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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/
(Score: 3, Funny) by Hartree on Friday August 14 2015, @09:31PM
I knew I shouldn't have taken that second helping of pasta!
Sorry.
(Score: 5, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 14 2015, @09:40PM
The Welfare State encourages the out-of-control breeding of unskilled, uneducated populations, and when each and every person is fighting to the death over table scraps like bunches of rural Chinamen do now; they all have only themselves to blame.
Humans have failed as a species, they just don't know it yet. If anything they're just figuratively treading water.
And lets defund Planned Parenthood, one of the few organizations dedicated to quality of life by keeping the cockroach population in check.
Burn, Baby, Burn!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @09:47PM
It's the conservatives who are to blame for the latter. For whatever pleiotropic reason, the asinine doctrine of "life begins at conception" almost always presents in individuals who hold conservative views on economics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @09:51PM
Also Jesus Jumpers. For whatever reason, they feel like the have to have ten kids.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by gnuman on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:56AM
It's the conservatives who are to blame for the latter. For whatever pleiotropic reason, the asinine doctrine of "life begins at conception" almost always presents in individuals who hold conservative views on economics.
Actually, people that want more abortions should be anti-abortions. In nations where abortions are illegal, there are more abortions per capita than in nations where abortions is legal.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/2397-abortion-in-latin-america-still-illegal-still-killing-despite-growing-awareness [upsidedownworld.org]
Cuba is the only country in the region where abortion on demand up to the 12th week of pregnancy is legal, as it has been since 1965. And the abortion rate is less than 21 per 1,000 women of reproductive age, 10 points lower than the regional average.
In Uruguay, abortion recently became legal. And guess what happened? Number of abortions dropped by more than HALF! It turns out that if couples have a choice and a legal choice, then they tend to think things through instead of acting because "now or never".
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/abortion-around-the-world-where-are-rates-highest/ [cbsnews.com]
Similar effect in US.
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/abortion_rates_are_going_down_except_in_states_where_access_is_most_restricted/ [salon.com]
So, if you want more abortions, you better plead the case to make abortions illegal. And if you want less abortions, you allow abortions for people that chose to have them performed *legally*.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:29AM
Well, that's fscking weird.
*wobbles with b33r in hand*
I don't pretend to understand non-Amazon women. Then again, granted, there's this annual festival thinger where the Amazons go out, get drunk, and fuck anything with a cock. But it's intentional! (No, boys, tonight is not the night! It's just Friday!)
Ok, I'm only a quasi-Amazon, not born Amazon, was Amazon for a while, kinda branched out. I'm on the pill. I really don't get it.
WTF is wrong with this species?!
Ok, confounding data point! Did the pill become free at the same time abortions were legalized?
There has to be something more to this effect. I'm not doubting the data. Does male aggressiveness increase when abortion is illegal? Correlation is not causation?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Friday August 14 2015, @09:58PM
I'm sorry...which welfare state are you referring to? Perhaps the one that makes it possible for company executives to get paid as much as tens of thousands of their employees? Maybe the one that guarantees the children of said executives never have to worry about where they'll find the money to pay for their third yacht? Could it be the one that rewards these same parasites for becoming too big to fail by giving them even more money for themselves after they've burned up everybody else's?
I'll certainly grant you the "unskilled, uneducated" epithets for those welfare recipients, but they don't tend to have large numbers of offspring and they certainly don't fight to the death over table scraps. So you must have some other welfare state in mind. Care to identify which that is?
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Friday August 14 2015, @10:03PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 14 2015, @10:07PM
Hey, I'm all about eating the rich. They are, after all, the ones who have more power to enable situations like what I described -- and all for the sake of profit.
And if you don't think welfare recipients have large numbers of offspring, you're wrong -- unless you think six offspring per couple is not a "large number."
The day of reckoning is coming, and when it does it will be too late. The human cancer will lose the battle with itself -- its own worst enemy. God will frown upon our remains with contempt and disgust. And then he will piss on those remains. He might even take a shit on them. A holy shit.
