Overpopulation Makes No Sense!

Bobby, you and I have butted heads many times, but this time I agree with ya. Lets not only focus on the surface of the earth, lets focus on the underground tunnels, caves, and other places. Not only do we have the surface of the earth, but we have the inside of the earth. While I am not sure the earth is finite, due to so many possibilities, it will eventually have a limit.

reply to post by TheMythLives


So you would say overpopulation is an issue at some point?

And what point would that be?

Well, please, once we get what % the earth is growing at population wise (can we even find it?) we take that number over 72 and the answer is how many years it will take to double in size.

Now, taking this information, we will know that the subset of years that we have came to in our equation, in that amount of years, we will have more people on earth than ever before..

And then down the line and down the line...


I urge you guys to think about this from a mathematical perspective, and just not how many square miles of land india has etc, that has no reference until we find out this %

Once we find out this equation, we can go from there, but NOT until then.

It's not as simple as having enough food to eat & enough land to live on. This is just the surface of the true equation to how many people can occupy the earth. We're overpopulated now.

The thing to realize is that with each human body around, comes the contamination of the environment we inhabit. If humans were to stay in the same area all their life, this wouldn't be so much of a problem, but in todays global civilization of intercontinental flights, we're wreaking havoc everywhere we roam.

A mass extinction process started thousands of years ago, when we first started to migrate, and brought all of our microbes with us. Just think of Europeans coming to America. What did we bring along? Disease! Not previously encountered microbes. This is a big issue. Our very existence is damaging the biosphere, and it's reached a point where we're in danger of not surviving.

It's true that government & corporations gross mismanagement of resources has exacerbated the situation, but this is where we're at now. You can't deny what our previous actions have brought us to today. It's not as easy as reigning in the corpogovt mis-doers. What has been done can't be undone. We've gotta face the situation and ride it through.

Could we add on a few billion more? Perhaps, but it would only be to our (and the biosphere's) peril. Our current course is unsustainable, period.

Food is not really a problem because not everyone on earth consumes meat. Meat & poultry is why most of the land is used it takes a lot of space to raise bovine, chicken, turkey, sheep, goat and pigs plus those animals have to eat something.

In the case of eating just plants we would not have to use so much space to support bovine, chickens, pigs, etc. without that all plant foods could be used for humans and there would be more of everything in the long run.

If people just reduced the amount of meat we consume we could put a serious dent in problems that we have.

In some countries people consume things that would be considered nasty, disgusting etc here like insects, pigeon, rodents and other creatures people need to change their diets and that's it.

We can support lots more people if everybody didn't consume the same damn foods such as beef, chicken, turkey in some places pork and bread there many more plants and animals on this planet that can be consumed by humans but we do not in some places because of notions of them being nasty. Any animal that is raised right and in a clean environment
can be eaten without worry.


We can fit millions upon millions of people in small places (NYC, Tokyo, China) if people changed to living in different places with varies climates and began to like in multistory buildings instead of houses with acres of land when the land is not even used for anything except for just having it (greed)

There is open land in Canada, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Mongolia, South America, the US, Alaska, all over Africa people have survived in all these places its just that people are too picky on where they live and what they eat.


All people need to do is change their lives to not be so darn selfish all 6 billion humans could live quite fine.


In the case of fuels we should use a mix not just consisting of fossil fuels ; we should be using solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, fossil fuels so that we are not relying on just one and using it until there is no more.



Stop with that crap of earth being to populated it is not the problem is to many humans in the same spot; How many people live in the Arctic, the Andes, Siberia, jungle in Africa, Amazon all these places can support life but do humans live in these places for the most part no aside from the natives while these lands can support more.

