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>There are physical limits and laws of thermodynamics that no amount of innovation will be able to fix. People have been crying about overpopulation since fore

>There are physical limits and laws of thermodynamics that no amount of innovation will be able to fix. People have been crying about overpopulation since forever - like the Pink Floyd song goes "And if you survive till two thousand and five I hope you're exceedingly thin" - we have the least poverty in history and the population is still growing. Sorry to burst your green bubble but we are nowhere near close to thermodynamical limits of sustainability on earth >What is the point of continued population explosion? Satisfying some people's belief that reproduction is an inherent right? Yes. This is the perverse reality that most of modern "environmentalist" arguments come down to "what I see as preserving nature is more valuable than people". Sorry buddy but if I had to chose between no more seals or not having children - well at least we have video footage of seals.

lisper 11y ago
OMG, you really don't get it. This isn't about seals. There's a classic puzzle that goes like this: you have a jar full of growth medium and a single bacterium of a species which divides twice an hour. One week later the jar is full of bacteria. At what point was the jar half full? The classical answer is: 30 minutes before the end of the week. But the real answer is that this situation is impossible, because after a week of doubling every 30 minutes the population would be about 10^232 bacterial cells, which is more than the number of sub-atomic particles in the universe. It's not about thermodynamics, it's about math: exponential growth cannot be sustained in a finite universe (let alone a finite planet). Sooner or later we will hit a limit. The only question is whether that limit will be imposed by the laws of physics or whether we will choose to become the masters of our own fate and impose it on ourselves. Personally I prefer the latter option because the former will almost certainly be very, very unpleasant.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  > Sooner or later we will hit a limit Sooner or later sun will burn out, universe will expand in to nothingness, etc. Those arguments are pointless - we won't reach those limits within our lifetime even with highest growth projections and who knows what happens after that. But that's not what OP is arguing - baby seals - ie. "bio diversity" and "wildlife preservation" - is more important to the modern green movement than increasing the standard of living for a large part of human population and hence the enlightened ideas such as forbidding reproduction and limiting resource use.
  - lisper 11y ago
    > Sooner or later sun will burn out Yes, in about 5 billion years. > we won't reach those limits within our lifetime Between "our lifetime" and 5 billion years there is still a very broad range of possibilities. Maybe you don't care what happens to the next N generations, but I do.
    - moonchrome 11y ago
      > Maybe you don't care what happens to the next N generations, but I do It's not about not caring - it's about not knowing what will and will not be relevant. As I've said before - people have been talking about population explosion since forever - we should be starving from 80s. All these people consistently ignore progress in their predictions. You don't know what the dominant method for food production will be in 20 years or what will be the dominant energy source - as someone linked above the things I'm talking about are already starting. How can you predict what will be relevant in 100 years ? We should deal with problems coming in 10-20 years - we don't have the tools to deal with the longer term than that.
      - lisper 11y ago
        > people have been talking about population explosion since forever No, that's not true. Thomas Malthus wrote his famous essay less than 200 years ago. The oldest human writings are only a few thousand years old. That's the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. > How can you predict what will be relevant in 100 years? Because I can do math. So I can understand that exponential growth cannot be sustained in a finite universe, let alone a finite planet. I can calculate how long we can continue at current (or historical) growth rates before we run into various limiting factors. For example: the carbon biomass of earth is ~10^15 kg. The carbon mass of homo sapiens is about 10^11 kg. Our current doubling time is about 60 years. That works out to about 600 more years of growth at current rates before the biomass of earth consists entirely of homo sapiens. That's a hard upper bound on how long we have left if we don't slow our growth rate.
        11y ago
Daishiman 11y ago
All the reduction of poverty won't mean shit if by the end of the century, as we have predicted and with those predictions turning out very well, the ocean rises by 3-5 feet and we turn the ocean acidic. Are you totally not able to comprehend that material gains in human living come at the cost of the extraction of resources from the ecosystem, and that said extraction is literally unsustainable? Do you not understand that the exponential growth of the last century has had an impact on the planet greater than the rest of the entirety of human existence? It is impossible to continue the resource extraction we have maintained for the last 20 years, for the simple reason that the climate is already starting to do number for us and this is just the beginning, consequence of said resource extraction. Unless you like the idea of geoengineering the planet (and no one in their sane mind does) the idea that progress depends on human consumption has to stop. You are the exact example of when psychologists say that people cannot really comprehend the exponential function.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  >Are you totally not able to comprehend that material gains in human living come at the cost of the extraction of resources from the ecosystem, and that said extraction is literally unsustainable? You don't seem to be able to understand that reliance on the ecosystem is not a good thing - it's inherently unstable anyway - just because we were fortunate enough up to this point doesn't mean that a big event like a volcano, weather or biological catastrophe can't destroy the ecosystem and us with it. Sea level only matters if we can't develop underwater construction in 100 years - As I've said it's unlikely that even in 20 years we will be using traditional farming as a food source - let alone in 100 years - just like we advanced from hunter gatherer -> farming - we adopted the environment to us - the next step is already happening. You seem to be stuck in the mindset that just because we can't deal with something now it will be a problem in 100 years. If we had to deal with this issue in 10-20 years I would be worried (it would still be possible but it would require large scale dedicated effort) in 50-100 years it's practically guaranteed to be solved by standard progress. People have been screaming about overpopulation exponential growth, etc. since forever[1], and it's yet to show any signs of being reality. The solution isn't running back to the caves and wishing everything stays as it was if we stop burning stuff and stop having children so we can enjoy the views - it's to take control of environment and reduce dependency on inherently unstable factors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

