The RGR rebuttal to PowerSwitch users thread.

[RGR]

[quote="UndercoverElephant"]

[RGR]

[quote="UndercoverElephant"]

[RGR]

[quote="postie"]

[UndercoverElephant]

RGR

The relationship between humans and the rest of the Earth's ecosystem is very similar to that between a parasite and a host animal, but with one crucial difference. Parasites, at least the type which can only survive on a living host (which is nearly all of them) have evolved in a way that ensures they do not kill their hosts. But the Earth's ecosystem has never experienced a parasitic species like humans before, and its systems for providing resistance have so far not been able to react fast enough to keep our numbers under control. We have now reached the point where we are killing our host - the rest of the ecosystem is in dire trouble and it is getting worse all of the time. We may yet kill our host completely - the possibility of humans creating irreversible runaway climate change remains real. It is more likely, though, that we will render most of the Earth uninhabitable for humans before we reach the global warming "point of no return." Either way, industrialised human civilisation as we know it is doomed.

UE

I think you are looking at evolution the wrong way. It is not that nature, in her loving care, promoted natural balance by ensuring the parasites evolved to not kill their hosts. What actually happens is that parasitic species that mutate to kill their hosts before they themselves reproduce simply die and become extinct. The ones that are good at being parasites get to pass on their genes.

Eh? I am absolutely and totally aware of how evolution works, thankyou very much. My description of a host/parasiste relationship in no way indicated that I think that "nature in her loving care promotes balance." If you saw that in my post then you put it there yourself, because it wasn't there in my words.

Evolution is all about death not natural balance.

It's about both. Death drives it but natural balances are achieved one way or another.

There are very good reasons why Pandas are an endangered species and they are all to do with what goes to make a Panda.

Pandas are endangered because humans have destroyed most their natural habitat and they aren't very adaptible.

The chance of humans producing irreversible climate change to the point of rendering the planet uninhabitable remains vanishingly small

That is debatable.

Homo sapiens have been around for a long time and survived in far worse conditions than these with a lot less technology.

No. Homo sapiens has survived in all sorts of conditions, but none of them resembled what the Earth is likely to look like once Homo sapiens has finished with it.

Your direct ancestors managed it quite well and YOU are their key to continued immortality. Would they be proud?

Stop asking my facile questions. And stop patronising me. I am NOT stupid.

Over shoot and die off do relate to us but they are mitigated by our technology.

So think idiots. Overshoot was created by our technology. You think more of the same can save us? That's like our glorious leaders who think they can get us out the current financial mess by employing more of the same policies that got us into it.

Our unique feature (actually not that unique) is that we can manipulate our surroundings to make it fit us rather than having to wait for conditions to change or evolution to catch up.

We are unique. I have already provided the best examples of similar behaviour in other species, and it doesn't come close.

The Earth's ecosystem has been massively shaped by life processes since the introduction of oxygen by Stromatolites. I say again that ours is not a static ecosystem; change is normal and we are the species most adapted to survive it.

Why don't you follow the consequences of your own argument, JSD? Yep, there once upon a time appeared organisms within the Earth's oxygen-free environment which produced oxygen. This oxygen was poisonous to almost everything which existed at the time, but they were saved from disaster for a long while by all the dissolved iron in the oceans, which reacted with the oxygen and mopped it up. Then eventually the iron ran out, oxygen started building up in the atmosphere and the entire anaerobic ecosystem which previously existed PERISHED.

Did you follow that?

You gave the example of stromalites changing the global environment a bit like we are changing it now, but the first organisms to produce oxygen on the Earth actually ended up wiping out almost everything which previously existed, including themselves. Yet you are claiming that this time the organism which is altering the global ecosystem with its poisons will be the one best placed to survive!!!

It doesn't work like that, JSD. This reality, not a comic book.

[UndercoverElephant]

deleted

[UndercoverElephant]

And how is it that the same type of past singularities which solved similar problems, won't happen again?

There hasn't been a "singularity" like this before. That's what I am trying to tell you.

What causes you to discount the history of mankind in its problem solving abilities?

Because it is precisely what we see as our "problem-solving abilities" that is causing the problem, RGR! The problem is that we are too good at it.

With the sheer amount of raw energy available to our species, I can imagine all sorts of solutions. I can create fresh water from air, or from polluted water, I can take nearly every molecule of CO2 from every power plant known to man and bury it in the ground, never to be seen again in our lifetimes, I can build fish farms and reduce pressure on fish stocks, allowing them to repopulate, I can terraform the planet (if I knew how to actually predict a changing climate, a point I do not concede), and undoubtedly current technology in bio-engineering can find an answer to new antibiotics just as it can (and in some cases has) for cancer.

If we were to discover a limitless source of clean, cheap energy then the whole dynamic would certainly change. I suspect we'd still end up heading for disaster but it would certainly provide us with some options which do not currently exist. However, there is absolutely no prospect of us discovering such a source of energy. This stuff is for cheap fusion dreamers - it's not going to happen.

I'm really only interested in the bigger picture - what this looks like on a global scale and in the context of human history - and that picture is very grim indeed.

Malthus and Ehrlich thought basically the same thing. It's easy to proclaim, in a deep and somber tone, "Yup...things are grim...it is all going in the crapper any minute now..." and yet...tomorrow we are all still here, and next week, and next year, and pretty soon (just like peak oil), years later, maybe in another century, everyone turns around and exclaims, "well crap, THAT sure didn't turn out like I figured".

That's what you will be saying.

No, RGR. It was our technological ingenuity which got us into this mess in the first place.

What mess?

*sigh*

I give up.

[Catweazle]

It's just a blip, like all the previous ones;



Oh, hang on a minute........

