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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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 Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 6:44 pm Post subject: |
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While ignoring the part about how deforestation can have very real effects?
As for North Africa, if you're too lazy to look it up yourself, let me help you: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=North+Africa+breadbasket+of+Rome.
Seriously though, I know you're not dumb and I'm sorry I've been a bit too snarky, but you don't seem to even acknowledge the possibility that there might be any truth outside of your anarchist world view. You say environmentalism is terrible, yet without environmentalists GE would still be dumping those chemicals. Perhaps we need stricter property rights, but ad we've discussed before, the tragedy of the commons is extremely difficult to resolve without government intervention. Bottom line, we have one world with limited resources and it's entirely reasonable to want to conserve those resources. Look at declining freshwater supplies, if the oil example doesn't suit you. Bottom line, what you see is what you get. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
Off the top of my head:
On a large scale:
-Easter Island
-The Mayans
-Anasazi...
... One aspect of intelligence is the willingness to consider opposing viewpoints; perhaps you should try it occasionally. |
Agreed. Here's an opposing viewpoint to Easter Island's demise
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090218095435.htm
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The ancient Rapanui people did abuse their environment, but they were also developing sustainable practices�innovating, experimenting, trying to adapt to a risky environment�and they would still be here in traditional form if it weren�t for the diseases introduced by European settlers in the 1800s.
�Societies don�t just go into a tailspin and self-destruct,� says Stevenson, an archaeologist at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. �They can and do adapt, and they emerge in new ways. The key is to put more back into the system than is taken out.� |
The eco-freaks love to point to Easter Island as an example but they leave out some important details.
As for the Mayans the cause is not clear. Nor they entirely collapse...many cities kept living just fine for generations afterwards.
http://www.criscenzo.com/jaguarsun/ideas.html
The consensus seems to be there were a number of problems.
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First, let's clarify what is meant by collapse - the collapse of the Classic civilization that occurred sometime near the end of the 9th century, was apparently a devastating event, but seems to have been contained to the Peten/highland areas. In the Northern Lowlands, sites like Coba and old Chichen Itza seemed to have continued without much of a problem for many more generations, and sites in the Puuc Hills were just beginning to flower. So I will assume your question pertains to the "demise" of the Central area sites.
Most Mayanists seem to agree that the collapse was due to a combination of problems, but none seem to agree on what was the dominant cause. Perhaps there was no dominant cause... |
As for the Anasazi there were a number of social problems that contributed...it wasn't just environmental
http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/anasazi.htm
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| Nobody is completely sure how their society fell, and no one reason will answer it completely, but it is a mixture of environmental and societal pressures |
So while environmental problems may have contributed to the downfalls of these societies they were NOT the main cause.
And BTW North Korea's problems are NOT the result of the environment they are the result of a brutal elite living in luxury on the labor of the rest..much like Stalinist Russia.
EDIT: just saw Mr. visitorq's last reply now...guess we think much alike (at least on THIS topic)  |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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| �Societies don�t just go into a tailspin and self-destruct,� says Stevenson, an archaeologist at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. �They can and do adapt, and they emerge in new ways. The key is to put more back into the system than is taken out.� |
Are we doing this now?
Visitorq's view seems to be that we can abuse the environment as much as we please, so long as government isn't doing the abusing. Perhaps environmental degradation wasn't the sole cause, but does that negate the need for environmental stewardship? I'm not saying putting the environment above people, I'm saying managing the environment in a sustainable way. Look at our oceans: fish currently make up a huge portion of the world's protein, yet fisheries are collapsing worldwide. Is everything okay?
North Korea's food supply issues are tied to clear cutting its hills in order to grow orchards, which in turn failed and led to widespread topsoil depletion. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 7:34 pm Post subject: |
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TUM,
Good job pushing back on the Jared Diamond Collapse thesis.
Northway,
In any of those situations, you're going to have causation troubles. Specifically, did human-originated environmental pressure instead of other societal factors predominate to cause the downfall of the civilizations. And also, were the collapse of the environmental systems, specifically in the case of North Africa, predominantly caused by human societies.
