I figure that you really can't call the first ones to get here (whether via the Bering Strait land passage way back when or pre-Eric the Red) aren't immigrants - they're not joining an existing population. Sure' they could be called emigrants from their previous home, and they could be called migrants, but they weren't immigrants - there was no existing society for them to immigrate to (or join, or merge with, or whatever).
The US is still at 2.1, which, if it gets its' health care system to start working properly and lowers infant mortality to the rest of the Western world, will be well above zero growth.
Then again, what are the chances the US will adopt a sane public health care plan when there's billions of dollars being funneled to politicians' campaigns?
I'm lucky - I never smoked, never wanted to, and never will want to. Some of my sisters do, and they've all gone from "I can quit any time" to "I'm addicted" to "Don't bother me - it's the one thing I enjoy in life." I'm the oldest, but I'll probably outlive at least 3 of them.
We should give more support to people who are trying to quit or stay off by raising the price constantly, by continuing to impose further restrictions on when and where people can light up (for example, take a page out of several divorce judgments that ban smoking around the children), and by stopping the war on drugs. The war on drugs undermines our credibility, and besides, tobacco is a much greater "gateway drug" than any other... We could reduce both tobacco and other drug abuse if we treat both tobacco and "recreational pharmacology" like the stupidity it is, and not by hypocritically selling one for profit and banning the other.
According to US Census, world's rate of population growth peaked at the 1960's and has been in decline ever since.
That doesn't mean that the population isn't still growing - it just means that it's not growing as fast as it was. World population is expected to continue to grow for quite some time.
Saying the population isn't growing as fast as it was is like saying you're not accumulating debts as fast as you used to - your debt is still growing.
The ocean has a limited heat sink capability... after its' temperature rises more than a few degrees, it will undergo a thermal inversion, with very nasty consequences for life as we know it on the planet.
High standard of living and full employment of women results in negative population growth
No it doesn't. Look at the fucking statistics, you self-complacent illiterate troll. When people feel economically secure, the birth rate goes back up, not down. It's called a "J" curve for a reason. Look at how many people bought 4, 5, 6-bedroom McMansions during the last bubble. Look at how many people are now postponing their plans for having kids. It has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with $$$.
What are you, a fundie, facts can't sway you?
BTW - Americans are the worst in the Western world when it comes to reining in their tendancy to over-populate. A sense of entitlement, "I've got mine, Jack, screw the rest" - the same shit that caused the last bubble, where over MILLIONS of Americans committed acts of outright criminal fraud, and you bail them out! WTF is wrong with you people?
So, rather than have 2 people starve to death 40 years ago, and two others who can make it on what's left, we have all their descendents starving now... not smart. It's called triage for a reason. It's from the french for "sort" - and helping maintain too large a population isn't "sorting it out."
Foreign aid too often is done to benefit the donor country, not the recipients. We'll sell them a tractor because that benefits our manufacturers, when what they really need is an ox and a few goats. We send them missionaries to "educate" them - using the bible as reading material - then teach them that contraception is "against god's will" - because the church wants to reap the benefits as well - more bodies.
You want a foreign aid program that works - try a combination of emigration and sterilization. No "snip, snip", no aid, and no entry into the emigration lottery. Come to the new host country, make something of yourself, and we'll see about maybe reversing the snip-snip, but no "family reunification" programs allowing people to jump the queue. Each person strictly on their own merits. Anything else is not fair to everyone else.
We only have limited resources, and if you take too many people into the lifeboat, everyone sinks.
No, they said it *might* eventually take care of itself - a big difference between a certainty and a maybe, and not something I would want to bet the species' future on, Clyde.
We're seeing further vindication that raising standards of living past a certain point increases birthrates from the contrary beheviour this recession has provoked - people putting off having kids because they don't feel they can afford them."at this time."
Note: Most large farm equipment is turbocharged. Most of the cooling of the exhaust is by adiabatic cooling - letting it expand. You can see it in action on your car - look at your exhaust pipe, and for a few minutes after you start your motor, you'll see water dripping out. Put your hands in the exhaust stream - it's not all that hot, certainly nowhere near as hot as the exhaust manifold. So, what would happen if, at that point, you were to capture the exhaust and pump it into the ground? Not much increase in back-pressure, and if you added an inline scavenging fan or pump, no additional backpressure whatsoever.
In case you haven't noticed, if you're not a Native American Indian, you're an immigrant, or the descendant of an immigrant. Excluding immigrants, the population of the US is well under 5 million.
If the world were overpopulated, we've already proved out a simple, humane solution to the problem - raise everyone's standard of living to that of the USA and Western Europe. Then birthrates will fall naturally to low enough levels that population will decline.
