Millions of Jellyfish Invade Nuclear Reactors

oxide7 writes "A nuclear reactor in Japan was forced to shut down due to infiltration of enormous swarms of jellyfish near the power plant. A similar incident was also reported recently in Israel, when millions of jellyfish clogged the sea-water cooling system of a power plant."

Comments

I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

praise our new jellyfish overlords.

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally a match for sharks with lasers!

Re:I for one

[macraig]

Scholl's wants to know: are you jellin'?

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

mdsolar, is that you?

Re:I for one

[kulnor]

Can't wait for the mutants to emerge! Godzilla will have some serious contenders to play with.

Re:I for one

[arisvega]

The Return Of The Radioactive Jellyfish!

Re:I for one

[Sulphur]

Finally a match for sharks with lasers!

Awesome jellyfish with Cerenkov radiation.

Re:I for one

[maxwell demon]

Obviously the yrr started their attack!

Re:I for one

[Phoghat]

What I want to know is When will This Guy show up ! And will he develope a taste for jellyfish, and follow

Jellyfish love global warming

[mrxak]

I have a theory that jellyfish are alien invaders, here to xenoform our planet. They love basically everything we do to the planet, from pollution to overfishing to global warming. This is just further evidence, but by shutting down nuclear reactors, the only current viable alternative to fossil fuel power plants, they ensure we use more coal and oil power plants, contributing to the environmental change they love.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Antisyzygy]

Many Jellyfish and Fish compete in their ecological niche. Because people the world over are over-fishing the sea, it leaves room for more jellyfish to snatch the food the fish would otherwise eat. Furthermore, Jellyfish are also nearly nutrition-less so people do not try to catch them. So, we have a collection of species of animal that have less predation vs. their main competitor and more food to eat, so they tend to thrive. Its not really a good idea for us to continue to ravage the sea life without regard to their continued survival. Coal and Oil plants really don't affect the Jellyfish as much.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[zill]

Furthermore, Jellyfish are also nearly nutrition-less so people do not try to catch them.

Most Asian cuisines have Jellyfish dishes. Some US fisheries even export Jellyfish to Asian countries.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[mrxak]

Increasing water temperatures do correlate with increased jellyfish populations, and they do better in depleted oxygen waters, which pollution causes. More fossil fuels do result in increased jellyfish numbers, it's been shown in a number of scientific studies.

They ARE xenoforming our planet, and we have limited time to stop them before they begin constructing saltwater-filled vehicles to roam the lands and take over.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

They've realized that radioactive water is the fastest way to genetic evolution. They just don't realize that they'll become giant, air-breathing human-eaters...yet...

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[mrxak]

Luckily they have no regard for their own lives, as TFA clearly shows they're willing to use suicidal tactics to get us to shut down our alternative energy sources that will halt their advance. If they did care more, they might be pissed off that we're eating them.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[anagama]

I was with you up to the last point.

When carbon dioxide dissolves in this ocean, carbonic acid is formed. This leads to higher acidity, mainly near the surface, which has been proven to inhibit shell growth in marine animals and is suspected as a cause of reproductive disorders in some fish.
...
The oceans currently absorb about a third of human-created CO2 emissions, roughly 22 million tons a day. Projections based on these numbers show that by the end of this century, continued emissions could reduce ocean pH by another 0.5 units. Shell-forming animals including corals, oysters, shrimp, lobster, many planktonic organisms, and even some fish species could be gravely affected.

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-ocean-acidification/

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Guppy]

Most Asian cuisines have Jellyfish dishes. Some US fisheries even export Jellyfish to Asian countries.

The problem is, preparation of Jellyfish for food is very time and labor intensive, due to the absurdly high water content that needs to be dealt with. Asians eat it, but not as a major dietary protein source like fish. So while it may support some small Jellyfisheries, there will never be huge fleets capable of making a dent in their populations.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[GooberToo]

The jellyfish explosions have been created by two things. Firstly, from massive over fishing in Asian waters. Secondly, from massive waste runoff in oxygen rich fresh waters from China. Its almost completely a problem of both Japan and China's making.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Antisyzygy]

See Guppy's post below. You can eat jellyfish, but the nutritional content is almost nil. You have to heavily process jellyfish to make it nutritional, and even then it is nowhere near the same level of nutrition as fish. You can catch a single fish like a Salmon and feed a man for a few days, or catch several hundred jellyfish and feed the same man for a couple hours.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[MassiveForces]

...absurdly high water content, some protein... hmm how about we use them to fertilize the desert?

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[MrQuacker]

Huh. Interesting idea, but would it work?

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Antisyzygy]

Ive read that Jellyfish thrive more in oxygen depleted waters, and I have not read about the carbonic acid problem. However I still think overfishing is the main problem for fishes. Since carbon dioxide is produced by pretty much any decaying or burning matter and we make up a minority portion of that (albeit significant since its beyond homeostasis) I am pretty sure the fact that people are eating fish far far beyond sustainable levels is the culprit. http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/06/story.asp?storyID=800 . We are talking about 70 percent of species that will be fished out of existence in the next 50 years if we don't do something. Im not against extinctions, and human beings are pretty much guaranteeing their own if they don't stop being short sighted twats.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Antisyzygy]

We are creating or have created similar problems. Consider the fact that crab and lobster fishing requires you throw away crabs/lobsters below a certain size. That is selective pressure on their species to encourage smaller animals. Also consider that in my home state (Montana) they introduced the Mysis which killed all the salmon. Furthermore, Americans want to eat fish that other nations import. We may care about what happens in our waters but we certainly don't bitch too much about where or how certain major importers of seafood get their fish.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[stms]

I for one welcome our new radiated Jellyfish overlords.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[RsG]

I wonder if the reason we don't use them as fertilizer has to do with salt content. Residual salt buildup, wherein the salt content in agricultural soil gets fractionally higher each year, is a problem already; if jellyfish fertilizer exacerbates it, that might be why nobody's tried it.

Desalinating something before you use it adds quite a lot of energy to the requirements.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's got what plants crave...

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[dissy]

They ARE xenoforming our planet, and we have limited time to stop them before they begin constructing saltwater-filled vehicles to roam the lands and take over

A salt-water filled vehicle, that's the real news for nerds here. I just hope they post how they made it on instructables!

Oblig. http://home.pacbell.net/fakeout/futurama_fish.jpg

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[smellotron]

You can catch a single fish like a Salmon and feed a man for a few days, or catch several hundred jellyfish and feed the same man for a couple hours.

Um, I'll take the fish, please?

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[That Guy From Mrktng]

Sponge bob square pants is not amused by your idea.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[sensationull]

Perfect refference there :)
"Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
If I had mod points I'd mod you up.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[DeepWeb]

Nah, jellyfish are just part of the Earth's immune system. They are attacking nuclear reactor the same way white blood cells attack a virus or bacteria.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Glowing jellyfish is a hit. It continues to glow even after consumption.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[beelsebob]

Further evidence – it's systematic. They did it to Torness nuclear plant in Scotland recently too http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-13971005

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, Jellyfish are also nearly nutrition-less so people do not try to catch them.

Most Asian cuisines have Jellyfish dishes. Some US fisheries even export Jellyfish to Asian countries.

I don't see how it's mutually exclusive that just because we eat something that it nutritious.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you're thinking with portals!

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[TheLink]

Yeah, people should be eating the smaller and younger crustaceans/fish/molluscs not the older fertile ones.

The norm for them for the past few hundred million years is the fertile ones spawn in the thousands/millions and a few survive to fertile adulthood, the rest get eaten or die for other reasons.

Us eating the big ones is messing things up.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's onto something, even crysis 1 and 2 have them....maybe it was their sense of humor at play... or a coded message masked among public eyes.

All hail our new jellyfish overlords.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Mathness]

Oh man, at least add a spoiler alert when talking about the Space Invader film. ;p

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[drinkypoo]

Desalinating something before you use it adds quite a lot of energy to the requirements.

It's not a big deal if you have empty space, which we do, and sun, which generally coincides with the empty space here. In Japan it's a bit trickier.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[marcosdumay]

Well, your source didn't include jellyfish on that list...

Some of them are probably hurt by ocean acidification, some of them are not (as all planktonic organisms also aren't). Evolution is quite fast in making the second population the important one. It's the same thing that already happened to spiders, ants, cockroaches, mouses, flys, and several other species, but now we are domesticating the entire ocean.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[riverat1]

What makes you think planktonic organisms are not affected by ocean acidification? Many if not most of the planktonic animals are the young of shell forming species.
 

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[Anubis IV]

The obvious answer to this problem is to find viable uses for jellyfish. Might I suggest the following:

1) First, vilify them, make them an icon of what's wrong in the environment. Plenty of people are against overfishing, so paint them as a consequence of it that the environmentalists can do something about. Keep referring to them as a problem that we created and that we need to fix.

2) Promote killing them. Tell people that all of our varied fish are being starved by the overabundance of jellyfish, and that it's good for the environment if we slay them in mass quantities, since we're the ones that created the problem of their overabundance in the first place. Accuse people that disagree of having "ganglia for brains." Then laugh at them.

3) Make a jellyfish the supervillain in a popular kid's cartoon show in order to raise the next generation up to hate them. Maybe they can ret-con Krang from TMNT to be a jellyfish instead of a disembodied brain? Or maybe force Nintendo to remove friendly jellyfish-like pokémon from their games?

4) Hats. Jellyfish could be the "in" style for next year as everyone tries to show off how eco they are by sporting a dead jellyfish or two.

5) Purses. You could tie their tentacles together and flip them upside down to have something unique and interesting. Get a celebrity to do it and you'll have everyone hooked.

6) Impromptu sporting nets. Dangle them upside down, and you could easily have a fun sporting event for children, wherein they try to land a ball in the jellyfish. Fun for the whole family!

7) Declare war on the jellyfish. It works for everything else, right?

8) Randomly accuse people who eat jelly with their peanut butter sandwiches as hating the environment by supporting the cause of jelly. Force everyone to start calling it "freedom jam" instead of "jelly". Never mind that jam is technically not the same as jelly. In the meantime, support the use of jellyfish as an acceptable alternative to using jelly with your peanut butter.

9) Declare that the "jellyfish have already won" whenever we talk about how the world has changed since we started attacking them.

10) Figure out a way, regardless of cost, to make them into a form of fuel for cars. The more unusual it is, the better it will be for Internet fodder. Get a Senator or two to support a bill promoting its research and adoption if you want to add some more punch to the impact of the idea.

Alternatively, instead of any of those we could be reasonable, but that's no fun.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[marcosdumay]

All planktonic organisms are not affected. Some (maybe even most) are. Again, evolution will turn the affected into a minority quite fast.

Re:Jellyfish love global warming

[riverat1]

True, it may also drastically alter the oceanic food chain to the detriment of ourselves.

Sayonara Fishies

[Tablizer]

We over-fished the oceans, and now jellyfish have all that extra food available to themselves to grow like weeds. Don't act surprised.

Re:Sayonara Fishies

[prefec2]

Well then. We have to eat jellyfish now and overfish them too. ;-)

Re:Sayonara Fishies

[Tablizer]

They do in some parts of Asia, but they never caught on elsewhere.

The Abyss

[chill]

They're just the advance troops sent by the aliens in The Abyss!

Re:The Abyss

[Anonymous Coward]

Or figment of Jerry's imagination from The Core

Re:The Abyss

[dragonturtle69]

LOL, ya beat me to it.

Re:The Abyss

[JabberWokky]

Or, as a better fit, from the novel "The Kraken Wakes" by John Wyndham. Great book.

Re:The Abyss

[Anonymous Coward]

A book? I would subscribe to your newsletter, but I can't read.

Re:The Abyss

[FrootLoops]

You mean The Sphere. The Core has no jellyfish scene that I can remember.

Re:The Abyss

[dkleinsc]

And here I was expecting some sort of B movie entitled "Attack of the Giant Radioactive Jellyfish!"

I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

...welcome our new gelatinous overlords.