You might be able to summon significant evidence for the latter. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
Northway,
In any of those situations, you're going to have causation troubles. Specifically, did human-originated environmental pressure instead of other societal factors predominate to cause the downfall of the civilizations. And also, were the collapse of the environmental systems, specifically in the case of North Africa, predominantly caused by human societies.
You might be able to summon significant evidence for the latter. |
Due in part to the fact that those societies which collapse tend not to leave the best records of their collapse. Generally speaking, I'm not a big believer in their being a sole cause (or solution) for any given problem, and I shouldn't have come across that strong in saying environmental collapse was the sole cause of those societies' respective downfalls. That said, we know that deforestation leads to soil erosion. We know that deforested lands with relatively little rainfall are slow to recover. I fail to see any stretch in making the connection that humans heavily farmed an area for awhile, clear cut it, and it eventually turned into poor farmland. My main objection is the premise that we can do whatever we please to the planet and everything will be just fine, as it appears we're already reaching a breaking point in regard to our oceans and much of our freshwater comes from underground aquifers that are being depleted much, much faster than they are being replenished. I'm not comfortable asking on a magic bullet, personally. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
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| �Societies don�t just go into a tailspin and self-destruct,� says Stevenson, an archaeologist at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. �They can and do adapt, and they emerge in new ways. The key is to put more back into the system than is taken out.� |
Are we doing this now?
Visitorq's view seems to be that we can abuse the environment as much as we please, so long as government isn't doing the abusing. Perhaps environmental degradation wasn't the sole cause, but does that negate the need for environmental stewardship? I'm not saying putting the environment above people, I'm saying managing the environment in a sustainable way. Look at our oceans: fish currently make up a huge portion of the world's protein, yet fisheries are collapsing worldwide. Is everything okay?
North Korea's food supply issues are tied to clear cutting its hills in order to grow orchards, which in turn failed and led to widespread topsoil depletion. |
Why is it on Dave's that when you merely present an opposing view people automatically assume you are an advocate of the extreme?
No everything is not okay. I'm merely pointing out that environment degradation only played a part in the collapse of the above societies and not the main factor.
As for the fisheries thing you may be interested in this article.
http://blog.nature.org/2010/11/fisheries-apocalypse-ocean-fish-stock-peter-kareiva-ray-hilborn/
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In an attempt to resolve this dispute, Boris Worm and I several years ago organized a set of four meetings, sponsored by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), in which we assembled a database on abundance as measured by fisheries agencies and research surveys. Participants included several of the authors of the 2006 paper as well as several people from national fisheries management agencies.
The results were published in Science in 2009 (Worm et al. 2009), and showed that, while the majority of stocks were still below target levels, fishing pressure had been reduced in most ecosystems (for which we had data) to below the point that would assure long-term maximum sustainable yield of fish from those ecosystems.
About 30 percent of the stocks would currently be classified as overfished � but, generally, fishing pressure has been reduced enough that all but 17 percent of stocks would be expected to recover to above overfished thresholds if current fishing pressure continues. In the United States, there was clear evidence for the rebuilding of marine ecosystems and stock biomass. The idea that 70 percent of the world�s fish stocks are overfished or collapsed and that the rate of overfishing is accelerating (Pauly 2007) was shown by Worm et al. (2009) and FAO (2009) to be untrue.
The Science paper coming out of the NCEAS group also showed that the success in reducing fishing pressure had been achieved by a broad range of traditional fisheries management tools � including catch-and-effort limitation, gear restrictions and temporary closed areas. Marine protected areas were an insignificant factor in the success achieved.
The database generated by the NCEAS group and subsequent analysis has shown that many of the assumptions fueling the standard apocalyptic scenarios painted by the gloom-and-doom proponents are untrue: |
It's a rather refreshing look at the issue.
