This is what happens when you weight just one thing, as with arguments about global warming which talk about local weather.

The buffalo are displaced, just in the US, by over three hundred million people, the presence of which cost not only big buffalo herds, but literally billions of other creatures.

Consider for a few minutes that marvel of engineering, New York City. At the junction of the Hudson, Long Island Sound, the Atlantic, it once was an ecological paradise. Ancient trash mounds in the area have yielded lobster shells more than five inches between the eye stalks. Sturgeon more than 15 feet long were hauled out of the Hudson clear into the 1900s.

Barrier islands all along the coastline have turned into housing and minimalls with the same store in all of them. In my hometown, scrub jay and burrowing owl habitat was built over by WalMart because three miles was too far to go to the next one.

Dan Piraro nails it here. We simply - consume.

Especially when the nasty truth is hidden from us. We'll even invent new ways to hide the truth.

. . . it once was an ecological paradise.

What makes something an ecological paradise? If it is nature unchecked by mankind, there has been much less of it than most people imagine. The New World was not despoiled by Europeans; it had already been remade to serve man by the previous wave of immigrants, with forests cleared for farming and so on. Even the amazon jungle has not been wild for thousands of years. Portions of it have been cleared or otherwise occupied for as long as there have been human beings.

It is not accurate to say that human beings "simply" consume, because we also create: we modify raw materials into forms more suitable for us. For example we cook food; we treat lumber; we process oil and ore into forms quite different from their natural state.

There is no moral superiority in nature. It is not objectively bad for mankind to change its environment.

It is not objectively bad for mankind to change its environment. - Pseudonym

Yes it is. Its not bad to modify it but to out right change it is very bad indeed.

Take Rads example, the environment in his home town wasnt modified to make life easier for humanity, it was radically changed from a natural habitiat for animals into a asphault paking lot to make shopping and profit generation simpler for a corperation.

How is that not bad? How much of the world has to be razed and paved over with lifeless chemically modified compounds before people start noticing the cost of such actions?

I live on the outskirts of Phoenix's east valley. 10 yrs ago driving out of the urban area out to my house you could feel the temperature drop by more then 10 degrees.

I moved 40 miles away form the city so I could see the stars, so I could have chickens running around providing me fresh eggs.

About 6yrs ago thousands of other people wanted to 'get away from the city'

So the bought homes in newly built neihborhods that looked just like the ones they moved out of. First thing they did was complaign that they now had to drive an extra 30miles into the city for work and the roads were to narrow, so the roads were widened and even more people moved out near me.

Then they complaigned that there was nowhere to shop(there was, it was just more than 5 miles away) So the built 4 new shopping centers.

And guess what? These jack holes that had to "get away from the city" are now complaigning that the area is just like the one they moved away from so "what was the point in moving"

I tell you what that guy is lucky I wasnt holding a baseball bat or tire iron cause I swear to god if I had I would have beaten him to death.

The world is full of brain dead, piece of shit, morons who go thru life destroying everything they come in contact with all in the name of selfish convenience, god forbid you have to drive more than 30 fucking seconds to buy your fucking big mac becuase you have no fucking control over your god damn impulses and cant be bothered to stay the hell away from those of us who dont have to be surrounded by 300 motherfucking strip malls in every 2 mile radius, eat shit and die

> The world is full of brain dead,
> piece of shit, morons who go
> thru life destroying everything

Lotta fuckin' bitterness in here this month... Lotta guys carrying themselves like middle-stage alcoholics— 'the world is shit', 'women are brainless prostitutes', 'everyone in government just wants to kill you', etc.

I'm not the only one to notice this, right?

Not a lot of sunshine cheer-bunnies at Amy's this summer.

It is not objectively bad for mankind to change its environment.

Yes it is. Its not bad to modify it but to out right change it is very bad indeed.

On what do you base your belief that objective morality exists? (I base mine on God, but I think you don't.)

