Author Topic: World's vertebrate biomass  (Read 13175 times)

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Offline Iguana

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World's vertebrate biomass
« on: January 10, 2016, 12:23:28 am »




From "Confessions of a Doomer"
by Ron Patterson Posted on 01/08/2016   
http://peakoilbarrel.com/confessions-of-a-doomer/
Cause and effect are distant in time and space in complex systems, while at the same time there’s a tendency to look for causes near the events sought to be explained. Time delays in feedback in systems result in the condition where the long-run response of a system to an action is often different from its short-run response. — Ronald J. Ziegler

Offline cherimoya_kid

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2016, 01:28:33 am »
Do not care. Technology is improving at an exponential rate, a fact that this chart ignores.

Offline Iguana

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2016, 02:27:09 am »
See: James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won't Save Us

Do you think that « we're not going to collapse into the dust bin of history like the Mayans or the Easter Islanders, because we have iPads and antibiotics »? It’s something like what I believed when I was a kid!

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/james-howard-kunstler-on-why-technology-wont-save-us-20120712#ixzz3wly9s0kH
Cause and effect are distant in time and space in complex systems, while at the same time there’s a tendency to look for causes near the events sought to be explained. Time delays in feedback in systems result in the condition where the long-run response of a system to an action is often different from its short-run response. — Ronald J. Ziegler

Offline cherimoya_kid

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #3 on: January 10, 2016, 02:37:08 am »
That was fluff. That guy probably has no idea what graphene batteries and capacitors even ARE, let alone what they will be capable of in a few years. But I don't care if you know I'm right, Francois. In fact, watching all of you get proven wrong in a few years will be the bigger thrill, versus having you admit I'm right now.

Offline JeuneKoq

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #4 on: January 10, 2016, 02:55:42 am »
Damn, I didn't realize this. Is there really that much more human biomass compared to wild vertebrates? I had a hunch about cattle though...

Offline sabertooth

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #5 on: January 10, 2016, 03:18:17 am »
Why does it have to be seen in such a negative light, vertebrates are the most awesome of all creatures ever brought forth by the evolution of life on this planet, it may be true that the human biomass may reach the point of a singularity where afterword there will be some kind of biological supernova event....such is the way of it, there is nothing inherently tragic about going out with a bang....and just maybe right before that moment of critical biomass is reached a breakthrough in higher consciousness will be attained which will bring forth something even more incredible.

Plenty of morally decent celestial bodies had gone out in a bang, a frenzy of cannibalistic ballistics,  the great supernova events of dying stars ejected their spent cores into the great beyond, and out of the ashes of apocalypse, like the fable of the phoenix, our world was born...as is above so is below, and it may be our destiny to go out in the biological equivalent of a supernova, in which the biomass of the more highly evolved beings, acts much in the same way as the higher density elements in the core of dying stars, and when the point of critical mass (or maximum capacity)is reached) the apocalyptic happens.

Its part of the unfolding of the nature of all things, to look to the future with the idea that if only we can reduce the biomass of these vertebrates, to a level that will be sustainable, will only insure that the world ends with the Whimper of the hollow men. In analogy, such an end would not be the progenitor of the kind of explosive event which would allow for the spirit of life to rise out of the ashes.

The biological supernova will come in due time, though let us be in no hurry to help it along, and it does seem within the human capacity to possibly be able to overcome the fate of worlds which lack higher forms of life, and are doomed to die with their star.... When this event comes, let it come, like one dances with an out of control loco motive....when humanity is at its peak biomass, then perhaps with the interconnected minds of billions, whom all share the hopes and dreams of the earth spirit....out of one last ditch effort for self preservation will bring forth the awareness to the answers needed to save the world from ourselves so that the life of the earth spirit can survive any train wreck of fate, and continue its evolution upon a new track...

The paradoxes are unavoidable, and must be accepted as an intrinsic part of the universe and of life itself. The growing of the biomass of humans whom need to continually increase the biomass of other higher vertebrates in order to fuel and maintain their awesome collective mental powers, which in turn fuels their technological enterprise... is extremely resource demanding, and is indeed not conducive to sustainability of earth as we know it....but we cannot ignore the reality of it, and to deny that there may indeed be an actual purpose behind what is now occurring, to reject it as something that is horrid, shows a lack of understanding, and this lack of understanding and compassion if acted on by those whom have taken it upon themselves to save the world from its own creation, will not lead to the kind of deliverance the green movement is praying for.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2016, 03:25:44 am by sabertooth »
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Offline Iguana

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #6 on: January 10, 2016, 03:40:32 am »
....but we cannot ignore the reality of it, and to deny that there may indeed be an actual purpose behind what is now occurring, to reject it as something that is horrid, shows a lack of understanding, and this lack of understanding and compassion if acted on by those whom have taken it upon themselves to save the world from its own creation, will not lead to the kind of deliverance the green movement is praying for.