EDIT: As for the freshwater thing...the problem is not that we are running out of water
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/14/are-we-running-out-of-water/
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Every year, about 110,000 billion cubic meters of water falls on the land surface of our planet as rain or snow. That annual endowment of water would cover all land to nearly a meter deep if it was spread evenly.
More than half of all of that water evaporates quickly or gets taken up by trees, shrubs, and grass.
More than a third flows out to the coasts, where it helps to maintain the delicate salt- and freshwater balance of estuaries, without which much of our seafood industry would collapse.
Of all the water falling on land, we�re consuming less than 10% to grow our crops, supply our homes, keep our industries running, and generate electricity. |
The problem is (as noted in the article) is that that water is NOT spread evenly.
But we're not running out.
In fact most doom-and-gloom scenarios are in large part false due to their nature.
If things were really going to get that bad...we'd already be in a place where no sane person could deny the facts.
Last edited by TheUrbanMyth on Thu Jul 05, 2012 8:42 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry, that wasn't directed at you, TUM. Thanks for reminding me as to the Easter Island alternative view, as I'd encountered it before and it slipped my mind (as a blurb failed to overwhelm everything else I've read on the subject, not that it being a blurb denigrates it). My comment about everything being fine was in regards to visitorq saying:
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| Sheer nonsense. The earth is fine- always has been and always will be. It's humanity I'm worried about, and we're negatively impacted far more by big government and environmentalist control freaks (i.e. green on the outside, red on the inside) than anything mother nature has to dish out at us. |
I'm sorry, but that's far more out there than anything I have suggested.
Good piece on the fish, though I do think our problems in that regard go a lot deeper than just overfishing (pollution, reef degradation, etc.). I have to think fisheries can be properly managed, though I think it will require more government intervention in order to do so, not less. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 9:03 pm Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
| While ignoring the part about how deforestation can have very real effects? |
I don't deny it can have very real effects, but I deny that it can cause whole civilizations to collapse.
I don't have to google it, since I already possess more than a rudimentary understanding of the history of Rome, and know that Egypt was the primary breadbasket of the Roman Empire. North Africa and Sicily were also very important grain tribute provinces, but Egypt was usually considered the most important (which is why Mark Anthony chose it, when he had he upper hand against Octavian, when they were dividing up control among the triumvirate).
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| Seriously though, I know you're not dumb and I'm sorry I've been a bit too snarky, but you don't seem to even acknowledge the possibility that there might be any truth outside of your anarchist world view. |
I would acknowledge it if there was any substance to it. I seriously fail to see any, based on what you've posted so far. I mean, Easter Island and North Korea? How about Europe, which has been largely deforested for centuries and yet still prospers? Or vast swaths of the US for that matter?
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| You say environmentalism is terrible, yet without environmentalists GE would still be dumping those chemicals. Perhaps we need stricter property rights, but ad we've discussed before, the tragedy of the commons is extremely difficult to resolve without government intervention. |
Not to quibble over definitions, but it's not really government "intervention" to enforce property laws. It's simply the rule of law, which is pretty much the fundamental purpose of government. As for GE dumping chemicals, the only reason they stopped is probably because their factories were offshored to China. Otherwise our government would have no problem letting them do whatever. Just look at all the drilling going on offshore (which is a massive revenue generator for the federal government), nuclear power plants, or GMOs being planted everywhere (and vandalizing the ecosystem). The government rubber stamps that sort of thing, and clearly doesn't care at all about the environment. But they'll happily use regulations to shut down GE's competition (like coal power plants) or control our lives.