Do people for the most part eat insects, rodents, birds (other than turkey and chicken ) no but we can how many rodents are there on earth in the wild (not city rats) there is probably enough to give to give everybody 5 times what they need to survive

[edit on 31-5-2009 by jatsc]

reply to post by GreenBicMan


The rule of 72 is not a mathematical law at all; it is a rule of thumb used in finances to make an estimate of the time it takes to double an amount based on a growth rate. The rule of 72 is useful when you do not have a calculator around (like the giant one called a computer) and need an estimate fast. If for instance the growth rate is 7%, then the rule of 72 predicts a doubling time of 72/7 ~= 10 years. The actual growth rate is not 200% but 196.7151..% (you can calculate this with the 10th power of 1.07; 1.07^10 = 1.967151..). The rule of 69, 70 and 72 all give inaccurate but fast estimates for fixated rates of growth.

Earth's population's growth rate is however not fixated (nor an aspect of the world of finances). Here's a graph of the average growth rate:

Note that while the population growth rate is declining, the population itself will still be growing exponentially as long as the declination of the growth rate does not exceed the growth rate itself.

We can't use the rule of 72 for a rate that changes every year. We can however project these rates over a longer period with for instance a normal calculator, and extract the world population predicted by those projections.

World population is currently growing by approximately 74 million people per year. If current fertility rates continued, in 2050 the total world population would be 11 billion, with 169 million people added each year. However, global fertility rates have been falling for decades, and the updated United Nations figures project that the world population will reach 9.2 billion around 2050.[11][12]

en.wikipedia.org...

Obviously there are a lot of different factors in play here, so there will some different projection figures, but between 9 and 11 billion in 2050 seems the consensus of the census ;]. Let's assume 10 billion for a second..

In 2005, the average biologically productive area per person worldwide was approximately 2.1 global hectares (gha) per capita.

en.wikipedia.org...

The total amount of land available on earth is 148,940,000 km².
This includes frozen areas, desert, mountains, and all other places where we cannot easily manufacture food.
If we still need 2.1 global hectares (0.021 km²) in 2050 per average person, we need 10 billion * 2.1 hectares = 10 billion * 0.021 km² = 210,000,000 km². This exceeds the amount of land we have in total by a whopping 6,106,000 km².

Maybe you're right about those technologies - in that case, we'd better start using them.

P.S. I invite you all to double-check my sources and calculations, I may have made a mistake!

reply to post by unityemissions


I don't buy that. We have adaptive imune systems, as does everything else. We will not die of disease, although pandemics may happen if we're not carefull with our higiene and the quality of our diet. This will impact us and a few of the animal species close to us, at most.

The overall impact we have is because of our technology. We pump oil out of the ground, burn it, consuming oxygen and at the same time cut down the biosphere. Over time we're reducing the overall oxygen level through the use of the wrong energetic technologies (we should be using biofuels and other renewables, not centralised and monopolised geological fuels) and pillaging the forests while at the same time polluting the waters. All this could be stopped in a decade with the right focus and investments.

But the right focus and investments would bring back the family farmer and individual and family freedom. This is why things are bad, the people in charge do not want to give up control of populations, and the mechanisms used to gain that control are what are causing the problems which then get spun into overpopulation.

From their, the slave drivers, point of view there is indeed overpopulation, because there is too many of us to maintain the social model they have herded us into. It is not an absolute though. It's just historical circumstance, which could be corrected if the right ideas get into the group mind, countering the systemic opposition to them which the controllers have setup, with taxation, with IP, with monopoly and so on.

The world is a fractal phenomenon. If we were in a bilateral symbiotic relationship with it, instead of parasitism, we could increase our numbers, even on the exponential, for a pretty long time. All it would take would be a change in used technologies and educations so that our cities and suburban sprawls slotted into the evolving biosphere instead of over it. Take a skyscraper for example. It's only used 8-12 hours a day on average for office space. Now imagine if it were an integrated vertical biosphere used 24hrs a day for everything from agriculture to energy generation. That same area could be the workspace for thousands but also provide electricity and food and water. These sort of integrated designs are what we need to save our cities. And the same could be applied to our houses in suburbia. Imagine if our roads were made with mixed in solar and thermal energy generation technology for example. We could have much more area to live in using fractal geometry, which is part of nature.