Did I write that there's no "purpose behind what is now occurring", did I "reject it as something horrid"? By the way, you're a great poet!

CK: yes, yes, graphene batteries and capacitors will certainly save the civilization!! Are you aware that these things don't generate energy but can only store it?

Did both of you read the article I linked before hurrying to answer? Did you read it entirely until its final paragraph with the title below?
Quote
You end the book talking about the importance of facing future with hope.  What gives you hope?
« Last Edit: January 10, 2016, 03:56:06 am by Iguana »
Cause and effect are distant in time and space in complex systems, while at the same time there’s a tendency to look for causes near the events sought to be explained. Time delays in feedback in systems result in the condition where the long-run response of a system to an action is often different from its short-run response. — Ronald J. Ziegler

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #7 on: January 10, 2016, 04:41:30 am »
CK: yes, yes, graphene batteries and capacitors will certainly save the civilization!! Are you aware that these things don't generate energy but can only store it?
The single biggest issue we face specifically as a species is the looming end of fossil fuels. The sooner we can develop a battery capable of retaining power generated through alternative measures such as hydroelectric and solar the better. We are literally in a race to beat that clock. All the reforms to consumption can help but they won't stave off that crash. We have become too dependent on retained energy to abandon it and sustain current population levels.

I am disheartened by the significant loss of wild animal biomass. The niche that so many of these animals play in ecosystems will not be filled by domesticated animals. We're marching towards a homogenized ecosystem we think we can control but many of these animals support us in ways we can't replace. Bees are a great example of this.

Offline TylerDurden

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #8 on: January 10, 2016, 05:56:39 am »
The Singularitarians have already lost the argument. They used to claim that the Singularity would happen by 2030, now they claim that 2045 is the new "real" date. Plus, there is a lot of data that shows that human technology can destroy just as much as create. And the Singularity involves all sorts of highly unlikely claims, such as "Man becoming God" without any data to back them up, just vague predictions.
"During the last campaign I knew what was happening. You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy. No more. No more.
" Ron Paul.

Offline cherimoya_kid

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #9 on: January 10, 2016, 06:14:14 am »
The Singularitarians have already lost the argument. They used to claim that the Singularity would happen by 2030, now they claim that 2045 is the new "real" date. Plus, there is a lot of data that shows that human technology can destroy just as much as create. And the Singularity involves all sorts of highly unlikely claims, such as "Man becoming God" without any data to back them up, just vague predictions.

So you think they've failed to predict the future, hmm? What makes your predictions more accurate?

Offline TylerDurden

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #10 on: January 10, 2016, 06:49:15 am »
So you think they've failed to predict the future, hmm? What makes your predictions more accurate?
I don't predict, I just point out that, statistically, Fermi's Paradox and the Great Filter Theory have, unlike the Singularity, a lot of data backing them.
"During the last campaign I knew what was happening. You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy. No more. No more.
" Ron Paul.

Offline sabertooth

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #11 on: January 10, 2016, 08:50:50 am »
Did I write that there's no "purpose behind what is now occurring", did I "reject it as something horrid"? By the way, you're a great poet!

Did you read the article I linked before hurrying to answer? Did you read it entirely until its final paragraph with the title below?

My poetic response was to the link with the Graph "from confessions of a doomer"

I thought the rolling stone dude has a more laissez-fairy outlook which was more in tune with the way things actually are, though I think he lacks vision that is needed to generate higher levels of understanding which would help ease the human suffering during the adjustments to come. 

I don't predict, I just point out that, statistically, Fermi's Paradox and the Great Filter Theory have, unlike the Singularity, a lot of data backing them.

The age old debate between the mystics and the rationalist continues, :)

Even after the quantum revolution has proven to large extent that perception is reality, and the observer by simply observing can alter the wave function of reality causing it to collapse onto a singular instance...the rationalist cannot believe that power of belief inherent within the human mind is responsible for the shaping of past, present and future reality in the same way creation is responsible creating itself.

