Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward

«‹›410 »

Morton Salt Grrl: Sep 2, 2011; D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
FRESH BLOOD

May their memory be a justification for genocide

Paradoxish posted:

I don't think this is a great example for this particular argument. Welfare restrictions inherently shove the cost of this problem off onto the poor, which is... not awesome. If you're going to do population control as government policy then you need to avoid regressive policies that only target vulnerable groups. Either everyone does have the right to have as many children as they'd like or no one does. Using welfare to punish poor people with large families is legitimately monstrous.

I know that ideally the same restrictions would apply to everyone, but that doesn't mean that any sort of progress isn't progress at all; the climate/environment doesn't give a poo poo about equality among humans and won't wait for us to get it sorted out. Furthermore, the policy I posted above wasn't a policy that said poor people can't have more than two children and any who did would have forced abortions; it was simply that they can't have a third child after the policy is introduced and receive welfare for that third/fourth/whatever child, which is a pretty sensible recognition that resources are limited and the world can't support an infinite number of humans without cost IMO. But even that policy's been held up as an example of wicked Tory right-wing poor-hating policy because if you tilt your head and squint your eyes it looks like it's discriminating against poor people, and to most people that's far more important and easier to get enraged about than the consequences of unmitigated human population growth.

And that's just the resistance that an extremely mild policy that doesn't really hurt anyone faces (who needs more than two children in modern Britain?). When you consider what would actually be needed to make a material impact on climate change and environmental degradation, you can see that it's basically impossible, not because of a group of wicked puppetmasters but because ordinary people like you and me want to have our cake and eat it as well.

MiddleOne posted:

Population control as a policy is both unnecessary and morally suspect.

Lets start with the unnecessary part. If we look at all of the developed nations of the world what they have in common is that a combination of better sexual education, distribution of preventive medical options and a high-standard (but yet precarious) standard of living has put us all at around replacement level. It is never a economically sound decision in the West to have children and as accidentally having children has become more difficult we simply stopped at some point. Therefore, instituting population controls doesn't really serve any purpose here.

Then we have morally suspect. In the undeveloped nations, from which most of our population-booms come from since the end of the 1960's, the situation is reversed. There is low to non-existent levels of sexual education. Preventive medical options drift between being difficult to access to illegal. Furthermore, in large swaths of the world subsistence framing, scavenging and child-labour makes it a net-positive thing to have children. The roots of all of these exist in our global economical systems failure to treat third world nations as anything but post-colonial areas from which to extract wealth. To advocate population controls in these countries is to advocate instituting totalitarian rule on these areas and to murder them for circumstances which we ourselves placed them under. This all while many of them live at living standards which are less polluting than our own by multiples of 2-2, depending on the country. Furthermore, that's without even getting into that much of their pollution comes from them producing crap for our benefit. We could kill them all but that wouldn't change the fact that we would still demand cheap clothing, electronics, steel, minerals and furniture.

Population controls do not address the systematic failures which brought us here. Any sensible plan for addressing climate change needs to get comfortable with the fact that this earth will still house a few more billion humans and that we are just as screwed with them as we are without them.

Even replacement level birth rates is too much; that population level alone is what brought us to the current situation in the first place, and it also ignores the impact of inwards migrants who then take up Western lifestyles with the associated environmental impact. Population levels (not birth rates, population levels) need to decrease, not stay the same. And I'm fully aware that it's Western countries that contribute the most towards climate change, and it's those countries which I believe most need to implement population control measures to reduce population while also trying to limit each individual's impact on the environment.

If we crudely define climate change and environmental degradation as the product of the formula POPULATION X ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT/PERSON, the best way to reduce it is to reduce both of those figures, not just one (and of course Western lifestyles are far higher in terms of impact/person). But that will inevitably result in suffering, whether from an elderly person who doesn't receive as much care as they like due to bad demographic structure, or people who want big families but can only have one kid, or people angry that they can't have the lifestyles that they used to and can't fly to the other side of the world for a three week vacation. But current Western politics is basically WE <3 THE ECONOMY on the right vs WE <3 HUMANITY on the left, and neither of those really has room for serious environmental action because that would a) harm the economy, and b) hurt people.

