The uninhabitable earth

[Nearly Sane]

Yes....it is based on a general feeling about the problems caused by our day to day living. 

I understand what the Butterfly effect means. That is why I said that seemingly minor matters add up to create major situations. Toilet paper or tampons may seem like minor lifestyle matters but they are not.

Your first sentence is borderline redundancy except for the it hiding your actual argument which is that primitive is best and that is something you choose without doing any numerical calculations. It's a simple bias, and in the absence of any data worthless.

And you have simply repeated your misunderstanding of the butterfly effect, link below provided for you. It is not that many billions of activities add up, I.e. your position is that the many billions of sheets of tampons add up to something significant ,  rather that in certain initial conditions the outcomes can be wildly different because of a single tampon/butterfly.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

[Rhiannon]

The fact is that women need menstrual protection. It's not only messy to do without, it's sore. Mooncups abd similar may be the way to go.

But as with periods there are so many other things that need to be made and sorted out - equipment for hospitals, cladding for buildings, computers for schools - where do we even begin?

[Sriram]

Your first sentence is borderline redundancy except for the it hiding your actual argument which is that primitive is best and that is something you choose without doing any numerical calculations. It's a simple bias, and in the absence of any data worthless.

And you have simply repeated your misunderstanding of the butterfly effect, link below provided for you. It is not that many billions of activities add up, I.e. your position is that the many billions of sheets of tampons add up to something significant ,  rather that in certain initial conditions the outcomes can be wildly different because of a single tampon/butterfly.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

No, I am not talking of billions of tampons as equivalent to billions of butterflies. I am talking of the entire tampon situation as a single butterfly effect....with other factors adding up to create the storm. 

[Sriram]

The fact is that women need menstrual protection. It's not only messy to do without, it's sore. Mooncups abd similar may be the way to go.

But as with periods there are so many other things that need to be made and sorted out - equipment for hospitals, cladding for buildings, computers for schools - where do we even begin?

Yes...that's my point.  Its not just the big stuff but the many little things that have become a part of our daily lives that are creating the problem.  It is indeed difficult to know where to start.

[Nearly Sane]

No, I am not talking of billions of tampons as equivalent to billions of butterflies. I am talking of the entire tampon situation as a single butterfly effect....with other factors adding up to create the storm.

Which is again missing the entire point. The butterfly effect is meant to be a single very very small cause so it's a single flap of a single butterfly's wing. The entire method of menstrual hygiene is equivalent to everything every butterfly has ever done.

[Sriram]

Which is again missing the entire point. The butterfly effect is meant to be a single very very small cause so it's a single flap of a single butterfly's wing. The entire method of menstrual hygiene is equivalent to everything every butterfly has ever done.

Ok...let me make one final comment on this. The butterfly effect is meant to highlight how seemingly very minor events can contribute to a major situations.   That is all it is about.

People normally tend to think of tampons as a normal day to day matter of no significance to climate change. They only think of industrial pollution and such other stuff as important.  My point is that it is not so. Even a seemingly minor issue like tampons can contribute to environmental damage and climate change.

Thanks then...

[Nearly Sane]

Ok...let me make one final comment on this. The butterfly effect is meant to highlight how seemingly very minor events can contribute to a major situations.   That is all it is about.

People normally tend to think of tampons as a normal day to day matter of no significance to climate change. They only think of industrial pollution and such other stuff as important.  My point is that it is not so. Even a seemingly minor issue like tampons can contribute to environmental damage and climate change.

Thanks then...

And usage by billions is not a very small event in terms of what the butterfly effect was coined to describe. It is again the single use of a tampon that would be described by it. Large scale use of anything is not the butterfly effect.

[floo]

I have just seen this.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-40566524

[Shaker]

Good.

More of this thing, I say.

[torridon]

It is always the little things that add up and magnify into major catastrophes. The butterfly effect!

Its the toilet papers and the trees cut down for it, the hygiene products and condoms that clog up drainages or end up in landfills or oceans, the coke and drinking water plastic bottles, the little plastic covers that we carry vegetables in, those plastic containers in supermarkets......its all these that add up to the massive plastic and waste problem.   

Of course the industrial pollutants, oil spills, vehicle fumes etc. are very important but the other day to day ones are no less important.  A small change in lifestyle or a little inconvenience can make a large difference in reducing these problems.

Whether we can at this stage reverse or even contain climate change is a different matter. Probably not! But awareness of our individual lifestyle contributions to these problems can help.

Making small adjustments to lifestyle is all very well, but perhaps this is just tinkering.  We've spotted a huge iceberg ahead so we set about hurriedly giving the Titanic a new lick of paint.  The problems created by our success run deeper and whilst it is testimony to our vision and inventiveness that we can countenance geoengineering solutions to fix things I'd think such planetary scale engineering is science fiction to be effective within the timescales of the changes that we have already set in motion. As it is, species are already going extinct at rates not seen since the last large asteroid strike, and climate change has barely begun to kick in yet. I think the problems are within us, our appetites and tendencies were formed when we were small bands of low population density hunter gatherers who had to gorge themselves when they came across rich resources and we've not stopped gorging ourselves since we discovered rich energy sources in the ground, fossil fuels. We can't easily quell appetites that were selected by resource scarcity and our cultural evolution has exponentially outpaced our biological evolution and we now live a city life psychologically decoupled from the energy constraints of a local environment that would have limited our forebears. I don't see any easy way out of this, our political systems favour short term thinking that have to appease populist instincts; life is going to be tougher for our children because we cannot change direction or reinvent ourselves.