We are in and of a singularity, the singularity is the origin of all that is and not the destination, that is why those looking for evidence of its approach cannot see it, it echoes us through the time wave from behind. Its the water in which our fishbowl minds swim through. Its the quantum soup, its where the time flys to and from....

Concepts of Singularity, big bang, quantum leaps, directionality of causality, impending biological supernova... are human attempts to express a higher reality by relation to lower level phenomenon....It has been assumed that ultimate reality is ineffable.... yet under the pretense of "as is above so is below", the ultimate can be conceptualized through an understanding of how it relates to the auxiliary.   

All of this existential drivel is human centric, yet something of the divine universal intelligence which created the cosmos must be expressed through the biological creation..(life being created in the image of the creator, creates itself)....The Great filter theory which suggest that biological life is incapable of breaking through to a level of ultimate reality and begin reshaping the cosmos in its image, is based on the singularity not being the origin of reality.... but if indeed our universe began out of a singularity of another, then the singularity would be omnipresent and every event, phenomenon, occurrence would be a reflection of the universal. In this type of pantheistic unity the singularity intelligence encompasses the entirety of everything. The creations of the universe are included in the creation process, the essence of the ultimate is within the essence of the biological forces which shape terrestrial life...so the need for some observable event which proves its existence is not relevant to those who can feel its presents within their very being.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2016, 09:00:48 am by sabertooth »
A man who makes a beast of himself, forgets the pain of being a man.

Offline cherimoya_kid

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #12 on: January 10, 2016, 09:09:03 am »
I don't predict, I just point out that, statistically, Fermi's Paradox and the Great Filter Theory have, unlike the Singularity, a lot of data backing them.

The fuck are you talking about? The Singularity is based on Moore's Law, which has been going since before we were born, and shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down very much. Currently, there's ZERO evidence of aliens AT ALL. I think they exist, but there's no direct evidence. And there's no reason for them to want to visit us. Since population growth slows to less-than-replacement levels once societies become educated, it's unlikely they'd need our living space or resources, for instance.

Offline JeuneKoq

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #13 on: January 10, 2016, 11:17:07 am »
Currently, there's ZERO evidence of aliens AT ALL.
...that "they" will let you know of  >D






*joke*

Offline RogueFarmer

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #14 on: January 10, 2016, 06:58:30 pm »
The technology that will save the world is methods of animal husbandry that mimic the ecosystem processes wild animals performed before they were wiped out. It will take over 100 years if not longer for wildlife populations to come back anywhere near where they used to be, however if we start using livestock to restore the grassland ecosystem, wildlife will be more able to recolonize the earth than otherwise. The earths carrying capacity could probably increased by six timed if not more using this technology in conjunction with remineralization of world soils.

Offline TylerDurden

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #15 on: January 10, 2016, 07:52:11 pm »
The fuck are you talking about? The Singularity is based on Moore's Law, which has been going since before we were born, and shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down very much.
Moore's Law has been shown to be slowing down according to multiple recent reports and even Gordon Moore has been criticising his own law recently. Moore's Law is also not a good indicator of increasing technology, anyway:- for one thing, the cost of creating ever-smaller chips has been going up astronomically in recent times eventually to prohibitive levels, and the potential self-awareness/consciousness of an AI or theoretical mind-uploaded human  are not directly linked to how miniaturised their technical components might be. Also, now that cloud-uploading is happening, Intel and similiar companies are reckoning that there will in the future be no more need for increased miniaturisation, anyway.
Quote
Currently, there's ZERO evidence of aliens AT ALL. I think they exist, but there's no direct evidence. And there's no reason for them to want to visit us. Since population growth slows to less-than-replacement levels once societies become educated, it's unlikely they'd need our living space or resources, for instance.
Some points:-
Kurzweil even admits that the Human Singularity notion falls apart unless the "Rare Earth" hypothesis is true, the one in which we are the only sentient life in the entire Universe, ever. The trouble is that, given the myriad zillions of stars and the many billions of years since the Universe got started, it is scientifically implausible for just one sentient species to appear in an entire Universe. Realistically, the only way for it to happen in a plausible way, were if a God existed or if some super-scientist from another Universe created our Universe in the form of a simulation, even less likely occurrences.

Re educated societies:- Populations are reducing in certain areas of the world  partly because resources are dwindling. FTL travel would enable infinite resources on other planets to be accessed by aliens, thus enabling population growth. Also, bear in mind, aliens are alien, not human, so would behave in a myriad different ways to us. Plus, if aliens ever discovered immortality(ie "ever-youthfulness"), they would still expand even with a lower birth-rate.
Re spotting aliens:- Aliens would not have to visit us, but it would be easy for us to spot interstellar aliens if they ever existed nowadays. For example, detecting Cerenkov radiation would enable us to spot ftl travel elsewhere. Dyson spheres could be detected via infra-red telescopes. No such evidence exists, though.

