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Estimated World Population to Pass 6,666,666,666 Today
suso writes ""The estimated population of the world will pass 6,666,666,666 today. No doubt an interesting number for people everywhere (not referring to any religion connotations). 5,555,555,555 was passed about 14 years ago. You may not realize that only 80 years ago, the population of the Earth was only around 2 billion. This shows how the population of the world has increased at an alarming rate in recent times, although the growth rate is almost half what it was at its peak in 1963, when it was 2.2%. Unrelated but also an interesting coincidence, the estimated number of available IPv4 addresses is getting very close to 666,666,666. It should cross over today as well.""
The two counters just crossed over each other about 10 minutes ago (2:42:36pm EDT). I estimate that the population counter will reach 6 repeating at approximately 11:30pm EDT.
looks like ipv4 is the antichrist, three times over...
666 is the number of the beast. Whose number is this?
Praise Hail Satan \m/
Slashdot comments passed the 66,666,666 mark, and CowboyNeal was passed over by 6,666 women.
geek page at KY speaks
Well, that's certainly arbitrary, and almost certainly completely incorrect...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
... not everyone on Earth has their own IPv4 address? Aaagh, my brain hurts!
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
the IPv6 address of the Beast.
Did you know that 6 to any power other than zero produces a 6 in the resulting number?! It's just as arbitrary as this...
You "schuttleMonkey"!
...when is it that we're totally screwed?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Come on slashdotters, we can make it
But a key difference at that time was I was still Catholic.
One of many reasons for divorcing myself from Catholicism was its stance towards birth control. Iâ(TM)m not talking abortion (or âoebaby killingâ as some of them like to refer to it)â"Iâ(TM)m talking about preventative measures like condoms and Plan B. For some reason, the Vaticanâ"the organization that is the Catholic Churchâ"took it upon itself to stop the use of preventative measures. In pre-industrial times, this may have been advantageous to a religion and even a people. However, as it stands now this attitude results in a powder keg leaving the populace open to drought, famine, disease and brutal warfare (probably as a result of the famine) to keep the human population in check. Just look at the enterovirus (EV71) in China.
I think a lot of the responses are going to be along the lines of what Iâ(TM)ve said so far; that if we donâ(TM)t start to pay attention to population and think of non-intrusive non-immoral ways to keep it in check then weâ(TM)re in some serious trouble. Instead, Iâ(TM)d like to relay some views Iâ(TM)ve heard from people quite close to me on this issue. Iâ(TM)m not sure if this will become a political issue in the near term but I know that, at least in the United States, there are people with conflicting views.
A close friend of mine who is a Christian and a bit conservative voiced concern that the United Statesâ(TM) population growth is lagging behind many other countries. Many of the Western countriesâ"such as those in Europeâ"are also lagging behind those of Muslim nations like Turkey and several others in the Middle East & Africa. He claimed (or âoefear mongeredâ if you will) that if the current trend continued the end state of the world would most certainly be Muslim Dictatorships everywhere. I would like to quickly point out that I do not share his ideas in this Christian Vs Muslim war he believes has been going on since the crusades. I am merely relaying what many conservative Christians in the world are probably subconsciously thinking.
Now just last week my uncle sent me an e-mail that was along his thinking of people should have to have a license to have children. They should have to pass tests demonstrating they can provide food shelter clothing water all the basic life necessities before they can start to procreate. This would require a source of income to sustain a child ⦠he also has said that criminal record and health history should be taken into consideration. He linked an unfortunate story and was perhaps half joking.
Are either of these ideas the future? Is the idea of a procreation license issued by the state an unfortunate reality? Is it my friend wrong to push to close the âbirth rate gapâ(TM) between West and East?
Personally, all I can do is rail for education worldwide for all and, with that, the power to do what is right for us and the future of our children.
My work here is dung.
We doooooooooomed!
Or a meta-meta-beast.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
... that we reached 6 billion. I looked it up to refresh my memory and it seems that happened on 12 October, 1999.
Still, almost 700,000,000 more people in just 9 years is an awful lot. Certainly can't help with environmental or economic stability, though I'm not sure there is too much we can really do about it.
It's OVER 9000!!!!
Sorry, I'll leave now
>>6,666,666,666
It's just another stupid ModGET.
Wouldn't it be more interesting when the population reaches 6,969,696,969? That day I'll see your face =)
Minti: What's that huge shuriken in your back?! Kin: It's the instrument of my victory.
Hint: apostrophe not optional.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
From the your-special-and-unique-just-like-everyone-else department? I think your grammar is in the kitchen baking cookies. It's "you're", as in you are, not your as in it belongs to you.
So I notice the text editor I was using on my friend's laptop (MS Word 2007) took the liberty of encoding my " ; -- symbols into some bullshit characters. Great, way to go Windows. Looks like it's time to throw the stand alone binary of emacs for windows on this laptop to avoid that for future posts. I apologize for the funky characters above ... OT eldavojohn
In a completely unrelated, but coincidental event, the number of unnecessary particles in Satan's rectum is expected to go past the 666^666^666 mark today.
If this has any correlation with that 666-legged millipede, then we're in trouble.
Dear me, it's a good thing I keep a chainsaw gased up and ready to go next to my shotgun.
*Cue's the E1M1 midi*
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
*deep breath* Doo-ooo-oo-ooo-oo-ooo-oo-ooo...
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
"666 is the number of the beast. Whose number is this?" - by Zibri (1063838) on Friday May 09, @02:55PM (#23353478)
Actually, the quote I have seen (which looks quite a lot like THIS number) from the Bible is:
600 threescore AND SIX
Specifically, from REVELATIONS (St. John/Holy Bible of Catholicism):
"Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six"
(Correct me if I'm wrong fellas, thanks!)
APK
P.S.=> The way things keep going in this world today, man... it's getting to look MORE & MORE like the "Revelations" of St. John... apk
surely that would make a small dent. I say it's time for another world war.
Tomorrow Phrenology. Coming soon: Tea Leaves, Entrails, Astrology and Tarot Cards.
"at an alarming rate" Why "alarming"? It doesn alarm me. It alarms ignorant people, or idiots with malthusian complexes. Earth can still support several times that number, but of course, some changes would be needed, such as enough nuclear plants to generate cheap electricity, enough plants that would convert sea water into tap water, dedicating more land in Africa for farming, and some more. Whole countries waste their lands doing nothing with them! Take a trip between most latinamerican cities, for instance, and you'll find plenty of... nothing! If they were to take advantage of every single square meter of land, like they do in Japan or the Netherlands, there would be plenty of food for humanity, and the animals that feed them.
But considering how distracted and divided humans still are, the earth will likely fix this load we are putting on it's resources. It has been known to erase lives hundreds of thousands at a time. In the USA alone there is a super volcano about due, and a few plate movements are overdue. A lot of people take issues with the population control methods utilized by the Chinese -- how much more densely populated would China be without those measures? What's point of a new bouncing baby girl if there isn't enough food available to feed her?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
over resources: fresh water, protein (wars over fishing rights for example), and any other non-renewable resource that humans need. That'll reduce the population.
And yet the developed nations carry the guilt and responsibility for food and resource shortages, famine and poverty
I just don't see how were ever going to eat this much Soylent Green!
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Didn't that put a dent in things? I don't want to be crass but the disaster in Burma isn't even countable. I know they can do estimates and such but major events like Burma should be accounted, are they? What about Iraq?
Besides, whats the fear? Its not like this planet cannot support double that if not more. Do people realize just how much arable land is not in use? Hell on my recent 1600 mile trip to and from Ohio I can tell you this, this country is empty in many spots and I am sure it is in others. Hell I know there are substantial areas of Europe that are essentially empty. Yeah there are villages and towns nearby but its not like we even try to exploit the lands we have. Look at Africa! How much of that is still like America of a hundred if not two hundred years ago?
One thing I have learned in my short time on this planet. Every doomsayer's predictions of over population and food shortages comes to nothing. We always shift how things are done and accommodate it. If we didn't we would not be here today. Food shortages are all the rave now but forever in our history some groups have been short of food but this is how we progress. If the population cannot create more food then it supports less people. Its a horrid fact of life but it happens. We actually do very well in this day and age from allowing nature to takes its course.
It all comes down to need. When the need arises we always step up.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
...In other words we're reaching the population peek slowly, it is expected to be around 9-10 billion by experts.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I resent people who are stating that 5, or 6, or 7 billions is too many and that the growth of world population should make us worry. I would like to point out that, compared to the era when world population was less than 1 billion, the average life expectancy, quality of life and, yes, access to ressources and opportunities has dramatically increased for our species. How far is the time when a single pandemic, natural disaster or mass migration would wipe out a third of a continent population and make whole civilization disappear from History ? Notwithstanding the current price fluctuations that call for natural adjustments in production and distribution systems, REAL hunger, the one where the basic intake of food necessary for survival simply isn't available within reach, has been reduced to cases relatively limited in scope and mostly due to geopolitical circumstances rather than natural resource limitations.
