So true Jan. :yep: As we evolve so does our planet. Maybe not in the way some, or most even would like. But that's life. :sunny:

As always. Books are always more in depth and thorough. You can read a book for a month, but try to sit trough a movie for a month.
Unless they made a whole serie, one 1,5 hour episode for one chapter etc.

Talking about interesting movies, there are two more that I would like to recommend. The first one deals with the exactly with the question of limited resources and the Malthusian idea of the upper limits to the size of the human population. It's a BBC Horizon programme, called "How many people can live on planet Earth" and the general message can easily be surmised by an analogy presented by one of the people interviewed, that is, that on the Titanic, the first class cabins went down as fast as the steerage, meaning that we'll all end up on the pile of history, the developed and developing world.

The second movies deals with a more general question of how things work or do not work in reality and how really in the deep end we really are. It's another movies called Collapse, but this time, by Michael Ruppert. Now, both the author and the movies have, let us say, questionable elements, for both sides of the argument, but if nothing else, it does provide a certain spark, that forces us to think about the issues presented. I myself do not have enough knowledge to claim that he is completely right, or completely wrong, but it's still a shocking movies that you should see.

Edit: I just watched the first 4 minutes of this so called documentary posted above me and I must say, this is some biased bull, if I ever saw one in my days on this fair planet. I'm not against the message mind you, it is, succeed or fail, sooner or later, but I despise being feed crap meant to scare me into believing something. Yes, the collapse of the ecosystem has brought down many civilisations in the past, but skulking in their ruins won't bring the solutions for the future. Oh, and nothing disappears into thin air. Neither the Romans, nor the Maya, nor the possible future collapse will result in total and absolute abandonment of our structures. Not unless we get wiped out by a very nasty bug, but that's a topic for a different "documentary" ;)

All that is correct and I know it. I have mentioned and criticised it myself often enough. I aolso said that I see the EU as being re-oriented since the German reunification. And it is this newly oriented EU that I am hostile to. The old one was not perfect, but at least it was not messed up so much that it was completely beyond hope for reform and repair. Before, it was more about de Gaulle'S idea as Europpe of cooperating fatherlands, cooperating economies. Today it is about a federal state of Europe with nationalo sovereignity rendered meaningless and voters for national parliam,ents being betrayed over their votes.

Hopefully, once agaion the briliant polit-thinker shave made the bill without taking into account this thriving drive of man: egoism and selfishness. It would be ironic if this time these two work for something good and destroy the EU from within. We already see it happening in so many EU symptoms and national special interests. And people more and more get alienated by the EU. The voting resuzlts in several EU countries hopefully indicate the beginning of a trend.

I recommend to leartn about the economic theories of almost forgotten Austrian economy professor Leopold Kohr. His book "The overdeveloped nations. The diseconomy of scale" is one of the most visionary and thoughtful analysis of modern economic societies I remember to ever have read.

This I agree, even if I'm pro-EU.

It apears that you dislike the EU for the political mess it has become and I like the EU for the cooperation of nations it represents...

Maybe the disolvement of the EU is not the solution but a rollback to only open borders, open trade organisation. No european parliament and all that jazz

I am not against Europe, but against the EU. The EU claims to be Europe, and Europoe impossible without the EU. Becasue they want a top-down uniform Europe of anti-cultural collectivism with the EU staff on top of it. I am about regional differences, refocussing on the local regions, I see the diversity in Europe as one of the reasons why Europe has become so overwhelmingly successful, and I do not want the EU bigots sticking their nose in every business of priovate people that must not mind the EU at all. Needless to say I am also against the abuse of the EU's power by economic lobbism, I am against the project of installing a European-Arabic super-union and Islamic migration to Europe, and Turkey EU membership, and I have problems with many of the prestigious EU projects like energy saving bulbs and water-saving showerheads, as well as the tendency that ever ynatiuon sends one commissioner who then must do something idiotic to leave his footstep in the history books of the EU records.

I see rthis EU being beyond reach of reforms and repairs, and thus want to see it getting destroyed, like you crash an old house and clear the rubble in order to build a new house in that place. Since corruption is a deep-rooting problem in the EU, at all levels of the hierarchy, chances for reforming it are even ´more reduced.

Eurpope and the EU are two totally different things, like Christian teching and the church are two different things. The EU is not Europe, europe is not the EU. I am pro Europe, and thus I necessarily must be against the EU. Else I would contradict myself.

There is nomn uniform Eiurpope, there is not just "one europe", and never has been. There are many europes, almost as many as there are regions. The eU doesnot understand this or tries to redefine reality, destroying this culutral and regional diversity in the name of most often questionable goals for uniformity. Cooperation: yes. Uniformity: no. In the end, no poltiican on government level inEuroppe got ever leected for selling his nation and people to other nations inEurope, that is high treason. People vote for national parliaments, and here is where the legitimation lies. A parliament that allows its sovereignity being dismantled and handing auhtority over top the EU, also becomes guilty of high treason. This is not what the voters in a given country have voted for.

