5 Generals 6 Admirals on Climate Change: There will be wars over water

[matrix]

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Where in the world do you think the most fertile land for growing crops is?

Could it possibly be next to the coast?

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Nope. Next to rivers. Dunno about the UK, but most of the coast over here is either homes or beaches. The food all gets grown inland. I've never even heard of a seaside farm.

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I grew up in Cornwall UK - and Cornwall is farming central. I'll concede the point that in places like the US the majority of the farmland might very well be inland.

Tho given that a lot of rivers run into the sea, is it not likely that a lot of good farmland will end up useless for farming as a result of a dramatic change in sea levels which will cause some rivers to flood, certainly places like Holland would be pretty much devastated and in the short term there might well be major food shortages in some places around the world.

Add that to water shortage problems - and several hundred million displaced refugees - many of them in third world conditions presently - with our continually dramtically increasing global population and it all adds up to a hell of a mess in a few decades time.

Right now we have the technology and the means to at the very least go some way to alleviating these problems, if not prevent some worst case scenarios altogether.

What are we doing? - arguing over whether the science is actually correct. Continuing to sell old dirty technology to emerging markets and continuing to deforest large areas of rainforest.

Just because this planet is a very large and diverse ecosystem it does not follow that it has an unlimited capacity to absorb the damage we help do to it everyday.

[slickss]

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Just because this planet is a very large and diverse ecosystem it does not follow that it has an unlimited capacity to absorb the damage we help do to it everyday.

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While I completely agree with you, I'd like to quickly touch in this. I got this from George Carlin when he said "Environmentalists don't care about the Earth, they care about their habitat."

The Earth will easily outlive humans. It has seen a lot worse than plastic bags and CO2 throughout its time. The problem is that we're messing with our quality of life and our chance of survival. The Earth will absorb anything we do to it, our fragile bodies, however, will not absorb the lack of resources that is upon us.

[NCAces]

Matrix ...

- Do you really think all of this is going to happen
quickly?

- Don't you think that if it does happen it will be bad for some things but good for others and we don't have the faintest idea what that would be.

- Assuming your stable nature comment is true, who decided that this period in time is the best fit? What if the USA desert and Sahara Rain Forest was better for the world overall?

NCAces

[Bremen]

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Nope. Next to rivers. Dunno about the UK, but most of the coast over here is either homes or beaches. The food all gets grown inland. I've never even heard of a seaside farm.

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Agreed. Salty water really isn't good for crops.

[XXXNoahXXX]

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Nope. Next to rivers. Dunno about the UK, but most of the coast over here is either homes or beaches. The food all gets grown inland. I've never even heard of a seaside farm.

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Agreed. Salty water really isn't good for crops.

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loooooooooooooooooool.

[matrix]

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The Earth will easily outlive humans. It has seen a lot worse than plastic bags and CO2 throughout its time. The problem is that we're messing with our quality of life and our chance of survival. The Earth will absorb anything we do to it, our fragile bodies, however, will not absorb the lack of resources that is upon us.

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ding.

100% absolutely true.

[matrix]

[ QUOTE ]
Matrix ...

- Do you really think all of this is going to happen
quickly?

- Don't you think that if it does happen it will be bad for some things but good for others and we don't have the faintest idea what that would be.

- Assuming your stable nature comment is true, who decided that this period in time is the best fit? What if the USA desert and Sahara Rain Forest was better for the world overall?


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I think that within the next 40 years the environment we live in will see a drastic and catastrophic change which will scramble the existing weather patterns kill millions of people (possibly billions) and make life exceedingly miserable for those that survive if things continue going as they are.

If it does happen it will probably be good for the earth - but bad for humans - (there are waaaaaaaaaay too many people living on this planet)

All things considered if this is right then if I am still around the next 40 years (I'm 32 so I ought to be) I don't want to be picking up the pieces of some disaster caused by fat greedy capitalists who are deliberately fudging the issue to protect their bank balances.