I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it, within a relatively short time on earth we've multiplied to the billions, with no indication of stopping. We're like the grey goo of nanotech horror, or flying penises of second life!

-Matt

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[mrxak]

Except we're clearly from this planet. If you wanted to argue the jellyfish are trying to stop us from spreading to other planets, you may be right. Their efforts thus far to change our environment to suit their own purposes have been quite effective, and may end up destroying us.

We better start fighting back now. Countries such as Germany are already under the influence of jellyfish. We should look for distinctive jellyfish sting marks on the necks of their lawmakers who voted for the nuclear power ban.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[arglebargle_xiv]

Countries such as Germany are already under the influence of jellyfish. We should look for distinctive jellyfish sting marks on the necks of their lawmakers who voted for the nuclear power ban.

At least they only under the influence of jellyfish. My country (UK) is run by them.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

Historically, we didn't have a population problem. China reflects the population growth of the entire world. Until about 1850, population growth was a stable thing, growing fractionally every century or so. After about 1850, we saw this exponential growth.

The reason I picked China as the example, is that China has made a conscious effort to control population. One couple, one child. Negative population growth, which should put China comfortably within the land's capability to support their population within the next 100 years or so. (Sorry, no, I haven't researched projected population figures - I'm just guesstimating that 100 years from now, China's population will be (very roughly) about 1/4 what it is today.)

Roughly half of the rest of the world still practices unrestrained population growth - all of Islam, all of the Catholic people, and much of the third world no matter their religion, politics, or anything else.

I think it's past time that some of those people were brought up to date on the results of unrestricted procreation.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[mrxak]

I think you'd be surprised how many Catholics use artificial birth control.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[LibRT]

The idea that the earth has some sort of "population problem" is nonsense: the entire population of the earth could fit into the state of Texas with plenty of elbow room (Texas: 696,241 km^2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas); 1 km^2 = 1,000,000 m^2 X 696,241 = 696,241,000,000 m^2; population of earth: ~6,930,000,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population); 696,241,000,000 / 6,930,000,000 = 100.47 m^2 per person (or about 1,081 ft^2)). There are more than enough resources, too (including food) to go around.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, cause all a person needs to live can be found withing 1000 square feet of Texas. Brilliant.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Hognoxious]

Until about 1850, population growth was a stable thing, growing fractionally every century or so.

You mean the population on a particular date would be, say, x% more than it was a year previously?

After about 1850, we saw this exponential growth.

You mean where the population on a particular date would be the base population at some time in the past, multiplied by some number, let's call it ((100+x)/100), raised to a power which corresponds the number of years after the base?

I wonder what biological mutation or socio-economic upheaval caused such a fundamental shift in human reproduction.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[That Guy From Mrktng]

Can we stop the "third world and catholics are teh rabbitz" meme? And use instead "Poor people all over the world don't give a fuck/don't know about birth control" It's worst in the first world where you get paid to keep on the breeding thanks to welfare.

In third world countries theres no way the government would say "oh poor thing, now you have 5 babies, here get some food stamps" They most likely say "Tough luck, I really hope you take good care of that children or else we'll take them from you and give it to adoption to someone that cares" if you're really poor and already have other children they offer you the adoption route, in that case the government support the mother across all the 9 months and the baby is usually given to fortunate parents on an ever growing list of kind people that can't or don't want to have children and opt to adopt one.

Most young people here don't want children in their lives, the sexual education is good even on public schools, you can go to any state sponsored sex health clinic and get birth control methods for free, being in a mostly catholic country this is the faces I see when to pope or other retarded dumbass asks to not use condoms or birth control. It's all in the education, because theres poor people all over the world including developed nations, people that probably want to have birth control but either don't know how, don't give a fuck (pun intended) or can't afford it.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[omfgnosis]

If you want to go live in a cubicle in the desert in Texas, more power to you. I hope you enjoy the disease, malnutrition, and mental illness that assuredly come with such a proposition.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[optimism]

There are more than enough resources, too (including food) to go around.

How do you explain that many fisheries in the world have been destroyed, and those remaining are in radical decline?

How do you account for the fact that every oil expert agrees we will hit peak oil within decades (and many believe we are already there)?

How do you refute the evidence of accelerating extinctions of other species, e.g. from our widespread destruction of global forests?

These are just a few example where we've proven beyond doubt that the current human population is too large to maintain global resources at steady-state.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Poor people all over the world don't give a fuck/don't know about birth control"

Actually, they do give a fuck. Quite a lot of fucks, to be exact.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[KDR_11k]

I blame the East Germans. They'll happily push the "non-toxic" jellyfishes out of the way while bathing, they probably deposit brain control chemicals in people!

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymus]

When there are a billion Chinese people of retirement age and only half a billion of working age, what do you think is going to happen?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[LandDolphin]

soylent green?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

Until about 1850, population growth was a stable thing, growing fractionally every century or so. After about 1850, we saw this exponential growth.

That is the same kind of growth. Watch this, especially if you're in a job which involves planning for growth (politics, economics, biology, etc.).

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[kwark]

Are trying to tell us Soylent green isn't coming from fish in the oceans?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

Too subtle.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

It might not be all that surprising to learn that the majority of Catholics do NOT use birth control. There is a reason that Mexico and other Latin American countries are overpopulated, and poor. There is a reason that the illegal aliens in the United States are rapidly repopulating the South West, while the white man is actually seeing negative population growth.

I'll accept that a lot of Catholics in wealthy, educated nations might be practicing birth control methods, but those Catholics are a minority of all Catholics combined, I think.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

Not subtle enough. The biological mutation you refer to didn't happen. Instead, advances in the field of medicine pretty much wiped out the most common causes of death.

Now, if you're finished mocking, you might actually do a Google search, to see what the earth's estimated population levels were for tens of thousands of years in the past. There most definitely was population growth, all through history and pre-history. But, that growth, overall, was stable. Only in the 1800's do we see that "population explosion".

You can see the same thing in nature. Some outside influence (usually man) kills off the predators, then the prey like rabbits, deer, or whatever, breed like mad. They eventually exceed the "carrying capacity" of the land, and ultimately begin to starve and/or die of various diseases.

Go forth, google, and learn. Medical advances may very well increase the chances of survival for individuals - but they have done little to ensure the survival of our species. There are so many of us, we're poisoning the very land we depend on for survival!

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

You're a bit closed minded, in calling for the end of a "meme". Actually, the "meme" is true, at least to some extent. Even welfare trash in the United States has other forms of entertainment, so they don't lay around and fuck all day for lack of anything else to do. Even welfare trash gets some decent public school education.

As for the government paying welfare trash to have more babies - some states are finally beginning to wise up, a little bit. "Who's the father? He's going to pay child support, and we'll take up some of the slack if he doesn't make enough." "I can't tell you who the father is." "Oh - well - no welfare for you then, Little Miss Smart Ass!"

Oh yeah - that adoption thing? How well is that working out in third world countries? Do they manage to export .0005% of the excess babies?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

China has a retirement program?

Seriously - what do you think has happened all through history, and prehistory? The old bastards start dying off. The young bastards dispose of the bodies, distribute the possessions, and get on with their lives. Can you find some point in history when things were different?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/themes/keytheme1.htm

Obviously not the same thing . . .

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/themes/keytheme1.htm

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[youn]

Except we're clearly from this planet.

actually many theories exist that life originated from a collision with an asteroid that had the building blocks of life... if this is true then you could argue human life is extra terrestrial in origin and thus the original terra forming program is already spreading to other parts of the universe through out the years

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Qbertino]

The reason I picked China as the example, is that China has made a conscious effort to control population. One couple, one child. Negative population growth, which should put China comfortably within the land's capability to support their population within the next 100 years or so. (Sorry, no, I haven't researched projected population figures - I'm just guesstimating that 100 years from now, China's population will be (very roughly) about 1/4 what it is today.)

And it will have a man/woman ratio of 1 to 0.6. Due to its one-child-policy the wealthy chinese are seeing to it that they give birth to men rather than women. Same problem with the middle-class in india and islam countries. That's what happens when you give high-tech to dumb and primitive people.

Same thing here as everywhere. It's barely 150 years ago that people in europe were seriously debating wether women have a soul and are fully qualified humans. And it's 60 years ago that they were trying to cleanse continent from 'underhumans'.

Sexophobia, sexism, superstition, sexual frustration and power-mongering on all levels of society, all over the f'cking planet. I sometimes feel like taking a huge army, invading every country on the planet and forcing some sanity into people at gunpoint. Maybe chopping of some really effed up heads along the way. ... But then again, that wouldn't change anything, would it?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

I told you to watch a video. You have not watched that video. If you had watched the video, you would have understood that "growing fractionally every century" is in fact exponential growth.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Narcocide]

Yea I saw that episode of Dr. Who as well.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

A culture's desire for a male or a female offspring is pretty much a separate issue from population control.

However - the fact that the balance is in favor of male offspring only helps to cut the population faster. One couple, one child. It most definitely requires a female to form a couple. So - she has one child, and the extra guy doesn't. I have no problem with that. Seems to me that the males in China would start working hard to make themselves attractive to the females, so that they don't end up as the unnecessary fifth wheels!

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not that we need to prevent procreation, but that we need to allow the fuckwits that are already here to remove themselves from the gene pool more easily. For example, by not giving that almost-fatally injured fuckwit drunk driver extensive medical treatment to save his/her life when they wrap their vehicle around a lamp post.

If we stop intervening when some idiot wants to do things that will almost certainly result in death (or near death), we'll all be better off. And we won't fuck up the balance of males/females in population like China's policy is doing. There's idiots in both sexes!

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[RobertLTux]

the biggest problem with china having an "excess" of males boils down to the problem of having several million pissed off men with "nothing" to do.

Most common way to blow off steam down history

INVADE ANOTHER COUNTRY.

who would really care that your plan for invading %country% has a planned 40% fatality rate when you have lots of "spares" to work with??

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

Yeah - that could be a problem. But - historically speaking, how many times has China invaded another country? I think that we all recognize that China has a different psychology than much of the rest of the world. When I look at history, I see a lot of nations invading others for food, for wealth, for crazy religious reasons, and to satisfy a desire for conquest and blood lust. China? They have had 1/4 of the world's population for millenia, I guess. Back when the number of warm bodies on the field pretty much decided the battle, they could have expanded anywhere they wanted. But, they didn't.

What I think is more likely to happen is, a lot of young men are going to emmigrate from China. China is right now building something of a financial empire across the rest of Asia, Africa, and reaching into Europe and the Americas, along with Australia. It would be perfectly reasonable for China to export young men to those nations for business reasons. And, while they are out and about, they may find that the local women are rather attractive, with the added benefit that the local governments don't care to much about the number of children you have.

To tell the truth, I think I'd rather face a Chinese army . . .

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[PopeRatzo]

Except we're clearly from this planet.

"Clearly"?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[c]

> Negative population growth, which should put China comfortably within the
> land's capability to support their population within the next 100 years or so.

They aren't going to maintain it for 100 years; it's not really a sustainable practice much beyond one generation or so. A large population of geriatrics supported by a smaller number of workers is an economic disaster. Assuming, of course, China acts like a civilized country in elder care... which I expect it would, given what I understand of asian traditions.

More likely, they'll soon start a gradual easing of the policy as their economy moves out of peasant-style agriculture (which high birthrates are normal and necessary) to a richer urban-based middle-class economy.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Will.Woodhull]

Parent post says humans are clearly from this planet; could not be alien xenoforming gary goo.

But the easiest way to destroy an ecosystem is through genetic modification of a species that is already part of the ecosystem. From a distant point of view, the main differences between humans and other apes are that humans are multiplying unchecked, have expanded their territory from a piece of Africa to every place on the world, and are busy releasing huge amounts of bioactive carbon that have been sequestered underground for millions of years.

Yeah, there is an undeniable argument that humans are xenoforming Earth. Could this be natural? Possibly, but there are no known parallel examples of a single species altering ecosystems to this degree. Could this be genetically engineered interference from an alien Monsanto? On the face of it, that seems at least as likely and in several ways looks like the simpler hypothesis.