From a naturalistic point of view, there is no objective morality: it's all relative. My atheist friends tell me that their morality is based on what behaviors help the tribe to survive. Therefore whether or not a particular change to the environment is morally acceptable depends on to what extent it helps or hurts people. Building houses? Helps. Building so many houses that we can't grow food? Hurts. Each decision must be made on a case by case basis.

Happily, that meshes nicely with my view: God created nature for us to enjoy and use, and we thinking beings have a responsibility to take care of it, managing it well in order to maximize its usefulness to us. Among other things this means that we should avoid extincting species and habitats in case they are useful someday.

Take Rads example, the environment in his home town wasnt modified to make life easier for humanity, it was radically changed from a natural habitiat for animals into a asphault paking lot to make shopping and profit generation simpler for a corperation. How is that not bad?

A parking lot makes life easier by providing a place to park. A shopping center makes life easier by providing an efficient way to distribute goods.

Since I don't claim that every single shopping center or parking lot is good, a single counterexample doesn't disprove anything. To oppose my view you must argue that every shopping center and every parking lot are always bad, and I hope you don't believe that because it's not true.

I put things this way because some people really do believe that every parking lot is always bad. That way lies pain and suffering on a scale that humanity has not yet experienced, and I oppose it.

Here's a thought: buffalo grazed solely on wild grasses. Today's cattle are fed highly concentrated, protein-enriched feed. My guess is that the methane-per-animal output is probably a lot higher.

Higher from modern cattle, that is.

lujlp,

"The world is full of brain dead, piece of shit, morons who go thru life destroying everything they come in contact with all in the name of selfish convenience, god forbid you have to drive more than 30 fucking seconds to buy your fucking big mac becuase you have no fucking control over your god damn impulses and cant be bothered to stay the hell away from those of us who dont have to be surrounded by 300 motherfucking strip malls in every 2 mile radius, eat shit and die"

Since there appear to be more brain dead pieces of shit that there are enlightened people such as yourself, what are you going to do about it? What happens if I think I'm the one who's enlightened and that YOU are the brain dead piece of shit?

"Not a lot of sunshine cheer-bunnies at Amy's this summer."

Perhaps Duckman can enlighten us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WzZ7vpBc44

Fist Psed I wasnt aiming my eat shit and die comment at you, I got into a grove and just went with it.

The only thing that pisses me off more than religion is urban and subrban sprawl.

I'm not saying that every shopping center is the devils work, but if to help people aviod the adrous trek past (gasp) 3 more traffic lights, then there is a problem.

Take Phoenix for exaple 7,000 square miles and growing.

More pavment, less desert, bigger heat island, less monsoon and winter rains. All of these new developments the houses are so close together that the people would have had more privacy and a less intrusive HOA had they bought a condo in a high rise.

But high ridses would "ruin the sky line" nevedr mind the fact that since all the morons who move here from CA bought homes 50 miles from where they work and all the extra smog makes it immpossibl;e to see the sky line anyway.

The air out here used to be so clear you could see the Superstition mountains from the airport. These days you have to be less than 10miles away to see any varition in the rock formations.

The problem is people dont care what efect heir actions have on others or the woirld around them so long as they get what ever it is the think they are owed.

Heres hoping swine flu kills a few million, might just get people to reexamine their fucked up priorites

Never claimed to be enlighted bill just smarter, ofcourse were you smarter yourself youd have realized what I had acctually written.

As to what to do, how about a battle a wits in which the loser dies?(Princess Bride would have been a much better movie without Fred Savage)

Ofcourse we'd have to pick something other than reading comprehention, given how poorly you've preformed thus far you'd die in that contest

"The only thing that pisses me off more than religion is urban and subrban sprawl."

Maybe so, but that's simply a personal preference. What if I like suburban sprawl? What makes my opinion morally inferior to yours? You can point to the supposed ecological damage that the surburbs do, but then I can point to the horrible human disasters that were the Middle Ages ultra-high-density ghettos in places like London. Or, I can point to the inbred snobbery of today's city elitists. Neither exists in a sphere of moral perfectionism. It kind of reminds me of the old SNL routine: "It's a matter of personal preference. I like baseball, I like apple pie, and I like the death penalty!"

