Reality check?

[Ellipsis]

I know population control has been discussed but how surious is the problem of overpopulation?

Think about this:

The population in 2050 is supposed to reach arround 9.4 billion currently the world's population is (based on 2010 estimate) 6.8 billion, 7 years ago the population was about 6 070 581 (give or take a couple dozen lol...) . Thus, in 10 years the population went up almost a billion people! (almost) A billion! Think about that...in 10 years there is 1 more person on earth for every 5...

Some how that seems very scary...

But certain experts can't handle the fact that we do not have the resources to handle that growth no where near that in fact...we can't even handle what we got now...Some will tell me that we will develop the technology to handle it...I doupt it...we can't relay on what I call "flying car" theory (though you might have a better name for it) anymore...Fundemetnal change to soceity will ultimatly have to happen (huge changes!)...they are already happening terrorism being one such example...and it will only get worse...scarcity will become ever more an issue...oil is going to be old news (wheat will be much more vauable)...face it the population does not change by itself, orginary people expect the world to change around them, they do not expect or intend to need to change thier own wants and needs...(and then they complain about taxes...the small amount of money is what they contribute to change the world...)

I will say it...the world is in troble...maybe not even becuase of the lack of resources but becuase of that great divide and as more people become aware of the divide the angerier they are going to get ( the middle is was one of the first...The USSR was an even older example)...

Terrorism is not an ideological divide but an economic one . It will only increase in intensity. No man however moral can survive on empty stomach, even less so with the empty stomachs of his children.

[Krill]

Reality check: Predicting the changes in global society, constituted by an excessive number smaller societies over the course of any great length of time is very difficult.

If I recall, not too long ago some guy predicted we'd all be starving by now, having mass epidemics of hunger in first and third world countries alike, drastically reducing the human population of the entire globe.

Yeah, at this point we actually have a surplus of food (quite the opposite of that prediction). It's just that it is concentrated in certain areas. We could feed all 6 billion people easy, we just don't because we aren't in some sort of global socialist system.

[Ellipsis]

Excuse the less well informed but there is a diffrence...and as I recall a large section of the population is stilling dieing of starvation/malnutrition (and yes I know the diffrence)...I don't know about "easily" feeding a number closer to 7 billion...without major change in diet for the rest of us...Also feeding is an easy thing equality in quality of life is imposible (even in richer nations this is seen in diffrent regoins eg. Newfoundland and Labradour VS. Alberta)...My main point is an increase in terrorism (please excuse the hungry man statement but ones man's corn is another's Plasma TV)

As for this surplus food it only adds the problem...most of it is junk...I heard that more people now are dieing from this stuff (eg. malnutriation even when becoming obease VS. malnutrition due not to eating enough)..."Quality" food such as beef will not grow on trees...or with hydroponics. (Note: I am defining beef as higher end...something it is not currently but one day will be...there are only so many rainforests you can cut down). Most of the food we have now comes with increased size due to things like herbasides and the like...get rid of those and well we will see...about that predicted mass starvation...technology has given us some advantages but even it has it's limits...the organic food movement may be the end of us all...

[Krill]

...and as I recall a large section of the population is stilling dieing of starvation/malnutrition (and yes I know the diffrence)...I don't know about "easily" feeding a number closer to 7 billion...

Yes, that is because they are not getting any of the surplus food. But, as I also seem to have observed, that starvation has not triggered the fall of civilization yet, and the fact that we could, if necessary, feed more than our current population and that in the future we will likely have developed more advanced technology that could improve the efficiency of food production, I have severe doubts that there is a population crisis pending.

[Architectonic]

We could feed all 6 billion people easy, we just don't because we aren't in some sort of global socialist system.

Last time I checked, socialist systems were more likely to create famines (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=chinese+famine&btnG=Google+Search&meta=). ;)
The real problems are poor governance/corruption etc.

GC AGE - these topics get discussed every other week. For example:
http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=19454
http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=13833
http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=6236
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=50

etc

[Krill]

Last time I checked, socialist systems were more likely to create famines (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=chinese+famine&btnG=Google+Search&meta=). ;)

I was speaking on purely theoretical terms within the context of why it is we have a surplus but people starving: no extreme effort to equally distribute it as might occur in a socialist system, even if that system is ultimately: Impractical, unwieldy or unnacceptable by its very philosophy.

But yeah, good point :)


The real problems are poor governance/corruption etc.

Definately a major factor.

[s'box]

Urban farming could be set up and increased exponentially, with the rooftops being covered and much of the roads torn up and turned into garden space. Won't be much driving without all that oil anyway. Perhaps some of the geneticly modified food will be incredibly effecient and not secretly poisonous.

Giant food skyscrapers. Tall as the corporate buildings, wider at the base. Systems of mirrors to reflect the suns light and drainage and complex water retention systems to make the whole thing viable for growing. Perhaps local waste products could be fed into their to enrich the soil. Same goes for the rest of the urban farms as well, if we have all those extra billions of people we might as well use their waste for something.

The same thing could be applied to livestock, 'microlivestock' chickens and such could be raised on a small scale at least in some buildings, I bet another large urban center style building could produce a fair amount of lunch without holding the things in production-line style hormone cage fests.

More self sustainability in general, rainwater collection comes to mind, electricity is a tough one though. Tide generators and windmills and solar panels could be helpful but probably still not enough.

but of course this would require a certain kind of culture. A much more open one, urban farming has had a lot of troubles getting a foothold in most places.

