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Will a die-off/ecological collapse happen in our lifetime?

Are you kidding me? Ecological collapse is already happening on a massive scale ALL OVER THE PLANET. We are in the middle of of a mass extinction, happening at a rate faster than any mass extinction ever.

Every inch of the parries are covered by agriculture and have been for a number of years. This has put every species in the entire region to near or total extinction.

The Arcadian forests of the maritime provinces was a long lived shade tolerant forest which covered most of the area, well over 300 years old. Today less than .00045% is considered old growth resulting in massive species loss and ecological collapse. This singles out remaining species for disease and massive disturbances.

The American chestnut used to cover 25% of the American appellation mountain range.
The maritime cod fisheries are another example - already collapsed. Blue-fin tuna which is nearly extinct is still being fished on a massive scale world wide. Whale populations are massively low, the great lakes are totally over run with zebra muscles.

We are looking at an era of species loss at a rate which is unmatched in the history of the planet. This has already caused irreversible damage to the planets ecosystems and incredibly broad sweeping ecological dieback on every level of every ecosystem.
 
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Sorry for not editing the above post I'm on BL mobile it wouldn't let me. The nuclear solution, that's a strange idea, but you can recycle old fuel and reuse it over. The goverments are a big hurdle to overcome in recycling spent fuel though.
 
Are you kidding me? Ecological collapse is already happening on a massive scale ALL OVER THE PLANET. We are in the middle of of a mass extinction, happening at a rate faster than any mass extinction ever.

Every inch of the parries are covered by agriculture and have been for a number of years. This has put every species in the entire region to near or total extinction.

The Arcadian forests of the maritime provinces was a long lived shade tolerant forest which covered most of the area, well over 300 years old. Today less than .00045% is considered old growth resulting in massive species loss and ecological collapse. This singles out remaining species for disease and massive disturbances.

The American chestnut used to cover 25% of the American appellation mountain range.
The maritime cod fisheries are another example - already collapsed. Blue-fin tuna which is nearly extinct is still being fished on a massive scale world wide. Whale populations are massively low, the great lakes are totally over run with zebra muscles.

We are looking at an era of species loss at a rate which is unmatched in the history of the planet. This has already caused irreversible damage to the planets ecosystems and incredibly broad sweeping ecological dieback on every level of every ecosystem.

That really does depend on what you define as damage. For example; why is it desirable that the American chestnut covers 25% of the American appellation mountain range?

There will always be winners and losers in times of change, new niches open as old ones close. I don't feel guilty about being one of the winners at all.
 
That really does depend on what you define as damage. For example; why is it desirable that the American chestnut covers 25% of the American appellation mountain range?

There will always be winners and losers in times of change, new niches open as old ones close. I don't feel guilty about being one of the winners at all.

You're right- there IS change constantly happening in nature. Winners and loosers, wax and wane, rise and fall...but the absolute key difference with this change is there is no winners, wax or rise- It's all in decline and quite literally faster than at any other point in the earths history

If you don't think chestnut coverage on the appellation mountain range is important because you don't eat chestnuts it's because you're underestimating the chain-reaction of species loss when such an abundant food source is lost- it alters the entire ecosystem and every other ecosystem which depends on it directly or indirectly.

I think the attitude of a lot of people is "who cares if it doesn't affect me", and that people are somehow separate from the ecosystem because of our technical ability to change it for our purposes, but as OP pointed out- our technology and the economy is a "wholly owned subsidiary of the environment" (- J.F.K.) and our way of life will be dramatically affected sooner or later like a slap in the face.
 
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Sorry, I'm gonna have to disagree that everything is in decline and that there are no winners. For starters there are Humans, who won't be going extinct in the foreseeable future. I mean, it's just silly for you to try and claim everything is in decline; because it simply isn't true. Not even close, in fact. Not only that, but if you're going to try and claim that not only is everything in decline but everything is declining faster than at any other point in Earth's history then that implies you have knowledge of every single decline in the history of the Earth. Which you don't; nobody does.
 
But it is in decline- I'm not pulling this from my ass either, I was quoting my girlfriend who has her masters in ecology from the university of toronto. It really is very well founded scientific fact.

I outlined just a very small handful of ecosystems which are in near or total collapse, so where's the winners? There have been 6 or so major mass extinctions as far as we can tell in the history of Earth, including the dinosaurs, and we're fucking it up even faster than the meteor which killed them all did.

Where I can see it being a little fuzzy (thanks to ignorance and self-interested economies, no doubt) is it's implications to people alone, but frankly it's pretty far fetched to assume that we can so drastically harm the planet at such an alarming rate without harming ourselves.
 
I don't feel guilty about being one of the winners at all.

What makes you so sure humans will come out the winners? Our species is extremely fragile when compared to a species like the cockroach.
 
so where's the winners?

Put it like this; chickens don't have to worry about going extinct any-time soon. Neither do cows, sheep, goats, camels or turkeys. Animals that are successful in urban environments also seem to be doing rather well; such as rats, pigeons and mice. Any animal we regard as a 'pest' can more than look after itself.

