Earth 2100

[sterlingice]

So, I gotta admit I was curious since I'm not altogether convinced we're not screwed.

Anyone else watching?

SI

[DaddyTorgo]

?

[sterlingice]

It's some special on ABC with a fictional person talking about their "history" from 2000-2100.

The host was on The Daily Show talking about it yesterday so I was curious.

SI

[sabotai]

I'm watching, more out of curiosity to see just how extreme they push this possible future they made.

[DaddyTorgo]

aaah. interesting.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by sabotai

I'm watching, more out of curiosity to see just how extreme they push this possible future they made.

Me, too. I know they're going to play fast and loose with the science. That said, I also think we're a lot closer to screwing ourselves over than most people so my interest was naturally piqued.

SI

[Tigercat]

I don't see how anyone can think we aren't screwed sometime in the future, unless we develop true fussion power and master it.

[sterlingice]

So far, I think they've overplayed the environment because I think there is the possibility of water pipelines which they just dismissed away.

I think they've underplayed the corporate and economic possibilities, tho.

SI

[sterlingice]

To explain this is more or less this is the sense I get in my mind- not necessarily what we see on here tonight, mind you.

We have this race to see if our hubris kills us or if we can have a big enough globally scary event to wake people up. But of course the key is that said event has to leave enough of an infrastructure left not only for the world to go on but to combat all of the other problems out there.

We just feel like we're overleveraging everything resource-wise from land to water to energy to whatever. It's just like we did in the last 10 years in the economy, and hoping everything just continues on. But as soon as a couple of bad events happen at the same time, it can take the whole system down. Then we're all left sitting there going "if only X, Y, and Z didn't happen, we'd have been fine" but we know X, Y, and Z are all within the realm of happening.

SI

[Racer]

Is there supposed to be talking? All I hear is the background music.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Racer

Is there supposed to be talking? All I hear is the background music.

Yeah...

SI

[Racer]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Yeah...

SI

My ABC affiliate must be screwed up then (oddly commercials have talking).

[Racer]

Originally Posted by Galaril

I missed this does anyone know where I might watch it online?

+1. ABC/ABC News only has clips it seems.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by sabotai

I'm watching, more out of curiosity to see just how extreme they push this possible future they made.

Very extreme it appears to be

The year 2100 sounded like some sort of dystopian sci-fi novel.

[Karlifornia]

Thanks, capitalism.

Sincerely,
Earth

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Racer

+1. ABC/ABC News only has clips it seems.

Looks like it's on Hulu

SI

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Very extreme it appears to be

The year 2100 sounded like some sort of dystopian sci-fi novel.

Again, I think they overplayed quite a few elements. But the problem I have with people's views is that I could see almost any number of these things happen (not all- they get a little crazy) and even more than 1 is possible. And, like I said, they didn't even play with any possible economic scenarios- this was pretty much environment only.

But, again, we have such hubris to think that these are so far away or, my favorite, that we could solve any problem that comes up. So, rather than trying to do preventative measures that are good ideas whether or not these doomsdays scenarios come to pass, we seem to be content to wait until something dramatic happens to deal with it.

SI

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

But, again, we have such hubris to think that these are so far away or, my favorite, that we could solve any problem that comes up.

Coming from the opposite side, we have such hubris to think that we can really make a huge difference to the climate of the earth, and push the climate to places its never been before?

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

Coming from the opposite side, we have such hubris to think that we can really make a huge difference to the climate of the earth, and push the climate to places its never been before?

6 billion people doing a little of anything does a lot.

Plus one of the things we are really good at is terraforming. Not only that, but I don't care about if we are pushing it to extremes never seen before. That's not the boundary we should be worried about. The boundary is what levels we, as humans, can survive at. We're not going to be able to destroy the planet, but we sure as heck can make it uninhabitable for humans.

SI

[Tigercat]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

Coming from the opposite side, we have such hubris to think that we can really make a huge difference to the climate of the earth, and push the climate to places its never been before?

A rock of comparatively insignificant size can strike the planet and lay waste to the earth's entire biosphere. So yes, we as humans can do all kinds of things actively and passively to screw up any part of the Earth.

Life is fragile. Systems in which life develops and thrives are fragile. The suggestion that they are otherwise is very close minded.

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by Tigercat

A rock of comparatively insignificant size can strike the planet and lay waste to the earth's entire biosphere. So yes, we as humans can do all kinds of things actively and passively to screw up any part of the Earth.

Life is fragile. Systems in which life develops and thrives are fragile. The suggestion that they are otherwise is very close minded.

What else would you expect from a Rams fan

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by Tigercat

A rock of comparatively insignificant size can strike the planet and lay waste to the earth's entire biosphere. So yes, we as humans can do all kinds of things actively and passively to screw up any part of the Earth.

Life is fragile. Systems in which life develops and thrives are fragile. The suggestion that they are otherwise is very close minded.

Life as we know it is fragile. Look at places life thrives on earth. The whole climate change issue is a joke. Look at the temperatures that life has survived at on earth in the past. Heck, you can look at it even today.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

Life as we know it is fragile. Look at places life thrives on earth. The whole climate change issue is a joke. Look at the temperatures that life has survived at on earth in the past. Heck, you can look at it even today.

This is going to come off as somewhat glib as it's not how I feel about this at all, but on a stupidly visceral level, I think this can be summed up quite simply: "I don't care that life has survived on earth in the past. I care if *humans* can survive on the earth".

