/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9366495
FOR ALLAH

The earth will die whether we try and stop it or not.

It is up to the intelligent among us to prevail and lead humanity on the right path. Even though I agree humans are cancer I think it is still possible for small number <10million to live in harmony with nature, assuming proper guidance of course. It might sound naive or hopeful but I believe it can be done without detriment to the environment.
It might seem hopeless when you look at the devastation around us, but think of all the victories the green movements have gained over the years. We are winning, even if slowly.

>>9366495
>>9366562

I found a pic of your professors...SAVE MOTHER GAIA, BRO.

>>9366495
The problem is procrastinate-able. The time-scale of a human lifespan promotes short-term gain over long-term suffering.
Government is never really proactive at preventing problems. It is only reactive to problems that have already occurred. That is when government is most needed and has most power as well.
Taking action usually means doing things the more difficult and expensive way. Action would also require "unfair" government action in the private sector.
The system believes it is the best system. Sadly, the only way I think it will change is if it is proven wrong through calamity. And even if calamity happens to prove it wrong, it will just improperly diagnose the cause of the calamity in order to justify not changing.
Everyone is drunk off the kool-aid and won't know it is poisoned until it is too late.

>>9366539

spot the /pol/ brainlet

what system of ethics do you base this on, how did you decide nature is inherently good and any changes made to it is destruction and unethical

>>9366669

>>9366664
/thread

>>9366495
Capitalism, and states in general work that way, authority is not determined by just cause, anyone with money can have power over other people, and the powerless see no means of holding authority accountable.

>>9366677
>Any changes made to it are destruction.
No destruction is destruction

>>9366562
Lmao how are you gonna kill the other 7.29 billion people?

>>9366495
No we aren't destroying Earth we are simply killing a great number of plants and animals
>yes but you know what I mean
Yeah, but they would have died anyways (and quite soon considering average lifespans)
>yeah but we are not simply killing individual beings we are killing species
And that's usually people agree genetic diversity should be conserved, but that can be accomplished simply by keeping a minimum reserve of each species (though smaller number do increase the increase the possibility of extinction in the event of a catastrophe) or even better by just simply retaining enough genetic and other information about the species to, at a latter date when conditions and technology has improved, clone them and give them large and comfortable habitats

But to do that we still would need to be doing at least those minimal efforts and as we can all agree the current amount of resources invested in this is pathetically small


A different problem is that we rely on other living organisms on earth to provide us with oxygen, food and also to keep global temperatures, and thereby global climate,stable
I believe in due time we will be able to do all of these ourselves with the use of advanced technology (not necessarily machinery, but eg. genetically engineered algee)
But to get to that point we do have to survive some decades/centuries/millennia yet and yes, the above mentioned do to pose a risk to that

>>9366495
>nobody seems to be enforcing drastic actions to stop the process right now

>>9366690
summed it up pretty nice

It mostly boiles down to the fact that OUR short term goals interest us more than long term effects on OTHERS
>Do people who understand this fact have an ethical obligation to start a political revolution immediately
Well people love to suggest we should start a revolution about X or Y but increasingly often it's far more efficient (but far less exciting and sexy) to achieve such goals within the established system


>The human psychology is inherently broken
Yes very clearly, but that is expected. If you mean "perfectly rational" as not broken then yes, that's evident from our animal origins

>we are trapped in a cellar with a limited number of cans and plowing through them
>>9366562

BUT WE DO NOT NEED TO DO THAT
We can reach almost an unimaginable number of cans by getting better technology
we just need to make it till' then

With a greater focus on advancement, a different socio-economic system, different culture... we could achieve much greater progress with a smaller population,
but it'd also help if less people were doing something usefull and not just "Saving mother gaia, bro"

>>9366562
>We are winning, even if slowly.
XDDDDDD
(pic related)

>It might seem hopeless when you look at the devastation around us
The only thing that can possibly give us hope that there will be anything greater on this earth than just some rocks and retarded animals is US. HUMANS

>Man found the planet a climaxed primeval forest
(pic related)

If we seek something to treasure in nature and be amazed at what it did, then the foremost example should ALWAYS be amazement at how just some mindless chemicals eventually created something that can think abstractly, imagine endless possibilities and shape the universe to it's will
We are the pinacle of nature and can do whatever we collectively want given enough time

Though granted as "the pinnacle of evolution" we should act a bit mature and maybe use that absolute power over nature to maybe conserve a bit

>>9366495
>why we know that we are destroying the Earth

We don't. There's no evidence of that happening. Just like (((overpopulation))).

>>9366495
tragedy of the commons

Hey guys, can we real talk for a sec? This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

I'm 25. With luck I'd like to make it to the century mark, 2092.
A lot of shit it scheduled to hit the fan by then.

What do you think will happen before 2100? What do you think we're in for?

