Good Job everybody, We have increased our numbers from 5,000,000,000 in 1985 to 7,000,000,000 today. We have increased the temperature of the Earth by 0.8C Thousands of fish die in the mid-west United States. Bats are dying. Bees are dying. Soon it will be humans. We won't make it to mid-century. Just keep popping out kids for no reason. Just keep it up. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Any recommendation? Should we wipe out half of the population so remaining people would get another century? Who is this "we" by the way that will decide to kill others? News for you: Nature will always try to kill us, whether we contribute this process or not. Conditions always change on this planet, that's how we were emerged in the first place, think about dinosaurs for example, what happened to them? Our difference, if there is any, is the ability of developing complex artificial solutions; otherwise we were already wiped out before. 7 billion people also means 7 billion intelligent human minds in this universe which can be turned into a massive advantage. Yes we might need to invent some brand new mobilization strategies, yes we might need to diversify our dependencies, yes we might need to this and that; but we do not have any other chance other than ourselves. Our population have increased 7 fold in the last century, that's correct. Yet this increase has not been a dull and mechanical one: Think about the developments in science, technology and production capability; think about the political and cultural shift that allowed us to imagine human beings as a single species sharing a global environment.
Human beings are resilient and creative. It's unlikely that any human caused event would wipe out more than half the world's population. Even if 99% of the population is exterminated because of natural disaster, that would leave a robust and quite large genetically diverse population base of 70 million people. Hint: about the population of: California & Texas combined France Congo Thailand 85% of the population of Germany Twice the population of Canada Three times the population of Australia Not too shabby. Nothing short of a global level extinction event would bring about the annihilation of humanity. Even if all the nations on earth somehow went extinct, there would still be isolated populations on islands in the pacific, isolated tribes/towns in the middle of Australia, Indonesia, Africa, Himalayas or the Amazon. ~String
Zeno: Your opening post is a valid observation and concern in that our population exceeds the carrying capacity in many parts of the world while not so in others. In countries that do not have social assistance programs, children are one means of providing for one's own declining years in the expectation that family looks after family. How would one determine or enforce that some should be privileged to reproduce while some should not? (China has had a policy in place for a long time and now that population is highly skewed toward males, which is creating a new range of concerns, as I understand it.) baftan: I like your comment that nature is ambivalent and cares not what the outcome is. Nature is ever-changing and while opportunity for life abounds, it remains up to life itself to take on the challenge of survival and continuity. origin: Are you going to be around in 2050 to pay out if you lose this bet? Wait a minute.......it won't matter if we aren't, now will it? You is funny, lol.... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Mind you, if enough people take your bet and have to pay up, you should be able to retire in comfort....provided the monetary system hasn't collapsed and completely restructured. Would you accept one chicken or three cabbages in lieu? String I tend to agree. Short of this cue ball called earth being taken completely out of orbit by a force beyond our control, I expect there will be a few niches where our species will be able to take shelter and survive. We have a pretty good record in that regard, anyway, and a propensity to reproduce even under the most seemingly adverse conditions. Apparently sex relieves stress. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
View attachment 5693 This planet would be better off without the human virus. We might survive as speices if we at least have a reduced population and extreme reproduction restrictions, renewable energy and the complete destruction or reform of current governments/economies.
Don't be stupid. Of course global warming is a problem, but humans are not in danger of extinction. Of course things might get unpleasant and natural disasters will happen more often, more people will die than would have otherwise, but that's about it.
You haven't been reading your memos. The second derivative of population went negative in the early 1980s, meaning that the rate of growth began to slow. The first derivative is universally predicted to reach zero and turn negative around the end of this century. At that time, population will begin to decrease, for the first time in tens of thousands of years. The reason? Prosperity has turned out to be the best contraceptive. Throughout the prosperous Western nations, the fertility rate of the native-born population has already dropped below replacement level. The only thing that's propping up the Ponzi Schemes we call "Social Security" is immigration. The global poverty rate continues to fall. Even in Africa, for the first time since anybody began measuring it, the poverty rate has dropped below 50%. When I was in college in the 1960s, millions of Chinese were dying of starvation. Today they all have TVs and cell phones. The net rate of immigration from Mexico to the USA has turned negative: more people are moving back than coming here. The reason is that in one generation it transformed itself into a middle-class country. There are still poor people there but they no longer comprise the bulk of the population. Brazil now has the world's sixth-largest economy. All of these things have the effect of slowing the birth rate. The problem you younger people will have to deal with, or your children for sure, is that every economic system on earth depends on a steadily increasing number of producers and consumers, as its engine of wealth creation.
The whole system of money is flawed. I think the current banking crisis is just the start. Debt acn't be paid off by creating more debt. Economics 101. At least, not unless they fiddle the figures so with inflation, the new debt loses value to the point it disappears (Economics 102).
Wait. I thought the first derivative was fertility, second was mortality, third was immigration and fourth was emigration. Additionally, people who fret about population growth are simpletons. Humanity is definitely reaching the end of the logarithmic growth period. It's no longer exponential but percentile and even that is slowing. By mid century we'll be fretting about population stagnation and its inevitable, economy-killing effects. ~String
Take a graph showing distance and time. The first derivative of that graph is velocity - the rate at which distance changes with a change in time. The second derivative of that graph is acceleration - the rate at which the rate at which distance changes with a change in time, changes in time. So relating that back to the discussion, we have a graph showing population and time. The first derivative of the graph is population growth. The second derivative of the graph is the rate at which population growth is accelerating. Relating this back to Fraggles original statement, for the second derivative to turn negative it means that the rate at which the population is growing has begun to slow.
It will certainly kill a good many - it already is taking out large numbers in India and Africa; only minor casualties in the form of extreme weather in North America and Europe. The deaths are generally due to water - drought in one place, flood in another, snowstorm, sandstorm, hailstorm... and fire. It will keep getting worse, affecting more crops and livestock, making more and larger areas uninhabitable. It won't be many years before borders can't hold back the masses of people in search of more hospitable land - and there isn't any, except in the richest, best-armed nations. If you think wars over oil are bad, wait till you see the water wars. The human population never needed to grow to this size; safe, cheap, effective birth control could have been made universally available fifty years ago, but vested interest and entrenched power don't easily give up control over people's lives. Anyway, the earth could manage the present level (so long as the religious resurgence doesn't totally fuck up current trends) of population. What it can't bear, and we can't survive, is the current lifestyle of "developed" countries (a minority) becoming the standard in "developing" countries, where the vastly larger number of people live. Global economic collapse or technological breakdown might stop or defer the catastrophe. We're not sensible enough to make the necessary adjustments. If we were, we'd have taken action (instead of blather) decades ago. There are likely to be survivors - who envy the dead.
