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Greatest threat to this planet.

In your opinion, which is the greatest threat to the planet/

  • Global Warming

    Votes: 7 15.9%

  • Human overpopulation

    Votes: 22 50.0%

  • Planet-killing meteor

    Votes: 8 18.2%

  • Death of the Sun

    Votes: 7 15.9%
  • Total voters
    44
Gathomas88 said:
Eh. The way I see it, you can either have stability, or you can have progress. Of the two, I'd much rather have progress. :shrug:

Would you consider a hunter-gatherer tribe which has maintained a "stable" population of twenty persons or less for the last ten thousand years - while never advancing above a stone age level technology in that entire length of time - to be "successful?"
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Thanks for falling into the trap

20 people is not a sustainable population for any organism. In order to be truly sustainable, you need a certain amount of genetic diversity and 20 doesn't cut it.

And when I used the word "stable" it was in reference to population and nothing else, so your contrasting it with "progress" is a red herring.
 
sangha said:
Thanks for falling into the trap

20 people is not a sustainable population for any organism. In order to be truly sustainable, you need a certain amount of genetic diversity and 20 doesn't cut it.

And when I used the word "stable" it was in reference to population and nothing else, so your contrasting it with "progress" is a red herring.
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There has never been a "stable" society in the sense you describe which has also managed to be technologically advanced. The closest we have to such a thing, are hunter-gatherer tribes who have spent the last ten thousand years or more living in the stone age.

For all intents and purposes, "stability" is "stagnation." That was exactly my point.

Progress might very well be messy, but it is progress all the same.
 
Gathomas88 said:
There has never been a "stable" society in the sense you describe which has also managed to be technologically advanced. The closest we have to such a thing, are hunter-gatherer tribes who have spent the last ten thousand years or more living in the stone age.

For all intents and purposes, "stability" is "stagnation." That was exactly my point.

Progress might very well be messy, but it is progress all the same.
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No, there hasn't ever been a stable population on the planet. However, progress is not synonymous with increasing population. There have been times when technology progressed after declines in population. In fact, technology has progressed irrespective to changes in population in either direction.

IOW, your point is a fiction.
 
sangha said:
No, there hasn't ever been a stable population on the planet. However, progress is not synonymous with increasing population. There have been times when technology progressed after declines in population. In fact, technology has progressed irrespective to changes in population in either direction.

IOW, your point is a fiction.
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The entirety of human history apparently disagrees. :shrug:

total-world-population-chart-inline-400.jpg


It's a simple numbers game. More people, means more workers, more fighters, more thinkers, and more aggregate demand for all of the things such people produce and provide. It also means new challenges for societies to overcome and adapt.

The crises created by population decline might serve a role as well. However, historically speaking, they only do so insofar as societies are capable of recovering from them and continuing the long-term trend towards growth.

The only possible outcome "stability" could ever provide is a massive slowing of overall progress, if not outright stagnation. Whether that occurs at a stone age level or a modern one is irrelevant.

If you want to claim otherwise, the burden of proof is going to be on you.
 
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sangha said:
Really?

Because I see three declines in population in that chart
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Always followed shortly thereafter by returns to growth.

Gathomas88 said:
The crises created by population decline might serve a role as well. However, historically speaking, they only do so insofar as societies are capable of recovering from them and continuing the long-term trend towards growth.
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Do you think GDP growth is irrelevant as well simply because economies occasionally experience recession? :roll:
 
Greatest threat to the planet? The planet would survive any of those options except the death of the Sun and a planet killing asteroid. But an asteroid hitting us is a chance that may not happen. The sun running out of hydrogen and engulfing the inner solar system is definite.

Human over population would only cause the death of humans, not the planet.

Global warming has never caused any problems. So I picked the last choice.
 
sangha said:
So what?

Again, so what?
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So? The trend for literally the entirety of human history has been towards growth - with regards to wealth, population size, and technology - at the expense of our environment.

The only societies we are aware of which have maintained "stability" or "equilibrium" with their environment, the hunter-gatherers which I mentioned before, have completely and totally failed to advance.