Just in sunlight we have 1000w per hour per square meter per daylight on average. Untill we utilise a higher percentage of that and the other resources, untill we do this and start running out we can only talk about missmanagement, not overpopulation, imo. Are we civilized enough to pull this off? Some of us are. As for the sum of our parts, time will tell.

reply to post by scraze


It is the same in my opinion as saying 2+2 = 4 (law or rule of thumb, ok..)

And yes, I think it is quite a valid instrument to use in these circumstances to project exponential growth in the future.

I am going to look over your information, thanks for the info.

Originally posted by Mindmelding
reply to post by unityemissions

 

I don't buy that. We have adaptive imune systems, as does everything else. We will not die of disease, although pandemics may happen if we're not carefull with our higiene and the quality of our diet. This will impact us and a few of the animal species close to us, at most.

We do have adaptive immune systems, but what happens when our actions on the environment cause microbes to evolve faster than our immune systems can keep up with? That's what's occuring NOW! Think superbugs for starters. It's not that pandemics may happen, it's that they WILL happen. We're overdue, and the next is poised to be massive, based on the self-organizing criticality currently taking place.

Our actions aren't only impacting us and a few animal species, it's producing cross-species, cross-kingdom & superkingdom mutations. This is unheard of based on our previous understandings of biology. We're in uncharted territory. You seem truly concerned, I'd suggest you look into this a little bit. I'm interested if you still think the same after visiting the link provided.

reply to post by scraze


Ok, so it looks as if we are growing at a rate of 1.2%?

74,000,000/6,000,000,000 population (thats what i used for numbers)

72/1.2=60

So every 60 years our population doubles in size

This puts us at 2069 at 12,000,000,000 in my book using my numbers in this post...

EDIT: Surprise, surprise, it correlates with your quotes from Wiki..! See rule of 72 is MOST DEFINITELY something we should go by regarding this topic!

And the reason I say the rule of 72 is quite valid regarding population growth is that there have been many articles published by mathematics professors regarding this issue.. One that comes to mind is a professor from CU

If this rate stays the same (ASSUMING 1.2% population growth)...

2129 - 24,000,000,000

2189 - 48,000,000,000

2249 -96,000,000,000

2309 - 192,000,000,000


In the "big scheme of things" 2309 is NOT THAT FAR AWAY


Remember, every 60 years (using my information) according to the rule of 72, our population will be more than it ever has anytime in history ALL ADDED UP TOGETHER


Something to think about guys, and I dont think I am very far off base at all, if even

Like I said im not a math wizard, not even close, so if someone could on this thread and debunk my work, I would not only be satisfied, but applaud them as well








[edit on 31-5-2009 by GreenBicMan]

reply to post by unityemissions


The reason we have superbugs is because of eugenics and ponerology. Psychopaths in our social systems make them, because they want to control populations through disease. They magnify the natural virulence by cross species genetic engineering and then launch these pathogens on the vaccine weakened immune systems of the populations. This is the reality behind contemporary pandemics, such as AIDS, SARS and now this swine nonsense.

We are much stronger than the media portrays us to be. For a pandemic to take hold we need years of constant psychological warfare and lifetime of immune supressant assaults and a bad diet.

I have not had a bad flu in 3 years and the last big flu I had was because of a vaccine. The happier I am in my day to day life the less ill I tend to become. It's dis-ease, not some minuture personal armageddon.

This is what you're not supposed to realise, that you can cure illness with happiness. At a fundamental level we are past biochemistry and into bioenergetics, and in this realm, or fractal scale if you prefer, it's very much mind over matter.

If you mind your mind, matter dosen't really matter, as I read somewhere.

reply to post by Mindmelding


Your post a while back discussing ponerology insipired me to get the book, Political Ponerology. Thanks for that. It's an insightful read. I'm taking it slow, so that I'm sure to absorb & integrate the information.

As far as I've read, ponerology has nothing to do with superbugs. Superbugs are the product of human's actions speeding up the evolution of bacteria. All the antibiotics we put in and on ourselves have forced bacteria to adapt. They have adapted MUCH faster than our bodies can counter-adapt. We use antibiotics, superbugs become not only antibiotic resistant, but actually feed off the antibiotics!! If we would have just let nature do it's thing and not used lab-made antibiotics, we wouldn't be in this situation. I don't think this has to do with ponerology, but with the current widespread perception of human superiority over nature. Put bluntly, we're arrogant and blind.

