Overpopulation? Elitest Propaganda and Damned Lies Lies Lies!

reply to post by JR MacBeth


You focused on the "hockey stick" graph, but failed to acknowledge the fact that I also addressed the logistic curve which takes into account the carrying capacity of a population. Including the fact that populations will either come to the carrying capacity and hover there, or overshoot and come back down. You repeated exactly what I put in my original post.

Instead, you suggest that I have "an agenda". You don't know me, please don't make unfounded assumptions.

Thank you.

Originally posted by brass
reply to post by JR MacBeth

 

You focused on the "hockey stick" graph, but failed to acknowledge the fact that I also addressed the logistic curve which takes into account the carrying capacity of a population. Including the fact that populations will either come to the carrying capacity and hover there, or overshoot and come back down. You repeated exactly what I put in my original post.

Instead, you suggest that I have "an agenda". You don't know me, please don't make unfounded assumptions.

Thank you.

Sorry mate, your first post and all, forgive any assumptions you felt I made.

Here's a quote from your first post:

Unfortunately, I am not of the belief that our population growth is necessarily "healthy". My guess is that the growth rate indicates an overshoot will occur...the question remains that nobody knows the answer to is what the implications will be on the human race as a result of us blowing right by the carrying capacity.

You don't have to call it an "agenda", that term does seem a bit negative I suppose. But, you certainly made your position clear, and I'm still not sure I misread you exactly. Even in the snippet I'm quoting above, you do refer to a "growth rate", and if you go back and read my post, you'll see that I felt it was important to make sure that the little-known fertility crisis is factored in somehow. It's too often ignored, IMO, but probably mostly based on the fact that it's seldom spoken of.

I actually liked your presentation, especially your acknowledgement that a population can overshoot, and collapse to near extinction. You deserved my star for that one, since few ever want to get quite that drastic, even though it is a possibility of course.

I'm not sure I repeated exactly what you said. Yes, the population will peak, by all appearances, but the fertility crisis seems to be ahead of any supposed carrying capacity considerations. And yes, I admit that I "failed" to treat of this issue, of carrying capacity, but perhaps not out of dishonest omission. Obviously, this is the controversial part, whereas the fertility crisis really should not be too controversial, for anyone who looks into it. As the OP points out, we are still a long ways from capacity issues, especially by employing just a wee bit more technology, or will. That latter one is probably the biggest problem of all.

Back to the word "agenda". No, you and I likely do not have one to speak of. But, those who I sometimes call "our masters", they seemingly DO have an agenda. These are the powerful people who, right or wrong, have the means to push their agendas.

One of those agendas appears to be to get the majority of people thinking in terms of "overpopulation". Have you been "guilty" of falling for this one? Have you further shared "your" opinion on the matter, perhaps aggravating the already propaganda-filled atmosphere, within your circles, even if they are relatively small? If so, then you too have been a "victim" of the propaganda our masters have been feeding us.

I hope you won't take that as an "accusation", it's more for anyone reading the thread, we ALL have been victims of this powerful propaganda, at one time or another, I agree with the OP on this one. I also think that your presentation does in fact have balance, and your observation that our population growth may not be "healthy", as you put it, certainly has merit. Growth in some areas is clearly problematic, even if overall things are not as catastrophic as we are usually led to believe.

In retrospect, I can see that part of my response was there to blunt the raw impact of your initial graphic presentation, which to me seemed a bit misleading. Considering the level of propaganda out there, I would submit that we should be more careful, since the average person is likely to misinterpret what you are trying to say.

JR

reply to post by JR MacBeth


Hi. Thanks for your reply. I think I understand where you are coming from a little better now. I suppose a large problem in population growth is likely the third world countries. I found an article (PDF research abstract actually) on the fertility crisis that stated "Nearly half of the world’s population in 2000 lived in countries with fertility rates at or below replacement level..."

SpringerLink

It's hard to imagine the ramifications of having such an imbalance down the road.

Concerning global population die-off, I don't think wars will play much of a part in reducing the population by any significant amount. Either some sort of pandemic might, or certainly a coming natural disaster: Yellowstone, asteroid, etc.

Take care.

Why would we want less of us? Were their property/slaves! They want more of us!

Originally posted by spikey
Overpopulation...really?

Let's take the most important requirement there is first..Air..without it, we all know we're toast in minutes...but there is plenty of breathable air and we can produce more if we ever needed to, so that's one required resource there's plenty of...no limited resource issue there.

There may be loads of air, but what about the quality of it????? Have you ever choked on the pollution of an Asian city? More people = more pollution = more toxins in the air of our cities.

The next important one..water..again, without it, we all know we've had it in just a few days..74% of our world is covered with water..it's everywhere, it's in the seas, it's in the lakes, it's in the rivers and the streams, it's in ponds, in plants and animals, it's in the very air we breathe. So that's taken care of..plenty of water, no issue with too little water.

Solar desalination will provide drinking and irrigation water, Solar water condensers will generate water from the air for land locked countries, and irrigation pipelines can be built.