This is why I don't want to see cancer cured. It's why I don't want to see ANY of the good diseases with high frag counts cured. It's why I don't care about the war in Iraq and the climbing death toll. It's why I don't care about starving kids in third-world nations. It's why I'd like to see all the warning labels taken off of just about everything.
Mark my words, planetary overpopulation will be the cause of World War III. Until selfish plebs quit plopping out their 2.5 kids, we really shouldn't be concerning ourselves with lengthening the average lifespan.
Cancer, President Bush, African warlords, and Darwin Award hopefuls: keep doing your thing!
..God is a sixist bastard!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Hardship and misery from Peak Oil will cull millions. Climate change will take out millions more. If the economies tank hard enough, then disease will take out a bunch more - perhaps a billion or more.
They will all die. It's just a question of how and when.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Agreed. Wake me up when the rest of the world reaches the population density of Japan.
Yawn, call me when it hits 6^(6^6).
There are more of us here on Earth right now than have ever been born, lived, and died. All souls in use. Not only is hell not half full yet, it's completely empty.
Now hurry up with that Tribes 2 rewrite, kthanksbye.
"I stomp in clown shoes where daemons fear to tread."
And here I just read a story today that some lady is having her 18th baby.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90I4TN00&show_article=1&catnum=0
Yes this is really helping things out....
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
...that is unrelated.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I'm not really worried about this number.
The actual "global population" is a big number that people wave around for dramatic effect. It is so far divorced from the realities at hand that it's a joke.
"Over population" is relative to the boundaries constraining that population. If the global population drops but the population of China continues to increase then the burden of "over population" in China continues to escalate. Of course, there isn't an "over population" problem in China proper - there is a problem with Population Density near the cities the Chinese Military Dictatorship cares about.
It reminds me of how dedicated coastal city-dwelling folks complain about urban sprawl and population control from their high-rises and college dorms in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. Take a trip out to New Mexico or Arizona some time. Visit Wyoming. There isn't a lack of land - you just can't to be away from your precious urban island. The idea of lacking having a neighborhood Starbucks, of not being able to slip down to the bistro and meet with your vegan friends to complain about the soulless carnivores, of maybe needing to own a gun - these things are so unthinkable to some.
We've got room in the U.S.A. folks - no need for the current generations to go all "0 population growth" fanatic on us. That negative reproductive rate isn't helping Europe either - they are just importing more immigrants and more unsustainable reproduction in the exporting nations fills the gap. Meanwhile, they are having serious problems assimilating their immigrant population and in some ugly cases (Londonistan, some suburbs of Paris) losing their domestic tranquility and culture in unprecedented fashion.
I don't think this number figures in the possible 100,000 people who might have lost their lives due to the cyclone in Myanmar. That could set the clock back by a whole have a day. I think its important that we remember all those who have lost their lives or are in danger of doing so.
66th post!
Ave Satanis!!
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
God dammit. That was 65. Maybe this will be 66th.
...many people will die soon as the energy crisis hits. Energy usage and world population have a very close correlation. Do not forget that the energy we use (fossil fuels) was produced millions of years ago. It is essentially free, we just have to use it. Any other method which requires us to produce energy will be more expensive (unless something marvellous happens, but I do not think so).
Less energy means smaller population. The future does not bode well for us.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
On average, over a 150000 people die every day. If a million people died in Burma, it'd only push the date back about a week.
I'm not sure if near 100% land utilization is such a good idea.
IIRC, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 people are born and 100,000 die every day. The Burma disaster and/or the Iraq war would throw off the count by only a few hours. The bigger issue is that the entire count is just a gross estimate.
Besides, whats the fear? Its not like this planet cannot support double that if not more.Some estimates say that will happen. Then what? What if everyone in the world manages to raise their standard of living to US levels? Then you'd need to find resources at 5X or more the rate we're currently using. Have you checked commodity prices lately?
Hell on my recent 1600 mile trip to and from Ohio I can tell you this, this country is empty in many spots and I am sure it is in others.The problem is water, without which all that space will stay just as empty as it is now. We're already mining it out of aquifers that are drying up, and we're diverting so much from surface sources that it's causing problems downstream.
In tonight's top story, people are fucking.
Film at 11^H^H^H^H^Hall over the Internet.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
...largely due to the efforts of this woman.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90I4TN00&show_article=1&catnum=0
Burma? put a dent in things? If the disaster there kills as many as expected (100k), that sets the counter back by about 5 days or so. (gaining close to 1.5million people per month). Even double that, and you still only account for just over a week worth of population growth.
Though I do agree with the rest, there are a lot of airable places left to farm, and quite a few good proposals for how to farm the ocean and coast.
If 100000 people died in Burma, that would be 0.0015% of the World population. The error bars for the absolute figure will probably allow a magnitude more.
"Besides, whats the fear? Its not like this planet cannot support double that if not more. " This is crazy short sighted. 80 years ago the planet had ONE billion people. We'll have 7 pretty soon. So another 20,30 years, we'll either hit the theoritical limit or have billions of people dying every year to prevent us from getting there. Sounds real pleasant. At least it won't happen in our lifetimes. Oh, wait, it will.
Land utilization rates mean nothing compared to how much we're fucking up our living space as we pump tons of shit into the air and water supplies. Where are the bees?
Thats way too many people for the amount of resources we're using per person.
Everybody, stop fucking.
Did they forget to account for the estimated 0.5 million killed in Burma? I would think that delays the date by a day or two.
the Beast can have any [] number he wants.
/28 for a total of 520 (514 usable), the beast ought to be able to have at LEAST two.
Hell, he can probably have two!
Why not?
If I can have two IPv4 class Cs and a
Heck: With all the work he has to do and minions to help him, he could probably use a class A (16,777,216 numbers).
Given that Haliburton and the US Post Office each have one and the US DOD has eleven, maybe he already does. (There WERE internet postings from a computer in the DOD named "beast".) B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Well, shame you don't know shit about economics or ecology.
We're running out of water, as the first thing. And we are supporting like a billion people at the US level or above - we cannot support six billion at that level, not even close.
There's a lot of arable land but if we turn everything into a field nobody would want to live here.
Those empty spots in Ohio are called "farms." That's where we grow our food. If we reduce the empty space, we reduce the amount of food we can grow. Also, there's a big empty space a bit to the west where we can't grow food and is a bit lacking in water. It would be difficult to live there.
Someone named "Ethanol-Fueled" complaining about fucking up our living space? That's rich! Nothing causes more *entirely pointless* environmental damage than the barely-disguised corn subsidy of requiring ethanol in gas. I can only hope you were referring you *yourself* as ethanol-fueled, which would be entirely respectable.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The day will eventually come when the last human will walk the earth, just as the last dinosaur once plodded to extinction in the far distant past. The difficulty with such a vast population is that we still exhibit many pack-building skills that don't work well in many modern situations - we exhibit in-group bias and much of life is spent attempting to build exclusive social hierarchies. The result is that we divide ourselves by religion, language, skin color and fashion and start irrationally arguing that our group is the chosen one. Add in a few advanced weapons and the result is like watching a group of preschoolers attempting to juggle swords.
Is the problem so much water? I would think its more water logistics than anything else. I live in Michigan and we have plenty of water here, not far from here near the Ohio border in Indiana flooding has been a huge problem because of the abundance of rain and all the lakes.
Granted I have no clue what kind of expenses or technologies would be required to make it workable, but if the commodity prices get high enough I'm sure the market would open up.
The other 6,666,666,665 of you can get the hell off my lawn!
Sig this!
Let us post anonymously to 666 and beyond. The holy grail; having a reason for it, stands plainly before us.
Ha! Not if we're dead!
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
Yeah, but by the time the world hits population density of Japan, we'll all be eating vat-burgers that collected on the PETA award for growing meat. So yeah, even if/when the world hits Japan's pop density, we might still have a lot of room to grow.
World population is levelling off very quickly. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/img/worldgr.gif
More data here: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.html but basically people stop having lots of kids once their nation becomes industrialized, and most "first world" nations have a significant population decline if you ignore immigration. Japan in particular has a serious problem with population decline.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yeah, but the worst out of me are bad farts after Pabst Blue Ribbon, and if you want to attack me on that front, then attack CowboyNeal first!
They forgot to mention "global warming" in the article
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The bees are being ripped apart from the inside by enzymes bred into GMO crops so that someone can protect their 'intellectual property' last I heard.
The total land area used for farming in America has decreased significantly over the past 50 years, and the total land area covered by forests has increased significantly as a result. Crop yields per acre are ridiculously high these days. The pollution created by agriculture is a potential concern if we needed more food, but the land area just isn't.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I read somewhere that at the current rate of reproduction in 300ish years there will be enough people that every square yard of dry land on the planet will be occuped by a person.
I don't know if that's accurate, but if it is something drastic and deadly on a huge scale will need to happen between now and then.
The big fear is that with more people, we in the industrialised world will have to stop squandering resources. If everyone in China owned a car, things would get rough for the environment. If you divide the earths area with the worlds population, that gives each person about two football fields of land to use. Discounting the fact that most of the worlds surface is oceans, deserts and mountains which are mostly not arable. I probably go through two football fields just for the paper coffee cups I use at work everyday.
