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But I don't want to eat something grown from poop!  I've heard of studies where it's hard to get people to drink recycled waste water. All water is recycled! It seems like we have to create our own loops soon, the natural one is going a little haywire.
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Jun 5, 2012 01:07
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Problem is that those natural loops (water cycle, nitrogen cycle, etc.) have been formed and refined over literally billions of years, and they work just fine on their own. Trying to improve upon them is going to be a losing battle, and our efforts are necessarily going to be derivative of the work that nature has already done. Furthermore, why do it if nature already has it figured out? It's wasted effort. Much simpler to just stop dumping toxic stuff in the water, don't you think?
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Jun 5, 2012 01:48
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http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=13006#.T80zKar-QCt.facebook Its all lies! Its all lies! (My sister has a whole pile of these loving emails she recieved. I wish she'd let me post them, but apparently the police have said that provoking psychos isnt smart)
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Jun 5, 2012 02:26
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Killer robot posted:A tiny fraction compared to what's lost by growing cotton in the desert. I meant of the amount in the toilet. Or to use this figure, how much and how is it 'lost' exactly? doesn't it reenters the system as a whole?
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Jun 5, 2012 04:19
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Problem is that those natural loops (water cycle, nitrogen cycle, etc.) have been formed and refined over literally billions of years, and they work just fine on their own. Trying to improve upon them is going to be a losing battle, and our efforts are necessarily going to be derivative of the work that nature has already done. The problem with those natural processes is that they happen too slowly to meet humanity's current needs. Though yeah, I assume you were being sarcastic on that last statement, but I've met people that actually believe that. They're all "Oh, just dump all that poo poo in the ocean. Thing's huge." Without realizing that's polluting a food source, for one, and for two, the poo poo tossed in the ocean tends to come back one way or another. It's part why sewage treatment plants and indoor plumbing replaced outhouses. Outhouses worked fine, as you just dug a big hole and put a building on it. There'd be an equilibrium point in the underground poo poo pile where the poo poo would decompose away as fast as you were putting it in. It's the basis of landfills. The problem is that the human race, with its current population, is producing more poo poo and garbage than nature can process. We're past the equilibrium point, overall, and the garbage is piling up. Hence, recycling. How long does it take to melt down a broken glass bottle and turn it into another non-broken glass bottle? Not long. However, it takes nature centuries to break down that same bottle. Sure, glass bottles aren't used much these days, but it goes for many, many things. It's faster to turn used paper into clean paper than it is to toss it in a dump and wait for it to turn into trees. Same goes for greenhouse gasses. Earth has a way of dealing with those, though part of that is "well life just changes to meet whatever you throw at it, so whatever...keep farting methane, cows. Earth gives no fucks." Life isn't going to end just because humans warmed the globe up. The issue there, of course, is are we creating a world that we can't survive in. The human race isn't capable of destroying the planet quite yet, but we're making it harder for us to inhabit. But, who knows? If we turn it into some kind of desert hellhole, maybe in 9 million years we'll have a race of intelligent lizard people that are freaking the gently caress out because the planet is getting too cold. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Jun 5, 2012 |
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Jun 5, 2012 04:43
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4liters posted:You'll find that the rate forests are being replanted is being exceeded by the rate of deforestation of the Amazon/other rainforests, and as large tree have have a much greater capacity to capture carbon it will be years before the new forests reach the carbon fixing capability of an old growth forest. In addition the cultivation of cleared land releases more carbon into the atmosphere as disturbing the soil increases the oxidation of organic matter and humus, and the bits of tree that are not used for timber are generally burnt and emit more carbon. Old growth forests tend to capture carbon at a slower rate than new growth forests. That's not to say old growth forests aren't important, just that significant gains could potentially be made by adding to existing forests with new stock or by establishing new forests. Fun fact for you all today - monitoring stations in the Arctic are recording a CO2 concentration of 400ppm. For those who don't keep up with these things, 350ppm is considered the 'safe' CO2 concentration to keep our climate livable. 
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Jun 5, 2012 14:07
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froglet posted:For those who don't keep up with these things, 350ppm is considered the 'safe' CO2 concentration to keep our climate livable. I think what you're forgetting is that 2012 is an election year, and what we need right now is more growth.
