I used to read Scientific American with interest and wonder. My favorite column was The Amateur Scientist because it had so many neat experiments and projects. Now, it is mostly with sadness and incredulity that I occasionally glance at it on the newsstand. I don’t bother subscribing or even buying it for an interesting article TAS article anymore. They’ve lost their way.
Grist magazine wrote on July 24th:
What would the world look like without people?
This is the latest in a series of Saturday GINK videos about population and reproduction (or a lack thereof).
In honor of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which we recently profiled, here are two videos showing what would happen if we humans suddenly up and disappeared.
I’m shaking my head as I watch this SciAm video, they have an animated musclebound synthetic person as the spokesman wearing a SciAm t-shirt. Yes, it’s that bad. They seem to forget where they came from and who they cater to.
Of course there’s the obligatory “global warming” mention, still going strong after 1000 years, turning NYC’s central park into an African jungle, complete with elephants.
And it’s not just Scientific American pushing this stuff. Nat Geo (another magazine I used to enjoy) also has a video out on the topic that looks like…like…oh heck just watch it, I can’t even describe it.
In both SciAm and the NatGeo videos they destroy the statue of liberty. I guess either they dislike what it represents, or they have so little creative talent that they have to borrow from the famous scene with Charlton Heston from Planet of the Apes, the original human decline disaster movie.
It’s fine by me if the people at Voluntary Human Extinction Movement want to recuse themselves from Earth, and I’d be totally OK if SciAm, and NatGeo met with extinction, but please, leave the rest of the human race out of your plans. I notice that the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is still around, so much for leadership.
Me? I’m going to celebrate life.
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As people consume goods and services and those take energy to provide it has been obvious to me for a while that in order to really reduce Carbon emissions there are only two real choices. Either keep the current population numbers and go back to a pre industrial society or reduce the population substantially and retain a modern standard of living for those who are left.
The voluntary reduction of population has been proven not to work, China being the prime example although China’s demographics have been severely skewed as a result of their one child policies. That is already negatively impacting them and will impact them in a far more in future.
If reduction of population is necessary to reduce carbon emissions and voluntary population reduction methods don’t work then what are you left with ?
hunter says:
July 26, 2010 at 5:32 am
“Kevin B,
Please offer any proof at all for your assertion that an intelligent species will evolve in about 100,00 years and take our niche if humans go extinct.”
Labradors.
I canceled my subscription years ago when they published an article arguing that agriculture ended the ice age–that’s right, AGW started thousands of years ago. Their own charts and graphs didn’t support the argument the text was making. SciAm has become a mindless cheerleader for any AGW alarmism coming down the pike.
Another article from the warmist faction at new Scientist that fits in with your criticism of ” science” journals
All power to the wind – it cuts your electricity bills
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727704.900-all-power-to-the-wind–it-cuts-your-electricity-bills.html
hunter says . . .
“The AGW social movement has turned SA, Nat. Geo, and other formerly respectable magazines into shrill parodies of what they once were.
And their news content and quality has suffered dramatically.
This example of media implosion exists across most media organizations.
The first media outlet that chooses to actually report instead of promote will benefit not only from a recovery of credibility but will also make a great deal of money. People are hungry for real reporting.”
Unfortunately, market studies and ad revenues indicate otherwise. Those magazines, newspapers, and television programs that portray horror, drama, destruction, and misery tend to draw in far larger audiences and make way more money. The Weather Channel was going broke until it hit on its scare series postulating “what if ,” and its turnaround in fortunes is directly attributable to the abandonment of objectivity and straight reporting. Rupert Murdock owns Nat Geo Channel. He purports to be a conservative, but he is foremost a businessman, and knows full well that hype and melodrama make money.
Scientific American is a business, not a charity, and its descent into freak show journalism simply reflects a global media trend.
There’s one saving grace, by urging their readers to forswear fecundity, SciAm is helping to remove a lot of idiots from the gene pool. Some problems solve themselves given time.
It’s a shame what happened to Scientific American. In my library I have some very old, bound editions of Scientific American from the 1870’s (all the latest advances in steam technology). Now it seems SciAm is just a sister publication of People Magazine.
I stopped a 10 year subscription after I read the first Bush-bashing article in SA. That’s when I realized that it was no longer about science but about politics.
What if we woke in the morning and Scientific American was gone ?
I thought the Scientific American video was interesting. I saw a programme on the BBC some time ago about “Life after Man”; it too was really interesting. Don’t be so stroppy all the time. Lighten up.
Count me as another who dropped SciAm when it became apparent that TAS was not only gone, but not coming back
For a representative of a possible replacement species, I would nominate the little ringtail possum that lives in my ceiling during inclement weather. His “hands” each have two thumbs opposed to three fingers. This could be a portent, and sometimes makes me envious. Nice nature, too: if I climb up to investigate a noise (see what he has knocked over), and decide I want to take a photo, he waits while I go and get my camera. Cute enough, or intelligent enough, to manipulate a human into giving him house room.
the VHEM were to late for jonestown & heaven’s gate so they’ve started a new one. And this time we’re all invited! Lucky old us (sarc off)
Oldshedite says:
July 26, 2010 at 7:34 am
“Another article from the warmist faction at new Scientist that fits in with your criticism of ” science” journals
All power to the wind – it cuts your electricity bills
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727704.900-all-power-to-the-wind–it-cuts-your-electricity-bills.html
”
Didn’t notice that here in Germany. That must be new.