I am going to go away now. I need to find my tinfoil hat and monolith detector.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Omestes]

Can we stop the "third world and catholics are teh rabbitz" meme? And use instead "Poor people all over the world don't give a fuck/don't know about birth control" It's worst in the first world where you get paid to keep on the breeding thanks to welfare [wisegeek.com].

No, because there is a sliver of truth in it. The Church is very much against any form of birth control. Catholicism is mostly prevalent in poor, 3rd world, countries. Most third world countries have population problems, or looming population problems. These statements don't depend on any particular reasons, so saying "the third world has a population problems", and "people in the third world don't care" aren't mutually exclusive. They might, gasp, even be an effect and a cause.

It's worst in the first world where you get paid to keep on the breeding thanks to welfare [wisegeek.com].

Oddly growth and birth statistics don't show this. Many of the countries with VERY high levels of welfare (so high that American conservatives can't go there without exploding) have negative growth. Actually most of the developed world (which often has higher welfare rates and social services than America) have sustainable or negative growth rates. The U.S., itself, with all its dreaded welfare, would be near replacement levels if it wasn't for immigration, and might even reach negative growth in a generation or so.

When we consider the third world, with its generally higher birth rates, we will find that there is a relative lack of "welfare" systems in existence. Why? Because its the third world, and they don't have the extra wealth to support such systems. Further, often these countries are ruled by kleptocrats who have no desire to support the general welfare of their states, nor have the slightest shred of sympathy for the people forced to lived under them.

It's all in the education...

This is true... But when education fails, religion quickly fills its shoes. If you live in a country with a very low level of education you lack the tools to critically analyze stupid statements made by religious authorities (see vast swaths of the U.S. for proof that this isn't a third world problem exclusively). And the anti-birth control message of the Church is harmful; it holds some stupid ideological castle high above human effects and suffering. If the Catholic church cared one bit about its followers they would be air-dropping condoms on their followers in impoverished countries, and talking about how it is sinful to bring a baby into such a world, since the child is doomed to suffer (though somehow the Catholics turned "doomed to suffer" into a positive thing, which helped switch much of my family towards agnosticism, humanism, and atheism).

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[LibRT]

Obviously that's not the point. The habitable world is considerably larger than the state of Texas, in case you're unaware. In fact, Texas constitutes 0.467% of all land on earth. So currently, there is 231,338 ft^2 for every single person on earth. So yes: there's plenty of room, even for people like you (you get an additional 20,000 ft^2 so as not to irritate the other humans).

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

China is a pretty horrible example, actually.

> Until about 1850, population growth was a stable thing, growing fractionally every century or so.
That's funny. Wikipedia says 1650: 123,000,000; 1750: 260,000,000; 1850: 412,000,000.

After WW2 and the communist revolution, China's leaders encouraged population growth. As a result, from about 1960 to 1980 (the start of implementing the one-child policy was 1979), they went from about 650m to 1b. And now they're still at about 1.3b. So yes, the growth rate slowed somewhat, but only in comparison to the immediately preceding extremely high rate.

In comparison, the US grew from 179m to 308m in the same 1960-2010 period. Less than a doubling. (And that's a country that takes about a million new immigrants a year.)

> (Sorry, no, I haven't researched projected population figures - I'm just guesstimating that 100 years from now, China's population will be (very roughly) about 1/4 what it is today.)

You really should spend a minute or two looking up stats before you post, then. They're projected to peak around 1.39b in 2030, and be around 940m in 2100.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[LibRT]

Citations needed: "...those remaining are in radical decline..."; "...every oil expert agrees..."; "...accelerating extinctions..."; "...proven beyond doubt...".

(And those are some ironic comments, given your user name...)

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[riverat1]

I'm not sure I'd say Latin America is particularly overpopulated, especially when compared to some African and Asian countries.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[riverat1]

That's a pretty optimistic calculation. It works out to a little over 5 acres per person. But if you really looked at it I suspect less than half the land area of Earth is really suitable for human occupation or agriculture. Deserts, high mountains, the Arctic and Antarctic and bodies of water have limited opportunities for occupation and exploitation. Like it or not humans are still dependent on the natural processes of the planet to provide clean air and water and much of the food we eat and we ignore that fact at our peril.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[riverat1]

To state the obvious, modern medicine and better hygiene, mechanized production of food and more efficient distribution are the socio-economic upheavals that caused the population boom.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[optimism]

Start with the wikipedia articles noted below, and you will find plenty of footnoted references:

Peak Oil (wikipedia)
"Optimistic estimations of peak production forecast the global decline will begin by 2020 or later, and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of heavily oil-consuming nations. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used.[3] Pessimistic predictions of future oil production operate on the thesis that either the peak has already occurred,[4][5][6][7] that oil production is on the cusp of the peak, or that it will occur shortly.[8][9] The International Energy Agency (IEA) says production of conventional crude oil peaked in 2006.[10][11]"
In brief, optimists and pessimists both agree on the peak, just not on when it will happen (or has happened).

Overfishing (wikipedia)
Read the "Instances" and "Consequences" sections, and follow the footnotes. These sections also discuss the relationship of overfishing to (back on topic) the jellyfish explosions.

Extinction (wikipedia)
"According to a 1998 survey of 400 biologists conducted by New York's American Museum of Natural History, nearly 70 percent believed that they were currently in the early stages of a human-caused extinction,[31] known as the Holocene extinction. In that survey, the same proportion of respondents agreed with the prediction that up to 20 percent of all living populations could become extinct within 30 years (by 2028). Biologist E. O. Wilson estimated [5] in 2002 that if current rates of human destruction of the biosphere continue, one-half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in 100 years.[32] More significantly the rate of species extinctions at present is estimated at 100 to 1000 times "background" or average extinction rates in the evolutionary time scale of planet Earth.[33]"

LibRT, you have confused realism for pessimism. I am very optimistic that we will overcome these and other resource problems through a combination of education, technology, and human population reduction.

However these problems will not be solved by idiots who bury their heads in the sand, refuse to acknowledge the data, and call that "optimism". They will not be solved by people who wave their hands and say "we have plenty of resources" in the face of overwhelming evidence that the current population is exhausting many resources.

They will be solved by people who can THINK, and we really need more of THOSE people on this planet. But unfortunately the unthinking idiots are the ones who multiply like rabbits.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the results of unrestricted consumption and production? While third world countries may have unrestricted procreation their consumption still pales in comparison to so called first world countries. Think about how much Americans consume daily both in food and in resources. Also, think about how much is produced for American markets that is just disposed of. Look at every major supermarket and all the food that stays lying on the shelves only to be discarded when it expires.

I get sick every time I hear this rhetoric about population from people who consume eight times as much as an entire family in a third world country. Just because you aren't having sex and kids doesn't mean its not okay for everyone else. Animals reproduce more when the chances of their young surviving is less. You want people in the third world to reproduce less? Make their success and survival rates as high as those in the first world.

Oh wait, then that thing called equality creeps into the picture - ouch.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[maxwell demon]

Except we're clearly from this planet.

No, we are from Golgafrincham.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[smellotron]

There most definitely was population growth, all through history and pre-history. But, that growth, overall, was stable. Only in the 1800's do we see that "population explosion".

Whoosh... the point of the GP is that these two statements both describe the same mathematical phenomenon, i.e. pop(t+1) = C * pop(t)

Until about 1850, population growth was a stable thing, growing fractionally every century or so.

After about 1850, we saw this exponential growth.

The only difference is the constant factor. I believe the latter statement implies "larger constant" due to the use of "exponential" vs. "stable" and "fractionally"; but hey, this is news for nerds, and technical accuracy counts.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[LibRT]

Fine: cut it in half and take your 2.5 acres. That's still plenty. And the calcs were based on land mass: no bodies of water were included. Hell, even if you only get one acre, that's still an awful lot of land for every single man, woman and child (a lot of people somehow manage to live in 500 ft^2 apartments).

Another thing to keep in mind is that growth in the efficiency of things like agriculture has outpaced the growth of the population considerably. For example, agricultural productivity increased about 89% in Florida, 108% in California and 127% in Ohio (the three largest producing states) between 1960 and 2004 - overall in the US agricultural production grew 112% - while population grew in the US between 1960 and 2000 by just 55.6%. Resource scarcity isn't a problem; distribution, on the other hand, often is.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[riverat1]

If your calculation was land area (really the area of the continents) vs. ocean area then things like the Great Lakes and all rivers are included in the land area. If you just took all of the land where an acre was productive enough to support 1 person I'm not sure there would be enough to go around. Most of Canada and Siberia is not really suitable for that.

The growth in agricultural yields has been slowing since the 1980's. It's still growing but not as fast as it was in the 1960's-1980's. There's probably enough food now if it was distributed properly but you know, part of the genesis of the Egyptian and other Arab revolutions was high food prices. Because of a number of events that have reduced yields in grain growing areas over the past couple of years grain stocks are pretty low right now. It won't take a lot to turn it into a crisis. How much production has been lost this year along the Missouri and Mississippi because of the flooding?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Runaway1956]

I'm sorry, but P+P/n != P+P(n) You will note that in the first equation, n is a divisor, in the second equation, n is a multiplier.

Fractional != exponential

I realize that my formal education may be three decades + out of date, but surely they haven't changed the meanings of fractions and exponents?

Allow me to rephrase what I said earlier. In any given century prior to the 1800's, global population growth amounted to a small fraction. In the 1800's we experienced exponential growth.

In point of fact, if you should look at a chart of historical population growth, I've overstated population growth prior to the 1800's. In many centuries, in fact, in some millenia, you would have a hard time finding any actual "growth". Considering the fact that most of the population levels are extrapolated from unverifiable data, it may well be that several millenia saw zero growth, or even negative growth.

Bottom line, we have millions of people living on land today that supported mere hundreds or thousands 200 years ago. Los Angeles is a prime example, Mexico City another, New York - we could go on and on.
 

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymus]

You basically said that population controls such as China's one-child-per-couple are a good idea. Ignoring any ethical arguments (of which there are many), I just pointed out a factual logistics problem with it. You then completely ignored my point by focusing on China itself and hand-waving the issue away.

I don't understand your question about a point in history where things were different, because literally the only times in history where things have ever even worked out at all similar to what you propose (tremendous decrease in youth population in relation to the elderly) is after a major war, and there HAVE been the exact problems I brought up. What society in the last 1000 years has had the policy of killing off their elderly and redistributing their wealth?

If you still want to focus on "China [or any country] has a retirement program?" it's not even a matter of a retirement program. Imagine a first world nation that the elderly have actually saved private pensions themselves and can afford to not die in the streets like you propose. The outcome is a society nearly entirely geared towards elderly care. How stable does that sound?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

Have a look at a history book, man. There's almost no country in southeast asia that was not occupied by China for some hundred years within the last 4000 years. History did not start in 1496...

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[LibRT]

Appreciate the citations.

Peak Oil: the very quotation you include sums up why it will never be a problem: if oil becomes scarce, price will rise; as price rises, alternatives become economical, and the substitution effect occurs. The same thing essentially happened to the whale oil industry. I will acknowledge that oil reserves among OPEC countries are almost certainly vastly overstated: when production quotas became tied to "proven reserves" in 1985, Kuwait boosted their declared reserves from 63.90 to 90.00 billion barrels of oil (a 40.85% increase). In 1988 alone, Iran claimed to find an additional 44.05 billion barrels in declaring 92.85 billion barrels against 1984s 48.80 billion barrels (+90.27%), Iraq jumped from 47.10 to a nice, round 100.00 billion barrels (+112.31%, where it stayed, consistently (and regardless of production), for another four years, before increasing to 115), while Venezuela suddenly got lucky and declared 56.30 vs. 1984s 25 billion barrels (+125.20%). In 1990, Saudi Arabia suddenly declared an increase of 51.79% in oil reserves (from 169.97 to an even 258 billion barrels), while in 1988, Abu Dhabi went from 31.00 to 92.21 billion barrels (+194%). Even little old Dubai got into the act, in 1988 nearly tripling their reserves to 4 billion barrels from 1.35 previously. 1988 was one hell of a busy year in the world of oil discoveries: the five countries which increased their declared reserves went from a combined 153.25 billion barrels to a whopping 345.36 billion barrels!

