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Orwellingly Yurz
SFN Regular

USA
529 Posts

Posted - 11/26/2006 :  18:57:40  Show Profile Send Orwellingly Yurz a Private Message
YO! Just THIS In...but STILL fit to print.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Doublespeak.html

Orwellingly Yurz sez: In later decades of the 21st century, when earth's population becomes too large for the planet to sustain it, the "government" will begin employing another doublespeak term:
"Intimacy Insecurity Enforcement."

Of course, there's always the chance that won't happen because global warming will have already..uh...resolved the problem for us.

Orwell for President.

OY!


"The modern conservative...is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith

If dogs run free
Then what must be,
Must be...
And that is all
--Bob Dylan

The neo-cons have gotten welfare for themselves down to a fine art.
--me

"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."
--J. Paul Getty

"The great thing about Art isn't what it give us, but what we become through it."
--Oscar Wilde

"We have Art in order not to die of life."
--Albert Camus

"I cling like a miser to the freedom I lose when surrounded by an abundance of things."
--Albert Camus

"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."
--Oscar Wilde

HalfMooner
Dingaling

Philippines
15831 Posts

Posted - 11/26/2006 :  19:30:49   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send HalfMooner a Private Message
"Food insecurity," eh? It's going around. I can sympathize with fisheries calling the "slimehead" a "golden roughy." I wouldn't eat a slimehead, but a golden roughy sounds pretty good.

I'd like to see President Bush redeployed out of the White House, via the redeployment clause provided in the Constitution.


Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive.
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Chippewa
SFN Regular

USA
1496 Posts

Posted - 11/26/2006 :  21:08:31   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Chippewa's Homepage Send Chippewa a Private Message
I read somewhere, (perhaps in John Toland's “The Rising Sun”,) that the Japanese army in WWII had no command for "retreat". They did however have commands for various tactical maneuvers, and redeploying positions including something like "fallback for future charge" and even "charge to the rear!"
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Orwellingly Yurz
SFN Regular

USA
529 Posts

Posted - 11/26/2006 :  21:34:03   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Orwellingly Yurz a Private Message
YO! Hey Chippewa-off-the-old-block, are you sure those aren't commands that Darth Cheney and his lieutenant, G. War Bush thought up? Such directives certainly fit those guys' logic patterns.

OY!

"The modern conservative...is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith

If dogs run free
Then what must be,
Must be...
And that is all
--Bob Dylan

The neo-cons have gotten welfare for themselves down to a fine art.
--me

"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."
--J. Paul Getty

"The great thing about Art isn't what it give us, but what we become through it."
--Oscar Wilde

"We have Art in order not to die of life."
--Albert Camus

"I cling like a miser to the freedom I lose when surrounded by an abundance of things."
--Albert Camus

"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."
--Oscar Wilde
Edited by - Orwellingly Yurz on 11/26/2006 21:35:25
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HalfMooner
Dingaling

Philippines
15831 Posts

Posted - 11/26/2006 :  22:42:07   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send HalfMooner a Private Message
Once, when roguish Gen. Patton was ordered not to advance, he did so anyway, calling it "reconnaissance in force."


Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive.
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chaloobi
SFN Regular

1620 Posts

Posted - 11/28/2006 :  11:04:01   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send chaloobi a Yahoo! Message Send chaloobi a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Orwellingly Yurz
<snip>

Of course, there's always the chance that won't happen because global warming will have already..uh...resolved the problem for us.

Orwell for President.

OY!


Actually, human birth rates are on the decline and have been for some time (like 3 decades) all over the world. Not just in the West but also in 'developing' nations. Although the overall rate is still strongly positive in the developing nations, the current trend, if it holds, will rapidly (like in fifty years or something) turn the rate of change negative.

The $$$ question is, will human civilization survive the population peak? Unfortunately, while world population is peaking (like around nine-ten billion), the coastlines will be flooding and temperatures and rainfall patterns re-shuffling everywhere. Add to that a general trend of increased life-spans, assuming the world economy can/will continue to support improved health care and nutrition, and things look grim.

My 2 cents: nothing substantial is going to be done about global warming or population control. The phenomena will be left to run their course. No question about it, life will go on, and probably human life, and perhaps human civilization will survive too, though not as we know it.