And there can be no food shortage, just a fairness shortage. The EU has for decades dumped its agricultural surplus in the Third World because state subsidies has made farmers overproduce. It has destroyed the native agriculture which hasn't been able to compete with imported foodstuff. That is the direct cause of the food shortage they are experiencing. Hail globalization.
Football Odds
Absolutely - there's no shortage of water in the world. The logistics side can be expensive to build and run, but the rich will never go thirsty. Some places use desalinated sea water. That is an essentially unlimited resource, but currently takes up a great deal of energy and therefore money to provide.
Versus the actual sex crimes and violence that we've been engaged in since the dawn of time?
I swear, every time someone complains about violent video games, or internet porn (which involves mostly willing participants) where no real person is hurt, I want to throw a 60 inch plasma at the commentator playing the latest glory shot of smart bomb turning humans into red stains.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
So it would be a market driven move then. When wheat hits 50 bucks a bushel I may have to start building that pipe line from superior :)
Greetings,
Please tell me where I can get some of this marmalade. I'm thinking I can combine it with a blindfold and obtain the desired result.
-MQ
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
ZOMG - if the current trend continues we're all dooooooomed! History is full of ridiculous disaster predictions from extending some trend to infinity, ignoring the complexity of the real world. Here in the real world, the rate of populaiton growth is decreasing rapidly, and most moden nations either have decreasing populaitons are (lie the US) are compensating only with immigration. Data here: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.html
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Food shortages are all the rave now
Ecstasy, flashing lights, glowsticks, cargo pants, trance music, and famine.
Worst. Rave. Ever.
The Earth as a managed system can easily support 18 billion people and all the other plants and animals.
Just wanted to mention this before slash dot fills with Casandra's whom I last heard whining about the population explosion (yeah that old pile of horse manure, when really they were worried about the population explosion amongst the great unwashed) after Alvin Toffler published his rather popular but well dodgy Future Shock.
According to that we were actually all dead now.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
The local flooding is a short-term fluctuation. We're talking about finding enough water to irrigate huge swaths of the western US, which aren't currently growing crops mainly because they don't have enough water. Emptying all of the smaller lakes in Michigan wouldn't make a dent in that problem, and the water levels of the Great Lakes are already a political hot potato without undertaking a massive new diversion project.
Yes, IF we want to live like that.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
And yes, we're not going to go hungry as long as governments remain stable. Hunger is always the result of political upheaval, war, and corruption. If we had to, we could grow food in space and use elevators to transport it down.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Or the farming business is being outsourced: http://www.ca.uky.edu/AGC/NEWS/2005/Feb/imports.htm
Because you weren't even correct.
From YOUR link
"The Number is 666 in modern biblical text"
If you are claiming that 616 is THE number of the beast, you're wrong.
Of course, you were interested in displaying a tiny bit of minutiae you picked up, but were too interested in trying to show off and got it wrong. The best you could claim is that 616 is A number of the beast.
Next time don't try so hard and you won't look so foolish.
It should cross over today as well.
And the number of cross dressers will exceed 666,666 at any given day.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
...let me know when it hits 123,456,789,876,543,210.
Population growth = Births - Deaths
There are approx. 360000 Births per day so grown is approx. 210000 humans per day.
The impact of 1 million extra death would therefore date the clock back by less than 5 days.
Read the notes link on the bottom of the counter page....
The populations displayed on the clock are not intended to imply that the population of the world is known to the last person. Rather, the clock is our estimate of the world population size and an indication of how fast it is growing. According to the current estimates, the world population reached 6 billion on July 27, 1999, at about 3:03 AM GMT (July 26 at 11:03 PM EDT). Because of the uncertainties of the estimates, and the fact that we are constantly updating our estimates, the estimate of when 6 billion was hit will change. The United Nations, whose population estimates differ somewhat from our figures, celebrated the "Day of 6 Billion" on October 12, 1999.
The world population estimates and projections used to produce these figures were developed by the International Programs Center based on analysis of available data on population, fertility, mortality, and migration. The analysis was performed separately for the 226 countries or areas of the world with a population of 5,000 or more. Population estimates and projections analyses are based on census, survey, and administrative information. For most countries, and especially less developed countries, adjustment of the data is necessary to correct for errors, omissions, and inconsistencies in the data. Since the most recent data for each country are often at least 2 years old (and for most countries they are older), the population figures used for the clock are projections from those estimates based on assumed trends in fertility, mortality, and migration. As new data become available, all data are reevaluated and past conclusions may change. For general information about how these estimates and projections are made, see the "Population Estimates and Projections Methodology". These estimates and projections are contained in the International Data Base.
The World midyear population and vital event estimates result from an aggregation of the figures for the individual countries and areas. The intermediate population estimates are based on a linear interpolation between successive midyear population figures. World vital events for different units of time are computed based on the number of months, days, hours, minutes, or seconds in the given year.
Figures may not add to totals due to rounding.
I'm not completely convinced that there isn't enough water. I just think there isn't enough water in the right place / state (such as salt water). But if the need comes up Iâ(TM)m sure some geniuses will figure out how to make it work. I don't care about feeding the world. I just want to make sure I can afford my pumpernickel.
Unexploited doesn't mean nonexistant. One thing I have learned in my short time on this planet. Every doomsayer's predictions of over population and food shortages comes to nothing. We always shift how things are done and accommodate it. If we didn't we would not be here today. What you haven't learned yet is that if the predictions are heeded and countermeasures are taken, tragedies are averted.
The doomsayers had been saying for years that if a cat 4 or more hurricane were to hit New Orleans... but nothing was done.
The doomsayers had been saying for years that if Haitians kept clearcutting the hills for fire wood... and their warnings fell on deaf ears.
If you weren't so ignorant, you'd know about all the tragedies that were foretold, and all the ones that were averted. but its not like we even try to exploit the lands we have. Look at Africa! How much of that is still like America of a hundred if not two hundred years ago?
[...] We actually do very well in this day and age from allowing nature to takes its course. Hypocrite.
You can't take the sky from me...
There is actually plenty of _space_ left. Do you really think we will all be living on this planet after 50 years?
I'm a nutritionist, so I don't work directly with agriculture, etc. From what I've gathered from my own education and conversations with others in agriculture and food science, however, "look at all that land that isn't used" is a common misconception most people have.
From what I've gathered, most of the land that can grow food without substantial work and capital input is already being used. Land may be too rocky, salty, or otherwise devoid of needed nutrients for food crop growth. Even land that is used for animals right now is usually unsuitable for crops. The primary area for food production increases right now is improved crop yields. Right now, anywhere from 20-30% of our crops are lost in the field due to insects, disease, etc.
Some of the studies I've read or hear about suggest that our planet could support 2 billion humans indefinitely with little to no environmental effects and that our population cap will be somewhere around 10-12 billion.
Mind you, such estimates are really only educated guesses at best when it comes down to it. The real point is that the more of us there are, the greater environmental effect we will have. Our farmlands are limited. Eventually we will either implement population control or food prices will soar, people will riot, the poor will starve, and nature will implement population control for us. Which way you would rather population control be implemented is what it boils down to.
110001101010111010100001010101010 is a very uninteresting number. Call me when we get close to 111111111111111111111111111111111 (8589934591 for those of you with ten fingers).
It's not that we're breeding like rabbits, it's that we're not dropping like flies.
I've been eating vegetarian a lot lately. I still eat meat 2 or 3 meals a week, but a lot more not meat. I don't really miss meat, and a well prepared vegetarian meal can be just as satisfying (if not moreso) than a meal with meat. I really don't understand why people have a need to eat so much meat. I used to eat meat at every meal, but recently (mostly for health reasons) I've decided to eat less meat. I can't say I really miss it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
When you consider all the 'overnourished' people in America, I find that pretty easy to believe..!
which is totally what she said
I'd start to worry when the population reaches approximately 9 billion people ... all Borg!
>in 300ish years there will be enough people that every square yard of dry land on the planet will be occuped by a
>person.
I don't know whether to picture this result as a Conway or a Dewdney.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I just don't get it. Is there a punch-line at the end that I'm missing? Or am I just an idiot?
The _planet_ can handle larger populations, sure. I however have serious doubts that current methods of human organization can.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
If the current food/fuel issues increase, then i suspect the population will start going down.
Between starvation and war ( which are always interrelated anyway )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Fear? Nobody mentioned fear.
Get off your soapbox.
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
While the problem is population density, it is in terms of the amount of land needed to provide food, water, fuel etc for a person. While having high-density cities surrounded by low-density farm-land may work best, the quality of life is best when the population density is far below the maximum point, allowing for the inevitable ups and downs in nature. Arizona and New Mexico can't support as large a population density as areas with better climate and terrain. A world wide negative population growth would be a huge positive.
I thought for a moment that Japan was where you're only allowed one child per family, but after a quick google, that turns out to be China..
which is totally what she said
The main problem being that if everyone in the world starts eating to 'US level', the earth will be crushed into a singularity..
which is totally what she said
dam catholics!
