'the Earth From The Air'. Too Pessimistic?

[Colmc54]

Broadcast tonight on BBC 4 HD some very good cameramen produced some stunning HD video clips of our planet from the air. However this was just the backdrop for the real meat and potatoes of the programme, as was made clear by the US lady's continuous diatribe against the devastating damage the human infestation is doing to mother earth.

At the end the people who were putting the words in her mouth appeared to realise that they made us all so depressed that we had all become reconciled to global ecological collapse and the cascade towards human extinction that we were all now accepting this as a certainty!

So, in the last few minutes they decided to cite a few not insignificant examples of more environmentally and humanitarian progress being made around the world.

imho it was perhaps too little too late. I couldn't help feeling at the end that the dye is pretty much cast and it is now only a matter of time.

I would be happy to be persuaded otherwise.

[modeller]

I don't know much about the content as the background music overwhelmed the female commentary . OK so it wasn't quite as bad as that but I nearly gave up on it.

[Colmc54]

You nearly gave up on the programme or the content or the 'message'?

[Hypognosis]

I didn't see the programme but the theme is familiar and I think total extinction for H.sapiens is overstating the case.

If civilisation collapsed, people might well become extinct in the Americas, where the 'survivalist' types will have guns and probably end up killing each other over one another's hoards or dying for want of medical facilities.

The tough part is that the oil and coal reserves upon which the modern world was built took millions of years to 'brew' into a useable form. The unspent reserves are probably not enough for a second attempt, even assuming that the world's libraries aren't lost too.

Zero carbon renewables are within our grasp but still under-developed. I don't understand why the oil companies aren't exploiting them to the full, with all the money they have, sloshing around.

[Colmc54]

I disagree with you. Human extinction, largely at the hands of our own species is, as our resources run out, a slam dunk.

Me, being a human, I don't like the prospect. However, as a scientist I was reconciled to the idea of human extinction a long time ago. Basically we are too primitive.

Life will survive of course and guess what, the next species like us will have a massive advantage over us- namely they will be able to learn from our moronic mistakes!

There are billions of years before the sun misbehaves. Many other species can therefore have their chance. This is our chance- and we're pissing it away!

[Hypognosis]

The point I sidetracked myself away from is that, should we ever suffer a dramatic population crash, the survival chances of those who can cope without electronic aids arw quite good. It might be at very basic subsistence level, if single-handed, or they could sustain a pre-industrial lifestyle with limited education but greater numbers of people to spread the workload. Without the teamwork, we're reduced to cavemen.

[scowie]

There is absolutely nothing scientific about the idea of human extinction. Scientists are obviously just as capable of jumping onto bandwagons as the rest of us. :)

The human race has managed to live through multiple ice ages lasting 100,000 years at a time. The warmer interglacial period we find ourselves in now typically lasts only around 15,000-20,000 years. Humans are a very resilient species. It would take some over-the-top sci-fi movie style cataclysm intentionally carried out by some megalomaniac evil genius to have a chance of wiping ourselves out. It isn't gonna happen.

The fossil fuel theory is probably wrong anyway. Oil and gas may well be renewable natural resources continually produced under the earth. Saturn's moon Titan is full of hydrocarbons and I seriously doubt they came from dead creatures: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html
Used-up oil reserves have been naturally refilling themselves. We are not gonna run out of "fossil" fuels any time soon, if at all. We may have to cut down out usage but i personally am not pessimistic enough to think we can't do that without killing ourselves.

The earth itself is just as resilient as we are. There is no danger of "ecological collapse". The earth is perfectly capable of supporting the 11 billion humans our population is expected to peak at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/11/hans-rosling-dont-panic-theres-no-population-bomb/?oo=0
^ now that was a refreshingly sensible documentary! :)

[Hypognosis]

@scowie

//The fossil fuel theory is probably wrong anyway. //

Can you expand on this, by identifying which particular theory you find unbelievable? Is it the whole thing about how organic matter is slowly transformed into petrochemicals or is it the bit about the millions of years taken to accumulate rotting vegetation/marine life and the additional millions of years to complete the chemical breakdown?

