THE Earth in 2100 Thread (merged)

[Sixstrings]

For anyone who missed the original airing...

Go to Hulu.com and search "Earth 2100"

I came up with 2 parts, each about 45 mins long...that must be the whole thing.

Oh duh.. thanks biofuel. It's funny, I use Hulu but for some reason thought ABC wasn't a part of it.

[threadbear]

I'm with Aaron--excellent show. Thought it was fantastic. Totally understand those who fear that environmental problems, will lead to a New World Order. More and more, though, it seems to me that we have a One World Order already, under oil. If international bonds already forged through Kyoto, are strengthened, and strict rules and regulations imposed, dissenting countries dealt with, where is the harm?

[Sixstrings]

I'm with Aaron--excellent show. Thought it was fantastic. Totally understand those who fear that environmental problems, will lead to a New World Order. More and more, though, it seems to me that we have a One World Order already, under oil. If international bonds already forged through Kyoto, are strengthened, and strict rules and regulations imposed, dissenting countries dealt with, where is the harm?

You're right. We already have a one world order anyway, and it's called global capitalism.

Anyway, I watched the show on Hulu -- very good. I liked the anime style. I'm surprised this ABC program was so brutally honest -- that despite all our ingenuity, the future is likely to be a relentless grind into a Dark Age. Gee whiz, brutal honesty about mass die off, on ABC of all places!

I wonder about that timeline.. 80 odd years sounds about right for worst-case global warming scenarios. The program didn't focus too much on peak oil.. the question we're always considering on this forum, of course, is whether the downside of the oil curve will wreck society before the weather has a chance too.

[Narz]

Thanks biofuel, will watch later tonight.

[dohboi]

"I also enjoyed the part about convoys of cars going across the midwest"

Yeah, but I found this a bit unrealistic. Will there be gas available at that point for a mass convoy? Much more possible here on peak oil. But in general pretty stunning stuff for prime time on a major network. Maybe this will be ABC's nitch in the very competitive market--doomer porn!

[Narz]

I thought it was overly optimistic with NYC as an ecotopia in 2060. It gave lip service to collapse in some places effecting everyone everywhere but it then showed business continuing mostly as usual (except for Las Vegas & Miami) for fifty more years.

[Kylon]

I would like to possibly watch part of it.

[Sixstrings]

I thought it was overly optimistic with NYC as an ecotopia in 2060. It gave lip service to collapse in some places effecting everyone everywhere but it then showed business continuing mostly as usual (except for Las Vegas & Miami) for fifty more years.

Well, from a global warming standpoint, wouldn't places like New York state be the benificiaries of a warmer earth? (as in much better farming in these northern climes)

[stonecypher]

Both Part 1 and Part 2 can be watched here:

http://www.hulu.com/search?query=Earth+2100

[Lore]

I believe there is a general misconception that northern latitudes will somehow be a beneficiary of a warmer climate.

If temperatures do increase by several degrees, as now seems likely, by the turn of the century it will leave little time to adapt crops to quickly changing growing zones. Not to mention the requirements for certain soil and water conditions by new plant varieties not native to the area.

Compound this with the probability that weather conditions will become increasingly more chaotic producing less than favorable growing conditions. In addition, evasive new weed varieties and pests without the resources to control either.

[mos6507]

Wow, two doomer porns in one week. We must really be close to the end now for all these documentaries to be coming out at once. I don't know whether to celebrate or shake in my boots. It's got the usual skirting around population control at the end. Sorry, social justice and being generous to the poor won't save us.

[VMarcHart]

...two doomer porns in one week. We must really be close to the end now for all these documentaries to be coming out at once.

You know, Hollywood releases by theme/category/genre; you have all the vampires, then all the floodings, the meteors, the time travelings, the blonde romantic comedies, etc. It's just a phase. By the Superbowl it will all be BAU.

Would a Mod please combine these 2 threads? Thanks!
http://peakoil.com/population-carrying- ... 53563.html

[mos6507]

...two doomer porns in one week. We must really be close to the end now for all these documentaries to be coming out at once.

You know, Hollywood releases by theme/category/genre; you have all the vampires, then all the floodings, the meteors, the time travelings, the blonde romantic comedies, etc. It's just a phase. By the Superbowl it will all be BAU.

