We can't all live like this and get away with it:

http://vimeo.com/23961607

Something's gotta give:

http://testtube.nfb.ca/#/testtube

We've a minute. What do we do?




Question for Scientists and Mathematicians:

Is David Suzuki's science and math accurate? Are we really at the "59th minute", as defined in Suzuki's 'test-tube lesson' on Exponential Growth?

http://vimeo.com/25213730

(Play it Loud)



Can we afford it? (That is not a question about money.)

Can Mother Earth support Abu Dhabi X The World?

David Suzuki says no, Mother Earth cannot. And we have a minute left.

What must we do with our Last Minute?

Life Out of Balance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirH8PADDgQ

http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/

Great, great, great movie. I Find it impossible to heap more praise on this piece of art than I already have.

The first two films are fantastic, the 3rd lacks the emotional impact of its predecessors, yet visually it kicks a$$.

David Suzuki is a Canadian scientist and activist with whom all Canadians know whether they like him or not. His CBC show *The Nature of Things* has educated and entertained Canadians since 1960. If you didn't watch him growing up at home then you watched him at school.

http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/50-years-of-the-nature-of-things.html

He's a PHd in Zoology and spent his academic career professing genetics at UBC in Vancouver, Canada, but has lectured world-wide as well. Some of the more science-minded RfMers have lamented the dreary state of Science education in American schools. David Suzuki is the remedy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Suzuki

Everyone with an iPhone, iTouch or preferably an iPad, please download the FREE NFB test tube lesson app:

http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/the-nfb-test-tube-david-suzuki/id392342606?mt=8

It is a nice complement to the '7 Billion' iPad app from National Geographic (which was free when I downloaded it a few weeks ago):

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/7-billion/id473524096?mt=8

Force of Nature

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMKQBjgE0Tw

I'm hoping one scientist or science-minded poster could take 4 minutes, look at Suzuki's argument, and comment. After all, if Suzuki is correct, and his assertion that every scientist he has talked to agrees with him is true, then arguments about what people believe or don't believe about God are completely beside the point.

Our behaviour as a species cannot be supported by the planet indefinitely. Suzuki has being saying as much his entire career, long before the brands "global warming" or "global climate change" we're invented.

Science has gotten us into this mess, which means nothing less than the near eradication of humans from this planet. Can Science get us out of this mess?

How much time do we have left?


(The larger point is this: (ex)Mormonism over-emphasizes belief, even over behaviour. But as a species, it's what we do that counts most. And what we are doing right now is committing suicide.)

I've been following him for about 35 years. You may accuse him of sometimes emphasizing the wrong facts, but he always has his facts straight.

There have been several things happening that may blunt the exponential explosion. In the 1970s, we added the fourth billion (I think it was the fourth) in just under 12 years. Had that rate kept up, we should be adding a billion every 8 years now, with the interval getting shorter all the time. The birthrate has slowed substantially in the last 40 years, and it appears that will continue. The population explosion is still a serious problem. In the 1970s, it was a catastrophic problem. We have made real progress.

We used to grind up trees and smear carbon-colored oil on the resulting paper, and plunk it on a truck to distribute information. The cost of moving information has dropped by orders of magnitude, and the time it takes to distribute information has also dropped by orders of magnitude. This has and will continue to change the world dramatically. Fifteen years ago, few people had cell phones, and half the world's population had never made a phone call. Now even really poor isolated villages often have at least a community cell phone.

So, Suzuki is correct - no way everyone on the planet can live like us, and even we can't continue to live like us indefinitely. The good news is we already aren't living like we were even 10 years ago.

And study up on how exponential growth works. Yes, if the bacteria colony doubles every minute and it takes 59 minutes to half fill the bottle, there is one minute left before the bottle is completely full. However, unrestrained exponential growth NEVER goes on forever. Something (space, food, resources) will slow, and eventually stop or reverse it. In the case of humans, we would rather that something weren't famine or war.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/2011 08:16PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Hans Rosling, from the TED link:

"...but if, and only if, we invest in the right green technologies,  so we can avoid severe climate change, and energy can be still relatively cheap..."

That is such a massive 'if', Strykary. What does Science have to say about the doability of that 'if'?


Alberta is all about oil, and yet I remember the theme of the 1978 maybe 1979 Calgary Stampede was what we now call 'green energy'. Today Alberta is still all about oil, and dirtier oil at that. I was promised all my life that Alberta was going to "diversify" itself away from oil. It hasn't. A few boondoggles over the years, sure, but oil still is what makes Alberta grow.

We've known about that 'if' for a long time. How much closer are we at fulfilling it?

It is a very massive 'if.' I don't think anyone will try to do anything until it's too late.

I'm heartened that you know about David Suzuki, Brother of Jerry. I've noticed that you are quite the Canadaphile, not very common among Americans. Canada rarely enters the American news cycle, and Canada's cultural contribution to America is mostly cloaked. It's rather silly, but I'm heartened by Americans who take an interest.

Dr. Suzuki deserves to be better known in America.


On population: even if we put aside population growth, and assume that it was to never grow past today's point and would shrink from this point onward, can the Earth sustain our lifestyle, and if so for how long? --My sense is that it cannot.

I just bookmarked his foundation page where I can read his blogs.

What little I've known about him has been in the context of pretty solid science.

No one wants to talk about the unpleasant truth that the Petri dish called Earth cannot sustain humans at these numbers. I think we are going to see the population bell curve start to decline. It's not going to be pretty.

