06-08-2014, 10:57 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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not really
Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 5,223
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Is the world about to end?
http://www.newsweek.com/earth-headin...ts-warn-252835
Quote:
A study published Friday in the journal Science found that plant and animal species are now going extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they did prior to humanity’s arrival. That means that species are disappearing 10 times more rapidly than biologists believed before this study.
"We are on the verge of the sixth extinction," Stuart Pimm, a Duke University conservation ecologist and a lead author of the study, told the Associated Press. "Whether we avoid it or not will depend on our actions."
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Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? | Nafeez Ahmed | Environment | theguardian.com
Quote:
By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.
These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."
Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:
"... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels."
The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:
"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."
Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.
Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharrei and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid
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We got about 10-20 years left give or take.
It would actually fall decently in line with where some recent orthodox Christians have predicted the rapture as well.
So, do you guys agree we are doomed? How do you plan to spend the rest of your existence?
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