How many planets would we need if everyone on Earth lived like you?

[CyberGnu]

Monk:

The CO2 released by nature is part of the equilibrium that nature has spent millions of years adapting to. (And I know what David is thinking here: Nature will adapt to the new, higher levels, right? Which is absolutely true, as long as we can wait a few thousand years. Civilization as we know it might go under in the meantime, but hey, we can always pick up where we left off)

When we burn fossil fuels, however, we don't have a process for removing the CO2 from the atmospshere. Imagine if you will a tank of water. On one side there is a pump which fills the tank by 10m^3 per minute. On the other side there is a pump that empties the tank by 10M^3 per minute. As long as we don't disturb the tank, the water level will be constant.

Now imagine that you go to that tank and start spitting into it. The amount of liquid you can spit is minute compared to the pumps. Nevertheless, since you are now continually adding liquid that is not removed from the tank, the water level will increase proportionally to how much you are spitting. Eventually the tank will overflow.


Carver, much easier to put the tax directly on the fuel...


David, I'm assuming you're not intending to have children...


Che, 'rape the now'? Kind of doubt it, but that IS what David is advocating...

[David Floyd]

Nah I'm not advocating anything I'm just mocking on general principles...

[CyberGnu]

what is the difference?

[David Floyd]

I forgot.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Che, 'rape the now'? Kind of doubt it, but that IS what David is advocating...

Rapa Nui is the Polynesian name for Easter Island.

[CyberGnu]

Ahhhh

[MrFun]

2.8 planets

9.7 global hectacres

5.1 total footprint

[Grrr]

I didn't realise my way of life was that good for the environment:

[Ari Rahikkala]

If everyone lived like you, we would need 2.2 planets.

Category
global hectares

Food
1.7

Mobility
0

Shelter
1

Goods/Services
1.2

Total Footprint
3.9
In comparison, the average ecological footprint in your country is 8.4 global hectares per person.

Great mobility footprint for never flying, not owning a car and walking a lot. I intend to keep it that way at least for a few years.

I wonder how many international network backbones we would need if everyone consumed as much bandwidth as me .

[MattHiggs]

If everyone lived like you, we would need 25.8 planets.


Category
global hectares



Food
1.4



Mobility
14.4



Shelter
0.6



Goods/Services
30



Total Footprint
46.4

[Wernazuma III]

2 planets, 3.6ha - Austrian average is 4.7ha.

[Starchild]

If everyone lived like I wish I lived, we'd quickly need the mass of the local star cluster just to provide enough resources for the health club.

[Illyrien]

The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the better plants grow...ofcause enough CO2 would kill all animals so we should release too much.

I think it is good for life on this planet that we humans stepped in to release CO2, as the world CO2 level has been droping since the world was formed (more or less). If we allowed the CO2 level to reach 0 all plant life (that uses CO2, which is just about everything) would perish, just as we would die if there wasnt any oxygen.

You cant just argue that CO2 is EVIL! there is more sides to this debate then that.

[CyberGnu]

Starchild,

Illyrien, this would only be true if CO2 was the limitng factor for plant growth, which is isn't. Except for special circumstances, such as directly after a wildfire, fixated nitrogen is the normal limiting factor (which is why farmers spread fertilizer on fields). In some cases such as near desert water is the limiting factor.

One scientist suggested releasing hundreds of tons of ironnitrate in the atlantic to fertilize algaegrowth, and thus fixate thousands or possibly more tons of CO2...

Of course CO2 isn't evil. It is just a chemical. It depends on what we do with it. Unchecked human emissions are, however, not positive. Upsetting a balance that nature has spent millions of years perfecting is at best neutral and at worst catastrophic. Most likely somewhere in the middle. More extreme weather is expected in the future, growing progressively worse as the world heats up.

Ironically, the people who has the best intuitive understanding of this are propably the same people who burns the most oil in the first place: chemical engineers. If one understands the fundamentals of reactor design on also knows the incredibly narrow range where equilibrium is maintained, and the results when the equilibrium is perturbed...

[The Mad Monk]

What equilibrium? There is no equilibrium, for it is the very antithesis of life. Equilibrium = stagnation = death.

As for the 'millions of years', would that include that spot of ice some 40,000 years ago?

Life on this planet has survived catastrophes magnatudes greater than being inflicted with us. It survived those, and came back to flourish with an explosion of new forms that changed and adapted -- until the next catastrophe.

It has always been this way. The environment is in a constant state of flux, punctuated by the odd asteroid, and life is in a continual struggle to keep up. It has developed in such a way that it must do this -- always growing, changing adapting -- or cease to be. If a particular form stops doing this -- say becoming so specialized that it can only subsist on a single food, and can only live within a certain area -- it is in grave danger of rapid extinction, for anything that disrupts that environment for even a little while (say, a fungus wiping out all the eucalyptis in a certain territory) can cause the deaths of enough individuals to doom a species. To adapt to the point where change is impossble, to gain equilibrium, is to court death.

