Humanity's impact on Earth illustrated!

a reply to: CharlieSpeirs

Your research kung fu is strong.

I will have to figure out how to do an original image search one of these days

Thanks for the info Charlie

First off many of these pictures are disgusting and we need to do a serious reality check with ourselves about how much we ALLOW to be wasted. We can't just point the finger at big companies. We are allowing them to do this.

Now onto the ice melting photo, most of these "sad and terrible" photos are from greenie tree huggers who want us to believe the Arctic is slowly being chipped away by global warming. Save the Polar Bears!

In reality, every summer in the northern hemisphere the ice along the borders will melt into the sea. Then in the winter months a lot of the sea water will refreeze. This happens every year. When someone films a large chunk of ice falling off an iceberg into the ocean, it simply means it's getting closer to summer.

Also I think there is still a record amount of ice up there right now.

a reply to: stosh64

No problem buddy...

RIS come in pretty handy...
Plenty of websites do it, but I found an app for it called Veracity.
So if you have a device with apps, you can grab that one.

Mods/Admin/Owners: I'm not trying to advertise or profiteer there, it's free and I'm unaffiliated, just think it's helpful in deconstructing disinformation, so to speak.

But if I've crossed the line I apologise.

originally posted by: jude11
I have no faith that it will be turned around in time because not enough voices are out there. And those that own those vast, putrid landscapes don't care because they won't be here when the entire bowl gets flushed.
It's the money-at-the-moment lifestyle for them.

Yeah, what are you doing about it personally? Do you drive a car? Do you have kids?

Nice lip service.

originally posted by: SirKonstantin
a reply to: Rezlooper

Great Find!

These images are disgustingly beautiful.

How did it get like this!
We need a clean-up plan now, not two seconds ago, but NOW!
Thank you for Sharing!

Regards,

That's exactly what my first impression was...beautiful pics but disgusting!

originally posted by: Blue Shift
Sure, we have an impact on a very thin layer of the planet, and a lot of the stuff we throw around is inert and doesn't really interact much with the ecosystem, but for the most part we're just along for the ride. Our impact is nothing compared to a tiny little shift in the Sun's output, a few sunspots, or the amount of material an average volcano pumps into the air.

Yes, the sun...just so long as we don't have to take responsibility for our actions, right?

I'm really disgusted and sad about Canada.

I used to live in a country with some of the highest ecological standards and since about a decade, it's been going down the drain! Tar sands which completely destroys EVERYTHING and for what? FOR F***IN GAS THAT ALSO KILLS US!

Clear cutting our beautiful forests, what could almost clean our planet's air not counting all the species that die along with it.

Most are foreign investors too, THEY GET GOVERNMENT SUBVENTIONS AND TAX CUTS FOR CHRISTS SAKE'S. All of this for short term profits. People with power are totally mad and are willing to destroy all life if it means being on top when we all DIE.

No wonder some find that the only reasonable explanation for such acts is that they are simply not human.

originally posted by: Autorico
The pics of LA and Mexico city remind me of First Contact when the borg took over earth. So sad that we are doing this

The Borg attempted to destroy humankind in the past in that movie because they could not conquer them in the present, not take over the Earth. They failed so... lol. But you already knew this.

-fellow star trek friend

originally posted by: Chrisfishenstein
a reply to: Rezlooper

How can an earthquake in Haiti and Hurricane Katrina be something humans did? I think these are powerful pictures but some just seem sensationalized to take their point to the utmost extreme....Ice melting can be argued as not something man did either, but good find either way OP!

I think the point of those two was more about overpopulation than man responsible for natural disasters. Haiti was more about starving people after the devastation of the quake and Katrina, IMO, is more about how we've put so many people in harms way living at such low levels where hurricanes are known to hit. That's my take on it anyways.

originally posted by: TiredofControlFreaks
a reply to: stosh64

not only is it considered renewable....

www.mnn.com...

In the United States, which contains 8 percent of the world's forests, there are more trees than there were 100 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), "Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s. By 1997, forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920." The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their arrival. Read more: www.mnn.com...