//Oil and gas may well be renewable natural resources continually produced under the earth.//

Citing whose research there?

// Saturn's moon Titan is full of hydrocarbons and I seriously doubt they came from dead creatures: //

Correct. Carbon is spewed out by supernovas and hydrogen is what gets secondary star formation started. Doesn't take much to get them forming compounds, like methane.

//Used-up oil reserves have been naturally refilling themselves. //

Pardon? They pump mud or water into oil wells, to get the last dregs out. No way for them to 'refill'!
Unless you'd care to cite us an example.


//We are not gonna run out of "fossil" fuels any time soon, if at all. //

The fact we -are- running low is what makes it economically viable to extract from low-grade sources like shale and run tar-sands goo, from Canada, through a catalytic cracker, in Texas, via 1000+ miles of _heated_ pipeline!

Back in 1973, no-one would have envisaged such lengths being resorted to. Indeed, that fuel crisis suddenly made offshore exploration economically worthwhile and triggered discovery of huge new reserves.

These were forecast to comfortably outlast our lifetimes but that was before enormous populations in south America, India, SE Asia and China decided that it was their birthright to drive a car, like those in the developed world do…

//We may have to cut down out (our?) usage //

No faecal material, Mr Holmes.

[scowie]

Refilling oil fields: http://www.rense.com/general63/refil.htm

[Hypognosis]

@scowie,

thanks. Heat and pressure at extreme depth would, indeed, work like a cat cracker, so the closing paragraph makes sense to me. Pity it's just one website in the wilderness, or this would have been all over the news, back in 2002.

BP's lawyers would be overjoyed to see this claim though:-

"Roberts added that natural seepage in places like the Gulf of Mexico "far exceeds anything that gets spilled" by oil tankers and other sources."

[Colmc54]

So far, despite seductive responses for which I am grateful, I am not persuaded that our infestation and abuse of this planet will not lead to our extinction.

First of all-climate change. Despite the fact that some of the work of the International Panel on Climate Change being discredited, an irrefutable case for anthropogenic global climate change is being built up by the scientific community.

It was interesting tonight watching a Horizon programme about a massive Tsunami heading for New York how one of their own emergency management team said that because nobody can see anything different around them they just ignore the warnings until it's too late.

Ecosystem destruction. Our survivalists will be all tooled up with the skills they need to survive in ecosystems that exist now but perhaps no longer once the cascade of our demise continues on it's path. What good is fishing boat on the Grand Banks for instance? A place where passengers on ships once said the sea was almost solid with fish, where now there are none.

Then there is globalization. Do you think starving diseased people are going to sit in their huts and die? No they will get on jets or any other means of transportation they can to get out and find salvation in the more affluent areas of the planet. The recent Ebola epidemic is a good example of what is to come.

War. Resource wars have been going for some time. In the Middle East, while not underestimating the brain-destroying effects of religious or political brainwashing, water and oil are already known triggers. To me it is inevitable that at some stage nuclear weapons will be deployed. Elsewhere we have psychopathic dynasties like North Korea all tooled up with nukes ready to launch them if anyone tries to take their puppets and playthings away from them. But what if the puppets themselves rise up. A nuclear tantrum will result.

Yes there is Bacillus radiodurans a bug that seems immune to radioactivity, probably by having a tiny and well protected genome. In other words the exact opposite to us with our mytochondria driven massive genome that allowed us to be human in the first place.

Yes pockets of humanity might survive the collapse of human civilization for some time, even centuries but eventually isolation and the effects of inbreeding, disease, malnutrition, and conflict will lead to our extinction.

I have recently become a grandfather through the marriage of my step-son to a beautiful Columbian girl. My wife and I are so thrilled with the little baby. They even want me to be her godfather!

It won't hopefully all turn to *** in her lifetime but who can be sure? I just keep my mouth shut and hope for the best.

The Royal Society were wanting an answer to the question of whether the Great Auk had become extinct, so a call for evidence was issued. This led to the shooting of the last pair of Great Auks left on the planet, the corpses of which were duly delivered to The Royal Society!