What is fascinating is the Great Filter Theory. It has been pointed out that the Great Filter Theory will be more or less proven if we ever discover life on other planets, even if only bacterial. If we ever discover evidence of past  intelligent life on other planets via telescope etc., then the Great Filter Theory is a certainty and we will end up eventually extinct like all previous sentient species:-

http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf

"During the last campaign I knew what was happening. You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy. No more. No more.
" Ron Paul.

Offline cherimoya_kid

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #16 on: January 11, 2016, 01:10:33 am »
Yes, you know everything, Geoff. Lol.

Meanwhile, reality exists independent of your assumptions. You assume other species would automatically want to reproduce continually no matter what, but that's just an assumption. Reproduction is pointless once you achieve physical immortality.

Offline TylerDurden

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #17 on: January 11, 2016, 02:23:03 am »
Yes, you know everything, Geoff. Lol.
I don't claim to. All I do claim, with some justification, is that my simpler, easier-to-achieve predictions are more likely to occur than your Singularitarian/Man Becomes God etc. hubristic predictions.

Quote
You assume other species would automatically want to reproduce continually no matter what, but that's just an assumption. Reproduction is pointless once you achieve physical immortality.
Not really. Think about it, many entities/aliens would eventually become bored by genuine immortality and would likely commit suicide in the end, thus requiring a new generation to eventually replace them, plus the hormonal etc. urge to have offspring  is so basic to living organisms that it is highly unlikely to just vanish completely in a particular species. Plus, a society full of immortals without offspring would end up stagnating in a big way, being largely unchanging and more prone to disasters of various kinds.
"During the last campaign I knew what was happening. You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy. No more. No more.
" Ron Paul.

Offline sabertooth

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #18 on: January 11, 2016, 03:03:39 am »
I  see  deep paradoxes within both "the great filter" which limits evolution to the confines of the finite mechanical universal model, and the "singularity" in which a creator evolves from finite being to into an infinite being.

The two theories at first seem to be at odds with each other,( I am liberally paraphrasing here) but when I think about what TD has previously claimed regarding how if ever a singularity of infinite magnitude ever evolved out of the quantum ether, into a universal consciousness,  then mind fire would spread and engulf all universal energy, space and matter into a singularity matrix and any further such singularity would then have to pass through---This great filter? Could it be that this great filter( if it exist) was deliberately set up as the mind fire wall to separate the gods from the mortals? Could it be a way for the immortals to perpetuate a tolerable existence without resorting to universal suicide?

Many of our myths and stories were attempts to Anthropomorphism unfathomable cosmic events into stories which could be related to on an all too human level...

Much of our scientific exacerbation stems from attempts to rationalize unfathomable cosmic events into a model of a universe built upon a mechanistic and lifeless ultimate reality... 

By viewing the singularity as the genesis event... The reverberations of such an origin may be responsible for setting the parameters by which the evolution of transcendental life are set by creation(or the creator)....as far out and incomprehensible as this may seem to the rationalist, its a philosophy closer to the heart . This is a view more tune with the ancient Vedas and Mystics than the Professors of Newtonian physics.....By fully embracing both extremes as equally valuable, and both as equally incomplete perspectives... it may be possible for the epicenter of truth to be approximated between or beyond such polar opposite machinations.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2016, 03:33:31 am by sabertooth »
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Offline cherimoya_kid

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #19 on: January 11, 2016, 03:15:09 am »
I agree that it's extremely difficult to actually imagine human futures beyond the point of physical inmortality. I suspect at that point we would put ourselves into suspended animation of some kind, or find another way to slow down our experience of time so that the millennia passing were not so boring.

Offline TylerDurden

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Re: World's vertebrate biomass
« Reply #20 on: January 12, 2016, 02:27:14 am »
Here's another extinction theory:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Duncan

Like the Singularity Myth, it has been a little, er "hasty" in its predictions, but it does have a point. The seeking for shale oil substute  has allegedly disrupted the environment in a much bigger way, plus it is nowhere near as profitable as cheap oil, as it turns out what with the shale companies facing massive bankruptcies etc.
"During the last campaign I knew what was happening. You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy. No more. No more.
" Ron Paul.

 

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