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davieG

Technology, Science and the Environment.

By davieG, in General Chat

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UniFox21

UniFox21

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20191021/Antibiotic-resistance-doubles-in-just-two-decades.aspx

 

Climate change is not the only global-scale threat out there.

It's terrifying to know how many antibiotics bacteria are resistant to. Tbf climate change will also potentially lead to increased resistance mechanisms. 

 

Yet the problem seems to be fairly unknown to huge numbers of people. It's a huge issue.

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, UniFox21 said:

It's terrifying to know how many antibiotics bacteria are resistant to. Tbf climate change will also potentially lead to increased resistance mechanisms. 

 

Yet the problem seems to be fairly unknown to huge numbers of people. It's a huge issue.

Right, it's all a multifaceted issue and too often people are only seeing one part of it and therefore dismissing it as a smaller threat.

 

It's often "perfect storms" of circumstance that bring down species, not simply one pressuring event.

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
47 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01577-w

 

Nailing gene editing tech will be a game changer in all biological and medical sciences.

Absolutely it will - provided, of course, that such tech is made widely available.

 

As an aside, I do think we have to be a little careful about gene editing outside of a particular purpose, like this one - it has real power and in the right hands it could help a great many people, but in the wrong hands it is a eugenicist Josef Mengele's wet dream.

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Bobby Hundreds

Bobby Hundreds

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Absolutely it will - provided, of course, that such tech is made widely available.

 

As an aside, I do think we have to be a little careful about gene editing outside of a particular purpose, like this one - it has real power and in the right hands it could help a great many people, but in the wrong hands it is a eugenicist Josef Mengele's wet dream.

Fair to say this isn't or won't be the only case https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-babies/chinese-scientist-who-gene-edited-babies-fired-by-university-idUSKCN1PF0RA

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Fair to say this isn't or won't be the only case https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-babies/chinese-scientist-who-gene-edited-babies-fired-by-university-idUSKCN1PF0RA

Yep, exactly what I'm referring to.

 

I'm not saying it isn't useful or even a necessity to vastly improve human quality of life, but this is a case where science is proceeding wildly ahead of the development of human ethics and prejudices and as such it could easily be used terribly.

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WigstonWanderer

WigstonWanderer

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50129353

 

Wrong way to go about things.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50140110

 

Another example of a Brit working in the shed to change the world. The better we get at energy storage, the more easily renewable options will become viable due to efficiency.

Yes, as idyllic as it sounds, there are just too many people on the earth now to be supported organically. The important thing has to be to protect animal welfare, reduce the impact of fertilisers and non organic farming methods as much as possible and recycle nutrients, etc. How? I have no idea. 

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
28 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Yes, as idyllic as it sounds, there are just too many people on the earth now to be supported organically. The important thing has to be to protect animal welfare, reduce the impact of fertilisers and non organic farming methods as much as possible and recycle nutrients, etc. How? I have no idea. 

Genetic solutions could probably come to the fore there by making crops easier to grow in harsher conditions with less fertiliser - but then that comes with its own attendant problems.

 

Honestly, this is probably a point we've long since reached but human development has most definitely now reached a point of no return - either we continue using scientific development to satisfy the basic needs of the humans of Earth and accept the risk that it might all go wrong one day...or we regress and accept that going wrong and resultant population crash as a certainty.

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MC Prussian

MC Prussian

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Genetic solutions could probably come to the fore there by making crops easier to grow in harsher conditions with less fertiliser - but then that comes with its own attendant problems.

 

Honestly, this is probably a point we've long since reached but human development has most definitely now reached a point of no return - either we continue using scientific development to satisfy the basic needs of the humans of Earth and accept the risk that it might all go wrong one day...or we regress and accept that going wrong and resultant population crash as a certainty.

Bit of a redundant argument, I think even the most reasonable person will accept the fact that the global population can‘t continue to increase at this rate without causing strains on the environment as a whole at one point or another.

 

One of the main side issues here is the development of the age pyramid; more and more people are getting older on average, which requires proportionally more and more young people/adults to supply the workforce, generating the basis for a stable economy, securing pensions and whatnot.

And since most Western countries can‘t satisfy that need due to low birthrates, they are forced to import labour from abroad. Which is the situation we‘re in right now, resulting in the assimilation issues of large amounts of people with a foreign background - some are able to integrate better than others, mind. This in turn dilutes culture to some extent, as profit reigns supreme.
 

Either the amount of natural deaths (age-related) will outnumber births, nature does its part (catastrophies, diseases) or we‘re looking at a large-scale war event, potentially WWIII. The latter part is particularly frightening.

 

There is no such thing as endless growth, even nature has checks and balances in place.

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, MC Prussian said:

Bit of a redundant argument, I think even the most reasonable person will accept the fact that the global population can‘t continue to increase at this rate without causing strains on the environment as a whole at one point or another.

 

One of the main side issues here is the development of the age pyramid; more and more people are getting older on average, which requires proportionally more and more young people/adults to supply the workforce, generating the basis for a stable economy, securing pensions and whatnot.

And since most Western countries can‘t satisfy that need due to low birthrates, they are forced to import labour from abroad. Which is the situation we‘re in right now, resulting in the assimilation issues of large amounts of people with a foreign background - some are able to integrate better than others, mind. This in turn dilutes culture to some extent, as profit reigns supreme.
 

Either the amount of natural deaths (age-related) will outnumber births, nature does its part (catastrophies, diseases) or we‘re looking at a large-scale war event, potentially WWIII. The latter part is particularly frightening.

 

There is no such thing as endless growth, even nature has checks and balances in place.

Oh yeah, I'm certainly not saying that there is an infinite growth model, as you say that's utter rubbish - I am hopeful that we can steer the human overall population to a plateau somewhere between the middle and end of this century as more countries develop and adopt tech. I can see why someone might think that was what I meant though, so allow me to clarify.

 

What I'm referring to is the use of science to address various environmental and social problems. Sometimes science itself is the creator of these problems in the first place. My point is because these problems exist and we've used science so far, we're on the horse riding full tilt and we can continue to ride it and develop and accept the risk that one day a development might blow up in our collective faces (metaphorically or literally) or we jump off the horse and accept the certainty that regressing in that way is going to result in a big population crash.

 

Needless to say, I prefer the former to the latter.

Edited by leicsmac
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