[Newsbot]

Title: 'The biggest threat to civilisation is human stupidity': Brian Cox warns lack of action on food supplies, climate change and asteroids could end life on Earth
Category: Science
Posted By: DrCaleb
Date: 2014-09-30 07:15:46

[bootlegga]

Yep - and by the time we do wake up and realize maybe we should do things different, it may be too late.

[DrCaleb]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Yep - and by the time we do wake up and realize maybe we should do things different, it may be too late.

I read a good article on why we ignore things that may hurt us in the future, like asteroids and climate change. We're wired for immediate threads - growling wolves, venomous snakes. But we aren't wired for 'crops might get wiped out next year'.

Luckily, we can overcome our base instincts and plan for the future if we choose.

[andyt]

Well, let's call it inability to act intelligently. The need to breed is deeply hardwired. So is the need to look out for number 1. (eg, tragedy of the commons). I'm not sure we're anywhere near overcoming our base instincts as a species, or even as individual countries. Plus the hazards aren't that clear - take climate change. It'd be great if we acted even tho we're not sure that our emissions are driving it, do the prudent thing. But our economies are so deeply entwined with carbon - have been ever since the industrial revolution. Very hard to get consensus to act against it, especially with no real clear alternative in sight that's anywhere near as good.

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

Plus the hazards aren't that clear - take climate change. It'd be great if we acted even tho we're not sure that our emissions are driving it, do the prudent thing. But our economies are so deeply entwined with carbon - have been ever since the industrial revolution. Very hard to get consensus to act against it, especially with no real clear alternative in sight that's anywhere near as good.

As I've always said - Pollution. We can all see that's a problem, we all agree it needs to be fixed. If we fix that, we'll already be half way to mitigating any effect we have on the global scale and we may even begin to see changes there too.

[andyt]

Except in the west we've already reduced pollution by cleaning emissions - you just don't hear about it to the level we did in the 80's say, so it's not up front to us. A country like China, I guess up till now the pollution seemed like an acceptable price to pay for moving out of poverty - you know like the pulp mills have signs that read "this is the smell of prosperity." Actually from what I've read, China is in many ways ahead of us in putting in green measures - they just have so much further to go.

and we really don't know how high our carbon output will drive temps, so it's hard to spend all that money for what may be no big deal, something we can easily adapt to. I'm not sure we can drastically reduce carbon output without drastically reducing our economy. Meanwhile more and more little carbon spewers are being born every day. Fells like bailing with a leaky bucket.

[BartSimpson]

Meanwhile an ever-growing number of militant muslims threaten Westerners in their own countries, the politically correct refusal to screen immigrants and tourists for health issues has brought death and disease to our shores, and an uncontrolled and unchecked shadow government spies on everyone in the world and orders people killed without trial.

Really, we have so many real and present threats so why worry about things like global warming that are turning out to be fraudulent anyway?

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

Except in the west we've already reduced pollution by cleaning emissions - you just don't hear about it to the level we did in the 80's say, so it's not up front to us.

We don't hear about tailings ponds failing? How are the Sydney Tar ponds now?

andyt andyt:

A country like China, I guess up till now the pollution seemed like an acceptable price to pay for moving out of poverty - you know like the pulp mills have signs that read "this is the smell of prosperity." Actually from what I've read, China is in many ways ahead of us in putting in green measures - they just have so much further to go.

China is starting to understand their expansion has had some pretty serious environmental challenges.

andyt andyt:

and we really don't know how high our carbon output will drive temps, so it's hard to spend all that money for what may be no big deal, something we can easily adapt to. I'm not sure we can drastically reduce carbon output without drastically reducing our economy. Meanwhile more and more little carbon spewers are being born every day. Fells like bailing with a leaky bucket.

If we demanded that industry returned the air and water back to the environment in the same condition that they took it out; if environmental impact we had equalled zero, global warming would be a 100% natural cycle.

[xerxes]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Meanwhile an ever-growing number of militant muslims threaten Westerners in their own countries, the politically correct refusal to screen immigrants and tourists for health issues has brought death and disease to our shores, and an uncontrolled and unchecked shadow government spies on everyone in the world and orders people killed without trial.

Really, we have so many real and present threats so why worry about things like global warming that are turning out to be fraudulent anyway?

The threat to our way of life from the results of climate change far outweighs the perceived threat from a few terrorists.