(Score: 5, Funny) by shortscreen on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:36AM
As soon as the Japanese get done perfecting sexbots, we'll start assigning one each to every welfare recipient. (And think of all the jobs created at the sexbot factory!) Next, the US military can start sending them to foreign countries in lieu of armed drones. Everybody lives happily ever after.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday August 14 2015, @10:31PM
You make two points that would seem to be false. At least, assuming you are in the US, as most Soylentils seem to be, but really anywhere:
"welfare recipients...don't tend to have large numbers of offspring"
It is well-known that number of children is inversely related to income. For example, in the US, see this chart [statista.com]
"welfare recipients...don't fight to the death over table scraps"
"Table scraps" is obviously figurative. The rate of violent crime (both as perpetrator and as victim) is inversely proportional to income. It's currently hard to find a simple link to this, because it's now PC to talk about "income inequality". But if you dig into the FBI stats, it's clear enough.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:46PM
>"It is well-known that number of children is inversely related to income."
Apparently, we need to pay welfare recipients a lot more if we want to reduce their birth rate.
Actually, it is probably that welfare payouts increase with number of children, encouraging welfare recipients to have more children. It may be true that the increase in welfare pay is less than the increased cost to care for the new child, but many people are not very good at accounting.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Friday August 14 2015, @10:50PM
You and Ethanol-Fueled are both making the laughably idiotic assumption that the most significant recipients of societal largesse are those receiving food stamps -- which was my whole point about the third yacht and what-not.
Sure. Birth rates are higher amongst those who receive food stamps. But those who get the real welfare? You know? Like bank bailout welfare?
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @11:39PM
I agree, corporate welfare needs to go. and not just corporate welfare in the form of direct funds. Corporate welfare in the form of overreaching IP laws and other anti-competitive laws (ie: taxicab monopolies, laws that limit competition in cable and broadband) that aren't designed to promote the progress or serve a public good but are only intended to serve corporate interests at public expense.
However perhaps part of the reason that people with more children tend to make less is because educated people spent their younger years studying, working, or building their own businesses while those that spent their younger years partying, drinking, smoking, drugs, also spent their time (precariously) doing things that caused them to have children without thinking. You reap what you sow. Then the government is supposed to bail them out encouraging them to screw off even more ...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:47AM
I'd like to point out that this precludes the conscientious party animal woman who is in control of her own body… of which I cannot find many examples of over here in flyover country. Party animals, yes. Party animals who take advantage of the menagerie of resources to get the pill for free? No so many.
To that extent, your point stands!
I don't get it. It's this puritan narrative. We have the technology! Yet, so many say, “Shun the technology! Every sperm is sacred!” One could very well party, drink, smoke, do “drugs” (alcohol isn't a drug?) and get on the pill.
I was going to post a comment earlier, when I was more sober, about the perverse incentives of the USA welfare system. They base it all on when you had your last kid and how many kids you have. Thus, one needs to have kids at least once every 2–3 years as I understand it to get welfare benefits. There are women who actually game this system, with their own bodies! My former boyfriend's mother did it, and her daughter did it as well!
Here's what I truly don't understand about the puritan narrative. Every month I shed an egg without the pill. Can't help it. Just happens. If every incomplete set of DNA is sacred, then wouldn't the pill be a boon?! Logic and reality: it escapes the puritans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @10:53AM
If they were logic and reality based from the start, they would be religious anyway...
(Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Friday August 14 2015, @10:49PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Friday August 14 2015, @10:54PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2015, @11:41PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:41AM
I was at work comp court a few years ago, which also has a welfare court on the next floor. There was an obese black lady there with about 9 kids ranging from a few months old to about 12 years old. Then there was a neighbor I tried to help get employment where I work, he asked me why I work when I could collect welfare and spend it on drugs and beer. Yeah you are correct, our welfare system promotes pumping out kids.
