I think I would have less of a problem with global warming if I thought the end result was that we would turn into beer and die. Especially if that happened in that particular order.

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Cannibal.

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Ahh, if we turned into beer, I'd imagine that the taboos against cannibalism would be stripped pretty quick. In fact, specific beer exceptions would become very much the norm. Me, if we're going out like that, I'd prefer we turn into grain alcohol.

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True dat. And they're only eating a farting. they don't have the help of giant machines that spit out gas.

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I like to point out, in situations like that, that we have this region of the planet that, when you study early history, is universally referred to as "The Fertile Crescent", and which is now a giant fucking desert because of our little habit of deforestation.

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And past climate changes, a couple Ice-ages, a few global warmings that melted that ice, a few tectonic plate shifts that changed ocean currents and weather patterns...

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Quotable.

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I'm more of the mind that while we continuously fuck up the planet, the end result is that we'll kill all surface dwelling life forms (i.e. practically everything) and the planet will continue on its merry way, for billions of years fixing all the nasty pollution and such, and then one day it will become habitable and life will evolve again, then it'll go "wonder what these funny creatures were that came before us."

That is, if the sun doesn't go nova or some other catastrophic cosmic event takes out the planet. But really, we can't literally kill the planet unless we blow it up, Death Star style. To put it another way, we're sort of like this really nasty microbe that spews poison into the system until we poison ourselves and die, then it has to let its immune system get rid of the poison before other microbes can start to develop.

Or I could just be babbling because I wasn't able to sleep all night. Insomnia = not fun.

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The question about that is, when the next group of critters becomes intelligent, they're going to have some challenges, because they will have fewer easily accessible fossil fuels (the time scale to evolve intelligence is much quicker than the timescale to make fossil fuels), and fewer useful radioactives.

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I'll be really surprised if we produce such a massive extinction event as you postulate. I think we destroy human civilization long before that, and as precivilized hunter gatherers we won't have as much influence on the planet. I concede I could be wrong - we could tip the planet's temperature into a new stable range much less suitable for life-as-we-know-it before we die off. But I don't think it is the way to bet.

Note that the destruction of human civilization is a bad thing in my eyes, and even though I am childless and likely to remain so I favor paying significant up front costs now during my lifetime for the benefit of future generations. It is the polite thing to do.

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I like to imagine that dinosaurs aced themselves with something comparable and the other theories (apologies for the eye-twisting page design - I didn't program it) are just reaching on the part of scientists who have nothing to go on.

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Mmmm, beer...

What? Oh, yes! Global warming is bad! Climate change is bad!

Looking at the evidence, I can see it seems pretty obvious that climate change is a reality. I can't understand how anybody could realistically deny it. Okay, it's true that there are still flat Earth nuts out there (so obviously some people will believe anything) - but at least that idea has a certain insane romance to it.

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"Man is not the rational animal, he is the rationalizing animal" - Robert Heinlein (as Lazarus Long, IIRC).

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Your last sentence is just begging for this video.

Are Humans Smarter Than Yeast?

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Fascinating and mind boggling video

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This video is good material for an eighth grader. Anyone who has watched an investment commercial however knows that "past performance is not a sure indicator of future performance" Even if you could identify a constant doubling rate for humans, that ignores the other half of the video's premise, which is the 'growth medium'.

A bucket of grain is both constant and finite. It is a closed environment with no energy input and no significant energy loss. In addition, it is a simple environment consisting of only two significant elements, grain, and bacteria.

This comparison, either on the part of the video, or even in the Ferret's original post is an excellent example of false logic. It intentionally points out the similarities between yeast and humans while ignoring the differences.

The earth is not a closed system. It receives immense amount of energy from the sun. It radiates waste heat into space. The overshoot and collapse phenomena with 100% loss can only be observed in simple (which on earth means: small) environments with limited input and output. Isolated human settlements are the largest portion of human society that achieve this result and the most recent of those was probably Rapa Nui.

Not that we can't overshoot and collapse, only that if we do, the collapse will be <100%, and it would result in smaller isolated communities of which, some would also result in total collapse. But a remnant of a remnant would go on to rebuild.

And I can't imagine Ferret actually thinking that the process of making beer could be a -bad- thing.

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Wiki: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I'd say we're doing a pretty good job of not affecting the environment!

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oh, so THAT's what they mean by "pissin' your life away"!

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The world will survive anything we do it.

Whether it will survive in a state that we want to actually be living here is another matter entirely.

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My major is microbiology and immunology. Bacteria (and viruses, and yeasts) are very small, but they sure as hell affect the world!

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thank you for the mental image of a tippy Cthulu enjoying a glass of fermented Earth after work!

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Any time I can give an image of Cthulhu, I am happy to do so.

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Old post I know - but I can't believe no-one pointed out that yeast doesn't die in the brewing process - it gets killed off later when the beer gets pastuerised (although even then, a few generally survive). But in some countries (well, ok, just England really) we also sell a lot of beer that is unpastuerised - and the yeast are very much alive when we drink it!

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sorry, bit drunk, forgot to close the bold tag ;)

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