Surviving isn't living, it's just not dying. Do you wan to live that type of life, but our duty has always been to overcome... war, starvation... & now is no different.
Brad Hammett I think they meant that the stakes are higher this century for all living things. If we survive it would mean that Earth has somewhat stabilised again.
"As far as we know, we are unique in the universe, and if for nothing else, it is our duty to our own innate curiosity to survive and to see where this rising complexity leads." I actually found myself giving John a spontaneous clap. Beautiful. :)
This video gave me a lot of emotions about humans. Sometimes we are awful, and sometimes we are amazing. That's why I love us. I used to think of us as the smartest animal, but really, we are the least stupid animal, and we are still figuring everything out :) The end of this was inspirational! -Nathan
As a Canadian, I am extremely embarrassed by Stephen Harper's climate policy. I laughed when the animators showed Stephen Harper drinking oil (6:30), but it would probably be more appropriate to cry.
DracoTheBlack You are preaching to the choir dude. However I am facsinated by the idea that we somehow elected someone, and I don't know a single person who likes him.
plm42 Thanks for the link. I've actually watched it before. And it does explain our voting problems rather elegantly. But since we are allowed to vote freely, I've decided to live with most of the issues our system has.
For those of you who have taken AP Human Geography, this video mentions so many of the concepts from that course. It's great. Crash course should honestly make an APHG course. It would benefit students so much.
I'm just discovering this series in quarantine, but episodes 4-9 are essentially my degree of Environmental Science (specifically this episode) and if you're stuck on a major to take, I'd suggest this one :)
I have a crazy idea, but why not make it LEGAL to sell electricity to anyone who wants to start their own micro-energy company? In other words, it is currently illegal in all 50 U.S. states to operate a power company that is not sanctioned by the state government. If this restriction were removed and say a home owner's association were to install solar panels and sell excess energy to a neighboring commercial strip, or vice versa, the money saving and profit generating incentives would spur technological advancements, new economic markets, and curb our dependence on non-renewable energy... and ODDLY enough, I think it might actually be something Democrats and Republicans could come together on... I dunno, call me crazy!!!
It is already legal, but regulated. Unregulated sale of local power has, historically, been done, and it was both an economic and infrastructure disaster. It was not until regulation that power production, usage, and consumer electronics took off.
This idea sounds a lot like Mao's Great Leap Forward but with power instead of steel. It takes a lot of expertise to produce, install, and maintain a solar panel. Even if an average Joe is willing to fork out the money to install his own solar panel, it still takes years for him to recoup his losses using free power. Also, power consumption is set to only increase, and solar panels will have upgrades for more efficient conversion, but every upgrade will put him deeper into the pit. Unless there is some sort of subsidy, the average family isn't even buying panels to save their electricity bill, let alone trying to sell excess power if there is even any to sell.
The reason that we have centralized power generation is that it is not practical for most power generation systems to be scaled down. Solar, wind and microhydro are able to scale to a personal level and people can use those for their own power generation. The issue with all the other power generation methods is that they rely upon some sort of heat engine to generate electricity - e.g. steam turbines. Hear engines become much more efficient as they become larger. That's why your car engine gets maybe 12% efficiency while a large ship or power plant reciprocating engine can run at around 50%. Going to local power generation would be horribly wasteful. Additionally, heat engines, particularly pressurized steam, are dangerous to operate. Ship and building steam engines used to explode all the time, killing large numbers of people. That's why it's very tightly regulated now with regular inspection and trained personnel. The ability for a corporation to have a staff of trained engineers and technicians is what is needed for safe and reliable operation of these complex machines. Compare large commercial air transport which is one of the safest forms of transportation with small privately maintained planes which are one of the most dangerous. Also, the big kicker is that any private power generation has to be able to couple to the grid. This is not a simple thing to do. AC power sources have to be extremely accurately synchronized to each other or else equipment will be destroyed and the entire grid can be brought down. Power generation plants have to use atomic clock timing signals to ensure that their generators are all synced to under 1% of the AC cycle. If you deviate beyond that, one of those huge generators will melt into a pile of slag in a few seconds. If private power generators start hooking to the grid, they aren't going to have the same reliable timing (and other technical issues) and you risk damaging the entire power grid to the tune of millions or even billions of dollars of damage. There is a lot of potential for rooftop solar to supplant grid power within a home but once you start pushing significant amounts of your grid power from private PV setups, you're asking for trouble. Municipal level power generation does have a lot of promise where you have smaller power generation facilities at a city level. But micro generation simply isn't reliable enough to try and run a grid off of it yet. Maybe in a decade or two we can make home level power regulating and inverting devices that are reliable enough to trust to be grid-level reliable without regular maintenance and inspection but it's a little early to be doing that yet.