[Rhiannon]

I have just seen this.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-40566524

About time too.

[SusanDoris]

It's illustrative of the problem of climate change that even such a basic subject such as how we deal with our own faecal matter, we have no idea of the impact of differing practices, or whether it could significantly change the situation going forward. I doubt any political party is going to get elected on a policy of dock leaves and weekly shites, and to be fair it may make little difference overall while we drown the world in plastic. I can picture a black market in supersoft thick toilet role should any govt impose a return to Izal.

Coincidentally, I have just been reading an article in a (braille) magazine called 'Progress' about Bronco and Izal!!! 

[SusanDoris]

I have never heard of moon cups before.

Nor had I until comparatively recently. I was wondering how women throughout history have managed and followed up various articles. It is an interesting aspect of history.
n

[Sriram]

Making small adjustments to lifestyle is all very well, but perhaps this is just tinkering.  We've spotted a huge iceberg ahead so we set about hurriedly giving the Titanic a new lick of paint.  The problems created by our success run deeper and whilst it is testimony to our vision and inventiveness that we can countenance geoengineering solutions to fix things I'd think such planetary scale engineering is science fiction to be effective within the timescales of the changes that we have already set in motion. As it is, species are already going extinct at rates not seen since the last large asteroid strike, and climate change has barely begun to kick in yet. I think the problems are within us, our appetites and tendencies were formed when we were small bands of low population density hunter gatherers who had to gorge themselves when they came across rich resources and we've not stopped gorging ourselves since we discovered rich energy sources in the ground, fossil fuels. We can't easily quell appetites that were selected by resource scarcity and our cultural evolution has exponentially outpaced our biological evolution and we now live a city life psychologically decoupled from the energy constraints of a local environment that would have limited our forebears. I don't see any easy way out of this, our political systems favour short term thinking that have to appease populist instincts; life is going to be tougher for our children because we cannot change direction or reinvent ourselves.

Here is something on the sixth mass extinction...

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/11/world/sutter-mass-extinction-ceballos-study/index.html

But another way of looking at it could be that there have already been five mass extinctions and in spite of that we humans arose!  So...maybe out of the sixth one something better will arise. 

[Rhiannon]

Whatever emerges it can't be any fucking worse.

[Aruntraveller]

Whatever emerges it can't be any fucking worse.

That was pretty much my thought Rhi. But I thought I would be sounding to downbeat. I'm glad it's not only me!

[Sriram]

Thousands of tourists (38000 in one year) visiting Antarctica are adding to the problem....

http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/antarctica-responsible-tourism/index.html

[ekim]

Meanwhile Earth Overshoot day this year is anticipated to be August 2  ..... http://www.overshootday.org/

[Rhiannon]

That was pretty much my thought Rhi. But I thought I would be sounding to downbeat. I'm glad it's not only me!

Don't get me wrong, I love people (well, some of them) and I love life and relationships (all kinds)  and the richness that they bring. But as a species we've developed the means to wipe not only ourselves out but pretty much all of life in several ways, which is pretty stupid. And we also think we belong at the top of the tree, so to speak, which is also pretty stupid.

[jeremyp]

Here is something on the sixth mass extinction...

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/11/world/sutter-mass-extinction-ceballos-study/index.html

But another way of looking at it could be that there have already been five mass extinctions and in spite of that we humans arose!  So...maybe out of the sixth one something better will arise.

We are not in a mass extinction at this time. Granted our actions might lead to one, but a mass extinction would make what is happening now look like a picnic.

[Aruntraveller]

Don't get me wrong, I love people (well, some of them) and I love life and relationships (all kinds)  and the richness that they bring. But as a species we've developed the means to wipe not only ourselves out but pretty much all of life in several ways, which is pretty stupid. And we also think we belong at the top of the tree, so to speak, which is also pretty stupid.

Oh yes I understand that.

It always confuses me that as a species we can be so brilliant, so intelligent ( I was watching 'Hospital' on BBC2 this evening - what we can do medically & surgically is astounding), so funny, so compassionate - and then we can be so stupid, ignorant, nasty, murderous and wilfully blind to the destruction we wreak.

[Sriram]

We are not in a mass extinction at this time. Granted our actions might lead to one, but a mass extinction would make what is happening now look like a picnic.

Its already happening. It is a process that will take several centuries before it stabilizes. 

[Nearly Sane]

It seems the article in the OP has kicked off a stramash.


https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/7/11/15950966/climate-change-doom-journalism

[floo]

Very scary if it is accurate.

[torridon]

The US Environmental Agency has now removed Climate Change from its list of 'popular' topics from its website, this apparently, to bring the website in line with Mr Trump's personal priorities.

https://www.epa.gov/

Climate papers are still available, but now there is no longer an overview/introductory page for climate change and you have to search for information rather than being presented up front as a mainline topic of environmental concern.

Here is the original https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/environmental-topics_.html

The EPA must be squirming at being leaned on.