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| Bottom line, we have one world with limited resources and it's entirely reasonable to want to conserve those resources. Look at declining freshwater supplies, if the oil example doesn't suit you. Bottom line, what you see is what you get. |
Yeah well, scarcity has always been an issue, but only insofar as we lack to technology to exploit resources (oil was scarce hundreds of years ago too). But beyond that, we live in a world of plenty, and any resources that can be used to improve peoples' lives should be used. All the Malthusian nonsense about how we're a parasite sucking the life blood of Mother Gaia, and should be starved into submission (or even killed like rodents) to "save the earth" is just that: nonsense. It's also profoundly anti-human, and frankly despicable to me. Eco-fascism is a force to be vehemently resisted. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 5:16 am Post subject: |
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| What I'm gathering is that you think we can do anything to the planet that we please and it will all end up okay (as long as we have less government). Cut down every tree, harvest every fish, and pollute every water supply, because we will innovate our way out of trouble. Perhaps this is possible on a species level, but I think it's unrealistic to think we can destroy everything in our path without negative repercussions. The case of Easter Island is illustrative, as it would appear that their quality of life did decline with the decline of their forests, given that deep sea fishing made up much of their protein supply prior to the island's deforestation. Many of our practices are unsustainable, notably with water, yet considerations to that effect are spearheaded by the Ecofascists, apparently. Do you really think that our oceans are perfectly healthy, or that clear cutting doesn't cause soil degradation? Are we not highly dependent on underground aquifers that are being depleted much faster than they are being replenished? Did we not use CFCs which resulted in ozone depletion? I absolutely understand the argument for putting people ahead of everything else, but I don't understand willful ignorance to very real problems. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 6:39 am Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
| What I'm gathering is that you think we can do anything to the planet that we please and it will all end up okay (as long as we have less government). Cut down every tree, harvest every fish, and pollute every water supply, because we will innovate our way out of trouble. Perhaps this is possible on a species level, but I think it's unrealistic to think we can destroy everything in our path without negative repercussions. |
Who said anything about "destroying everything in our path"?
You say I lack nuance, but then you proceed to totally misrepresent my views. My view is that we are no where even close to such a scenario. Of course the alarmists would have us believe otherwise, but then we know better to believe their gross lies (think Al Gore the oil baron telling us oceans would rise 20 ft. this century if we don't start paying a carbon tithe to him and his ilk, most of whom live in luxuries ocean front mansions and fly around the world in private jets).
I'm simply not picking up what you're laying down, because it's been proven time and again to be nothing more than hype. Malthus and others have been crying wolf for hundreds of years, and they've always been wrong. Pretty well the only time people starve is when they have corrupt authoritarian governments. Think about the Holodomor, or famines in China and North Korea. Caused entirely by government, and had nothing to do with humans over-exploiting the environment.
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| The case of Easter Island is illustrative, as it would appear that their quality of life did decline with the decline of their forests, given that deep sea fishing made up much of their protein supply prior to the island's deforestation. |
Nobody knows what happened on Easter Island, so frankly I'm not interested in your speculation on the matter. I appreciate that you think it makes a good example to support your (biased) views, but don't expect to me nod my head in agreement...
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| Many of our practices are unsustainable, notably with water, yet considerations to that effect are spearheaded by the Ecofascists, apparently. |
Whenever I hear the word "unsustainable" I think: 1) What's this person's agenda? and 2) I'll believe it when I see it.
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| Do you really think that our oceans are perfectly healthy, or that clear cutting doesn't cause soil degradation? Are we not highly dependent on underground aquifers that are being depleted much faster than they are being replenished? Did we not use CFCs which resulted in ozone depletion? I absolutely understand the argument for putting people ahead of everything else, but I don't understand willful ignorance to very real problems. |
I don't think nature is "perfect", but I simply don't care. Your claim is that we're destroying the earth and that it's going to cause our own collapse. This is alarmist and unsupported by any real life examples (your fanciful account of Easter Island notwithstanding). At the end of the day, humans play a pretty minor role. It's up to us to adapt to our environment to use it best to our advantage. I don't advocate wantonly raping the earth of resources and wasting them (which is what government tends to do), but I'd still rather do that than hand control of society over to a bunch of anti-human psychopaths in the green movement, who would have us all living like subhuman prisoners (or even culled like rabbits) in order to appease their depraved Gaia complex. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 6:55 am Post subject: |
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I'm not misrepresenting anything: you said that the world is fine and it will always be so. That lacks nuance.