[omnirook]

If one takes a close look at the world's population, one sees that, w/the exception of Europe, most of the world's people live along the coasts. That is true for the United States; it is true for Canada; it is true for Russia*; it is true for China. Even in Europe, the coastal populations are markedly denser.

The interiors of most places are, by comparison, hardly populated.

Land management - or should I say, "mismanagement?" - is one culprit. Clearly the mismanagement of food supplies is another.

Certainly, as time goes forward, the ideals of America and personal freedom will have to be modified, if not tossed aside entirely. The need for modification has already become apparent, as Americans themselves are enjoying far less personal freedom than they did even just a generation ago. Despite all of the rhetoric, the trend has been for increasing regulation of all human behavior, except perhaps for sexual behavior. There the liberalization in attitude toward varieties of sexual expression has resulted from the operation of an old maxim: not only does familiarity breed contempt, it creates an "oh, fuck it" attitude.

Population is not what threatens us most. What threatens us most is pollution. Either we address this or we die out as a species - unless, of course, technology continues to do what it has been doing - progress geometrically.

When my father was born, no one had a radio. When he was a teenager, everyone had a radio - and quite a few people had telephones, though most still did not. My mother, a decade younger than my father, grew up w/o electricity and w/o running water and w/an outhouse out back. That was in England, not in some "backwards" place.

When I grew up, we had running water, electricity, a radio, a telephone, and even a television - but no microwave, no cable tv, no videotape, no cassette players (forget the cd!), no stereos, no cellphones, no beepers, no ATM's, no answering machines, not even a remote for changing channels. I was the remote: "Mark, change the channel for your mother." (My father thought that I would be less likely to mind if it was for my mother. If I was in another room, it would be "Your mother is tired. Change the channel for her.")

There were no digital clocks. There were no personal computers, and there certainly was no internet. The Xerox machine had not yet been invented! The mimeograph was still in use, and we used to sniff the pages as the teacher handed them out to get a brief high off the solutions used to make the copies. The electric typewriter was still the "new kid on the block," and a school that had ONE was deemed "progressive." Frozen food consisted of frozen peas, forget tv dinners, forget even Hamburger Helper and Rice-a-Roni. A radio was still a prime "option" for a car, and the windows were rolled down using cranks. My uncle had an older car where the windows had grips so that you could lift them up to close them, and you secured them w/leather straps! An automatic transmission was so rare that people came from blocks around to see a car that had one.

And I'm only 43 years-old.

The world's technology has changed out of recognition since my father's childhood. My father was not born when Lincoln was in the White House; he was born in 1929, and there are still millions of people alive who were born earlier than my father.

So, there is hope.

*In Russia's case, the people are clustered in the northwest coastal areas and along the western border w/Europe; the interior consists of vast unpopulated expanses larger than most countries. Russia's tremendous size and resources will give Russia an edge in the future.

[Krill]

I'm reminded of an article, that even if you disagree with the general premise behind it, makes a very good point:


Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS… None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about.

Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it.

(from: http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html)

[attila_the_hunny]

This means we all need to stop living so long and die.

[omnirook]

Since posting above, I've been sitting here, reflecting on the changes in the world since I was a child. It would take a voluminous post to cover only some of them. It's amazing!

The electric razor, the electric pencil sharpener, the pen w/its own supply of ink, the ball-point pen, the disposable razor, the disposable diaper, the disposable lighter, the toaster-oven, the microwave oven, the tv remote, color tv (!), the stereo, the ATM machine, and the credit card itself have all been introduced since I was a child. Citibank introduced the first ATM's; at first, they were a novelty, could only be found in Manahattan, and the cards were easy to "demagnetize," so that they would stop working if you put your wallet on top of the tv. Credit was a pain in the ass - you held up the whole line in the store while the cashier called the card's national office to see if you had credit and to get the price of the item that you were purchasing deducted from your available credit. Good credit meant that your credit company was willing to extend your credit by a few bucks past your limit to buy something.

There was no lite beer, there was no diet soda, there were was no artificial sweetner. Bayer asparin was the only pain reliever available over the counter. Vitamins had to be prescribed, and you usually got them in the form of an injection at your doctor's office. When I went for a blood test, the lab tech was still using a glass pippette on which she sucked to draw my blood up into the tube! The nurse at my doctor's office was a real battle axe and still wore one of those little nurse's caps that one sees in old movies.

I had a record player, mono, of course, and the needles needed to be replaced regularly, and they were still making 78's.

Television came on at 6 o'clock in the morning and went off at midnight - a little later for a local station that showed the "late, late, late show." The programming day ended w/the national anthem. CBS (2), NBC (4), ABC (7), WOR-NJ (9), and WPIX-NY (11), and PBS (13) were the only stations available - but we in NY were the envy of the rest of the country! Maryland had ONE television station - WorWic TV - and you watched what was on or nothing.

I rented one of the first vcr's on the market (they were far too expensive to buy, several thousand dollars at a time when money was worth nearly 4 times what it is worth now). It came in 5 pieces! You had to connect all these pieces in series - and then there were only a handful of movies available. A movie being released on video tape was still a news worthy event and got coverage on the evening news report. Movies still did 6 months in the theatre as an average run. Nobody would see the movie again until it was aired on the tv several years later.

And I remember a world where there were NO video games. There were pinball machines and a few other games, but none of them required electricity. The calculator was a big deal when it came out. Texas Instruments introduced the first one, and it sold for $70 - again, realize inflation and understand that $70 was A LOT of money.