The population delusion

[dreamdancer 0]

interesting...

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THINK of the biggest crowd you've ever been in - perhaps 50,000 in a sports stadium. Just 6 hours from now there will be that many more people in the world, and another 50,000 in the following 6 hours, and on and on... No wonder that the burgeoning human population is often seen as is the single biggest problem facing our world.

There are nearly 7 billion humans alive today, twice as many as there were in 1965, with 75 million more being added each year. UN predictions say there could be an extra 2 to 4 billion of us by 2050. The planet has never experienced anything like it.

Can the world sustain this growing horde? It's a contentious question. While it is clear that the population cannot go on increasing forever, history is littered with dire but failed predictions of famine and death resulting from over-population. Most famously, Thomas Malthus warned more than two centuries ago that population would be held in check by rising mortality. What he failed to anticipate was the ability of newly industrialised societies to support large numbers of people.

Today, the "population problem" is firmly back on the agenda. Earlier this year the UK government's chief scientific adviser John Beddington predicted a population-led global crisis by 2030, and a group of influential billionaires including Bill Gates and George Soros identified overpopulation as the greatest threat facing humanity. Every time we publish an article in New Scientist detailing yet another of the planet's environmental woes, readers respond by arguing that the real problem is overpopulation.

The population statistics are indeed staggering. Yet the raw numbers hide a multitude of complexities. Look closely, and it becomes clear that the common-sense assumption that population is the root of all evil is simplistic.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327271.400-the-population-delusion.html

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[rehmwa 2]

think of it as a stimulus program - building a new stadium every 6 hours will create a TON of jobs


and the stadiums will be "free"

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Ion01 2]

Notice no mention of how many people die each year. Just like in the UK they quote number of how many people are added to society each year and say they need to lower these number but they actually aren't even producing enough kids to replace themselves ones you toss in the death rate.

[kallend 2,150]

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Notice no mention of how many people die each year. Just like in the UK they quote number of how many people are added to society each year and say they need to lower these number but they actually aren't even producing enough kids to replace themselves ones you toss in the death rate.

So the concept of gross and net eludes you.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[turtlespeed 226]

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Notice no mention of how many people die each year. Just like in the UK they quote number of how many people are added to society each year and say they need to lower these number but they actually aren't even producing enough kids to replace themselves ones you toss in the death rate.

Do you really think there are only 50000 births on this planet every 365 days?

Here . . . this may explain it more.

They do list the death rate.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[kbordson 8]

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Notice no mention of how many people die each year. Just like in the UK they quote number of how many people are added to society each year and say they need to lower these number but they actually aren't even producing enough kids to replace themselves ones you toss in the death rate.

Do you really think there are only 50000 births on this planet every 365 days?

Here . . . this may explain it more.

They do list the death rate.

In Ion01's defense, the cut and pasted segment didn't list anything about net/gross and stated that there were 50,000 in 6 hours (not 365d)

So maybe he just decided not to go to alt.net or where-ever. . . but even if he had gone to newscientist.com, he would have read that

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the rate of growth is slowing - from a peak of 2 per cent in the early 1960s to around 1 per cent today. In Japan, Russia and many European countries, women are having so few children that populations are shrinking or will do so soon - an unprecedented state of affairs other than in times of war or plague

But... that wasn't listed in the first post....

[headoverheels 334]

Also interesting...

http://www.photius.com/rankings/population/median_age_total_2008_0.html

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_pyramid

[steve1 5]

What a huge problem this is! It makes me sick! It's a good thing that people are finally taking off their rose colored glasses and looking at this....

[pirana 0]

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think of it as a stimulus program - building a new stadium every 6 hours will create a TON of jobs


and the stadiums will be "free"

You mocking my use of "free" ?

(I have no idea how to properly punctuate that question, which you are "free" to mock).

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[SpeedRacer 1]

Two words for you:

Soylent Green

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[tkhayes 348]

does not matter- disease, starvation, flooding due to climate change, all of this will change soon.

Well maybe in the next century, we are pretty adept at changing, but I still see the population of the world radically being cut by something like the Flu, AIDS, or offshoot diseases like these.

Until the industrial revolution, the world would only grow to an estimated 750M people (I think it was that much), then get decimated by a plague, by 1/4 or 1/3

We are just finding the new population level -POST industrial revolution.

[Lucky... 0]

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THINK of the biggest crowd you've ever been in - perhaps 50,000 in a sports stadium. Just 6 hours from now there will be that many more people in the world, and another 50,000 in the following 6 hours, and on and on... No wonder that the burgeoning human population is often seen as is the single biggest problem facing our world.

W/o a doubt. We need more babbies for Jebus tho. Wait till we hit carrying capacity, that will bethe wakeup because we're too stupid to control our own population, but we'll control other animal's population.

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There are nearly 7 billion humans alive today, twice as many as there were in 1965, with 75 million more being added each year. UN predictions say there could be an extra 2 to 4 billion of us by 2050. The planet has never experienced anything like it.

Carrying cap is supposed to be around 9.5B, and I think it's more like 2025 that we hit that, last I checked they revised the date sooner than 2050.

It will be interesting when I'm old, if I make it.

[Lucky... 0]

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Notice no mention of how many people die each year. Just like in the UK they quote number of how many people are added to society each year and say they need to lower these number but they actually aren't even producing enough kids to replace themselves ones you toss in the death rate.

Wrongo... about 150k die every day, the number of born WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY outnumber the attrition rate.

[Lucky... 0]

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does not matter- disease, starvation, flooding due to climate change, all of this will change soon.

Well maybe in the next century, we are pretty adept at changing, but I still see the population of the world radically being cut by something like the Flu, AIDS, or offshoot diseases like these.

Until the industrial revolution, the world would only grow to an estimated 750M people (I think it was that much), then get decimated by a plague, by 1/4 or 1/3

We are just finding the new population level -POST industrial revolution.

Mother nature wins every time, Jebus and the other nutty religions are just here to distract the gullable.