Again, I'm asking you: could deforestation have dramatic effects on the global environment? We are currently cutting down trees at a definitively non-insignificant rate. If we cut down all of the world's rainforests, do you really believe that it won't have a significant effect?
We don't know exactly what happened on Easter Island, but we know that there were trees prior to the arrival of humans, then there weren't any trees. That's hardly fanciful.
I'll ask you a very specific question on the issue of sustainability: are the water use practices of Las Vegas and Arizona sustainable?
And again: what about fisheries, what about reefs? You simply don't care, or you're electing willful ignorance?
Really though, why does the vast majority of the scientific community disagree with you? Is it all a big government cabal (along with everything else, apparently)? Who is spearheading this global conspiracy? |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 7:30 am Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
| I'm not misrepresenting anything: you said that the world is fine and it will always be so. That lacks nuance. |
The one lacking nuance is you. I said the world is fine and always be, because that's the truth, and it's very straightforward. But it depends on your definition of "fine". If you want some perfect, imaginary jewel of a planet without any interference from humans then I guess it's not "fine". But if you're comparing the world as it is to some desolate wasteland out of Mad Max, then absolutely it is fine, and will continue to be so. Minus some cataclysmic nuclear war or something (and even then the world would bounce back in a relatively short time).
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| Again, I'm asking you: could deforestation have dramatic effects on the global environment? We are currently cutting down trees at a definitively non-insignificant rate. If we cut down all of the world's rainforests, do you really believe that it won't have a significant effect? |
A significant effect? Could you be any more vague? Beyond that, no, it probably wouldn't have a ruinous effect. If you can prove otherwise, then feel free. You can't. If we'd all listened to Malthus hundreds of years ago, we'd still be living with less than a billion people. People like yourself are the new Malthuses. And you've still got nothing.
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| We don't know exactly what happened on Easter Island, but we know that there were trees prior to the arrival of humans, then there weren't any trees. That's hardly fanciful. |
Who cares? There's hardly any trees left in Europe, and they're one of the most thriving continents in the world. Easter Island proves nothing.
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| I'll ask you a very specific question on the issue of sustainability: are the water use practices of Las Vegas and Arizona sustainable? |
We'll see. If not, then we'll move somewhere else. It's not like there isn't enough freshwater in the world. Let's get real already.
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| And again: what about fisheries, what about reefs? You simply don't care, or you're electing willful ignorance? |
Tragedy of the commons. Private property rights. Been over this already.
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| Really though, why does the vast majority of the scientific community disagree with you? Is it all a big government cabal (along with everything else, apparently)? Who is spearheading this global conspiracy? |
The vast majority of the scientific community? What a joke. Go ahead and prove that statement. How about you take a census?
As for the global conspiracy, yes it is real, and is run by major banks, corporations, and governments. It's right out the open and undeniable. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 7:43 am Post subject: |
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Attributing something to tragedy of the commons doesn't make it untrue. Moreover, simply because it is so in Europe does not mean it will be so throughout the world.
Anyway, I'm not sure why I bother to argue with an anarchist who believes every conspiracy theory he reads. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
| Attributing something to tragedy of the commons doesn't make it untrue. Moreover, simply because it is so in Europe does not mean it will be so throughout the world. |
The onus is entirely on you to prove that human society is 1) going to destroy the environment through overexploitation, and 2) be destroyed ourselves as a result. You have failed to provide even a single conclusive example.
Why you would then expect me to try and "prove" that your ridiculous hypothetical/conjecture isn't true is beyond me...
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| Anyway, I'm not sure why I bother to argue with an anarchist who believes every conspiracy theory he reads. |
Probably because I've pointed out obvious flaws in your reasoning, thereby forcing you to respond. Ultimately you (the person making the positive claims) haven't proven a single thing, so really it is you who should concede the argument (but I won't hold my breath)... |
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yodanole
Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: La Florida
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| Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Well, I guess that she won't be teaching English in Korea. |
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