Showing posts with label overpopulation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label overpopulation. Show all posts

Friday, May 29, 2015

There be Aliens

Whether you believe in UFO's or not is a moot point. Personally, I have my own opinions on that matter. The one thing both I and those UFO watchers share is the certainty of life out in space. Mathematically, when you realise how many galaxies there are, how infinite the universe is yet conversely small, for what is size but a man made creation, then the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life becomes abundantly clear. We are not alone.
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Friday, March 22, 2013

33 years ago today - the guidestones


The Georgia Guidestones is a granite monument in Elbert County, Georgia, USA. A message clearly conveying a set of ten guidelines is inscribed on the structure in eight modern languages, and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient languages' scripts: Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The structure is sometimes referred to as an "American Stonehenge." The monument is 19 feet 3 inches (5.87 m) tall, made from six granite slabs weighing 237,746 pounds (107,840 kg) in all. One slab stands in the center, with four arranged around it. A capstone lies on top of the five slabs, which are astronomically aligned. An additional stone tablet, which is set in the ground a short distance to the west of the structure, provides some notes on the history and purpose of the Guidestones. (read more)

A message consisting of a set of ten guidelines or principles is engraved on the Georgia Guidestones in eight different languages, one language on each face of the four large upright stones. Moving clockwise around the structure from due north, these languages are: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian:

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.

3. Unite humanity with a living new language.

4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.

5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

8. Balance personal rights with social duties.

9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.

10. Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Sunday, July 22, 2012

The Bomb


The Population Bomb was a best-selling book written by Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich (who was uncredited), in 1968. It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Fears of a "population explosion" were widespread in the 1950s and 60s, but the book and its charismatic author brought the idea to an even wider audience. The book has been criticized in recent decades for its alarmist tone and inaccurate predictions. The Ehrlichs stand by the basic ideas in the book, stating in 2009 that "perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future" and believe that it achieved their goals because "it alerted people to the importance of environmental issues and brought human numbers into the debate on the human future."

In answer to the question, "what needs to be done?" he wrote, "We must rapidly bring the world population under control, reducing the growth rate to zero or making it negative. Conscious regulation of human numbers must be achieved. Simultaneously we must, at least temporarily, greatly increase our food production." Ehrlich described a number of "ideas on how these goals might be reached." He believed that the United States should take a leading role in population control, both because it was already consuming much more than the rest of the world, and therefore had a moral duty to reduce its impact, and because the US would have to lead international efforts due to its prominence in the world. In order to avoid charges of hypocrisy or racism it would have to take the lead in population reduction efforts. Ehrlich floats the idea of adding "temporary sterilants" to the water supply or staple foods. However, he rejects the idea as unpractical due to "criminal inadequacy of biomedical research in this area." He suggests a tax scheme in which additional children would add to a family's tax burden at increasing rates for more children, as well as luxury taxes on childcare goods. He suggests incentives for men who agree to permanent sterilization before they have two children, as well as a variety of other monetary incentives. He proposes a powerful Department of Population and Environment which "should be set up with the power to take whatever steps are necessary to establish a reasonable population size in the United States and to put an end to the steady deterioration of our environment." The department should support research into population control, such as better contraceptives, mass sterilizing agents, and prenatal sex discernment (because families often continue to have children until a male is born. Ehrlich suggested that if they could choose a male child this would reduce the birthrate). Legislation should be enacted guaranteeing the right to an abortion, and sex education should be expanded.

The Population Bomb has been characterized by critics as primarily a repetition of the Malthusian catastrophe argument that population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled. Ehrlich observed that since about 1930 the population of the world had doubled within a single generation, from 2 billion to nearly 4 billion, and was on track to do so again. He assumed that available resources on the other hand, and in particular food, were nearly at their limits. Some critics compare Ehrlich unfavorably to Malthus, saying that although Thomas Malthus did not make a firm prediction of imminent catastrophe, Ehrlich warned of a potential massive disaster within the next decade or two. In addition, critics state that unlike Malthus, Ehrlich did not see any means of avoiding the disaster entirely (although some mitigation was possible), and proposed solutions that were much more radical than those discussed by Malthus, such as starving whole countries that refused to implement population control measures.

Ehrlich was certainly not unique in his neo-Malthusian predictions, and there was a wide spread belief in the 1960s and 70s that increasingly catastrophic famines were on their way. (read more)

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Choice


Fifty years ago (1960) the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive. In a world that is clearly overpopulated, it would be in our best interests to offer birth control for free, especially in poor third world countries where the greatest growth in population is occurring.

The combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP), often referred to as the birth-control pill or simply "the pill", is a birth control method that includes a combination of an estrogen (oestrogen) and a progestin (progestogen). When taken by mouth every day, these pills inhibit female fertility. They were first approved for contraceptive use in the United States in 1960, and are a very popular form of birth control. They are currently used by more than 100 million women worldwide and by almost 12 million women in the United States. (read more)

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Malthusian Catastrophe


The Population Bomb was a best-selling book written by Paul R. Ehrlich in 1968. It warned of the mass starvation of humans in 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. The book also popularized the previously coined term, "population bomb". The book has been criticized in recent decades for its alarmist tone and unfilled predictions. Ehrlich stands by the basic ideas in the book.

