Climatic Extremes

[SHRED]

I think the hour is getting late.
If things aren't drastically changed soon, the rapidly expanding CO2 imbalance will alter this world's atmosphere beyond recognition.

For mankind: weather-driven nomadic "tribes", fraught with epidemics and plagues, are quite possible.
I see chaos ahead.

Discuss.

[amitten]

1. Yaaayyyy!

That extremely negative attitude is SURE to energize the masses. Nothing like a totally hopeless situation to get Joe Shmoe off his sedentary ass!

[Boomer]

2. I'm in favor of a nomadic future

The "chaos" to which you refer is likely to be rather gruesome, with significant de-population due to crop failures and famine, disease, civil disorder, more intense natural disasters and a breakdown of all industrial-level technology as oil reserves are depleted. The dismantling of any civilization is not a gentle process.

But imho, the nomadic existence that could follow is the light at the end of the tunnel, not a bleak fate.

Humans took a bad turn when they invented agriculture. They traded life in a small, egalitarin group for membership in large populations of people divided by class and driven to produce so that a small ruling elite could enjoy leisure.

Your equation of nomadic tribes and epidemics/plagues isn't accurate. Epidemics are the bane of societies with large population density and close proximity to domesticated animals. Nomadic tribes are too isolated to provide easy transmission of contagious diseases to other tribes, they don't contract the diseases associated with settlements with improper sanitation, their health is generally better than that of the average peasant in an agrarian society, and they don't pick up the cross-species diseases from living with cattle, pigs, goats, chickens, etc.

If homo sapiens ends up back where we started -- following game and foraging for nuts and berries -- the entire planet will be better off, and in many ways so will we.

[dcfirefighter]

3. nomads typically have a larger footprint than farmers

and the rule among nomads is the rule of might, not the rule of law. Intra-tribe relationships may have been egalitarian (though it was generally with the leadership of the strong), Inter-tribe relationships were often settled by brute force.

Fuck that.
I want personal rights, I want property rights.
I want airconditioning and antibiotics. I want refrigeration and heart surgery. I want world-wide communications. I want to be able to carry an entire encyclopedia on my keychain. I want to be able to find Tibetan and Ethiopian restaraunts on the same block.
Hell if I want to forage on the local flora and hunt for the local fauna.

If we wind up foraging for nuts, I'm planting a garden. And my people will displace those who forage.

[Boomer]

4. Good luck with that

You may or may not have a choice in the matter.

And the airconditioning, antibiotics and heart surgery may well end up being a thing of the past if don't find substitudes for our petroleum-based technological culture. Soon. Very very soon.

[Odin2005]

5. Yep, farming developed because H-G-ing was over-exploiting the land.

Farming is less harmful to the enviroment per capita then farming. Earth can sustainibly suport about 6 million hunter-gatherers, but pre-industrial agriculture can sustainibly support 500 million people and indistrial agriculture can sustainibly support 2 billion people. The challange we face is to discover a way to feed 9 billion people sustainibly before famine hits and we are killed back to 2 billion.

[dcfirefighter]

6. Actually, farming can support more

Nothing is truly sustainable, but we can get pretty close with 'sustainable' agriculture. There are currently 5B Ha of agricultural land, according to the UN. According to proponents of intensive sustainable agriculture, one Ha can be sustainably be farmed to produced food for up to 20 people. By the straight numbers, that's 100 Billion people worth of food.

It's not what the Earth can sustain, its what methods and economics we use to feed ourselves. Current agriculture is very Labor efficient - one man with huge equipment, and a supply of chemicals, can feed 100's if not 1000's of people. However, it's not very Land efficient: it takes a great deal of land area and water, as well extracting the vitality of the soil, the stores of petroleum, and it bears heavily on the balance of the atmosphere. But, it's Labor efficient.

This is not the 'natural' way of things. It is this way because we tax Labor a hell of a lot more than we tax our footprint on the Land. It is this way because we allow the Land to be privatized, while we're intent on socializing a person's Labor. We've got it backwards.