Some estimates say that will happen. Then what? What if everyone in the world manages to raise their standard of living to US levels? Then you'd need to find resources at 5X or more the rate we're currently using. Have you checked commodity prices lately?
That's what I'm afraid of. There simply isn't enough resources for everyone in the world to live like a middle class family in the US, and production isn't increasing as fast as population growth or standard of living.Something has to give, and it's going to be within 25 years. The standard of living is going to start coming down in the US and other highly developed countries, due to demand for resources worldwide.
Sort of some miraculous deus ex machina technology is needed ASAP. Or we'll end up in a world war over resources.
Threescore means sixty, what is your point? If they translated it wrong then it doesn't matter what the translation says
which is totally what she said
Having land to stand on isn't the problem. The problem is resources. People need food, water, fuel, electricity, building materials, plastic and metal for their toys, etc. Water especially is a big issue. We're living on borrowed time and resources right now.
From wikipedia: "The Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted at a rate of 12 billion cubic meters (420 billion ft3) per year, amounting to a total depletion to date of a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers. Some estimates say it will dry up in as little as 25 years. Many farmers in the Texas High Plains, which rely particularly on the underground source, are now turning away from irrigated agriculture as they become aware of the hazards of overpumping."
Once the Ogallala is depleted, we're going to be facing another dust bowl. We're going to be increasingly relying on desalination in the future for our fresh water, and that's quite energy intensive. This drives our energy usage up even more. Once our fossil fuels run low, where do we get the energy? We're going to have to seriously expand nuclear and renewables to cope. Empty desert doesn't do much to solve these problems.
There is some truth to this. We pay farmers to throw away crops while people in the global South are rioting because they have no food. However, just because it is technically possible for everyone to have adequate food doesn't mean that the infrastructure and distribution exists to make this possible. That's like saying just because we can create solar power (and the sun has more energy than we know what to do with) we are not facing an energy crisis. Our fishing techniques are shockingly wasteful---1/4 of the fish caught are thrown out (about 27 million). More developing nations are eating beef (it takes 7 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef) while developed nations are transforming former food crops into ethanol. Even in the U.S., we daily throw away enough food to feed every homeless person here. So sure, it is technically possible to defeat hunger but we have failed miserably so far and the situation is getting much worse. You say, "when the need arises, we always step up," but that isn't true. In fact, when the need arises "we" go to other countries and take their resources so that "we" can continue to use eight times as much as we produce. It isn't really about passing some magical threshold where everyone starves. It is about an increase in the number of the many that are starving while more resources go to the few born lucky. So it is not some forward-facing idea, it is something that has always been (well, at least since the end of hunter-gatherer societies), a constant struggle. It is wise to see these problems and deal with them rather than saying "nature will take care of it." I suppose that is easiest to say when the vultures are not at your back.
When the world has 2 billion, it's a paradise.
When the world has 11 billion, it will be approaching hell.
Almost certainly a lot of the most wonderful areas will be roped off for a tenth of a percent of the population since if everyone when there, they would destroy those places.
And when water gets short, you are talking billions of death. Eventually we will become callous to death as they were in the middle ages.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Unfortunately I'm not surprised that you are so quick to blame man. You are no different than so many creationists who think that whenever we don't know the cause of something, it must be God's work. Instead of blaming/crediting God, you attribute everything to man when no other reason is known. Sometimes, even when the answer IS known, man is STILL blamed ("Man Made" Global Warming causing tsunamis is a good example. Hell Global Warming itself is a good example!).
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The one child per family rule in China has caused many problems. Firstly the problem of babies being thrown away if they aren't the correct sex. Then the ones that do survive end up being completely spoiled, from being raised as an only child. A co-worker of mine who was from China said this was a big problem, and that there was an entire generation of people who grew up as only children. Obviously the only-child stereotype doesn't affect absolutely everyone, but it didn't become a stereotype without reason.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
After the three people left, there are -1 people in the building. Add one and you've got 0, no-one.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Well I am worried about this number. And other number too like the rate of growth of consumption. The number doesn't seem dramatic? Imagine then 6.7 billion people living like we do in America. And there is an overpopulation problem in China. Think of the resources besides land that support those cities. The density for the whole country is still over 3x the global average. The way we live now depends on a much larger number of people living beneath us at a much lower quality of life. It only makes sense. We can have fewer people and more resources for everyone and live smarter or we can have more people and be desperate for resources to provide a quality of life for everyone. And by resources think more than just land, for example: Healthy food, clean water, unpolluted air, energy, and a beautiful and diverse planet that has an abundance of more than just people.
Just out of curiosity, if more people moved out to places like that, where would they get the water that they need? Considering that the populations that are already there are having problems with water.
6 666 666 666 = 0x00 00 00 01 8D 5D 42 AA
For me that looks like some random invalid address causing a core dump.
What's the difference to say "passing 6.7e9" and "passing 6 666 666 666"?
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Yeah, the Sun provides enough power many times over - if we can get 100% efficiency. As it is now, solar panels hardly produce enough energy to pay themselves back. It takes a lot of energy to make them, they take a lot of space (that we could use.. umm.. to grow crops?), and they're at 20% efficiency at maximum.
Yeah, solar power is feasible once we have 50% and above efficiency solar collection satellites. Before then? Not so much.
No it shouldn't. In the world, there are on average 5 births and 3 deaths per second, so the population is increasing by +2/sec. Worst case, Cyclone Nargis is estimated to have killed 100,000 people. So after the disaster, the world population regained its previous level in merely 14 hours (100000/2/3600). Don't get me wrong it is a terrible disaster, but when speaking about the worldwide population it is merely a blip on the radar.
I'm an atheist, you insensitive clod! Though humans who do stupid things in the name of god are just as stupid as those who do stupid things not in the name of god.
Well, first of all, you can't live completely without meat. You need certain proteins that you can't get anywhere else. And secondly, even if you could live without meat, who would want to? :) Nothin like a good steak. Nice NY Strip, medium well....
44444444435555555556
9 4's, a 3, 6 5's and a 6?
Sweet.
And did you know 0-0=nan in kcalc?
Take Texas (please...)
262,017 sq mi of land * 640 acre/sqmi = 167,690,880 acres. Subdivide that into 1/8 acre plots, and you get 1,341,527,040 plots. So just Texas alone could fit the entire world's population at the density of 5 people per 1/8 acre plot, or 39.7 people per acre.
Apparently going vegetarian makes you repeat yourself.
First of all, the planet can only support the amount it does today due to oil. Since that's about to reach a peak in production I doubt your argument can hold true. Petroleum based agricultural products has allowed from the increase in crop production. World fisheries are on the verge of collapsing due to over fishing. If you think the Earth was meant to support such a large population you are grossly mistaken.
I agree with your claim that there's lots and lots of room left in the US. Part of the reason for that is: those places mostly suck. I've lived in Wyoming, and New Mexico.
There are parts of Wyoming -- large areas, as it happens -- where they get roughly 20 cm of precipitation a year, all of it snow. They get actual rainstorms with actual measurable accumulation, during the part of the year when crops can grow, maybe once every two or three years. Their aquifers have maybe 40 years' worth of water if you drill and start pumping them for irrigation. When you get done with that, you're back to dryland farming, and you can't get Kansas crop yield on wheat that never gets rain.
Likewise New Mexico is great if you want to grow squash and pumpkins and other things that can handle blisteringly hot temperatures, as long as you have lots of water to feed them. Not so hot when all your water rights have been stolen by Southern California to fill their swimming pools.
There are enormous areas of unused land -- Nevada is 70% Federal land, that's uninhabited, but that's because it's desert and nothing grows there. The Colorado and the Rio Grande have had 100% of their flow purchased and allocated since the 1930's, and it's not like we're adding new water to them. Kansas, Wyoming, and Oklahoma are already sucking huge holes in their aquifers and seeing actual ground subsidence because the empty aquifers are crushing under the overburden. Unless you're planning a Cadillac Desert scenario where you reroute the Columbia down to water California so the mountain rivers can water Wyoming and New Mexico you're not going to get much out of them.
As far as I can tell, that's generally the case everywhere: people live where it's reasonable to live, and the places people aren't living aren't going to sustain that many people unless you're proposing moving San Francisco to Nevada. Now that might work: reclaim the good, fertile lands for farming and have people live in the hellholes. I think there are other problems to contend with before you can do that.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I care that it is.
As a Christian, I believe that God created man and woman in His image, "male and female".
Therefore, perverting the sexual relationship (which was designed as an attribute of marriage) is disrespectful to God, because it distorts our view of Him ("God is Love"--sex is one of many, but it is one of the more powerful stamps of His character on us), and it is disrespectful to both men and women, because it distorts both of the roles that they were designed to play in marriage (and in sex, as an extension).
Homosexuality is a perversion and a distortion of what God says about His own character.
I have nothing personally against homosexuals, it's just that they insult my God in their ignorance, and that makes me sad.
Homosexuality isn't the only perversion of sex: fornication, adultery, rape, incest, voyeurism (i.e., porn) are all in the same category.
