- #176
Evo
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Overpopulation, serious political and economical problems
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I'm curious how you envision space to be a problem? If you read what I said, I said space literally is not the problem, the problems are resources, economics, and pollution. Therefore, as you ask, "places for people to work, etc", you are essentially making the same point I was making.
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- #179
Evo
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Without talking about specific examples it is hard to consider what you can or can't do. Sometimes the solutions aren't pursued because of economic reasons. It doesn't help that many people are so ignorant or selfish that they often refuse to make any long term investments in our future.
- #181
Evo
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And you claim it is. I don't really see how you can argue it is in the context I have given. Your effort is only going to be futile, unless you resort to misrepresenting what I actually have said, which I think you already have done.
And now you claim natural resources can't be moved. Which is kind of vague and at face value untrue.
- #183
Evo
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Let me put it to you this way. You said space is not an issue. That requires you to back your statement up with manistream peer reviewed sources. Either provide the sources that back you up or retract your statement.
That is a rule here, it is not a personal request. You said
You said that, not me.
Are you retracting your statement? If not, please, by all means provide the required proof. If things like water and climate and arable land are not issues based on available space I'd be happy to see it.
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- #184
CRGreathouse
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- #185
Evo
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My post is part of my request for sources from jreelag, which he has yet to furnish. The onus is on him at this point. Instead of furnishing a source, he's trying to argue his way out of it.
Are you suggesting I should have just restricted him from posting until the required sources were furnished? That can be done also. I thought it was nicer to allow him a chance to explain himself.
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- #186
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I thought is was kind of clear what I meant if you read my post prior to that one, in which I said that it's not a matter of space, but resources etc. which obviously includes water.
You catch me on a one line response and take it out of context, and now want me to back up a claim in a context separate from which I made it in with a mainstream paper. It's clear that your attempting to abuse your mentor status to gain the upper hand.
Should I take your claim that natural resources can't be moved seriously, and ask for you to substantiate it, or would that be ridiculous? Should I point out that water is shipped all over the world, as well as are minerals, lumber, food, etc, just to capitalize on a gotcha out of context one liner?
- #187
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And my post was a response to others who have gone on about should we make floating cities, and build cities in antarctica to overcome the crowdedness of Earth, which were by the way rediculous and unsubstantiated. I think my point that it's not space but resources that we are worried about is valid don't you? What's the point in building a city in space, for example, if you don't have the resources.
I would expect that the claim that space irrespective of resources is running out, and that the Earth is crowded need to be addressed. It's like if someone wanted me to provide a peer reviewed paper proving that big foot didn't exist.
- #188
Evo
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I agree those are ridiculous. That's why I asked for sources of how this could be done in an overpopulated world. What are the statistics? What is the plan? Are we going to place people in the Gobi desert? How many, what would it take to keep them alive? I imagine the assumuption is that people have to be moved there because they can't be supported where the natural resources are. If the natural resources are maxed out, where are additional resources going to come from for these additional people in the desert? If we are saying that space is a problem because space without resources isn't usable space. Then we do agree.
- #189
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I think you and I are essentially in agreement.
I do know that where people can live generally revolves around access to fresh water. If we had enough energy we could desalinate sea water. But then you might have more pollution issues. It might not be cost effective enough, and water doesn't run up hill. Bottom line is that it is better to start building and planning for the future instead of waiting with our hands in our pocket looking the other way. and part of that has to do with economics. The richest country in the world is now in the position where many of us claim we can't afford to protect our environment. Our short term solutions are often the causes of our long term problems.
- #190
Evo
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this you are telling is a problem, simply, because the pressure of overpopulation in poor countries. Westerners have not this problem, but the opposite. We are liable to being overrun by immigrants. I a not calling of ethnic purity but of troubles and in the future with immigrants, when they would begin to bred like in Cameroon or some Latino America or near Eastern countries.
To avoid these troubles, they would have to sterilize all immigrant women that gave birth to more than three children. Since the third or fourth child, the women would had to be sterilized.
John Galaor
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to message 179
<<No, space is a problem because you CAN'T move natural resources. Do you agree?>>
Space is a problem because we need a lot of energy to carry water and food, to far away places. We need energy to build cities and that to process refuse water. To create new machinery, fuels to make them run, etc.
We need a lot of energy to build the infrastructure to collect sun and wind energy, we need energy to search fort new sources of energy, only only oil and coal, but underground heat, etc.
The poor countries, had to spend most of his energy in feeding more and more mouths each year. While the most developed nations, had progressed in part because they had less population growth.