Stop being such and ignorant asshole. The whole "raise the standard of living and birthrates will fall to low enough levels that the population will decline" has been disproven as a general case for several years, and was NEVER true in the US. Look elsewhere in this thread and you'll find the references.
Once people's standards of living go beyond a certain point, birth-rates resume their upward trend. Coupled with lower mortality rates, it's a double whammy.
Nuke the excess from orbit - it's the only sure way.
I agree that we do the most damage to ourselves. People die mostly from lifestyle diseases. It's a sad state of affairs when most people are so fat they can stand in a shower and the tops of their feet don't get wet, or they can't reach around to wipe their behind properly when they're done on the toilet, or they continue to smoke because "I'm addicted" after decades of saying "I can quit any time I want."
Keeping the brain going is key, and part of that is regular exercise. Most people would benefit from owning a large dog (not a "rat ona rope", but something large enough that you have to walk it for an hour a day, rain or shine, snow, sleet, hail, heat, cold, whatever). Vegging out in front of the tube doesn't do it. Mental activities that encourage creativity, such as crossword puzzles or trolling slashdot, will help keep the brain from atrophying.
Good luck with your continued good health.
I have a friend who works in an old-age home. It doesn't matter how nice you treat the people, or how good the facilities, it's not a way to live. Humans just aren't people any more when all the fight is gone out of them and they're resigned to their fate.
And we're not well past "sustainability". There's still a bunch of orders of magnitude till we reach the capacity of the Earth to radiate heat (and keep the surface cool enough for human habitation). That's the only real obstacle ("sustainable" or otherwise) to high population.
Grow up. That has to be one of the most childish, stupidest things posted in this thread. "A bunch of orders of magnitude." Do you even know what an order of magnitude is? Let's take 5 orders of magnitude as a "bunch" - 70 trillion people. 149 million square kilometers total land area (including desert, mountaintops, swamps, etc)... That's 470,000 per square kilometer, or 2.2 square meters per person. They'd be drowning in their own shit, except that they'd already be dead because there simply isn't enough oxygen-generating capacity in the oceans (even if the algae, etc. were to survive the pollution) to support that much biomass.
Population growth usually levels off once medicine reaches the level where surviving to adulthood is the rule rather than exception, and social services provide for you whether you have children or not.
If you had read the Economist article, you'd know that this assumption has now been proven false. Birth rates start rising again after a certain level of affluence. People figure they can afford a few extra mouths to feed.
Diesel exhaust, if you remove the particulates and NOx, is a lot less harmful than car exhaust. The NOx, by the way, is also bio-reactive, and may be the other agent helping increase crop yields - the focus exclusively on COx is probably just because the media is fixated on CO2.
It's been successfully tested in Canada in cooperation with the National Research council, among other places. Go to the site and watch the TV news videos if you're too lazy to actually read anything.
It was developed by someone in yet another country. Canada. Why wasn't it tested in Canada?
So we have the experiment performed in a place where it can't be verified, and developed in a place where it wasn't even tested.
It was tested in Canada, in conjunction with the government, and it works. It's also being tested at 100 other sites.
What's going on in the soil as a result of our injection of exhaust emissions? The summer of 2007 saw the first real scientific research into our Bio-AgtiveTM Emissions Technology. In two separate arms-length experiments co-funded by the National Research Council of Canada and N/C Quest Inc. (one in Alberta and one in Manitoba), two eminent Canadian agricultural scientists headed teams that seeded and monitored test plots with various crops, fertilizer and exhaust emissions treatments in two totally different areas of the country.
Unfortunately the Alberta experiment supervised by Dr. Jill Clapperton was completely hailed out and yielded only limited data. Dr. Clapperton was, however, able to review and assess the research data, crop yields, soil tests, tissue tests, and anecdotal evidence collected elsewhere in 2007. With regard to the 2006 and 2007 yields of our licensees, she states that, while we may not know exactly what is going on below ground, "plants are indicators of what's going on in the soil, so plant success is always the first step [in proving the value of new technology]".
The Manitoba experiment was a resounding success despite the extreme drought conditions in that area. What our scientific team found was "agronomy test data to show that exhaust stimulated soil nutrient release and uptake by both canola and wheat", according to Dr. Loraine Bailey.
Sooner or later you have to add something back in, or plant some other crop that fixes nitrogen or you deplete the soil.
One of the byproducts of diesel exhaust is nitrogen oxides (NOx). Don't forget, 4/5 of the input to the diesel engine is nitrogen, and diesels, working at higher pressures, produce more NOx than gasoline engines.
Many developed countries are facing the frightening reality of negative birth rates
As one of the citizens of one of those countries, let me assure you it's not frightening at all. Sure, it means that we have to continue to work as we get older, but we CAN work as we get older. The idea of retirement at 65 was good when most people died by 60. It's not such a good idea now, between increased productivity and longevity.