I love that there are crazy critters that can survive at the bottom of the ocean and in deserts and in the arctic. Those are great animals- they're really neat to see in zoos and aquariums or out in the wild, if one is fortunate enough to see them there. But if you screw up earth so it's closer to that than what it is now- we, humans, are all screwed.

SI

[Tigercat]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

Life as we know it is fragile. Look at places life thrives on earth. The whole climate change issue is a joke. Look at the temperatures that life has survived at on earth in the past. Heck, you can look at it even today.

And look at how hardy dinosaurs were, all kinds of species/family diversity under their order, and they were wiped out when their environment most likely changed with just one event.

Climate change "critics" like yourself do not understand, most people who believe in future climate change agree with you; the changes we are making to the environment aren't HUGE in the grand scheme of things. But again, it just doesn't take much. If we threw away all our technology and industry and tried to live simpler lives for the next 200 years, we would still be screwed because of simpler pollutants like rice patties.

Fusion power + some kind of atmospheric controlling technology = the only way we thrive on this planet for the long term. Well, perhaps minus some kind of horrible disease that kills off billions of us.

[fantom1979]

The real question is.....

Do I have my jet pack and flying car in 2100? They were promised to be 50 years ago, and it still has not been delivered.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by fantom1979

The real question is.....

Do I have my jet pack and flying car in 2100? They were promised to be 50 years ago, and it still has not been delivered.

I know what could get GM out of their financial woes!

SI

[thesloppy]

I count myself as someone who is a believer in 'Global Warming', as I have no doubt that industrial waste and pollution IS having an effect on the planet, and I I doubt it is a positive effect.

On the other hand, I often get caught up in Global Warming debates, because I am a HUGE skeptic of the climate sciences, especially as a predictive tool. Studying the climate is like studying the economy, you can't capture a bunch of 'em, stick 'em in a controlled environment, and perform tests on them. You can't isolate the environment, or the economy, you can ONLY observe it and how it reacts. Would you believe an economist if he told you he could paint an accurate picture of the 2100 economy? Personally, since no economists can predict with any accuracy, the state of the economy TOMORROW, I would take their input about the future with a mountain of salt. Same thing with the climate sciences, nobody believes the weatherman's 2-week forecast, but lots of folks will gulp down any 'doomsday scenario' that makes it's way onto the airways, without even the slightest question.

What are these climate doomsday scenarios based on? 'Models' and 'trends', baby....that is almost entirely what the climate sciences (again, like the economic sciences) based on. The problem with 'models' and 'trends' is that they are not 'hard data' so to speak, they're a collection of indicators like temperature and sea-level, tossed together with results that SOMEONE has determined are related to those indicators. Another problem with these trends and models is that they're often used to predict the climate hundreds of years in the future, or to relate the climate thousands of years in the past....but we have only had the technology (radar, sattelite photography, etc.) to construct, measure, and test these models accurately for the last 10-50 years, meaning that those models and trends are likely at most 50 years old, and to make predictions 100s or 1000s of years into the past or the future, you have to take these already innacurate, uncontrolled and relatively small, models and trends, and nest and fold themselves onto eachother hundreds or thousands of times.

Smells like snake oil to me.

[SFL Cat]

Nah. Won't watch until 2400. That's when Buck Rogers gets thawed out.

[Lathum]

I watched this and was pretty meh about it. Obviously they were going for worst case scenario.

The biggest problem I had is there wer no technological innovations. Yeah there was that damn around NY and that shit they sprayed into the atmosphere. But when you consider how far science has come in even the last 50 years let alone 91 I don't think you can assume all these bad things are going to happen without some breakthroughs in there as well.

It was like watching Starship Troopers. They can travel through interstellar space but still use bullets to fight giant bugs.

[Buccaneer]

Apparently, a major non-skeptic (Mojib Latif, lead author of UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), has recently stated that in the next 10-20 years, there will be a cooling trend (and then warm back up again).

World's climate could cool first, warm later - environment - 04 September 2009 - New Scientist

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Apparently, a major non-skeptic (Mojib Latif, lead author of UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), has recently stated that in the next 10-20 years, there will be a cooling trend (and then warm back up again).

World's climate could cool first, warm later - environment - 04 September 2009 - New Scientist

That is interesting Buc thanks....I think we all can agree that no matter what side of the global warming debate people sit at that we can only hope this is true. It would be great news if a lot of the warming we have seen recently was caused by "natural" climatical cycles like the NOA. I was a meteorological officer years ago in the Air Force and the NOA has been pointed to in the past as a factor in GW. I am still a bit skeptical and find it real hard to believe that all the global warming "experts"were so far off the mark especially with scope and magnitude of climate changes we have seen in such a short period of time. But like I said we can hope this is true.

[Buccaneer]

But it still doesn't excuse not taking personal responsibilities. My household has reduced our carbon footprint about 40% in the past 5 years. We are driving 50% less, increased the gas mileage on one of our vehicles by 24%, replaced our frig and water heater, switched out several outdoor light bulbs, watched for vampire electrical use and recycled more things. The fear is that the government will impose unequal/inequitable punitive legislation, not so much on making a difference but because they can.

[sterlingice]

Really? For a punitive reason and because they can?

SI

[Buccaneer]

The House of Representatives recently passed the ACES bill

American Clean Energy and Security Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The bill does not offer local ratepayers sufficient price protections, benefits certain regions of the country at the expense of other communities, relies on unrealistic targets and timelines, and does very little to actually address emissions.