Some places it can be about personal prefernce, not in the desert though, not unless you will to entirely destroy the entire ecosystem

I stopped getting really upset about environmental damage when I realized that, if we let it get bad enough, we'll make it impossible to live on this planet and we'll all die off, letting the earth recover.

Don't want to see it happen, but at least there's a global plan b.

Those pushing "New Urbanization" and looking down their noses at suburbia never get around to addressing the many negative environmental and social consequences of urbanism.

Thus a thread that began with The Smart People patiently explaining that increased density is the difference between idyllic buffalo herding and "exploitative, destructive" modern livestock farming - ends with The Smart People telling us that increased density is The Way To Save Gaia.

Could y'all make up your minds?

High concentrations of people present many local and global environmental problems:

- getting food to all those people breaks the link between communities and their food sources, and incurs costly, carbon-burning shipping and packaging.

- getting water to all those people taxes ever larger watersheds. Urban areas almost never harvest or manage local rainfall because it's nobody's private resource.

- cleaning away all those people's SH*T and garbage taxes waterways and creates areas with high toxin concentrations.

- urbanites are disconnected from the resources they are consuming - leading to heedless, wasteful consumption. By contrast, rainwater harvesting and backyard fruit/vegetable gardening are increasingly common in the suburbs - sparked by private ownership of land - the mother of all "environmental resources".

- there are documented social problems in high-density housing. Crime thrives in high population centers, as do many vices and negative social patterns.

- nuisance laws and other regulation of high-density housing inevitably leads to restrictions on personal freedom.

- private ownership of land has been inextricably linked throughout history to an independent populace. Go read the story of Joseph in the Bible - Pharoah uses the famine years to move everyone to cities - consolidating his power. Centuries later, the Soviets and Chinese did the same.

Ben-David in AZ suburbia constists of a 2000 square foot house ona 2200 square foot lot.

Most of the new home built near me, if you were to satnd on the wall betwwen the house you literally could not fully extend your arms.

If you were to stand in the front door you could, in most cases, piss in the street.

The only difference between sububia and urbania in AZ is wheter or not its built horizonal or vertical.

I moved to where I did because I wanted to live in a RURAL area, where there wanst a street light every 30yds, where there wanst a demonically timmed light at every intersecteion, where there wanst a walgreens on eery gfoddamn corner and I could see the starts at night

And MonicaP I'd normallly agree with your sentiment, I just get my hackles up when its the few square miles around my plot of land that is being turned into a urban/suburban wastleland

Ben-David, you're right. What I get a laugh out of is that the self-appointed Smart People, back in the 1960s, were calling big cities the environmental disasters, citing all of the things that you cite. Those same Smart People were saying that human industrial activity was on the verge of bringing about the next Ice Age. (And, to boot, they stated without doubt that the world would be out of crude oil by 1980.)

luj, I'm not any more of a fan of those zero-lot houses than you are. My opinion, if I were going to do that, I might as well live in the city. My house is on a 1/2 acre lot, about a third of which is unimproved forest, and I intend to keep it that way. Mind you, it took me some time to work my way up to this. And, I know that the zero-lot homes are actually very popular with the still-active elderly -- it fits their lifestyles, and their need for low-maintenance easy-access property, perfectly.

Keep in mind that by far the biggest land user, for most of our history, has been neither city nor suburbs -- it's been farms.

Small lots aren't all bad. Though I prefer to be far enough away from my neighbors that I can't hear them fire their guns, I happen to dislike yard work, which might not be a problem in the desert but it is lots of other places.

I've got just enough yard. Big enough to run around in and have parties, small enough to mow in under a half-hour with a regular mower.

We've got plenty of those packed McMansions around here, and I just don't get it. No privacy, your neighbors are right on top of you, and you can't turn up your stereo without knocking your neighbors out of bed.

"We'll even invent new ways to hide the truth."

Thanks, Pseudonym, for immediately proving my assertion.

Any old excuse to do what we want will do.

Now, take a look at world population and think.