Do you really want to spend the last years of your life in an old farts' home, watching Coronation Street, waiting to die? Fuck that!
If that's your idea of "retirement", just pull the f*ing plug now and spare us your waste of oxygen.
Women's rights don't come into it. People don't have 14 kids because they're not allowed to abort them.
Hiere let me fix that for you.
Women's rights come into it. People have 14 kids because they're not allowed to abort them, or practice safe sex, etc. Religion has always been against women's rights.
People who worry about overpopulation don't realize that if we increase women's rights and reduce poverty in developing nations, the problem will take care of itself.
Not any more. That's what the article in The Economist was about - that after a certain level of affluence, births INCREASE again.
The best way to "let the problem take care of itself" is to walk away from problem areas and let the natives sort it out among themselves. Aid to starving populations where their past population was unsustainable has led to even more mouths to starve. Not too smart, Sally Struthers.
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I figure that you really can't call the first ones to get here (whether via the Bering Strait land passage way back when or pre-Eric the Red) aren't immigrants - they're not joining an existing population. Sure' they could be called emigrants from their previous home, and they could be called migrants, but they weren't immigrants - there was no existing society for them to immigrate to (or join, or merge with, or whatever).
Then again, what are the chances the US will adopt a sane public health care plan when there's billions of dollars being funneled to politicians' campaigns?
I'm lucky - I never smoked, never wanted to, and never will want to. Some of my sisters do, and they've all gone from "I can quit any time" to "I'm addicted" to "Don't bother me - it's the one thing I enjoy in life." I'm the oldest, but I'll probably outlive at least 3 of them.
We should give more support to people who are trying to quit or stay off by raising the price constantly, by continuing to impose further restrictions on when and where people can light up (for example, take a page out of several divorce judgments that ban smoking around the children), and by stopping the war on drugs. The war on drugs undermines our credibility, and besides, tobacco is a much greater "gateway drug" than any other ... We could reduce both tobacco and other drug abuse if we treat both tobacco and "recreational pharmacology" like the stupidity it is, and not by hypocritically selling one for profit and banning the other.
That doesn't mean that the population isn't still growing - it just means that it's not growing as fast as it was. World population is expected to continue to grow for quite some time.
Saying the population isn't growing as fast as it was is like saying you're not accumulating debts as fast as you used to - your debt is still growing.
The ocean has a limited heat sink capability ... after its' temperature rises more than a few degrees, it will undergo a thermal inversion, with very nasty consequences for life as we know it on the planet.
No it doesn't. Look at the fucking statistics, you self-complacent illiterate troll. When people feel economically secure, the birth rate goes back up, not down. It's called a "J" curve for a reason. Look at how many people bought 4, 5, 6-bedroom McMansions during the last bubble. Look at how many people are now postponing their plans for having kids. It has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with $$$.
What are you, a fundie, facts can't sway you?
BTW - Americans are the worst in the Western world when it comes to reining in their tendancy to over-populate. A sense of entitlement, "I've got mine, Jack, screw the rest" - the same shit that caused the last bubble, where over MILLIONS of Americans committed acts of outright criminal fraud, and you bail them out! WTF is wrong with you people?
So, rather than have 2 people starve to death 40 years ago, and two others who can make it on what's left, we have all their descendents starving now ... not smart. It's called triage for a reason. It's from the french for "sort" - and helping maintain too large a population isn't "sorting it out."
Foreign aid too often is done to benefit the donor country, not the recipients. We'll sell them a tractor because that benefits our manufacturers, when what they really need is an ox and a few goats. We send them missionaries to "educate" them - using the bible as reading material - then teach them that contraception is "against god's will" - because the church wants to reap the benefits as well - more bodies.
You want a foreign aid program that works - try a combination of emigration and sterilization. No "snip, snip", no aid, and no entry into the emigration lottery. Come to the new host country, make something of yourself, and we'll see about maybe reversing the snip-snip, but no "family reunification" programs allowing people to jump the queue. Each person strictly on their own merits. Anything else is not fair to everyone else.
We only have limited resources, and if you take too many people into the lifeboat, everyone sinks.
No, they said it *might* eventually take care of itself - a big difference between a certainty and a maybe, and not something I would want to bet the species' future on, Clyde.
We're seeing further vindication that raising standards of living past a certain point increases birthrates from the contrary beheviour this recession has provoked - people putting off having kids because they don't feel they can afford them."at this time."
