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With all the damage we are doing to this planet how long before humans won't be able to live anymore? I would say under 100 years for sure.
I read we produce 700,000 tons of trash a DAY That is a staggering amount of trash! And with everything being packaged in plastic that never breaks down?
Seriously how much trash can this planet take? How much of that trash is leeching into surrounding soil and affecting water and air quality too?
It's the sort of alarmist, posturing, polarizing language chosen by the OP which often tempts me to dismiss all environmental concerns as rubbish.
Fortunately, on most days, reason overrules this, but the OP presents a picture of an overly-impressionable youngster in the thrall of a professional politician (such as Al Gore) who uses cuddly polar-bear commercials as an appeal for a bigger bureaucracy to "solve" a "problem" for which no practical solution has yet been devised (but they surely need a bigger budget and staff, and immediately!)
And please don't waste our time, and your breath by citing the "teachings" of environmental fanatics/"experts" who have every reason to beat their drums because it puts more power, prestige, and tax dollars, in their hands.
The man who shaped much of my formative years was an early environmentalist; his personal effects included many sets of the early "endangered species" stamps issued by the National Wildlife Federation as long ago as the 1940's. He was to live into his nineties, and to see many of the basic measures championed by those with a concept of what was, and was not practical, adopted. But he ha little time for an environmental movement hijacked for political purpose by aging radicals, and playing upon the fears of children -- both natural and overgrown.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 05-24-2017 at 01:31 PM..
eddie1278 - Even with our messier excesses I do not believe that human effort, including full out nuclear war, will ever make the planet uninhabitable. It will take Nature to do that and even them it will not be a complete wipeout.
Volcanic eruptions the same size the last great eruption of the Yellowstone or Long Valley calderas in the American West would likely shut down Northern hemisphere agriculture and kill billions of people and most likely other complex life in the Northern Hemisphere enough humans and their agriculture would survive in the Southern Hemisphere to maintain humanity. Even the deadly meteorite impact when Dragon slayer landed at Chicxlulub 65 million years only killed the dominant creatures (dinosaurs), and not even all of them (birds), while the smaller mammals survived to evolve into the dominant creatures in today's world.
Yea, nature can create Great Extinctions but so far has not made the planet completely uninhabitable. Humans cannot even come close.
Before our planet becomes uninhabitable, we probably find ways to trash the Space
Just think about trash. Trash is a problem, and currently we are selling our trash to poor countries, who sort it through in hope to find something reusable. That also includes a toxic waste. Rich countries are allowing developing nations to become toxic dump yards for hazardous waste that is poisoning the surrounding environment and resulting in illness and death in people and animals.
A great way to save the planet
The world's oceans are dumping places full of discarded trash that degrades and sinks, or drifts ashore, posing hazards to wildlife, from sea turtles to fish to corals.
No one wants to talk about this, but between 1960 and 1999, almost unnoticed, population doubled from three to six billion people. They now stand at nearly 7.5 billion, and by 2050 there will be nine or possibly 10 billion people on Earth, all wanting cars, computers and other stuff. All producing trash. All generating waste and ecological damage on a massive scale. Obsolescence and quantity rules over longevity and efficiency. We simply want way too much stuff that no one possibly needs.
Before our planet becomes uninhabitable, we probably find ways to trash the Space
Just think about trash. Trash is a problem, and currently we are selling our trash to poor countries, who sort it through in hope to find something reusable. That also includes a toxic waste. Rich countries are allowing developing nations to become toxic dump yards for hazardous waste that is poisoning the surrounding environment and resulting in illness and death in people and animals.
A great way to save the planet
The world's oceans are dumping places full of discarded trash that degrades and sinks, or drifts ashore, posing hazards to wildlife, from sea turtles to fish to corals.
No one wants to talk about this, but between 1960 and 1999, almost unnoticed, population doubled from three to six billion people. They now stand at nearly 7.5 billion, and by 2050 there will be nine or possibly 10 billion people on Earth, all wanting cars, computers and other stuff. All producing trash. All generating waste and ecological damage on a massive scale. Obsolescence and quantity rules over longevity and efficiency. We simply want way too much stuff that no one possibly needs.
A long time ago I read that all the garbage the US will create for next 500 years could be put in a landfill 5 miles square by 500' high. Or maybe 5000' or 5 miles, I forget. Not an insurmountable problem I would think.
And more basically, we can never run out of room to put garbage. It comes from the Earth to begin with. It's already here in its pre-garbage form.
I wouldn't describe the quality of our air and water as "cleaner than ever" -- but I can cite many instances in which realistic approaches to specific issues have brought positive results.
I live near the mouth of Nescopeck Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna River. It drains an area including the City of Hazleton, PA, which has extracted anthracite coal for nearly two centuries and still sustains some activity, now via "strip" rather than "deep" mines.