Look at the population densities. Consider the environmental impacts properly addressed by your own state. Concerned about Man's influence on global warming? Look at the population; you cannot deny Man's influence. It is obvious when you look. It's everywhere you look, and there is a point where no, it's not a good thing.

There is ample reason to understand just what your standing in life really is. You in California know that a big earthquake will kill, maim and burn thousands, maybe millions of you. But, party on, dude!

I am not calling for you to wear animal skins and forage for food in the wilderness - although a period of having to do that would end lots of stupidity. I'm calling for you to look around and realize that your ignorance of what was really there before the shopping mall was built can disqualify your opinion that the new Target store is the Best Thing Ever!

I know the public will do what they want, and that it includes a whole host of irrational things. One of them is to deny the real costs of the system that lets them live in comfort. Me too, as I sit here pecking away.

Not all change is good.

I'm curious as to what any of you think is an upper limit on world and local population, and why you think that number is reasonable.

Concerned about Man's influence on global warming? Look at the population; you cannot deny Man's influence. It is obvious when you look. It's everywhere you look, and there is a point where no, it's not a good thing.

The supreme arrogance of man allows him to believe that his insignificant contributions to the environment can destroy the planet. At worst, we could make some areas unpleasant to live in.

I'm curious as to what any of you think is an upper limit on world and local population, and why you think that number is reasonable.

Considering that the present limits on food production and access to arable land are all political problems, I'd say the Earth's carrying capacity is somewhere between 10 and 12 billion humans, with plenty left over for the animals that we have and their population growth.

You do realize that we could fit the entire population of the United States within the confines of Texas, right?

The main reason we sprawl out is that humans don't particularly like each other. That's why crime is so much higher in high-density living conditions.

And that, more than any natural consideration, will place a much lower limit on human population.

Concerning Anthropogenic Global Warming (or whatever they're calling it today): the central tenet of that theory — that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration causes temperature increases — is for all intents and purposes inoperative. The last ten years have seen an almost linear increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration while temperature has remained steady or decreased.

When your theory no longer comports with observed reality, it's time for a new theory.

I'm curious as to what any of you think is an upper limit on world and local population, and why you think that number is reasonable.

I don't know what the upper limit is. According to the CIA World Factbook, 0.21% of the land in the United States is used to grow crops, and 18.01% of the land in the United States is arable. That tells me that the USA can expand our food production by at least an order of magnitude, and probably two if absolutely necessary (because food production technology continues to improve and because we could shift away from meat production which requires more land). Other sources say that the US has 9% of the world's arable land, so if necessary food production could be increased by a third order of magnitude.

Since world population growth is leveling off, I don't think we'll hit any theoretical food production limits. The big crisis on the horizon is not too many people, but too few. The social welfare systems of the developed world require more workers paying in than retirees taking out, and demographic trends are about to invert that.

If, hypothetically, the population continued to grow, we would have to develop ocean farming techniques. Using today's technology the cost of that would exert downward pressure on reproduction but future technology might make large scale oceanic food production economical.

Various estimates for how much land is needed to sustain a person for a year range from 0.5 hectares to 0.05 hectares. The first number assumes a balanced diet including meat and the second assumes high yield farmland. With about 1.5 billion hectares of arable land in the world, those estimates produce a total population carrying capacity of the earth that ranges from 3 to 30 billion people. Those are land estimates that don't include ocean food production.

Brian:
When your theory no longer comports with observed reality, it's time for a new theory.
- - - - - - - - - -
Unless your theory has become an article of faith.
PC identity politics
global warming
socialism
...these have all become religions.

I no longer discuss the situation here in Israel with some people. I ask a few screening questions - and if they give evidence of clinging to victim-group nonsense, I just don't waste my time.

The loony left = the real fundamentalists of our age.

"I'm curious as to what any of you think is an upper limit on world and local population, and why you think that number is reasonable."

