Our Oceans are Under Attack

U.N. Panel Warns of Dire Effects From Lack of Action Over Global Warming | New York Times

Citizens of the US might consider the above when voting Nov 4.

 

The Climate-Change Solution No One Will Talk About | The Atlantic

 

I see the too many people argument being suggested now.

Have you seen this
http://www.betawired.com/antarctic-ozone-hole-remains-at-the-same-size-of-north-america/1412064/

the ozone hole has not gotten smaller since the decision to ban flourocarbon refrigerant r12 - r22.

It is the same thing now, they dont know why the earth is not warming with the extra co2. And if we eliminated co2 from fossil fuels, then they wont know why the earth is not cooling.

Simply is they just dont know at all and it is all a guess what will happen. Will you let them screw up your life on a whim of dire warnings?

 

Humans are the most powerful species on this planet, but does that automatically give us the moral right to do whatever we want to with animals?

Many dictators and tyrants have enslaved, tortured and murdered their fellow citizens over the centuries because, for whatever reason, they felt superior and had the power to do what they wanted. On a daily basis, around the globe, animals live under a sickening dictatorship ruled over by their tyrannical human ‘masters’.

There are numerous double standards where there are animal welfare laws and agreed protocols in place for certain animals. A tiny percentage of animals are legally protected because they are on the verge of extinction, a small selection of animals are considered to be pets, but the vast majority of animals are dealt with very differently.

Most of the animals on this planet are treated like property or as a resource to be exploited. Animals of relatively high intelligence are farmed with minimal care for their well-being. Animals are killed in gruesome conditions on a mass scale every day. Around the globe natural habitats for animals are reducing each year because of the human imperative for commercial gain.

 

NASA Bombshell: Global Groundwater Crisis Threatens Our Food Supplies And Our Security | Think Progress

 

How to stop global warming, in 7 steps | VOX

 

And animals kill other animals in gruesome ways. Ants enslave aphids. Cats "toy" with mice. Parasitic organisms alter the brain chemistry of their hosts. Wasps lay eggs inside living insects that burst out and eat them while still alive.
Ain't life grand!

But I agree with you 100% that oceans are in dire trouble from a variety of man-made pollutants, from plastics to the chemical soup that gets dumped into them every second.

 

And over fishing
Are you saying humans are like Parasites, I agree with you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JE4vZGK020

A parasite is kind of living thing that lives in, or on, another living thing, which It may or may not injure. In order for your question to make sense, there must be some living thing larger than a human, or larger than a human population, for people to parasitize. In order to answer your question, it will help to think in terms of 'living systems' instead of particular living things. Examples of living systems would be plants and animals, it is true, but also ecosystems like forests, beaches, prairies, and some folks would add the whole earth itself as well, since many of its changes are strongly affected by living things, including the people who live on it.

So, people could be thought of as a harmful kind of parasite, for example, in a forest, when they cut down the trees for lumber or firewood, and then prevent forest re-growth by planting crops or grazing cattle where the forest had been. A different kind of relationship that could be thought of as parasitic would be our relations with farm animals, such as chickens. Most of these are now domesticated, with only a few of the original red jungle fowl still living in southeast Asia. Since people raise these birds in order to eat them or to take their eggs, or sometimes to breed fighting champions to bet upon, it could possibly be considered that the human species (Homo sapiens) is a parasite on the chicken species (Gallus gallus). We do damage to individual chickens, but we also promote their species by fostering their breeding. There are now more chickens in the world than there were hundreds of years ago. So, we could be said to be 'good for' chickens as a species, while at the same time we are bad for individual birds by, for example, treating them as prisoners in industrial agribusiness farms. This example shows that the answer to your question depends upon a person's viewpoint.

Consider fisheries. Most of the ocean's fishes that people like to eat, like salmon, codfish and tunas, have been so heavily fished that these species have been much decreased, and their populations have been changed so that there are no longer any large individuals left. As well, it seems that fishes like these, as a result of our fishing, now begin reproducing at earlier ages and smaller sizes. So the human species has certainly had a strong effect on these fishes' lives, but how can we decide if that effect was good for them, or bad? This could only be decided in the future. Modern people's industrial activities have unintentionally injured the lives of many kinds of animals and plants as a result of pollution of various kinds. But these cases, even though the bad effects are caused by our economic activities, would not be examples of parasitism as it is defined. These effects could, however, be discussed as parasitism in connection with the earth itself.

Some scientists have proposed that the earth itself is a giant living thing, which they have named 'Gaia'. This is based on various feedback tendencies that the earth shows in its climate and weather patterns and geological activity, which result in it not making really big unexpected changes very often. This idea is based on the fact that living things show these kinds of regulation. For example, if you start to get cold, your body will automatically begin to shiver, which produces warming heat through the friction generated as muscles rub against each other. Another example is how you feel hungry when your body needs more energy. If we accept the idea that Earth is a giant living thing, then we ourselves are parts of it, not unlike the way that cells in our body are parts of us. It might make sense to think of the human species as having become a harmful parasite on the earth if our economic activities begin to affect the ability of living things to continue to exist here. For example, in the 1980's we learned that our use of certain chemicals was destroying the protective layer of the atmosphere that prevents harmful radiation from the sun penetrating through to the earth's surface. This could result in nothing being able to live except in the ocean or under ground. Fortunately, we were able to change that technology so that this problem is no longer very great.

