Between 2000 and 2012, the Earth lost forest cover the size of Mongolia.
49 replies, posted
Someone hurry up and invent those things in star trek that just magic burgers out of thin air
Half the world population? Do people really understand how much that is?
To put it this way. If you killed every person in all of the Americas, Australia, and Europe, that would [I]only[/I] be 1.7 Billion people gone. If you took the 10 most populated countries on Earth and killed everyone in those, it would only be 3.9 Billion. All of Asia would be a total of 4.1 Billion (so Asia is the problem?).
7.1 Billion is a [I]metric fuckton[/I] of people. Honestly trying to kill half of that many (as if such a thing would ever be agreed on) would take so many resources, it'd probably end up more trouble than it's worth anyway. Who's going to kill all those? And with what? What do you do with the bodies now?
Oh hey I can see the oil sands from here
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;42877415]Half the world population? Do people really understand how much that is?
To put it this way. If you killed every person in all of the Americas, Australia, and Europe, that would [I]only[/I] be 1.7 Billion people gone. If you took the 10 most populated countries on Earth and killed everyone in those, it would only be 3.9 Billion. All of Asia would be a total of 4.1 Billion (so Asia is the problem?).
7.1 Billion is a [I]metric fuckton[/I] of people. Honestly trying to kill half of that many (as if such a thing would ever be agreed on) would take so many resources, it'd probably end up more trouble than it's worth anyway. Who's going to kill all those? And with what? What do you do with the bodies now?[/QUOTE]
indeed, is really funny when people say "the planet is overpopulated", people are using too much resources, yet the united states loses only to china in consumption of energy for instance, both the EU and the US have less population than china, yet both consume almost 2 times what china consumes, US consumes 3 times the ammount of energy india consumes, and india has 3 times the population of the US.
and there is more, US also uses insane ammounts of water.
[url]http://www.wateraid.org/us/~/media/Publications/US/WASH%20Facts%20and%20Stats.ashx[/url]
[QUOTE]“The average North American uses 400 liters of water every day. The average person in the developing world uses 10 liters of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking.”[/QUOTE]
the problem isn't overpopulation, the problem is waste by developed countries, and recently increasingly by third world countries(like china) who can only catch up by doing the exact same thing.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;42877415]Half the world population? Do people really understand how much that is?
To put it this way. If you killed every person in all of the Americas, Australia, and Europe, that would [I]only[/I] be 1.7 Billion people gone. If you took the 10 most populated countries on Earth and killed everyone in those, it would only be 3.9 Billion. All of Asia would be a total of 4.1 Billion (so Asia is the problem?).
7.1 Billion is a [I]metric fuckton[/I] of people. Honestly trying to kill half of that many (as if such a thing would ever be agreed on) would take so many resources, it'd probably end up more trouble than it's worth anyway. Who's going to kill all those? And with what? What do you do with the bodies now?[/QUOTE]
Jeez, I never said it was a real solution. I know it's not possible, I was just making a comparison to demonstrate the extent to which we are overconsuming resources. Apologies if I was misunderstood.
[QUOTE=Fatfatfatty;42869486]Well, we can comfort ourselves that it is the sea that absorbs most of the carbon dioxide[/QUOTE]
That has a serious cost too though.
When the ocean is forced to "take up the slack" of the forests, the oceans pH starts to drop (acidification) which can kill small ocean organisms, coral reefs, etc. That lack of smaller organisms goes up the food chain and kills off fish populations, which will reduce predator populations, etc.
the earth is bleeding
[QUOTE=Timebomb575;42882201]That has a serious cost too though.
When the ocean is forced to "take up the slack" of the forests, the oceans pH starts to drop (acidification) which can kill small ocean organisms, coral reefs, etc. That lack of smaller organisms goes up the food chain and kills off fish populations, which will reduce predator populations, etc.[/QUOTE]
[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event"]It's happened before and it wasn't pretty[/URL]
A thread full of people saying how this is awful and that it should stop, but how many of you are actually going to put your money where your mouth is do something about it?
Serious question. As Ghandi said, [i]"be the change you want to see in the world"[/i]
[QUOTE=The Pretender;42868475]Title has typo, supposed to be 2000 to 2012.[/QUOTE]
I had a small heart attack there. This much in 2 years, that would've been fucking crazy.
Not that this is good either though.
[QUOTE=proch;42882604]I had a small heart attack there. This much in 2 years, that would've been fucking crazy.
Not that this is good either though.[/QUOTE]
Phew. I was like "We're losing a Mongolia's worth of forest every two years? We're fucked!"
Do you suppose the average person understands that oxygen in our atmosphere isn't just a random given? That it's only there because of life, mainly forests and plankton? And, therefore, maybe removing the forests isn't a good idea?
Granted, we've got a ways to go before we can't breathe, but forests are also a primary source of natural carbon sequestration, and removing their ability to pull CO2 out of the air just exacerbates all our other climate problems.
We'll be fucked for lumber by the end of the century. This planet is so rapidly draining of resources. ._.
Vermont used to be 70% pastures for the sheep industry craze back in the 1800s. Once the sheep industry died out here, the forest reclaimed most of the land and now we're called the Green Mountain State.
[url]http://www.freedomandunity.org/1800s/landscapes.html[/url] With management and regulations it should be possible to at least slow the deforestation of the planet.
[QUOTE=GammaFive;42883345]Vermont used to be 70% pastures for the sheep industry craze back in the 1800s. Once the sheep industry died out here, the forest reclaimed most of the land and now we're called the Green Mountain State.
[url]http://www.freedomandunity.org/1800s/landscapes.html[/url] With management and regulations it should be possible to at least slow the deforestation of the planet.[/QUOTE]
Vermont's been known as the "Green Mountain" for a while now.
[QUOTE=Explosions;42883360]Vermont's been known as the "Green Mountain" for a while now.[/QUOTE]
Yes, you're right. I was just trying to emphasize that we're still able to be called that considering the heavy deforestation we had back then.
brb planting some trees
It's not like nothing is being done to help the forests anyway, I know replanting is a huge industry here in Canada and most of the shit they cut down had actually been planted by us. It's not like they're clearcutting rainforests to turn them into coffee tables. On top of that the majority of our oxygen actually comes from the ocean, not forests, so losing a few forests isn't going to destroy all life on Earth.
Not to mention that the majority of deforestation is due to wildfires, and IIRC the vast majority of those are caused by human actions. Maybe we should teach people more about what causes wildfires and have better safety precautions instead of complaining about how the sky is falling due to some deforestation. Plus, wildfires are natural as well.
With human population stagnating hard, and some countries already in decline (Russia, Spain, Japan) it wouldn't suprise me if our rate of intentional deforestation became more manageable in the coming years.
Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about deforestation, it's not as big of a problem as the title might make it out to be.
[QUOTE=Amish Steak;42868371]what's the black area?[/QUOTE]
rudesnip
[QUOTE=snookypookums;42868278][IMG]http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_6310/img/forests.jpg[/IMG]
[I]The map shows forest change from 2000-12. Green areas are forested; red suffered forest loss; blue showed forest gain; pink experienced both loss and gain.
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lel almost no loss to amazon jungle?
Here is some more data on this (black and red areas):
[URL="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Desm_amazon.jpg"]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Desm_amazon.jpg[/URL]
[QUOTE=Flazer210;42883015]We'll be fucked for lumber by the end of the century. This planet is so rapidly draining of resources. ._.[/QUOTE]
Who gives a fuck about having no lumber.
I for one, would much prefer not having to fight for my next lungful of oxygen because we eviscerated several vital ecosystems and not suffer from erratic weather patterns due to those lost areas.
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