Christians who have a "special" problem with homosexuals that they don't have with fornicators and adulterers are being hypocrites. They distort God's character that they're supposed to be emulating. That makes me sad too.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
The rest of you are not real.
Living in the city is a more efficient way of living than having everyone out in the country on a farm, because there's too many people for us to be living sparse and widely distributed...at least according to environmentalists like David Suzuki.
If we keep spending money on blowing shit up and killing dictators for oil, sure. 50 years is not a long time when we're talking about governments or their agencies being involved. That stuff moves as slow as molasses.
Well, I for one would miss it dearly. I want my food to have been able to howl, grunt, moo, snort or what the hell.
And besides, not eating meat doesn't solve all that much of the problem. Cows don't eat crop. They eat grass. That's the stuff we usually don't eat. That's the stuff that grows even where wheat doesn't. Sheep eat... well, damn, everything! They can produce food digestable by humans through stuff that isn't digestable. Humans call it processing, nature does it since forever and a day.
Meals containing no animal fats just don't sate me and I'm willing to bet I'm not alone. Considering that I can go one day on one good steak with a filling side dish, while I get hungry in mere hours from the side dish alone... I am a carnivore. I know that. My body has made that completely clear.
Well, technically, I'm an omnivore, but it is a close call...
If everyone raised their standard of living to about what the US and most of Europe enjoys then population growth would slow dramtically. Most developed nations are either losing population slowly (barring immigration) or just maintaining steady levels.
The better the standard of living, the fewer babies people have. Google around and you'll see plenty of studies to that effect and plenty of theories why that is.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Well lets see, bees have been around for 100 million years; fossil evidence for honeybees indicate they were around 35 million years ago. And yet now they are disappearing in large numbers. Read this for a quite plausible guess at the cause.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
2/3 of this planets surface is covered with water. There is no shortage of water. Of course you may need to desalinate it and transport it to the area it is needed, but thats an energy problem mostly.
Or we can build a new standard of living better than the current one and that is a bit more sustainable.
Sort of some miraculous deus ex machina technology is needed ASAP. Or we'll end up in a world war over resources.You ought to look at history. We've been coming up with "deus ex machina" technologies for quite a while now. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that some of the deux ex machina technologies are already developed. Things like solar and wind power, computers, that sort of thing.
6,666,666,666!
Thats over nine thousand!
I am looking forward to vat grown beef. It would be awesome. Controlled meat types and flavors, cheaper, no need for cows.
MMmmmm... 50 cents a pound T-Bones, Perfect Center cuts...ARRrrghhhh
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Except that 100,000 people just died in Malaysia. gotta love typhoons...
g0t b33r?
The bees are a victim of a fungus, that mystery was solved a while ago.
Thinking of bees reminds me of warm pandas milk.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Cows don't eat crop. They eat grass.
In the US, most cattle are fed corn and soy.
> The one child per family rule in China has caused many problems
Does it cause more problems than having 12 children per family?
My estimated bank account should pass $6,666,666,666 today. Mind you, that's an estimate.
If you accept estimates at face value, the average world penis size is 9.5 inches.
I think there's a lesson there for all of us.
Agreed. A good example of this is agricultural technology which (in the US) has been growing at an exponentially faster rate than the world population for a number of years.
Wrong again, for two reasons. One is that the crappy solar panels which took more energy to produce that they made in their lifetime became obsolete 5 years ago, and the new ones are really efficient (like 30% efficient, which is a lot of power). But, more importantly, who said anything about photoelectric power? All you need for desalinization is the ability to boil water, which only takes a few mirrors - solar furnaces are reasonably low-tech and reasonably efficient.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Boston, Manhattan, and Los Angeles couldn't ever produce enough food in their surrounding lands to sustain their populations - so why don't they starve?
The same answer applies to the drier parts of the country - you bring in what you need from a place that runs a surplus. The U.S.A. does have a surplus of water. Heck, we let our reserves evaporate or dump out into the ocean. We've got desalinization technology to boot. There just isn't enough demand right now to make it profitable to build more extensive distribution networks. Considering that the populations that are already there are having problems with water. "Having problems with water," out here in Arizona is somebody fretting over the water bill going up $1 on 3000 gallons. When we have a real water problem, people are standing by with the technology and the ambition necessary to improve distribution. I'm sure Minnesota and Wisconsin would be happy to trade surplus water (useless) for surplus electricity once we start putting our uninhabitable desert to work hosting a Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor.
In the past 14 years, the world population increased 20%. In 28 years that means the population will have increased by only 44%. Our world is fully able to handle that many people.
Well if global warming (for the PC crowd read: climate change) is so real then all we have to do is send some giant jugs up to the Arctic and wait for the glaciers to drop in them. By the time they are hauled back to civilization they will have melted completely, voila, fresh water. Or as I recently read in the latest Wired, some people have even had the idea of hauling icebergs down from the Arctic. But the issue is fresh water, not simply water, because it takes a lot of energy to remove the salt from sea water so natural fresh water is ideal instead of salt water which has to be desalinized. The last option: recycle your piss.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
There are more people alive at this moment than there are years the Earth has existed (~4.5 billion years).
Coincidentally, 4chan's /b/ will reach 66666666 get today.
Creepy.
The entire point of his comment was that the doomsday scenario you're predicting won't happen. One thing all doomsday predictors in history have had in common is that they've all been dead wrong.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
Between Global Warming, Deforestation, Hole in the Ozone Layer, Deglaciation, massive extinction of species, depletion of the ocean's fish supply, dogs and cats (living together), running out of oil etc etc etc are you really sure the world is able to "fully handle" as many people as we have today?
You are what you eat, applies to cattle too. Grass fed cattle are much healthier themselves and to eat. It's starting to make a comeback, but ever since food started being treated as a commodity the quality has fallen in ways that people couldn't measure before.
Too bad they aren't all Caprica 6's babes...,
To use all those Sixes, is, umm, hell, SICK. Gives a new ring to SickSigma... umm, SIX Sigma.... But a lot of these goods are still damaged, since there's definitely no Nine 9's uptime or reliability in humans, except in failing over to various vices, hehehe...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
on a related note, 4chan's /b/ channel reached 66666666 posts at approximately 10:35 PM GMT. lotsa sixes today.
HAIL SATAN!
"Threescore means sixty, what is your point? If they translated it wrong then it doesn't matter what the translation says" - by somersault (912633) on Friday May 09, @04:41PM (#23355038) Homepage Oh, no argument from me there!
I agree for the most part, that the bible's been "bent & twisted" in translations between languages (& things DO get "lost" in that, speaking here as someone who speaks 3 languages pretty fairly fluently - things come out diff. in diff. tongues, & I have noted that for instance, when you say "Blue Dog" in English (U.S. English that is), it's REALLY more like "the dog that is blue" (reversed subject-predicate?) in European languages, if translated LITERALLY, many times).
Points & meanings can get 'twisted' or, outright lost in translations... no doubt about it. Heck - it could be INTENTIONALLY misstated by the church themselves for all we know (misinformation &/or misdirection? It's as powerful as good solid TRUE information).
I only just put down what's exactly in the Bible I have here is all (std. Catholic Holy Bible) in regards to the "number of the beast" stuff is all...
Well, all in all?
I just hope things are NOT what they seem lately (to myself is all, & in regards to what I have read in the revelations of St. John).
See, I FIRST had read the "revelations of St. John" when I was 17, & that was 25 yrs. ago & it kind of looked that way then, as if things were near "The End of Days" etc. et al (& still do now, albeit imo, moreso).
So, as I stated? Heck - it still sppears to be that way now, 25 yrs. later (the "revelations" are 'pretty wide open' to interpretation, by all means, in other words). I don't know WHAT to think of any of it @ this point... so I keep on, keeping on, in the meantime is all!
APK
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Fear the 6,666,666,666th Baby Antichrist!
rubbish. meat is high energy which is what we grave. vegetarian is never as satisfying.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
What we need is a good plague, something that wipes out 99% of the population. All we need is a single person to smuggle some horrendous virus out of the CDC, most efficiently would be an airborne virus and they could smuggle it out in their lungs.
I'm not Pro-Abortion. I'm Pro-Death.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Then take to the seas, and begin desalanising (remove salt).
All the sensationalists claim there's a lot of water in the oceans and that it's rising, why not take some out and use it to quench the thirst of the world?
There is absolutely no rational reason to think history will repeat itself. There is just as much (actually, much much more) logic to saying that current population growth is unsustainable and there will be a worldwide catastrophe. The simple truth is that poor people breed like rats, and they're going to drag down the rest of the world. Your assumption that we'll just be fine based on some pollyanna view of humanit's history is baseless.
You're basing your view of the future on what happened in the past, which begs the question. There has never been a time in the past when we've had this large a population and this fast a population growth. So your argument is based on the faulty assumption that point A (now) is the same as point B (sometime in the past) and hence point C (sometime in the future) will be something like point D (sometime in our past, and point B's future).
To put it bluntly - we're fucked.
Save the whales! Kill yourself.