I'd quite like for the planet to still be here in a habitable form for my kids (if and when I have any) to live out happy relatively long lives.

What makes humans so arrogant that we and we alone can [censored] up the environment for every other single living thing here?

Of course the Earth goes through cycles and changes naturally. You cannot claim that the CO2 enhanced temperature increase is a completely natural phenomenon. There is too much good science out there now that points to us humans at th very least greatly accelerating the gradual changes that would have happened anyway - or outright tilting hte balnce of nature too far and being on the verge of climate catastrophe.

imo. (which might not really count for much) the only way this isn't going to happen in the next 4 decades is if.

i) we blow ourselves up
ii) some other natural disaster along the lines of a comet hitting the earth and blowing us up for us happens first.

to get back to the OP - I think there is almost definitely going to be a war over water. All that needs to happen is for water to become a very precious commodity - we have wars over oil - if water becomes more valuable than oil then we will surely wind up fighting wars over it.

The question is really instead of readying the war machine to fight the war that is coming - why don't we instead look to spend that money on ways of making our environment better all round for everyone rather than just the select few?

If there are too many people here - why isn't there a population control program? why aren't we spending more time and money and effort on designing new habitats for people on space stations or on the moon? Why is the number one spend for advanced nations its war apparatus? (or if it's not the number one spend - why is it ranked so highly on the budgets?)

[John Kilduff]

[ QUOTE ]
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Matrix ...

- Do you really think all of this is going to happen
quickly?

- Don't you think that if it does happen it will be bad for some things but good for others and we don't have the faintest idea what that would be.

- Assuming your stable nature comment is true, who decided that this period in time is the best fit? What if the USA desert and Sahara Rain Forest was better for the world overall?


[/ QUOTE ]

I think that within the next 40 years the environment we live in will see a drastic and catastrophic change which will scramble the existing weather patterns kill millions of people (possibly billions) and make life exceedingly miserable for those that survive if things continue going as they are.

If it does happen it will probably be good for the earth - but bad for humans - (there are waaaaaaaaaay too many people living on this planet)

All things considered if this is right then if I am still around the next 40 years (I'm 32 so I ought to be) I don't want to be picking up the pieces of some disaster caused by fat greedy capitalists who are deliberately fudging the issue to protect their bank balances.

[/ QUOTE ]

As mentioned in another thread, I don't think the core issue is what people are doing to the planet/ecosystem, but rather that there are too many people doing things to the planet/ecosystem.

Humans don't like to think in the following terms, but a mass population reduction might actually be good for the species in the long run (just as deer populations need to be kept under control else starvation and disease will cause the population to crash anyway).

The root problem isn't really capitalism, or weather patterns; the root problem is overpopulation and the pressures that ever-increasing numbers of humans place on the Earth's resources and ecosystem.

No amount of resource management or political engineering will solve the problems as long as human population growth continues unabated.

The population problem is a thorny issue that few seem willing to address, and there are no likely solutions in sight except for eventual catastrophe. Yet this (in my opinion) is a far more important issue than any band-aid temporary fixes that might be achieved politically or technologically.

An enormous natural disaster would be bad for the humans who suffer under it, but it would quite likely be good for the species in the long run, and of course for the planet and the wild natural world.

If people can't restrain themselves from breeding like rabbits, the human population must eventually crash.

The greatest problem of overbreeding takes place in the third world, and coincidentally, that is where the worst effects of global weather change are projected to be most likely to impact and thereby catastrophically reduce the population.

[diddle]

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Matrix ...

- Do you really think all of this is going to happen
quickly?

- Don't you think that if it does happen it will be bad for some things but good for others and we don't have the faintest idea what that would be.

- Assuming your stable nature comment is true, who decided that this period in time is the best fit? What if the USA desert and Sahara Rain Forest was better for the world overall?