Morton Salt Grrl fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Aug 14, 2017

# ? Aug 14, 2017 20:00

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 31, 2024 04:28

call to action: Jun 10, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

I love how people always turn the "there should be fewer people on the planet" argument into "fewer brown people, huh? OK Hitler!" No, fewer everyone - preferably starting with the first world.

Morton Salt Grrl posted:

But current Western politics is basically WE <3 THE ECONOMY on the right vs WE <3 HUMANITY on the left, and neither of those really has room for serious environmental action because that would a) harm the economy, and b) hurt people.

Well said.

# ? Aug 14, 2017 20:19

MiddleOne: Feb 17, 2011

Morton Salt Grrl posted:

I know that ideally the same restrictions would apply to everyone, but that doesn't mean that any sort of progress isn't progress at all; the climate/environment doesn't give a poo poo about equality among humans and won't wait for us to get it sorted out. Furthermore, the policy I posted above wasn't a policy that said poor people can't have more than two children and any who did would have forced abortions; it was simply that they can't have a third child after the policy is introduced and receive welfare for that third/fourth/whatever child, which is a pretty sensible recognition that resources are limited and the world can't support an infinite number of humans without cost IMO. But even that policy's been held up as an example of wicked Tory right-wing poor-hating policy because if you tilt your head and squint your eyes it looks like it's discriminating against poor people, and to most people that's far more important and easier to get enraged about than the consequences of unmitigated human population growth.

And that's just the resistance that an extremely mild policy that doesn't really hurt anyone faces (who needs more than two children in modern Britain?). When you consider what would actually be needed to make a material impact on climate change and environmental degradation, you can see that it's basically impossible, not because of a group of wicked puppetmasters but because ordinary people like you and me want to have our cake and eat it as well.

That's because the story is demonstrably monstrous. The UK does not have a high replacement rate and cutting entitlements does nothing but make poor households poorer at the benefit of the richer households who can now pay less taxes. You're being taken for a ride if you believe this is in any way relevant for helping to address climate change.

Morton Salt Grrl posted:

Even replacement level birth rates is too much; that population level alone is what brought us to the current situation in the first place, and it also ignores the impact of inwards migrants who then take up Western lifestyles with the associated environmental impact. Population levels (not birth rates, population levels) need to decrease, not stay the same. And I'm fully aware that it's Western countries that contribute the most towards climate change, and it's those countries which I believe most need to implement population control measures to reduce population while also trying to limit each individual's impact on the environment.

It's the complete opposite. The west needs to decrease its standards of living while the east needs to stabilize its replacement rates as quickly as possible. By ignoring this you pretend that there is a reality where you can just murder or oppress billions of people without triggering a human conflict that would in itself end humanity. There is no way to decrease populations meaningfully without murdering billions of people. Get it through your head. We are stuck around wherever population numbers stabilize in a few decades as economic development and environmental change puts an effective stop to population growth (lots of people around the equator are going to die regardless of what we do). Those are the numbers we will have to work with in finding a solution.

# ? Aug 14, 2017 20:26

Crazycryodude: Aug 15, 2015; Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?

Just sterilize everyone, imo. And I mean everyone, not just brown people or however that might get twisted. Humanity had a good run, let's have one hell of a party with everyone currently alive as we all die out, and then leave the ashes for the dolphins to clean up whenever they evolve thumbs.

If you're really attached to the idea of humanity, I guess we can choose like 100,000 or so people by random lottery who are still allowed to have kids. The rest of us just need to kinda fade away, population reduction is the most effective way out.

Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Aug 14, 2017

# ? Aug 14, 2017 20:52

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

Crazycryodude posted:

Just sterilize everyone, imo. And I mean everyone, not just brown people or however that might get twisted. Humanity had a good run, let's have one hell of a party with everyone currently alive as we all die out, and then leave the ashes for the dolphins to clean up whenever they evolve thumbs.