Its fun to look at ugly pictures and shake our heads and mourn ....but is it true??

While I am truly an environmental person, what is lacking here is perspective.

please remember that north america was once covered with glaciers and had no trees at all! Change is a constant in nature.

Tired of Control Freaks

Dude, you're far from an environmental person with your attitude. I like how you try to distract from the global picture of deforestation to looking at the US which is only 8% of the world's forests. What about the other 92%. How's it going there? Can you provide us some statistics on that as well?

a reply to: Rezlooper

All I can say is that I am ashamed being a Canadian at this moment. Horrific stuff going on and yes I was aware of it but it is decided by the money people unfortunately for us and the rest of the world.

Regards, Iwinder

originally posted by: the2ofusr1
a reply to: stosh64

Most modern societies are a man created fiction like their money . Education is not about thinking but what to think .Basic Native knowledge would never have created this beast we cal modern civilization today .

Always think ahead, leave a place better than or equal to the way you found it. Always think seven generations ahead, what will I leave my great grandchildren's great grandchildren. The native way, even though not big on technological increase, was the sustainable way.

Turtle Island huh, if you see Sindy, say hi for me ;-)

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: Rezlooper

The picture of deforestration that you showed was in Canada. Obviously the link I provided shows that there are more trees in North America now than 100 years ago.

So you deforestration picture is the one that is mis-represented.

So is that what environmentalism means to you - the one who can shed the most tears over a fake picture?

You made the statement with the picture that deforestration was devestating North America - should the burden of the research be on your shoulders?

Tired of Control Freaks

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

Here is a link that reports on the global forests

www.earth-policy.org...

Forests cover 31 percent of the world’s land surface, just over 4 billion hectares. (One hectare = 2.47 acres.) This is down from the pre-industrial area of 5.9 billion hectares. According to data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, deforestation was at its highest rate in the 1990s, when each year the world lost on average 16 million hectares of forest—roughly the size of the state of Michigan. At the same time, forest area expanded in some places, either through planting or natural processes, bringing the global net loss of forest to 8.3 million hectares per year. In the first decade of this century, the rate of deforestation was slightly lower, but still, a disturbingly high 13 million hectares were destroyed annually. As forest expansion remained stable, the global net forest loss between 2000 and 2010 was 5.2 million hectares per year. (See data.)

if you read this article you can find that many countries are tackling deforestration and the picture is not as bleak as it used to be. It looks like we are turning the corner.

The spread of planted forests has been accelerating, rising from an expansion of 3.7 million hectares annually in the 1990s to 4.9 million hectares annually the following decade. Planted forests now cover some 264 million hectares, comprising nearly 7 percent of total forest area. Plantations now have the potential to produce an estimated 1.2 billion cubic meters of industrial wood each year, about two thirds of current global wood production. Where forests have already been cleared, plantations can alleviate the pressure on standing forests.

So it appears that only 7 % of the worlds forests have been clear cut (doesn't sound like global catastrophe?

China is doing much better

n contrast to South America, Asia has changed its trajectory from net forest loss in the 1990s to net forest expansion in the following decade, with China leading the growth in planted forests. After disastrous flooding in 1998, China realized the tremendous flood control and soil protection benefits of intact forests, leading it to ban logging in key river basins and to begin planting trees at a rapid rate.

One sour note strikes me though - Indonesia

Another large driver of deforestation in Indonesia is palm oil production; the country accounts for almost half of the global output of this product. Expansion of oil palm, which is largely planted on lands that have been logged or burned, threatens the remaining forests. To assess this risk and limit the country’s contribution to global warming from land use change, Indonesia instituted a two-year moratorium in May 2011 on new licenses to convert primary forests to oil palm or other uses. The temporary ban is meant to provide time for the government to devise a way to double palm oil production by 2020 from 2009 levels while protecting its forests. The effectiveness of this ban remains to be seen, considering the ambitiousness of the production goal and the government’s ongoing struggle to limit illegal logging.