I'm looking forward to learning more about his findings and views.

(And thanks for your kind words.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/2011 08:40PM by dagny.

We may very well share the fate of the St. Matthew Island Reindeer.

http://dieoff.org/page80.htm

David Suzuki is an alarmist. He is in this for himself. I have absolutely no faith in what he says. As far as i am concerned, he is in the same group as Al Gore. He has put out more lies and dis-information about Alberta and the oil industry, while all the while using more than his share of the very fossil fuels he decries.You think Mormons are are bad for hypocrisy? They can't hold a candle to this bozo.

As an life-long Albertan, and one time subscriber to the Alberta Report even, I use to hold the same opinion. Growing up I was taught Suzuki was nothing more than a filthy hippie.

But lately, past 5 years or so, I've been reconsidering.

It seems to me now that Suzuki had been right all along, and that The Nature of Things was one of Canada's greatest cultural sucesses.

About his ego, though, you'll get no argument from me. Perhaps not even from him, either.

Enjoy the holiday from the 'patch, Southbound. You deserve it.

Cheers

Human

Thanks, Human- Been a long run this time-since August. All the best to you and yours.

Linear thinking is much easier. Unfortunately, we are not on a linear growth path.

About 40 years ago, oil production had an energy return on energy invested (EROEI) ratio of 40:1. As we burn up the easy, high pressure, light sweet crude, what's left in the ground get's harder and harder to extract. The EROEI for US oil imports is now less than 20:1. We are on the edge of an EROEI cliff.

At the bottom of this cliff is ethanol with an EROEI ratio of 1.05:1.

Look around you at the abundance of our western, first world lifestyle. All of that abundance is due to high EROEI oil, and cheap oil is going away. World population just hit 7 billion, and China/India are just getting started. Something has got to give.

We've killed the Albatross:

http://vimeo.com/25563376

Journey to Midway, wherein lies the Albatross dead:

http://www.midwayjourney.com/


We haven't time to argue about how big the GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH is; we must resolve to not make it any BIGGER than it is now --whether it's twice the size of Hawaii or twice the size of Texas, it's big, ugly, toxic, deadly and getting bigger.

We've a minute left. What do we do?



Some may remember my posting the following photos on the old board. Some questioned their authenticity.

http://chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#CF000313%2018x24

Whether Art or Fact the photos say the same thing. We're fucked.

Japan's tsunami didn't help:

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/15957620/special-report-tsunami-trash-adrift-to-hawaii

They're already finding the tsunami trash on the B.C. shores, well ahead of a predicted timeline:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/12/26/bc-tofino-tsunami-debris.html


The trash will travel north of Hawaii, hit the West Coast and then float south and back out into the Pacific, joining and mingling itself with the GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH.

20 million tons (tonnes?) of trash is the estimate amount the Japanese tsunami has sent out into the Pacific. That is 10 times the estimated amount that is released into the Pacific each year. That's 2 million tons (tonnes?) of trash per year.

The Midway albatross choking to death on our plastic is a sign signifying not only our murderous disregard of Earth's life but also of our own suicide.

"If you look at who’s going to be the last person standing in North America when the whole thing goes, the Indians have got such a lead that you can forget about it! The whites are all clustered in the cities so they’d better stop fooling around with these little countries because if they decide they’re really going to go after the U.S., the way the cities are, with germ warfare you could start one hell of an epidemic. With the environment, look at global warming, it’s becoming catastrophic. That Ice Cap up there is melting and so you’re going to see a total ecological breakdown in Alaska very shortly and everything there will change radically…It’s going to be a hell of a mess and they are finally going to have to admit that there were gigantic catastrophes on this planet. But the Indians are going to win in the end because there’s undoubtedly going to be a Cree or Blackfoot up on some mountain in Canada that won’t get the word when everything collapses and everybody kills each other, and they’re going to come down out of those mountains saying, What the hell happened?" Vine Deloria Jr.

some folks that are studying, documenting and reporting on the problem of plastic to our oceans and ourselves:

http://5gyres.org/

Exponential growth rates are always mathematically ideal while in reality no real-world system can sustain a growth-rate like that. As the rate of change approaches infinity the system will collapse as it exhausts the available resources. (ex: the growth of the real-estate sector. It was on an exponential growth rate until that rate became unsustainable and then it collapsed.)

My question is whether the population growth rate will level off and move towards a logistical model or if the population will collapse because it is unsustainable. Either option is feasible and I think will be determined on what we do as a global community.

So, is David Suzuki right? Yes.
Is his conclusion right? It depends.

As I asked Brother of Jerry on population:

...even if we put aside population growth, and assume that it was to never grow past today's point and would shrink from this point onward, can the Earth sustain our lifestyle, and if so for how long? --My sense is that it cannot.


The next question, after putting aside population growth, and assuming Earth cannot sustain our lifestyle, is what lifestyle *can* Earth sustain, and how do we create that lifestyle?

TED Talks

Charles Moore on the Sea of Plastic:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic.html

Chris Jordan, the artist responsible for the Albatross photos from Midway:

http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html

Topping because recovering from mormonism is another way of saying becoming responsible adults in the real world.

Also, what's the point of recovering and facing reality if there isn't a planet habitable for ourselves and our children, nieces and nephews?

I think it's awesome that when you google "59th minute test tube" the second hit on the first page of google is this thread.

Well done, sir.