(Score: 1) by FunnyItWorkedLastTime on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:47AM
And lets defund Planned Parenthood, one of the few organizations dedicated to quality of life by keeping the cockroach population in check.
Burn, Baby, Burn!
In Soviet Russia cockroaches burn You
See what i did there?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @07:19AM
Finland spends much more of their GDP on social services than the US (assuming you are from US because that's a popular buzzword in American politics) and has none of those problems.
The communist bogeyman is so 1980. Get on with the times grandpa, the modern great enemy is terrorism.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 16 2015, @12:57AM
Soylent users should have a shiny badge for reaching 15+ moderations on one comment.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by SlowMustang on Friday August 14 2015, @09:47PM
I have this same problem when I play RTS games where I have to gather resources.
Sooner or later I chop down all the trees, catch all the fish, and mine everything.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 14 2015, @10:33PM
That's why you need to build farms and send trade units to the nearest market.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:01PM
What do you do in a prisoner's dilemma with seven billion players when all players but a tiny portion of privileged white, affluent westerners have decided to take everything they can? Take everything you can yourself. Nearly everyone else has already defected.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday August 14 2015, @11:11PM
How do you think they got so affluent?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2015, @11:42PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Friday August 14 2015, @11:50PM
Yeah, I've been there. You cooperate with them and they profit.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:27AM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @03:27AM
Yeah the developing world loves to talk shit while they use our fertilizers, seeds, vaccines, import our technology, have benefit of our scientists/specialists consulting on their projects, and accept our aid hand over fist. Hey wiseasses, maybe if we didn't send so much shit to you we wouldn't have to produce as much.... Maybe if we stop giving you drugs and vaccines a lot of you will just fuckin die off so no need to worry about you becoming affluent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:26PM
Yeah the developing world loves to talk shit while they use our fertilizers, seeds, vaccines, import our technology, have benefit of our scientists/specialists consulting on their projects, and accept our aid hand over fist. Hey wiseasses, maybe if we didn't send so much shit to you we wouldn't have to produce as much.... Maybe if we stop giving you drugs and vaccines a lot of you will just fuckin die off so no need to worry about you becoming affluent.
Call our bluff, if you don't like being part of the civilized world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:44AM
I was trying for a non-derogatory version of what others would call hippies, treehuggers, smug fart sniffers (as per southpark). In no way does it matter how they managed to enter their position. They are the exclusionary group that have the opportunity to cooperate on global resources because of how many they already have and actually do take advantage of that opportunity.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday August 14 2015, @10:13PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:53PM
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
(Score: 1) by dak664 on Saturday August 15 2015, @07:02PM
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:37PM
Who consumed more than the Earth can produce? I certainly didn't. Many others didn't. I don't feel guilty of consuming more than the earth can produce.
Whenever someone lumps together the whole world and says "we have destroyed the world" or something like that, ask him who is "we" and what is he trying to sell?
There are always a few who are responsible for the collective guilt of the whole world, and sometimes the guilt is manufactured, saying: "we are responsible for the erosion of the world's forests/land/oceans/fresh water reserves/oil". No, I am not responsible for using more than my fair share. Never have. I am being blamed for something I never did and something that never happened, so I will feel guilty and responsible, and will happily give them my money and feel good afterwards. Seriously? WTF!
It is always helpful to give some statistics along with such reports so we know who is to blame and who got rich "consuming" the world.
For example, look at the amount of CO2 produced, and who caused it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:50PM
The whole point is that the rich elite who meet in secret are worried because they cant control the human race at the size that it now is, so they need to make a reason for the human race to kill itself off a bit in order to make things more manageable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:05AM
in order to make things more manageable.
Television is doing a good job of keeping people dumb and manageable. Its a slow process, but it definitely works. Indoctrinate and victimize viewers with propaganda slowly that they wouldn't realize what is being done to them.
The few still not indoctrinated by television are attacked by (hollywood) movies so dumb and worthless, they make a smart person cry.