In the end, the hea dof states abuse the EU also for being amongst themselves. All those talking about strengthening the EU, those operetta titles of "high representatives" - they have made sutre to bring comprimse candiates of weak own profile and capability and low ambitions into ranks and offices (who is Rumpoy? who is Ashton?), with tinsel-wearers like Solana craving for attention using the EU as their private tanning bed. They are ignoring their own declarations over what they intend, and they easily break their own rules oif they do not get what they want (locking out critical citizens from voting over the EU coup-paper of Lisbon).

Dismantle it. Build a new building, with smaller dimensions and lower ambitions. Be more pragmatic. Delete all what goes beyond the goal of economic cooperation and the needed level of coordination. More I do not want from a EU. I do not even necessarily need open borders and one currency, especially not the suicide-currency we now have. It is no drama to exchange some money before you start your holiday trip. It is no effort to wave your ID card when passing the border, and in most cases get waved through. You still are free to travel, free to buy in another country and go travelling there. Your freedom by its real precious meaning is not being touched at all.

Damn it Sky, I really got to stop reading your posts :doh: the more I read them the more I agree with you.

This pro EU is not pro Europe makes a good point. But I still preffer the open borders even if it was no different in the past. And the exchange offices were a highway robbery when converting. Plus there's that one billion euro non-return funds we get from EU every year :DL

"O.K. scepticists, here is the climate raw data you wanted"
 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ou-wanted.html


Data sets here:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research...tation-records

Meanwhile a spokesman for the russian office of disaster relief has said Russia expects until 2050 a shrinking of the permafrost territories by 15-30%, and a movement of the perafrost barrier 200 km northwards. This would cause huge damages to piperlines, powerlines, streets, communication infrastructure. He said in recent years mean temperatures in Western Siberia have increased by around 1.5-2.0°C. The release of methane from these frozen grounds is expected to multiply.

That'll be fun.

Most intelligent folks I know never disputed the fact that the world is getting warmer, only the significance of human action upon it. The Earth has a long cycle of ice ages, oxygen and carbon. There is evidence for global warming (and global cooling) throughout the earths 4.5 billion year history - the entirety of humanity exists on a negligible slice of time at the end of this scale. At some time(s) in the ancient past global warming (and cooling) occurred much faster than it is doing so now.

However there are obvious problems with human actions that need addressing, and fast - over population, over exploitation of resources to name a couple. Oh and pumping poison into the land, the sea and the air is not going to do any living thing any good, least of all ourselves.

To me the alarming issue is not the total ammount of change being seen in climate, but the incredible speed at which it takes place, and the incredidble speeds by which species go extinct. Both processes curerntly go hundreds of times faster than ever before in this planet'S hiostory, as far as we can reconstruct it's climate history by geologic findings. This speed and insane acceleration must be explained , and the only decisive factor that seems to qualify as a candidate is the rough correlation of this acceleration having begun and speed up with the explosion of human population and industrialisation. One needs to to think in geologic timeframes here, not in political ones. And in geological timeframes it has happened in less than an eye-lid's blink.

If the observable universe's liofespan so far, since creation, would be scaled to the length of one year of 365 days, then our galaxy would have formed up somewhere in February. Earth and the Solar System would have emerged in early September. Life would hjave started on Earth by the end of September. Big complex life forms showed up not before mid-Decembre. The dinosaurs saw birth on the second christmas day, 26th, and four days later, on Decembre 30th, they altready had gone extinct again. On Decembre 31, at 2100 in the vening, the first hominides appeared on Earth. The human civilisations we know of, appeared 30 seconds before midnight firework stars. The pyramides were formed 11 seconds before midnight, Kepler and Galilei lived maybe 1 second before midngiht, and one human'S life takes around 2, maybe 3 tenths of a second.

And it has taken us just one or two tenths of a second to notice the by far fastest mass-extinction and by far fastest ecospheric and climatic change on this planet that Earth has ever seen in all it'S life so far.

A sudden acceleration of random cyclic patterns by a factor in the high three digit range. Now for that you need to find a reasonable explanation that goes slightly and just a little bit beyond sun cycles (that have always been there, btw). What we see on Earth happening currently, according to all what we scientifically know, is beyond example in this planet'S history. Beyond example due to its speed of manifestation.

The long cycles are gradual yes, but fast catastrophic changes have happened before. Magnetic pole swapping occurs very rapidly - within a few years or so - during which time the magnetic field that deflects the charged particles (ionising radiation) from the sun would fail causing severe damage to all unprotected surface life. Vulcanism could flair up and turn the atmosphere to sulphur. Extinctions occur all the time, we are only just becoming aware of them. I argue that we should stop polluting and exploiting the environment for rather more obvious reasons, do you disagree? because in the wake of the planetary scale cycles and catastrophes we are powerless.

We are only animals after all, and turning back the tide is simply not within our power, just ask old Cnut. However we could stop crapping everywhere if you know what I mean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian...tinction_event

96% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertabrates go extinct inside an arguably short period of time roughly 250 million years ago.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/286/5441/930.short

Another abrupt global warming event roughly 15,000 years ago about as quick as it is happening now.

