"Earth is Full" by Tom Friedman

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Orick said:
LIB - I was beginning to think Wendy & I were the only ones believing governments (plural - not just ours) have a role to play in maintaining our planet's resources.

As for the discussion about there being room for the population, I don't disagree.  There is lots of room.  The problem comes in trying to maintain a reasonable & healthy life for all those folks.  As China and India (not to mention Africa, eventually and others as well) move ahead with their greater demand for all the things we take for granted, and if those feeling unthreatened now were still around, I would expect to hear a different response - some good, some bad, but probably few would still feel the same.  If we are lucky, new technologies will save our butts, but we could just as easily be grasshoppers fiddling the summer away.
 
Molaker said:
As for the discussion about there being room for the population, I don't disagree.  There is lots of room. 

The problem isn't the quantity of available space, it's the quality of the available space. There are lots of places where people can't live - Antarctica (too cold) and deserts (not enough water) come to mind. Take a look around the U.S. There's a lot of empty space but people don't live there because people either can't or don't want to. The quality space is filled up with more wanting their piece of the good pie. What is it they say in real estate - location, location, location.

Wendy
 
Why would anyone take anything the NYT prints as fact?

I long ago (actually about 20 years ago) stopped getting the NYT in the mail for the reason that more often than not what I was reading was pure propaganda, speculation, distorted, unacurate or just "Politically Correct"..

In fact I have learned to put anything that I read into a thought process that goes someting like, "does this sound reasonable, does the writer have an agenda, if any figures, statements of facts are shown, what is their source, does the article answer Who, What, When, Where, How and Why"?

Very few pieces in the NYT match my requirements, and many were just plain wrong before I stopped reading the Times.

I use the same measure with any other media source also.
 
Bob Maxwell said:
Management not doom is what's called for.

I just finished yesterday a rereading of Ton Clancy's "Rainbow 6." Two observations; 1. it's the best description of Seal Team 3 and that the units training and use of spec ops for Usama. 2. There are environmental jihadists as well as scientific, economical, political and religious literalists.

I just saw the guy who formed and named Seal team 6 and when asked why pick 6 he said to flummox the Russians. He said they knew the Russians were all ways carefully watching Seal 1 and 2 so they decided to skip to 6 to let them try and figure out where were 3,4,5.  ;D
 
Rancher Will said:
Why would anyone take anything the NYT prints as fact?

I long ago (actually about 20 years ago) stopped getting the NYT in the mail for the reason that more often than not what I was reading was pure propaganda, speculation, distorted, unacurate or just "Politically Correct"..
An awful lot like Fox "Noise".
 
Molaker said:
An awful lot like Fox "Noise".
...and NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, NYT, USA Today, AP, ...
Effective filters required to be used for any and all media.
I follow the track provided by Rancher Will
Rancher Will said:
"does this sound reasonable, does the writer have an agenda, if any figures, statements of facts are shown, what is their source, does the article answer Who, What, When, Where, How and Why"?

 
All of human existence in the last 1/2 and inch of our fingernail.

Let me explain, if you take your hands and spread them all they way out as far as they can reach.  Starting at the tip of your left hand the earth came into existence, stretching all the way across your body is the whole of time in earth's existence.  All of Earth's history that contains humans fits in the last 1/2 inch of your right fingernail.  We truely are that insignificant.

We are here now, we are going to go away and the earth will still be here when we are gone.  At the same time we have always been here and will always be here, on an atomic level at least.  The atoms that are you, used to be something else, and when they are done being you they will go be something else that is not only not you, but probably not what they were before they were you. 

Earth is just as full now as it was when it was formed and as it will be when we are gone.  Atomically that is.

Jeff
 
jeffbrown said:
Earth is just as full now as it was when it was formed and as it will be when we are gone.  Atomically that is.
What about the stuff we threw off into outer space?  Just asking. ::)
 
Molaker said:
What about the stuff we threw off into outer space?  Just asking. ::)

Made up for by all the meteorites that hit the atmosphere every day.
 
wgb1 said:
But most meteorites are but a mere grain of sand.

The earth has been collecting those grains of sand for 4.5 billion years.  That's a lot of beach :)
 
wgb1 said:
But most meteorites are but a mere grain of sand.
OK, which is it?  Either the earth is getting emptier from the stuff we shoot outta here or getting fuller from the grains of sand meteorites or "someone up there" is carefully measuring the ins and outs and ups and downs so it balances out. ???  Oh, I know.  It's being regulated by the government. ;D
 
jeffbrown said:
We are here now, we are going to go away and the earth will still be here when we are gone.  At the same time we have always been here and will always be here, on an atomic level at least.  The atoms that are you, used to be something else, and when they are done being you they will go be something else that is not only not you, but probably not what they were before they were you. 

Earth is just as full now as it was when it was formed and as it will be when we are gone.  Atomically that is.

Jeff

I don't understand a word the man said, but I sure do like talk like that. ??? :-\ :D
 
Since every atom of every element heavier than iron was made in a supernova, we're all made of "star stuff" as Carl Sagan said.
 
jeffbrown said:
We are here now, we are going to go away and the earth will still be here when we are gone.  At the same time we have always been here and will always be here, on an atomic level at least.  The atoms that are you, used to be something else, and when they are done being you they will go be something else that is not only not you, but probably not what they were before they were you. 

Earth is just as full now as it was when it was formed and as it will be when we are gone.  Atomically that is.

Jeff

I'm gonna frame this!  This is the best paragraph I have ever read, by a large margin.  Thank You Jeff.

My only suggestion is that if we look inside the atoms, what we would find is empty space, except for a few particles in the center, which we call neutrons and protons.  So actually if we strip off all the electrons flying around, the whole planet could be condensed to something like one yard in diameter.  That could be what was here initially?
 
The cool thing about all that empty space is that while most of it is empty at any given time the electrons move so fast and so randomly that none of it is empty for long even though most of.it is empty most of the time.

A great book for understanding a bit of science is "A Brief history of nearly everything."

Jeff
 
jeffbrown said:
We are here now, we are going to go away and the earth will still be here when we are gone.  At the same time we have always been here and will always be here, on an atomic level at least.  The atoms that are you, used to be something else, and when they are done being you they will go be something else that is not only not you, but probably not what they were before they were you. 

Earth is just as full now as it was when it was formed and as it will be when we are gone.  Atomically that is.

Jeff

I seem to remember learning about conversion from matter to energy and vice versa when in school. Wasn't there that E=MC squared thing? We are driving around burning oil and converting it to energy and gasses. Some of the energy is heat which radiates into space. Some of it is motion, which I supposed is affected in the earth's rotation, as insignificant as it may be.

Plants absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide and convert them into mass and oxygen. Pound for pound, does a watermelon pull its equivalent weight in nutrients out of the ground? I don't know.

Most of the water in the world is salt water. Clean, fresh water is an extremely small percentage of the total. We need fresh clean water to live. It isn't necessarily how much matter exists on the earth, it's what form it's in. :)
 

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