If you're really attached to the idea of humanity, I guess we can choose like 100,000 or so people by random lottery who are still allowed to have kids. The rest of us just need to kinda fade away, population reduction is the most effective way out.

Just because you hate humanity doesn't mean that ending humanity is an effective response to climate change.

# ? Aug 14, 2017 21:01

Drunk Theory: Aug 20, 2016; Oven Wrangler

Edit: NVM this was a dumb statement. Of course it would work in a purely hypothetical imagined situation in my head.

Drunk Theory fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Aug 14, 2017

# ? Aug 14, 2017 21:06

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Kill all humans: always an option.

# ? Aug 14, 2017 21:12

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

Drunk Theory posted:

Wouldn't it be incredibly effective though? I mean not feasible in any way, and probably immoral. But in this complete hypothetical, it should work.

First, we've already significantly hosed poo poo up, us all dying won't undo that damage but does exclude us ever mitigating the damage in the future. We need humanity to stick around to clean up our mess.

Second, you have to really extend the fantasy to imagine that we'd either mass sterilize or mass murder and also at the same time deconstruct our cities and nations in such a way that doesn't lead to massive emissions anyway. The decaying of our built infrastructure will cause massive carbon equivalent releases. From rotting wood in houses to exposed lake beds and fallowed fields we have a lot of emissions that will occur if we just started dying off.

Third, we're taking lots of critical actions to limit the higher order impacts of climate change. It is human based programs that are relocating species so they can survive. It is human based activity attempting to limit the spread of disease in forests. We've created a problem that most other species can't adapt fast enough to respond. Even if you don't care about people, we have an obligation to not just let these species and biomes all be doomed.

We've hosed poo poo up bad enough that using most non-anthropocentric value systems still leaves humanity an obligation to fix poo poo rather than selfishly commit suicide and say "gently caress it dolphins, you fix ocean acidification yourself."

# ? Aug 14, 2017 21:16

Notorious R.I.M.: Jan 27, 2004; up to my ass in alligators

MiddleOne posted:

Population control as a policy is both unnecessary and morally suspect.

Lets start with the unnecessary part. If we look at all of the developed nations of the world what they have in common is that a combination of better sexual education, distribution of preventive medical options and a high-standard (but yet precarious) standard of living has put us all at around replacement level. It is never a economically sound decision in the West to have children and as accidentally having children has become more difficult we simply stopped at some point. Therefore, instituting population controls doesn't really serve any purpose here.

Then we have morally suspect. In the undeveloped nations, from which most of our population-booms come from since the end of the 1960's, the situation is reversed. There is low to non-existent levels of sexual education. Preventive medical options drift between being difficult to access to illegal. Furthermore, in large swaths of the world subsistence framing, scavenging and child-labour makes it a net-positive thing to have children. The roots of all of these exist in our global economical systems failure to treat third world nations as anything but post-colonial areas from which to extract wealth. To advocate population controls in these countries is to advocate instituting totalitarian rule on these areas and to murder them for circumstances which we ourselves placed them under. This all while many of them live at living standards which are less polluting than our own by multiples of 2-2, depending on the country. Furthermore, that's without even getting into that much of their pollution comes from them producing crap for our benefit. We could kill them all but that wouldn't change the fact that we would still demand cheap clothing, electronics, steel, minerals and furniture.

Population controls do not address the systematic failures which brought us here. Any sensible plan for addressing climate change needs to get comfortable with the fact that this earth will still house a few more billion humans and that we are just as screwed with them as we are without them.

I guess if you won't bother citing anything I'll just lay everything out here too:

- Go look at the primary differences between RCP 6 and RCP 8.5 in inputs. (hint: It's mostly population).
- Go look at birth rates in countries that have received outside contraceptive and family planning aid in 3rd world countries.

Oh and advocating for population control in those countries is not advocating for totalitarian rule. It's much the same as it is in the first world at this point: There's not enough access to resources for family planning, birth control, and abortions.