That's not a coincidence.
 
Most responders are neglecting the importance of our atmosphere's role in filtering out harmful emissions from the sun and other cosmic sources. If humans excessively damage or change the atmosphere with pollution or warfare it could kill all of us, possibly all life. A large enough volcano or meteor could also do the same.

"Risk: Cosmic rays are high energy particles fired at nearly the speed of light by the Sun, supermassive black holes and supernovae. They have the ability to blast right through your body, damaging DNA as they go. Long term exposure to cosmic rays increases your chances of getting cancer. Fortunately, we have our atmosphere to protect us. As cosmic rays crash into the atmosphere, they collide with the oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the air.

Risk: Gamma rays and X-rays. As you know, radiation can damage the body. Just a single high-energy photon of gamma rays can cause significant damage to a living cell. Once again, though, the Earth’s atmosphere is there to protect us. The molecules in the atmosphere absorb the high-energy photons preventing any from reaching us on the ground. In fact, X-ray and gamma ray observatories need to be built in space because there’s no way we can see them from the ground.

Risk: Ultraviolet radiation. The Sun is bathing the Earth in ultraviolet radiation; that’s why you get a sunburn. But the ozone layer is a special region of the atmosphere that absorbs much of this radiation. Without the ozone layer we would be much more exposed here on the surface of the Earth to UV rays, leading to eye damage and greater incidence of skin cancer.

Risk: Solar flares. Violent explosions on the surface of the Sun release a huge amount of energy as flares. In addition to a blast of radiation, it often sends out a burst of plasma traveling at nearly the speed of light. The Earth’s magnetosphere protects us here on Earth from the effects of the plasma, keeping it safely away from the surface of the planet. And our atmosphere keeps the X-ray/gamma ray radiation out.

Risk: Cold temperatures. Space itself is just a few degrees above absolute zero, but our atmosphere acts like a blanket, keeping warm temperatures in. Without the atmosphere, we’d freeze almost instantly....."
How Does the Earth Protect Us From Space?
 
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I know which one I'm least afraid of: over-population. I know most people selected it but it's probably the least realistic worry we face. We aren't approaching a malthusian collapse and we have the ingenuity and resources to overcome and meet our needs for the coming century and beyond.
 
Gathomas88 said:
So? The trend for literally the entirety of human history has been towards growth - with regards to wealth, population size, and technology - at the expense of our environment.

The only societies we are aware of which have maintained "stability" or "equilibrium" with their environment, the hunter-gatherers which I mentioned before, have completely and totally failed to advance.

That's not a coincidence.
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That's just untrue. The most crucial and critical technologies (ex fire, the wheel, agriculture) in human history were discovered and developed by hunter-gatherers. Modern man stands on the shoulders of giants

Hunter-gathering giants who were much shorter than us.
 
sangha said:
That's just untrue. The most crucial and critical technologies (ex fire, the wheel, agriculture) in human history were discovered and developed by hunter-gatherers. Modern man stands on the shoulders of giants

Hunter-gathering giants who were much shorter than us.
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Yup, by hunter-gatherers who went on to breed like bunny rabbits and develop agriculture, civilization, and everything else we currently enjoy along the way.

They didn't spend the last ten thousand years lingering in loin-clothed "equilibrium" with nature. :lol:
 
Gathomas88 said:
That was frankly in response to Sangha's initial post as much as your's.

I agree that we should not go out of our way to try and destroy our planet's natural order if it can be avoided. I was simply responding to the general attitude (so commonly held by the modern Left) that "stability" and "equilibrium" should be held to trump material progress, and that the "planet" is somehow more important than humanity.

It's a rather regressive and "Hobbit" minded philosophy, IMO, and one which I find to be extremely annoying on the whole.

If it comes down to planet vs progress, I'm very much on the side of progress. lol
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No, I don't hold to the tenant that we should needlessly suffer the loss of our prosperity or progress for the sake of simple minded environmental conservation. It overrides our prime and principle concept of providing for the population. But stopping some of the waste, pollution and tearing up of the landscape and ecology for sheer corporate greed is a necessary step in trying to survive as a species.