I would not hazard to do so, given that the best and brightest of many previous generations have tried to do just that, and almost without exception their guaranteed absolute upper limits have been exceeded without any dire consequences. The mistake they always make is assuming future populations living with existing technology. We don't know what technological progress will bring, so we also don't know what our future carrying capacity will be (especially considering that it may not all be on Earth). I read somewhere -- I'll try to find the link -- that if we still all lived as hunter-gatherers, then the upper limit of human population would be on the order of 10 million.

I'm a little dubious on the claims that humans can be grass eaters and actually be healthy.

Concerning the demographic inversion - Obama's got that figured out - we'll just kill off the old folks before they become a burden!

In all seriousness - the idea of a "retirement age" needs to be reworked. As it is, people spend the first 20-25 years of their lives in school (many amassing debt), work for 35-40 years, and then expect to live for another 20-30 years on some fortune that they may have accumulated in those 40 years of work.

Not gonna happen. Especially if you went and had kids. By the time you get your kids out of your house and on your own, you're already pushing 50 - and that's assuming you followed a traditional vector and made all your babies before you turned 30.

Which means that now you've got roughly 15 years to save up enough cash (while still living your life) to "retire" for 20+ years.

Oh, and you'll be expected to spoil your grandchildren, so there goes that savings.

Small businessmen are already getting wise - they don't retire. They work well into their 70s and 80s, they just work less as time goes on.

The whole "social democracy" welfare-state is a failure. It was always destined to be a failure. But since it was going to be a failure on someone else's watch, who cares?

luljp:
Ben-David in AZ suburbia constists of a 2000 square foot house ona 2200 square foot lot.
- - - - - - - -
How many children are there in these families?
Uh-huh.
So why the #!&$* do they need 2000 square feet?

The original ticky tacky homes of Levittown housed larger families on average, in 800-1300 square feet.

That's around half the size.

3 bedrooms, eat-in kitchen, living/dining room, walkout basement/den with patio. Depending on how nicely the lots are laid out, you may have another patio/porch area off the living-dining or kitchen, which can be glassed/screened in.

Add a library/playroom - again, depending on the lot this can be on top of a garage - and you're still not breaking 1800 sq ft.

How many modern families need more than this?

Also: take the master suite or kids bedrooms and put them on a partial second floor - over the garage is efficient. Now you have nice garden areas and green corridors between houses.

Zero lot neighborhoods can be laid out nicely, with 2 and 3 unit "townhouse groupings, secondary units for granny/office/rental income, and open space. And groundskeeping fees for those who don't want to garden.

I'm a little dubious on the claims that humans can be grass eaters and actually be healthy.

I think it's possible, though not easy, depending on how "healthy" is "healthy". Lots of poor people in third world countries are de facto vegetarians. Dr. Spock wrote a book where he claimed that, growing up in the 1930s, his family couldn't afford meat until he was 9. Was their nutrition optimal? Probably not, but they survived. The stereotype that people from East Asia are short came from malnutrition, which didn't stop them from having billions of babies. I expect that in the future, genetically engineered plants will be able to provide all of the nutrients (and in the correct proportions) of meat.

This is a fascinating topic for me, in part because the technological progress that can come from a world economy with billions and billions of people is truly amazing. We need to get the third world out of their rut and up to Western levels of consumption as quickly as we can so that we stop losing their Einsteins and Fords to disease and war.

The supreme arrogance of man allows him to believe that his insignificant contributions to the environment can destroy the planet. At worst, we could make some areas unpleasant to live in. - brian

If we can effect it on a small scale why not a large one? Also global warming advocateds arent saying we will destory the world entirely, just make it unihabitale for our species

That tells me that the USA can expand our food production by at least an order of magnitude, and probably two if absolutely necessary (because food production technology continues to improve and because we could shift away from meat production which requires more land). - Pseudonym

Here's a question, if it takes four pounds of vegtable matter to produce one pound of meat in a herbavoire wouldnt the same rate of conversion hold true in an omnivore such as us? Think about it, vegits want you to belive one pound of veggie matter can replace the nutritional value of one pound of meat - if this were true then why does it take four pounds of veggie matter for a cow in the first place? killing all the cows and turning vegitarian will not reduce the amount of food needed to feed the population

luljp:
Ben-David in AZ suburbia constists of a 2000 square foot house ona 2200 square foot lot.
- - - - - - - -
How many children are there in these families?
Uh-huh.
So why the #!&$* do they need 2000 square feet?
Some have pto five kids some have none, but even people with trailers have a 700 square foot trailer on a 775 lot