Environmentalism, at least certain bits of it, has had a taint of species-suicidal nature to it for awhile. Intelligent, well-educated people who are well versed in sound environmental principles, convince themselves a great way to help save the planet is to forswear having their own offspring. Those who don’t care about the environment, by choice or by not knowing the issues or even by circumstance, don’t have those problems and freely breed. Thus those in the best position to raise a new generation which is knowledgeable about the environment and willing to take care of it, do not, while those who will likely raise children who likewise do not care for the environment, do so. Thus the ratios get skewed and too many “don’t cares” may eventually destroy their own habitat.
Of course we can freely see what their “solution” is: Take over public education and indoctrinate other people’s kids into caring for the environment. Eh, those parents had it coming, ’cause if they cared as much as real environmentalists then they never would have had kids in school anyway. Right?
At the other extreme for “caring environmentalists” they have their own children because they recognize their kids will be the best able to tackle the problems and save the planet. Then they figure out how to keep those less caring from breeding. In milder forms of the condition you find things like wholehearted support for abortion, as a universal right that should have no restrictions, as it means there will be less of (and they are very careful on the wording) “those people.” From there it goes off into eugenics, by various means people must show they are worthy of breeding. On the light end you find reasonable-sounding items like having people pass a test to show they would be good parents. On the heavy end, of course, whole groups are kept from breeding, whether the divisions are between the wealthy (those who are “proven”) and the poor (the “untested” and “failed”), or by education levels, and even along racial lines going by historical trends (“These people have always been a waste of effort to educate!”).
What would be the “fair” solution? Don’t interfere, let anyone breed, let Nature settle it out. Do you really want to be one with Nature? Then abide by her rules, same as any other species, and accept the population booms and busts that other lifeforms have as well. Mankind has a built-in desire to propagate as much as possible, and we have repeatedly learned that working with the environment is the best long-term strategy for a sustainable large population. The “problem” will take of itself.
Besides, if anything went really bad then mankind, being intelligent, is best able to quickly fix the problem. You want to believe in a Living Earth? Accept that humanity has been generated as the fast-acting repair and immunity system. Sure we put a load on the system, but imagine what could happen if we weren’t here to rise up to a planet-threatening challenge. And hey, those asteroids won’t deflect themselves, for one example.
As the great George Carlin said about “endangered species”: “Just let them go!”….and: “the world is not going anywhere, WE ARE!, so pack your sh**s folks!”
[snip way off topic, and flamebait to boot ~mod]
DirkH says:
“Didn’t notice that here in Germany. That must be new.”
Ok i skimmed through the linked paper
http://isi.fraunhofer.de/isi/publ/download/isi07a18/merit-order-effect.pdf?pathAlias=/publ/downloads/isi07a18/merit-order-effect.pdf
They ran simulations of the German electricity market, noting the caveat that their simulation assumes 100% of the electricity is traded on the spot market when in rality it’s only 16.5 %. The rest is traded via bilateral contracts.
They don’t compare the behaviour of their modeled prizes with real prizes from the spot market.
Need i say more?
We better do not commit voluntary suicide in the event of “interesting times” which could account for the disappearance of a great number of human beings. Perhaps nature it is anticipating to eventual armageddon or a more probable ice-age scenario
DirkH says:
July 26, 2010 at 10:39 am
“[…]Need i say more?”
Well, yes i think i need to. They say we, the German consumers, pay about twice as much as subsidy for the renewable power as is its market value (assuming the grossly inflated electricity prizes in Germany to boot). Then they go on to find out via simulations that the prize-dampening effect of renewables (concerning the marginal prize) makes good for half or more of the entire cross-subsidy; so the message is: we might not win anything but at least we don’t lose money.
Given the unaddressed shortcomings of their simulations – they don’t even talk about the need to improve them or evaluate the deviation from reality – i would say this study is rigged big time. Fraunhofer is big in the renewables research business so i’m not surprised.
OK, the unblinking Green Fascist Cyborg Soul Patch Doofus paired with the oddly jubilant funk-techno music is about the creepiest thing I’ve seen in quite a while. Terminator 5, Hippie Douchebag Salivation. History Channel did a series called “Life After People” which was pretty interesting, but as far as I recall didn’t encourage or glorify mass-sui-genocide.
I liked both clips.
It’s clear who destroys who.
I just love these self-hating individuals that want all the rest of us to follow them into death — oh, wait. That’s our deaths, not theirs.
If they want to immolate themselves on the altar of Gaia, fine, but leave me out of it. I have few enough years remaining, but I doubt my grandkids are eager to follow this particular pied piper.
Good old Mother Gaia, red of tooth and claw, makes survival of any species problematical. I don’t know what the future holds, but I am human and loyal to my species, unlike this bunch of scientific loons.
One thing’s for certain, if there weren’t any humans around then absolutely nobody would be worried about climate change.
reminds me of the “The Caravazan Empire” — s.f. reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Upcountry#Major_Interstellar_Players
who believe in the need to remove all negative human influence from the galaxy (except of course the few very wealthy “caretakers” of the worlds), and if the work the planetary population to death during the cleanup — well that’s just good efficiency, now isn’t it. Now of course they can’t abandon technology *themselves*. How else could they fight the enemies of nature if they did?
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement — Now there’s a self-limiting organization if there ever was one.