 

Is humanity a plague?



Sir David Attenborough, patron of Population Matters, has talked in an interview with the Radio Times of humanity being a plague on the Earth. What did he mean? Surely he does not mean that we are a disease? More probably, he was thinking of a plague of locusts, which consumes all that it sees, and then dies off.

That analogy is apt. Human numbers have doubled in the last fifty years to seven billion. Natural habitats, wildlife and fish stocks are falling around the world, due to development, overexploitation and climate change. Resources, too, are being steadily depleted, whether that be water sources, fertile land, fossil fuels or key minerals such as fertilizers.

What does the future hold? The UN projects growth of another three billion people, 40% more, by 2085, mainly in the poorest countries. At the same time, per capita consumption is growing as the billions in developing countries seek to improve their living standards from the current very low levels, including moving to a more western style, meat and dairy based, diet which requires much more input for the same nutritional output. While demand for food and other resources is thus on a sharply rising trend, supply is constrained by limited availability and the impact of climate change on rainfall, temperature and sea levels.

The consequence, which we are already seeing, is increased competition for food. Prices are rising, as are land sales as investors and countries position themselves for future shortages.

Rising food prices particularly affects the poorest countries, such as Ethiopia, whose population has more than doubled since the famines of the early 1980s, or Mali, whose population triples every fifty years.

 

Complete and utter extinction when the next big comet hits, or when the
sun expands and vaporises the oceans and kills every living thing.
Let's see Gaia get around that one

 

2060 Recognising that 11 billion people cannot all eat like Americans or Australians and hope to survive on this planet, we need to refashion the world diet.

To one that involves far less energy, land, water, nutrients and pollution.

To one that doesn’t actually kill half the peopleping world or in smallholder agrnt one.

Sounds hard? Not really. It means returning to the sort of balanced nutrient intake our grandmothers would approve.
One way to do this is to double the amount of vegetables in the diet, many produced in these new urban systems using recycled water and nutrients.

There are over a thousand “undiscovered” indigenous vegetables to make this a culinary adventure as well as a global awakening and a health revolution. The richness of nature has scarcely been tapped in this regard and our shops, supermarkets and restaurants are poor in diversity compared with what they will become.

To achieve this we should also embark on the world’s most ambitious educational campaign – to install one full year, a food year, in every junior school on the planet.

A year in which every subject – maths, language, geography, science, society and sport – is taught through the lens of food, how precious it is and how it is produced, where it comes from, how to eat safely, thriftily and healthily. How to help ensure it never fails.

Teaching food is acceptable in all cultures, races and creeds. Teaching respect for food and how it is produced is equally so. The means already exist to share these principles and educational courses universally.

We must enlist the food processing industry, the supermarkets, the cookbook writers and nutritionists, the TV chefs and restaurants and the health departments to promote the same universal messages.

“Eat well but eat less. Eat more vegetables and less energy-intensive foods. Choose foods that spare our soil and water. Be happy to pay more for such good food, so our farmers can protect the precious environment that produces it.”

It is essential that all national governments understand that agricultural science IS defence spending.

Devoting just a tenth of the world’s current weapons spend to sustainable food production would secure both the food supply and enhance the prospects of world peace.

 

That sounds very sensible.

Romantic nonsense.
BTW, people of my grandmother's generation were responsible for the
two greatest wars in human history. And their life expectancy was lower
than it is today.

That sounds sensible, as long as there are health controls over the
re-cycled water and the supply chain. You don't want avoidable deaths
due to E. Coli contaminating food because the producers who supply the
food are careless. You'll want to have some control over where the
pesticides, fertilisers and other products go after they have been
used in urban centres. Or will they just be flushed into the sewage
system?

Sure, encourage people to be interested, or pay food scientists more,
but forcing people to study things they have no interest in is not
going to happen.

More support for genetically-modified food research would be good too.

Also teach science and critical thinking. At least people won't go
round touting the Gaia hypothesis as if it was fact.

 

I agree with you that Grandmothers encouraged to eat meat or you do not get your pudding “Pink Floyd another brick in the wall”
I was brought up in the country where my parents owned a supermarket that had a post office and a petrol station combined with our house next to this.
The farmers we supplied on one main road all ate the same product,” lots of meat and drank from the milk vat,” many started to get cancer and die at around the same ages and where dropping like rotten grapes of a vine.
My father told me if you cannot eat what you want it’s not worth living, however not long after in this in his early 40s he had a massive heart attack caused from diet.

 

we do not have a food shortage. the only place where people are starving is where irresponsible government policy has created shortages. like collectivism, communism, Marxism. no one starves in free market economies, even the poor are overweight and eat too much.

technology has actually drive food costs down to a fraction of what our grandparents would have paid for food. The amount of yields we get from modern farming uses less land, less water and less resources than ever before. Modern agriculture drives yields up and costs (resources) down. this will improve further if government will just get out of the way.

 

No quick fix for global warming: Limiting short-lived pollutants cannot buy time | PHYS.ORG