Wars are good for the planet

[blaaah]

The upside of mass human deaths from wars is a regrowth of trees in areas where the population has destroyed. The air quality will improve and thousands of ton of co2 absorbed.
Wars as they stand though are not enough to halt the continued trend for rising co2 levels.
So the planet needs more wars in order to save itself for the benefit of wildlife and for future human generations?


Source:http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/01/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of.html

 

[Alex p.]

Sorry but I think this is a silly/sick idea. How did you come up with something like this?

 

[Danoff]

Where to start:

- First, establish that CO2 is bad for the planet
- Second, establish that the net effect of war is to decrease CO2 and does not offset that with something worse (bombs do pollute)
- Third, establish that any positive effect on CO2 is worth the number of lives lost necessary to achieve that effect.

Number 1 hasn't been done. Number 2 is probably impossible. And number 3 is definitely impossible.

 

[sumbrownkid]

What a horrible idea.

War is the one thing that truly plagues mankind.

 

[BigYoSpeck]

Yeah but call me racist, xenophobic or what ever, but I'm not a planet so I don't actually care about the well being of one. As many stars can super nova as they like destroying planets, I don't even donate to dog shelters so planets can go stuff themselves.

I am a person though so I wouldn't ever be happy at the sacrifice of humans for the well being of a planet.

Peace out hombre 👍

 

[risuku13]

Overpopulation is an issue and war isn't the solution.

 

[BrutherSuperior]

The upside of mass human deaths from wars is a regrowth of trees in areas where the population has destroyed. The air quality will improve and thousands of ton of co2 absorbed.
Wars as they stand though are not enough to halt the continued trend for rising co2 levels.
So the planet needs more wars in order to save itself for the benefit of wildlife and for future human generations?


Source:http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/01/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of.html

This is right up there with shaving your head and stuffing your pockets with quarters so you can call home from your spaceship.

 

[Dotini]

The upside of mass human deaths from wars is a regrowth of trees in areas where the population has destroyed. The air quality will improve and thousands of ton of co2 absorbed.
Wars as they stand though are not enough to halt the continued trend for rising co2 levels.
So the planet needs more wars in order to save itself for the benefit of wildlife and for future human generations?


Source:http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/01/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of.html

This is not the world's most tactful post, blaaah. We know you can do better, particularly with the subject title.

Respectfully yours,
Dotini

 

[niky]

Pretty silly idea.

Wars need materiel, materiel needs economic activity. Big wars... or wars big enough to decimate human populations in large numbers, require lots of industrial activity. Guns, ammunition, tanks, aircraft, bombs, mines. Munitions pollute, as Danoff noted... and many battle sites still suffer from the toxic effects of heavy metals and explosives.

And after the war, there's a need to rebuild. A simple study that doesn't take into account that people will be cutting down forests to fix infrastructure destroyed during a conflict is extremely myopic.

 

[Keef]

Where to start:

- First, establish that CO2 is bad for the planet
- Second, establish that the net effect of war is to decrease CO2 and does not offset that with something worse (bombs do pollute)
- Third, establish that any positive effect on CO2 is worth the number of lives lost necessary to achieve that effect.

Number 1 hasn't been done. Number 2 is probably impossible. And number 3 is definitely impossible.

Don't forget the immediate environmental cost of all those decomposing bodies. I don't even know what sort of gases are produced, but roadkill is bad enough, much less thousands of human bodies.

 

[Sam48]

The upside of mass human deaths from wars is a regrowth of trees in areas where the population has destroyed.

Your first statement plagues the rest, that is if the rest is even relevant. Anyway, when populated areas are destroyed by war, we rebuild (Assuming this isn't some third world country). Just look at Europe. Two world wars later and you can hardly tell.

