This is unfortunate news

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Raiden

Deal with it. Everything has as much of a right to live as you do, and they demand your respect.

If you want to keep mosquitoes away, remove any standing water from containers and fountains and such around your house, and build batboxes.

How to build a BCM bat house

These are artificial roosting sites for bats; by giving them places to sleep near your house during the day, they will come out at night to hunt mosquitoes, and this can drastically reduce their population if enough bats are attracted.

That's a brilliant solution. It makes me annoyed I hasn't heard of that one before - I didn't know bats were predators of mosquitoes - that is what the world needs, ways to encourage ecosystems to balance themselves.

[auroraglacialis]

Yay! for the bats - I love them. They were dancing to my song some weeks ago - very cool...

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

Such a nostalgic phrase... Makes me remember my first nature themed presentation at school... To go back to those times and leave all this nonsense behind...

Today it is called "ecosystem services" and it is the job of the institute I work for to scientifically explore these abilities of the natural world to clean water from human made substances.

A better world... One can only dream... But then you have to wake up and realize it was all just an illusion.

Everything is an illusion in a way because it is how we perceive the world that forms that realization inside of us. So as I said - it depends on where you look and in what way you look at it.

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

TBH I think there is a schism coming in the human species. Those that want to take Clarke's approach can leave the planet completely, and become the space-traveling species they want to be. Hell, they can set up camp on Mars for all I care. At the same time, we let the Earth return to a natural state, and those of us who want to live close to nature can stay.

Nice dream, but I dont buy it. For once, to make the majority of humans a space-travelling
species (talking about billions of people leaving Earth) would require technological development at a scale that will destroy Earths biosphere. Also, Mars may be a bit boring - Earth in a more restored state (if that ever happens) makes a great holiday location for the billions of people living elsewhere. So in the best case, Earth becomes something like a holiday location with hotels, clubs and nature reserves that one can enter on Safaris... I don t know if that is desireable. But I doubt that the majority of people would leave such a place anyways.

It must have zero impact on the surrounding environment. As before, if you wish to live close to the land, you're free to roam the planet.

Not zero impact, but playing the proper part in the cycles...

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

Many I've spoken to think those on the side of technology will get tired of the nature people walking around and wipe them out

Yes, that is what I think as well. As i said, a restored Earth may just become re-colonized then - if only as a commodity, as a sort of park to go to and have fun.

[Moco Loco]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Yes, that is what I think as well. As i said, a restored Earth may just become re-colonized then - if only as a commodity, as a sort of park to go to and have fun.

When you say "park", do you mean the restored sections or the whole planet?

[Carborundum]

Originally Posted by Raiden

No, the mosquito thing was different.
1) They did it to drive down the death rate from Malaria. This in itself is a noble cause, but malaria is one of the last potent checks to the human population, and since we don't seem to be anywhere near enforcing birthrate limitation laws, the population will skyrocket if it works, and then future humans will be cursing us anyway when billions of them die to some super-mutated flu virus instead of a few hundred thousand or so to a parasite that is easy to avoid.

So very much this.

I think we should completely stop all research into disease control and new medicine. In fact, why not go all the way and make it illegal to practice medicine altogether? That would do wonders for the population problem!

[Human No More]

Reductio ad absurdum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Carborundum]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Reductio ad absurdum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You got me.

Let me point you to another interesting Wikipedia article:
Malaria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An excerpt:

An estimated 781,000 people died from malaria in 2009 according to the World Health Organization's 2010 World Malaria Report, accounting for 2.23% of deaths worldwide.[9] Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, with the majority of deaths being young children.

To then say "let's not try to fix this, because it's an efficient population control mechanism" is just... unbelievably disgusting.

[Human No More]

Population control is needed. While disease should be cured, it should be a part of efforts to place proper control in its place, such as education and distribution of easy, safe contraception.

[Carborundum]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Population control is needed. While disease should be cured, it should be a part of efforts to place proper control in its place, such as education and distribution of easy, safe contraception.

Absolutely.

[Fkeu'itan]

Yeah, good luck with that one.

Especially where we are as a society, that should be more than easy.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

When you say "park", do you mean the restored sections or the whole planet?

I guess it depends. Of course only those parts of Earth that are restored in this hypothetical scenario would be interesting to be re-colonized or be used for recreation, but maybe people also like to watch some wastelands, who knows. In any case, this whole thing is completely bonkers. Humans will never leave Earth out of their free will in numbers large enough to let Erath return to a wild state. The only time humans would do this is if Eath has been so thoroughly wasted that it just is impossible to live there. If it is just undesireable - one can still put some poor people there. And if Earth has become uninhabitable for humans and they really do go away - it would take millions of years if at all to recover to some form of natural state. This is just crazy.