# ? Aug 14, 2017 21:27

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Trabisnikof posted:

First, we've already significantly hosed poo poo up, us all dying won't undo that damage but does exclude us ever mitigating the damage in the future. We need humanity to stick around to clean up our mess.

Second, you have to really extend the fantasy to imagine that we'd either mass sterilize or mass murder and also at the same time deconstruct our cities and nations in such a way that doesn't lead to massive emissions anyway. The decaying of our built infrastructure will cause massive carbon equivalent releases. From rotting wood in houses to exposed lake beds and fallowed fields we have a lot of emissions that will occur if we just started dying off.

Third, we're taking lots of critical actions to limit the higher order impacts of climate change. It is human based programs that are relocating species so they can survive. It is human based activity attempting to limit the spread of disease in forests. We've created a problem that most other species can't adapt fast enough to respond. Even if you don't care about people, we have an obligation to not just let these species and biomes all be doomed.

We've hosed poo poo up bad enough that using most non-anthropocentric value systems still leaves humanity an obligation to fix poo poo rather than selfishly commit suicide and say "gently caress it dolphins, you fix ocean acidification yourself."

I'd say on balance humans are still doing more damage by existing than not existing. We'll see a return of peat and swamplands as well as large scale reforestation in many regions, limiting any further emissions from land use down the line. Large animals will also spread across the landscape and succession will make a return to overly managed landscapes.

e: i guess all the methane in Russia and on the seabed could go unstable and gently caress the planet because warming doesn't stop immediately, but that would be the case with humans still around anyway

# ? Aug 14, 2017 21:29

Drunk Theory: Aug 20, 2016; Oven Wrangler

Trabisnikof posted:

First, we've already significantly hosed poo poo up, us all dying won't undo that damage but does exclude us ever mitigating the damage in the future. We need humanity to stick around to clean up our mess.

Second, you have to really extend the fantasy to imagine that we'd either mass sterilize or mass murder and also at the same time deconstruct our cities and nations in such a way that doesn't lead to massive emissions anyway. The decaying of our built infrastructure will cause massive carbon equivalent releases. From rotting wood in houses to exposed lake beds and fallowed fields we have a lot of emissions that will occur if we just started dying off.

Third, we're taking lots of critical actions to limit the higher order impacts of climate change. It is human based programs that are relocating species so they can survive. It is human based activity attempting to limit the spread of disease in forests. We've created a problem that most other species can't adapt fast enough to respond. Even if you don't care about people, we have an obligation to not just let these species and biomes all be doomed.

We've hosed poo poo up bad enough that using most non-anthropocentric value systems still leaves humanity an obligation to fix poo poo rather than selfishly commit suicide and say "gently caress it dolphins, you fix ocean acidification yourself."

Well, thanks for the legit response. About two minutes after making that post I realized how dumb it was. But I appreciate you went to the effort.

# ? Aug 14, 2017 21:29

MiddleOne: Feb 17, 2011

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

Oh and advocating for population control in those countries is not advocating for totalitarian rule. It's much the same as it is in the first world at this point: There's not enough access to resources for family planning, birth control, and abortions.

What on earth did you think I meant when I wrote about economic development stabilizing population growth in my second post if not this. Population growth is stabilizing on its own in a few decades, our global population is just going to grow a few more billions before we reach that peak. What the arguments above my initial post were insinuating was that there is anything we could do to make this happen today to which I responded that you could but only with a violent totalitarian regime of some kind. That was what the whole morally suspect part was about. All of the things you just mentioned will cut replacement rates but they will do so over a long stretch of time at an incremental rate as the HDI of these areas increase.

# ? Aug 14, 2017 21:51

Femur: Jan 10, 2004; I REALLY NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

Oh and advocating for population control in those countries is not advocating for totalitarian rule. It's much the same as it is in the first world at this point: There's not enough access to resources for family planning, birth control, and abortions.