Internet and books still allow a person to get education and get smart, so they are controlling it all they can. Internet certainly did crap on their plans for world domination and set them back years or even decades.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:03PM
Did it? Now they know intimate details about orders of magnitude more people. Information is power, and they have much more of it now than they did. And through mobile phones and soon the Internet of Things they'll be able to, theoretically, activate a kill switch for everything in your life. Your fridge shuts off. Your car shuts down. Et cetera.
The way I see it, the outcome of that stand-off pivots on the geeks. What will they do? Will they cooperate with the Masters of the Universe, or defect?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Friday August 14 2015, @10:51PM
Okay maybe I'm being a bit fanciful, but I'm just not that worried about consumerism, especially in light of my own spending habits. Besides, the nice thing about Capitalism is that it has a built in safety device that also happens to be the basis of why all this works: Supply and demand. We're not going to hit a day where, for example, no more gasoline is available. Instead it'll be harder to get, making prices rise. As those prices rise, alternatives become more economical. When equilibrium is reached, oil is replaced with dilithium crystals or whatever we end up using.
Maybe it's because I'm optimistic or naive or maybe even a little bit of both, but I'm not worried about it.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday August 14 2015, @11:18PM
With tech as a service you would loose choice and quality over time.
Also there are too many people getting (not earning) money by moving money and paper around rather than by contributing to society.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday August 14 2015, @11:25PM
With tech as a service you would loose choice and quality over time.
Why?
Also there are too many people getting (not earning) money by moving money and paper around rather than by contributing to society.
What does an arbitrary value judgment on contributions to society have to with this conversation?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday August 14 2015, @11:48PM
Why? Because profit. Once a subscription service gets your membership it will tend to gradually reduce services and choices. Look at cable TV for example. When it was new it was great; lots of good quality content and no commercials.
When you're building your own computer, or even buying a prebuilt, they need to earn your money with every purchase. With a subscription they just have to not be bad enough to make you want to switch.
"What does an arbitrary value judgment on contributions to society have to with this conversation?"
"That's good in the sense that the money moving around means everybody's doing work that is earning them money."
Some people are getting money without working.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:05AM
Look at cable TV for example. When it was new it was great; lots of good quality content and no commercials.
Yes, there were no commercials, no I don't agree that content is worse today. In the last several decades we went to shows designed with a built in reset-button at the end of every episodes to compelling TV whose stories span entire seasons. Although there is a shit-ton of crap out there (for some reason we don't remember that all eras of television have had tons of crap) we've got plenty more interesting things to watch... all on DVRs instead of being a slave to airtime. In fact, re-watchability in modern TV is at an all-time high! It's fun to pick on TV since we can pretend we don't watch it in order to appear smarter than we really are, at the end of the day we all wish FireFly would come back. It's not a very good example.
Some people are getting money without working.
Who are you talking about?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:50AM
I'm talking about the parasites and freeloaders who get rich on other people's labor. Many investors, CEO's, and politicians offer little if anything in exchange for their profits. They may work hard, but they're working on ways to get something for nothing rather than on making value to be traded fairly.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:35AM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:19AM
I'm not being a blind optimist, but this kind of fearmongering and worrying overlooks a few facts. Malthus was terribly worried that population would overshoot, then crash catastrophically. Life has had this capability for billions of years. Population growth is exponential and given sufficient resources, will quickly fill all reachable space. Is the fossil record full of events in which overpopulation followed by devastating collapses happened? No? Or perhaps we haven't really looked for that in the evidence we have, and we would see it if we thought to look. But I think a more likely explanation is that such collapses have very seldom happened. Why?
An easy argument is that a tendency to overpopulate makes a species less fit. Sure, such a species dominates during the good times, but when it ends and they collapse, they're easy prey for a replacement, easy to finish off. Just like the Moties in The Mote in God's Eye. So, I think life has evolved various self-limiting strategies. What are they? If there's research in that area, it hasn't gotten much attention. Too distasteful a subject for the other kind of optimist. We can hardly bear to talk about forcibly limiting everyone to an average of 2.1 children, consider that a moral outrage and infringement upon everyone's right to procreate without limit.