The pollution of Lake Erie and the algae bloom contaminating the water on Ohio is a good example. We're beginning to see the stress of a growing populations needs on the planets resources.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Yup, by hunter-gatherers who went on to breed like bunny rabbits and develop agriculture, civilization, and everything else we currently enjoy along the way.

They didn't spend the last ten thousand years lingering in loin-clothed "equilibrium" with nature. :lol:
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Yes, the most important discoveries humans have made were hunter-gatherers (who spent far more than ten thousand years as h/g's)

Glad you agree!!
 
sangha said:
Yes, the most important discoveries humans have made were hunter-gatherers (who spent far more than ten thousand years as h/g's)

Glad you agree!!
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:lol:

Discovery of Fire - When was Fire First Controlled

You do realize that fire, flint tools, and all the rest of our earliest "inventions," weren't even discovered by homo sapiens, right? We basically inherited them from earlier hominid species.

The controlled use of fire was likely an invention of our ancestor Homo erectus, during the Early Stone Age (or Lower Paleolithic). The earliest evidence for fire associated with humans comes from Oldowan hominid sites in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya. The site known as Koobi Fora (FxJj20, dated 1.6 million years ago) contained oxidized patches of earth to a depth of several centimeters, which some scholars interpret as evidence for fire control. At 1.4 million years of age, the Australopithecine site of Chesowanja in central Kenya also contained burned clay clasts, in small areas.
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The greatest threat to the planet?

The cancer that is growing upon it.

That is multiplying and devouring all in it's wake.

That ingests nature and excretes garbage.

That cancer goes by the name Homo Hominis.

Human Being.
 
Gathomas88 said:
:lol:

Discovery of Fire - When was Fire First Controlled

You do realize that fire, flint tools, and all the rest of our earliest "inventions," weren't even discovered by homo sapiens, right? We basically inherited them from earlier hominid species.

​
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IOW, the greatest discoveries aren't even credited to homo sapiens but to a species that went extinct!! There might be a lesson there.

BTW, you do know what the word "likely" means, right?

Also, don't you think there's something a bit contradictory about declaring that we have continuously progressed while complaining about how modern humans have rejected past behaviors?
 
The biggest threat to the life on this planet (including themselves) and the status quo: humans

The biggest threat to the planet itself? The sun engulfing it. It would take an impacting object the size of a small planet itself to actually destroy the earth beyond repair.

Humans have to exist for approximately 10,000 times longer (rough estimate) than they currently have to be around for the sun to gobble up the earth. If we somehow avoid extinction we will have evolved enough in ~2.8 billion years that we would bear no resemblance to what is considered at present to be "human"

As far as the merging of Andromeda and the Milky Way that I saw another poster mention, that is not an issue, the stars are so far apart that the odds are astronomically stacked (pun intended) against another body ever getting close enough to exert gravitational influence on our solar system.

The planet will go on existing a very very long time, life, and especially life as we know it is immensely more fragile however.
 
sangha said:
cool-pun-bro-say-another-one-thumb.jpg
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I liked your post since I was compelled to up chuck. This was my second option, since neither is chuck, nor is pun(t) (as in "out the window") available options.
 
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Ten pages, and no one has even mentioned the 12th. Imam and Jesus coming to save us. Sacrilege.
 
sangha said:
IOW, the greatest discoveries aren't even credited to homo sapiens but to a species that went extinct!! There might be a lesson there.
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Species which are extinct because they either went on to become modern humans, or were wiped out by them, yes.

Also, don't you think there's something a bit contradictory about declaring that we have continuously progressed while complaining about how modern humans have rejected past behaviors?
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If the "past behaviors" being "rejected" happen to include those which have, historically, driven most of our forward progress as a species, not in the least.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Species which are extinct because they either went on to become modern humans, or were wiped out by them, yes.
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So even you admit that I'm right!



If the "past behaviors" being "rejected" happen to include those which have, historically, driven most of our forward progress as a species, not in the least.
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You don't seem to understand what the word progress means. Whether you like or not, it's still progress
 
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