>>9367094
AI will save us. Everything will be perfect, anon.

>>9366771
Nukes
And it will take quite a bit longer for conscious life to reemerge than just simple animals meaning there will be a bit of time where there is only "pure nature"
And to make it harder for any latter advanced species to get started why don't we just intentionally deplete all mineral, fossil fuel... anything reserves that might help a developing civilization

or just wait a while for commercially available GM, make a specifically tailored virus only targeting humans
And maybe launch a superintelligent AI and some self replicating robots to the lifeless moon and task them with instantly orbital lasering any species that might be close to discovering fire

>>9367094
Collapse of the West, race riots and tribalization in heterogenous societies, rise of authoritarian oligarchies and totalitarian regimes throughout the world.

The ideas of the Enlightenment have been around long enough for everyone to take notice, but they haven't caught on anywhere outside of the West. They're currently being phased out in a global paradigm shift.

the only reason we should be protecting the environment is because as apex predators we're highly vulnerable to extinction events

we couldn't kill all life on the planet even if we tried, not at our currently level of technology at least.

>>9367094
all the cool animals will be extinct
Coastal cities will have to figure something out.

And ice-free arctic will lead to Russia and Scandinavia and China to become Great Shipping Empires.

The oceans will acidify and fuck up the air. Wildfires will burn everything not leveled by cyclones.

Fresh water shortages

Famine

War

>>9366495
Command and control systems are greedy, but they serve a function.

Once we get through our teething problems, we're the best mechanism for transplanting a recognizable earth biome off planet.

It's far from a trivial coin we offer for our indiscretions, here.

>>9367122
this

best post I've seen all my life concerning this topic

>>9367122
but why abandon earth to rot?

What's your plan to survive the Water Wars?

>>9367122
We can't even fix Earth, what makes you think we can make another planet like our own?

People care more about the short term than the long term, i.e. who cares what happens later on, it won't be my problem since I won't be alive. Also, many people care about making a lot of money rather than helping others, which is why businesses like big oil have lasted and will last for a very long time.

>>9367425
?water wars?

>>9367577
Oh I'm not talking about full terraforming - though I'd not completely rule it out - rather, any habitat we set up for the long term won't be humans and some kind of ultra tech. It'll be humans +plants +'friendly' bacteria etc. Our biome goes with us, even in the ultimate reduction of what we carry everyday already which isn't encoded by human dna.

As for fixing the planet, we're doing a great job of that. For us. And, eventually, the planet - at least, that's my point.

And while I may think we have a responsibility to the life forms here that are less capable of arguing their case, it's not as though the Apocalypse has already happened and we must Fix it. What's happening is as well described as being teething problems for our civ as anything else.

>>9366495
Environmentalists are killed (or worse) all the time by psychotic sellout consumers who want the whole fucking cake.

The rest of the consumers pretend there is no problem and let it happen.

That's why.

>>9367651
To make matters worse, the guy who just at the whole cake is stronger than you because he just ate the whole cake...

But I guess that's part of life. Good must prevail over evil even though it lives under moral constraints that put it at a tangible competitive disadvantage.

I've seen some video about some guy talking about countering global warming by engineering pretend volcano eruptions that would cool the planet down. I think that's a much more interesting approach than crying over polar bears and insisting on inefficient energy sources.

>>9366495
>Can someone explain to me why we know that we are destroying the Earth,
Because science and scientists. And we're destroying our habitat, the current state of the biosphere, not the Earth. The Earth will be fine without multicellular life. Again.

>but nobody seems to be enforcing drastic actions to stop the process right now?
Because businessmen, politicians, fanatics, and other assorted criminals and psychopaths.

>Do people who understand this fact have an ethical obligation to start a political revolution immediately?
Yes, but they won't, because they're spineless pussies and easily enraged by anyone who calls them on it.

>The human psychology is inherently broken,
The overall human psychology is essentially psychotic. That's why mankind won't survive. And, no, I'm not being sarcastic or rhetorical.

>>9366495
Climate change negatively affects everyone and yet a single person cant see the effects of his own actions. It's called a 'negative externality' and the way you deal with that is by policymakers punishing behaviours that excacerbate the neg ext. So the real question is, why have policymakers not done their job? Weeell, that could be due to lobbyism, failing to understand the severity of CC etc.

>>9366495
Because scientists are not politicians, politicians are not scientists, and lobbyists work for businesses, not scientists.

All organisms put their own genes ahead of everything else. This law is the foundation of evolutionary science.

The mathematics behind this principle are surprisingly simple. Every organism is certain its genes are 100% related to itself. For the organisms parents, offspring and siblings, the shared genes are on average 50%. And so on, for uncles/aunts and grandparents the number is 25%, for first cousins 12.5%. As we can quickly calculate, you share less than 0.2% of genes with your 5th cousin. As such, you don't care much for the survival of them, even less of people in other parts of the world where the number is even less, or to a tiger to whom you only share the mammalian genes from the point where your latest common ancestor split off.