Overfishing: I'll admit I can't speak intelligently on this issue, except to point out the role government subsidies play. For example, in Canada, fishermen (fisherpeople?) are paid by the government for six or more months of the year because they cannot earn a suitable income on their fishing income alone. Absent these subsidies I suggest a whole lot fewer people would be out there fishing. Of course, like trees, fishes are not a finite resource: you can always make more of them.

Extinction: I know this is an unpopular view, but I say: who cares? I honestly don't mean that flippantly. I just mean that species have gone extinct throughout the history of the earth, while other ones pop up for a while. According to some guy on Quora (I'm too tired to look up more sources - sorry!), somewhere between 6,000 and 19,000 new multicellular species are discovered each year http://www.quora.com/How-many-new-species-are-discovered-every-year. Is it "bad" that some (or perhaps even many) species disappear simply because of humans? If you accept that humans are part of nature, then you should conclude that there is no real difference between species becoming extinct because of a meteorite or because of humans or because of anything else. The view that humans are somehow "outside of nature" is very odd to me: birds build nests, beavers build dams and humans build skyscrapers and nuclear plants. The nests and dams and skyscrapers and nuclear plants are all simply animals reorganizing their environment to their benefit, and are all "natural" in my world view. I don't see humans as an affront to nature. YMMV.

As for "widespread destruction of forests", as I mention above regarding fishies, we can always make more trees. In fact, there are more trees now in the US than there were 100 years ago: according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the number of trees in the US increased by 4,441,000 hectares between 1900 and 2005 http://www.fao.org/forestry/country/32185/en/usa/.

In any case, I'm glad to learn you are indeed optimistic, as I'm optimistic too, and for the same reasons you are, except for the "human population reduction" you mention, which has been tried in various ways with poor results (see Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and others). Humans are humans' best and most precious resource, and more of them is a good thing.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[RespekMyAthorati]

But unfortunately the unthinking idiots are the ones who multiply like rabbits.

As in: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's past time that some of those people were brought up to date on the results of unrestricted procreation.

Earth can support every man's needs not every man's greeds.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true globalist.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[robsku]

Except we're clearly from this planet.

Not according to Hitchickers Guide To The Galaxy.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize that my formal education may be three decades + out of date, but surely they haven't changed the meanings of fractions and exponents?

It's possible you never actually got them to start with.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[That Guy From Mrktng]

But when education fails, religion quickly fills its shoes.

Probably I didn't stated that very clearly but Catholicism it's just present IN STATS, nobody cares or follow catholic teachings blindly since when? the 90's? Actually the more vocal religions here are Christians and Mormons being a minority they get to make more noise that Catholics, because catholics simply don't care, people is Catholic because they got baptized when they were 1 year old and Church makes sure to shove that numbers on the statistics.

It's pretty shortsighted when you take the textbook definition of a religion or a culture and assume this is actually how things are in the real world in such religion or cultures.

Actually most of the developed world (which often has higher welfare rates and social services than America) have sustainable or negative growth rates.

That is pretty much true, the same the the kleptocratic governments we have, but since we have the resources to somewhat support that growth I can't help but think that what pisses the developed world is that we are using our own resources instead of selling them to You. And I know thats because your post 50's textbooks, those that ingrained in You the idea that the world's resources are intended for the developed nations only, that you are entitled to them since you are the only ones that can do something useful whith them. And while this is probably true, China got the foot on the door first and are the ones mining the hell out of the third world, which ironically, will not help to the population control as a whole.

--

some people can cry a river arguing that Catholicism is the whole issue w/ population growth, but IRL, Catholicism it's dead jim, nobody pays attention to those corporate child molesters and we don't have to take that meme from people on a country that still teaches Creationism on it's schools. And the only thing that bother "negative growth developed world" is that we will be more in the future for good or bad (probably for worse) and You can't just bomb the difference out to even teams and it creeps the hell out of some when they find that not every third world citizen it's some dude w/ moustache picking apples in the field. We have been very poorly educated for generations, but thats not true anymore, for good bad or worse depending in your point of view.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[optimism]

I replied to a post that said there are "more than enough resources to go around", with a few examples of global resources that we are clearly exhausting.

Whether you choose to value those resources, or believe that they can be replaced with something else, is another matter entirely.

We cannot make more oil at any rate approaching our current consumption.

We cannot make more fish at any rate approaching our current consumption. And believe me, the salmon farmers and tuna ranchers and others are certainly trying.

We CAN plant more trees for factory farming...but we cannot replace the destrroyed forest ecosystems. In particular the highly biodiverse rainforest ecosystems.

There is much more to a forest than just the trees.

Plus consumption is increasing, not decreasing. Most of the world is far behind the consumption rate of Americans, but they are starting to catch up with consumer middle classes. Witness China and India.

Any nihilist can say that, eh, none of this matters. In the grand scheme it doesn't matter if humans go extinct in the next thousand years and cockroaches take over the planet. Or if all diversity is wiped out and the earth becomes a monoculture of one human race that all look alike and think alike.

But most people in my circles are inclined towards continuing human consciousness and intelligence, in a more diverse environment. Your values may differ. In any case, the exhaustion of many resources at current rates on population/consumption is undeniable.

Oh also - population reduction does not require war or killing. Education would do quite nicely. Negative population growth only requires a "one child per couple" mindset. Plus those kids get much more attention and resources from their parents than if they had siblings.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Omestes]

Actually the more vocal religions here are Christians and Mormons being a minority they get to make more noise that Catholics, because catholics simply don't care, people is Catholic because they got baptized when they were 1 year old and Church makes sure to shove that numbers on the statistics.

I'm not saying that Catholic teachings are the only problem, but I'm sure they contribute at least a bit. Even if their contribution to the popuation problem is minor, its still socially irresponsible, and dangerous. Basically, if it isn't a practical problem, it is a moral one. I'm guessing, though, that there is some influence, at least judging from some of the recent immigrant Catholics I know, have known, and talked to. The apartments behind my old place were pretty much colonized by one extended Mexican family, they were ultra orthodox Catholics, who really did believe in basically everything Rome says. My family is pretty much wholly Irish Catholic, and we love our babies (my father was one of fourteen, and many of his brothers and sisters have sizable broods), religion definitively played a roll since my grandmother was very pious. Obviously this was a bit blunted as we gained income and status, and shed some of the "immigrant" stigma.

Again, I didn't mean to imply, though, that there weren't other factors at play.

... but since we have the resources to somewhat support that growth I can't help but think that what pisses the developed world is that we are using our own resources instead of selling them to You.

Hey, I don't want your resources. I actually find many of the actions of my country, on that front, to be distasteful. I'm actually very hopeful for much of the third world (or developing world, whatever term is proper). Many places seem to be getting their acts together, and actually, you know, developing. Some places seem as hopeless as ever, but many places are doing well.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[RockDoctor]

actually many theories exist that life originated from a collision with an asteroid that had the building blocks of life.

You're inappropriately conflating two perfectly respectable pieces of planetary development science.

1. About the only theory for constructing the Earth-Moon system that reasonably accounts for the distribution of angular momentum and mass, and which has a reasonable probability of occurring in a proto-planetary nebula, is for there to have been an off-centre collision between the proto-Earth (pick a name ; no one cares about a name) and a considerably smaller but still substantial proto-planet (same naming convention), resulting in the merging of proto-planetary cores (mostly iron) and the ejection of the main part of the mantle of the impactor into low (proto-)Earth orbit, where it assembled to form the Moon.
   Unfortunately, such an event would have been fairly effective at baking the volatile elements out of the system. The Moon is noticeably depleted in "volatile" elements like sodium compared to the Earth, and more volatile elements like hydrogen are even more strongly depleted.
2. To get to the current inventory of volatiles on the Earth, there must have been a later period when smaller individual impactors had a relatively high volatile content, which brought in what would eventually become our oceans. The exact details ... we (I speak as a geologist, with an interest in planetary science) simply don't know ; not that it stops people building (mathematical) models. But the constraints on those models change with the evidence. For example the recent (a half-decade or so ago) discover of zircon cores in the Acasta and Jack Hills metasediments that are both 4200Ma old AND were formed on a planet with a water cycle that included a liquid phase ... means that the volatile acquisition and the formation of the earliest granitic (or at least, tonalitic) crust had taken place in those first 350Ma. Which is constraining, but not drastically.

It is hypothesised, but certainly not agreed, that the period of acquisition volatiles included the acquisition of significant quantities of amino acids etc that formed precursors to life. Other opinions have it that such materials could well have been produced by interaction between simple inorganic compounds (methane, CO2, water, ammonia). Again, it is a matter of honest debate, which doesn't raise much heat amongst the actual OOL (Origin Of Life) scientific community because it's not considered vitally important. Both (actually, several) mechanisms could produce substantial amounts of organic materials, but there would still remain a problem of getting the material concentrated amongst the larger quantities of water. Which is an interesting problem, which is not resolved by any means.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[LibRT]

>"Oh also - population reduction does not require war or killing. Education would do quite nicely. Negative population growth only requires a "one child per couple" mindset. Plus those kids get much more attention and resources from their parents than if they had siblings."

It's self-correcting - you needn't worry about population growth continuing exponentially indefinitely in the absence of "education": as societies reduce their birth rate as a function of increased wealth (which they reach by consuming those resources you're worried about) it will become self-limiting. There's a pretty good analysis here: http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html.

While I can appreciate that your circle of friends believes greater diversity = better, and place some arbitrarily value on "highly biodiverse rainforest ecosystems", is there any particular reason you and your friends have concluded the current amount of biodiversity is optimal and should remain static?

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[That Guy From Mrktng]

We ended up getting to the same point, I love discussion when they end that way.

I love how the score ended being +1 troll. while I admit it was written (unintended) in a trollish way the point remains that double standards are not cool anymore and someone will ever point to them. What sometimes it's sad is that most Americans take little or focal criticism as a full blow attack to the good old America which is never the case, I like US of A and I actually not happy for all that stuff that is happening right now there.. TSA, Bailouts, Education, Infrastructure etc etc etc. As one of my first post stated, USA may be a bitch but is our bitch.. I don't want to see China being the new bitch.

So move your ass and do what only Americans can do to make that nation great again, this time w/ less racism once you're there.

Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers

[Omestes]

So move your ass and do what only Americans can do to make that nation great again, this time w/ less racism once you're there.

If you have any suggestions, I'd be very happy. I've been scratching my head at this little problem for a while, and no conclusions suggest themselves. We really need an international psychiatrist.

If only they made Thorazine for countries.

Two months ago?

[kriston]

Didn't this hit the regular news over two months ago? What's new this time?

Re:Two months ago?

[SJHillman]

Slashdot posted news within 2 months of it being news... that's new

Re:Two months ago?

[jmd_akbar]

Slashdot posted news within 2 months of it being news... that's new

ONLY two months

Re:Two months ago?

[baegucb]

Not to worry. It'll be back again in a year or two.

Also the reactor in Torness, Scotland.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Torness reactor was shut down on June 28th because jellyfish clogged the seawater inlet filters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/30/jellyfish-shut-nuclear-reactors-torness

Up Next...

[Haedrian]

Up Next:

Radioactive Jellyfish spotted

Up Next after that:

Man stung by radioactive jellyfish, gains superpowers. New crime-fighting "Jellyman" reduces world crime considerably.

Re:Up Next...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Man stung by radioactive jellyfish, gains superpowers. New crime-fighting "Jellyman" reduces world crime considerably.

Unfortunately he is ultimately beaten by his nemesis, "The Knife", who defeats him easily with the aid of a giant jar of Jif Peanut Butter.

Re:Up Next...