But if they don't have tons of kids, how will they go about collecting wealth, to enable them to compete with us? humans are incredibly cheap, and relatively worthless; hence you see the inverse correlation in birthrates in rich/poor.

It is an obviously a form of protecting status quo, aka tyranny.

Femur fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Aug 15, 2017

# ? Aug 14, 2017 22:06

call to action: Jun 10, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Wow that guys is really advocating that letting a house rot is going to put more carbon into the atmosphere than maintaining adequate housing for the duration of a human life, he's not real smart is he

Just because you don't want an unsustainable amount of people to born in the future doesn't mean you hate humanity, no matter how desperately you wish it did, hth

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:14

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

blowfish posted:

I'd say on balance humans are still doing more damage by existing than not existing.

Even if right now we're worse than not existing (I'd agree that's true), the extent of our harms make it worse to preclude us mitigating them versus mitigating BAU harms by ending us now.

quote:

We'll see a return of peat and swamplands as well as large scale reforestation in many regions, limiting any further emissions from land use down the line. Large animals will also spread across the landscape and succession will make a return to overly managed landscapes.

e: i guess all the methane in Russia and on the seabed could go unstable and gently caress the planet because warming doesn't stop immediately, but that would be the case with humans still around anyway

I don't think the forecast for the world's biomes are as rosey as you seem to believe they are. Most importantly your sense of scale is off. It will take over 10,000 years for the peat to return. The emissions from humanity choosing suicide over mitigation will occur within the next 100 years as the systems we've set up fall apart and dams are destroyed and monoculture dooms local ecosystems.

You're also ignoring the higher order impacts of climate change (and other human activity) that are already limiting the resilience of existing biomes. At this point I don't think you can be certain that natural processes can respond to the manmade changes to the environment fast enough to ensure things are better without any future human mitigation efforts.

We've tried to ruin this planet, so within a non-anthropocentric values system we have a moral obligation to fix it rather than commit suicide, even if we are shirking this duty now. Within an anthropocentric value system obviously ending humanity is bad.

call to action posted:

Wow that guys is really advocating that letting a house rot is going to put more carbon into the atmosphere than maintaining adequate housing for the duration of a human life, he's not real smart is he

I'm saying humans have hosed poo poo up enough that yes, ending humanity will end up causing additional harm and also prevents any chance of humans getting our poo poo together and mitigating things.

quote:

Just because you don't want an unsustainable amount of people to born in the future doesn't mean you hate humanity, no matter how desperately you wish it did, hth

Good thing I was replying to someone talking about sterilizing all of humanity. hth.

Crazycryodude posted:

Just sterilize everyone, imo. And I mean everyone, not just brown people or however that might get twisted. Humanity had a good run, let's have one hell of a party with everyone currently alive as we all die out, and then leave the ashes for the dolphins to clean up whenever they evolve thumbs.

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:24

shrike82: Jun 11, 2005

It takes a certain type of delusion to believe that Earth needs humans around to keep its biomes in line

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:25

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

shrike82 posted:

It takes a certain type of delusion to believe that Earth needs humans around to keep its biomes in line

It takes a certain kind of climate denier to pretend humans haven't caused significant changes in our biomes and significantly impacted natural processes to adapt.

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:29

shrike82: Jun 11, 2005

Lol weren't you the guy that was weeping with joy last year about how Hillary Clinton was going to save the human race from climate change.

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:32

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

shrike82 posted:

Lol weren't you the guy that was weeping with joy last year about how Hillary Clinton was going to save the human race from climate change.

I was saying that Clinton would help to mitigate harms while Trump would undo what good Obama did, yes.

Trump's election will be shown to directly lead to additional deaths due to the changes in climate policy from Obama alone and that's assuming Clinton did nothing but keep Obama's status quo.

That's consistent with an idea that we have a moral obligation to mitigate as much climate harm as we can, which is basically what I'm always arguing in this thread.

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:36

shrike82: Jun 11, 2005

And yet you pooh-pooh any idea of population control, in favor of the neoliberal line of putting the onus on individual consumers instead of governments.