The real value of the environmental movement is not to 'save' the world or the whales and gorillas, but to stave off the supreme human discomfort (misery?) of rapid uncontrolled environmental change. Said term can be grouped in kind with concepts like 'population crash' and 'mass extinction.' Interesting aspects of ecology to be sure, but not pleasant to experience.

This is our choice - to bring about and live through (or not) what amounts to just another sudden climate shift with accompanying mass extinction of species (ala the T/C Event 65 million years ago) OR to become a moderating force that halts and/or moderates such changes for the foreseeable future. Now THAT would be something unique in the history of life on Earth - life finally able to interupt the mass die offs. Imagine that!

Might we become responisible stewards? Let me check my Crystal Ball....

....

....

Nope. You don't need a crystal ball to know that. Just look around.


-Chaloobi

Edited by - chaloobi on 11/28/2006 11:06:06
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Dude
SFN Die Hard

USA
6891 Posts

Posted - 11/28/2006 :  13:42:28   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Dude a Private Message
Don't give up hope chaloobi. I think the human race exhibits atleast one character trait that will eventually force us to action on the environment, on a wide scale.

In the long run we always look out for our own self interest. The vast majority of people will not be willing to let the planet go down the tubes entirely. Eventually they will see the political rhetoric for what it is.

I hope.


Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson

"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin

Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth
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chaloobi
SFN Regular

1620 Posts

Posted - 11/28/2006 :  14:21:46   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send chaloobi a Yahoo! Message Send chaloobi a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Dude

Don't give up hope chaloobi. I think the human race exhibits atleast one character trait that will eventually force us to action on the environment, on a wide scale.

In the long run we always look out for our own self interest. The vast majority of people will not be willing to let the planet go down the tubes entirely. Eventually they will see the political rhetoric for what it is.

I hope.

I'm actually more hopeful than most. I believe humanity will be fine - better off, even - despite the horrors of over-population and climate change. It's exactly the spanking our collective cultures need to push us into a more sensible approach to civilization.

It's like Japan and WW2 - one of the most war-like, brutal, arrogant cultures in the world, pre-war, and out of the fire comes a pacifist nation with an amazing sense for capitalism. Terrible suffering in between, of course, and that's the kind of suffering the environmental movement, ultimately, is fighting against (whether they know it or not). But I'd like to think Japan is all around a better place post WW2. And the same will likely be true for all of humanity post environmental cataclysm.

But no matter what happens, life will go on. Even if humanity drives themselves into extinction, life will go on. There is no question about it. Mass extinctions and climate change are par for the course on Earth. Humanity has a chance to change all that forever, though. From environmental stewardship to climate engineering to asteroid deflection, we could conceivably make it so there's never a Mass Extinctin again.

If we wanted to. But now all we really want is to wallow in consumerist capitalist luxury, excess, and wealth. And for that short sightedness, lack of sensible moderation, we shall be spanked.

-Chaloobi

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Orwellingly Yurz
SFN Regular

USA
529 Posts

Posted - 11/28/2006 :  15:25:54   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Orwellingly Yurz a Private Message
YO! Chaloobaby! You've nailed it on the head with these words:

"But now all we really want is to wallow in consumerist capitalist luxury, excess, and wealth. And for that short sightedness, lack of sensible moderation, we shall be spanked."
[/quote]

OY sez: The Japan analogy is also a good one. I've been put near to nausea with newscasts on tv and cable over the past several days. First, slaughter in Iraq, then people buying shit in stores in America, then some has-been saying the N-word in a comedy club, then more people buying more shit in stores in America, then...did I mention slaughter in Iraq?

Oh yes, wasn't it great that NBC Nooze deigned to dub the slaughter in Iraq as a "civil" war. Please, it's been a civil war for months. But, of course, G. War, in all his myopia, maintains it's not, and that we won't get out until we attain victory. Hmmmmm, as so many others have asked, what would be the definition of "victory" over in this big Mess 'o Potamia, these days?

OY!!