As far as mind over matter, this is true but I doubt the limitless potential of positive thinking. I actually think optimism is as much a faulty perception as pessimism. The reality lies in between. It lies in realism.

I've not had the flu since 2005. Pushing though it. Not giving it much mind, has probably helped out, though I'd also think being careful with what I put in my body has something to do with it.

[edit on 31-5-2009 by unityemissions]

reply to post by bobbylove321


Ok bobby, now that you have seen my calculations, please debunk me..

Even if my 1.2% gets slightly revised lower over time, I can adjust those numbers as well to correlate to the % of growth

reply to post by unityemissions


Ponerology has to do with everything. This is why I mention it so often. If someone understands ponerology they understand the motivations of elitist people to conspire, they understand it's a pathology, that these people cannot help themselves and can't stop. Thus no conspiracy becomes too outlandish and this opens the mind to see what really is going on. Specifically the bug thing. One book on the subject is Dr Mary's Monkey, which talks about AIDS and cancer producing vaccines back in New Orleans in the 50's and 60's iirc. This gives a clue about what is under the water with that iceberg that is biological warfare against civilian populations. And I'm not talking about gassing curds here, I'm talking about the new epidemics mankind faces, such as cancer, MS, fibromialgia and so forth.

Ponerology also helps understand the true nature of evil, again imo. Good is a creational energy, a positive, evil is an entropic, destructive energy, a negative. Psychopathic people, because of their internal emotional imaturity or total lack of emotions are cut off from more positive energies, which are available to a loving a heart. This is my life experience. Positive emotions, not just thoughts, but the underlining somatic emotional response, the body energy system behind them, will generate positive experiences, perhaps through a physical mechanism like ressonance, I don't know at this point. Negative emotions, which I think are a lack of emotion, will generate negative experiences. Psychopaths have the wiring messed up and they're experiencing negative as positive or not experiencing anything at all. This is what evil is, not so much an omnipotent devil being, but a simple falling out of natural positive creational energy.

The "fallen" (a common religious meme) are probably not some highly advanced beings who fell out of heaven, really personality types that are out of sync with the love energy behind reality. This is what causes dysfunctions, like pathological lieing, like sadism, like uncontrolable greed, like envy and so forth. It's an energy system malfunction which manifests entropy.

And this is at a lower level of the fractal than the biochemical manifestations, so if you treat the emotions you can reduce the load of entropy your body has to deal with. If you manage to get to a point where you have lees entropy than love in your life I see no reason why someone could live indefinately or untill they got bored with their current existence. I don't however think thats a viable proposition given the amount of negativity in our current environment.

Slightly off topic, my apologies. Just trying to make people understand our "elites" so they don't fear them and we can move on to solving problems, not just get hung up trying to understand them.

Edit: anyone trying to understand the above can try this, attempt to meditate on love itself, on the feeling, focusing that feeling around your heart area. If a person manages to get into the right brainwaves (don't ask which...) and the concentration is deep enough then love should manifest itself as an energy flux through the entire body, especially the spine. This is the body experiencing the life force of the universe, imo.

[edit on 31-5-2009 by Mindmelding]

reply to post by GreenBicMan


Like I said, the rule of 72 gives nice estimates, but we're all typing behind incredibly fast calculators, so you could easily check what the real doubling time would be for 1.2% by calculating the logarithm of 1.012 and 2: log( 2, 1.012 ) = 58.108 years. Sure enough, the estimate of the rule of 72 is only off by 1.9 years, but why would we take margins of error if we don't have to? Use the power of your computer!