Get over yourself

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:38

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

shrike82 posted:

And yet you pooh-pooh any idea of population control, in favor of the neoliberal line of putting the onus on individual consumers instead of governments.

Get over yourself

I pooh-pooh the idea that we'll actually implement policies of mass sterilization or genocide faster than we can implement strong carbon regulations. I actually think the onus should be on governments to force climate policy, including supporting reproductive health which is a kind of population control we can implement faster and within existing political frameworks. I am a big proponent in this thread for strong regulators.

But I also think that individual action can both lead the vanguard and provide evidence of the feasibility of the changes needed. And fundementally insufficient actions are better than actions that make things worse. It is better that you insulate your house and use less energy for heat than not insulate your house, and so on.

I'd love for us to be able to get a perfect solution to mitigating climate, but until then, we need to choose insufficient but mitigating over actively harmful as much as we can.

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:46

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

Problem is, certain people eagerly jump to coercive population control measures or worse no matter how much you explain about voluntary family planning methods proven to have worked- even in countries currently or formerly considered shithole dictatorships. There are in fact historically successful methods for the state to encourage people to have less children without forced abortions, forced sterilizations, punitive fines or sharply increased rates of femicide.

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:59

Conspiratiorist: Nov 12, 2015; 17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the ~~fifth~~ ~~sixth~~ some day

Morton Salt Grrl posted:

I know that ideally the same restrictions would apply to everyone, but that doesn't mean that any sort of progress isn't progress at all; the climate/environment doesn't give a poo poo about equality among humans and won't wait for us to get it sorted out. Furthermore, the policy I posted above wasn't a policy that said poor people can't have more than two children and any who did would have forced abortions; it was simply that they can't have a third child after the policy is introduced and receive welfare for that third/fourth/whatever child, which is a pretty sensible recognition that resources are limited and the world can't support an infinite number of humans without cost IMO.

Laffo this just means poors that are already having more children because of cultural and socioeconomic factors are gonna get even poorer, not that they'll start having less children.

# ? Aug 15, 2017 02:59

StabbinHobo: Oct 18, 2002; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

FourLeaf posted:

Problem is, certain people eagerly jump to coercive population control measures or worse no matter how much you explain about voluntary family planning methods proven to have worked- even in countries currently or formerly considered shithole dictatorships. There are in fact historically successful methods for the state to encourage people to have less children without forced abortions, forced sterilizations, punitive fines or sharply increased rates of femicide.

yea its a totally fake debate

group a: we should include population de-growth in our plans (education & healthcare)
group b: YOU WANT TO STERILIZE THE POOR YOU NAZI

# ? Aug 15, 2017 17:16

call to action: Jun 10, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

It's not an argument you're gonna win, to those folks a baby that's not born is basically a baby that's been killed

# ? Aug 15, 2017 17:20

SSJ_naruto_2003: Oct 12, 2012

I'm going to do my part for climate change by murdering as many westerners as possible starting with myself.

# ? Aug 15, 2017 20:01

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:

I'm going to do my part for climate change by murdering as many westerners as possible starting with myself.

# ? Aug 15, 2017 20:06

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

https://twitter.com/zcolman/status/897479873538785282

https://twitter.com/AlexSteffen/status/897164415786598400

FourLeaf fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Aug 16, 2017

# ? Aug 16, 2017 05:16

call to action: Jun 10, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

FourLeaf posted:

https://twitter.com/AlexSteffen/status/897164415786598400

Does anyone following this still think we have until 2100 or even 2050 before there's widespread flooding-related destruction?