lisper 11y ago

OMG, you really don't get it. This isn't about seals. There's a classic puzzle that goes like this: you have a jar full of growth medium and a single bacterium of a species which divides twice an hour. One week later the jar is full of bacteria. At what point was the jar half full? The classical answer is: 30 minutes before the end of the week. But the real answer is that this situation is impossible, because after a week of doubling every 30 minutes the population would be about 10^232 bacterial cells, which is more than the number of sub-atomic particles in the universe. It's not about thermodynamics, it's about math: exponential growth cannot be sustained in a finite universe (let alone a finite planet). Sooner or later we will hit a limit. The only question is whether that limit will be imposed by the laws of physics or whether we will choose to become the masters of our own fate and impose it on ourselves. Personally I prefer the latter option because the former will almost certainly be very, very unpleasant.

moonchrome 11y ago
> Sooner or later we will hit a limit Sooner or later sun will burn out, universe will expand in to nothingness, etc. Those arguments are pointless - we won't reach those limits within our lifetime even with highest growth projections and who knows what happens after that. But that's not what OP is arguing - baby seals - ie. "bio diversity" and "wildlife preservation" - is more important to the modern green movement than increasing the standard of living for a large part of human population and hence the enlightened ideas such as forbidding reproduction and limiting resource use.
- lisper 11y ago
  > Sooner or later sun will burn out Yes, in about 5 billion years. > we won't reach those limits within our lifetime Between "our lifetime" and 5 billion years there is still a very broad range of possibilities. Maybe you don't care what happens to the next N generations, but I do.
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    > Maybe you don't care what happens to the next N generations, but I do It's not about not caring - it's about not knowing what will and will not be relevant. As I've said before - people have been talking about population explosion since forever - we should be starving from 80s. All these people consistently ignore progress in their predictions. You don't know what the dominant method for food production will be in 20 years or what will be the dominant energy source - as someone linked above the things I'm talking about are already starting. How can you predict what will be relevant in 100 years ? We should deal with problems coming in 10-20 years - we don't have the tools to deal with the longer term than that.
    - lisper 11y ago
      > people have been talking about population explosion since forever No, that's not true. Thomas Malthus wrote his famous essay less than 200 years ago. The oldest human writings are only a few thousand years old. That's the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. > How can you predict what will be relevant in 100 years? Because I can do math. So I can understand that exponential growth cannot be sustained in a finite universe, let alone a finite planet. I can calculate how long we can continue at current (or historical) growth rates before we run into various limiting factors. For example: the carbon biomass of earth is ~10^15 kg. The carbon mass of homo sapiens is about 10^11 kg. Our current doubling time is about 60 years. That works out to about 600 more years of growth at current rates before the biomass of earth consists entirely of homo sapiens. That's a hard upper bound on how long we have left if we don't slow our growth rate.
      - 11y ago

Daishiman 11y ago

All the reduction of poverty won't mean shit if by the end of the century, as we have predicted and with those predictions turning out very well, the ocean rises by 3-5 feet and we turn the ocean acidic. Are you totally not able to comprehend that material gains in human living come at the cost of the extraction of resources from the ecosystem, and that said extraction is literally unsustainable? Do you not understand that the exponential growth of the last century has had an impact on the planet greater than the rest of the entirety of human existence? It is impossible to continue the resource extraction we have maintained for the last 20 years, for the simple reason that the climate is already starting to do number for us and this is just the beginning, consequence of said resource extraction. Unless you like the idea of geoengineering the planet (and no one in their sane mind does) the idea that progress depends on human consumption has to stop. You are the exact example of when psychologists say that people cannot really comprehend the exponential function.

moonchrome 11y ago
>Are you totally not able to comprehend that material gains in human living come at the cost of the extraction of resources from the ecosystem, and that said extraction is literally unsustainable? You don't seem to be able to understand that reliance on the ecosystem is not a good thing - it's inherently unstable anyway - just because we were fortunate enough up to this point doesn't mean that a big event like a volcano, weather or biological catastrophe can't destroy the ecosystem and us with it. Sea level only matters if we can't develop underwater construction in 100 years - As I've said it's unlikely that even in 20 years we will be using traditional farming as a food source - let alone in 100 years - just like we advanced from hunter gatherer -> farming - we adopted the environment to us - the next step is already happening. You seem to be stuck in the mindset that just because we can't deal with something now it will be a problem in 100 years. If we had to deal with this issue in 10-20 years I would be worried (it would still be possible but it would require large scale dedicated effort) in 50-100 years it's practically guaranteed to be solved by standard progress. People have been screaming about overpopulation exponential growth, etc. since forever[1], and it's yet to show any signs of being reality. The solution isn't running back to the caves and wishing everything stays as it was if we stop burning stuff and stop having children so we can enjoy the views - it's to take control of environment and reduce dependency on inherently unstable factors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe