There are a lot of earth problems created by man.

[JohnDBarrow]

1. pollution

2. litter

3. failure to recycle recyclable materials religiously and have a widespread infrastructure that makes this convenient to do 

4. overpopulation

5. overconsumption

6. poverty

7. war

8. hate

9. crime

10. dangerous drugs

11. dangerous chemicals and other hazardous products 

12. displacement of materials to a situation where recovery is not feasilble 

13. waste of resources 

14. ignorance

15. greed

16. selfishness 

 

Most if not all of these human shortcomings can negatively affect the world environment. True or false? 

 

Let me explain Number 12. Let's take the rare metal LEAD (a chemical element Pb). Man extracts it by mining from places that nature conveninetly deposited in large masses and then he spreads it thin all over the globe. Lead is scattered all over so that it cannot be practically recycled for use again and again. In some cases, however, lead is actually recycled.  This often occurs with automobile wheel weights and lead-acid car batteries. Lead pipes have been replaced by other materials and I suppose most of that lead also has been put back into the reusable materials pool. Where lead is often not recycled is when it is used as fishing weights and gun projectiles. Billions upon billions of gun bullets are shot worldwide and lead shotgun charges have been fired at ranges and in the field so that the spent lead is hardly practical to try to recover. What hunters and game processors should do is collect the lead slugs from the quarry for recycling. Target ranges for firearms also should have a way of capturing the lead projectiles for practical recovery and recycling. I'm afraid one day man will run out of suitable materials for gun projectiles and fishing weights if he continues to displace such materials by hurling them widely all over the landscape and ocean bottoms of the globe. Often lead sinkers are released for hooked fish reeled in on purpose when trolling for fish. It's not that these materials are lost for good. Matter in the universe is neither created nor destroyed. It's that man purposely puts some materials out of his easy reach for reuse. The same is true for aluminum beer and soda cans that end up in landfills. 

 

Edited June 29 by JohnDBarrow

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, JohnDBarrow said:

I'm afraid one day man will run out of suitable materials for gun projectiles and fishing weights if he continues to displace such materials by hurling them widely all over the landscape and ocean bottoms of the globe.

OTOH, this would really help with 5-9, 13-16.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, JohnDBarrow said:

I'm afraid one day man will run out of suitable materials for gun projectiles and fishing weights if he continues to displace such materials by hurling them widely all over the landscape and ocean bottoms of the globe.

Is there some analysis that stokes this fear? 

[Franz H]

Is point 4 actually still up to date?

I remeber reading that the orginial claim of overpopulation was debunked or even retracted.

 

[exchemist]

35 minutes ago, Franz H said:

Is point 4 actually still up to date?

I remeber reading that the orginial claim of overpopulation was debunked or even retracted.

 

Overpopulation seems to me a debatable issue. How does one determine when the human population is "too much"? What does seem fairly sure is that the human population will naturally reach a maximum later this century, as rising standards of living, better education and more autonomy for women reduce the birthrate. It's already below replacement level in many developed countries.

[Phi for All]

15 hours ago, JohnDBarrow said:

Most if not all of these human shortcomings can negatively affect the world environment. True or false? 

1-3 are the same things. We can definitely do better. This is a capitalist problem though, manufacturers not wanting waste to cost them profits. Remove capitalism and there are suddenly great reasons to clean up our environment.

4-6 are similarly related. Remove the need for capitalist profit and increase education availability to make these vanish.

7-10 also mostly go away when there's no reason or profit in them. Better social investment also reduces these drastically, helping us move away from basic tribal conflicts. 

11-13 are yet more examples of problems that mostly go away when we allow pressures OTHER THAN profit to influence our decisions. More capitalism is making these problems worse, so the answer seems obvious.

14-16 are humans forgetting that we have intelligent brains, and that we can overcome animal behavior by actually using them. These are really the only "shortcomings" on your list, since the rest can be fixed by removing the desperate need for more and more profit in our economies. We CAN be ignorant and selfish and greedy like many animals, or we can realize that cooperation and communication gets everybody what they need so greed and selfishness have no firm ground to grow in.

[JohnDBarrow]

15 hours ago, swansont said:

Is there some analysis that stokes this fear? 

No, I have questions, though. What is man going to do for a lead or aluminum source once all lead or aluminum mines are exhausted? 

Can you imagine man's trying to reclaim all the lead material shot downrange at firearms target ranges?  Then there are all those lost fishing lead weights

at the bottoms of bodies of water. Go diving to recover them if you wish. Copper is being lost (displaced, scattered everywhere) too as it is a jacket for some bullets. 

Edited June 29 by JohnDBarrow

[zapatos]

17 hours ago, JohnDBarrow said:

I'm afraid one day man will run out of suitable materials for... fishing weights

Yes, that is what keeps me awake at night.

[swansont]

16 minutes ago, JohnDBarrow said:

No, I have questions, though. What is man going to do for a lead or aluminum source once all lead or aluminum mines are exhausted? 

