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People over 30 should be dead...


ChuckS

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We have to concern ourselves with RECYCLING. As messy as that sounds, if you've ever pondered what gets tossed out into landfills these days, you'd rush out and have a puking emoticon tattooed on your chest in revolt. I'm an avid recycler and yet I consider how much, let's say, junk-mail I have to toss out, let alone things I cannot recycle... and it's a humongous amount each year. And I'm just ONE little person!! :o

I check out what people are "tossing" in the apartment complex dumpboxes and it's appalling. We provide LOTS of bins 'n barrels for recyclables and yet I lean into the dumpsters and yank cardboard, plastics, etc. and recycle them. I'm getting tired of doing it, though... the bins are RIGHT NEXT TO the dumpster. Why can't they recycle??!! :angry:

I also volunteer at a computer recycling facility (kid in candy store for computer components!!!) and the INCREDIBLE amount of waste we dismantle and recycle is downright ominous. :blink:

Anyway, we're soiling our nest, allowing the week and feeble to live-and-reproduce, allowing greed to govern our affairs and not entirely teaching our young respectable social and survival skills. Granted, our technology and cleverness has affected how we interact with the world around us, but something got lost in the shuffle. Best example I can think of for the moment: That issue about cheating in school. We now allow a culture of dishonesty and falsehood. :ph34r:

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well if you want to get into suppositiona bout what causes the breakdown, I'd put forth an idea. Rapid and ubiquitous communication.

Seriously. Your community gave you values, and you either embraced them or turned against them in some proportion. You wanted wealth or success or praise, you measured it first by those around you, rather than the world at large. In a way a set of social training wheels between the big picture and the protected sandbox of the family.

But now, you are exposed to the whole thing all at once. You might grow up in a town where rich means making $50k a year, influential might mean simply that everyone likes you, and good looking isn't a matter of surgical enhancement. However, that isn't what you measure yourself by anymore. You have examples paraded before you that represent the one in several million odds and occurances, and you think it should be as common as changing the channel or turning the page to achieve such success or depravity. You get all this information shoved at you without having had a chance to explore the topics wearing your training wheels so to speak. You get a lot of wacky priorities form that.

If were lucky though we'll reach a critical point where there is so much information thrown at us that we have to filter it down no matter how developed and well heeled one's psyche is. Just sheer volume and time will require it. The problem then may be ever losing your training wheels.

Or it might just be simpler if a good war or plague wiped out about 2 billion people and reorganized some of our immediate priorities and stresses the old fashioned way.

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Anyway, we're soiling our nest, allowing the week and feeble to live-and-reproduce, allowing greed to govern our affairs and not entirely teaching our young respectable social and survival skills.

There is not much more to say, is there?

Just because game nr's are up by ±350% here and in RSA does not mean the black maned lion will return, or the dodo (from Auz???)...as examples.

As that one idiot said - people are like viruses, destroying their own living habitat, thereby destroying themselves....

I wish people would stop and think about what they are doing. Too many idiots get their ideas made into reality without knowledge of the consequences. Simple management by normal people (I wish there were more... <_< ) would help alot...but hey, who wants a normal person as a leader???? :ph34r:

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And going back a little further we find that bashing the younger generation has a long history....

"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. "

Socrates, 469-399 BCE

While I agree with the original post the world seemed better(?) when I was a kid and learned to love the bomb, I remember the adults did not think to much of us either, especially once we got to college.....

Population density may be a factor. But was it not after the plague years the holy office of the inquisition sprang up?

My guess is the sentiment expressed in the Tao Te Ching that 3 in 10 are seekers of life, 3 in 10 are seekers of death and 3 in 10 are just passing between life and death is pretty close to the mark today as it was 2500 years ago.

"When will they ever learn...."

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We have to concern ourselves with RECYCLING.

well, i know this isnt quite on the original topic, but this is an interesting perspective on the grand deed of recycling. there is much more to it than just tossing the can or cardboard or whatever into the other container.

http://www.cato.org/dailys/8-27-97.html

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Does the word "carrying capacity" hit home? To understand this I did a lit search and found some interesting things, the following describes it best:

OAKLAND, California, November 28, 2002 (ENS) - Humanity is putting increasing pressure on global ecosystems, with consumption exceeding the Earth’s biological capacity by 20 percent, according to a new report from the Sustainability Program of Redefining Progress, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy organization.

