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Simon

Mon Oct 29 2007, 11:58PM

Registered Member #32 Joined: Sat Feb 04 2006, 08:58AM
Location: Australia
Posts: 549

I had a go, out of curiosity. 2.2 planets. (I don't have a car and live right near to my work and uni. I also don't eat much meat.)

I wonder how accurate this is?

(By the way, for me not having a car is kind of financial, kind of convenience. I'd rather walk and keep fit than work the extra hours to keep a car going.)

Steve Conner

Tue Oct 30 2007, 09:53AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Wee, I got 1.9 planets. Who says I'm not a hippie

HV Enthusiast

Tue Oct 30 2007, 11:00AM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

Crap! 11 planets?

Anyways, i agree with Hawking. I think we've got a 100 years or so before the end and that we are already past the point of no return.
I mean seriously, with the amount of population and growth we have right now, even if we eliminated cars and industry completely, we still be screwed. There just isn't enough resources to support the kinds of populations that are predicted in the next 100-200 years.

What we need here is a good old fashioned black plague or new strain of the 1918 influenza. Nature always has a way!

Carbon_Rod

Tue Oct 30 2007, 05:14PM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

EVR, wow...

lol

They should also ask if people use nitrous oxide (NOS) or methane producing fertilizers. Although only 8% of estimated emissions contain NOS it is over 310 times worse than CO2 as a green house gas.

Marko

Tue Oct 30 2007, 06:00PM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145

Anyways, i agree with Hawking. I think we've got a 100 years or so before the end and that we are already past the point of no return.

That's other thing... we'l have to adapt to other energy sources, but that doesn't really mean anything like the end of world. Population will also probably self-limit itself at one point.

I'm not really worried about greenhouse effect thing. If there was enough overall carbon on earth to cause any irreversible runaway effect, earth would probably never evolve to support life at all. I don't really care if average temperature is going to increase for 1C in 100 years.
There will be ice ages too.

I believe that earth is going to be blown up by nuclear bombs. And I think that's about the top of the list.

AndrewM

Tue Oct 30 2007, 06:01PM

Registered Member #49 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:05AM
Location: Bigass Pile of Penguins
Posts: 362

5.7 planets, and my license is suspended so I haven't driven a single mile in months....

Frankly, if animals didn't want to be eaten, they wouldn't grow up to be so delicious.

Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Tue Oct 30 2007, 11:34PM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735

4.7, no... its waaaayyy off. If I were in charge we wouldn't have plastic packaging madness, factories pumping out boxes and boxes of toothpics every second, or 6 hardware stores with the same crap within walking distance of each other.

I'm all for consumership, but there's so much competition now that its wasteful, and I don't care much for waste or any institution throwing away perfectly good junk.

Also I don't understand why people crush perfectly good PE bottles for recycling, just wash them out and refill, now that's recycling without wasting energy!

Coyote Wilde

Tue Oct 30 2007, 11:34PM

Registered Member #175 Joined: Tue Feb 14 2006, 09:32PM
Location: Sudbury, ON
Posts: 111

EastVoltResearch wrote ...

Crap! 11 planets?
... I think we've got a 100 years or so before the end and that we are already past the point of no return.

I guess that's the only way to justify 11 planets.

I guess you're not hoping for grandkids, then...

You know you can download the smallpox genome online? Just like that? According to what I've read, it would only take a competent lab (estimated) 2-4 months to replicate the full virus, and there are some public-domain tricks to make it even more virulent and get around vaccines (tested with mousepox, peer reviewed and published.)
-- so mother nature is going to get a little help with the epidemic, methinks. o_o
Antibacterial-resistant bugs are probably going to be making a comeback, too-- TB was for many years the world's number one killer, after all.

UN was predicting we level out with between 9 and 12 Billion people... according to Worldwatch, if it's 9 billion, we can all afford to eat like Italians. That's less meat than the average American, but it's quality, not quantity. :P
12 Billion, and if we all do share-alike we end up eating like India does now. But that's okay, because my mouth will be too fried to handle any more than that.

Edit: When did Stephen Hawking say that? Last I heard he was urging the human race to reach into space to ensure the survival of our civilization, not preaching doom and gloom. Or do I have the wrong Hawking? People seem to have noticed the space Hawking-- the DOD is finally looking into Solar Power Satellites again. Add asteroid mines and we're off and running... while we're at it that lets us have a backup of civilization in case of atomic/biological war, pandemic or et cetera.

This quiz is sort of eye-opening for me. I mean, I knew, abstractly that the average citizen of the west was using far more is tenable, but I didn't have a figure to peg to myself-- even if this quiz is too vague to give anything but a ballpark number.
The way I think we should look at it is this: look at your number of Earths, and think "Out of six billion people, am I really worth more than any other 2/3/11?" -- if you can honestly say "yes" to that, well, then you've got amazing self-esteem... if not, then I guess you have to look at cutting back. I know I will.
We need a better quiz, though--finer details, and more parameters, like if you're buying your power from renewable sources (and how much you use to the kWh), or investing heavily in green research, or involved directly in said research, then it should count towards your total as well.

Edit 2: I agree entirely with Hazmatt. It would be grand if we could legislate that there exist but 2 or three standard sizes of bottles that could be collected, autoclaved, and refilled-- glass as well as PE (perhaps we'd need mostly glass, to survive repeated autoclave exposure)

HV Enthusiast

Wed Oct 31 2007, 12:29AM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

AM wrote ...

5.7 planets, and my license is suspended so I haven't driven a single mile in months....

Frankly, if animals didn't want to be eaten, they wouldn't grow up to be so delicious.

Well, if god didn't want us to eat animals, then he shouldn't have made them out of meat!

uzzors2k

Wed Oct 31 2007, 09:04PM

Registered Member #95 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:57PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 1308

I got 2.3 planets, which IMO means the world population needs to decrease by a ratio 2.3. If the population stabilizes at 9~12 billion every country in the world will become a third world country (not literally, but shouldn't civilization progress and not regress?). With the world's resources already being stretched thin and billions living in extreme poverty, I think population growth is the largest problem the world faces today, and not global warming.

I believe that with a population of 2 billion max, ideally everyone in the world could have a worthy living standard, no matter which country one lives in. Of course this is just my opinion, which has no scientific basis.

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