Not likely. First off, most people who install power generation devices at home use them as supplements, they still pay for electricity, just less of it. They don't have any excess power to sell. However the real problem is from an energy transmission point of view. Having many small sources makes transmission very difficult as you have to deal with the reactance in the lines. If they're privately owned, they're also unpredictable since the people who own them can just cut them off any time and that's a problem. It works in theory but from an engineering perspective, it's just a nightmare.
Rather disappointed in lumping Nuclear in with Coal and Oil around 6:30, especially on an image that specifically mentions Climate Change. Nuclear Power certainly has concerns that should NOT be overlooked or minimized, but it currently stands as the cheapest, safest, and most effective way to power the earth without CO2 Emissions, and make a Serious impact on global warming.
Once again, I'm perfectly aware that it has drawbacks. Serious safety and proliferation concerns that need to be addressed and taken seriously. But No CO2 emissions and No contribution to Climate change.
Fencer Dave That doesn't solve the issue of limited supplies of nuclear fuel. The fuel we have may last us for a very long time but if we use nuclear power as our solution to our overuse of fossil fuels we're only going to have another issue of having to again find a new fuel source. It's a step in the right direction but not THE solution to the fossil fuels problem.
The biggest critique against nuclear power plants is the accidents that can happen (Lets not forget that there isn't infinite amount of energy here, they run on elements that we dig out of the earth, remember that.) and I see an easy solution for this... Have nuclear power plants run inside of old mines that go deep into the earth. That should keep stuff safe, just in case. Even at a melt down, due to the rock and earth layer, it shouldn't radiate the surface or spew radioactive elements up to the surface if you have a sort of lid on the entire thing.
Michael Thomas, +Victor Tesla: Those incidents were caused by a lack of equipment, proper education and malfunctioning safety precautions. Nuclear power's technology has improved greatly in the past 10-20 years so most scientists don't even take it into consideration.
***** I know, or scientists, amiright? Other people screwing up before us is why we don't Have to change! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to split a dove in half, and put in on my head to ward off plague...
Same. I learned about vlogbrothers and his book in sophomore year. I was playing Minecraft and watching SciShow around the time I got into highschool. Those were the times.
These episodes, even if they're written sometimes in a too hopefull way regarding the future, always get me pumped up in the morning. Thanks Crash Course.
@@mobeenkhan824 I know, I wrote this mainly as a joke. Before this whole quarantine mess started. It is not even close to comparing with the Spanish flu, the chicken pox outbreak, or the black death.
Why do so many folks think that more people is better? Way I see it, more people is just more people, more stress on the ecological systems that support them, more competition.
Not if they don't have access to food and water to survive, and the technologies to improve upon them (which is the case for most of the 7 billion people on Earth). ;-)
agreed: it would be better to have fewer people with more efficient production such as more automated factories and other menial jobs, more concentrated/intensive farming and food production, and industrializing as much as possible. That way we could basically do away with 90% of blue collar/menial jobs freeing up more people to get educated positions allowing faster technological advancement. Right now only a tiny population work as "white collar" or educated jobs, so we could maintain or increase the number of people advancing the human race as a whole and free up more land and resources.
I'm personally for option 3 at 10:13 ... I kinda feel like 'hoping for the miracle technology' was the same kind of thinking that caused so many of the bittersweet pros and cons of the last 150ish years.
Dear Thought Bubble: Thank you so much for your shot at our jackass Prime Minister. Most Americans seem to think it's all sunshine and rainbows up here, but the truth is we've got Tony Abbot North running the show. Sincerely, A Canadian.
Take off the partisan blinders and see the tremendous service that Mr. Harper did for every Canadian. He stopped the crazies from ruining the country with their global warming conspiracy theory.