When one considers that southern European nations, or even Muslim nations of from the Near East, were once more civilized than central and north Europe lands, the explanation that comes to my mind is natural resources. These basically were rainfall, arable land, and wood lands. While these southern nations were growing in population their resources were not; in fact woodlands were diminishing, and the excess grazing of sheep and goats made the resurrection of former wooded lands impossible. Then, due to the excess of animal grazing, and the virtual extermination of forest land, the countries were suffering more or erosion, and also they were warming. Then they got less rain for there were less woodlands. In a climate of scarce rains, forest grow very slowly. Also occurs in very cold lands, but those are much less populated.
Some centuries ago, resources meant suitable arable lands, enough rainfall and plenty of forest. This changed with the arrival of fossil fuels.
This commentaries are not for you Evo, they are general, for the individuals who do not think we have a problem with overpopulation in the near future.
John Galaor
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At present, some resources are carried from a part of the planet to another. It takes energy to do so. We are carrying oil and coal from a part of the planet to another. Four centuries ago, Venetians were sailing to Turkey with shiploads of timber, in exchange for species. It was a good business to both, for Turkey was poor in woodlands.
But we could not extrapolate that we can be carrying those valuable cargoes of energy for ever, for they would get exhausted sooner or later, while the population of poor countries keep growing. The question is... have we enough time to change to other ways or producing or collecting energy? Is a good thing that the population of the planet continue growing while we are not sure we would be able to solve the future problems with energy?
Everything we are consuming are related to energy. And the solar energy is only a fraction of the total energy we have from food. Without machines and fertilizers, and artificial irrigation, we would produce only a small fraction of the actual numbers.
Perhaps, we would have only about a fifth of it, or a seventh part of it.
If we come back to year 1,800, the planet had a population of just a billion people.
But we had not machinery them, and the shipping of grain was mostly done by sailing ships. Most populations were feeding themselves with the food produced where they were living. There was not any significant carrying of foods farther than a hundred miles. Most of the food was not carried farther than twenty or forty miles.
John Galaor
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- #194
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my argument about building floating cities on the seas and the Antarctica was a replied to people that was not alarmed by the present population growth. Some of them told me that a growth as small as 0.9% a year ( the average growth in the last 200 years for the planet population) was not a great rate of growth.
Then, to prove them wrong I calculated what would mean this "small" growth over a span of 2,000 years. While is estimated that population in year 1 was 230 million people, for the planet, that means only a multiplication by 30 of the planet population in the last 2,000 years. That means an average growth of 1.7 per thousand a year, nor 9 per thousand.
then, if we take the modest growth of 9 per thousand, as a rate of growth,
1.009^2000=60 million. A multiplication by 60 million, not by 30
then, if we take the rate of growth of most poor nations, we can see there is a problem on the making. We not not need a doctorate in Maths to see this.
take a growth of 2.5% like any poor country, like Haiti or other.
How much time would it take to multiply by 60 million? Let's calculate.
log 6 (10^7)/log 1.025=725.3 years
Then if Haiti has a present population of 10 millions you only need to multiply it by 60 millions and you have pretty number. 1 million by million makes a trillion.
then 10 by 60 is 600 that is 600 trillion people, in scientific notation 6 (10^14)
this number is higher than the number sq. meters of solid surface of the Earth that is approximately 1.5 (10^14) sq m.
Then the growth can not go forever unchecked or we are going to have serious problems. It is not that we have a present a serious problem. We are boiling a problem into the future. We are concocting a problem of population for the near future.
John Galaor
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- #195
CRGreathouse
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I think it's a fallacy to suggest that it would! In fact I often see claims to that effect ("if we continue to grow at X% per year, we'll have Y billion people by year Z") and can't help but wonder.
(Not suggesting that *you* fall prey to this fallacy, just pointing it out as relevant.)
- #196
mheslep
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Can't you imagine some other solution than forced sterilization off all immigrants? (and just the women?)
How about controlling the borders and limiting the rate of immigration, or taking other cultural steps to speed integration of immigrants into existing society, in which the norm is a visibly much lower birth rate?- #197
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of course, I do not believe that any growth whatever could be sustainable for a long time. The reason could be the problems it cause. But must educated people that do not even blink when hearing of overpopulation of animals in Reserves. But we feel a sort of rejection when this idea is applied to humans. That's why is considered a taboo to debate overpopulation of humans in this planet.
We have heard so many fables of the loving Nature, that give us all we need. People cannot imagine that Nature would put some obstacles to our present growth and development.
We believe also in the might of our technology. We have such wonderful technology that we would solve any problems we would meet in the future. Even if we keep growing at this crazy rate during many more decades.
John Galaor
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- #198
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Can't you imagine some other solution than forced sterilization off all immigrants? (and just the women?)
it would be a nice thing if we could do that. Even sterilization, forced or voluntary, is rather more than problematic to implement.
It is a fact, that most immigrants felt a resentment against the country that received them in the first way. This is specially true for second and third regeneration immigrants. I mean, the sons and grand children of immigrants. It can be caused in part for a minority of natives that show some scorn at them. But must probable it happens because, having on average very large families they do not improve as fast as they want. And they could not accept the idea that this is mainly caused by having to many children, en relatives harbored at their homes.