By the way - do any of you know the movie "Cargo" from 2009 I think. Its a swiss SciFi movie and I kind of liked it despite it haveing some logic holes. The english translation is a bit bad though. Its about a time when people have been forced off Earth because it has become too toxic and people live in space on space stations and in crappy cargo ships. Poor people are driven into jobs that suck by the wish of becoming colonizers of a newly discoverd Earthlike planet called Rhea where there are still trees and greens and animals, but only the rich or lucky ones can afford it, so everyone works his arse off to get there. The background story is cool, the effects are okay, there are some plotholes or weird/unlogical character actions and the film draws out a bit, it is not very action laden. Typical Euro-movie at that - still worth watching and related to this topic.

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Population control is needed. While disease should be cured, it should be a part of efforts to place proper control in its place, such as education and distribution of easy, safe contraception.

Knowledge is the essential prerequisite to everything. For example, healthy foods are easily available in the western countries, yet we don't eat them.

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

By the way - do any of you know the movie "Cargo" from 2009 I think. Its a swiss SciFi movie and I kind of liked it despite it haveing some logic holes. The english translation is a bit bad though. Its about a time when people have been forced off Earth because it has become too toxic and people live in space on space stations and in crappy cargo ships. Poor people are driven into jobs that suck by the wish of becoming colonizers of a newly discoverd Earthlike planet called Rhea where there are still trees and greens and animals, but only the rich or lucky ones can afford it, so everyone works his arse off to get there. The background story is cool, the effects are okay, there are some plotholes or weird/unlogical character actions and the film draws out a bit, it is not very action laden. Typical Euro-movie at that - still worth watching and related to this topic.

Am I the only one, or does this plot remind you of Titan A.E.

[Theorist]

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

Knowledge is the essential prerequisite to everything. For example, healthy foods are easily available in the western countries, yet we don't eat them.



]

They are a bit more expensive though. I mean I can still get healthier foods fairly cheap. But I stuff like kashi whole grain food cereal, fiber one granola bars, etc are significantly more expensive. Like a box of 10 kroger brand granola bars is about $1, while a box of 6 fiber one bars is about $2.37.

I personally very rarely eat fast food, but I'm guessing the reason a lot of people here do is because it's so easy to get. If fast food places had veggie burgers, or even if salads were on the dollar menu instead of being close to $4, people might get them instead of getting 4double cheese burgers for a dollar each.

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by Theorist

They are a bit more expensive though. I mean I can still get healthier foods fairly cheap. But I stuff like kashi whole grain food cereal, fiber one granola bars, etc are significantly more expensive. Like a box of 10 kroger brand granola bars is about $1, while a box of 6 fiber one bars is about $2.37.

Of course it's cheaper to produce low quality foods than it is to produce high quality foods, and then there are the market volumes to consider as there is usually more demand for easy and convenient meals, because people are busy doing other stuff to stop and cook their own meal. Personally I have a problem of not knowing what to eat, so I just eat something, and sometimes I just eat nuts and other small snacks. Besides, the more balanced your diet is, the less you hate to eat in total, though that's not something I can do, but I eat rather little anyways.

I personally very rarely eat fast food, but I'm guessing the reason a lot of people here do is because it's so easy to get. If fast food places had veggie burgers, or even if salads were on the dollar menu instead of being close to $4, people might get them instead of getting 4double cheese burgers for a dollar each.

It's convenient, fast and affordable, so why wouldn't people prefer fast food? The problem with fast food is that it's mostly cheap junk thrown together with some nifty spices added to it to make it at least taste as if it actually were food. Oh well ignorance is bliss, but the more I think about food, the less I want to eat it, other than vegetables, fruits, grain products and whatnot.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Theorist

I personally very rarely eat fast food, but I'm guessing the reason a lot of people here do is because it's so easy to get. If fast food places had veggie burgers, or even if salads were on the dollar menu instead of being close to $4, people might get them instead of getting 4double cheese burgers for a dollar each.

...except that taste is also a consideration in having them, and salads or vegetarian 'burgers' defeat the point to most people (and ironically, in many cases, have less nutritional value).

[Moco Loco]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

And if Earth has become uninhabitable for humans and they really do go away - it would take millions of years if at all to recover to some form of natural state.

I find this highly unlikely. By the time we're forced out, the environment may be very radically altered, but I feel certain Earth will still be full of life, though it has been affected by us, and I can really hardly imagine it taking millions of years to look like we were never here at all. The only scenario in which I can see us totally destroying life here (and permanently) is this that I mentioned in another of your threads, and even this is very far off if possible at all. Earth will become uninhabitable to us long before it is for the majority of species.