KillerKane0 I'm going to save everyone the trouble and tell them to just assume that was sarcasm. If it was sarcasm. "I know right~ Lol." If it wasn't well.. Sorry to break the news to you but the momentum is already there for renewables simple on a sustainability level so. Push at least for sustainability if you aren't gonna push for being some kind of 'greenie'. But! It was probably sarcasm.
AllDayUmDay I know right, I was amazed when I heard the news too. Like, you know Britain? Those unapologetic monarchs whom enslaved us without representation a hundred or so years ago.. They're a democracy now! Its fuckin nuts.
+4-Piano Orchestra No, it's Stephen Harper, the awful Prime minister we just got rid of here in Canada. However a Ted Cruz presidency would be a disaster! As would any of the GOP candidates. I hope my American neighbours are smart & vote for Sanders!!
I like you Green boys. You have the boundless energy and optimism of a student teacher. There is one cynical point I want to make, but I don't want to be snarky on it. You guys put a lot of thought and effort into this and deserve the same in return. One of your big pros is education, but not everyone sees education as the unique and absolute good that you do. Education just like poverty and famine can lead to unrest. People deciding for themselves what they want and what world they want to live in is messy and often the people in power take aim at Academia. If schools can turn out contented, docile workers all right. But if schools turn out protestors, advocates and leaders, then school has to be dismantled. Every nation has some level of self interest which requires schools teach what is needed for passive citizens and not get to powerful or too independent to teach anything else. That hampers the 'saved by future tech' possibility considerably.
+OrangeBurrito #4: We become a two-planet species. Set up colonies on the moon and bring near-Earth asteroids into orbit at the Lagrange points around Earth. Mine these asteroids and the moon, and from there we colonize Mars. We don't even need to send people to build everything we need; we can send robots and 3-D printers to do the work for us, then send settlers.
I'm still hopeful that once things like hydrogen vehicles, solar farms and hydroponic farms start becoming more viable things will take a turn for the better. That said, I'm glad to be born now than any other time in our known history. This is a great time to be alive.
***** Also, a third of Canadians are not native English speaker, but rather native French speaker. Which doesn't help with grammar. I myself am not a native English speaker. Although I cringe at bad grammar, I try to understand that most humans are not native english speakers and not to judge them. Perhaps you should reflect on that. :) Anyway, not trying to take a jab at you, merely thinking/starting a conversation!
***** Actually the extremists in question are Sikh. Not sure about Trudeau yet myself, but there's also Mulcair to consider. After all these years, I'm just hoping for anyone who isn't Harper.
It seems weird but I would prefer 3, It doesn't mean that humans must become stupid or stop collective learning, it just means we stop abusing the earth and it resources. I believe that we should use our communal learning to advance our understanding of our own planet and all of its other species (that aren't humans) also advance our understanding of outer space; instead of focusing on things like politics. Us humans would simply limit reproduction and live in a simpler (but not less advanced or intelligent) society.
I think this series is hitting the core concepts a little heavy, and often without expanding into new territory. Population growth and sustainability was the payoff of last weeks episode- the Modern Revolution. A topic like the Anthropocene (a term with merit but not officially recognized) begs for introductions to the Noosphere and analysis of the economic factors that literally treat the Biosphere as an externality in equations to maximize revenue. The Noosphere is a topic they've been tacitly building and even referring to without defining or discussing beyond "collective learning". I'm fully on board with the goals of this series, and admittedly agree with the bias emerging from them. Perhaps that is why I wish they would be more thorough and critical while also inspiring and entertaining. That said, I can't wait to see what's next!
I'll live to see a million things, that men were never meant to see. My senses and my faculties, I'll augment with machinery. Auditory, optical, touch and taste, olfactory. Converted into data streams and floating bits of binary. Singularity.
current nuclear energy generation process create radioactive waste that last over 10 thousands years, Human civilization has existed a bit over that time.
killerbee256 Nuclear waste is not a green house gas so it should not be lumped into with carbon emissions in terms of its waste profile. Also, solar and wind have waste steams that are bad as well, that isn't a reason not to do them. We also have reactors that can use waste as fuel, which is why we don't call it waste, we call it spent fuel...and other reactors can use spent fuel as a primary fuel source...recycling basically.
TheFi0r3 Once again, that isn't a green house gas, should not be included with carbon and GHG emissions. Chemical wastes can also have a very long life span, that isn't a reason not to do solar. If it can be safely managed, there is no issue, and the national academy of science says that it can be done via geological repository.
If it can be safely managed, but the consequences of accidents can be devastating. I do agree that nuclear energy helps against climate change since the only residue that goes to the atmosphere is water, and in the future we might won't need water because we would use a better method than using a steam engine.
The earth is entirely capable of supporting a much larger human population, given certain technological advances, but it absolutely cannot sustain the inequality of capitalism much longer. Luxury for all!
Automate all industry, give workers a 15 hour work week, and then let's see how impossible tackling climate change is then, with the intellectual capacity of the world redirected, away from pointless labour to create profit, and towards whatever problems we want to solve. At the moment, humanity only works unless somebody, somewhere is making a quick buck off it- we're going nowhere until that's all over.
iamihop I'm assuming the machines would need supervision and some minor labour would be necessary (with all efforts made to remove it from existence). People would be supported by universal basic income, and have free time to do as they choose, not as they have to- I think most workers would be up for that, would you? really, the issue I'm getting at is that our resources aren't limited, they are unequally distributed (and increasingly so). people who ignore this tend to imagine we're heading for a population crisis, which can presumably only be solved through direct extermination of a population, or an indirect one (starvation, not supporting migrants, desertification, etc.). I and many others are arguing for the immediate redistribution of apparently limited resources- there's enough for all.
seymour millen You're talking about reducing standard of living for millions of people, the United States, Europe, and Eurasia won't like that at all. Instead of redistributing have the people who are not as well off work to improve their own country instead of taking from another.
If you gave distributed all the money and resources eqaully everyone would live in sqaulor, and people who DON T work and don't want to, should not get ANYTHING.
iamihop No human in most modern and developed countries could live off of that for half a year, I don't know were you live, but NO ONE could live off of that for a long time.
Just for those who may not know, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper's interests in oil and environmental hatery is not supported by the majority of Canadians. He got less that 40% of the popular vote in the 2011 elections, so please don't think that he represents Canadian ideals a a whole.
This is very dangerous. It will maybe even out after 99% of the living things died. But why would we want to first take that risk, and second not improve how it's NOW.
***** we were always a product of nature. Yet we fought against rain, snow, germs that wanted to live in our body, and modified plants to live for our benefit. This fight against climate change and extinction is no different. Humans are really stubborn in accepting nature's plan for us :P
The idea that the task of humans in the XXI Century is just to survive, sounds pretty horrible. I think that becoming closer and closer to colonize another planet, end hunger and continue expanding our lifespan, sounds much more appealing.
John, don't get me wrong, I love your videos and have been a huge follower and fan for years and your channel inspires me every time I watch a crash course upload….. ….But I have to admit the OCD in me came out and the entire time I was kind of distracted by that incredibly uneven cowlick on the right side (left side from my view) of your hair.
10:00 (the third option) very accurately illustrates the reason why we will never solve world hunger, achieve world peace, institute full equality, and most importantly, why we are approaching a crisis that will likely cut down the majority of the world population (because human society is always hierarchical and the bottom of the pyramid will always contain the largest part of the population)
Einstein said that the human population will need to switch to a vegetarian (plant-based) diet, if they want to survive. As this is a much more eco-friendly (as well as healthy!) way to consume and live, it definitely makes sens! Consider changing what's on your plate (go vegan!) as more conscious and intelligent choices are presented as solutions to many global issues!! Such a seemingly small change can have HUGE repercussions. ;)
You forgot happiness - I grew up poor and remember the struggle, but don't remember being unhappy at all. Happiness is a state of mind wheather you work in a sweatshop or are head of a bank. Do you really think people in poor countries are less happy than the average american?? Stop telling people they are miserable because they don't have what the top 20% have. Getting a job at a sweatshop for a poor person could mean as much as getting a job at google in the US. So called sweatshop job could pay more than anyone has ever made in that persons family.