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Jun 5, 2012 14:18
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froglet posted:Old growth forests tend to capture carbon at a slower rate than new growth forests. That's not to say old growth forests aren't important, just that significant gains could potentially be made by adding to existing forests with new stock or by establishing new forests. I'm not doubting you, but do you have a source for the old-growth forests capturing carbon at a slower rate? I'm just curious about it and was under the impression that old-growth forests continued to capture carbon more so than previously thought. This article states: quote:All told, by Luyssaert's calculations the relatively small remaining stands of old-growth forests in the U.S. Pacific Northwest as well as Canada and Russia consume "8 to 20 percent of the global terrestrial carbon sink," or roughly 440.9 million tons (0.4 gigatonnes) of carbon per year. I've also seen a study recently showing that seagrasses may be better at capturing carbon than trees.
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Jun 5, 2012 16:11
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Desmond posted:I'm not doubting you, but do you have a source for the old-growth forests capturing carbon at a slower rate? I'm just curious about it and was under the impression that old-growth forests continued to capture carbon more so than previously thought. The theory that I've heard (and it's entirely possible I am incorrect/looking at the wrong studies) is that trees absorb the most carbon during the first 50-odd years and absorb less after that. Then when the tree dies and rots (or burns), carbon is released back into the atmosphere. Theoretically this would mean that it'd be more efficient to expand existing forests/establish new forests for the purpose of harvesting the wood every few decades and replanting (if the goal was to capture as much carbon as possible). Was the study you saw this one? I believe here in Australia there are a few businesses that have been looking into fixing carbon via restoring mangroves and seagrass habitats. Edit: while googling about old growth vs new growth I found this article. Not sure what to think now, but either way it's a good idea to plant more trees considering all the other benefits associated with it. froglet fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jun 5, 2012 |
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Jun 5, 2012 17:04
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The worst thing about destroying civilization in order to save the planet (aside from the billions of deaths) is that it would plunge every surviving woman into a hell without end.
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Jun 5, 2012 18:54
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-Troika- posted:The worst thing about destroying civilization in order to save the planet (aside from the billions of deaths) is that it would plunge every surviving woman into a hell without end. I've sat around and pondered this in the past an yeah...it would be completely horrific for the fairer of sexes.
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Jun 5, 2012 23:00
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people clamoring for the destruction of civilization have sort of this 'noble savage' fantasy of man wandering the savannahs and living off the land in harmony with nature. Operative word there being man.
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Jun 5, 2012 23:02
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froglet posted:Old growth forests tend to capture carbon at a slower rate than new growth forests. That's not to say old growth forests aren't important, just that significant gains could potentially be made by adding to existing forests with new stock or by establishing new forests. Its sort of true, but is completely misleading, because you lose more CO2 to the atmosphere by pulling down an old growth forest than will ever be regained by the initial accelerated absorbtion of a new forest. So next time a logging apologist tells you logging is good for the atmosphere, punch him in the dick
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Jun 5, 2012 23:06
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Wrong again, Troika.quote:The picture that emerges falls, in my estimation, within the broad outlines proposed by Frederick Engels in his now classic Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: the initial egalitarianism of human society included women, and their status relative to men declined as they lost their economic autonomy. Women's work was initially public, in the context of band or village collectives. It was transformed into private service within the confines of the individual family as part of the process through the specialization of work and increase of trade, both women and men lost direct control of the food and other goods they produced and economic classes emerged. The process was slow, and one that women apparently banded together to resist in various ways, judging from what we know of West African women's organizations and of patterned hostility between the sexes in Melanesia and other areas. You started off by saying I was advocating genocide (which was totally false on top of being extremely offensive), and now you're making baseless claims. I have never "clamored for the destruction of civilization." The suffering caused by such a collapse would be unimaginable, and I've never cheered it on. My argument has always been as follows: 1. Civilization is unsustainable Most civilizations are lucky to last a few hundred years. The entirety of human history backs up this point. 2. Civilization ALWAYS results in hierarchy. 3. Civilization produces enormous material wealth but results in emotional and psychological impoverishment. I haven't talked as much about the second and third points as they are outside the scope of the thread. I'd be glad to elaborate in a new thread.
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Jun 5, 2012 23:16
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froglet posted:The theory that I've heard (and it's entirely possible I am incorrect/looking at the wrong studies) is that trees absorb the most carbon during the first 50-odd years and absorb less after that. Then when the tree dies and rots (or burns), carbon is released back into the atmosphere. Theoretically this would mean that it'd be more efficient to expand existing forests/establish new forests for the purpose of harvesting the wood every few decades and replanting (if the goal was to capture as much carbon as possible). The first article seems suspect to me, but I think the idea that old-growth forests is carbon neutral is an old one. Even if these forests do start to slow down on capturing carbon (not sure they do), they still continue to store a ton of carbon. Old-growth forests aren't just about the trees but the soil and other vegetation, including fungus, which altogether is a huge carbon sink (more so than younger forests) and home to some critical and unique habitat. Old-growth forests also have climax species and withhold a lot of biodiversity, not to mention that some of old conifers are fire-resistant and will outlive invasive species. The seagrass study I read is here: http://scienceblog.com/54760/seagrasses-can-store-more-carbon-than-forests/. It's been sourced a few other places too.