You mentioned agriculture in an earlier post, the most populous bird on Earth, the Red Billed Quelea, got that way because of all the food we conveniently grow for it to feast on. Some animals lose a habitat and the others who are resourceful enough gain a food source.

Going down the food chain I will start worrying when insect populations start to decrease. As insect population growth will likely be accelerated by a warmer climate I won't start worrying just yet.

This is without going into bacteria whose biomass possibly exceeds all other life's biomass combined. That is to say we macroscopic animals are merely the entertainment; this is a planet run by bacteria.

What makes you so sure humans will come out the winners? Our species is extremely fragile when compared to a species like the cockroach.

Cockroaches are another example of a 'winner,' doing very well at the moment and will probably continue to do so. Despite our best efforts to eradicate them they just keep flipping us the bird.

Why am I so certain humans will come out winners? I'm not certain of anything but in a similar vein to the OP's "are human's smarter than yeast" video I'm currently enjoying the exponential growth of technology and hopefully will continue to do so. I very much hope that I will be a winner.
 
I like the example you gave for chickens being winners- they don't look much like winners to me...But I guess that's a debate for another day.

OK, there's a few species which have survived or even benefited because of human endeavor- it's still massively in decline on a global scale and you just can't argue this fact.

Furthermore, a few remaining species in an area cultivated or changed by people, resilient as they may be, are of such a narrow genetic makeup that they are left very vulnerable to things like disease. It takes biodiversity to make up a healthy, resilient ecosystem.
 
Now, you see all this above? This is the situation right now. But this is mostly from the Western World. How much worse do you think it will get once China, India, and the rest of the world industrialize? They want to live just like us (i.e. wastefully,) and we really have no right to tell them they can't. (and don't forget, every minute 255 more people come into the world, the population is still growing)

China will get better, and then stagnate on their responsibilities and it will get worse (Just like America's current situation). It's the Divine Comedy played backwards. China resembles a lot of America before ascension. Minus perceived freedoms of course. Aside from the question of being the next empire, China will pander to clients just like Americans, only more openly. So naturally the problem is inescapable.
 
Things don't look like they are going well, but who is to say what will ultimately happen. There are to many wildcards to make an accurate prediction.
 
So many ways to look at this..

Would the planet have continued on a roughly predictable trajectory had humans not come along? Who can really say?

Since we cannot compare what is happening to what could have happened, then we have to decide whether what's happening now is 'bad'. Clearly the mass extinctions that are occurring is completely unacceptable. No matter which way you look at it, killing off any species entirely is going to cause large scale changes in the tenuous balance that exists in the ecosystem and we exist in that ecosystem.

Climate change has been brought up a lot but I don't really understand why. The large scale extinctions have to do with clear cutting and the whole sale rape and slaughter of the environment - over fishing, dumping of poisonous material, etc.

Climate change is just a huge wild card and we're only just on the cusp of understanding it's effects both short term and long term.


Personally, I'm worried. We could very easily damage the ecosystem beyond repair with our actions (or could have already) and things could transpire too quickly for us to do anything about it. The rate of change on the planet right now, on a geological timescale, is absolutely unbelievable.. and it's only going to get faster in the next decades.
 
I think it's all going to hell, bad karma throughout the world, it's karmic payback time. The rug will be pulled out from under us, the plutocrats will escape in their jets & yachts (New Zealand, Australia, Bolivia). I have little faith in science saving us, neither will the Federal Reserve. Economically, ecologically, Babylon is doomed.

http://dieoff.org/
 
Right now is the time to invest in things like oil, guns, and water. When Saudi Arabia makes it public that they don't have enough oil to sustain another 2 years of stable production, which should be any time now if they haven't already said so, shit is going to hit the fan. Politicians here know better than to talk about it because the less we know, the easier it will be for them to do what they have to do to secure good oil prices for as long as possible. There are no back-ups for oil - everything we own, everything sitting in your room, is literally made of oil. Things will get bad when we get a surprise eviction from that lifestyle. You can't fix it by starting to support environmental alternatives. The best bet at this point is to just take as much as possible and hoard it like a warlord.

The real winner in the upcoming energy nightmare is going to be North Korean president Kim Jong-Il. Half of his people are toting machine guns for him, the other half are too famished to form a revolt, and he has a well-oiled arms trading and money-laundering infrastructure set up for covering his ass in exactly the kind of situation that is about to happen. Being the leader of an impoverished totalitarian system is exactly the kind of experience a leader needs for a world where oil production is decreasing. The population on planet earth has never been this big, and all of these people are here only because oil allows them to not starve and die off. When the tap runs out, there is going to be a large population of potential forced labor, as most people's current jobs will be meaningless when basic supplies are imitating rolling blackouts, and they're all stuck in their homes with no agricultural experience and very limited land. Forced labor, all the way - at least until the population drops to about a fifth of what it is right now. Kim Jong-Il will suddenly become a folk hero for politicians all around the world. How does he brainwash them like that? How does he manage all of those starving people and still get away with taking all of that money?
 
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