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/150813-earth-overshoot-day-earlier/


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday August 14 2015, @10:13PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 14 2015, @10:13PM (#223032) Journal
    Humanity consumed about 155,000 terawatt-hours of power in 2012. Considering the solar output over the same period, I get an Earth overshoot day about 22 trillion years from now. That truly is cause for alarm.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:53PM (#223047)

    I think you forgot that you should only include the solar output that is actually accessible today.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2015, @10:58PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 14 2015, @10:58PM (#223051) Journal
      I did.
      • (Score: 1) by dak664 on Saturday August 15 2015, @07:02PM

        by dak664 (2433) on Saturday August 15 2015, @07:02PM (#223333)

        So you considered the solar output of "power" over the same period. Great for the Sun as a thermal engine operating between 6500K and 4K. Not so good for the Earth solar thermal heat engine running between 600K and 300K.

        Yes PV panels can get better thermodynamic efficiency. But 22 trillion years? Don't believe it, show you work.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 15 2015, @11:03PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 15 2015, @11:03PM (#223383) Journal

          Not so good for the Earth solar thermal heat engine running between 600K and 300K.

          Which is still 50% of the efficiency of the previous thermal engine.

          But 22 trillion years? Don't believe it, show you work.

          And why should I bother? That would be more work.

  • (Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Friday August 14 2015, @10:58PM

    by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Friday August 14 2015, @10:58PM (#223050) Homepage

    Let me guess. You're also the type who think nine women can make one baby in one month?

    You do know that arable land is a limited consumable resource, right? That topsoil depletion and groundwater reserves are two of the biggest worries that keep big agribusiness types awake at night?

    What the fuck good do you think all the sunlight shining upon Uranus will do here on Earth?

    Hell, why limit yourself to the energy output of the Sun? The Virgo Supercluster has some 10E62 joules total mass-energy, so why is everybody so upset about some presumed "energy crisis"?

    Idiot.

    b&

    --
    All but God can prove this sentence true.
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by khallow on Friday August 14 2015, @11:00PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 14 2015, @11:00PM (#223053) Journal

      What the fuck good do you think all the sunlight shining upon Uranus will do here on Earth?

      That's dumb. You would intercept that power inside the orbit of Mercury, of course.

      • (Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Friday August 14 2015, @11:22PM

        by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Friday August 14 2015, @11:22PM (#223060) Homepage

        You're either a really bad troll or a really bad comedian if you expect people to either take seriously or laugh at the idea that we're anywhere close to setting up photovoltaic panels on the surface of the Sun and running giant extension cords out to the Earth.

        Your food obviously gets handed to you through the basement doorway and heated in the microwave. But on the rest of the planet, food comes from plants or things that eat plants, and those plants die without topsoil and water and lots of other things far more important than your particle-of-the-week fantasies.

        b&

        --
        All but God can prove this sentence true.
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:24AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:24AM (#223080) Journal
          Of course, I wasn't expecting that. Mercury gets no closer to the Sun than 46 million km and the Sun's radius is only about 700,000 km. I'm confident you'll be able to squeeze a millimeter thick solar panel in the 45 million km between those two objects.

          As to the extension cord, there are various ways it can be done, such as beamed microwaves or transporting anti-matter. Some means may be a bit too exciting to transport to the Earth's surface, but it's just not that hard a problem when you're capturing most of the energy of a star rather than focusing your tunnel vision on a patch of dirt.

          Your food obviously gets handed to you through the basement doorway and heated in the microwave. But on the rest of the planet, food comes from plants or things that eat plants, and those plants die without topsoil and water and lots of other things far more important than your particle-of-the-week fantasies.

          You do realize that the entire food chain thing is a completely solved problem, top soil and all, from dirt to your plate? I'm merely pointing out that if we approach this rationally, rather than the stupid alarmist approach used in the article, we realize we have vast, sustainable resources at our disposal which are far beyond the paltry imagination of those authors. It also demonstrates the frivolous nature of the metric.

          • (Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:30AM

            by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:30AM (#223084) Homepage

            You do realize that the entire food chain thing is a completely solved problem, top soil and all, from dirt to your plate?

            You do realize that Star Trek is fantasy, don't you? And that whoppers like that and your casual suggestions we build a Dyson Sphere to solve all our problems make it plain you're an idiot completely out of touch with reality, no?

            b&

            --
            All but God can prove this sentence true.
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:37PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:37PM (#223257) Journal

              You do realize that the entire food chain thing is a completely solved problem, top soil and all, from dirt to your plate?

              You do realize that Star Trek is fantasy, don't you?

              So you don't realize this. Maybe you ought to read up on modern agricultural practices. No Star Trek technology is needed.

              And that whoppers like that and your casual suggestions we build a Dyson Sphere to solve all our problems make it plain you're an idiot completely out of touch with reality, no?

              I think rather it indicates your paltry imagination. This is a common problem with the people who claim we're using up resources despite the fact that we never run out of resources. We find ways to extract more of the resource, use or reuse it more efficiently, or use other things in its place. I used the Dyson Sphere example to demonstrate the ultimate absurdity of claiming that resources are restricted by surface area.

              • (Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:50PM

                by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:50PM (#223278) Homepage

                Hey, I've got an idea.

                You've got the solutions to all the world's problems, so why don't you...like...you know? Solve all the world's problems?

                And if you say you can't, you're not in a position to or some other lame excuse like that, it only indicates your paltry imagination. After all, one of those jet-high mind fucks should do the trick, no?

                So, what're you waiting for? The world needs a superhero to save it, and you know everything the superheroes do, so get out of your basement already and save the world!

                b&

                --
                All but God can prove this sentence true.
                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 15 2015, @09:00PM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 15 2015, @09:00PM (#223357) Journal

                  Hey, I've got an idea.

                  You've got the solutions to all the world's problems, so why don't you...like...you know? Solve all the world's problems?

                  I don't even need to do that. As I noted before, the various problems mentioned are already solved. It's just not worth the bother to implement them at this time.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday August 14 2015, @11:03PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 14 2015, @11:03PM (#223054) Journal

      You do know that arable land is a limited consumable resource, right? That topsoil depletion and groundwater reserves are two of the biggest worries that keep big agribusiness types awake at night?

      Everything is a limited consumable resource. Energy just happens to be the important one.