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Jun 5, 2012 23:23
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Desmond posted:Old-growth forests aren't just about the trees but the soil and other vegetation, including fungus, which altogether is a huge carbon sink (more so than younger forests) and home to some critical and unique habitat. Not to mention the nutrient retention of mature forests, which more sustainable logging methods don't exactly earn five stars in. Accumulated organic matter that a large part of the biodiversity relies upon doesn't exactly stick around when you ship it off on a truck bound for the lumber mill. Selective cutting of damaged and malformed trees is really the only decent method of keeping this loss to a minimum while still allowing for extraction. -Troika- posted:Yeah, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people clamoring for the destruction of civilization have sort of this 'noble savage' fantasy of man wandering the savannahs and living off the land in harmony with nature. Operative word there being man. Care to elaborate on how these people have a burning desire to oppress women, or are you fine with just leaving it as a straw man? Operative word there being straw.
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Jun 6, 2012 00:57
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I'm guessing the register of history where the vast, vast majority of civilizations we have with a lower tech base generally have women be employed mostly for reproduction, since the survival rate of infants drops to crap... which at first impulse seems like an excellent example of oppression by limiting choices.
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Jun 6, 2012 01:01
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I'd say you're right about women in civilizations with a low tech base, Claverjoe, but your observation does not translate well to noncivilized peoples. For one, the weaning age for noncivilized peoples tends to be 3-5 years, which is much later than most civilized people. This longer breastfeeding results in a hormone-induced lowering of fertility. Simply put, noncivilized women are not capable of producing nearly as many babies as civilized women due to extended breastfeeding. On top of that, women in noncivilized societies were treated as equals and possessed much more reproductive choice than most civilized cultures all the way up until the relatively recent womens' rights movement, which has evened the scales between civilized and noncivilized as far as reproductive choice goes. Arguing about how noncivilized people live by referring to "civilizations with a lower tech base" is not very convincing due to the profound differences between noncivilized and civilized cultures. You're comparing apples to oranges. We're also wandering quite far afield of this thread. I'll either start a new one tomorrow or resurrect one of the old ones I made along similar lines so we can continue this elsewhere. Your Sledgehammer fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Jun 6, 2012 |
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Jun 6, 2012 01:22
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Advanced technology kind of can't exist without civilization. The infrastructure required to produce modern goods is complex. Which, of course, means that a tribe of 50 people can't manufacture fancy things like birth control pills and condoms. Given that people like to gently caress, that means having zero to two children per couple isn't likely to happen. As medicine kind of requires modern technology, we get to a higher infant mortality rate than with modern medicine, which leads to the heartache of more babies dying. There's also the problem of an increased likelihood of the mother dying during childbirth. So we'd be back to a situation where the life expectancy of women was shorter than the life expectancy of men, women would be watching more of their babies die, and would probably have less choice about when to become pregnant and how many babies to have.
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Jun 6, 2012 03:19
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There are methods of contraception which don't require modern technology. Not good or reliable ones, obviously, but they do exist. It'll still be a bad world for women if civilisation collapses, though. 
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Jun 6, 2012 03:21
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I doubt you'll see civilisation collapse. There will still be plenty of fertile land around, just not enough to support the current population. Remember that any population reduction will not be even and will mostly be concentrated in the third world where bad farming practices and poverty have made the people most susceptible to change. It's more likely we will see a return to some form of colonialism where wealthy governments or corporations buy up large tracts of land in poorer countries to provide food for their more or less unaffected western backers. Also to touch on the old growth forest thing; growth rings are the carbon fixed by trees. A large tree will have growth rings of the same thickness as a young tree but because the trunk circumference is much larger you have a larger volume of fixed carbon per year, no? Also when you look at the amount of leaves (which amount to the photosynthetic capabilities of of a plant, assuming water and nutritional status are equal), an old tree has much more than a young tree, so I'm not sure how a replanted forest can storing more carbon than an old one. If a forest has been replanted, the carbon from the previous forest has to go somewhere (the atmosphere) so there isn't really a net accumulation of carbon.
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Jun 6, 2012 03:35
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Your Sledgehammer posted:We're also wandering quite far afield of this thread. I'll either start a new one tomorrow or resurrect one of the old ones I made along similar lines so we can continue this elsewhere. Please do, while it’s all nice to talk of living in harmony with nature I did enjoy when this thread was about more realistic ideas (Nuclear, fusion, artificially modifying the atmosphere to reflect sunlight) all are more likely than 6.5 billion people just curling over and dyeing.