"The modern conservative...is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith

If dogs run free
Then what must be,
Must be...
And that is all
--Bob Dylan

The neo-cons have gotten welfare for themselves down to a fine art.
--me

"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."
--J. Paul Getty

"The great thing about Art isn't what it give us, but what we become through it."
--Oscar Wilde

"We have Art in order not to die of life."
--Albert Camus

"I cling like a miser to the freedom I lose when surrounded by an abundance of things."
--Albert Camus

"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."
--Oscar Wilde
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Original_Intent
SFN Regular

USA
609 Posts

Posted - 11/28/2006 :  15:36:44   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Original_Intent a Private Message
I tend to agree with chaloobi on this.
People will yell and scream, but not act. Some will act and be brutally squashed. We will continue to pour money into the coastal areas to watch them flood. New Orleans will be the Crescent City once again.

Life will get real hard, people will kill themselves and each other off as centralized governments collapse. Many, many, many people will starve to death laking the knowledge to feed themselves when the trucks aren't delivering on a regular basis.

People will gather into tribes. Tribes will kill each other over resources until they form larger entities. These larger entities will do the same onto nations. Nations will kill each other. Stability will produce an increased labor pool to take advantage of technology. Technology will beget technology and give people too much to do, other then to think about what is going on. They will become content and lazy, and lose the ability to take care of themselves. They will abuse something that starts the whole thing over......

I really don't think humanity will become extinct from global warming (unless you believe the earth is going to blow up from it). I don't think it will be any more of a retreat for civilization then the Dark Ages were, just out civilization. There are always good pockets to support life (unless we nuke it), At worst I see a global Dark Age for a few centuries.

Who knows.....

Peace
Joe

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Dude
SFN Die Hard

USA
6891 Posts

Posted - 11/28/2006 :  15:44:40   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Dude a Private Message
I'd like to think that we are playing a non-zero-sum game with our civilization. That we can learn from history and take those lessons and apply them to the new challenges we encounter.

But maybe I am overly optomistic.


Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson

"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin

Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard

USA
4574 Posts

Posted - 11/28/2006 :  16:09:03   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send H. Humbert a Private Message
I believe the population of our planet will be cut to a third of it's present number within most of our own lifetimes.


"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman

"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie
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Original_Intent
SFN Regular

USA
609 Posts

Posted - 11/28/2006 :  21:43:24   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Original_Intent a Private Message
Me, I tend to go with 100,000,000 or so when it is over..... but it has no basis in science, just my faith in human nature..... Climate shift, overcrowding, not enough supply, pestilence, war, famine, consolidation, war, pestilence, etc........

I don't know timeline wise...... I don't think the climate scientists really know either. Hell, it could all happen in the next year if a big enough volcano goes........ I think we will see major a major upheavel in our lifetime, but I think it will do with war and pestilene.

While we are on the topic.....

An optomistic guy here

Peace
Joe
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Dude
SFN Die Hard

USA
6891 Posts

Posted - 11/29/2006 :  09:59:51   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Dude a Private Message
Ya know, you guys are starting to sound like the Rapture-Ready crowd with all this "soon" and "in our lifetimes" talk of catastrophe!

The only realistic way that any modern nation is going to experience significant population reductions is from a massive war involving nukes. I don't see that happening.

Climate change, even if it happened suddenly(which it won't), will not cause famines. The US will just take over Canada and put our massive agriculture technology to work on newly airable lands. We'd be able to feed 10B people, for a small fee of course.

Rising waters? So a few people have to move. It isn't like the oceans will just pick one afternoon to jump up 40ft. It will happen gradually.

Will things change if those events really do occur? Yeah, obviously. How will things change? Aside from everyone becomming members of crazyass Green Peace and insisting (with guns) on alternate energy.... I can't say. But I don't think it will be anything like an apocalypse for the human race.

Well, the French may die out... err... frogs I mean Amphibians are currently undergoing some extinctions probably related to warming.


Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson

"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin

Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth
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chaloobi
SFN Regular

1620 Posts

Posted - 11/29/2006 :  11:44:49   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send chaloobi a Yahoo! Message Send chaloobi a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by H. Humbert

I believe the population of our planet will be cut to a third of it's present number within most of our own lifetimes.



Now that's a fracking scary scenario.

-Chaloobi

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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard

USA
4574 Posts

Posted - 11/29/2006 :  11:53:35   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send H. Humbert a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Dude
The only realistic way that any modern nation is going to experience significant population reductions is from a massive war involving nukes.

Exactly. Expect a massive global scale conflict as energy and food resources dwindle beyond their capacity to meet growing needs.

I'm not saying it definitely will happen, but as I look ahead, nothing looks very hopeful to me.


"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman

"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie
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