So, this feeling of hate towards the host country and their civil culture is shown very openly among them. Many of the polls done on immigrants showed this scorn for the country that had harbored their grand parents.
Also a religion of hate had done very well their good part to develop such a hate.
The results is that the more aggressive this children and grandchildren of immigrants become, the more scorn and fear would instill in the natives; the the natives, would throw back at immigrant children all this scorn and hate.
Then, it is very easy to say, we can educate them in this or that. It is very difficult to educate people, for other controllers among them, would do a contra-education.
To speed integration. It is very easy to propose integration. Quite a different task is to implement this integration.
As for the control of borders... It is not an easy task either. You cannot control all the clandestine networks that smuggle people into the land.
And unless you build a sort of police state of cruel performance and meticulous controls you would not stop the immigrant community of hiding among them the new arrivals. In very extreme, nasty and dramatic, circumstances, there is a possibility to stop both. This police state would transmute the hate into extreme fear, and the disregard of the native authority, into acceptance. Such a police state could had power to stop the more fanatic mullahs spreading hate among them, against the natives of the host country. A serious "thought police" would stop all sort of hate propaganda, and so on. But this are nasty procedures that provokes disgust in us, for we love democracy and freedom.
Then, democracy and freedom would work against us as well. It is only a theory of mine.
This problem of the immigrant hating us, is very difficult solve by freedom and democracy. Even if they were to earn the same salaries as us, they would be in worse state than we are, because they have a tendency to have large families.
John Galaor
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- #199
mheslep
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Looks like these countries are on track to cease to exist as we know them now within a couple generations, all with birth rates of 1.5 or below:
Greece (1.5)
Czech R.
Russian Federation
Switzerland
Lithuania
Spain
Latvia
Italy
Austria
Poland
Germany
Portugal
Hungary
Romania
Japan (1.34)
S. Korea (1.19)
http://www.google.com/publicdata/ex...ZE:PRT:ROM:POL:LVA:AUT:LIE:LTU&hl=en&dl=en_US
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If we were in the ancient world, in which the wars were fought mostly with people on foot and riding horses, that would be true. Any neighbor nation with plenty of young people to sacrifice on the altar of god Mars, would win easily. But the next war would be a global one, very murderous, and caused by the exhaustion of fossil fuels and the planet's overpopulation.
Then, the butchering would be wholesale on a grand scale, with rockets coming and going in all directions, and probably nuclear heads. I imagine that the present technological world will be devastated.
If any of us remain alive, they would be too busy looking for some food to eat every day.
Most people would go to the supermarkets to rob some food, but would be repelled with machine guns and killed by guards keeping the food stores.
In the end, the guards probably would exhaust their ammunition and some people would be able to enter to rob any food stored there. It would be a nasty, bloody and brutish way of life.
With all the infrastructures of transport ruined, it is a question of time the few of us that would survive, would began to a new life as hunter gatherers. If the catastrophe is not total, we will go back to the middle of the 19 Century.
Richard C. Duncan postulates, in his Theory of Olduvai, the life span of a technological civilization is about 150 or 200 years. If that theory is true, we are already near the end of this cycle.
It started at the middle of 19 century and will end in the middle of 21 Century. This total 200 years.
So, I am not worried by these nations disappearing.
I am already 73. And with a little luck, I will not live to watch the end of the world.
This would be a problem for the survivors of the Armageddon, I suppose.
John Galaor
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nevertheless, Sweden had this problem of negative population growth some ten or twenty years ago, and this was corrected by giving economic incentives to mothers with children. If any nation needs children the government should pay for them. Then, the single people must pay to help raising those children the nation needs. It is very easy.
If I were young I would like to live an enslaved existen to breed and raise all those children the nation needs.
I suppose this is a rational way of thinking.
I got only two kids in my life. But I only raised them and married because I found a good and stable job with a good salary. Were I be living with a worthless job, I would not had married at all, and neither breed any children at all.
John Galaor
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- #203
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I don't know which 'Western' country you live in, but in my country we welcome immigrants and we treat them like we treat any other human being, with respect and a bit of compassion, and we don't cast ignorant and unsubstantiated aspersions about their breeding habits.
Seriously, forced sterilisation?
It's a 'fact' now is it? Really. Suppose this 'fact' is true, so you think it may 'be caused in part ... [by] natives that show some scorn at them'. Call me crazy but I don't think they show the same resentment to your fellow countryman as they have towards you. Just maybe, JG, you're attitude towards immigrants has a lot to do with how much resentment they show towards you.
More of your 'facts', right...
Oh, so it's not just that they are 'immigrants' but it's also their 'religion of hate'? So far the closest thing to a 'religion of hate' I'm hearing is from you.