 

[blaaah]

The title was not an opinion I was expressing or a statement of intent.
It was titled as a news item to which I linked to the scientific report for you to read.
The title is the basis of the gist I took from the report and what it means. When I repeat the notion I do so with a question mark to promote discussion. And in any case the complete cessation of human life as we know it could be good for the planet in my opinion if you like to have an opinion expressed, but I can also have the opinion to think it's not so simple and absolute as that and human life can be of great merit to the wholeness of the planet.
I do not think it is morally wrong or sick to consider the extinction of humans as a good thing.
Those debates are philosophical and scientific and can take on board emotions and concerns. So I hope your concerns are voiced to congratulate the debate and not to dismiss it as something that should not be said, but to just disagree a point of view.
I suppose I should have predicted that emotive negative personal associations would come from such a potential big issue, I was thinking about it purely in an Nature point of view and in a wider point of view from an outsider observing Earth. But anyway it's not my story or an idea that I made it's just a science news report available for comment.
I think there is apparently scope for more controversial topics as there is clearly room for views to be expressed in this conceptual morality.

Us humans are a significant part of this Planets evolution, I don't know whether we are doing our bit for the Earth's mission of existence or not, need to discover the mission first or if there even is one. At which point someone could rightly say "shut up I have a family to feed and care for". But then it could be argued so what a family is just a holographic projection from the outer edge of the universe containing merely mathematical information. It really doesn't matter if that projection gets turned off. But only if those projections are not aware of their imminent shut down and knowledge of loss?
Whether it's just maths or not, suffering is a genuine feeling for us and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, that's as personal as i can get.

BTW. I do 'feel' like Earth has a mission. I suppose it is a bit like how people might believe in a god/religion which gives purpose to humans and rules for ways of life to lead to heaven etc. But for me I think humans are just a tool (please don't feel inclined to say "We are not a tool but you might be", we are not the main dudes in the story, we are not heading for heaven, but we are certainly helping the Earth in it's core purpose, I think we are like a 'hive being', encompassing everything the planet has created. With our technological abilities the analogy is like we are seed and can go to other planets and domains of space. But that might be making us too important, but it fits a theory anyway. I know i have an overwhelming draw or curiosity about what's out there in space. So I hope the light switch doesn't get flicked off just yet. Selfishly though, as something just as relevant and important would fill our species shoes after a while, Dolphins are apparently only 100,000 years behind us in evolutionary intelligence development I read. Which might seem like a long time but it's certainly not astronomically.
Any views? Or does someone just want to say Hitler?

 

[niky]

The "mission" of all life is to survive and propagate.

As such, considering the biosphere of Earth as having a mission at all, without humanity, it's a pretty futile effort.

Humanity is Earthlife's best chance (so far) of leaving Earth and colonizing other planets.

The extinction of Humanity sets that back at least another few million years, in which "intelligent" life may or may not evolve... or cockroaches develop the ability to propel themselves via methane rocket flatulence and survive in deep space...

Reforestation due to genocide is only a temporary thing, and it was only able to occur because Native Americans did not irrevocably destroy the land and the topsoil through industrial-level agriculture.

A war killing off a modern civilization will not likely have the same effect. And worse, societies which are faced with possible starvation and economic ruin are more likely to give up sustainable farming in the short run in order to increase yields during the lean years after the war... which will further destroy more land.

 

[blaaah]

So long, and thanks for all the fish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojydNb3Lrrs

 

[Joel]

War is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the reason for which it is waged. Therin lies the crux of the problem with this idea, war for the sake of population control isn't beneficial for the planet, nor is it anywhere even remotely close to morally correct.

 

[nobuffalo]

So you're a dolphin?

 

[BigYoSpeck]

War is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the reason for which it is waged.

People being willing to fight and die over something means at least one party is always the baddy or both are stupid.

 

[Giancarlo]

So you're a dolphin?

 

[Pupik]

This reminds me of that thread (since deleted) about if cannibals should get a lesser crime for cleaning up properly after themselves.

Just a really dumb thread, and this pretty much goes alongside of it...I could be planting a tree instead of reading this junk.

 

[daan]

War? What is it good for?

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Our clean air comes at their expense. Makes sense, doesn't it?

 

[niky]

War? What is it good for?

Uhnnn!

Absow-lutely... nuthin!

 

[mirial]

A more humane way of dealing with the problem is to keep birth rate under control, but since all countries are continuing to evolve, it just ain't gonna happen.

But I do agree with blaaah to some degree that humans have taken liberties with the planet. I think only something cataclysmic will prevent the planet from going into meltdown.