I know that, but Home comes from europe, not Hollywood.

Documentaries are kind of a different beast anyway. I think the general trend in documentaries is, as the barrier to entry has lowered, that there is kind of a blurry line between a documentary, propaganda, and quackery. These days anybody can make something that looks like a documentary and get it onto Youtube. I don't think people are very good at distinguishing between well researched information and propaganda. Too often J6P will disregard stuff like Earth 2100 or Home as propaganda while believing something like this as genuine. Ultimately people can build their own library of videos and web pages as a way to validate their existing beliefs. Whether these would pass fact-checking is a different matter entirely.

But when you start to get high profile docs come out from different sources all saying we're f*cked, I'd say there is reason to take it seriously.

[Sixstrings]

...two doomer porns in one week. We must really be close to the end now for all these documentaries to be coming out at once.

You know, Hollywood releases by theme/category/genre; you have all the vampires, then all the floodings, the meteors, the time travelings, the blonde romantic comedies, etc. It's just a phase. By the Superbowl it will all be BAU.

I know that, but Home comes from europe, not Hollywood.

Documentaries are kind of a different beast anyway. I think the general trend in documentaries is, as the barrier to entry has lowered, that there is kind of a blurry line between a documentary, propaganda, and quackery. These days anybody can make something that looks like a documentary and get it onto Youtube. I don't think people are very good at distinguishing between well researched information and propaganda. Too often J6P will disregard stuff like Earth 2100 or Home as propaganda while believing something like this as genuine. Ultimately people can build their own library of videos and web pages as a way to validate their existing beliefs. Whether these would pass fact-checking is a different matter entirely.

But when you start to get high profile docs come out from different sources all saying we're f*cked, I'd say there is reason to take it seriously.

Curiously, "Home" is funded by the PPR group, a large French holding company which owns Gucci and Puma among many other subsidiaries. According to Wikipedia, PPR is "multinational holding company specializing in retail shops and luxury brands. The company was founded in 1963 by the billionaire businessman François Pinault and is now run by his son François-Henri Pinault."

I say this is curious, because without earth-raping consumerist global capitalism, PPR group wouldn't have a business.

Other than that little oddity, the documentary has gorgeous visuals (looks great in hd on hdtv). The pacing is very slow though, and I have to admit I literally fell fast asleep halfway through.

I found it interesting that the documentary presented peak oil as just matter of fact -- along with peak coal, etc. I may have misunderstood, but I think it said all these fossil fuels will be exhausted by the end of the century? And it's not just the peak on fossil fuels, it's a peak on trees, fish, and God forbid anything ever goes wrong with the algae in the oceans cuz then we can't even freakin breathe (lots of interesting facts in the docu, like sea algae prodcues 70% of our oxygen!).

You know, a lot of us are always going back and forth about the timeline for TEOTWAWKI. If the timeline is in fact by century's end, then these issues aren't the kind of immediate emergency that one would prep for by storing food and gardening and all that.

But the more I look into this, the more I realize that yes, I may be able to live "normally" for the rest of my life but without a doubt TEOTWAWKI will be a reality for the next generation.

It's awe-inspring, when you think about it. After 200,000 years of our species being on this planet, those of us alive today are literally the last generation of humans to enjoy the full bounties of the Earth. The planet will be a very different place going forward. It will take a million years of evolution to rebuild all the biodiversity that we're presently killing off to extinction.

No wonder we have existential angst. We're all living in the twilight of advanced civilization, and earth may never again see another.

[dohboi]

Well put. But of course we cannot and will never know how long the earth will take to recover the level of species diversity it had before humans started our series of major extinction events. After the other great mass extinction events, it took in the range of millions to tens of millions of years for recovery. But humans are messing with life on so many levels, it could take another order of magnitude or so longer which pushes us into the time frame where the expanding sun makes any life on earth impossible.

Remember, human-driven extinctions started at least 100,00 years ago and happened every time humans entered a new ecosystem. Agriculture, starting about 10,000 years ago represented an even fuller war on anything that wasn't a crop or animal domesticated for human use. The age of European colonialism introduced an increasingly lethal form of life-annihilating technologies and ideologies to the globe, culminating with our current rapacious global industrial capitalism.