Even the fastest mass exticntions we conclude on, took place over time frames of ten to one hundred thousand years. That ignores the fact that currently we proabbaly live in the time of the biggest bio diversity on this planet ever, there is a bigger diversity of species now than there has ever been in the poast, say the era of the dinosaurs. Nevertheless, a bigger percentage of that doiversity already got wiped put over just a couple of decades than before in tens of thousands of years.

The permian dying you refer too saw changes in the chemical balance of the oceans and the atmosphere that again took hundreds and thousands of years to evolve and finally cause the drastic consequences. We see indications today that comparable chnages take place in the oceans today again - just at a faster pace than back then. Some biologists already warn since years that the oceans are on a trip backwards to the time before fishes became a dominant lifeform, but jellyfishes were the rulers of the sea.

Some decades do not already form an era. Geologically, we talk about eras when referring to past events. But events today we describe in decades.

So again: what is alarming is not only what is going on, but the pace by which it manifestates. In scienbce we do not know of such rapid and drastic changes in climatic indizes like we observe them in our recordings of the past couple of decades, or one or two centuries. It all has been incredibly accelerated.

And the factor causing this atypical acceleration needs to be explained. Something causes an extinction effect that is worse than at the time of the dinosaurs - and unfolds much much faster. Sun cycles cannot be it. And a meteor has not struck us recently also. If you correlate the beginning of this imploding decline in biodiversity against possible causes, you are not left with many possible answers that are not linked to the existence of modern, industrialised mankind. The same is true for the changes in gas composition in the atmosphere and the general warming of global climate.

However, this discussion has been had on this board quite often. I just wanted to inform that the demanded raw dfata of almost all weather stations and their record over the past 150 years is no available to the public, sionce the unavailability of these data sets has been the fundament of many conspiration theories by climate sceptics who not only claim that mankind has nothing to do with it, but even claim that no global warming effects take place. From now on they will need to claim that these data already are being forged by weather stations all over the world since over one century.:D That adds a completely new dimension to the global conspiracy, eh?:haha:

I'm not an scientist, but I will tell you this.

It would have happened whatever we have been here or not.

The only different, is that we have kickstarted it long time before it should have started.

Markus

OK I'll give it one last try. The evidence presented in the first post proves 1 thing and 1 thing only : mean global temperatures are rising, faster than they have been rising on average since the end of the last ice age (although they have been rising steadily since then) and faster or as fast changes are believed to have happened before. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/286/5441/930.short

It makes no assertions regarding mass extinctions or bio-diversity at all, and it does not provide any proof or measure of the effect that human actions are having on climate change. We may be accelerating the rate of global warming, yes. There is still no definitive evidence that this is the case, however, and believing that we have the power to stop or even reverse this process is unfortunately a fairly common delusion of grandeur and a good example of human conceit. We often like to place ourselves on a high pedestal seperate from the rest of life, to think of ourselves as more advanced or better than our distant cousins. With a global population of nearly 7 billion, we are certainly the most prolific mammals that ever lived but that is as far as it goes. Worrying about climate change is missing the point somewhat compared to worrying about the immediately dangerous effects of pollution and over exploitation of natural resources, even social-political and religious problems may well do for us as a species long before the earth gets too hot. There are more pressing problems at hand.

I don'T see why you are upset. Didn't I say myself the most obvious thing is the pace of climate change? The speed at which it happens? However, both temperature rises as dramatic as we already see, and without doubt still will see in the forseeable future, do effect biological life on this planet, it changes species distribution patterns and movement patterns as well as the chances for species to grow and blossom, or to die. That we see a massive, rapid mass extinction of species currently, is not questioned by any serious scientist anymore.

So, it is a reasonable thesis, especially regarding maritime life, that climate change and changes in quantity and quality of biodiversity, are linked. Another link is that between mass extinction of species and pollution, industrial eploitation, overfishing etc etc. And some of the latter factors again are linked to global warming.

And while I also agree that there are those political, religious, cultural etc etc problems that you mentioned in your last paragraph, and while I never never have stated (not here and in no other thread ever) that it is within our reach and options to reduce warming from now on by pushing as button or even to reverse it (current state of technology and science, in fact I often said the event now has a self-dynamic that will make it unavailable for any effective acting by us for the coming decades), on your last sentence that it all does not matter that much and that there are more pressing problems I must leave you alone, necessarily. That is like a 100m runner running 99m of the race, and before the finishing line refuses reach it. We already see wars being fought over rsources, oil, and even sweet water. The UN - granted, I am no fan of the UN, but still - has just released a resolution that states that environmmental changes are likely to be the cause of future wars and human misery.

Maybe we cannot stop warming by a single button'S push, within ten years. But I think it is a good idea to chnage our economy that way so that we no longer help in strengthening factors that work against our survival interests. The longer we delay that, the more inetnse and long-lasting the self-dynamic I mentioned above will prevail, I think that is a reasonable assumption, isn'T it. When you know you can'T fly by yourself, is that the argument for not stopping to balance on the tip of the roof? Or isn'T it wiser to freeze and watch how to get down from there, even if the trip might be dangerous? Maybe it would have been the best scenario to never have gone iup there in the first? I think so. But now - we are up there, and we still need to find a way to get down there safe - or learn to grow us wings.