[JavaScriptDonkey]

Why don't you follow the consequences of your own argument, JSD? Yep, there once upon a time appeared organisms within the Earth's oxygen-free environment which produced oxygen. This oxygen was poisonous to almost everything which existed at the time, but they were saved from disaster for a long while by all the dissolved iron in the oceans, which reacted with the oxygen and mopped it up. Then eventually the iron ran out, oxygen started building up in the atmosphere and the entire anaerobic ecosystem which previously existed PERISHED.

Did you follow that?

You gave the example of stromalites changing the global environment a bit like we are changing it now, but the first organisms to produce oxygen on the Earth actually ended up wiping out almost everything which previously existed, including themselves. Yet you are claiming that this time the organism which is altering the global ecosystem with its poisons will be the one best placed to survive!!!

It doesn't work like that, JSD. This reality, not a comic book.

My point was that our climate has an undeniable history of change and that we are the product of that change. Our climate will continue to change whether we like it or not and the human contribution to that change is miniscule.

Species that ignore change, that fail to adapt, die. Species that expect the climate to stay static, despite the evidence of the eons, die. Evolution isn't about the survival of the fittest but merely about the survival of whatever doesn't die. It's a fine distinction that takes a while to sink in. Perhaps I haven't communicated it very well. The only semblance of natural balance is when a species exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment and then dies.

It is very revealing that you attribute any altering of the climate to us rather than seeing any of the other sources of CO2. I suppose they are natural but we are some sort of invasive species? That's a very common attitude amongst school children but I blame the teachers.

But you as a Peaker know that soon our economies will collapse and our production of CO2 will tail off to nothing as we all die. So why worry about MMGW?

[On a point of science, Stromatolites (or perhaps more properly prokaryotic cyanobacteria) were the only ecosystem 3.5billion years ago and survive to this day. They did not destroy an entire ecosystem (full of oxygen free bunnies perhaps?) and if it wasn't for their oxygen production ours would be a planet inhabited by little other than moulds].

[On another point of science, CO2 isn't a poison, it is essential for the majority of plant life on this planet and a slight increase in CO2 will mean better growing conditions for them].

[On a further point of science our oceans are 'only' 4 billion years old, forming about 50:50 from condensed volcanic steam and comet debris. They are therefore, to follow your Stromatolite logic, cesspools of poison polluting the natural rock surface of our glorious red planet.]

[JavaScriptDonkey]

It's just a blip, like all the previous ones;



Oh, hang on a minute........

Thankfully we have a history of data to arrive at a theory of demographic transition to comfort us.

[UndercoverElephant]

Oh, hang on a minute........

Thankfully we have a history of data to arrive at a theory of demographic transition to comfort us.

Are you being serious or sarcastic?

I realise that that graph provides comfort to people like Biff, but it provides none to me.

[RGR]

[quote="UndercoverElephant"]

[UndercoverElephant]

My point was that our climate has an undeniable history of change and that we are the product of that change. Our climate will continue to change whether we like it or not and the human contribution to that change is miniscule.

First, it is highly debatable how relevant human contributions to climate change are. Second, climate change was only one of several different impending ecological crises. People like you tend to focus on one at a time, busily ignoring the bigger picture.

Species that ignore change, that fail to adapt, die. Species that expect the climate to stay static, despite the evidence of the eons, die. Evolution isn't about the survival of the fittest but merely about the survival of whatever doesn't die. It's a fine distinction that takes a while to sink in. Perhaps I haven't communicated it very well. The only semblance of natural balance is when a species exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment and then dies.

I really don't understand what point you are trying to make. Are you trying to say that it is OK for humans to (knowingly) cause a mass-extinction on the scale of that which wiped out the dinosaurs, because there have been previous mass-extinctions caused by cataclysmic geological or astronomic events?

It is very revealing that you attribute any altering of the climate to us rather than seeing any of the other sources of CO2.

Yep. It reveals I take science seriously and tend not to believe politically-motivated propaganda.

I suppose they are natural but we are some sort of invasive species?

Yes, in effect. That is precisely what we are. The only place we are not an invasive species is sub-saharan Africa, and the interaction of the native species there with human beings reflects this. It is the reason why Africans never domesticated zebra or wildebeest, for example.

That's a very common attitude amongst school children but I blame the teachers.

Don't patronise me, arsehole.

But you as a Peaker know that soon our economies will collapse and our production of CO2 will tail off to nothing as we all die. So why worry about MMGW?

I was describing to RGR my view of what is going on in the global ecosystem as a whole, and climate change is part of that. I'm not "worried" about anything at all, thanks.

[On a point of science, Stromatolites (or perhaps more properly prokaryotic cyanobacteria) were the only ecosystem 3.5billion years ago and survive to this day.

And you know this how, given that anything without a skeleton or shell would have left no trace?

[On another point of science, CO2 isn't a poison, it is essential for the majority of plant life on this planet and a slight increase in CO2 will mean better growing conditions for them].

It becomes a poison if there is too much of it. Exactly the same applies to all sorts of things, including most vitamins.

[On a further point of science our oceans are 'only' 4 billion years old, forming about 50:50 from condensed volcanic steam and comet debris. They are therefore, to follow your Stromatolite logic, cesspools of poison polluting the natural rock surface of our glorious red planet.]

It wasn't me who started talking about stromatolites in this thread. It was you.

I think we should go back to your graph. Was that a serious post or a joke?

[RGR]

[quote="UndercoverElephant"]

[RGR]

[quote="UndercoverElephant"]

[UndercoverElephant]

OK, now I remember why I don't normally bother reading your posts.