So for a school of fish, or a herd of antelopes, you might wonder why they hoard themselves together in huge packs such that that it becomes easy for their predators to find and prey on them? Because each fish or antelope only cares about its own genes. It doesn't matter if a few other organisms are killed and eaten, their genetic relatedness is probably next to none. Each organism gambles that it genes are good enough that it won't get caught.

Apply this to humanity of today. Kim and Trump only cares about their own genes. So does every one of us. When someone advocates change, that change is always meant for other people, not for themselves.

When will the ice age start? Will anthropogenic climate change accelerate it or will we just gradually heat up until something else triggers it?

>>9369220
>All organisms put their own genes ahead of everything else. This law is the foundation of evolutionary science.
explain cucks

>>9366677
Anything which is very costly to all humans and can be mitigated for less cost should be mitigated.

>>9369259
Care more about the other replicants - memes - than they do about genes.

>>9367577
>>9367623
Terraforming is a stupid idea
With the same amount of resources you could build a million rotating habitats that you could tailor completely to whatever enviroment you desire

But of course with that level of tech (that we already have) you could just build space mirrors and geo-engineer earth

>>9367106
sure is some absolute utter retards on /sci/

>>9367904
If someone actually wanted to practically solve climate change and not just appease voters or cry about the evil of humanity, then geo-engineering, space tech and "re-terraforming" would be the obvious solution

I think we need to be using more energy, building more complex systems, and spreading to our next home, space.

>>9369291
>sure is some absolute utter retards on /sci/

>>9369288
Rotating habitats are a stupid idea.

For the same amount of resources you could develop non-biological propagators of human culture in the form of androids with sophisticated human-like artificial intelligence and virtually eliminate the need for costly life support systems in all future space and planet-based colonial outposts.

>>9369444
Physical existence is a stupid idea

For the same amount of resources you could develop self-replicating nanobots that automatically build dyson spheres and matryoshka brains to run you in perfect simulations till the end of the universe

>>9369220
This works for simple organisms, but for complex mammals containing empathy responses this is not the case. We feel sad when we see other humans die for a reason. In fact we also feel sad when we see other animals die. This is the case in the general sense, though some hunting cultures lean towards being more sociopathic and non-empathetic

Organisms gain great advantage by being part of a species that has this empathy response and group mentality, and we have it

>>9370074

Most of us do, but those that don't are the ones in control at the moment. Those who have a lust for power and are willing to do what others aren't to get and maintain it. Corporate ladders are designed in this way, same with politics.

>>9366679
If you think it's okay to let the planet go to waste in a few centuries if not a few decades just because it will get destroyed in a few billions of years down the road, then you might as well kill yourself right now because you'll die in a few decades or years anyways.

>>9366495
>Can someone explain to me why we know that we are destroying the Earth, but nobody seems to be enforcing drastic actions to stop the process right now?

there's no money in it.

>>9367425
>What's your plan to survive the Water Wars?

solar thermal desalinization.

>>9369261
Like high infant mortality present in countries that have lower bo/e

>>9367425
Drink saltwater.

>>9371964
The saddest truth of all.

>The real question is why the world don't consider continued survival economical

We are not destroying the Earth. We are destroying our continued existence on the Earth. Eventually the planet is going to get too hot because of accelerated destruction of the O-zone and then a lot of organic life, including us, will die off. My advice is to move to the Amazon and live with the local tribes if you want to turn the tide against global warming. Maybe bring some of your moralistic environmental friends with you so they don't keep crying and making everyone else miserable.
I would agree with you that we have an ethical obligation to stop the destruction of the Earth, as God gave us dominion over it. But a political revolution is both unnecessary and unethical. Politics cannot fix global warming because there are 0 developed countries who are running at even 50% renewable energy consumption, and we have been investing into this garbage for many years, at least since around the 60's (although environmental activism stretches back into the 19th century). It is also unethical because political intervention is against the will of God.
The reason why we are destroying the Earth is pretty simple. It is money. Take the automotive industry for example. Behind the agriculture industry, it is the second largest contributor in the states to global warming; common knowledge. So why do people drive or eat meat? Driving is already known to be an inefficient mode of transport and we already know that you can meet your dietary requirements without meat.
It's just business and marketing. People want cars not just for transport but because they are status symbols. And meat tastes good because it is higher in fat which our brains have become accustomed to liking.
It's not really that complicated, you are just a moralistic environmentalist. The only way to fix the issue is to curb our use of energy (I would recommend reading Plan C), but nobody wants to live like animals.

>>9366562
What victories? What developed countries are running at even 50% renewable energy needs?

>>9369450
Ideas are stupid.