I work for a big corporation, and it, and it's competitors are only interested in setting up factories to produce machines that consume collossal amounts of consumables to make even more money.

 

[blaaah]

This reminds me of that thread (since deleted) about if cannibals should get a lesser crime for cleaning up properly after themselves.

Just a really dumb thread, and this pretty much goes alongside of it...I could be planting a tree instead of reading this junk.

It's a serious report which you make a mockery of.
The publication was from New Scientist which I think has more professional credentials than you can counter with, by just saying it's 'dumb'. Do you understand the science of the report, did you read it?

There is only 1 comment posted so far on the actual article at New Scientist, from user chinab2cc1 on January 20, 2011 11:36 PM, which concisely says "excellent!!!", which I think is good form.

 

[Northstar]

It's a serious report which you make a mockery of.
The publication was from New Scientist which I think has more professional credentials than you can counter with, by just saying it's 'dumb'. Do you understand the science of the report, did you read it?

Great, another "It's on the interwebz, it has to be true!!!!!!" thing.

There has already been things brought up in this thread that argue certain things that that article didn't even touch. Mainly the fact that the weapons needed to cause enough human deaths(probably nuclear, which would bring the whole radiation aspect into the argument) to have any noticeable effect would surely cause more environmental harm than a few trees could make up for.

On that note, do you know how long tree's take to grow? It's not overnight, not months, more like years. That's in fertile soil, who knows if a tree would even grow in a war zone since there would be a crap load of debris.

I don't see that becoming a forest.

 

[Danoff]

I do not think it is morally wrong or sick to consider the extinction of humans as a good thing.

Then you do not understand morality.

And in any case the complete cessation of human life as we know it could be good for the planet

What are you talking about? Nothing is "good for" our planet. Our planet is a massive lump of solid and liquid rock with a little gas floating around it. The rock we stand on doesn't care whether we stand on it, dump trash on it, change the chemical composition of the gas surrounding it, or detonate nuclear weapons on it.

I do not understand why you are anthropomorphizing our planet, but it's silly. Trust me, humanity's significance to a lump of rock is not a worthy conversation topic. Typically people who go on "save the earth" campaigns understand that the real purpose is to benefit humanity.

A more humane way of dealing with the problem is to keep birth rate under control

A more humane way of dealing with this conversation is to first establish that the human population is a problem - which has not been established, not by a long shot.

 

[Anes]

A more humane way of dealing with the problem is to keep birth rate under control

I've brought this up in the american thread before. Apparently it's a bad idea. I called it a licence to breed iirc but even drug dealing mass murderers serving life sentences should have the right to populate the earth with 12 kids according to some

 

[spiker]

I've brought this up in the american thread before. Apparently it's a bad idea. I called it a licence to breed iirc but even drug dealing mass murderers serving life sentences should have the right to populate the earth with 12 kids according to some

Yeah. We shouldn't restrict human breeding. I want to see this guy running the US one day.

 

[Pupik]

It's a serious report which you make a mockery of.
The publication was from New Scientist which I think has more professional credentials than you can counter with, by just saying it's 'dumb'. Do you understand the science of the report, did you read it?

Yes, while there is factual basis to the story, its practical application requires a lot of Kool-Aid to wash away the phenolbarbitol, that's what.

 

[blaaah]

...but even drug dealing mass murderers serving life sentences should have the right to populate the earth with 12 kids according to some

12 is OK but 13 is right out of the question.
.............
I think the potential avenues of this thread are too broad and complex and arguments over too many different things and concepts and misunderstandings of ideas and statements.
Wars being good is not my idea and never has been.
The article focuses on medieval wars where many people died, they were killed by arrows/clubbing/spears/bare hands. There were no factories or carbon emissions from industries or pollution of air from war activity. The comment was that because of the population decline at a period of war, it is suggested the tree/plant regrowth absorbed CO2 to a significant degree.
I don't think the article itself is meant to make any conclusions about things, but just to find itself some data as a statistic for general consumption.
To include it in a debate about a wars merit should be considered perhaps just in an environmental aspect and not directly to the human meanings of war.