[Anonymous Coward]

"New crime-fighting "Jellyman" reduces world crime considerably"

Reduces his enemies to a quivering mass of jelly, I'd bet.

Re:Up Next...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for providing SyFy with their next few "original movie" ideas.

Re:Up Next...

[artor3]

No, he is the quivering mass of jelly. His enemies just really, really don't want to touch him. Neither do his friends, come to mention it. But toss a pair of glasses on him, and he becomes a mild-mannered Democratic congressman!

Re:Up Next...

[Anonymous Coward]

He jelly?

Re:Up Next...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah! I was about to post something like that.

Re:Up Next...

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo, that explains this!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooms

Not surprising

[PhrostyMcByte]

A friend of mine used to work as a deep diving welder. Things get pretty cold when you've got that much water between you and the sun, so they'd pump down warm water from the surface to let the divers stay under for as long as possible.

Some of the divers discovered they could get even warmer by sticking the hoses into the neck of their wetsuit. After a few weeks of doing so, a number of jellyfish swam near the surface. You can probably guess what happened next -- one of them got sucked into the pump and shot through the hose, straight down the back of his wetsuit and settling right between his legs.

It took a few days before he was able to walk after that, and probably a week more before he could do it comfortably. I guess he was lucky they weren't a more deadly variety, and that he had a buddy nearby to help him surface and remove his wetsuit.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story bro

Your story would go over better if it were not so obviously fabricated.
1) Deep waters welders: We almost always wear dry suits not wet suits.
2) When we do wear wetsuits (short shallow dives in warm water) we want the water in our suit to remain constant because our body heat warms it up and it is trapped inside the suit providing insulation. You would be stupid to break your seal to pump in other water as you would loose body heat that way.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a UL. Read it (and weep) on Snopes.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, no way the Master would move from up his neck to down between his legs and still have anything left to sting with.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You were kind to stop at #2

3) The hose would have to be at least 2.5" with an output pressure of 250 psi.

So this guy is now somehow welding underwater - with a full pressure fire hose in his wetsuit.

The water pressure would instantly rip his suit apart, rip his skin from his body, and toss him around like a man at the end of a 150' of high pressure flexible hose, with underwater welding gear, and breathing gas hoses, and his buddy in the same area.

The stinging cells of the jellyfish which are activated by the pressure of brushing against the skin, will have to survive ingestion by a high pressure, high volume pump and the trip down the 100'+ feet of hose down to the diver.

I just do not see it happening quite the way you say.

You would need enough 'warm' water around the guy to make a difference. We can be kind and call it a 'box' 4'x4'x8' = 128 cubic feet of water to warm to help the diver stay warm. This water is going to move quickly toward the surface, ambient temperature water will want to fill the void left by the rising water. The warm water will not simply rise, it will also move to the sides and the turbulence involved will cause mixing of the water and this will require an additional volume of warm water to be delivered to maintain a warm area around the diver. This is a total swag - but let's say it will need to be the equal of a 2.5" fire hose, running at something greater than 250 psi output pressure. ( I think this is a very conservative number as the water will need to be distributed across 16 square feet of surface area to form the box cross section ( and 250 psi will result in less than a 1 psi delta across 16 square feet of the bottom footprint of the area to be warmed, not even close to being enough to clear a column of water 8' tall.

  The pump for this effort would need to produce over 400 psi at the pump if the diver was at about 125' below the surface. To compensate for the weight of the water over the diver and losses in the hose.

To use a car analogy - it would be a fire truck

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

loose --or -- lose ??

lern sum enGlish, BITCH

lol (as in lots of loooove) y u righ T btw

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

1. To be fair, I wouldn't expect most people to be able to name the difference between a wetsuit or a drysuit. Wetsuit has a stronger presence in the lexicon, and drysuit not so much.

2. Now I'm no expert in the matter, but he said they pumped warm water into the suit, I can see that not causing the person to lose body heat.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever weld inside the nuclear reactor boiler on a nuclear submarine? They pump cold water in to prevent the person from boiling alive.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

and then the loose body heat would rattle around, causing unwanted vibrations in the wetsuit. Game over man .. game over.

Re:Not surprising

[ceoyoyo]

1. Dry suits are warmer and used in cold water. You'd have to be nuts to go to the trouble of rigging up some kind of warm water system if you could just use a dry suit. You can't just stick a hose into the neck of a dry suit because it's sealed. That's how it stays dry.

2. He said the water was pumped down, into the open. The divers "discovered" they could jam the hose into their wetsuits and stay even warmer.

So basically, to be fair, we shouldn't expect someone who doesn't know anything about diving to come up with a believable diving story.

I've seen these jellyfish "swarms"

[TheJodster]

This happened when I was out on my boat fishing last summer. It's the most amazing thing I think I've ever seen in salt water. They were everywhere as far as I could see with the water clarity being what it was. It would have been a very bad day to fall off the boat! That's a lot of tentacles in the water. I did not, however see a radioactive Super Jellyfish with psychic powers which saddens me a little.

US Navy vs Jellyfish

[ikedasquid]

Jellyfish clogging marine heat exchangers is a common problem at sea, but is of particular concern for US Naval vessels using nuclear propulsion. Typically the only fix is to open the exchanger and manually clean the stuff out. Some ships have a capability to flush with either low pressure steam or reverse flush with firemain water (although the firemain is now also likely to contain jellyfish). How these multi-billion dollar machines are designed without a method for removing dead jellyfish is beyond my comprehension.

Re:US Navy vs Jellyfish

[Anonymous Coward]

although the firemain is now also likely to contain jellyfish). How these multi-billion dollar machines are designed without a method for removing dead jellyfish is beyond my comprehension.

But they are designed with that in mind. The fire mains, you say? Repelling boarders is pretty easy when you can shoot jellyfish out of hoses at them.

Re:US Navy vs Jellyfish

[qwak23]

That's because an automated/mechanical means of removing jellyfish was not in the original contract write up. Oh, and it's not just the vessels with nuclear propulsion, pretty much every vessel sucks in water and thus marine life for various systems, most of the time it's not a huge issue, though in really shallow ports it can be.

Re:US Navy vs Jellyfish

[Hognoxious]

That would almost certainly be against the Geneva Convention.

Re:US Navy vs Jellyfish

[KDR_11k]

What would a military be without some messes for the new recruits to clean up by hand?

Re:US Navy vs Jellyfish

[splatter]

Not wanting to assume from the handle, What ship are / were you on?

Ike 92-96 1st div

Re:US Navy vs Jellyfish

[ikedasquid]

Well, you have a very good point there.

Bring in some Chinese chefs

[oldhack]

One thing we know how to do is kill stuff. One thing Chinese chefs know is to make dish out of almost anything.

Invite some Chinese chefs and take care of the bidnis.

Re:Bring in some Chinese chefs

[xs650]

I've eaten jellyfish in China. Reminded me of chewing on rubber bands without the flavor.

Re:Bring in some Chinese chefs

[RussR42]

OMFG!1 I've always liked rubber bands, except for the flavor!

Re:Bring in some Chinese chefs

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a common appetizer in Asia, not just China. If it is well prepared, the dish actually tastes fantastic. The one I tried was slightly sour and spicy. Nice!

This entire thread

[Anonymous Coward]

is this

In Non-Soviet-Japan, Jellyfish clog YOU!???

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, doesn't have the same ring to it.

All Hail Sosai X!

[eveversion4]

This reminds me of that episode of Gatchaman with the giant jellyfish lens monster that was created using polluted sea water.

Re:All Hail Sosai X!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gatchaman was the first major anime series to be exported to America, and still is the best. We need some good dubs made! :)

Jellyfish

[thr13z3]

Fcking Jellyfish, how do they work?

Re:Jellyfish

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They are actually just small regions where the seawater is held together in semi-solid form by magnetism...

Re:Jellyfish

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's an electric field held together by rubber bands that holds the jelly fish together.. Get your facts straight. Geez

Here's a BIT of detail...

[MagusSlurpy]

...since TFA had absolutely none whatsoever.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-japan-nuclear-jellyfish-idUSTRE75N0Z520110624

Re:Here's a BIT of detail...

[B Nesson]

And here is some detail on the non-nuclear, coal-fired Israeli power plant mentioned in TFA.

So I guess "Millions of Jellyfish Invade Nuclear Reactor." Not "Reactors."

I for one....

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome are squishy yet stingy overlords.

great!

[superwiz]

Now they are gonna blame any new problems in the nuclear reactor on the Israeli jellyfish.

Re:great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Zionist Jellyfish Hold Up Reactor

Nothing can get done around here until we do something about these amoral tentacled monsters trying to poison everyone. They must be purged, killed if necessary.

Re:great!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even worse! Dimona is in the middle of the Negev desert. Jellyfish that can travel across land - that is really scary.

Sea water for cooling?

[adolf]

IANANE (I Am Not A Nuclear Engineer), but why is raw sea water being used for cooling water, where it can be blocked by jellyfish?

Or raw lake water, for that matter? ISTR a similar almost-problem at the Davis Besse reactor in Ohio from the (invading) zebra mussel trying to plug things up.

Certainly both sea water and lake water are cheap and plentiful, but if using them allows living creatures to foul the works and cause actual problems (instead of simply costing more money) is it really worth the convenience?

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's for emergencies. If you can't handle an emergency at a nuclear power plant, the plant shuts down.

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[ikedasquid]

IAANE -- 2nd law of thermodynamics. That Carnot will get you every time. The plants need to dump about 60-75% of heat produced to reduce entropy. For plants of this size that is a considerable amount of energy. Dumping to seawater, river or lake water is easy, cheap, and typically a non issue. I'm not sure there are any other solutions that are better than what they are doing now, even with the sea critters clogging the condensers.

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[Runaway1956]

I think it's a multiple stage cooling system. The reactor's excess heat is transferred from the internal cooling loop, to ponds, the ponds are cooled by a separate cooling loop - into yet another pond? Then the pond is hooked up to an open ended system that pulls cool water from the sea, dumping warm water back into the sea. The reactor is isolated from the sea by a couple of stages, but ultimately, the excess heat has to go SOMEWHERE other than another closed loop system.

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[Omniscient Lurker]

The Shimane Nuclear Power Plant is a Boiling water reactor. This means it has two water loops in it. One is boiled by the reactor and turns a turbine. A second (probably from the sea in this case) is used to condense that steam and recycle it through the reactor. For any heat based power generation you need a final heat sink, usually the atmosphere (cooling towers) or a body of water for nuclear power plants; coal plants usually have an entirely open system and just go water source to air.

Most of Japan uses BWRs. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boiling_Water_Reactor

(I am a Nuclear Engineering Student)

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[Antisyzygy]

Thermal pollution has been a problem with nuclear power plants. Whenever you change the conditions in a chaotic system the results are not usually predictable. You may force the system into whole new orbits or it may fly away to some other orbit or it may just shoot off to infinite. Mathematically speaking that is. In this case, warm water expelled from the plant caused lifeforms that do well in warm water to do better. They started moving closer to the source because they thrive in even warmer water yet. There are numerous other problems this warm water in an otherwise stable environment caused, but the only one the news is talking about is the one that directly affects humans over + or - 2 weeks.

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[Anonymous Coward]

If your plant is sited near a massive body of cool water, why wouldn't you use it to cool off your plant? Of course, maybe they intentionally site large power plants to be near large bodies of water so they can be used for cooling. I'm sure other types of power plants have similar problems, but it's more newsworthy when it's a nuke plant.

dom

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[adolf]

If your plant is sited near a massive body of cool water, why wouldn't you use it to cool off your plant?

Because the interface for that relatively cool body of water can become readily clogged with jellyfish and/or zebra mussels, as has actually happened in the really real world?

Did you have an actual retort or vindication for the concept, AC, or are you just restating what I already declared as being obvious?

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[The Master Control P]

If you can come up with some other economical way for a typical 2-reactor plant to dump 6 gigawatts of leftover heat, by all means share.