[CyberGnu]

Monk, didn't expect you to use chemical terms. The correct chemical term is a 'stable steady-state'. Yes, if your body reaches equilibrium that means you are dead. But if your body goes to far from the stable steady-state, you also die. Examples of this would be deficiency in trace elements, overexposure to CO2, dehydration, etc.

You see, a stable steady state is selfcorrecting if the preturbations are small. Your body can deal with minor changes in your environment. But if the changes are to big, the situation goes outside of the stabe steady state region, and the system goes amock.

(Incidentally, this is exactly what happens when chemical reactors blow up. One of the most important tasks when building a reactor is to figure out in what region stable steady state is reached, as one cannot do it evolutionary... Would take too many reactors.)

The global environment follows the same priniciple. A small change is selfcorrecting. A big change, however, such as a dinosaur killer, cannot be corrected for, and global parameters will change enough to the more vulnerable life forms to die.

I don't quite undertsand your last paragraph. Are you claiming that we shouldn't worry about global warming because even though humanity dies out, cockroaches will survive? Interesting... Well, I guess that makes me a stinking humanity-lover, as I'd prefer humanity and civilization to survive...

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Illyrien
The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the better plants grow...ofcause enough CO2 would kill all animals so we should release too much.

I think it is good for life on this planet that we humans stepped in to release CO2, as the world CO2 level has been droping since the world was formed (more or less). If we allowed the CO2 level to reach 0 all plant life (that uses CO2, which is just about everything) would perish, just as we would die if there wasnt any oxygen.

You cant just argue that CO2 is EVIL! there is more sides to this debate then that.

Um -- humans did not need to intervene to improve a process that was already working for millions of years naturally, on Earth.

If CO2 would reach zero without human contribution, the planet would never have been able to sustain plant life in the millions of years before humans came into existence.

Just because it has been dropping, does not mean that
it cannot level out later, and thus, preventing natural depletion.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Hey I am not bad

If everyone lived like you, we would need 1.7 planets.

Category
global hectares

Food 1.3

Mobility 0.5

Shelter 0.5

Goods/Services 0.8

Total Footprint 3.1
In comparison, the average ecological footprint in your country is 5.3 global hectares per person.

The only thing is that my eating habits made it even worse *suprise * suprise*

[JohnT]

5 Planets! Beat that!

Food: 2.8
Mobility: 1
Shelter: 1.9
Goods: 3.3

Total: 9 hectares

What do I win?

[JohnT]

Damn... should read these threads before I respond. Wtg, Imran!

[David Floyd]

Actually, I beat Imran - I have 12.1 planets...and Higgs takes up 25, although methinks he doctored his results a tad

[Gangerolf]

6 planets.

When I did the test again and said I was from Peru, entered the exact same information, I got 1,1 planets!
Why??

This test is bullshit I tell you

[Saras]

No Lithuania option in poll = screw poll. Zero planets, I don't exist.

[Gangerolf]

what do they mean by "footprint"

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Life on this planet has survived catastrophes magnatudes greater than being inflicted with us.

To be honest, I'm less concerned with life on Earth (which will surivive, regardless of what we do) than I am with the survival of human civilization. On a planet where the explosion of one particular volcano has brought down civilizations worldwide, we ought to be pretty damn careful what we do to the environment.

[CyberGnu]

Che,

[Oerdin]

With 6 billion hairless monkeys running around civilization's survive is more then assured. we are like a new breed of cockroach; even an nuclear war couldn't wipe us out. In a worse case senario global warming would only be a catastrophy but not a life threat to civilization.

BTW Global warming is more or less bunk; if we warm to much then the global ice caps will begin to melt and flood the oceans with cold fresh water. Since salty water is more dense we will experience a change in ocean currents. Currents like the Gulf Stream would shut down and the result would be a massive temperature drop for Europe and eastern North America.

Global warming causes global ice age. Simple enough, huh?

[CyberGnu]

Oerding, not familiar with thermodynamics, are we?

CO2 causes global warming because of the greenhouse effect. The CO2 bounces radiation from the sun back onto earth, instead of radiating out into the universe. The net effect is the same as in a greenhouse: higher temperature.

You can rearrange all the streams you want, if you don't reduce the CO2 levels you won't reduce the temperature.

(and I won't even go into statements like 'if we warm to much then the global ice caps will begin to melt and flood the oceans with cold fresh water. Since salty water is more dense we will experience a change in ocean currents.' What on earth makes you think the freshwater will stay fresh? Ever heard of diffusion?)

Finally, I read somewhere that if civilization collapses it will take a LONG time before it resurfaces, mainly because we've used up all easily accessible raw material. Basing a civlization on wood and bone isn't all that easy...

Out of curiosity, who told you that global warming is more or less bunk? Whoever it was, you'd be doing him/her a favor by enrolling him/her in any high school science class.