It's possible that our technological advances have inadvertently disabled or removed some of our self-limiting behavior, that the unprecedented change we are bringing upon the Earth has upset some delicate but vital limit, and that we are indeed headed towards a Malthusian catastrophe. We really should better inform ourselves on this matter.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Balderdash on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:06AM
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 2) by seeprime on Saturday August 15 2015, @05:48AM
You nailed it. No one knows how much food all the gardens on Earth produce. The only data available are production numbers and estimates of all else. This is indeed an example of how to lie with statistics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:50AM
Any time I hear any of these guilt-trip eco-doomsday news stories, I close the window / change the station / turn the page. I can appreciate that eco-guilt-trip-mongering is a core part of the National Geographic Society's mission, but I feel that their time would be better spent studying the world's past and present, because I already know that my generation is the last that will enjoy many relative lifestyle luxuries like internal-combustion-propelled personal vehicles, electricity, running water, and so on. They seem to expect the readers to "atone" for all of this by reverting to 19th-century society (well, in actuality, they want us to "atone" for it by donating to their non-profit organization, which will waste yet more time on guilt-trip articles, offsetting actual decent geographical journalism that used to be the cornerstone of the National Geographic). This is, of course, made under the premise that humanity would actually be able to revert the damage done by almost 200 years of industrialism.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @03:41AM
It's funny that "global warming" is again mentioned.
considering that fossil fuels are renewable (over a looong period of time) then the one
and only resource that cannot be renewed is uranium.
uraniums "birthplace" was pre-earth formation and most like a supernova.
to "renew"split uranium naturally, one needs to wait for a sun to devour earth with its radiological waste and then supernova!
everything else that is stable pretty much isn't going anywhere, unless it is dumped on another celestial body (moon, mercury, mars, venus,etc.) or just discarded into the void (voyager et al.)
maybe it is possible to "renew" broken uranium, if we could harness enough sunlight to power a fuser that would mend the broken pieces of uranium but it would require a "shitload" of ... dedication! : )
(Score: 2) by panachocala on Saturday August 15 2015, @08:54AM
This reminds me of the Doomsday clock which has been telling us we are 2 minutes from total destruction, and have been for the last 50 years. Credibility?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:16PM
This is OT, but I did see the actual Doomsday clock once. I was jogging along the Midway in the middle of the University of Chicago to get ready for rugby season and happened upon a decrepit old house sitting by itself toward the south side of the area, close to the No-Man's Land that are the neighborhoods surrounding Hyde Park. It was an unusually warm day for early Spring, with the metallic tang that wafts up from Gary, Indiana hanging in the air. The front door of the house was open. A small sign over the entrance said "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" and there, hanging over the front desk, was a clock that was 5 minutes to midnight.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @11:30AM
I'm confused. When we reach that day will we all suddenly run out of food and start starving to death?
If not then their statement can't be true.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:38PM
Let's make an analogy: For many years you were spending less money than you earned. So you've accumulated quite a bit of money on your account. But then your spending rose so that you're now spending more than you're earning. Does that mean instant poverty? No, of course not, you've got lots of money on your account. It's just that your stored money gets less. But if you continue to spend more than you consume, then one day you will bankrupt.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:05PM
are you claiming we'll be eating food that's been in storage since 1970 until the rest of the year?
I still don't get it.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:01PM
People produce. And people are clever. (At least some of them.) When there's a need, clever people innovate. We reward those innovators with cash for the valuable goods they figure out how to produce.
Then we steal it back and give it to the overbreeders.
You really care about the environment? Really and truly and not just some whining excuse for bigger government? Than do something about the overbreeding. That's the root problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:36PM
Texans cope with overbreeding by hunting.