Find out what the known reserves are, and how much is being used each year to justify the concern. Science discussion, instead of gloom and doom rhetoric

(Aluminum is not mined, BTW. Bauxite is, and processed)

16 minutes ago, JohnDBarrow said:

Can you imagine man's trying to reclaim all the lead material shot downrange at firearms target ranges?  Then there are all those lost fishing lead weights

Lead is about $2000 a ton. That should suggest how difficult it is to obtain. It’s not a rare substance.

16 minutes ago, JohnDBarrow said:

at the bottoms of bodies of water. Go diving to recover them if you wish.

If it becomes rare, such efforts might be economically feasible.

16 minutes ago, JohnDBarrow said:

Copper is being lost (displaced, scattered everywhere) too as it is a jacket for some bullets. 

With ~25 million tons mined in 2021, I think the amount list to bullets is probably minuscule by comparison

[Sensei]

Quote

There are a lot of earth problems created by man.

The earth is not a living being, so it has no problems. These problems are created by humans to other humans, living now or to future generations.

18 hours ago, JohnDBarrow said:

The same is true for aluminum beer and soda cans that end up in landfills.

I disagree. Aluminium has pretty good recycling rate..

https://www.google.com/search?q=aluminium+recycling+rate

"The global Recycling Efficiency Rate (RER) of aluminium is currently 76%. The RER defines how efficiently aluminium is recycled throughout the value chain."

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=lead+recycling+rate

"A Sustainability Star: Lead Batteries Maintain Impressive 99% Recycling Rate. As we celebrate America Recycles Day 2023 on November 15, it's important to highlight the remarkable sustainability achievements of the lead battery industry."

 

Charts with various elements:

https://www.google.com/search?q=metal+recycling+rate

e.g.

Lead used in ammunition, etc. is the margin of its use. It is highlighted in yellow on this chart:

 

Of course, the higher the recycling rate, the better. But it is still impossible to achieve 100.0%. One can only try.

[Franz H]

On 6/29/2024 at 8:17 PM, Sensei said:

The earth is not a living being, so it has no problems. These problems are created by humans to other humans, living now or to future generations.

If you refer to 'the earth' as the blob of mainly hot matter moving around space, yes.

For 'the earth' as whats going on ontop of its crust, I would make the case that is a living being. Or an array/chain of many different beings. 

I agree that this living being has no problems in the long run as it will continue living far beyond the existence of mankind.

[JohnDBarrow]

On 6/30/2024 at 3:04 PM, Franz H said:

If you refer to 'the earth' as the blob of mainly hot matter moving around space, yes.

For 'the earth' as whats going on ontop of its crust, I would make the case that is a living being. Or an array/chain of many different beings. 

I agree that this living being has no problems in the long run as it will continue living far beyond the existence of mankind.

As long as the earth exists as a planet, it may still have conscious living things on board. Maybe not Homo sapiens sapiens as we know them today. Maybe intelligent chimps, gorillas and orangutans a billion years from now.  The last I read, the earth and the sun have about 5 billion years left before the sun's burnout time. It's amazing how the sun can burn for so long and the sun's volume is only 1 million times that of the earth. The sun must be very energy-dense to burn for 10 billion years.  Without the sun's energy, it would seem life on earth would not do so well if life on a sunless planet is even possible at all. Energy is life. 

Edited July 3 by JohnDBarrow

[Phi for All]

8 minutes ago, JohnDBarrow said:

The last I read, the earth and the sun have about 5 billion years left before burnout time. 

That's when the sun burns up most of its hydrogen. Long before it does that, it will be so bright with energy that Earth will dry out. Earth and Mars might even survive as planets as the sun goes red giant, but they'll be dry rocks, and they won't be habitable. 

[swansont]

54 minutes ago, JohnDBarrow said:

As long as the earth exists as a planet, it may still have conscious living things on board. Maybe not Homo sapiens sapiens as we know them today. Maybe intelligent chimps, gorillas and orangutans a billion years from now.  The last I read, the earth and the sun have about 5 billion years left before the sun's burnout time. It's amazing how the sun can burn for so long and the sun's volume is only 1 million times that of the earth. The sun must be very energy-dense to burn for 10 billion years.  Without the sun's energy, it would seem life on earth would not do so well if life on a sunless planet is even possible at all. Energy is life. 

The sun’s mass is 2 x 10^30 kg, and it converts about  4 x 10^9 kg per sec into other forms of energy  (ultimately, sunshine) The volume comparison isn’t relevant. The earth isn’t made of (mostly) hydrogen, nor is it undergoing fusion

[Sensei]

9 hours ago, swansont said:

The earth isn’t made of (mostly) hydrogen, nor is it undergoing fusion

..it has already gone through the fusion and supernova explosion stages at a distant time > ~ 4.5 billion years ago.... It's just debris/dust from supernovae et al.

[Ghideon]

On 6/29/2024 at 7:08 PM, JohnDBarrow said:

Then there are all those lost fishing lead weights

If that really is a concern that bother you: the ability to catch fish without lead weight seems documented, and we're not likely to run out of rocks and stones:

Quote

Nineteen broken and complete bone fish hooks and six grooved stones recovered from the Epipaleolithic site of Jordan River Dureijat in the Hula Valley of Israel represent the largest collection of fishing technology from the Epipaleolithic and Paleolithic periods. 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0257710 (bold by me)