Zero lot neighborhoods can be laid out nicely, no they cant with 2 and 3 unit "townhouse groupings, secondary units for granny/office/rental income, and open space. And groundskeeping fees for those who don't want to garden. - Ben-David

Heres my solution, you dont have a minimum of 1 acre buy a condo in a highrise in the city and leave nature and the rural areas to those who acctually want to live there, dnt move into our neck of the woods just long enough to turn it into the overcrowed hell hole you had to get away' from befoire you move one and destroy another section of land with the same bullshit excuse

lujlp:

If we can effect it on a small scale why not a large one? Also global warming advocateds arent saying we will destory the world entirely, just make it unihabitale for our species

Because we can't. It's too big. Learn about forcing functions, iterative systems, etc. Get back to me.

We cannot create a perturbation so large that it causes the environment to "fall out" of its attractor.

What the Global Warming advocates say, and what their models say do not match. The models say that at a worst case scenario, we end up with more arable land, extended growing seasons, and maybe some coastal areas of the world a little closer to the beach.

The advocates however, want you to believe that Manhattan will be under water, and everyone's going to starve from the desertification of all the arable land on the planet, leading to food wars.

Needless to say, it's all hooey. There is no such thing as anthropogenic climate change. The "greenhouse theory" is inoperative — either CO2 has nowhere near the heat holding capacity the models are programmed with, or there is some other forcing effect that is cooling the planet faster than the CO2-induced warming can warm it — and should be scrapped while another theory to explain reality is sought.

Passing laws to change behaviors that will impact an effect that is not occurring is just plain stupid.

What the Global Warming advocates say, and what their models say do not match. The models say that at a worst case scenario, we end up with more arable land, extended growing seasons, and maybe some coastal areas of the world a little closer to the beach.

For those who hate humans, capitalism and prosperity, that's a terrible outcome!

lujlp,

Fortunately, I've spent the last 10 years building up an immunity to reading comprehension.

OK, substitute "Smarter" for "Enlightened" and have another go at it.

And... I am not lefthanded.

"When your theory no longer comports with observed reality, it's time for a new theory."

Theory this.

It's ten years old. It shows the diminution of Arctic ice cover. The debate is not whether warming is happening, but about the cause.

When you drive a compact car, 20 HP goes into propelling you down the highway and 74 HP goes into heating your surroundings. Chemical and nuclear energy stored by nature is being released for our convenience and at our whim. There is no debate that the huddled masses of the 3rd world cannot take the long crude steps we did to development; they'll poison us all. Ask the people of Beijing. Just where does pollution go? It just disappears, right?

(By the way, don't abuse the word, "theory". It doesn't mean "guess" or "postulate" in the scientific world. It means that a systematic description of events and the relationship between elements have been explained so as to enable predictions. Think, theory of gravity.)

I'm not abusing the word theory. You should take that up with Gore and Hansen.

Warming, such as it was, stopped abruptly in or near 2000. All the models based upon the greenhouse "theory" have failed. It was never anything other than a conjecture if you ask me. No rigor whatsoever to indicate that it was anything other than an idea.

It's science if it can be falsified. I'd say that CO2-induced warming has been completely falsified. You're welcome to disagree, of course, but reality isn't going to go along for the ride.

Oh, and I also like how you conveniently included the "you must love pollution" straw-man. Always a favorite among the global warming followers.

I'm an engineer - I value efficiency. Pollution is evidence of inefficiency. Anything we can do to reduce pollution that doesn't require dismantling or bankrupting modern civilization is OK by me.

You might want to catch up with Watts Up With That.

There is no debate that the huddled masses of the 3rd world cannot take the long crude steps we did to development; they'll poison us all.

Apparently there is a debate, if you say they can't. Good luck convincing them.