The biosphere needs about one year and three months to renew what humanity consumes in a year, the report found.

The organization’s latest “Ecological Footprint of Nations” report analyzes the ecological impact of 146 of the world’s nations, demonstrating to what extent a nation can support its resource consumption with its available ecological capacity.

The report uses ecological footprint accounts to provide a measurable estimate of humanity’s pressure on global ecosystems.

“The ‘Ecological Footprint’ accounts show us that humanity’s consumption and waste production today exceed the Earth’s capacity to create new resources and absorb waste,” the report says. “We are, as a result, liquidating certain natural capital to support current resource use, thereby reducing the Earth’s capacity to support future life.” :(

The Redefining Progress report expresses ecological footprint in terms of global acres. Each global acre, the report explains, corresponds to one acre of biologically productive space with world average productivity.

The “Ecological Footprint” measures the biologically productive area required to produce the food and wood people consume, to supply space for infrastructure, and to absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels.

The global ecological footprint in 1999 was 5.6 global acres per capita, while the Earth’s biocapacity was 4.7 global acres.

“Assuming on further ecological degradation, the amount of biologically available space will drop to 2.8 global acres (1.1 hectares) per capita once the world population reaches its predicted 10 billion. If current growth trends continue, this will happen in about 30 years.”

Timeline and Issues

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exactly? not really.

he “Ecological Footprint” measures the biologically productive area required to produce the food and wood people consume, to supply space for infrastructure, and to absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels.

Smart and efficient recycling is good, however, the notion of recycling isn't a panacea. It actually has to earn it's keep. I could use 100% recycled glass, but because it takes more energy than making glass from scratch to get the same quality product, it may actually INCREASE my ecological footprint if I burn fossil fuels to recycle. Just because it is referred to as recycling doesn't mean it is done well, efficiently, or in a manner that doesn anything more than make you feel better.

That was the main point of the article linked. Not that recycling isn't a good thing, but that recycling AS WE HAVE IMPLIMENTED IT may actually make the situation worse.

re-use on the other hand is pretty much 100% upside. So let me go reload some ammo.

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Sorry guys, but this stuff has been going around for years. Maybe you want to go back and look at all the noice about the "Population Bomb" about 20 years ago. According to those expert reports we are all dead and starving right now.

Whenever someone write a book/report/paper/article the predicts the end of the world/humanity/nature/eco-system you have to ask yourself a couple of question.

1) Does the author have an interest scaring you?

2) Is his/her interest actually to protect something or to affect social change?

3) How good is the data?

The last question is a lot more relevant then you may think. A lot of this studies assume 0 growth in productivity which is insane. For example the population scare crap of the 80's was using food production numbers from the 70's and assuming no change. However by the 90's we were using GPS guided farming equipment and bio-enginered foods and now the world has about 120% of the food need it to feed everyone above standard nutritional requierments (if it get to who needs it is a political issue). For example the US is the number 1 food exporter in the world and the arable land is less the %20 with permanent crops on the less then 0.2%. And most of this land stays unused anyway, by government grants. Almost every tree we cut down, we grow for that purpose.

The article about "ecological footprints" forgets that technology reduces that footprint. If you had to farm the land with 18th century tech it would take a lot of land to feed a family. Unfortunatly more then half the world still does, and a good portion of the other half its inching its way through the mid 20th century tech. Taking any statistical number and assuming it will not change for 30 years is the worst kind of "science".

Vlad

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not sure i get all of that. if we exceed our capacity by 20% each year, will we disappear after 5 years? ;)

if recycling is more wasteful (in terms of energy and resources) than not recycling (and in some cases, it surely is), how does that improve the earth's capacity to support future life? but then, i'm not even sure that's what you were trying to say???

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We really need to recycle. That includes re-use of certain/many materials.

We have too many people on the planet.

We have soiled the nest carelessly and without thought of consequence.

We've wasted the resources we DO have and failed to conserve.

We create more useless throw-aways literally every day.

We've overdone the "plastics" concept.

We are more interested in looking good that being healthy.

Our water, air, food and other stuff is contaminated and full of chemicals and drugs.

The planet's in trouble! Period.

There was a phrase from the early 60's that went like this: "There is No Garbage." Meaning, out-of-sight-out-of-mind doesn't make the trash go away. Be more responsible, dammit.