I'm an opportunivore ... given an opportunity to put something food-like near my mouth, down it goes. Unfortunately, there has been less opportunity to put meat within range lately.
If your parents were the only child in your family, and you are their only child... that means when it's time for you to support your parents and your grandparents, you've got 6 people to support on your one income. Or 12 people to support on you and your wife's income. That's is going to be a big problem soon.
Unexploited doesn't mean nonexistant. You know what? You are full of NATURE! You are, in fact, surrounded by nature! You are typing on nature in order to send electrons down the spine of a copper and glass part of nature. You are nature! Behold the eternal Dao! What you haven't learned yet is that if the predictions are heeded and countermeasures are taken, tragedies are averted.
The doomsayers had been saying for years that if a cat 4 or more hurricane were to hit New Orleans... but nothing was done.
The doomsayers had been saying for years that if Haitians kept clearcutting the hills for fire wood... and their warnings fell on deaf ears. So you personally predicted Katrina and the deforestation of Haiti? Damn. Good call. I wonder why they didn't listen to you? It's unfortunate but jackasses have tried to command their fellow men by making up stories about coming apocalypse for years. Follow the gourd! It's the end of the world!! You happen to have bought into one or several of these eschatologist's dystopian myths. If you weren't so ignorant, you'd know about all the tragedies that were foretold, and all the ones that were averted. If you weren't so ignorant, you'd know about all the prophecies that were foretold, and all the ones that were averted. Hypocrite. On the contrary, you are the hypocrite. You are claiming that mankind is not natural. On the contrary, this is a universe that peoples. Mankind is an animal! We are not separate from nature. We ARE nature!
And I personally think we humans will leave this rock before overpopulation is an issue. But who the fuck are you to tell other human beings how many children they can or cannot have. Particularly based on your religious beliefs.
What you're suggesting is that some "visionary" humans should be able to use guns to prevent other humans from reproducing - to avoid an imagined apocalypse.
Thanks, but keep your religious beliefs to yourself.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Well, first of all, you can't live completely without meat. You need certain proteins that you can't get anywhere else.
You can easily satisfy all your protein requirements with vegetable sources. The argument that you need to eat meat is bogus.
That being said, I eat meat. I eat it for the same reason everyone does - it tastes good!.
So - just ensure you have executions at the level the US or China have and problem solved!
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
I am also deeply disturbed by my knowledge of...numbers. Disregard the previous post as I go sulk in a corner, weeping to myself and pondering the subtle differences between one and four.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
And how much of the water that covers this 70% is actually drinkable?
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water 97% is salt water and undrinkable. Large scale desalination is energy expensive. I believe it is popular in the Persian Gulf - at least on the rich Arab side - until their money runs out and they go back to the desert...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
i dont get it
the population counter decreases every five years in the last 15 years whenever i read about it
i was already counting above 8 billion pre 2000
Earth may be at 6,666,666,666 but calif* is already over 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999.
And that is how they have a highly consumeriest society with a large population in a small space and still have forests. If they had a western style diet (growing corn for bacon somewhere) it would be even more of an inbalance. Also barring geothermal, solar or tide there really isn't anything they can do to get a local energy source. Since I live in a country that has an economy that depends upon Japan buying a lot of stuff this is an observation and not a complaint :)
6,666,666,666 people and 666,666,666 IP's, thats 1 IP for every 10 people. I probably have at least a dozen used up with all my electronics and I am sure I am not alone. That sure leaves a LOT of people in the world without any.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I was suprised to find it didn't happen in the entire country but mainly in the highly populated areas. While a lot has happened in Tibet for instance the one child policy wasn't applied there. Also despite this policy there are 300 Milion people in China under 30.
Dude. Unless you have something to contribute, STFU.
the world death rate is still a steady 100%.
Really? I'd heard it was more like 50%. Of all the people ever born, half of them are alive right now.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That means the world population is only ~4,310,251,930 in Europe.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
Population: 6,666,666,666
Land area of Texas: 261,797.12 mi^2 (let's convert that to feet -> 7.29848483 x 10^12 feet^2)
And finally how much per person? 1094.77 feet^2
But the point to be made here, is that every person in the WORLD could comfortably fit into the state of Texas and there would not be a soul ANYWHERE else on the Earth. Also this assumes that every person would have their OWN area, and not combined into families.
Makes that large population seem pretty small ...
He's lonely you know.
be sure to send some extra stamps; he'll make it up to you, really.
(I half wonder if we could screw with fundies by making them support mass abortions to try to stop some magic number from happening for about a hundredth of a second.)
A bit tricky to find the cooling water there. It's also very hard to moving whopping great big components like turbines to remote areas. Just outside of deep water ports is really where you want to put the nuclear plants once somebody can build a single use civilian plant worth using on it's own merits. The Japanese have some that are worth it because they are worried about a naval blockade. Putting enormous taxes on coal and oil could make some designs viable - guess who's trying to cynically make money out of global warming!
Nothin like a good steak. Nice NY Strip, medium well....
If you use "well" anywhere in the description of how you like a steak cooked, I hope a good one has never been wasted on you. Might as well eat burger king at that point. Ugh.
"...what we grave"? What a Freudian slip!
Well if you look into IPv6, this should take care of the problem.
By the same token, there is also absolutely no rational reason to think that at the present, of all times, people are going to suddenly stop coming up with new technologies of all sorts and ways to support more people on Earth. At no point in the past have we had this amount of technological progress, either.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
...relieving the world of excess humans.
Mankind as a whole hasn't shown much positive virtue. He is just a ravenous, greedy, selfish ape, content to destroy his own kind, as well as others, for his individual gain.
Neither the planet nor other creatures of the Earth have benefited from this monkey's dominance.
The next steps to be expected from this primate range from starvation due to overpopulation, and the self destruction of his habitat, and/or near total self annihilation in an atomic apocalypse.
He's already begun tampering with the DNA of his food sources, bred and evolved super-bug bacteria using antibiotics, and has considered outer space his destiny after the inevitable burning and poisoning of his own environment by his own hand.
The more the merrier! I don't believe in carbon footprint and population control bullshit and neither should you.
On an unrelated note, the Gmail inbox capacity counter surpassed 6666.666666 megabytes a week or so ago.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Medium well? ...philistine. Go to a good steak house(i.e., not Ruth's Chris or anything similar), get either a Kobe steak or some well-aged American knock-off, order it medium rare with a good wine, and get nothing else. That's Heaven in the form of food.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
That's what I'm afraid of. There simply isn't enough resources for everyone in the world to live like a middle class family in the US, and production isn't increasing as fast as population growth or standard of living.
There are plenty of resources available. Most of them are just either expensive to get at with current technology or prevented from being touched by environmental laws. Take oil for example. The US is sitting on huge reserves that we won't touch for various political reasons.
As for water, there's plenty of that too. Again it's a problem of technology, and technology always seems to rise to the occasion. Every generation has had doomsayers like yourself. They were wrong and I'm betting you will be as well.
this is the first time I've actually laughed at a +x funny comment on Slashdot - thanks :)
Yes you can live completely without meat. One example of a really good plant protein source is Quinoa. Also, 1 billion Hindus can't be wrong. And while I realize that some Hindus do eat meat, there's enough people in the world who eat no meat (or who are completely vegan), who have no problem meeting their nutritional needs. I also enjoy steak, although top sirloin is my favourite cut. I'm didn't say that I was completely vegetarian, or that it's the way people should be, but big chunks of meat at every meal is very detrimental to your health.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Sizable parts of East Anglia are almost dust-bowls, these days. A long, long way from being the heartland of the British agricultural industry. Once upon a time, you'd see a field with good soil and a good-size crop. Now, you see soil that's crumbly and of poor quality, leeching salt, and incapable of sustaining much of anything. The difficulty of maintaining the sea defences is not the only reason the government is considering letting the sea take back so much. It's that there's nothing much left worth defending.
As for the world supporting twice the population, it can't sustain the existing population. Cod levels are down to a few percent of their pre-commercial levels. Extinction rates are rising sharply. Great swathes of the Amazon basin are cut down just to supply meat for northern America. We're talking an area the size of the country of Belgium each year, every year, to handle the increasing American population. And America isn't even the fastest-growing country.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In 50 years, we will either be living on this planet or dead on this planet. Some of us may be living somewhere else at some point, but 50 years is incredibly optimistic.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
That's simply not true. The "can't get anywhere else bit." Also the "medium well" is a good steak bit.
... (and the list of animals I haven't tried yet is much longer...)
If you're cooking your steak any more than medium rare (and NY strip should absolutely never be cooked more than that under any circumstances. It should be seared like tuna (which itself should be served completely raw...)) or pretending fillet mignon is a tasty cut, and/or using any quantity of A1 at all, you don't really like steak.
It's perfectly possible to construct a diet without meat which allows you to obtain all of the necessary nutrients. It's not as easy, but it's well researched.