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Jun 6, 2012 06:26
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Agreed. Sorry for derailing about it so much 
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Jun 6, 2012 06:31
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TheFuglyStik posted:Care to elaborate on how these people have a burning desire to oppress women, or are you fine with just leaving it as a straw man? I imagine he's referring to something akin to a Kantian State of Nature in which the strongest among us simple take and use whatever they want, be it food, property, or other humans. Considering the relatively brutish nature of human beings, I'm inclined to agree that a total collapse of society would mean a lot of forcible mating.
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Jun 6, 2012 23:23
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Your Sledgehammer posted:I'd say you're right about women in civilizations with a low tech base, Claverjoe, but your observation does not translate well to noncivilized peoples. (snip)
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Jun 7, 2012 15:42
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ungulateman posted:There are methods of contraception which don't require modern technology. Not good or reliable ones, obviously, but they do exist. Unreliable would be understating it, as I may or may not have discovered recently As much as I am sympathetic on a theoretical level with primitivism, I think we have to be honest about the effects on healthcare, which would be ,roughly, abysmal.
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Jun 8, 2012 01:25
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Why stop at women? Any scenario in which civilization collapses would likely be terrible for children and the elderly as well.
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Jun 8, 2012 04:05
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Danny LaFever posted:Why stop at women? Any scenario in which civilization collapses would likely be terrible for children and the elderly as well. And.. Why stop there? It'll be terrible for everyone, to say the least, considering, you know, the vast majority of the population will die.
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Jun 8, 2012 08:37
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Anatharon posted:And.. Why stop there? It'll be terrible for everyone, to say the least, considering, you know, the vast majority of the population will die. Yeah I don't understand why people don't get this. Didn't anyone else see The Road? Did you notice how empty it was? That's because the majority of people are dead.
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Jun 8, 2012 08:52
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:I imagine he's referring to something akin to a Kantian State of Nature in which the strongest among us simple take and use whatever they want, be it food, property, or other humans. Considering the relatively brutish nature of human beings, I'm inclined to agree that a total collapse of society would mean a lot of forcible mating.
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Jun 8, 2012 10:04
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Your Sledgehammer posted:My argument has always been as follows: Human history sans Indian, Chinese and Western civilization for example, all of which have significant continuity going back ~5000 years?
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Jun 8, 2012 10:20
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Chinese and Western civilisation wasn't exactly stable until recently (although large-scale collapses are extremely rare). Nonetheless, civilisations last a long time in many cases - even relatively small ones like the Angkor Empire (later known as Cambodia) managed to last for more than a thousand years.
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Jun 8, 2012 11:07
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Wrong again, Troika. 1. Eurasian civilization at least has been sustained since its inception. Probably all others except insular societies like Easter island too. 2. Hierarchy is the result of our nature, not culture. I feel safe in saying this since it is something we share with and can see in basically all other primates. 3. A disbanding of civilization will only make us happier sofar as ignorance is bliss. Or maybe nutritional insecurity and being afraid of the dark and not knowing stuff is cool I don't know. A philosophical malaise stemming from the meaninglessness of modern living makes no sense to me since I can't really se how roving about in a more natural environment is any more meaningful, unless there is some sort of meaning to life that I'm ignorant of.
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Jun 8, 2012 11:15
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Most ideologies use reason and political activity to better humanity or to stabilize it, even if they disagree on almost everything. Anarcho-primitivists use these tools to saw at the branch we're sitting on. As a result they're the enemies of civilization and as an extension, humanity as a whole. For once, their complete marginalization in society is a good thing. And that's how it should remain, regardless of what socialist/capitalist/vegan/liberal/...ist society will come after us in the future. It is difficult to find any ideas more evil than what primitivists propose. The only ones I can think of are radical fundamentalist Christians or Salafis, and fascists. Whatever rhetoric or sophistry they use to defend their "philosophy", I don't care about as the conclusion would be the relegation of humans to miserable beasts, a cruel and eternal ignorance. Not to mention the deaths of literally billions of innocent human beings, and of knowledge in general. Of course, don't you dare claim that primitivists would be complicit in it, don't you dare label their proposal with the proper term - a genocide.
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Jun 8, 2012 11:31
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I don't agree with primivists' solutions to our problems, and I think some of the things they blame on agricultural civilization are just part of the human condition, but as a group they've produced a lot of very interesting and valid criticism of civilization that shouldn't be dismissed merely because the reader disagrees with their proposals for fixing it.