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Vlad....what has the price of gasoline been doing? What about the cost of a gallon of milk? Geez...the price for a quart of drinking water is out of this world! What part of the equation is hard to understand? Something is out of balance here and I'm not sure that I understand it all or can even start to talk about the issues.

Here are a few givens:

Fewer people in the US today make their living off the land (Farm/Ag) than 25 years ago. So were did the jobs go? To the city - maybe or other countries but I'm going to touch that.

What about the land? Statistics show that the number of farms and ag. crop production has dropped significantly over the past 25 years - farm or ag. lands have been converted to paved streets and homesites! Take a gander at the farm lands around DC or Leesburg.....a person could not make the payments for a farm in this area just on crop(s) produced from that piece of ground alone. That's pretty much anywhere in the US right now. The start up cost for farms are outrageous. With interest rates, price per acre rates, and equipment/fuel costs....you get my point. Remember that steaks do not grow on a supermarket shelf or the vegies that we enjoy just happen to magically appear in a freezer. Carrying capacity = # acres that support a living thing for a period of time (usually measured by a calendar year).

One side of the argument indicates that the world populations are growing but the area of dry land is relative static. What happens in 30-40 or more years when the world populations reach 10 billion....I don't have a clue but do hope that there is world peace by then otherwise it could get ugly.

I could rant on this....ug... but will save it for later <_<

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gmw2b. Ok, if agricultural lands are shrinking, yet we are producing more, it bears out vlad's point. Assuming it will take the same ammount of land to provide the same function 30 years later is not rational thought unless you spent some time demonstrating that we are reaching the limits of yeild.

Just like you can think we have soiled our nest all you want. The simple fact that someone SAYS recycling will fix it or delays it, and another entity LABELS something as recycling, does not mean the actual task being perfomed has a net conservation of anything.

Right now, glass is probably one of the easiest to recycle items, and it still is a net energy loser and pollutes more in a way we have less wiggle room on (spewing carbon into the environment rather than stacking bottles over there on that piece of land we arent using) to recycle a bottle than to make a new one. At some point this may change. however, If we stack smartly, we have a big old bottle mine in that direction to make use of that is now the least polluting method of getting us a new bottle.

So far, the washa bottle, put it ina blue can where even more energy will be put into it type of recycling isn't really resulting in a lot of savings on the "footprint" end of things. Quite often, it makes the footprint worse.

At the same time, there are a lot of burgeoning technologies that gets the human race actively participating in the carbon cycle of mother nature. Artificial trees that yank usable hydrocarbons out of the atmosphere for us to reuse, or turn agricultural waste and sewage into the same. I'd certainly rather spend money an energy on that rather than something that when you do the math may be rushing us to a planetary grave faster than not doing it.

The real type of pollution that should concern the species isn't the pile of innocuous garbage, it when we create things that are super rare in nature, or don't exist in nature, and when manufacturing the new super zippy small hard drive, jsut spew it out into the environment because it isn't regulated yet. that's the kind of stuff that wipes you off the face of the earth. This whole footprint thing is solved real fast by one good war or virus. Very fixable.

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Vlad....what has the price of gasoline been doing?  What about the cost of a gallon of milk?  Geez...the price for a quart of drinking water is out of this world!  What part of the equation is hard to understand?

Actually you point out some of my favorites. The price of oil is still dirt cheap. You don't believe me? Do the math or look it up here. The short of it that despite the cries of record highes, the price of oil right now is about 40% of what it was in 1980.

Milk? Talk to your senator. The price of milk has to do with price controls and "pork" in the farming industry. Water? Actual drinkable water from your faucet is cheaper then ever before (if you account for inflation). If you want to drink water from France and Fiji, then you are paying a tax for being a snob and a transportation fee.

BTW, I highly recommend that everyone watch the Penn and Teller show called Bullshit! and pay attention the water, recycling, and enviormental scare episodes.

The rest Raz addressed so I'll leave it alone.

Vlad

Edited cause I left out some words and diminished the sense/words ratio.

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The planet's in trouble!  Period.
ha! you malthusians (followers of thomas malthus, ie, doomsayers) have been predicting that stuff for literally centuries. fortunately for the rest of us the predictions have always been wrong.

go here for a good story about this:

"The ultimate embarrassment for the Malthusians was when doomsayer Paul Ehrlich bet Julian Simon (an anti-malthusian) $1,000 in 1980 that five resources (of Ehrlich’s choosing) would be more expensive in 10 years. Ehrlich lost: 10 years later every one of the resources had declined in price by an average of 40 percent."