[/ QUOTE ]

I think that within the next 40 years the environment we live in will see a drastic and catastrophic change which will scramble the existing weather patterns kill millions of people (possibly billions) and make life exceedingly miserable for those that survive if things continue going as they are.

If it does happen it will probably be good for the earth - but bad for humans - (there are waaaaaaaaaay too many people living on this planet)

All things considered if this is right then if I am still around the next 40 years (I'm 32 so I ought to be) I don't want to be picking up the pieces of some disaster caused by fat greedy capitalists who are deliberately fudging the issue to protect their bank balances.

[/ QUOTE ]

As mentioned in another thread, I don't think the core issue is what people are doing to the planet/ecosystem, but rather that there are too many people doing things to the planet/ecosystem.

Humans don't like to think in the following terms, but a mass population reduction might actually be good for the species in the long run (just as deer populations need to be kept under control else starvation and disease will cause the population to crash anyway).

The root problem isn't really capitalism, or weather patterns; the root problem is overpopulation and the pressures that ever-increasing numbers of humans place on the Earth's resources and ecosystem.

No amount of resource management or political engineering will solve the problems as long as human population growth continues unabated.

The population problem is a thorny issue that few seem willing to address, and there are no likely solutions in sight except for eventual catastrophe. Yet this (in my opinion) is a far more important issue than any band-aid temporary fixes that might be achieved politically or technologically.

An enormous natural disaster would be bad for the humans who suffer under it, but it would quite likely be good for the species in the long run, and of course for the planet and the wild natural world.

If people can't restrain themselves from breeding like rabbits, the human population must eventually crash.

The greatest problem of overbreeding takes place in the third world, and coincidentally, that is where the worst effects of global weather change are projected to be most likely to impact and thereby catastrophically reduce the population.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah the tsunami of 2005 has actually been a good thing.

[John Kilduff]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Matrix ...

- Do you really think all of this is going to happen
quickly?

- Don't you think that if it does happen it will be bad for some things but good for others and we don't have the faintest idea what that would be.

- Assuming your stable nature comment is true, who decided that this period in time is the best fit? What if the USA desert and Sahara Rain Forest was better for the world overall?


[/ QUOTE ]

I think that within the next 40 years the environment we live in will see a drastic and catastrophic change which will scramble the existing weather patterns kill millions of people (possibly billions) and make life exceedingly miserable for those that survive if things continue going as they are.

If it does happen it will probably be good for the earth - but bad for humans - (there are waaaaaaaaaay too many people living on this planet)

All things considered if this is right then if I am still around the next 40 years (I'm 32 so I ought to be) I don't want to be picking up the pieces of some disaster caused by fat greedy capitalists who are deliberately fudging the issue to protect their bank balances.

[/ QUOTE ]

As mentioned in another thread, I don't think the core issue is what people are doing to the planet/ecosystem, but rather that there are too many people doing things to the planet/ecosystem.

Humans don't like to think in the following terms, but a mass population reduction might actually be good for the species in the long run (just as deer populations need to be kept under control else starvation and disease will cause the population to crash anyway).

The root problem isn't really capitalism, or weather patterns; the root problem is overpopulation and the pressures that ever-increasing numbers of humans place on the Earth's resources and ecosystem.

No amount of resource management or political engineering will solve the problems as long as human population growth continues unabated.

The population problem is a thorny issue that few seem willing to address, and there are no likely solutions in sight except for eventual catastrophe. Yet this (in my opinion) is a far more important issue than any band-aid temporary fixes that might be achieved politically or technologically.

An enormous natural disaster would be bad for the humans who suffer under it, but it would quite likely be good for the species in the long run, and of course for the planet and the wild natural world.

If people can't restrain themselves from breeding like rabbits, the human population must eventually crash.

The greatest problem of overbreeding takes place in the third world, and coincidentally, that is where the worst effects of global weather change are projected to be most likely to impact and thereby catastrophically reduce the population.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah the tsunami of 2005 has actually been a good thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you really believe that the tsunami was a good thing?