Even World War III 'could not stop rising population'

a reply to: pheonix358

You are equating living conditions with birth rates and claiming that this is the causal factor.

Where did I say there was a causal relationship? Who knows what the cause is? Does it matter? Do women have more children in underdeveloped regions because they feel a need for "spares?" It doesn't matter, because they do have more children. A lot more.

I agree that there seems to be a relationship here, but then, only half a century ago in Australia, it was typical for us to have large families with 4 of more children. Living conditions were very good and still large families were the norm.

The average (average!) number of children borne by an Afghan woman is 6.2. What was the average number of children borne by Australian women 50 years ago? What was the rate of population growth in Australia 50 years ago?
blog2.id.com.au...

There are other factors. You need a science based investigation rather than straight assumptions.

You don't need an investigation to see a correlation. You don't need a scientific investigation when that correlation applies to a great number of different locations with different cultures and standards.

Don't be silly! Of course they do! I don't know what you were trying to convey to us, but you missed. These two statements are just nonsensical.

No. They aren't. People die faster and live shorter in underdeveloped regions. Those same regions have the highest population growth rates on the planet. If something is nonsensical here it's human nature.

FYI

The paper on which this newspaper article was based is available via National Academy of Sciences. Human population reduction is not a quick fix for environmental problems. That one is behind a paywall. This one at Stanford is apparently open access.

The supporting information page has the actual source code they used in the model. The files Dataset_S01 and Dataset_S02 are R (or S) language scripts that should execute within the R Statistical package.

I haven't read the full paper, or tried to do anything with the program. It took too long to figure out what chicken-scratch language the scripts were written in.


Have fun!



Dex

a reply to: Phage

I had to chuckle, even though your meaning was clear from the context of the post.

People dying does not reduce the population. Killing people does not reduce the population. Improving the lot of underdeveloped regions does.

I believe that's what we call a semantics error. The correct noun phrase should have been population growth.

I've had programs go into tight infinite loops for less.

Just a little friendly ribbing. You make very few errors, this one just happened to be humorous to me.




Dex

I think what the a user said earlier will prove to be true. If things are just left alone. It should be okay , at some point there just won't be enough food to keep up with the population growth and people in third world or second world places will just start dying off naturally. Things will probably get really ugly then we will go back to equilibrium again.

And anyways cancer seems to be killing a lot of people. Who's to say that isn't population control. Either natural or man made?

a reply to: Phage

People dying does not lower population growth. Longer life spans does not increase population growth. Fewer children being born does. Improving living conditions in underdeveloped nations is the "key" to reducing population growth where it is highest and causes the most misery.

I agree death has nothing to do with this in the grand scheme of things.

With that said, "Improving living conditions in underdeveloped nations" I believe is part of it, if that means educating as well as some other solutions. In Africa, from what I remember from Tribal Studies, they have lots of children due to the mortality rate and also because they 'want' to build a larger family = more help to do family related tasks. Now in a modern society devoid of the tribal relationship, I can best relate this to the majority of America, it is also common that the poorest families also have the greatest amount of children, rule not a law though.
So is it really socioeconomic, a combination of factors or something else?

And then there is the problem on how to solve this for the best of the species(us), that's where I get stuck.

Forced fertility restrictions obviously would work over time but would also be a heavy handed solution. Education targeting these issues, I assume would be the least evasive but in many cases it doesn't work(like the old condom on a broom-handle case - ask me if you didn't hear that one). As for everything in between we would have to take the blanket approach and cover everything pertinent; China's taxation solution, increasing living conditions, offering free sterilization to those wanting it, forced sterilization of all sex offenders, ??? - In the end I can only believe it will work if ALL countries take part in it together and we know how well that has worked in the past!

Funny, many on here talk of the conspiracies with certain high level individuals calling for a population reduction. I usually don't post my feelings but I agree with them, we need population reduction and this doesn't have to be some evil thing either. The real conspiracy should be why we allow de-evolution of our species to continue unchecked due to overpopulation. Overpopulation brings with it terror: food, water, disease, crime, corruption - it all plays out like a song eventually.

Global population certainly is an issue that is directly tied to the sustainability of civilization. The use of petrol has allowed for this massive population explosion and we will soon run out of food for the masses as we already have a lot under-fed people onnthe planet. There is also the problem of fresh water.

So what should be done? IMO, nothing as nothing short of unbiased genocide can halt the population explosion. So all we can do is wait for the inevitible dramatic overpopulation, the resulting collapse of global civilization and hope you and your loved ones can survive the cannibal era and can be part of the re-seeding of civilization.

What is morally unthinkable for us, nature will do with zero remorse.



Or perhaps some well funded group will send several spacecraft to the asteroid belt, attach some propulsion systems to some very large rocks and send them hurling our way. Boom, bye, reset. Mayne those people have a massive underground complex capable of supporting human life for a few thousand years...with an entrance out there near an airstrip about 30 miles from Denver.

