Ray Mears: We'll struggle to survive climate change

cubes · Post by **cubes** » 16 Nov 2009, 00:22

Saw this in New Scientist this weekend. Who would have thought he'd be a doomer.

How will humans cope with climate change?

I don't think most people will survive climate change. It will be a disaster. We have to adapt to survive and take lessons from nature. Adaptable things do better - the more specialised you become, the more marginal you are. My biggest concern is that people are turning their backs on Darwinian evolution. I don't think there should be a conflict between Darwinian science and Christianity. If you believe in Darwin and evolution you don't need to be faithless. Plenty of scientists would agree.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... hange.html

jonny2mad · Post by **jonny2mad** » 16 Nov 2009, 02:33

Darwinian science and Christianity

well maybe you can be a Christian and believe that survival of the fittest exists or existed but Im not sure you can be a Christian and really apply it , I'm not a Christian by the way used to be a Morman elder.

he points out at the time of the last climate shift we were hunter gatherers there were also a hell of a lot less of us then with worse weapons .

I'm not so worried by global warming as by another ice age

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 16 Nov 2009, 07:24

That last climate shift was an ice age - easy to cope with by walking south. The present climate shift will be much harder to deal with as a great many more people need to move north.

Ludwig · Post by **Ludwig** » 16 Nov 2009, 11:36

bond wrote:He wants people to be confident about surviving in the wild, but reckons most of us won't make it through a global climate crisis.

I always assumed he teaches bushcraft because he's interested in it and enjoys it. I don't think he's trying to save humanity or anything.

SILVERHARP2 · Post by **SILVERHARP2** » 16 Nov 2009, 11:52

What exactly makes him qualified to speek on the subject at all? surely he is only a rung or 2 below Leorardo di Caprio on who we should be listening to about this topic

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 16 Nov 2009, 12:06

jonny2mad wrote:Darwinian science and Christianity

well maybe you can be a Christian and believe that survival of the fittest exists or existed but Im not sure you can be a Christian and really apply it ,

You don't have to apply it. Just because a person believes that natural selection was the mechanism which "designed" them, it doesn't have to become an ethical code by which you live. That would be an example of "the naturalistic fallacy" (what is natural is right/good).

Provided you do not take the Bible literally and provided you aren't scientistic rather than scientific, then there is no big clash here. The problem is the fundamentalists and evangelicals, like the one that turned up here recently and claimed that only God can solve the problem of human sin.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 16 Nov 2009, 12:09

Ludwig wrote:
bond wrote:He wants people to be confident about surviving in the wild, but reckons most of us won't make it through a global climate crisis.
I always assumed he teaches bushcraft because he's interested in it and enjoys it. I don't think he's trying to save humanity or anything.

As a teacher of bushcraft, it is quite hard for him to avoid issues about ecological stability and sustainable use of resources. They are a fundamental component of bushcraft.

Anyway...I don't believe that Europeans are turning their backs on evolution. The Americans are (have already) but that is their problem.

jonny2mad · Post by **jonny2mad** » 16 Nov 2009, 13:08

I don't really understand the naturalistic fallacy undercoverelephant ,
nature red in tooth and claw produced the fast and the strong we seem to be on the road to producing the slow and the weak .

ever see the film Idiocracy its worth thinking about

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 16 Nov 2009, 13:19

SILVERHARP2 wrote:What exactly makes him qualified to speek on the subject at all? surely he is only a rung or 2 below Leorardo di Caprio on who we should be listening to about this topic

Reading the NS interview anwers that.

Vortex · Post by **Vortex** » 16 Nov 2009, 13:27

nature red in tooth and claw produced the fast and the strong we seem to be on the road to producing the slow and the weak .

The effete quiche eaters will be but a speed-bump in the course of history.

The A-type personalities will be back in due course.

Does anyone REALLY expect the current politically correct, caring & compensation based culture to survive hard times?

However the populace might be rather surprised to find that the heads of the Population Reduction Control Force, the Eugenics League and the Fair Allocation Of Hunger quangos will be ... former heads of Liberty, the RSPCA and the Cuddle A Terrorist quangos.

Andy Hunt · Post by **Andy Hunt** » 16 Nov 2009, 13:52

"Every plant which my Father hath not planted shall be rooted up and burned".

Sounds like natural selection to me, for sure.

Ludwig · Post by **Ludwig** » 16 Nov 2009, 14:04

Vortex wrote:
nature red in tooth and claw produced the fast and the strong we seem to be on the road to producing the slow and the weak .
The effete quiche eaters will be but a speed-bump in the course of history.

The A-type personalities will be back in due course.

They may survive longer than the quiche eaters, but they'll still end up killing each other until there's only a couple of them left and their children have six heads and are infertile.

Human civilisation has evolved through a balance of individualistic and cooperative impulses. Don't imagine that by taking away the cooperative impulse, civilisation will survive.

Don't forget either that it's the quiche eaters who saw this crisis coming. Type A personalities are those least prone to reflection and self-criticism, and you could reasonably argue that it's their greed, aggression, shortsightedness and self-deception that got us into this mess in the first place.

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 16 Nov 2009, 14:24

Human culture is like many animal cultures. There is a big element of rock paper scissors. In times of plenty co-operation works and average body size increases and populations expand. As the population increases and starts to reach resource limits, society becomes more competitive, and the largest alpha males fight it out to control the reproductive potential. Resource consumption becomes very asymmetric and the losers become physically smaller as famine triggers epigenetic changes (Short term Lamarkian inheritance) . Eventually the resources are so constrained that the large alpha males starve, but their few remaining, smaller beta males survive because they need less food. These then increase their reproductive success due to lack of competition. The population pressure falls below the regeneration rate of the food resources, and slowly the whole cycle starts again, provided that another species does not jump in and steal the ecological niche.

Vortex · Post by **Vortex** » 16 Nov 2009, 14:27

Don't forget either that it's the quiche eaters who saw this crisis coming. Type A personalities are those least prone to reflection and self-criticism,

The A-types create stuff and get things done.

The quiche eaters consume stuff and benefit from the efforts of the A-types ... whilst resenting and criticising their more active colleagues.

Ludwig · Post by **Ludwig** » 16 Nov 2009, 14:38

Vortex wrote:
Don't forget either that it's the quiche eaters who saw this crisis coming. Type A personalities are those least prone to reflection and self-criticism,
The A-types create stuff and get things done.

The quiche eaters consume stuff and benefit from the efforts of the A-types ... whilst resenting and criticising their more active colleagues.

Bullshit, Vortex. You may "get things done", but who do you do it for? Only yourself. Don't kid yourself that you're some kind of gift to civilisation.

What "stuff" did you create in any case? IIRC you were a high flying engineer, saving the world through mobile phones or something - things that no one needs (or needs replacing) and that people therefore have to be persuaded through advertising to buy. Very useful, that.

(Incidentally, I worked in the mobile phone industry too, but I don't consider that I was saving civilisation by doing it.)

And in what way is someone who does a lower-down job "not active"? Or less useful?

Conceited twat.