Lovely, more of your 'facts'.
Clearly forced sterilisation would work better.
Oh no, we can't let that happen can we.
Yes! We love democracy and freedom (but only for 'natives'; the immigrants can have the lovely 'police state of cruel performance and meticulous controls'). And how lovely do these 'thought police' sound? But of course, we love democracy and freedom!
Yes, damn those immigrants with large families! Great theory by the way.
signed
skilgannonau
p.s moderators you guys haven't been doing your job properly.
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- #204
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Ok.
I accept that perhaps I had overplayed too much all these pessimistic considerations.
At his precise moment in History, hatemongery is mostly the work of a small minority on both sides of the divide. In general, only a small minority of Islamics are spreading the hate for western nations. Some polls suggest otherwise, and tell us of a 70% of European Muslims hating the western nations. I am not sure if these polls are credible or not.
Then, if all the things continue the same way as it is at present, none of these considerations apply. To say this of the present times is an inappropriate exaggeration. All my previous rant were meant for a near future with a severe crisis related to fossil fuels exhaustion.
The present economic crisis has nothing to do with immigrants, but with our own exaggerated hyper-consumption. Recently, people had been borrowing excessive loans that now had to be paid. Then, what was before an acceleration of the economy is now a stagnancy. But this is a defect of our system and excessive profits that were spent in wrong investments that could not give up profits. Profits cannot grow exponential either, the same way the growth in population. It is the basic problem of exponential growth to blame. It cannot work for extended periods of time. They create a havoc.
Summing up, all this rant of mine, was inspired to me by the alarming growth of population figures. They were coupled with a foreseeable exhaustion of fossil fuels in the near future.
The result of both circumstances would provoke a probable catastrophe in the form of a global war.
I assume that we are, the western nations, the most to blame, for rapid exhaustion of fossil fuels.
The other part, the excess of population is more visible in the poor countries of the world today.
But even us, the western nations, have also an overpopulation of our own. We are also too many, once the oil would disappear, and the coal become much more scarce and dear.
Once we would be deprived of all that much energy we are expending at present, with the enormous load of our huge cities and the incredible sprawl of the populations around them, the crisis of energy would explode with all their might in our faces.
Then all these foreseen miseries into the future would cause the hate among us to explode. Not only among immigrant descendants and the old natives, but also among the natives themselves.
The hunger would erase the remaining varnish of civility and all would become harden criminals, if not cannibals.
As these would not become a sudden catastrophe, the first steps into the abyss would produce the first clashes between natives and immigrants.
I am talking in abstract terms. All this is just a theory, a catastrophic nightmare.
In general, I do not have bad feelings for immigrants, either Muslims or people of black skin. I had some friends among Africans, and I was helping a few of them. But I had not enough economic means to help them any better.
As I am worried about overpopulation in general, I also worry about our immigrants having many children.
I had been always worried by this question since I was an adolescent and watched the poor neighborhoods of my city full of barefoot almost naked children. Now, sixty years later, today, when I watch some videos of small villages in Africa full of children, this made me recall this experience I had when I was 12 years of age and visited a poor neighborhood.
I was also poor, but I was a single child. I was worried by being hungry most of the time, one day after the other, and I thought sadly, "the most poor is the people is most children they have." But they were all natives children, not immigrants.
We were so poor them, that we had not any immigrants in my country. Then, as I was shocked, I sort of swore to myself "I would never breed many children, for the most children we have, the most people would suffer of hunger."
I am impressed for the hunger of my own infancy.
Times were so bad, that some people emigrated illegally to Venezuela in small sail fishing boats. We had not motors them in our fishing boats. When I heard tell of this emigration, my reasoning was then, "they emigrate because we are too many people here, in this island. They had been breeding too many children." So, you can see that I had reasons to worry of overpopulation. Nowadays we have about 900,000 people in this island, while in my childhood it was only 300,000 people. If the exhaustion of fossil fuels become real, all the tourism industry will suddenly disappear. And this would be a catastrophe, so many people trapped here.
Then, all this considerations are due to my early experiences with hunger in childhood, and by the lot of children I had witnessed in the poor neighborhoods of my infancy.
I am not hating anybody, but I am worried with the future. All this comes to me, because I do not feel optimistic. Perhaps is a sort of illness I suffer, not being optimist.
If this pessimistic predictions come true, the picture could be much worse that I could ever had imagined. And we will all to blame for this; only the poor people of the world. For, where is the wisdom or our leaders?
I had not heard anyone telling a word about the future couple with overpopulation.
Yours,
John Galaor
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- #205
Evo
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I'm closing this thread because it has gone off topic from the real consequences of overpopulation to discussions of immigration, religion, eugenics, etc...
The issues of overpopulation as considered by the UN is here. https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2648544&postcount=2