I admit I'd be curious to see the calculations for a forced air cooled heat exchanger... it'd need to draw in roughly 50000 cubic meters of air per second, assuming an exhaust temp of 120*c is acceptable.

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[climb_no_fear]

I guess a giant radiator (i.e., closed loop) in the ocean as the last step would be ridiculously expensive.

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[Runaway1956]

Even a closed loop radiator in the ocean would depend on water flowing through it, again, into an open ended system. And - what exactly attracts those pesky jellyfish? The heat? So - the jellyfish drape themselves over and around the ridiculously expensive gargantuan radiators - and we're right back to re-telling the story in the summary. Hmmm - no net gain there, sorry!

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[Anonymous Coward]

sell it? Several modern power plants around here use their excess heat to provide residential block heating.

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[Stevecrox]

Depending on the radioactivity of the water, I can think of a couple of uses. You could build a smaller generator station and use the energy of the water to pump it through a generator. By passing it through another lower pressure generator you would take a lot of the heat out of the water. Or you could use it to heat local homes/businesses (similar to Geothermal heating).

Sure dumping in to the ocean has to remain an option but why waste all of that energy?

Re:Sea water for cooling?

[amorsen]

Non-nuclear power plants generally have thermodynamic efficiencies of at least 50% these days. Nuclear plants tend to run at low temperatures so their thermodynamic efficiency is crap and therefore the need for cooling is extreme.

One target for modern nuclear reactor design is higher operating temperatures to reduce the need for cooling and save fuel.

Jellyfish Heaven

[mnot]

Jellyfish heaven
In the big blue sea
Where it's too cold to surf
And it's too warm to ski
Jellyfish Heaven
Is full of dead
Jellyfish

People always saying
"I won't eat jellyfish
'Cause they ain't got no bones
And you can't make a wish"
People always shouting
"Don't go swimming near those things!"
But when they're close to dying
You can hear them sing

Jellyfish heaven
Is not like Japan
Jellyfish heaven
Is not like Thailand
Jellyfish heaven
Is a lot
Like LA

Re:Jellyfish Heaven

[Alien Being]

That's beautiful. Demented, but beautiful.

Where the hell is Aquaman when you need him?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he could take these jelly fish out with some peanut butter fish.

Re:Where the hell is Aquaman when you need him?

[Culture20]

He's probably the one who ordered them to do it. That filthy Green Atlantean terrorist sends sea life to their deaths with his telepathic compulsions all the time.

The Pokémon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lot's of them are gonna die at the Pokémon center if the power doesn't come back soon!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLu84a1Mywg#t=3m21s
(skip to 3:45 to omit the introduction; if only the episode featured Tentacool/Tentacruel instead if Grimer/Muk)

In Scotland too

[Anonymous Coward]

Two weeks ago the Torness nuclear plant in Scotland has also been closed due to jellyfish clogging the water filters http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-13971005

The message is clear

[Progman3K]

SHUT
DOWN
EVERYTHING
Seriously, I think the planet is trying to to tell us "You can't contain the nuclear garbage you're making, stop it"

Re:The message is clear

[Anonymous Coward]

Start with your Internet connection and the power supply feeding your web browser.

Re:The message is clear

[Anonymous Coward]

mhmm. cuz you know, the earth isnt full of naturally radioactive things. we just move a tiny fraction around.

Re:The message is clear

[rubycodez]

There is no such message, and anthromorphizing a dead rock in space with a molten center, or the biosphere, is just a psychosis.

The spent fuel isn't garbage, it's a gold mine of energy that we can use later to get seven times more power than we have thus far extracted, leaving behind isotopes that will decay on a short scale.

If we stopped power generation as you suggest, human life span would drop to half or more its current value. Overall the industrial age has blessed us with more life, health and happiness. But if you want to rip off your clothes and go foraging in a forest or field for the remainder of your (35 - x) years, x being your age, be my guest. Of course, if you're over 35, thanks to modern technology, I expect you to play fair and kill yourself immediately.

Re:The message is clear

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the planet talk to you a lot lately?

Re:The message is clear

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly hippy how did you discover the internet?

Re:The message is clear

[ctid]

Why do you think that the planet is trying to tell us anything? If the planet is trying to communicate with us, why does it use swarms of jellyfish as its medium?

Re:The message is clear

[FrootLoops]

If the planet can control jellyfish to send us a message... why doesn't it just control us? People don't go far enough when idealizing their world. "In a perfect world, I could have both steak and pasta!" No, in a perfect world, even if you still needed to eat, you wouldn't need to limit yourself to just those two choices. Since it's perfect, you wouldn't make the mistake of limiting yourself either.

Re:The message is clear

[cowboy76Spain]

Yes, anthromorphizing the planet is a bad thing.

I mean, it is just a big rock falling into the sun (and missing).

It could not care less about if he can sustain or not an environment for some life forms. Life forms famous in the galaxy for only being able of either thinking "OMG we are all gonna die" or thinking "These changes do not affect to ME and automagically everything is going to be ok always".

Re:The message is clear

[riverat1]

If you listen, yes it does. Probably not in a language you would recognize though.

Re:The message is clear

[B Nesson]

So by "nuclear garbage," are you also referring to the coal-fired Israeli power plant ambiguously mentioned in TFA? Are you advocating stopping all electricity generation?

Re:The message is clear

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of 'EVERYTHING' did you not understand?

Been done before

[norriefc]

Japanese copying Scotland again Actually I'm not sure when they have done it before but I'm sure they have /Scottish

Re:Been done before

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Japanese copying Scotland again Actually I'm not sure when they have done it before but I'm sure they have

Three words: Japanese bagpipe music.

Re:Been done before

[norriefc]

I don't ever want to hear that. Our bagpipes are bad enough as it is.

chinas program is an utter failure

[decora]

they have profoundly disrupted the balance between male and female, leading to social unrest and massive mental health problems.

the idea that there is insufficient land is bogus as long as we are paying farmers to not grow things. there is plenty of food, the problem is distribution and marketing. we throw away food every day from supermarkets and restaurants, and people go to jail if they try to dig in the trash for food to eat. there is no food shortage, there is a shortage of low-priced food, and that has nothing to do with the supply of land (except maybe as it relates to ethanol). it has to do with things like the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index Fund and other investment banks and hedge funds attempts to manipulate food markets for profit . . . something that is very old, a good 20th century example being the potato market and NYMEX.

the problem with 'population control' is that someone has to decide what 'sort of people' are 'better' - nobody who thinks they know the answer to that should ever be in any position of power because it is amongst the basest, most primitive and violent impulses of the human species, to 'wipe out the other clan'.

see also. eugenics. t4. genetic health courts. etc etc.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[mrxak]

You're exactly right, that we produce enough food to feed everyone. Inadequate packaging and storage, as well as inadequate distribution channels, corrupt governments, and plain old poverty keeps a lot of it getting to where it needs to go. Much of it spoils before reaching market and much of it gets used as a political and social weapon.

Just recently the UN FAO said we need to double our food output by 2050, when population is expected to reach 9 billion. Well, ignoring the fact that math doesn't make sense, it's missing the point. We can produce food for 6.5 billion right now. Production will need to increase to meet the demands of another 2.5 billion people, but the problem isn't production and never was. So long as there isn't enough refrigeration, pest-resistent procedures and packaging, and the roads and governments in place to distribute it adequately, production is irrelevant.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Hognoxious]

the idea that there is insufficient land is bogus as long as we are paying farmers to not grow things.

You might be able to use it now, but that might make it completely unusable in future. Land needs to recover, they'd worked that out in the middle ages.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[omfgnosis]

the idea that there is insufficient land is bogus as long as we are paying farmers to not grow things.

That's only logically true if the land on which nothing is grown could replace the food that is being grown on land that is being cleared (for instance, in the Amazon) for food production. The amount of land subsidized not to grow is about 34 million acres. From various sources, I'm seeing anywhere from 6 to 47 million acres of Amazon rainforest alone being cleared for food production each year. Taking the lowest figure for granted, that 34 million acres of unfarmed land could effectively produce "sustainably" (in place of clearing forest land) for six years. And that's assuming an acre is an acre and equally capable of producing food. All of this takes a lot of assumptions I'm not comfortable with, about whether current production levels are even remotely necessary, about quite a lot of things. But the "paying farmers not to grow" argument is just far too facile for me to ignore anymore; the fact is, sustainable food production requires a certain amount of land per person, and it requires certain features of land that need to be maintained over a period of time. Adding more people adds more burden to that requirement. And it adds more burden to the land, which once depleted stops producing.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Zumbs]

the idea that there is insufficient land is bogus as long as we are paying farmers to not grow things.

You might be able to use it now, but that might make it completely unusable in future. Land needs to recover, they'd worked that out in the middle ages.

... which is why modern farming use fertilizers ;-) Oil is a key ingredient in making fertilizers, so if we ever should burn out our oil supply, we better find an alternative, though. Mulching is not enough.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[dvice_null]

Some alternatives:
- South-America's ancient cultures used charcoal (which they made by burning trees without oxygen) as a fertilizer.
- In ancient Egypt they used floods of the Nile to fertilize their fields.
- In several places volcanic ashes have been used.
- Also animal dung has been used as a fertilizer.
- It is also effective to use different plants in different years as they have slightly different needs.
- One should also remember that currently a lot of fertilizer is going with the rain down to the sea, where it causes problems. So fixing this problem would also help.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Anonymous Coward]

they have profoundly disrupted the balance between male and female, leading to social unrest and massive mental health problems.

the idea that there is insufficient land is bogus as long as we are paying farmers to not grow things. there is plenty of food, the problem is distribution and marketing. we throw away food every day from supermarkets and restaurants, and people go to jail if they try to dig in the trash for food to eat. there is no food shortage, there is a shortage of low-priced food, and that has nothing to do with the supply of land (except maybe as it relates to ethanol). it has to do with things like the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index Fund and other investment banks and hedge funds attempts to manipulate food markets for profit . . . something that is very old, a good 20th century example being the potato market and NYMEX.

the problem with 'population control' is that someone has to decide what 'sort of people' are 'better' - nobody who thinks they know the answer to that should ever be in any position of power because it is amongst the basest, most primitive and violent impulses of the human species, to 'wipe out the other clan'.

see also. eugenics. t4. genetic health courts. etc etc.

Do you work for Monsanto?

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[rtb61]

We produce enough food, is hardly a sound reason to continue reproducing to the point were we do not produce enough food. At the moment with by far the majority having a bare minimum of access to the resources we exploit and produce, those resources are already being stretched to their limits.

So any judgements should be based upon an equitable share, we all gain pretty much equal access to the resources of the planet, defining what limits need to be put in place to ensure long term livability for human society. Basing decisions on the majority basically living in poverty with only limited access to resources and even then still stealing from future generations to feed the greed of a tiny minority, is pretty much the insanity of psychopaths.

It's not like there's a shortage of humans and some reasonable population controls should not be put in place. Numbers and quality are all reasonable considerations, just because those concepts were abused by a bunch of psychopaths in one war does not end their importance in solving a real existing and growing problem (we do not have enough when the vast majority, billions, live in poverty just barely hand to mouth, whilst a tiny majority wallow in wasteful polluting luxury).

Why is a licence to breed and raise future citizens such a challenging idea, those future generations obviously have a right of protection from bad parenting and if you accept the spirit or soul a reasonably healthy and competitive carcass in which to exist (able, agile, socially adept and intellectually capable).

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[drinkypoo]

... which is why modern farming use fertilizers ;-) Oil is a key ingredient in making fertilizers, so if we ever should burn out our oil supply, we better find an alternative, though. Mulching is not enough.

The problem however is that using the land for oil fertilizers kills the soil and makes it incapable of growing food crops again without massive infusions of some other fertilizer. The other problem is that we currently waste the best fertilizer we have — our poop! It should not be called waste, but that's what we do with it in the developed world.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Pharmboy]

You might be surprised to know that we don't throw away all human waste.