Along the way, humans brought thousands (at least) of species into areas they never would have entered (or only after many millennia, with time for adjustments by local populations), often with devastating results for local species.

Industrial production of chemicals has introduced tens of thousands of compounds that never would have been produced and that existing species have no way of breaking down or using.

We have unearthed and generated massive quantities of radioactive materials, with much more on the way if start a new round of nuclear plants or get into a nuclear war.

We have undermined the ozone shield that protects life from over-exposure to ultraviolet radation.

We have directly destroyed ecosystems, not only through agriculture, but through building cities, suburbs, paving over living soil with roads and parking lots...setting fires...dumping slag...strip mining...

We have fished most major food fish to depletion probably setting many on a path to extinction.

We have, through fishing, pollution and other means, destroyed most of aquatic life and we're still going at it.

We have created great death zones in the ocean where essentially nothing can live.

We have scattered vast quantities of plastics, including what amounts to nearly a new floating mini-continent of plastic in the Pacific, which actively kills creatures, and as if very slowly breaks down into smaller and smaller indigestible pieces continues to kill smaller and smaller creatures.

We have interrupted migratory patterns and avenues for species to move in responses to the other shocks we give them by creating vast monocultures (modern industrial farms), huge paved areas, highways...

All of these and more created what most biologists by the nineties recognized as the sixth great mass extinction event. But it turns out we were just barely getting started. The effects of global warming are just barely revving up.

A very sudden change in global temperatures by 6+degrees C (a sure thing now, according to more and more researchers) will make it impossible for most species (those that have survived our depredations up to now, that is) to survive in their current habitat, and as noted, we have made it extremely difficult for even mobile species to migrate to new areas. And of course for the many species adapted to mountain habitats, they will keep moving further up the mountain till there's no mountain left.

But CO2 isn't just overheating the planet; it's also acidifying the upper levels of the oceans where the plankton live that create most of our oxygen.

...I could go on, but I've gone too long already and we all know the drill by now. Humans are at war with the living earth, and we are close to a near total victory. At this point, even if we laid down our weapons (stopped extracting fossil fuels...) and our lives (stop having kids and extending life of the dying, or something more dramatic), the processes we have started, especially runaway global warming, would almost surely continue to wipe out most life on earth and existing infrastructure and pollution would continue to kill and to hamper adaption to a rapidly changing world.

As Elizabeth Kolbert pointed out in her recent article in The New Yorker, the asteroid that caused the K-T extinction event (if that was what did it) was basically a really bad afternoon in the history of life on earth. We've been a bad 100,000 years, with the last century being the worst of all.

And yes, it is awe inspiring in its way, I guess.

But don't count on getting by unscathed. When the summer north polar ice cap totally melts in the next few months or years, it will create havoc with the climate at least in the northern hemisphere and with the ocean currents and sea life (though of course companies are salivating at the chance to access yet more fossil fuels and other resources and transport corridors).
link

[Sixstrings]

Well put. But of course we cannot and will never know how long the earth will take to recover the level of species diversity it had before humans started our series of major extinction events. After the other great mass extinction events, it took in the range of millions to tens of millions of years for recovery. But humans are messing with life on so many levels, it could take another order of magnitude or so longer which pushes us into the time frame where the expanding sun makes any life on earth impossible.

Remember, human-driven extinctions started at least 100,00 years ago and happened every time humans entered a new ecosystem. Agriculture, starting about 10,000 years ago represented an even fuller war on anything that wasn't a crop or animal domesticated for human use. The age of European colonialism introduced an increasingly lethal form of life-annihilating technologies and ideologies to the globe, culminating with our current rapacious global industrial capitalism.

Along the way, humans brought thousands (at least) of species into areas they never would have entered (or only after many millennia, with time for adjustments by local populations), often with devastating results for local species.

Industrial production of chemicals has introduced tens of thousands of compounds that never would have been produced and that existing species have no way of breaking down or using.

We have unearthed and generated massive quantities of radioactive materials, with much more on the way if start a new round of nuclear plants or get into a nuclear war.

We have undermined the ozone shield that protects life from over-exposure to ultraviolet radation.

We have directly destroyed ecosystems, not only through agriculture, but through building cities, suburbs, paving over living soil with roads and parking lots...setting fires...dumping slag...strip mining...

