The Disappearing Lake

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Thank you. This is the sort of correction I was hoping for you to make.
What exactly are you talking about?
Let the set be those 6 billion people.
No 'set' of six billion people is able to exist.
You assume. :p I don't assume that I'm right, I point out where you're wrong.
Which means you assume that you are right and that I am wrong.
Because if you say, for example, "Nobody can invade Iraq" and another person disagrees, then the "no single person" interpretation is an irrelevant distraction from the argument over whether it's possible to invade Iraq with a set of people.
Maybe, but I believe we're getting slightly off topic here.
If you didn't believe that your opinion was right, why would you hold it? :hmm:
I didn't say that I didn't believe my opinion was right.

Oh, and:
:pat:
:D


Che Guava said:
Here's the catch though: we don't need to change the lifestyle of 6 billion people: just modifying the habits and lifestyle of the top 10% of us would likely be enough. After all, its us that are driving cars, using vast amounts of electricity per capita, and buying the products that are fueling heavy industry in the rest of the world.

Besides my ealier argument, we can stop the damage, especially if we do it from a top-down standpoint (legislating against emitters, banning or regulating certain products, etc...)
But even having six hundred million people changing their behaviour is almost impossible. And most governments don't take envorinment seriously yet. The only thing they do take seriously is money, and they don't want any (in their own eyes) useless changes.
Sure, not one government will admit that, but we all know it's true. There are of course actions taken for the environment, but unless governments start taking that really seriously it won't get us anywere. And no Al Gore movie or something like that will let the governments take the environment seriously.

With taking it seriously I mean actually making concessions, in that it might weaken the economy a bit, but they still take measures because they take the environment seriously. Right now, no government will take any measures for the environment that will seriously hurt their economy. That is because the economy is higher on their priority list.

That's why I think it's better to live with global warming rather than against, as it means that the governments won't have to take concessions that hurt their economy.
 
I'm sure the warming doesn't help, but as has been mentioned, the main reason why the world's lakes are draining - we're using most of the water that goes into them. Most of the water that would be filling Lake Chad is taken out of the rivers to use in agriculture. Soil damage from poor crop management and overgrazing spreads deserts more than lack of rainfall.

Believe it or not, most of the world's ecological problems stem from farming. Deforestation, desertification, eutrophication, soil salination, overpopulation, extinction...

Farmers: Destroying the world since 5000BC.

Whether it's man or nature warming the planet up it is clear we won't have much water left.

Stock up on ammo and leave one for yourself, this is going to get ugly sooner rather than later. And here I was looking forward to a good life like my parents and maybe their parents before them.

Oh, be quiet. Doomsayers here expecting to run out of water probably live either in the US or Western/Northern Europe. You're fine. You'll need some water recycling infrastructure eventually, but that's the fault of population levels and it isn't beyond your means to build. It's not going to stop raining. Actually, total world rainfall should increase as the world warms. It's just that it won't all fall on the places it falls now - some places will be wetter even as others dry up.

Isn't there a lake in Chili that comes and goes every so often? Have any new lakes popped up any where?

Plenty, actually. Reservoirs!

..just modifying the habits and lifestyle of the top 10% of us would likely be enough.


This isn't really true. Partly because China's coal-fueled factories and power stations will counter any savings we make, but mostly because the changes required to negate emissions entirely with current technology are staggering.

We'd have to give up fossil fuels completely, which at the moment means no transport and barely any electricity. That's not a change of habit - that's social collapse. Not to mention the fact that actually stopping people from doing these things would require serious military intervention and general domestic oppression. No, we're stuck until we find another source of power. Solar, nuclear, water, wind, fusion, magic, whatever. Something. We could sequester the carbon, but that requires too much energy - it's a waste of time at the moment.

Sure, we can reduce the problem with good habits, efficient infrastructure and investment in technology, but there isn't much we can actually do to stop it. We're not all going to die, though. It'll be an environmental disaster, sure, but so are hurricanes and tsunamis and volcanoes and...
 
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