Furthermore, if you take the time to reread the second half of my post, you'll find that the growth rate will not stay at 1.2%. In fact, as it is now projected, it looks like it will be 0.5% by 2050. Of course we don't know how accurate these projections are, but the trend of the past half century has been a steady declination of the growth rate. With a different growth rate every year, it does not make sense to make 'doubling figures' that are based on multiple years of steady growth. Whether you do this with the rule of 72 or with an accurate calculator, it simply won't fit the data. To demonstrate, in 1970 the growth rate was about 2.0%. Doubling time for such a rate is 35.003 years. This means that in 2005 we should have had 3.8 *2 = 7.6 billion people, and in 2040 we should have 15.2 billion. At the same time, if we assume a growth rate of 1.2% and calculate the world population for 2040, we get 9.94 billion people. The difference between those predictions is more than 50% (compare 15 billion and 10 billion - thats 3 to 2). This is terribly, terribly inaccurate. You cannot use doubling figures when it comes to a variable growth rate, in this case one that is constantly declining. It works to estimate the years nearby, for example 5 or 10 years, but if you take it over half a century, things get a-skew - the growth rate differs so much between the start and end of the period that any linear projection is simply false. You need to factor in the change of the growth rate over each single year.

reply to post by scraze


Yes, you are very correct

And like I said as well, i am terrible at math, so doing any logarithms would make me puke lol

You will notice how I said assumed growth rates, and not for sure as I said I would revise them if necessary

And yes the small %'s are a very big number

But it is not to be discounted as a whole, do you follow me there?

I think we can agree on that..

What we do know is it will go up and down (% wise)

So obviously, everything I am using is an estimate, but for someone to think 300-500 years down the line we wont be facing an overpopulation problem (espically if we start to live longer!) they are kidding themselves

Do we agree on that my friend?

EDIT: good post by the way, you explained yourself well

[edit on 31-5-2009 by GreenBicMan]

reply to post by GreenBicMan


Yeah, so far there is no reason to assume the growth rate will be dropping below the 0% level any time soon (e.g. this century). Some countries only show more growth the past years (or continents - Africa for example). I wonder how many countries can do what China did.. ;]

reply to post by scraze


Yes, dropping below 0% in my opinion, would prob. mean "something is up" and by that I mean the invisible hand taking action

That is of course discounting a real pandemic, not h1n1, but something that will actually have a kill rate of over .1%

reply to post by Mindmelding


I've found when someone uses an absolute, they're actually projecting. No one concept encapsulates everything, save infinity. Many evils are directly a result of ponerology, but to say all evil stems from that would be to deny ourself. I'm pretty sure it's a universal feeling to experience negativity, and I have yet to meet a sinless man.

Sorry, but saying that ponerology is the root of evil, seems like a cop-out. It's a big chunk, but not the whole pie.

[edit on 31-5-2009 by unityemissions]

I'm seeing too much math and little atttention to specific needs in countries and regions.

The Chinese government considers their population too high and is making an effort to bring it down to what is considered a more manageable level.

In Europe the socialized governments implemented pension plans based on population growth and with an unexpected population decline, they are in trouble with a system that requires younger workers supporting older retirees.

The US maintains a steady birth to death ratio - unusual in the Western world.

The problems right now are population distribution mot so much gross numbers.

Countries like Japan and Israel, relatively small with few resources, have robust exporting economies and can afford to import food, fuel, and other necessities. Few countries have that luxury.

North Korea suffered a famine that resulted in the starvation of 2 Million. Bad government planning jut as Zimbabwe, once the primary agrarian source of food in Africa, now produces a tiny fraction of it's potential due to it's leader handing over control of farms to his incompetent elite.

It all comes down to management by country leaders and co-operation between them.


Mike

reply to post by GreenBicMan


Well, actually the H1N1 has made 99 confirmed casualties out of 15510 confirmed cases so far, which is 0.638% - a factor 6.3 larger than 0.1% ;D

By the way, even China didn't really do what I thought China did:

In total, the Chinese government estimates that it has three to four hundred million fewer people in 2008, with the one-child policy, than it would have had otherwise.[25][26]

en.wikipedia.org...

That's still .3 to .4 billion people less, then, but they're still growing quite rapidly.
It seems the growth rate acts as an asymptote, never quite reaching 0.0%.. Pure speculation from my side, though ;]