And do we know why palm oil plantations are so popular in Indonesia.....why false little environmentalists are crying their hypocritical little tears and demanding the biofuel replace carbon sources of fuel...without ever once considering that it takes 1.5 litres of gasoline to produce 1 liter of biofuel and that biofuel is less energy effecient and burns less effecicently than carbon fuel leading to more air pollution.

Further, a country can apply for carbon credits by re-plants an area with palm oil plantations, cut it down at the end of the year, sell the crop and cash in the carbon credits!

Wonderful to see all those tree huggers crying their little crocadile tears.

Tired of Control Freaks

originally posted by: the2ofusr1
a reply to: stosh64

Most modern societies are a man created fiction like their money . Education is not about thinking but what to think .

I think that is what is called Educatering.
Now I know about clear felling, (as in the Canada picture from the OP) that is a standard Forestry procedure of taking down mature trees, and replacing with new growth, AKA conservation and one goes with the other, and has been ongoing for a long time. Just because one grows up with a hill or mountain covered in trees and one day finds they are gone, does not mean this is some contribution to climate change, so that picture is out of context, as is the ice melt picture since that also happens all the time.
The pictures of rubbish in the sea..are pictures of rubbish in the sea, ugly as that may be.
However, the OP is not about CC, AGW or GW, it's about human impact on the Earth, and seemingly not about human impact on Earth...that sort of makes us aliens does it not?
Anyway, whomever 'wrote' that book, does a good job in Educatering.

a reply to: Rezlooper

Glancing at your post I had to take a double look and chuckle . At first I thought you name your thread

Hannity's impact on Earth illustrated!

Then I cried when I realized that could equally been as accurate.

Now if we could only get the Aliens to show up and fix all our problems.

On a more serious note , we as Humanity need to find alternative incentive methods other than greed and monetary gains to advance to a type 1 civilization.

However, I don't see that happening and like Michio Kaku says the jump from a type 0 to type 1 is the most difficult where most civilizations don't survive. I'm afraid without changing our values and the incentives that drive us as a society we are doomed for extinction.

Seriously where are the Aliens, what a bunch of jerks watching from the sideline.

a reply to: Rezlooper

Instead of using great minds to create weapons of mass destruction, we need to put all that brain power into innovating ways to recycle the massive amount of waste humanity is producing all around the world. Not only are we killing ourselves with weapons, we're killing the rock that sustains us.

a reply to: SirKonstantin

Actually we needed one 40 years ago. I don't know if mankind can get its sh*t together in time before we severely damage the ecosystems of the planet beyond any kind of repair. The only thing that could conceivably stop this completely disastrous trajectory we're on would be some kind of mass die off.

I don't see the majority of mankind organizing and changing fundamentally at a true grass roots level fast enough, modern civilisation is a bus careening towards a cliff. Almost all of us can see it coming, but apathy reigns and we hide from this reality as best as we can by making various excuses. In the end what it comes down to is: We are not accountable or responsible. Let someone else handle it, I'll be dead in a few decades anyway.

What kind of total reversal of character would it take for the whole of mankind to effect the change needed?
We would need some kind of collective enlightenment on a gargantuan level to ever hope to pull that kind of stuff off.
You see that coming? Is humanity on a path of enlightenment? Humanity is lost and fallen, drowning in disaster.

So keep arguing about global cooling, global warming or "climate change", it's just a red herring hot button issue, an obstacle, a diversion and a magnet of attention. Meanwhile, all the other ecological disasters - representing the majority of these pictures I think - gets less attention. The whole global warming debate is just a huge distraction from the bigger picture.

It is also I think, a convenient excuse used by politicians and their elite handlers for all kinds of totalitarian power grabs and justifications. They're setting up the problem.. let's see if they can make the great unwashed beg them for a highly regulated and micromanaged life lived in squalor, what would amount to a modern feudal system and technological dictatorship ran by the same bastards that polluted the world in the first place. They'll probably have the future generations paying for their oxygen, and they'll probably be feeling all good about it too.

originally posted by: BlueMule
We've got to plant trees. More. Trees.

🌲🌳🌴

👣

No one is stopping you go plant some