I like the UCS but it seems like everyone citing "2100" is using outdated IPCC stuff that's extremely underplaying the latest science

# ? Aug 16, 2017 21:52

Dr. Furious: Jan 11, 2001; KELVIN
My bot don't know nuthin' 'bout no KELVIN

call to action posted:

Considering there's dead zones around areas of the US that don't have commercially significant amounts of agriculture (New England, for example) I'm going to say that seems like one part of the issue

Households dump a lot of nitrogen into waterways as well through things like over-fertilizing lawns and pet waste. It's often a higher amount per unit area than agricultural use because farmers will manage fertilizer levels over their large field better as a matter of cost, whereas a homeowner has their little plot they want to be greener and more lush than the Johnsons down the street. An area that is more densely packed with houses (New England, for example) can be dumping more nitrogen than a similarly sized field.

# ? Aug 16, 2017 22:06

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

TildeATH posted:

Trying to come up with the burn meme for people who rationally appraise the situation is a dumb cult.

Sorry but the misanthropic shitheads calling for mass sterilization and death camps on account of climate change are not "rationally appraising the situation". They are actually just misanthropic shitheads.

# ? Aug 20, 2017 16:33

StabbinHobo: Oct 18, 2002; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Thug Lessons posted:

Sorry but the misanthropic shitheads calling for mass sterilization and death camps on account of climate change are not "rationally appraising the situation". They are actually just misanthropic shitheads.

gently caress you moron, there are zero of those, you're just being a drama queen

# ? Aug 21, 2017 13:59

MiddleOne: Feb 17, 2011

StabbinHobo posted:

gently caress you moron, there are zero of those, you're just being a drama queen

Do we read the same thread? :psyduck:

# ? Aug 21, 2017 15:40

Mozi: Apr 4, 2004; Forms change so fast
Time is moving past
Memory is smoke
Gonna get wider when I die; Nap Ghost

I was only calling for releasing the smallpox virus, please don't twist my words.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 15:47

syscall girl: Nov 7, 2009; by FactsAreUseless; Fun Shoe

Sterilization protocol: Niven Saturn V initialize

# ? Aug 21, 2017 16:06

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

Thug Lessons posted:

Sorry but the misanthropic shitheads calling for mass sterilization and death camps on account of climate change are not "rationally appraising the situation". They are actually just misanthropic shitheads.

Can we settle at just goon genocide?

# ? Aug 21, 2017 16:27

Slow News Day: Jul 4, 2007

Thug Lessons posted:

Sorry but the misanthropic shitheads calling for mass sterilization and death camps on account of climate change are not "rationally appraising the situation". They are actually just misanthropic shitheads.

death camps are inefficient and a pain in the rear end to manage. we have nukes, we should use them!

# ? Aug 21, 2017 17:19

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

StabbinHobo posted:

gently caress you moron, there are zero of those, you're just being a drama queen

did you...did you read the thread?

# ? Aug 21, 2017 18:01

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

FourLeaf posted:

Problem is, certain people eagerly jump to coercive population control measures or worse no matter how much you explain about voluntary family planning methods proven to have worked- even in countries currently or formerly considered shithole dictatorships. There are in fact historically successful methods for the state to encourage people to have less children without forced abortions, forced sterilizations, punitive fines or sharply increased rates of femicide.

The thing is, stabilized populations or slightly declining populations, which have only been achieved in a few countries through voluntary means, still leaves us wholly hosed unless we artificially constrain lifestyles and access to resources, because nothing resembling our current consumption is sustainable. I would rather humanity be 100 million people who all have access to the wealth and lifestyle that our technology makes possible than 10 billion scrabbling wretches living cheek to jowl in the remaining habitable areas because we were terrified of giving up the right to have as many babies as we want.

I think it's inevitable that millions if not billions are going to die from climate change. If you accept this premise, why not get ahead of the curve and manage that in a smart way that has the potential to preserve the lifestyles we would want for ourselves and perhaps mitigate some of the more catastrophic effects?

# ? Aug 21, 2017 18:55

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 31, 2024 04:28

Car Hater: May 7, 2007; wolf. bike.
Wolf. Bike.
Wolf! Bike!
WolfBike!
WolfBike!
ARROOOOOO!

Thread title should just be "Overshoot: are we going to do anything about it?" at this point.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 19:10

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward

«‹›410 »