Actually, there is an entire branch of science devoted to measuring happiness. The basic take-away from that research is three-fold. - People who are so poor they cannot reliably get food and shelter are very unhappy. - Above that, the absolute level of wealth has little impact on happiness. Instead relative wealth has a huge effect. If you are richer than your peers, you will tent to be happier. If you are poorer, you will be less happy. This is the single largest determinant of happiness along with the next point. This is why rich 1st worlders are often still unhappy. - Having a reliable and close network of family and/or friends is the other big determinant of happiness. So basically, don't be starving to death, try to make at or above the median wage where you live and have a rich social life.
Dan Heidel Being poor mean different things in different countries. You are right that it is very true that it is possible to be happy, but it is much harder when im unhealthy, uneducated, starving, cold, etc.
tugger i know its not paradise but we need to make nations smaller so that less and less people have less control of people. and it is a lot better than self destructive mess that is our world.
of all the ways our race could die out, i think the most embarassing would probably be due to us just sitting around being too comfortable or lazy to change our ways
I find it interesting that when discussing overpopulation, people don't realize that this isn't the first time we were worried about a growing population. In the 1800s, humanity passed the 1 billion mark; many were concerned that the earth could not hold many more people. That was 200 years ago and now the world holds 7 times that. It is predicted that humans will develop desalination, aquaculture (fish domestication), and vertical farming. By the time high schoolers of 2015 enter retirement (that is a long period of time considering that retirement age will likely rise), humanity will be colonizing the other worlds and moons of our solar system.
+JessLe Berry nuclear needs uranium as a fuel, it also needs tons of water and other resources during the process, and produces a waste that is unsalvageable and destroys everything it touches, I think it fits right in with coal and oil.
Jason Zayd No, it shouldn't be put into the same category as fossil fuels. Addressing you "unsalvageable" claim, there are methods to reuse nuclear waste to help cut down on the need to dispose of it as often as we used to. As for the inevitable "it seeps into the environment" argument; yes, it is possible, however its an incredibly rare occurrence, and so long as it has been disposed of in the correct manner, there shouldn't be anything to worry about. Its a hell of a lot better than 100% of fossil fuels seeping into the environment that's for sure. We are also discovering new & cleaner ways to dispose of it, e.g turning it into solid in order to help minimize the chances of it being exposed to the environment if in the unlikely event it does happen to leak. I think your opinion is inapt.
If I know humanity, #3 will never happen. Right now we're racing to fulfill #1 before #2 catches up with us. I think even if #2 happens, we won't be wiped out. We'd be reduced in number to a few million or a few thousand even, but we're adaptable and tenacious enough that we'd probably survive again.
If you mean I should enter the technology sector to try and change global warming, I already am. I'm studying to become a biologist, specifically my dream is to work in genetics. If our knowledge of DNA and stem cell research continues at the pace it is now, I could use DNA to make people and animals that breathe less CO2, or even animals with symbiotic algae that will use some of our CO2 and produce oxygen. That would make us more resilient in a smoggy atmosphere. I could genetically engineer super-plants that grow incredibly fast, thriving on the higher levels of CO2 and other emissions in the air, reducing and perhaps even reversing Global warming. Crops that are more resilient against extreme temperatures. Trees that can grow in deserts. We can do it.
That Canadian that came out of under the rock and started licking oil when Hank was listing cons, was that a stab at the Canadians and the Keystone Pipeline?
whitewolfe35 I beg you, please do not judge all Canadians based upon our Prime Minister. Only a third of Canada actually wanted him to be PM anyway. Hurray for our very outdated voting system! ... Or maybe not...
plm42 Actually, it was 40%... and if you want to compare the others, only 30% wanted Layton, and 18% wanted Ignatieff... and you can't blame Alberta for that, like you want to, because Ontario is always the swing vote in the Federal Election.
Someone just get nuclear fusion to work on a huge scale. I mean... a machine the size of a bus is ok but... cmon just stick loads of them together and problem solved. If only it was that easy. Someone will do it and i hope its soon!
It will take the combined effort of a lot of very smart people from all over the world, and they will have to (and to an extent already are) build a giant and ridiculously complex machine the size of a small town. It would be almost as difficult to do this today as the Apollo program was in the 60s. So in this case, no one person, no matter how smart and capable they are, can do this. SomeONE may not be able to do it, but perhaps someWHERE (meaning a country or collection of countries) can.