What solar desalination plants? These are only theoretical at this point in time and would really only of be of any use to solar belt countries that have plenty of empty land near the sea (which coincidentally is where the most built up land is) Next problem would be all the warm brine produced by these plants - it would kill the sea floor and ruin fisheries. The natural precipitation process just evaporates a bit of water off the top of the ocean, usually well out to sea where the water is very deep. Australia has just invested a fortune in desalination plants. Here in Adelaide we just spent 1 billion AUD on a plant that is only capable of providing 1/2 the water needs of 1 million people. These things also suck up vast amounts of energy - so yep, more air pollution from those coal powered or gas fired power plants........

Next requirement on the list would logically be food. Because food is tied in to all of the other requirements, i'll list them as one general requirement..For food we obviously need somewhere to grow it, land?

How much available land is there for farming, growing our food? Plenty.
Every single human being on this planet, could theoretically fit (with room to spare) in an area the size of Texas...every one of us.

Nice theory but can you imagine how terrible it would be if everyone was forced to live in a confined area. What about the waste from it? You would probably have to travel through an area the size of texas in all directions to get through the refuse from such population density to get to the pristine land!

With modern and innovative farming methods, even with using tried and tested traditional farming techniques, the rest of the world is a pretty big farming area, if every person on Earth only used a total area equivalent to the size of Texas.

Using vertical farming techniques (hydroponics -growing walls), and multi-story farming, our land and water and nutrients requirements have just been slashed to 20% of traditional requirements...20%. (based on tests carried out into these techniques). The real boon though, is the sheer amount of extra food that can be grown in the same space that tradition methods use, up to 2000% more food production in the same area! (20X)

Excellent and practical idea, as is the idea of roof top farming in cities - it would greatly help lower pollution and help lower urban temperatures over summer. Main problem with this idea though is that if you are growing 20x the plants you need 20x the soil or growing media and 20 x the nutrients - not all soils are fertile enough to pop some seeds in and get a lush garden from. Some modern fertilisers like nitrogen are starting to get expensive thanks to being petroleum products and others such as phosphates are just plain running out until if / when new deposits are discovered.

Vast areas of our coastal waters, landlocked lakes, reservoirs and international waters at sea (avoiding international shipping lanes), could easily be used as space to build extensive networks of floating farms...no land required for farming *at all*, everything would be grown at sea.

Sounds like a lovely idea, but what happens to your sea farm when a hurricane or severe storm passes through - it doesnt take much salt water to kill a plant......

The land would be exclusively for flora and fauna and habitation, forests could be replanted where thousand acre farms now sit...all over the world. So, land space is another non issue.

Why do you think they want to de-populate?

Energy is required for food production, and our use. The sun provides enough energy to the Earth in one day, to match or exceed human energy requirements for one year.

If we could capture just 1% of the total energy, we'd have much more energy than we need. Match advances in Solar technology (nanotechnology, metamaterials, Graphene, Solar roll printing etc) with wind power (also a type of Solar energy), and we have plenty of energy...also with the very latest in energy (still controversial of course) research in areas such as cold fusion (Rossi - Italy) the energy 'problem' isn't such a problem after all.

To put these numbers into a perspective with highly practical relevance, on average, humankind is only using about 1/10,000 of that amount for its total energy consumption. In other words, sunlight seems to be a viable option for our energy needs, at least from the perspective of the total amount needed.

All wonderful ideas, but so far in the real world we have a few 'giant fans' sitting in rural areas and the odd solar panel on roofs. We are all waiting for the energy breakthrough that will save us all but so far, what ever the reason be it motivated corporate greed or technological stumbling blocks, they seem to be a way off yet.

Even using clean burn coal technology, the world has enough accessible coal to last (conservative estimates) approximately 2000 years. So, plainly our energy resources are plenty...and inexhaustible (Solar and wind).

I hope you realise that the term 'clean coal' is an oxymoron. Pumping CO2 into rocks in the ground may sound all lovely and like a great way to dispose of an unwanted pollutant but what happens if a fissure through say an earthquake forms? A huge realease of CO2 will occur and kill everything in it's path. Just look what happened in Cameroon when a volcanic lake let go of a giant CO2 burst:

news.bbc.co.uk...

I asked the question earlier 'What resources *exactly* are limited?'

In short, pretty much all of them. Even the ones that are not limited are currently either poisoning us with their use so increasing use is only going to make things worse. The 'clean' energies you mention are the breakthroughs the world is still waiting for.....

The answer is simply the imaginary resource, the artificially created, worthless invention of *MONEY*!

THAT is the limited resource that is meant when talking about overpopulation, the cost in terms of (imaginary) money to actually build the infrastructure, the flotillas of floating sea and Solar farms, the widespread use of nanotechnology Solar, and perhaps virtually limitless cold fusion technologies down the line a little.

How does it feel for you and your children to be considered of less value than an invented monetary system that has zero intrinsic value? I know how it makes me feel.

Just how many pieces of ink printed paper are your children's lives worth? The real answer is none. There are not enough trees and ink available on the planet to make enough pieces of paper that would be equal in value to your children.