Early editions of The Population Bomb began with the statement:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.

The book dealt not only with food shortage, but also with other kinds of crises caused by rapid population growth. A "population bomb", as defined in the book, required only three things: a rapid rate of change, a limit of some sort, and delays in perceiving the limit.

Also worth noting is Ehrlich's introduction of the Impact formula or I PAT:

I = P × A × T (where I = Environmental Impact, P = Population, A = Affluence, T = Technology)

It states that the impact a community has on the environment, can be calculated by multiplying the community's population by its wealth and how developed it is. Ehrlich thus argued, affluent technological nations have a greater per capita impact on the limited resources of the earth than do poorer nations.

The world's population doubled from 3 billion in 1959 to 6 billion in 1999. It is currently (2010) at 6.8 billion, and is expected to reach 9 billion by around 2042.

More than 36 millions died of hunger or diseases caused by malnutrition in 2006. According to the World Health Organization, malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases. Environmental issues with agriculture has hampered the finding of acceptable solutions to these problems.

In a 2004 Grist Magazine interview, Ehrlich acknowledged some specific predictions he had made, in the years around the time the Population Bomb was published, that had not come to pass. However, as to a number of his fundamental ideas and assertions he maintained that facts and science proved them correct.

In answer to the question: "Were your predictions in The Population Bomb right?", Ehrlich responded:

"Anne and I have always followed U.N. population projections as modified by the Population Reference Bureau -- so we never made "predictions", even though idiots think we have. When I wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, there were 3.5 billion people. Since then we've added another 2.8 billion -- many more than the total population (2 billion) when I was born in 1932. If that's not a population explosion, what is? My basic claims (and those of the many scientific colleagues who reviewed my work) were that population growth was a major problem. Fifty-eight academies of science said that same thing in 1994, as did the world scientists' warning to humanity in the same year. My view has become depressingly mainline!"

The book sold over two million copies, raised the general awareness of population and environmental issues, and influenced 1960s and 1970s public policy. (read more)

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Thomas Robert Malthus


The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (13 February 1766 – 23 December 1834), was a British scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularised the economic theory of rent.

Malthus has become widely known for his theories concerning population, and its increase or decrease in response to various factors. The six editions of his Principles of Population, published from 1798 to 1826, observed that sooner or later population gets checked by famine, disease, and widespread mortality. He wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving, and in principle as perfectible. William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, for example, believed in the possibility of almost limitless improvement of society. So, in a more complex way, did Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose notions centered on the goodness of man and the liberty of citizens bound only by the social contract, a form of popular sovereignty.

Malthus thought that the dangers of population growth would preclude endless progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". As an Anglican clergyman, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour. Believing that one could not change human nature, Malthus wrote:

"Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in every State in which man has existed, or does now exist, that the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence, that population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and, that the superior power of population it repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."

Malthus placed the longer-term stability of the economy above short-term expediency. He criticised the Poor Laws, and (alone among important contemporary economists) supported the Corn Laws, which introduced a system of taxes on British imports of wheat. He thought these measures would encourage domestic production, and so promote long-term benefits.
Malthus became hugely influential, and controversial, in economic, political, social and scientific thought. Many of those whom subsequent centuries sometimes term "evolutionary biologists" also read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, for each of whom Malthusianism became an intellectual stepping-stone to the idea of natural selection. Malthus remains a writer of great significance and controversy. (read more)

Sunday, February 21, 2010

worldpopulationbalance.org

Current global population of over 6.8 billion is already two to three times higher than the sustainable level. Several recent studies show that Earth’s resources are enough to sustain only about 2 billion people at a European standard of living. An average European consumes far more resources than any of the poorest two billion people in the world. However, Europeans use only about half the resources of Americans, on average. (read more)

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Overpopulation: Our Greatest Threat


Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. In common parlance, the term usually refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth.

The resources to be considered when evaluating whether an ecological niche is overpopulated include clean water, clean air, food, shelter, warmth, and other resources necessary to sustain life. If the quality of human life is addressed, there may be additional resources considered, such as medical care, education, proper sewage treatment and waste disposal. Overpopulation places competitive stress on the basic life sustaining resources, leading to a diminished quality of life.

If resources required to sustain the organism are being consumed by the organism faster than the resource can be renewed, then the organism is overpopulated. For example, humans are destroying topsoil and consuming fossil fuels much faster than the planet can renew them and those resources are currently required to produce and distribute the necessary quantity of food to feed the population, and therefore humans are overpopulated on Earth.

(read more)

Thursday, August 13, 2009

End Of The Line

90 percent

of the big fish

in the oceans are

gone...

we ate them.


Thursday, April 30, 2009

Big Fish


There's a million fish in the sea...

where there once were billions...

90% of the big fish in the ocean

have been caught and consumed...

thanks to overfishing, bluefin tuna

have been driven to just 3% of its 1960

abundance.................a decline of 97%

Friday, February 6, 2009

Your children


Don't cry for me.....

.....I'm already dead.


........The Simpsons........

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Soylent Green


Soylent Green......is people!