Note: Most large farm equipment is turbocharged. Most of the cooling of the exhaust is by adiabatic cooling - letting it expand. You can see it in action on your car - look at your exhaust pipe, and for a few minutes after you start your motor, you'll see water dripping out. Put your hands in the exhaust stream - it's not all that hot, certainly nowhere near as hot as the exhaust manifold. So, what would happen if, at that point, you were to capture the exhaust and pump it into the ground? Not much increase in back-pressure, and if you added an inline scavenging fan or pump, no additional backpressure whatsoever.
"Excluding immigration"
In case you haven't noticed, if you're not a Native American Indian, you're an immigrant, or the descendant of an immigrant. Excluding immigrants, the population of the US is well under 5 million.
The US won't achieve ZPG before 2050. A big reason for that is the under-18 set, the kids who have kids because their fundy Sarah Pailin-type parents don't believe in teaching proper birth control.
Stop being such and ignorant asshole. The whole "raise the standard of living and birthrates will fall to low enough levels that the population will decline" has been disproven as a general case for several years, and was NEVER true in the US. Look elsewhere in this thread and you'll find the references.
Once people's standards of living go beyond a certain point, birth-rates resume their upward trend. Coupled with lower mortality rates, it's a double whammy.
Nuke the excess from orbit - it's the only sure way.
Change the diet, and you'll see the "trend" reverse.
Better be careful - the nazis will sue you for defamation for comparing them to Bush.
I agree that we do the most damage to ourselves. People die mostly from lifestyle diseases. It's a sad state of affairs when most people are so fat they can stand in a shower and the tops of their feet don't get wet, or they can't reach around to wipe their behind properly when they're done on the toilet, or they continue to smoke because "I'm addicted" after decades of saying "I can quit any time I want."
Keeping the brain going is key, and part of that is regular exercise. Most people would benefit from owning a large dog (not a "rat ona rope", but something large enough that you have to walk it for an hour a day, rain or shine, snow, sleet, hail, heat, cold, whatever). Vegging out in front of the tube doesn't do it. Mental activities that encourage creativity, such as crossword puzzles or trolling slashdot, will help keep the brain from atrophying.
Good luck with your continued good health.
I have a friend who works in an old-age home. It doesn't matter how nice you treat the people, or how good the facilities, it's not a way to live. Humans just aren't people any more when all the fight is gone out of them and they're resigned to their fate.
Grow up. That has to be one of the most childish, stupidest things posted in this thread. "A bunch of orders of magnitude." Do you even know what an order of magnitude is? Let's take 5 orders of magnitude as a "bunch" - 70 trillion people. 149 million square kilometers total land area (including desert, mountaintops, swamps, etc) ... That's 470,000 per square kilometer, or 2.2 square meters per person. They'd be drowning in their own shit, except that they'd already be dead because there simply isn't enough oxygen-generating capacity in the oceans (even if the algae, etc. were to survive the pollution) to support that much biomass.
If you had read the Economist article, you'd know that this assumption has now been proven false. Birth rates start rising again after a certain level of affluence. People figure they can afford a few extra mouths to feed.
Diesel exhaust, if you remove the particulates and NOx, is a lot less harmful than car exhaust. The NOx, by the way, is also bio-reactive, and may be the other agent helping increase crop yields - the focus exclusively on COx is probably just because the media is fixated on CO2.
Diesel fuel has been low-sulfer for decades. The old high-sulfer fuels f*ed up the fuel injection system.
It's been successfully tested in Canada in cooperation with the National Research council, among other places. Go to the site and watch the TV news videos if you're too lazy to actually read anything.
Here, there's even a linky for those too lazy to look it up on their own ...
TV stories here and here- the Europeans, Japanese, Chinese and the UN are interested.
It was tested in Canada, in conjunction with the government, and it works. It's also being tested at 100 other sites.
One of the byproducts of diesel exhaust is nitrogen oxides (NOx). Don't forget, 4/5 of the input to the diesel engine is nitrogen, and diesels, working at higher pressures, produce more NOx than gasoline engines.
As one of the citizens of one of those countries, let me assure you it's not frightening at all. Sure, it means that we have to continue to work as we get older, but we CAN work as we get older. The idea of retirement at 65 was good when most people died by 60. It's not such a good idea now, between increased productivity and longevity.
Do you really want to spend the last years of your life in an old farts' home, watching Coronation Street, waiting to die? Fuck that!
If that's your idea of "retirement", just pull the f*ing plug now and spare us your waste of oxygen.
Hiere let me fix that for you.
Women's rights come into it. People have 14 kids because they're not allowed to abort them, or practice safe sex, etc. Religion has always been against women's rights.
Not any more. That's what the article in The Economist was about - that after a certain level of affluence, births INCREASE again.
The best way to "let the problem take care of itself" is to walk away from problem areas and let the natives sort it out among themselves. Aid to starving populations where their past population was unsustainable has led to even more mouths to starve. Not too smart, Sally Struthers.