Also, bos taurus has just about the least interesting meat of all of the animals you might like to consume. There's also nothing like ostrich, roast boar, venison, yellowtail, octopus, buffalo,
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Also, FYI, both corn and wheat are grasses. Considering that I can go one day on one good steak with a filling side dish, while I get hungry in mere hours from the side dish alone. Excellent point. I've also noticed that if I have two plates of food in front of me, and I only eat one of them, I get hungrier sooner. [rolls eyes]
The david star. 6 lines, 6 triangles, 6 vertex. 666.
The sign of the devil. The sign of the jews.
It is extremely unlikely that the greek text from which the bible you are using is translated used a word that translates to "threescore" in anything but a mathematical sense.
The actual American English translation used by the Catholic Church translates it as follows: Revelation 13:18: "Wisdom is needed here; one who understands can calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number that stands for a person. His number is six hundred and sixty-six."
That page also includes the explanation that it is likely a numerological way to obfuscate the name of the tyrant, Nero. who himself is used as a symbolic reference.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Needless to say, the world did not come to a sudden and premature end. I guess my p6.666666666b survival kit didn't work. Check out a screenshot at my website: Linster.moved.in
people are living too long. It's as simple as that (well not really but.....)
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
You can't take the sky from me...
:-)
Hey! Spacecows!!! Don't quell the dream, man, come on!Somehow, I don't believe they're going to pack a year worth of hamburgers and a few cows along on the trip
You can't take the sky from me...
Also, the problem with replacing all natural areas with urban jungle should be more than obvious.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
Don't worry, when polywell fusion solves all our energy problems in five years water and food won't be an issue anymore.
Tell you what, when you have a point, we can discuss this. Even setbacks such as the "Dark Ages" were temporary. And as the other replier points out, we're developing new tech and knowledge faster than any time in history. What you neglect is that the Dark Ages started with a stagnation of knowledge and progress in the big empires. The Library of Alexandria died on Rome's watch. Further, as the UN has noted, global demographics point to a population peak before 2050. I think it's reasonable to see what happens before we angst over population growth.
You're basing your view of the future on what happened in the past, which begs the question. There has never been a time in the past when we've had this large a population and this fast a population growth. So your argument is based on the faulty assumption that point A (now) is the same as point B (sometime in the past) and hence point C (sometime in the future) will be something like point D (sometime in our past, and point B's future).OTOH, that's no excuse to avoid looking at similar situations in the past. As I see it, if we stagnate in our learning, technology development, etc, then we're far more likely to run into the problems that concern you. But I believe there's plenty of evidence that dynamic, flexible, exploring cultures consistently beat nature.
The USDA doesn't have a clear candidate. What makes you think you know more than the USDA? I find it interesting that you blame people for making up reasons for things happening, yet you're very quick to jump to unproven conclusions as well. I smell confirmation bias.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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I also hope that it will pass 2000000000 someday. In its way down.
On my last business trip to the US, I ordered a steak "medium rare". What I got was barely even pink in the middle. So, the next steak I ordered (at a different place) was "rare" and came to me cooked in a way that the rest of the world would call "medium rare" (i.e. How I like it).
Based on this, I get the feeling that "medium" is actually leaning towards the "well done" side of things from a non-US perspective.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Look at the comment right below this one, and compare the times... and then give this parent the karma he deserves! He shouldn't receive a Score: 1, Offtopic.
If your calculations are correct then Texas is 32.687 times the size of Wales in case you are from the UK.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
We're experiencing a food shortage here in the EU? Wow... news to me. I seem to be able to get all the food I want, at really cheap prices and most of it is of a very high standard.
(Sorry, I know you meant the food shortage in the third world countries, and I actually agree with you completely, I was just making a (fairly lame) joke based on the ambiguity of the way you phrased it.)
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
If God didn't want us to eat cows, he wouldn't have made them out of meat.
If the parent doesn't get +5 funny, all the mods should be lined up and shot...
Or just sent to the 4 raves in question.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Unfortunately, yes I do. As a child, I had high hopes that we were entering our space-faring days, but it seems it's all gone completely the wrong direction for far too long. There are glimmers of hope now that a direction change may be imminent, but it'll be more than 50 years before we have a significant population on anything other than this pale blue dot that we live on.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you have a cite for this? I've read elsewhere that the death rate is at around 150000 a day. That works out to only a bit under 2 deaths per second, which is significantly less than your figure of 3.
I don't have any figures off the top of my head regarding birth rates, and I'm too lazy right now to look it up.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Oh not quite. China will then eat the U.S., thus approaching singularity
Hey, I live in Ohio, and I guarantee you that the crops grown around here look like mud and grass to me ...
This shows how the population of the world has increased at an alarming rate in recent times.
People are having kids. Exactly why is this "alarming"?
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
I know how steaks are supposed to be cooked. If it doesn't sit up and moo while you're eating it, it's overcooked.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
My point was not that they eat lots of fish (I like fish), but that they import basically _all of their raw materials and food. This was in reply to a guy who fantasized that we can all live like the Japanese. We can't.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Okay, we've beaten it (Netherlands: 395 versus Japan: 337 per square kilometer). Now what?
Come take a look, there really is barely any unpopulated area and those that are are to ensure we still have some nature left at all. We should've had a higher number since half of the land used used to be sea and is still below sea level.
Your line is like an unintentional burn on all
Bravo!
What a strange statement, yes you can! It certainly takes some extra planning, but it's hardly impossible. It's not like all those vegetarians out there are secretly sneaking hamburgers while you aren't looking
We are the ones doing the dragging.
There is no solid data giving any particular number of children a clear advantage with all other things being equal. The spoiled only child has no real basis when factoring in money/child and other relevant metrics.
Also, your 'didn't become a stereotype without reason' argument is a bit frightening. Do you use it to justify other stereotypes like stingy Scots and stealing Jews? The truth is many things that are/where common wisdom are just plain wrong.
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
Support for the 6bone (the IPv6 testbed) was discontinued on June 6, 2006.
No better time to switch to Ubuntu Satanic Edition!
FYI I'm not satanic, I just like the graphics.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
WoW and Civ have taught you the wrong models.
Yield varies tremendously depending on geology, location, hydrology, etc. This can vary greatly over even short distances. So to reduce the need for chemical and other pollution, you need to position the agricultural zones where they require the least added work.
Also, those "ridiculously high" yields are currently fully dependent end-to-end on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are used to make fertilizers and pesticides, to sow, cultivate, and harvest. Then you have the foods transported, so that they get properly stale, hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles using -- fossil fuels.
So some of the current growing food crises (plural) lay squarely at the feet of so-called developers who convinced communities and steam-rolled zoning commissions into paving over their best farmland. You can only import when someone else has a surplus which they are also willing to export.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
On the same day, /b/ passed 66666666 posts
AND in reply, see th lecture video on area163 youtube.ca.
that's the result.
OH, the complete film will make the religion angle more obvious. THIS clip is the walk thru...
HD version is for people who pay.
packrat ; writer-informer. http://packrat.comicgenesis.com http://www.youtube.com/area163 https://www.smashwords.com/
You must not get much "Texas Beef" in your area since thats nearly all grass fed.
"grain fed" means it got grain at the feed lot right before it was turned into hamburger. Even if it was one of the few that get daily grain, it still would spend most of its days chomping at grass.
One thing I have learned in my short time on this planet. Every doomsayer's predictions of over population and food shortages comes to nothing. We always shift how things are done and accommodate it.
If you mean accommodating by having 1/6th of the worlds population living in extreme poverty (living under $1 a day) then I suppose you are right.
The problem with letting people reproduce wily nilly is that the poor and uneducated tend to breed the most and statically their children will face the same fate. Apparently the rest of the world doesn't care enough to help them economically, educationally, or even bother sending them condoms. At worst, some very large religious organizations condemn birth control in these regions even when it is available.
So unless something changes on the core level of how humanity treats the situation, we'll have 2 billion people living in extreme poverty instead of just 1 in a few years.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
This brings to mind an old college professor of mine in the 70's who said, "by the year 2000, world population will be at 10 billion and America's biggest health problem will be starvation". Yeah, turns out it was about 5 billion and America's biggest health problem was/is obesity. These doomsayers don't know anything.
Breed Breed Breed!
In many cases, that's what they're doing. Ohio has a significant dairy output, and grasses are pretty good food for cows. For half the year, you don't even need to harvest it, you just let the cows out into the field. They mow the grass for you and replace it with lots of fresh fertilizer to grow the next crop. This works with steers, too, though they don't produce milk. (OTOH, you don't have to milk them a couple times a day.)
There's also "fallow" land. (Google it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Well, first of all, you can't live completely without meat. You need certain proteins that you can't get anywhere else.
Actually, that's not true. By "proteins" you really mean amino acids, of course. And all of the amino acids that we need can be gotten from plants. It's really that animals are a higher-quality source of amino acids than plants. A chunk of meat gives you all of the kinds of amino acids that you need, in about the right balance, while no plant does. You can get all the amino acids you need from various mixtures of plants, such as the common grains+legumes eaten in a lot of cultures. But you have to know a bit to do this, or eat one of the traditional diets of people who have learned by trial and error what's a healthy mixture.
There are also some vitamins that are easier to get from animal sources, though they are all available from the right plants. Similarly, there are vitamins that you can only get from plants.
