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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (186360)	3/30/2012 4:48:14 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 542798

re..... Overpopulation, industrialization and AGW are taking us on hte fast track to disaster .......................................................................... sat in on a climate conference yesterday.. when A Big hat..NASA speaker..... was asked about.. 'Rapid' Climate Change.. she said... Greenland..ice core research..indicates.. it can occur..in 1 or 2 years.. One or Two.....years........!!!!!!???? ............................................................ buy some lentils....stash away for that....not so rainy day.. .............................................................................................. 'Mother Nature..bats last....' Dr James Lovelock..................

To: koan who wrote (186360)	3/31/2012 2:15:17 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542798

>>Oil: You are right, it is all about China and the developing countries simply outstripping supply. Overpopulation, industrialization and AGW are taking us on hte fast track to disaster as you keep pointing out. Few seemed concerned though?<< I think this is a good explanation of why that is. Consider a jar with one bacterium in it. This type of bacteria reproduces by fission once every minute, so the one becomes two, the two become four, etc. And let's assume that the bacteria are intelligent. Some are smarter than others, of course. They have all the food they need, let's assume, but their growth is limited by the size of the jar. Now answer this question: If the jar has one bacterium at 11PM, and is full by midnight, at what time is the jar half full? The answer is that it's half full at 11:59. Now, when the jar is 1/8th full, it's already 11:57. Some of the smarter the bacteria inside it, assuming they were able to think and do math, might look around and say, "Hey, dudes, we're going to have a space problem in a few minutes if we don't stop reproducing at this rate." But most of those bacteria are going to say, "What are you talking about? Look at all this empty space! This jar is huge. You guys are alarmists." Three minutes later, the bacteria will try to reproduce again, and all of them will die. This demonstrates the principle of exponential growth. We don't perceive the danger, because it isn't immediate enough. We think we still have plenty of space, oil, food,water, and other resources in our jar. And we think we still have plenty of time. I first encountered bacteria in the jar thing from a video recorded by a college professor in Colorado, if I remember correctly. I'm pretty sure the link was provided by somebody right here on this forum a couple of years ago. In addition to explaining this concept, he went through some math that showed how long it takes for consumption of a resource to double at various rates of growth. It was eye opening. I was going to ask if anyone could find it, but I just did. I remembered correctly. The lecturer is Albert Bartlett, a physics professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I'm providing the link for anyone who missed it the first time. Video