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Jun 8, 2012 11:35
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Torka posted:I don't agree with primivists' solutions to our problems, and I think some of the things they blame on agricultural civilization are just part of the human condition, but as a group they've produced a lot of very interesting and valid criticism of civilization that shouldn't be dismissed merely because the reader disagrees with their proposals for fixing it. Disagreement is putting it lightly, I "disagree" about as much with fascists and Jihadis. In any case, presentation of problems cannot be viewed apart from the proposed solutions. The primitivists see problems, sure, but their morally bankrupt ideology twists these problems to validate their world view. Their ideas are only interesting as a phenomenon. What I mean is that any consideration of their ideas should be done in absolute awareness of the twisted ideology surrounding it. If there is something relevant to their ideas, it would be okay for analytic or deconstructive philosophy to attempt to liberate any potentially valid ideas from the ideological manipulation. I am not sure if this is what you meant but sure, philosophers and sociologists can observe their ideas and consider their validity and general interest, as they are experienced enough to identify the ideological bias that surrounds them. This is how you can approach the situation if the goal is to analyze or deconstruct different ideas (like you could theoretically deconstruct and analyze fascism/jihadism/etc) for the sake of theoretical curiosity. However, when that is not the main concern it should be told like it is. I know that most people in this forum do not approach imperialism or racism with "well its evil but think of how many interesting theoretical arguments they made, I love to analyze them, so you can't deny them some validity". They don't do it, instead they treat them with the frank condemnation that those ideologies deserve. And so too should they treat anarcho-primitivism. Dusz fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Jun 8, 2012 |
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Jun 8, 2012 12:02
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A major difference that limits my capacity for outrage is that primitivists are a powerless group of kooks with no ability to put their dangerous ideas into practice on any significant scale or to force them on others, much unlike racists and imperialists.
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Jun 8, 2012 12:06
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Torka posted:A major difference that limits my capacity for outrage is that primitivists are a powerless group of kooks with no ability to put their dangerous ideas into practice on any significant scale or to force them on others, much unlike racists and imperialists. That's a decent point, sure. I agree that the denouncement of their bankrupt ideology should be proportional to the level of danger, and like you say they aren't a big danger so far (thank the world). In any case, I don't think it is necessary to be worried about this type of "kook control" being too much of a distraction, as the world has far bigger problems like you said. Still, they shouldn't be completely ignored either, as there are more than a few active primitivist groups around the world, and they are dangerous, if only a little.
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Jun 8, 2012 12:18
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Dusz posted:don't you dare label their proposal with the proper term - a genocide. This a thousand times this. Earth is just a planet even if we wreck it, we are talking a time frame of hundreds of years we can spread out into the solar system if the survival of our species requires it (it does). Balnakio fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Jun 8, 2012 |
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Jun 8, 2012 12:47
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Dusz posted:Not to mention the deaths of literally billions of innocent human beings, and of knowledge in general. Of course, don't you dare claim that primitivists would be complicit in it, don't you dare label their proposal with the proper term - a genocide. I don't think you really know what genocide means and it's not like primitivists blindly endorse the deaths of billions of people. The reason they take action like this is BECAUSE of the imminent death of even more people. I'm not a primitivist, but I will say that there's a lot more logic to their ideology than the average western neoliberal who actively endorses in-progress genocides like that of the Palestinians in Israel (this is just one example, there are countless and many are perpetrated/endorsed/ignored by 'liberals') while condemning other ideologies for "promoting genocide" in spite of the fact that I've never seen a primitivst call for anything like genocide. Dusz posted:As a result they're the enemies of civilization and as an extension, humanity as a whole. You do realize that not all of humanity exists under the umbrella of civilization, nor has it ever, nor will it ever. That moral outrage that you feel when primitivists suggest that the long term plan which results in the least deaths might be moving away from industrialism prevents you from actually understanding their position. Balnakio posted:Earth is just a planet even if we wreck it, we are talking a time frame of hundreds of years we can spread out into the solar system if the survival of our species requires it (it does). We actually can't do this. What makes you think the colonization of the solar system is anywhere near? Do you realize that the space program is built on top of the currently collapsing capitalist system? We are not going to move seven billion people in to space. You think ending industrialization would be genocide and instead advocate that once we've "wrecked" Earth we should just colonize the solar system. Hmm, I wonder who's going to get that opportunity. Not that it matters, since colonization isn't going to happen during this civilization's lifespan and even bringing it up is laughable. a lovely poster fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Jun 8, 2012 |
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Jun 8, 2012 12:56
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