We buy tandom truck loads (~10 cubic yards) of recycled waste from the waste treatment plant for $125 delivered, consisting of composted wood chips, leaves and sterilized human waste sludge. Many municipalities all over the US sell it. Cost varies from $10 to $15 a yard. This is only slightly cheaper than regular compost, at $15 to $20 a yard. We stack it up and let it "cook off" for another year before using in the garden, although it isn't actually required. This is deep, rich black compost that works perfectly to condition soil for lawns or gardens, and is far superior to standard "compost" you buy due to a higher manure content.

I have also seen people buy just the sterilized effluent for spray fertilizing fields for animal feed. Very powerful stuff. Many waste treatment plants are expanding their ability to produce, as it is a profitable venture, which is reflecting in the fact that the price has gone up as demand has, at least here in North Carolina.

So we don't actually waste our poop in America, like others believe. It is rapidly becoming a PROFITABLE product that makes the community money and reduces landfill usage. We still aren't doing this with all human waste, but we are well on our way as it is rapidly gaining acceptance. If my little town of 20k people are doing it, then any city can. I would be shocked if 90% of human waste isn't done this way within 10 or so years, as it makes money, grows great plants, and costs less than landfilling the material.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[drinkypoo]

So we don't actually waste our poop in America, like others believe. It is rapidly becoming a PROFITABLE product that makes the community money and reduces landfill usage.

There are a couple problems with this though. One is that the process is incredibly wasteful. Another is that it is only done in a tiny minority of cases. Most of the time it's just landfilled or even incinerated. And even where it is not the processing is horribly wasteful, even though there are alternatives, like AIWPS or simply using composting toilets which are as simple as can be and which save water to boot.

Small towns are overwhelmingly more likely to be using a rational process because the money in doing it the wrong way is mostly in large installations.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[jbengt]

They used to sell sewage treatment plant "sludge" around here, but there was a problem because the municipal waste system can't really control what is dumped into the sewers. The sludge was found to be contaminated with heavy metals and other toxic wastes and was determined to be not suitable for use in farming or private gardens.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Will.Woodhull]

The assumption that there is plenty of land and ample resources to grow enough to feed the world is bogus.

Modern agricultural practices destroy the native soil ecosystems and make the farms increasingly dependent on fertilizers and other additives to stay in production. At this point, in the USA, farmers who raise corn are only using the dirt to hold the stalks up. It takes 7 calories or more of petrochemicals to grow 1 calorie of corn. The need for additional chemical applications increases every year as the soil is degraded; much of what was once some of the most fertile land anywhere in the world could not now grow any marketable crop on its own.

There are sustainable farming practices that nurture the soil and can actually strengthen the ecosystem. However none of these methods could meet today's need for food, let alone the calories that all of today's squalling babies will need when they become teenagers ten years from now.

Our food factory is being run like a some Mississippi riverboat in a race to the New Orleans docks. Where rather than stopping to take on firewood and lose the race, the captain has ordered the crew to rip up the planks to stoke the boiler's furnace. Except one way or another, the riverboat race will come to an end and everyone involved will go back to a normal life. Many of you who read this will not have that luxury of looking ahead to a normal life. (The rest of us will be pushing up daisies long before 2050.)

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[jbeaupre]

You may be interested in this:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=phosphorus-a-looming-crisis

The full article is behind a paywall, but one conclusion is we need to recycle sewage.

Thank you for doing your part.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[DNS-and-BIND]

So how many greenhouse gases are released during this "cooking off" period? How many carbon credits did you buy? None, right?

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[riverat1]

It doesn't matter. The greenhouse gases released during this process were already in the active carbon cycle unlike the ones released from burning fossil fuels.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[DNS-and-BIND]

Ah, gotcha. I knew there was some pat explanation of why this was all OK. All ahead with more fertilizer to make more food, so we can make more humans! What a great idea!

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[riverat1]

That was not my point at all. The greenhouse gases released by the decomposition of organic material came from greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere that the organic material absorbed while it was growing. As such it was already in the carbon cycle. That of course ignores the caloric input from fossil fuels used to grow and process that organic material.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Pharmboy]

So how many greenhouse gases are released during this "cooking off" period? How many carbon credits did you buy? None, right?

What are you, an idiot? It would be cooking off forever in a landfill. Now it is actually nourishing plants that capture carbon, causing them to grow more (ie: capture MORE carbon), and create edible food that was created with NO pesticides, almost NO herbicides, and causes less pollution overall when compared to commercially grown food.

"Cooking off" simply means to allow to compost even longer, to break down more. (it creates a lot of steam and heat when you compost, hence the expression.) Does it create methane and CO2? A little, but less than if it was in a landfill forever, and lowers the need for landfills to boot. Composting is how nature turns garbage into plants and trees, usually without our assistance. How you can see that as bad for the environment is beyond me, it is a natural process of the environment.

And I'm an American. We don't buy or sell carbon credits, on purpose. They aren't the solution, proper recycling (like this) is. Consuming less is. Sitting on a throne and judging others isn't.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[nukenerd]

Quoting Decora :

the idea that there is insufficient land is bogus as long as we are paying farmers to not grow things. there is plenty of food

Ever watched "Soylent Green"?

In fact GP did not mention food. Whether he meant to or not, the concern is not just about food, but for many reasons.

Take living space. In the UK there is now an oppressive sense of overcrowding almost every where you go. The south east and midlands are becoming one huge connurbation in which the remaining green areas (including what used to be "The Green Belt") are battlegrounds between developers and conservationists, battles the moneyed developers almost always win. Journeys I made only 10 years ago through pleasant countryside are now though vast new tracts of housing, with much more traffic accordingly. I find this population growth frightening.

Am I the only person who likes some personal space, quiet and solitude sometimes? Am I the only one who hates siting in traffic jams, waiting in queues, being almost in shoulder-to-shoulder contact with people in the street, and having to park-and-ride with thousands of others to complete the journey to any location considered attractive?

I have friends, with professional jobs but not so well off, who can only afford tiny accomodation - in modern 'rabbit hutches' or older houses divided into multiple bed-sits. Those older houses were actually built for a single working class family 100 years ago, but now accomodate two or three different "professional" couples or individuals. And I see the mental strain caused by this overcrowding - noise issues, parking issues, bathroom-sharing issues, rubbish (trash) collection issues, and plain lack of space for their own 'things'.

To hell with the overcrowded world you seem to want.

the problem with 'population control' is that someone has to decide what 'sort of people' are 'better'

So what would you leave it to - until the entire mass of the universe has been converted to human biomass? Or would you call it a day at some earlier point? I have practiced 'population control' myself. It is called contraception. WTF have ideas about a 'better sort of people' got to do with it?

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Pharmboy]

Supply and demand. Right now, the smaller plants are getting near capacity for producing the compost. My town, Lexington, NC (20k) is currently expanding their capacity to produce more. They will still have the space and capacity to produce more, and they can sell the stuff easily (great for golf courses, btw). What will they do?

They accept for free, the surplus solid waste from Greensboro (250k) or Winston-Salem (175k) both of which are 30 minutes away. Both cities are out of landfill area, no one wants one in their backyard, and it will be cheaper to sell it to the smaller cities in the burbs who have a market for it. It is only a matter of routing the trucks full of waste to here, instead of the landfill. The fuel they expend (minimal distance) will be less than the cost of dumping the waste in the landfill (fees are high).

I didn't mention this, but this is also taking the bags of leaves, chips and clippings that normally get put in the landfill, and putting them to work as well. They were already composting some of it, but now anything that can be composted, is. It is amazing how much landfill space can be saved with both "ingredients" being kept out. Even if the compost isn't used commercially, there is a lot of demand by landscapers, home gardeners, golf courses, etc. and the more people know about it, the higher the demand is going.

In short, capitalism will end up fixing the problem. It isn't always fast, but it does work, and it will in this case because the "product" is better than average and priced lower than average, yet still very profitable. Ironically, it is the lack of landfill space that started the composting, but it was the eventual consumer acceptance that is fueling the growth.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[ToddInSF]

We dont waste the poop, but we should. Given all the toxins, pharmacological/radioactive crap in human waste, it's just a matter of time before the cumulative pollution of arable lands reaches dangerous levels across the board.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[AmiMoJo]

I don't think we will get to 9 billion. Even countries like India have realised that keeping population under control is key to prosperity and as quality of life improves people generally have fewer children anyway. In order from them to climb out of poverty they will have to produce fewer kids, and until they do there is no chance that all 1B+ Indian citizens living in poverty now will get out of it.

China's solution is radical but it is going to take something like that to do it.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Methuseus]

And they also knew about crop rotation, by which you grow different crops each year/season and the land never goes unused. But in 3 years time you can grow, say, wheat there again, when you were growing something else there the past 3 years.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Methuseus]

Talk to Indian farmers. They were given the GMO crops that produced more food, but in the past 15-20 years they have gone back to the farming they've done for thousands of years. And they are having an even easier time feeding lots of Indian people as they did when using the GMO crops. Sustainable farming can and does provide food in large quantities. Yes there are starving people in India, but it's not an issue of the amount of food, but distribution.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Hognoxious]

One of those "different crops" you refer to is, in fact, nothing. So at any given time roughly a third is out of use.

Did you think "fallow" is a plant?

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Human waste contains (relatively) high amounts of heavy metals.. and requires a lot of expensive filtering and processing in order to be even remotely safe to use as a fertilizer.

Read up on Night Soil sometime.

Re:chinas program is an utter failure

[Methuseus]

Sorry, been a while since I read up on it, but I'm sure you're right. If you can grow (close to) enough food for everyone and not have to use tons of fertilizer produced by a wasteful process, isn't that a good idea? And the fallow land makes a good place to raise sheep, cows, and chickens somewhat free-range.

Right out of fiction

[Daetrin]

So we've got a creature with tentacles infiltrating a nuclear power plant in japan. All we need now is for them to get exposed to some of the radiation and we'll be all set for some real live bad hentai.

Re:Right out of fiction

[MrQuacker]

Its Japan, nothing a bunch of scantily clad Japanese schoolgirls cant handle.

Re:Right out of fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

So we've got a creature with tentacles infiltrating a nuclear power plant in japan.

No, the summary says the power plant is infiltrating the jellyfish....

A nuclear reactor in Japan was forced to shut down due to infiltration of enormous swarms of jellyfish near the power plant.

yeah but i love McDonalds fish filet

[decora]

shrug.

did you see american idol last night?

Re:yeah but i love McDonalds fish filet

[Antisyzygy]

I don't really care to watch shit as it slides down sandpaper.

Hey.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not surprisingly, it's Japan. I think the jelly must really like not the heat, nor the sushi, but the radioactivity.

This is not flamebait

[turing_m]

How is this flamebait? What Tablizer says is true. The fish that are the normal predators of jellyfish have been overfished, along with a lot of the smaller fish they feed on. What results is an abundance of the food that jellyfish eat along with an absence of predators (including the human predator), which causes a surge in jellyfish numbers.

Re:This is not flamebait

[Tablizer]

An article about the jellyfish boom:

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-08-world-oceans-jellyfish

Re:This is not flamebait

[gblfxt]

don't piss off the japanese!

Re:This is not flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this flamebait?

What he wrote *is* flaimbait for Japanese fishing people (regulators and fishers). What they maintain is that it is whales that eat all the fish in the oceans. And I'm not joking. See here,

http://www.whalesanctuary.co.uk/2009/08/who-eats-all-fish.html

I can't find the original as it seems to have been deleted from the Japanese fisheries website. Most people in Japan are totally oblivious that there is any possibility of overfishing. And that is from a nation that eats 10% of all the fish caught each year in the world.

It's obvious

[93 Escort Wagon]

Nuclear reactors running amuck, millions of jellyfish swarming to stop them - this is just a promotional gimmick for the next Hayao Miyazaki film.

Re:It's obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

ponyo was not that good.

