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#11602 08/15/06 08:52 AM
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We hit 6.5 Billion souls here on Starship Earth in early February of this year. That number is double what it was in 1960, but, even more scarey, we went from 6 Bill to 6.5 in only less than 2 years. Only a moron would say that this kind of growth can be sustained. So. Here's my question - What, in your opinion, is going to take us out? Famine? War? Pestilence? This Avian Flu in Asia looks promising. My money is on a hit from Space, a rock we don't see coming. If it comes at us from the direction of the Sun, we'll have about two weeks warning, just enough time to max out all your Credit cards. There's an asteroid named Apophis that will come frighteningly close to us on April 13, a Friday, BTW, of the year 2029. In fact. it will be visible to the naked eye as it zooms past us. According to the experts, if Apophis passes through a "keyhole", a spot about 2,000 M wide, on that pass, it will hit us square on when it comes by again, in 2036. The keyhole is a gravitational spot that will alter the rock's path just enough to clobber us next time around.

You heard it here first.

.
#11603 08/15/06 09:54 AM
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what i find interesting in this is that the over population scaremongers have been claiming for decades that our population is doubling every 7 years, yet the record shows that it is only doing so every 40 years.

one of the biggest contributers of the population growth of the late 20th century was china, yet now, they are doing what the goverment there can to stop the growth and perhaps reduce it.

another major contibuter was india and they are working on reducing their increases already. after that we will have to worry about the population of africa. If these three are brought undercontrol, the population growth will be substantially reduced, if not stopped altogether.

as to something taking us out, i really dont think anything will take out the entire population. i feared at one point a few months ago that two of the super valcanos were about to erupt and, if they did in close temporal proximate, would wipe out the entire population. It possible that it would wipe out the us part of civiliaztion if long valley erupted. If it were one of the ones in the south pacific, it might take out a large part of the oriental population. either would cause a sevire food shortage that would wipe out a large part of the population, but not all of it. not by a large percentage. At worse it would knock out civiliation about 2000 years back, but little more than that. the same is true with most asteroids. dispite what the scare mongers tell you Avian flu is not likely to make that large of a dent in the world population even if it does cross to humans. there is no evidence that is happening yet. personally, i think what will reduce the population of earth is when we finally figure a way to travel in space easier. then there will be tons of people moving into space habitats. Just dont hold your breath waiting for it. its likely to take a few decades minimum for that, a couple of centuries perhaps.

oh, and i had already heard about the risks of Apophis. its been discounted as very unlikely.


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#11604 08/15/06 03:43 PM
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Count me as an overpopulation scaremonger if you wish but I am far more interested in quality than quantity.

Bigger integers are not better integers.

But go right ahead and keep taxing yourself for more schools, more roads, more government, etc. No doubt you look at Tokyo, or Beijing, or Mexico City ... and think to yourself ... "Wow: If we can just increase the population some more we can live like they do. Can I have some more ice cream?"


DA Morgan
#11605 08/16/06 05:27 AM
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interesting that you include tokyo in that

http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator1.htm

Quote:
For at least 25 years, 20 European countries and Japan have had below replacement-level fertility rates (2.1 children per woman).
also
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Six countries account for half of the world's annual addition: India (16 million), China (9 million), Pakistan (4 million), Nigeria (4 million), Bangladesh (3 million), and Indonesia (2 million).
china has already begun working on slowing down their growth as has india. Unfortunately the other four have not (or at least ive not heard of it).

here is some good news though

Quote:
Fertility rates in countries at the intermediate level, where women have between 2.1 and 5 children on average, are expected to drop below replacement level by 2050. This group includes India, Pakistan, South Korea, and Egypt, which were among the first to realize that rapid population growth makes it difficult to reach socioeconomic goals.
I dont mean to sound morbid but, another point your missing is that there was a major world wide population boom after world war two. world wide the baby boomers make up a significant portion of the population. as the baby boomer reach the end of their era, there will be a larger mortality rate. so far as i can tell none of the scaremongers curves take into effect the dying off of the population boom. most of the curves ive seen show a slow to stead death rate and a increasing birth rate.

basically what im pointing out is that scaremongers have a tendacy to tell the people that have no control over things that the people who do are doing anything, despite the evidence that they are. they also dont bother trying to do anything about it in the areas that something might. the united states has a birth rate well below the replacement level, yet if you listen to the scaremongers, youll see that they blame the us for the damage the increase in population is having. none of these seem to bother going to africa to preach about it. not one of them seems to care that the thing that would have the greatest effect on the population is educating the women of these countries. why? because its so much easier to rag the us about how are population boom is destroying the planet, and educating the educated is easier than trying to do something about it where it would do some good.


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#11606 08/16/06 08:29 AM
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Now, now, Morgan is right about Tokyo being crowded. My son's been there twice over the past four years. He's got photos of Train Station Attendants pushing commuters into the train so the doors can slide closed. That crowded enough for you?

You seem to like that term - "Scaremongers". Granted there are a lot of semi-informed people running around going off half-cocked. But ask older people what they have seen in the course of their lifetimes. What their hometown looks like today as opposed to when they were growing up. It doesn't matter where they come from, be it Oklahoma City, Seattle, Denver, Scranton, Billings, London, Paris, Munich or Bumble****, North Dakota, the place has grown so much you wouldn't recognize it today.
Intellectual hubris is one reason we're in the mess we're in today.

#11607 08/16/06 11:41 AM
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I never said that tokyo was not crowded, but he was insinuating (from what i understood him to say) that japan was getting worse all the time. he also insinuated that none of the rest of the people in the entire world knew how bad it was. if they did not, why is the chineese goverment pushing for a reduction in their population. why is japan trying to reduce its population.

btb, the town i grew up in has shrunk by over 10 percent since i graduated from high school. you see the problem is not that there are more people in the countries. its that the people are moving from small towns to larger ones and from poor countries to rich ones.

the problem is not with the developed courtries is with the underdeveloped ones. the average children per woman is inversely proportional to the level of women education in that country. the better they are educated, the fewer children they have. Its the same in all countries. before complaining about how bad things are, maybe you should find the real cause of the problem. the problem is not population growth, its poverty and lack of education. find a way to take care of those and the population will not expand like it is.

as far as the term scaremongers goes, what else would you call people that spread the stories of how bad things are going to be unless you listen to them, even if they dont have half the facts that other people have. even if they dont have a clue how to fix the problem. all they do is go around telling people how bad things are going to be and pointing fingers at the people that are different than them and blaming them for the problem. half the time, if you really look at things, youll find that the thing they are spreading stories about and saying how bad they are, really is not the problem they claim it is.


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#11608 08/16/06 02:56 PM
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I include Tokyo because I have been there. Not as a tourist but as someone who got up the morning, showered, shaved, and took the train through Shinjuku station every morning on the way to work.

Anyone that would want to live that way, especially in August, deserves the full measure.

I'll say it yet again if it is necessary. Overpopulation is not, and should not, be about whether we are going to run out of food or drinking water or petroleum. It should be about quality of life. And so far the human inhabitants of this planet have yet to come to terms with one very simple fact. Continuing to reproduce at the rate they are is not improving the quality of their lives: In fact exactly the opposite.

Most of the problems we have whether involving taxes, natural resources, highway construction, etc. can be traced back to too many people.

ZPG

And if you don't know what it means ... look it up.


DA Morgan
#11609 08/16/06 07:00 PM
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the i guess the answer for america is to close our borders tight. because our population is not growing from births, its growing from the number of immagrants that are coming here, mostly from third world countries.

the problem with food and all of that would be much easier to take care of if you take care of the base problem: EDUCATION OF WOMEN. there is a saying

give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life.

let me paraphase that a bit.

give a man food and you feed him for today.
teach that man and you feed him for his life.
teach his wife and you feed his family for life.

there is a very close corrilation with the levels of education of the women of different groups around the world and the birth rate. the higher the level of education, the lower the birth rate, the lower the level of education, the higher the birth rate.

if you want to improve the quality of life, teach the women of third world nations and they will take care of the problem of over population. in many parts of the world, women are not allowed to be educated. in the countries you find the women pregnate a large percentage of their reproductive life.


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#11610 08/16/06 07:11 PM
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dehammer wrote:
"i guess the answer for america is to close our borders tight."

Your statement not mine nor do I agree with it.

Wofman's post starts with: "We hit 6.5 Billion souls here on Starship Earth in early February of this year." and you go charging off into education? Why? Why can't you stay on topic? Is there something about the subject of quality rather than quantity you find uncomfortable? Or perhaps the fact that when someone says ZPG you think about SEX. Please try to stay on topic.


DA Morgan
#11611 08/17/06 08:13 AM
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obviously you cant follow it.

i am on target.

the answer to the population problem is not to stop having sex or forcing others to stop. the answer is education.

you are one to use sarcasm, yet you cant see it when its plain in front of your nose. I don't believe in closing the border but if all the problems with America (your words basically) are due to the population increases in American that is the only solution. Americans have long since stopped having enough births to replace themselves. the only increases we are having is due to people from third world countries trying to get away from the crowding of their countries. this does not help those countries. since your so worried about the increases in the us population, this is the only choice to sooth your worries.

the answer to the problem with zpg is education of the poor and crowded areas, not complaining about those who are already doing something about it not taking care of everything in other countries. we in america really have not control over the undereducated females in india and china and other areas like that. on the other hand the goverments of india and china do and are educating their young ladies. this will decrease the population growth in a few decades. unfortuantely there are other countries that either dont care, or have no wish to educate their young ladies. those countries will continue to have population increases until such time as the world can do something about those goverments.


the more man learns, the more he realises, he really does not know anything.
#11612 08/17/06 08:31 AM
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De Hammer, as crude and as crass as he is, is right on this one. If these poor, disenfranchised women of the Third World could learn to keep their legs locked, or learn, at least, the Rhythm Method, these Rat-Hole Copunties wouldn't be in the predicament they find themselves in today.

Of course, that's like enlightening De Hammer on Global Warming - it ain't gonna happen.

#11613 08/17/06 09:37 AM
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im not putting it that way, but there is a strong corrilation between the education of women and the birthrate of the population they are in. the better they are educated, the better their families are, and the fewer children they have.

if you are concerned about the quality of life, then you should be concerned with slowing the increase in the quantity of life at the sourse of that increase: the women of the societies that are the problem. in socieities that the women dont graduate from grade school, you find the highest level of birth per women (5 to 7). in socieites that the women are allowed to go to college, there is a reduction in the number of births per women (2 to 3). If you want zpg, stop worring about contraceptives and start working on teaching these women how to have a better life. THEY will take care of the contracptives and other methods.


the more man learns, the more he realises, he really does not know anything.
#11614 08/17/06 04:10 PM
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dehammer wrote:
"the answer to the population problem is not to stop having sex or forcing others to stop"

I didn't say that either. Nor did I imply it. Nor do I agree with it. Where does this stuff come from?


DA Morgan
#11615 08/17/06 11:29 PM
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Bioterrorism and asteroids are likely causes of the demise of the human race. However, I believe it will be our own ignorance and obliviousness to our surroundings that will ultimately lead to the destruction of us homeosapians.


"A plague on both your houses!"
#11616 08/18/06 04:19 AM
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I think it a bit melodramatic to expect us to disappear anytime soon.

But I can certainly see where self-aggrandizement and lack of critical thinking skills and education will lead us to living like cockroaches.

A rather substantial fraction of humanity already does. The rest will follow if they don't wake up. You can see classic examples of humanity standing on the beach when the tide goes out here at SAGG. Rest assured some of us know the warning signs of a tidal wave and, figuratively speaking, are running for higher ground.


DA Morgan
#11617 08/18/06 05:51 AM
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Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:
dehammer wrote:
"the answer to the population problem is not to stop having sex or forcing others to stop"

I didn't say that either. Nor did I imply it. Nor do I agree with it. Where does this stuff come from?
from the way that you say that the answer is simply zpg and the fact that when i discuss educations, you slam me about it. there are really only three solutions, only one of which in my mind is any good.

1) kill all the excess people in the courties that have more than they need to keep their countried at zpg. do i really need to point out how bad this one is.

2) stop people from having sex. hardly better than 1)

3) educate people. let them see what they are doing to themselfs and to their children. the majority of them would make the same decision that you and i have. that is that the planet cant sustate a higher population and that they could do their part. The qualitity of life is not about the quantity of it. its about being able to enjoy it more. education is a great step in that direction.


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#11618 08/18/06 05:56 AM
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Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:
I think it a bit melodramatic to expect us to disappear anytime soon.
on this we can agree.

Quote:
A rather substantial fraction of humanity already does. The rest will follow if they don't wake up. You can see classic examples of humanity standing on the beach when the tide goes out here at SAGG. Rest assured some of us know the warning signs of a tidal wave and, figuratively speaking, are running for higher ground.
the problem is that tidal waves are most often caused by earthquates or things of that matter. you need to make sure that the higher ground you are running to is not an erupting volcano. just because you are focused on one problem, dont let another get you.


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#11619 08/18/06 06:23 PM
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I asked:
"Where does this stuff come from?"

dehammer replied:
"from the way that you say that the answer is simply zpg"

And since when does ZPG equate with no sex? Hasn't the practice of birth control made it to Texas yet?

Perhaps not given Bush's insistence on abstinance but you might want to take note that the rest of us don't live our lives that way.


DA Morgan
#11620 08/18/06 06:25 PM
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dehammer wrote:
"the problem is that tidal waves are most often caused by earthquates or things of that matter."

So is this one. Figuratively speaking you are standing on the beach watching the tide recede. And this is the only warning you are going to get.


DA Morgan
#11621 08/18/06 06:49 PM
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Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:
And since when does ZPG equate with no sex? Hasn't the practice of birth control made it to Texas yet?
basically since the catholic church has a major hold on a lot of the areas that are doing so much of the population boom. there are other religions that also forbid use of contraceptives. in those countries, its either no sex or lots of children. the problem with birth control is that it requires the woman to have a certain level of education to manage or teaching the man that having large families is neither a status symbol or a way of guarenteeing his waning years someone will be there to take care of his needs. either way the answer is still education. the women can figure out the best way of not having children if she is educated. since you appearantly dont believe in that (you post have been about doing everything else), your methods will fail.


the more man learns, the more he realises, he really does not know anything.
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