Mining activity apparently contributes heavily to the acidity of ground water, which has to be pumped out and/or drained away. So as early as the 1890's, the four-mile-long Jeddo Tunnel, which drains into Nescopeck Creek, was completed. That brought an immediate end to local fish life.
That was just one of a series of measures for which the local environment paid the price. In the early Sixties, another incident, the "Knox mine disaster" sent the waters of the Susquehanna into literally millions of cubic feet of worked-out deep mines, and it wasn't too long before efforts to drain it killed all fish life between Pittston and Sunbury, and turned the river bottom a bright orange.
Since that time, many of the upriver acid-pollution sources, not to mention the Wyoming and Lackawanna Valley's half-million toilets, have been dealt with; the Susquehanna, if not all of its tributaries, now runs clear enough to sustain fishing. But the Jeddo Tunnel continues to spew, primarily because budgetary resources are limited and circumstances, both technical and political, made other locations and issues easier to address. It will be cleaned up, I'm sure; I just don't, at age 67, expect to live to witness it.
It's an imperfect world, and it has to answer to what the present economy can sustain. But to claim that it's not capable of improvement, or that we're on the verge of a disaster that only another expansion of an already-bloated bureaucracy can sustain, just casts doubt on the motives of the most strident among the environmental movement.
Last edited by toosie; 05-26-2017 at 12:04 PM..
Reason: Deleted quoted post which has been deleted from main thread
LOl seems we may just be here to create, gather and innovate other things nature needs then it will dipsose of us like Bee's during Collony Collpase jut like we use to polinate our food crops and pruduce honey and Wax which we use maybe nature is playing then same game on much bigger level then we can see.
Then again much like Bee's if someone hits their nest with a the end of a broom or throws rocks at it then the a massive hive of honey bee's protecting their lavrae/babies/nest/home can sure "bee" ticked off and sting back much like we have conflict and wars over territory and resorces.
They can commicate by dancing to find imposters and or get the "Bee news" know where to find all the good areas to find and extract raw resouces and mine them are.
The n to top it off they have the abilty to use those reosuces and covert them into something else and also compete with other colonies and other species that are threats to their hive/Homes to surivie much like humans.
man colony collapse disorder for Bee is very much like societal collapse we are going through right now and well if we can figure out what is effecing the bee's our casuing that we can also theoretically figure what is going with humans.
Based on healthy thriving Bee collonies and the ones suffring from colony collapse disorder theoretically we might be able to figure out how climate chage works a bit better and how to innovate ways to stop or prevent them that can be useful to us in someway.
Since if we cannot save the bees we are not going to have a easy time survivng either it is all connected it is worth a deep investigational study IMO.
Pretty much yes I agree nature can destory things on scale we cannot fathom but we also can learn alot nature as well since we are part of nature.
Like nature there can be good things that come from it bad things just like people there can be good people and bad people some want to save/protect and others destory/create chaos.
Nature is a part of us and we are part of nature we both have an effect on it and it has effects on us be it good or bad that is just all about perpective or how one views it all.
With all the damage we are doing to this planet how long before humans won't be able to live anymore? I would say under 100 years for sure.
I read we produce 700,000 tons of trash a DAY That is a staggering amount of trash! And with everything being packaged in plastic that never breaks down?
Seriously how much trash can this planet take? How much of that trash is leeching into surrounding soil and affecting water and air quality too?
And people say the world isn't overpopulated.
I really hate to tell you this, but it's a lot more than 700,000 tons a day, it's 5 times more than that.
It's presently 3,500,000 tons per day.
A recent World Bank report projected that the amount of solid waste generated globally will nearly double by 2025, going from 3.5 million tons to 6 million tons per day. And, according to the projection, we likely won’t hit peak garbage until after 2100, when we will produce 11 million tons of trash per day.
The water and air pollution today are nothing compared to what they were 50 years ago. I'm not including China or Indonesia. The Hudson River used to be full of "sewer trout". Chuckrow's chicken processing plant emptied what wasn't used right into the river. The Watervliet Arsenal had a bright red cloud coming out of its smokestack day and night. International Paper dumped right into Lake Champlain. Asbestos fiber from car brakes filled the air. Lead from leaded gasoline, lead paint was everywhere. The city incinerator on Oakwood Ave. burned all day long and the ashes were dumped in a swamp.
I'm using Troy, NY as an example but any city of any size was the same story or worse: Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburg, Gary, etc. Just change the sources.
None of that is around anymore. The air is clear and clean. The water is safe. People who weren't around in the 50's can't imagine the improvement.
Now, China has picked up some of the slack, so to speak. And Indonesia has forest fires it can't put our and have burned for years. But around here, the air and water are the cleanest they've been since the Mohawks and Hurons first came here.
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