Except the elite don't see it that way.

They see a paper value for your children, and when that value is exceeded by cost in paper, that's when your children, and mine become 'expendable' for the sake of financial expedience.

There is more than a little truth in your final statement re money and Elitists. But remember this - capitalism is driven by expansion. Expansion is fuelled by a growing population. So in actual fact, decreasing the population actually serves to undo the capitalist elites as the money they so love will dry up as the economy shrinks while the population declines and the associated demand for their worthless trinkets with it.

What the elitists are trying to do is play Devil's advocate in this situation. They can see the writing on the wall and they are trying to control the inevitable collapse of the system they ruined with their greed.

reply to post by markosity1973

What solar desalination plants? These are only theoretical at this point in time

Maybe.

Maybe not...

IBM, Saudis to open solar desalination...

Originally posted by JR MacBeth
reply to post by markosity1973

 

What solar desalination plants? These are only theoretical at this point in time

Maybe.

Maybe not...

IBM, Saudis to open solar desalination...

Ahh thanks for that. I read the post and this is not a 'pure' solar desal plant. All they are doing is using solar cells to power the pumps for reverse osmosis - the same technique used here in Australia minus the solar cells. It is the pumps that hog the electricity because they need to get the water to a ridiculous pressure to force it through the membrane. Here in Aussie they have hooked up a few windmills and made similar claims of 'green' desal plants.

The syetem I was referring to is detailed in this link below and would use sunlight to effectively boil the water.

www.globalwarmingsolutions.co.uk...

Originally posted by JR MacBeth
reply to post by markosity1973

 

What solar desalination plants? These are only theoretical at this point in time

Maybe.

Maybe not...

IBM, Saudis to open solar desalination...

Ahh thanks for that. I read the post and this is not a 'pure' solar desal plant. All they are doing is using solar cells to power the pumps for reverse osmosis - the same technique used here in Australia minus the solar cells. It is the pumps that hog the electricity because they need to get the water to a ridiculous pressure to force it through the membrane. Here in Aussie they have hooked up a few windmills and made similar claims of 'green' desal plants.

The system I was referring to is detailed in this link below and would use sunlight to effectively boil the water.

www.globalwarmingsolutions.co.uk...

reply to post by markosity1973

It is the pumps that hog the electricity because they need to get the water to a ridiculous pressure to force it through the membrane.

I like your desal plant, seems well thought out.

The article I linked does use solar electricity to power the pumps for reverse osmosis, but the most encouraging thing was at the bottom of the article where they mention nano-tech membranes that will cut the power need substantially, reducing the cost per cubic meter of potable water to the same approximate range as your large-scale plant.

Either way, I think practical desalination is already well-beyond the theoretical stages. It would be nice to see more political will get behind this, but it's hard to see how it could become a real priority as things stand now. The areas that need it the most, can seemingly afford it the least, and things are often the way they are for "good" reason, at least politically speaking.

JR

The OP did a great job of creating illusion with this piece.

Playing into the fears and prejudices of the average type who would call a place like ATS home.

Few of us will attempt to deny that TPTB believe in Malthusian Population Control = control the population of the lower classes specifically.
Most people will agree that TPTB are the war mongers and they do so primarily as a form of population control.

With these two PROOFS we go on to deny reality.
That there are no limits to anything.... food production.... energy production.... human population growth etc etc...

Heh!!! I believe in the Expanding Earth Theory yet just as with the Abiotic Oil Theory, I am sorry to suggest that the two main components of each equation are not even. That the Earth is not growing in proportion to the population i.e. we will eventually run out of room and that if Oil is created in the creamy nugate center of the earth then it is not doing so at the rate of 80,000,000+ barrels per day i.e. the rates of extraction will eventually not suffice our needs.....

Sure, sure!!! There are many ways we could increase our "yields" and thus our population yet at what cost?
And also, like many have stated already.....At what cost to what we consider to be our quality of life?

Ultimately I hope that you find your limitless world... I simply do not believe that this is it...

reply to post by JR MacBeth

I agree, the new type of plant they are building in Saudi Arabia looks very pomising. The only thing that I wonder about is the cost of them. As we know Saudi Arabia is a rich oil state so it can afford whatever it wants pretty much.
The new desal plant here in Adelaide has yet to be fully completed and we are already being told to expect a substantial hike in water prices.
Lets hope for the third world in particular that either of the 2 designs manage to get off the ground and be produced in a cost effective and enrgy efficient manner to make water freely
available to those who need it most and not just rich oil states and western countries

reply to post by spikey



This is from Julian Huxley and sounds to me like a case against the health care bill passed last year. Is this why people are so dead set against having access to affordable health care? Sounds suspiciously to me like it is.

The lowest strata are reproducing too fast. Therefore they must not have too easy access to relief or hospital treatment lest the removal of the last check on natural selection should make it too easy for children to be produced or to survive.

This was something that takes a different viewpoint and I think it also has merit here in this discussion. Meanwhile I am trying to find the website where I got the quote above from yesterday. It had something to do with the planned NWO and Darwinism.