We have too many people on the planet.
ha, again! actually, the greatest resource on earth is us humans...the more the better!
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as luck would have it, humans, the great resource that we are, have come up with many solutions to your urban traffic problems, depending on the circumstances:

-ride a bike

-take a train/subway/plane/helicopter

-walk (get some nice, comfortable walking shoes)

-move to the country, start a home business

-telecommute/videoconference instead

and dont forget, it used to be a problem for people to be stuck in a single small geographic area for their entire lives...humans solved that problem too.

cheer up...things really are going pretty well here on earth.

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OK guys...lets look at some simple stats and see me rant - sorry for the thread drift but this debate is good!

We all enjoy protein in our diets right :D ....well here are the number

See any trends?

(000's)

Year (Broilers) (Cattle on Feed) (Dairy Cows)

1980 3,963,852 12,249.00 10,810.00

1981 4,149,200 11,598.00 10,869.00

1982 4,151,275 10,619.00 10,998.00

1983 4,183,660 12,040.00 11,066.00

1984 4,282,391 11,609.00 11,140.00

1985 4,478,749 12,440.00 10,819.00

1986 4,646,312 11,412.00 11,179.00

1987 5,002,934 10,953.00 10,547.00

1988 5,235,605 11,527.00 10,307.00

1989 5,518,133 11,160.00 10,217.00

1990 5,864,650 11,626.00 10,149.00

1991 6,138,350 12,742.00 10,159.00

1992 6,388,990 11,947.00 9,904.00

1993 6,689,110 12,701.00 9,844.00

1994 7,017,540 12,928.00 9,638.00

1995 7,325,670 12,450.00 9,531.80

1996 7,598,200 12,792.00 9,412.00

1997 7,760,260 13,216.00 9,280.90

1998 7,934,280 13,618.00 9,190.90

1999 8,146,010 13,214.00 9,143.10

2000 8,262,630 13,983.00 9,187.80

2001 8,389,100 14,199.40 9,202.90

2002 8,590,180 13,860.30 9,109.60

2003 8,492,850 12,915.80 9,151.70

Looks like the US eats one hell of a lot of chickens in our diets! Beef cattle...static numbers. Dairy cows numbers are down while the demand for milk has increased...can we say higher prices.

Think about this - urban developement is rapidly expanding in regions of the US around populations centers. Productive farmlands are sold one by one, subdivided, and give us opportunity to live in the country. Reason why? Residential and Commercial real estate values far exceed farm values.

Farm Real Estate: Average Value per Acre, by Region

Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Dollars Dollars Dollars Dollars Dollars

Northeast US 2500 2660 2830 3000 3200

Southeast US 1800 1920 2030 2140 2270

Your very much right when you say we do more with less. Science has given us genetically engineered crops, conservation measures, and farming alternatives. But at what cost? Water rights are a major battle ground in the western US right now. Population centers are growing and people like to drink water but it rains and snows only so much. Water is a commodity and not free! Believe it or not - your tax dollars are very much at work conserving and preserving water resources.

Last year I remember driving on gas that cost $1.50 and now its close to $2.00. Here's how that effects my pocket book - if I had a fixed budget it would mean driving to 25% less or 3/4 of the matches. Did you change or have you changed your lifestyle because of gas prices? Hope you guys get a pay increase because your buying power has dropped.

the great resource that we are
that was a joke right :lol: maybe resourceful or adaptable!
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--I'm still paying about $2.40 per gallon and have to plan for EVERY trip out of the house nowadays. There is no longer any allowance for frivolous trips around town in the car. The price will likely go up.

--I skipped fall shooting league because of money... or rather, the lack of it.

--The war going on in the Eugene-Springfield area (here in Oregon, for you new members) about annexing (and developing!) fringe area farmland is downright noisy and bloody!

--For the first time that I can recall, ALL my expenses--across the board, mind you, all at once!--increased by about 15% or more at the first of the year.

--We've lost so much fresh water sourcing nationally, that I can hardly believe we continue to build homes everywhere (including here) with no job base in some place and no water resources to support it.

Yadda, yadda and more of it. God.

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