Nothin like a good steak. Nice NY Strip, medium well....
That's the real reason. Humans are omnivores, and most of us really like the taste of meat. With care and knowledge, a purely vegetarian diet is possible. But it's a bit boring to most people raised on a meaty diet. Meat just tastes so good to critters like us, and it's difficult to persuade people to give up such good-tasting food without very good reason.
It's funny how this can work. We have a couple of pet cockatiels, and the books on caring for your pet bird will tell you that cockatiels are strictly seed eaters. Ours didn't read the books. I have a couple of cute pictures of them on the table, next to a piece of steak that outweighed both of them, and they're happily biting into the steak. They especially love the fat. I have this image of a flock of 1000 cockatiels descending on a cow and ripping it to pieces. The cattle growers in Australia should hope that nobody ever teaches the wild ones how tasty beef is. They also like cheese, and if I'm eating a cheeseburger, they'll land on my hand and nibble the meat and cheese, ignoring the bread that's made of their natural grain diet.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Wow and just today Patrick Moore's the sky at night show had it's 666th episode!
Ditto. I too need meat. Tried doing a vegetarian thing one week and it was hell. Always hungry and missing something. a 2 pound rib eye medium rare fixed me up.
But lets look at the bright side, if so many go vegetarian, and meat gets short, we can put a vegetarian on the menu. Soylent Green. That was a movie far ahead of its time.
Five days you say? Hmmm. What a coincidence. Also, it will be Israel's 60th anniversary as a nation on that date more or less.
This server SUCKS. There's WAY too many players, and they're online ALL THE TIME. Get a LIFE.
Not to mention the economy is TOTALLY whack, the players are all acting like MORONS, and all the guilds fight ALL THE TIME even when they're supposed to be on the SAME SIDE.
But the worst is the LAG. It takes HOURS to just get from one side of a continent to another, and even hitting vendors is likely to take you an HOUR at LEAST. On a GOOD day.
Clearly the admins haven't assigned enough resources to meet the demand of the COMMUNITY. I heard that the whole thing is STILL on a computer Douglas Adams made in the 70s.
Someone needs to start a PETITION for a NEW SERVER.
At the current rate as per the counter, my count gets rid of 100 IP addresses every 12 seconds. Based on the current number left (assuming no accelerations or decelerations), they should all be gone by September 2014 (roughly). 6 years to fix the problem. No worries though. Where I live we will be moving to 10 digit dialing in 1 month. We used 7 digit dialing for my entire life (43 years), but both my parents remember using 6 digit dialing (Garden Drop-4307 or GD-4307). As kids they also remember people using 4 and 3 digit dialing. I have multiple devices that are all subnetted to one real IP address (that I get from a rotating pool my ISP provides). All of my computers get IP addresses from my router (which acts as a DHCP server to them all). If it were not for subnetting, we would all be in IPv6 land already.
In the end, like overabundant deer, there's going to be a mass die-off. The best thing the first world can do is the massive diffusion of effective birth control.
The build up of industrialization (and its concurrent population and quality of life increase) based on a finite resource (oil) is another one. Tell me what would happen if you created a safe-haven (the industrialized age) for deer (people) with all the food (oil) they wanted. Why, the population would boom and those deer would be happy as shit. Now, get rid of 90% of the food (oil). What do you think happens? Mass die off.
I'm not a big believer in deus ex machina coming to save us, this isn't a scifi novel it's real life. Sure, it won't wipe out humanity but I have a very pessimistic view of the next 100 years.
I am probably what's considered upper middle class these days. I very good money, have a nice big house, eat well, we have 2 cars, etc.
When I was 19 (I'm 41 now) I spent about 4 months living off the land in the woods. I ate what I could catch/gather, lived in a tent until I had a bit of a hut built, went without baths, etc. IMO I enjoyed a very good standard of living during that time and it still gives me fond memories.
That should have been "I MAKE very good money" not "I very good money." Heh. In a rush, the wife is waiting to go spend money on dinner and a movie. Doing our part to help the struggling economy, you know.
We don't feed cows grass - we feed them corn.
Hey, I'm 2/3 of a person, you insensitive clod!
Populations increase when resources abound. Oil is a good example: for the last 100 years or so was reasonably available and mostly transformed into food (fertilizers, tractors, and a massive trucking industry carrying food around). No wonder the population increased: it became so easy to produce food, it freed up an unprecedented proportion of the population so they could become doctors and engineers for the benefit of us all.
The human race did not "step up", we were just fortunate enough to have oil and use it. Without oil, there would probably be a lot more farmers, and possibly still some form of slavery.
You are totally right. That's why my beef is against real estate developers who feel the need to cram people in as tight as possible. I wish everyone every parcel of land was required to be an acre at minimum(actual real land, not a damn CONDO.).. let's spread it out some.. (btw, the entire US is over 2.4 billion acres)
Well, I have a pretty good opinion of the guys that do the translations, they don't just translate from language to language, they translate from the original language, though they can make mistakes when some statement is ambiguous. I don't think they have anything to gain from mis-translations. I'm thinking of the guys that translate bibles like the NIV and KJV and such. I believe the Roman Catholic church may try to be more controlling, but reformed evangelical churches have genuine preachers who are Christians and believe what they preach. It's crazy but some churches have ministers who admit that they aren't even Christians? I don't get that. Personally I have been going through doubts recently, which haven't been helped much by some discussions on /. over the last couple of days. I can defend against a lot of accusations brought up against the bible, since I've read it myself a couple of times, but there are still some things that make me unsure myself. Revelation is quite an interesting book, likewise Daniel has some stuff supposedly to do with the end of the world, you should maybe read that too if you're interested. It's better not to get too hung up on it like you say though :) I keep on keeping on myself, I just wish I knew what I was meant to be aiming for!
which is totally what she said
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
I have no source, this is what I was taught in school 10 years ago. Your numbers are probably more recent and more right than mine. According to http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.html the world population was 6,600,372,992 in 2007 and 6,677,563,921 in 2008, which results in +2.44 persons per second. Which actually means the world population has regained its level from before Cyclone Nargis in only 11.4 hours.
One step in all those old rotation schemes is not using the land. The european method was two seasons of use, one season bare.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Probably. However, some of that land that is not currently a field is still not sustainably arable.
For example, you need forests, marchlands, etc. to sustain the overal ecological system. Taking down all the forests to convert the land into fields will result in massive changes all around. From winds (= erosion) to the animals living in the area. Which in turn affects the crops. For example, the forest might be necessary for some predators who protect your field from rodents which would otherwise eat everything.
Other parts look arable at first glance, but aren't in the long run. The rain forest is a great example - if you cut it down you sure get fields. But after just a few years the ground has lost most of its fertility.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
We all know about the strain on the ecosystem with a rise in population, but the real question is... With all those people there must be a lot of screwing goin' on.
/.s.
It's going to come to the point to where I don't wanna put little (edited) in anything, except for my hand. Wait if I had a gf then I might have to worry about that like most
But seriously, STDs on the rise, they'll evolve to the point to where you can give it to someone from just looking at them. Wait, I think that's the same as most sexual harassment cases which seem to be on the rise.
Your argument is a red herring. Yes, there is a lot of land out there. Yes, a lot of it is non-arable. But even so that doesn't change the fact that there is lot of sustainably arable land that we haven't used. And on top of that, the amount of crop per acre produced is increasing at an astounding rate that has kept abreast of or surpassed the population's growth rate due to improvements in agricultural technology.
While long term population growth is a problem, you exaggerate these other difficulties. For example, poor people don't breed like rats. If you look in developed countries, they aren't doing much better than the supposed rich ones. Further, any such affect will be swamped by germ line modification within a few decades.
The build up of industrialization (and its concurrent population and quality of life increase) based on a finite resource (oil) is another one.All civilization is based on finite resources. And a lot of the structure of society like markets is designed to provide a way to allocate these resources. Unlike deer, humans can change their environment and their behavior to get "food" in other ways.
We need science to solve problems attributable to indiscipline.
;-)
Nature loves it that way.
If all people lived peacefully and fed and clothed each other first, before thinking of buying their annual MacBook upgrade or iPod thingy or tons of liquor and meat (yeah, it's possible to live without those, whatever your personal gospel truth may be) or selling guns and stuff, it would probably be a boring situation. Nothing exciting, nothing stormy, almost like a hall of a software company (contrasted with the floor of the NYSE).
Nature likes it and answers no questions.
Nature isn't opensource.
So, we'll keep innovating and rescuing each other willingly (Linux) or not (M$).....
In Soviet Nature, big computer reboots YOU!!
Hackers have long memories. It works both ways.
Having said that; you can pry my interwebs from my cold, dead fingers.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
... but big chunks of meat at every meal is very detrimental to your health. [Citation needed]Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
Okay that's a lie, I'm just stingy.
which is totally what she said
Rate of growth is decreasing, but we're still growing.
The world is overpopulated.
Pointing to open land is idiotic - we can't use every spot of land for people.
1 billion people should be our target.
Give everyone some elbow room, ample resources, and relax.