Welcome to Gaia! ::

We could always get in a spaceship or something and continue raping other planets for resources until an alien race with the same sort of hunger finds us and obliterates us with incomprehensible technology!
...Well, it'd be better than voluntary extinction...

To be a bit more serious, it's obvious that humans are too stubborn to let things like this happen. Our problems will get solved, one violent way or another. We're awesome like that. Not bastards, but awesome. [I'm American, can't you tell?] Nah, but really. Sorry for the lack of seriousness. There are so many possible solutions, advances in medicine, space exploration, technology in general. In 300 years, we could have so much more options available to us. All of these problems probably have proposed solutions out there, and if they don't, they'll get one. Optimistic, yeah, but oh well. I will help the world out in any way I can myself if I need to, and so many more of the 6 billion people in the world will too, if only out of the refusal to die.

I think this is completely plausible. Like all things in nature, population comes and goes in waves, just like the ice age (one reason i don't believe in global warming. But that's another thread). The population has been on the rise forever now, slowly it will start to back off again, then come back up....It's a cycle. I know there are people who will argue with me on this (read: raping the earth), but in time things will turn around. You just have to look at the big picture, as in, from the beginning of time until now.

Subrosian-

I think your post might be what keeps me in the guild. That is, unless most people are either joking, confused, or the rest disagree with the current posts.


(Not trying to attention whore myself or anything... but if people really accept/believe some parts of what's been said, then they really are beyond hope... and I'd rather not deal with it)

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I'm sorry, but I think the idea is ludicrous. Homosexuality isn't necessarily on the rise. Social tolerance has risen a great deal, and so have population levels. If anything, people are just admitting to it because it will be accepted... whether or not its strictly true. Also try to remember that anyone can prove anything with statistics. I actually have a book about lying with statistics (I believe the title is "How to Lie with Statistics")

Some group actually found a correlation to births in Afghanistan, and the (I believe) number of times the lower-case letter "i" was used on the front page of the New York Times.

As a side note, I don't really believe in "gaia theory." The planet is not alive, the things on the planet are alive. The planet in and of itself is not only inorganic, but a good deal metallic (iron, magnesium, aluminum). Unless, of course, the idea is that Earth is really a computer designed by a computer designed by an ancient race to determine the meaning of life, all so they could be rich and famous.
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It is my general opinion that people who buy into ideas like "VHEMT," for example, suffer some serious neurological disorders. It is misanthropic and hostile and as far as I'm concerned on the issue, should get a self-imposed death penalty... the sooner people are gone, the sooner it gets better, right?

The very concept most people like this rely on is nothing more than a poor, misguided, sense of either mercy or "empathy." The planet will not just suddenly get better. Nor will it "die" in any way shape or form. If there's water, there's life. Simple as that.

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As for things like global warming... everyone, Gore included, does not understand the science behind it. More heat in the system just means that the system will behave in a more random fashion.

That means both hotter and colder. We could just as easily melt the ice-caps, as we could double their size (exaggerated statement).

The human race is not leaving. Societies will crumble first, and those remaining will do what humans do best. Rebuild, and repopulate. Not to mention the fact that technology is working towards resolving all these issues and more.


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When talking of pollution... remember that the earth does have some filtering systems, and people are recycling more each year. Especially those who see money in it. It will never be "all life on earth" threatening. Not now.

Doubly so once the US decides nuclear power is acceptable. But everyone is afraid of another 3-mile Island, or maybe an American Chernobyl.

These are not serious issues anymore. We have the technology necessary. Not to go ranting about fossil fuels, but the technology exists for us to go without them (don't anyone dare go on about hydrogen, unless they intend to explain where it will all come from, or how we will power the system required to do the electrolysis to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen).

I'm thinking wind power, and maybe do like the french and use something that generates electricity via the sea itself.

Then there is the heat stored within the earth itself...



/rant


tl;dr version

I disagree with the idea, on multiple levels, a few of which I may have failed to mention.

Global warming exists, but it does not act the way people think it does, which comes from a flawed understanding of how "heat" works.

Pollution is a manageable problem, and is less of a problem each year. Technology is winning the race.

VEHMT is so dumb, it hurts. Literally.

you kinda misunderstood my point on homosexuals. its not that theres suddenly more of them, its just that the ones that are here are comeing otu of the closet becuase we wont flog them anymore......
and ive seen enough movies webpages, ect to know how global warming works. it traps greenhous gasses and make earth warm. you might be talking about makeing it colder becuase it the polar ice caps melt the water going into the eastern coast of america (between america and europ i htink is somewhere in there) it will go against the current that brings the warm water and air from going to us anymore which woudl cause another ice age.

Hmmm, so... I'm not entirely sure on how much I agree on any of this...
The Holocaust and World War II certainly wasn't the first time tons of people have been killed by war and genocide... it was just bigger because more people around the world were involved... The whole globalization thing, you know? And it certainly won't be the last... Like, I'm not saying that it wasn't horrible, 'cause it was, but people somewhere are always killing people somewhere else for some reason or another, holy wars, murders, killing people of different ethnic groups...
And after the war people were of course getting married and having kids, so then you have the population boom...
And, well... as for the lower sperm count and Europe and all... the sperm count could be something stupid, like on my science test last year... Yeah, apparently guys can get lower sperm count from keeping a laptop in their lap, not 'cause their sperm thinks they're a dork and shouldn't have babies... Anywho!
Like, the Europe thing... Europe has been settled longer than America has(well, excluding the people who were in America first... that our ancestors killed... back to the genocide etc), so there'd be more people there, right? Also, some of the European countries are quite poor, and some of the European population is moving to America and whatnot... So if you're from a poor country, you can't really afford to keep kids or have a big house... And some of the other countries are expensive. Also, people have less kids 'cause they don't have most of them dying and have the rest help on the farm anymore(well, at least in the developed countries)
The homosexuals... they've always been there, just now it's more okay to be gay, though it's not totally accepted and sometimes horrible things are still done to them for being gay... But now it's more out in the open, and there's more people than back when we didn't have such advanced medical technology... so there seem to be more gays 'cause there's more people overall and they're more out in the open... when before they'd end up having to pretend to be straight and whatnot.
Then back to the technology... We have so many people still alive now because of technology who would have died in the past because of disease or age or accident or whatever! So that would contribute to the population...

So, I don't really know how much I'd agree with the whole gaia theory, or that people will screw the world up in 300 years... It's been here this long, why not another 300 years? We'll probably kill ourselves before we destroy the whole planet... probably...
Ah well, just so long as we don't try to go colonize another planet and mess with it too... I think one planet of humans is enough.
Though wouldn't it be funny if the mice really were running the whole thing? I bet the question would be something like 'What hat size does God wear?' =P