The only sane solution is leveling the playing field globally; adopting a more egalitarian social structure. You just might save yourself this "inevitable" collapse and instead stabilize and perhaps slowly decline. I'm okay with there being just 3-5 billion by 2100.

The only places that are reproducing higher than the replacement rate are in Africa and Asia. These are the same places that have low standards of living, and high life stressors. To the poster above talking about the under-eating, why are you not mentioning the growing trend towards obesity everywhere else? It seems to me if we could funnel those excess calories to those who most need it, we'd solve more than just the overpopulation problem.

The current terrain is unsustainable, but not because we lack the resources, rather we lack the vision, and will to do what needs to be done. There are changes happening, and some are for the better, but we need to step up our game. Trying to solve these problems within the current paradigm is just too difficult. Technological progress has brought us a long way in spite of the fact that we stick to a system which no longer benefits the majority well. We need to leverage that technology to create new social structures. I have hope this vision is with the youth and will be seen through.

While you people panic (or explain why we ought not to panic) about population, I'll be over here planning a viable space colonization plan. No, seriously. Whether it be overpopulation, war, or uncomfortably large asteroids, something capable of claiming us will come along sometime. Maybe we deserve it, hopefully we don't. Whatever the case, anyone who hopes for the continued existence of humanity (and perhaps terrestrial life in general) ought to take space travel seriously.

And don't give me the crap about taking care of stuff at home before reaching for the stars; there will always be problems here; poverty, famine, sickness, civil rights...the only way it'll all be fixed will be a nice, cataclysmic asteroid impact or volcanic eruption, in which case there will be nothing left to fix.

Reminds me of a line from Pulp Fiction:

Jules: If my answers frighten you Vincent then you should cease asking scary questions.

This is because the answer is already there, it is obvious, it is its scary nature that makes the "answer" unpalpable.

I remember telling a friend about global genocide in 2010, and he doubted me and we went to Google for a search. But even I was amazed at the pages of returns from people just playing with the idea. In time I came to realize it is a real global issue and others having been analyzing it for a couple hundred years.

But as we see it is no easy feat. But even a 10% depop is but 700 million people. So 70 million is easily doable, and strangely the incentive is there because that is about the same 1% recovery depop of both the respective world wars 1 and 2. Meaning a recovery is aided by even such a small reduction. (it just depends on which 1% is filtered)



Thus all indications are we will see the beginning gradations of this possibility in the final destabilization cycle that always precedes the recovery cycle, yet another programmed incentive in the very formula of world war.

If I was from Pluto and was betting on the outcome, I'd bet we will see a few years of at least zero population growth in the future, but that is not enough to do it, but it will lighten the load of that one straw that could potentially break the Camel's back.

Unfortunately, the more I looked into it, the more everything is saying yes yes yes to less fish in the pond going from theory to application in the coming decade, at least initiating the global agenda once multi-polarity is removed to allow the proper uni-polarity to make this tough decision into global policy.

But in reality the decision is already made, because the alternative is worse than the solution! No matter how deep you look, more yeses keep coming forth, more incentives, more necessity. The question is why not do no depopulation? And the answers coming back to that question are no!, no!, no!. The tough thing is coming to accept the scary answer. Whether it was the earth/cosmic system or human ingenuity, something is going to normalize the current trajectory.

If they don't beat nature to the punch on screwmanity, they risk losing control of the whole filtration process, imo. But another yes, for the yes they will deal with the graph in time. All the yeses are first, world war as well, its just a primer and test period for some of the potential "cures", imo.

Geo-physical precision energy "vaccines", at global scale, may just come in handy, imo, for the power that will be at that time. Cancer needs the radiation treatment, and sad as it is, I think the cancer of human population will use the same analog for its cure. Looks like "progress" is not all it was cracked up to be by guys living with less than 2 billion people till about 1930 who preached us that banker and industrialist sermon. It was progress on the building of the global final solution in reality.

But another weird twist to the story. You can help build a "new world order", but you can't live there! Ultimate irony, but present in society in general in spirit.

The best way to decrease population growth is to educate women and empower them. In the west WW1 and WW2 did little to stop population growth. It was the liberation movements in the 60s combined with increased access to contraception and abortion that did that. Most western nations today have below replacement rate birth rates and the population only increases through immigration.

a reply to: Phage

I agree with you for the most part but Eastern Europe is a massive outlier as they have some of the lowest birth rates in the world and are not wealthy nations. There are a number of nations who are wealthier and have much high birth rates. That said, the only western nations who have replacement rate birth rates are Ireland and the US. The only western nation with above replacement rates is France. 2 children born/woman is replacement rate, stats in the link below.

www.cia.gov... #us

originally posted by: john452
The best way to decrease population growth is to educate women and empower them.

Totally agree. Women hold the key. Education of both sexes is the goal.

On the OP,s premise that wars constrain population growth... That is utterly wrong. The number of people who have died in conflict is miniscule against the numbers of people who have died due to diseases (some easily preventable), like malaria.

Regards