We have fished most major food fish to depletion probably setting many on a path to extinction.

We have, through fishing, pollution and other means, destroyed most of aquatic life and we're still going at it.

We have created great death zones in the ocean where essentially nothing can live.

We have scattered vast quantities of plastics, including what amounts to nearly a new floating mini-continent of plastic in the Pacific, which actively kills creatures, and as if very slowly breaks down into smaller and smaller indigestible pieces continues to kill smaller and smaller creatures.

We have interrupted migratory patterns and avenues for species to move in responses to the other shocks we give them by creating vast monocultures (modern industrial farms), huge paved areas, highways...

All of these and more created what most biologists by the nineties recognized as the sixth great mass extinction event. But it turns out we were just barely getting started. The effects of global warming are just barely revving up.

A very sudden change in global temperatures by 6+degrees C (a sure thing now, according to more and more researchers) will make it impossible for most species (those that have survived our depredations up to now, that is) to survive in their current habitat, and as noted, we have made it extremely difficult for even mobile species to migrate to new areas. And of course for the many species adapted to mountain habitats, they will keep moving further up the mountain till there's no mountain left.

But CO2 isn't just overheating the planet; it's also acidifying the upper levels of the oceans where the plankton live that create most of our oxygen.

...I could go on, but I've gone too long already and we all know the drill by now. Humans are at war with the living earth, and we are close to a near total victory. At this point, even if we laid down our weapons (stopped extracting fossil fuels...) and our lives (stop having kids and extending life of the dying, or something more dramatic), the processes we have started, especially runaway global warming, would almost surely continue to wipe out most life on earth and existing infrastructure and pollution would continue to kill and to hamper adaption to a rapidly changing world.

As Elizabeth Kolbert pointed out in her recent article in The New Yorker, the asteroid that caused the K-T extinction event (if that was what did it) was basically a really bad afternoon in the history of life on earth. We've been a bad 100,000 years, with the last century being the worst of all.

And yes, it is awe inspiring in its way, I guess.

But don't count on getting by unscathed. When the summer north polar ice cap totally melts in the next few months or years, it will create havoc with the climate at least in the northern hemisphere and with the ocean currents and sea life (though of course companies are salivating at the chance to access yet more fossil fuels and other resources and transport corridors).
link

Exactly. Recovery from mass extinction takes a VERY long time. It's not as simple a matter as a depleted fish stock rebounding.. if most of the earth's species become extinct, then the only recovery is via the slow process of evolution and the emergence of entirely new species.

This happened after the dinosaurs, of course. The little rat-like mammals survived that extinction and slowly branched out to repopulate the earth, from the whales to us.

[VMarcHart]

...when you start to get high profile docs come out from different sources all saying we're f*cked, I'd say there is reason to take it seriously.

Set your recorders, folks: National Geographic - Easter Island

...a tale of ingenious achievement, environmental catastrophe, and brutal social breakdown that remains a haunting lesson for all of us, similarly trapped on an island planet of our own.

[vision-master]

I disagree.

Look at Mt Saint Helens eruption.

The ecosystem recovered way quicker than the x'perts figured.

Evolution, more mainstream brainwashing.

[mos6507]

IMHO, there is a distinction between the natural ebb and flow of change in the natural world and a mass extinction. The natural world left to its own devices is not static. There is quite a bit of jockeying for position and changing of the guard in nature. So I'm not sure I'd claim that humans started causing a "mass extinction" 100,000 years ago. To do that is to basically impugn our entire species from our inception when all we had to work with were chipped stones. I'd like to think we have a niche we can fill without destroying the earth by design. If we wind up causing a few extinctions in our wake, I'd chalk that up to "making room" for us to flourish just as must have been the case with many other species. But doing what we're doing now is on a far different scale.

[dohboi]

Yes, our niche was in Africa where animals had evolved along with our increasing abilities as hunters and learned to fear and flee us. That is why Africa is still the place where you can find more large fierce animals than anywhere else in the world.

But once modern humans left this homeland, we spread as an exotic alien species wiping out mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, various large marsupials in Australia...This was the first major wave of human-caused extinction we know of. Whether you want to call it "mass" is perhaps a matter of semantics. It certainly did not reach the top six yet, but it could be seen as the beginning of the current, on-going anthropogenic great extinction event.