[Thanos]

$1:

I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, that accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction. One last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

- Rustin Cohle

Intelligent enough as a species to be incredibly lethal and dangerous to every other life form in existence, including to ourselves. Yet not intelligent enough to ever collectively conceive the possibility of not constantly behaving like selfish and psychotic assholes practically all the time. An endless stampede of the irredeemably stupid, whipped into a frenzy by the most-cunning worst and the most soulless, running off of a cliff into oblivion, while those paltry few unfortunate enough to have evolved a conscience can only scream and weep in horror as they witness a slow-burn group suicide that no one can ever stop, and that most aren't even interested in stopping anyway.

$1:

The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, I guess he had it comin'.

Will Munny: We all got it comin', kid.

We're a fucking abomination, and the world will be better for it when we're all gone. Fuck us, I'm rooting for the asteroids.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

We're a fucking abomination, and the world will be better for it when we're all gone. Fuck us, I'm rooting for the asteroids.

I love it when you're off work and bored.

[BartSimpson]

xerxes xerxes:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Meanwhile an ever-growing number of militant muslims threaten Westerners in their own countries, the politically correct refusal to screen immigrants and tourists for health issues has brought death and disease to our shores, and an uncontrolled and unchecked shadow government spies on everyone in the world and orders people killed without trial.

Really, we have so many real and present threats so why worry about things like global warming that are turning out to be fraudulent anyway?

The threat to our way of life from the results of climate change far outweighs the perceived threat from a few terrorists.

The threat to our way of life from NON-EXISTENT global warming is zero.

[bootlegga]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Meanwhile an ever-growing number of militant muslims threaten Westerners in their own countries, the politically correct refusal to screen immigrants and tourists for health issues has brought death and disease to our shores, and an uncontrolled and unchecked shadow government spies on everyone in the world and orders people killed without trial.

Really, we have so many real and present threats so why worry about things like global warming that are turning out to be fraudulent anyway?

ALL threats to our civilization - both long-term and short-term - should be considered, period.

[Thanos]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Thanos Thanos:

We're a fucking abomination, and the world will be better for it when we're all gone. Fuck us, I'm rooting for the asteroids.

I love it when you're off work and bored.

Someone had to say it. Hopefully the next cycle of evolution has the dominant species emerging from the canids, which are billions of times better in terms of basic heart & soul than anything that could have evolved from a bunch of belligerent and sociopathic fucking monkeys. Maybe they'll get lucky and not allow some fantasy shit-god from their own version of a bronze age to corrupt all their thinking for 5000 years after some desert-dwelling incest-practicing patriarch dumb-asses invent it.

Most of my optimism died recently. Not sure why. I think that the relaunch of the war for no other reason than the full-blown We Gotta Do Something! panic the right-wing media invented had something to do with it. If no one learned fuck all from a terrible, terrible mistake made all of ten years ago then what hope is there of defeating problems that have been decades or even centuries in the making?

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Thanos Thanos:

We're a fucking abomination, and the world will be better for it when we're all gone. Fuck us, I'm rooting for the asteroids.

I love it when you're off work and bored.

Someone had to say it. Hopefully the next cycle of evolution has the dominant species emerging from the canids, which are billions of times better in terms of basic heart & soul than anything that could have evolved from a bunch of belligerent and sociopathic fucking monkeys. Maybe they'll get lucky and not allow some fantasy shit-god from their own version of a bronze age to corrupt all their thinking for 5000 years after some desert-dwelling incest-practicing patriarch dumb-asses invent it.

Most of my optimism died recently. Not sure why. I think that the relaunch of the war for no other reason than the full-blown We Gotta Do Something! panic the right-wing media invented had something to do with it. If no one learned fuck all from a terrible, terrible mistake made all of ten years ago then what hope is there of defeating problems that have been decades or even centuries in the making?

The funny part for me is that I don't disagree with you. We are responsible for screwing this planet up so badly. The whole idea that we have to 'manage' the fish stocks in the oceans or 'manage' the air and water is bullshit.

They managed themselves just fine for millions of years before we screwed things up. What we have to 'manage' is ourselves. Our own instinct to take until there is nothing left to take, until we realize we killed the last Dodo; to strip mine the ocean till coral that took thousands of years to develop is wiped out; that is what need we need to 'manage'.

We look at the Universe, and realize there Billions of stars in Billions of Galaxies and that there are more planets than stars - and not one that we have found looks like ours and contains such diversity of life. It may be better for the planet if we were not here.

"For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young, and curious, and brave. It shows much promise.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves." - Carl Sagan "Cosmos"