It is flamebait because some don't want to hear

[SmallFurryCreature]

The flamebait or troll mod is not there to catch flamebait or trolls but to label things as "I don't want to hear this". Take tuna, it is easy to see it is over fished as it has become harder and harder to catch. The people who want to continue catching with no restrictions don't even bother denying it, they just don't want to deal with it. They want their tuna now, if that means no tuna tomorrow, so be it.

Call Samus Aran!

[MeatoBurrito]

It is now obvious that Metriod is actually a warning from the future!

These aren't Jellyfish: they're eating Energy.

[Anonymous Coward]

They're eating Energy at a rate that proves they aren't anything other than Metroids.

Of'course, Shamus Aran is somewhere in the Pennsylvania Dutch fields among the Native American bird-people, training
under the master at containing the Metroids: Spongebob Squarepants.

Catholics

[sourcerror]

" all of Islam, all of the Catholic people, and much of the third world no matter their religion, politics, or anything else."

You mean like Italy (total fertility rate:1.3), Spain (1.3), Hungary (1.3), Slovakia(1.3), Turkey (2.15), Algeria (1.75)?

But hey, don't bother with the facts!

Re:Catholics

[Runaway1956]

Facts, you say? Why are the indigenous populations of much of northern Europe being overrun by Islamic "immigrants"? Them muslims are outfucking the white boys, simple as that. Why is the US being overrun by Latin Americans? The Catholics are outfucking the white boys.

Maybe white boys are just to queer to compete?

Re:Catholics

[sourcerror]

Because they come from third world countries?

Re:Catholics

[Runaway1956]

AND because the Pope discourages birth control. Come on, man - good Catholics do as they are told. The pope says it is God's will that every woman has a dozen babies or more. She's supposed to spread those legs every time her man points a stiff one at her, no questions asked.

Re:Catholics

[sourcerror]

95% of Italy and Spain, 90% of Poland, 68% of Slovakia are Catholics, however they all have a total fertility rate of around 1.3 per woman, thus refuting your point.

Re:Catholics

[Runaway1956]

Not refuted at all. You're pointing at four countries, each the size of a US state. I'm looking at the world. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that the Catholics in Mexico, Central, and South America outnumber all other Catholics world wide. I could be wrong about that - if so, I'll eat some humble pie. I DO know that Mexico is so overpopulated that they barely eked out subsistence level living fifteen years ago. Now, with NAFTA, they cannot do so any longer. The corporations are competing against small family farms, and the family farms can't continue.

Re:Catholics

[Sique]

No single U.S. state has the size of Italy, Spain or Poland. The largest population has California, which comes pretty close to Poland (36 mio inhabitants vs. 38 mio), Spain (47 mio) and Italy (60 mio) are much larger. And even if small Hungary was an U.S. state it came in at number 9 overall, with 10 mio inhabitants larger than Georgia and North Carolina.

So your point was, that you don't have any good estimation of european population sizes, right?

Re:Catholics

[Runaway1956]

Lemme think a second. The EU has a population of roughlty 400 million. The US has a population of roughly 350 million. So - the EU has about 14% more population than the US. Roughly speaking, of course.

Anyway, I said "the size of a US state". Let's see what we get with sizes.

On the European side, we have the top five:
Russia: 6,592,771 square miles
Turkey: 302,535 square miles
Ukraine: 233,090 square miles
France: 211,209 square miles
Spain: 194,897 square miles

On the American side, we have the top five:
Alaska: 663,267 sq mi
Texas: 268,580 sq mi
California: 163,695 sq mi
Montana: 147,042 sq mi
New Mexico: 121,589 sq mi

With the exception of Russia, roughly ten times the size of Alaska, all of your nations are about the size of a US state.

Pretty picture to look at here: http://goeurope.about.com/od/europeanmaps/l/bl-country-size-comparison-map.htm

Re:Catholics

[drawfour]

You're off by a little bit. According to Wikipedia, summing up South America, Central America, Caribbean, Cuba, and Mexico, there are a total of 451,655,584 Catholics out of 1,082,368,942 worldwide. So it's about 41% of the Catholic population that are in the Americas (excluding Canada and US). Even if you include the US and Canada (539,745,532 total), it's just under half of the total worldwide population of Catholics (49.93%).

Re:Catholics

[Runaway1956]

Oh, very well. Pass me the humble pie. ;^)

Re:Catholics

[Sique]

We were talking about populations. Most U.S. states are large, because they have large deserts and steppes (hey, even the Prairie was called "Great American Desert" before the big settlement trecks started).
How pointing out large swats thinly or not inhabited land does refute an argument about low reproduction rates in mainly catholic countries, will remain a mystery.

Re:Catholics

[Hognoxious]

You seem to use Europe and EU as if they are synonyms. They are not.

Just for the record, of the European top five you mention one is definitely in Asia, two arguably are, and three are not in the EU.

Also, you've randomly switched the subject from population to land area. Nice try, but no cigar.

This was the plot of "Ponyo"

[ScentCone]

At least I think this was the "Ponyo" plot. It's very difficult to figure out what that was actually about. Sometimes I think that animated Japanese films stray, just a bit, from conventional western story telling forms. A bit.

Jellyfish + nuclear reactor in Japan?

[agoliveira]

Here comes Jellyzilla!

This story is True!!!one!

[FatLittleMonkey]

I knew the same guy. He was later found dead, still in his wetsuit, hundreds of miles from the sea, in the middle of an area of burnt out bushland. The FBI believe that a water bomber must scooped him out of a lake where he was working... Bizarrely, his wife found a series of missed calls on her phone from his cell number, but the timestamp was hours after he died!

Re:This story is True!!!one!

[QA]

I knew the same guy. He was later found dead, still in his wetsuit, hundreds of miles from the sea, in the middle of an area of burnt out bushland. The FBI believe that a water bomber must scooped him out of a lake where he was working... Bizarrely, his wife found a series of missed calls on her phone from his cell number, but the timestamp was hours after he died!

That was just a News of the World reporter......

Re:This story is True!!!one!

[FoolishOwl]

Not long afterwards, the widow died of brain cancer from using a mobile phone.

Re:This story is True!!!one!

[Douglas Goodall]

But her son survived because he was wearing his tinfoil hat to prevent alien mind control rays from taking over his higher functions.

Just crank up the blenders...

[trum4n]

...i mean pumps, yea, pumps.

Jellyfish shut down file sharing?!?

[Overzeetop]

Damn. I read that as the Torrent reactor.

Enormous swarms of jellyfish

[Arancaytar]

Thanks to mutation, soon to become swarms of enormous jellyfish.

Sounds like the Jellies have been reading...

[ukemike]

Sounds like the Jellies have been reading about Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

"Run like it's Godzilla....."

[deggy]

You see - this is how it starts.

All flee before the super-mutated radioactive jellyfish. The Blob is coming.....

Double annihilation benefit

[hcs_$reboot]

Jellyfish + Powerplant = 0

Torness, yep, and also Israel apparently

[Dogtanian]

The Torness reactor was shut down on June 28th because jellyfish clogged the seawater inlet filters.

I was going to mention that until I noticed you already had, and while searching the BBC site for a story link, I also saw that an Israeli nuclear plant was threatened by jellyfish less than a week ago.

Either this sort of thing is very common, there's something happening that makes it common just now (aside from the fact it's summer, else we'd be hearing about it every year), or it's pure coincidence.

Tuff Voyaging

[Anonymous Coward]

Mudpots?

overcrowding doesnt come from 'too many people'

[decora]

it comes from people being forced out of rural areas and into concentrated centers because of politics, economics, warfare, and corruption.

why are there millions in refugee camps in africa? because of wars, often funded by corrupt 'developed' nations to extract natural resources and prop up dictators. and they use weapons from the 'developed' nations to do it. people used to be spread out in rural areas - then like in sudan, militias go around committing genocide and the people flee to centralized population centers.

why is england full of immigrants? because the corrupt nature of countries like Iran or Pakistan doesnt allow people to escape poverty there, so they flee.

why are american cities full of central and south american immigrants? because mexico and south america have too much violence and not enough jobs. why? because they are corrupt societies that have not enough opportunity for honest work, and too much opportunity for corruption and crime.

why are rural areas of america emptying of people? there are no jobs, and people cannot afford to live there. they move to cities.

none of these migrations are caused by 'too many people', they are caused by social and political choices made by the leaders of society - - to allow corruption, to allow things that prevent people from living in rural areas, etc etc etc.

nobody forced you to use contraception, and if you had an 'accident', no government agent would force your wife to have an abortion.

you naturally chose it because you are a knowledgable person. the answer then is to provide more people with opportunities to become knowledgable and educated, not to knock their doors down and arrest them for fucking.

Re:overcrowding doesnt come from 'too many people'

[nukenerd]

it comes from people being forced out of rural areas and into concentrated centers because of politics, economics, warfare, and corruption.

why are rural areas of america emptying of people? there are no jobs, and people cannot afford to live there. they move to cities.

I guess by "it" you mean the overcrowding in cities. I am talking about what I see in the UK, and I assure you that there is no emptying of rural areas here these days. There was in the 18th and 19th centuries, but not now. You do not have to go far in (what was) the countryside in the UK to see new houses being built by the 1000's.

UK readers might take a look by the M4, Jcn 15-16 as Swindon expands into green fields, and around Andover, Basingstoke, Brackley. In my lifetime new "housing" cities have sprung up in what were totally rural areas, usually named after a village or small town it has swallowed : Milton Keynes, Thornbury, Nailsea, Cambourne. I am just naming some places which I pass. Away from any town or village, former stables, cowsheds and barns are converted (if they are of brick or stone - it's an industry) to commuter homes (adding rural traffic). The cows and corn are moved to pre-fab buildings - if they survive, as the farmer makes more money from the rents than he ever did farming.

why are there millions in refugee camps in africa? because of wars, often funded by corrupt 'developed' nations to extract natural resources and prop up dictators. [etc etc]

Not sure what this has to do with the subject of world overcrowding. You seem to have a thing about corrupt dictators.

why is england full of immigrants? because the corrupt nature of countries like Iran or Pakistan doesnt allow people to escape poverty there, so they flee.

The immigrants I meet were never that poor (I do not think the poorest can afford the ticket) and not at all "oppressed", although they usually come expecting more sex and money. Many, or most, are disappointed. I know one with a degree who works now as a cleaner. When I ask why they came the answer is "To get on I needed to learn English, so came to England", but now they seem stuck here. To be honest, I do not think most of them really know why they come : more like a feeling they want to be near the centre of things, in a world sense.

One came (from Czechoslovakia, 1968) for the much vaunted "freedom". He described his feeling on reaching the UK as : first euphoria (lasted 4 weeks), then disappointment (that he had no more freedom in UK than where he came from, in many ways less), and finally the resignation that he had been chasing a chimera. As for democracy, he said it was western bullshit that the then communist Czech was a single party state : their elections offered a wide choice of parties, but all had virtually the same policies - just like the UK then.

none of these migrations are caused by 'too many people', they are caused by social and political choices made by the leaders of society - - to allow corruption, to allow things that prevent people from living in rural areas, etc etc etc.

You put everything down to corruption. But there are many worsening factors in the world which have nothing to do with corruption, and many of these get worse as population increases, because land area and natural resources do not increase in line. Physical things like the efficiency of electrical distribution will go down as copper is used up. I have to spend a lot of my time painting external woodwork - a man in 1600 would not have needed to, because joinery was then made of oak, but then the expanding population used up oak faster than it grew. Just examples. And friction between people increases with population levels, both at international and local levels.

I submit that there there is an optimum level of population, which most countries have already greatly exceeded.

Dr. Who episode

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure this was already covered in a Dr. Who episode..

didnt you know

[hesaigo999ca]

I heard birds can see pathways in the air for cold and hot air masses in order to know where to glide...i am sure the jelly fish somewhat do the same thing in water, trying to see where the warmest and maybe coolest parts are to navigate, and all saw the reactors as extremely hot, and maybe thought this is a good place to be for a quick rest....and swarmed the heat (nuclear reactor) thinking it would be a good idea for them.

JellyNET

[Anonymous Coward]

A new form of malware out of Iran.