The Overpopulation Myth, The Underpopulation Crisis

Originally posted by Lookingup

Originally posted by aliengenes
you could put every man woman and child from every country in the world in Texas, and give them all one acre of land,and they still wouldn't overpopulate the state. thats how many people there are.

overpopulation of the planet is impossible at the rate we die

Do the math or provide your reference. I'm tired of doing the math every time someone makes this statement. For starters, there aren't six billion eight hundred million plus acres in Texas. There are that many people on Earth.

Looking at the World Clock, you will notice the birth rate is higher than the death rate.


World Clock

I can't imagine any logical reason we would need more humans than that...or half that...or a quarter of that....

there are 640 acres in a square mile
there are 268,580 square miles in texas
there are 3,790,000 square miles in the usa

total acres in texas =171,891,200
total acres in the usa = 2,425,600,000

canada has 9,984,670 so everyone could have an acre in that country. thats around 6,390,000,000 acres. canada is huge by the way but much of it is inhabital

[edit on 17-8-2010 by jlafleur02]

This thread can not be serious. OP must be trolling

I've been to India twice. Once to Bangalore and once to Mumbai. Overpopulation is not only a serious problem there, it's an epidemic! There's no way you can convince me overpopulation is a myth when I've seen the masses huddled in shanties alongisde the roadways and in the dividers between the roadways!

[edit on 17-8-2010 by black cat]

reply to post by LiveForever8

S&F...well done...I did a study on world populations about seven years ago and couldnt help but notice that death rates were under reported thus giving the impression that birth rates would mean over population. No one would listen to me that the 'overpopulation' rhetoric was basically false and was based on false readings of the data.
The truth is not hard to figure out - check the two rates against each other and there you have it !
Dick Smith in AUstralia has just recently announced he's putting up a million dollar prize for anyone who can come up with a viable means of lowering world population - this is horrifying to say the least.

reply to post by black cat


Yea well you're not viewing it in the full picture. What you described is basically looking at a damned river and saying the world sea level is rising. One place is overpopulated. Have you traveled beyond that place? To the deserts of China north, or to the unoccupied jungles of Asia eastward? Just as the man who claims the damned river proves the sea levels have risen should travel to the lowered rivers past the damn to see that the waters are perfectly normal, so too should you travel the world to see how unoccupied and depopulated it is. Cities are inheritable overpopulated in as much a damn builds up water behind it.

reply to post by Gorman91


Check out this excellent site and tell me what you see where it says "'# people have been born in the world' since you started watching" and "'# people have died in the world' since you started watching". Lower right corner. The number of births is several times greater than the number of deaths.

www.breathingearth.net...

Also, check this site out and tell me if this number is ever decreasing over time?

www.worldometers.info...



[edit on 17-8-2010 by black cat]

Over population isn't about land for people to live its how many people can the world support. That is a number that is hard to come by. You can say anything but the data isn't there, acreage for crops, energy production and consumption, drinkable water, the list goes on for a long time.

It might be a problem but who are you to tell someone they can't have a child? I think that if the world becomes overpopulated then it won't be sustainable then people will die off. The weaker ones will go then the strong will be left, just like in nature. Why do you think those lemmings jump off that cliff?

Originally posted by black cat
reply to post by Gorman91

 

Check out this excellent site and tell me what you see where it says "'# people have been born in the world' since you started watching" and "'# people have died in the world' since you started watching". Lower right corner. The number of births is several times greater than the number of deaths.

www.breathingearth.net...

Also, check this site out and tell me if this number is ever decreasing over time?

www.worldometers.info...



[edit on 17-8-2010 by black cat]

so they have a guy at every hospital and they telephone in at every birth? I saw it on the internet so it must be true

reply to post by LiveForever8



"Population" is only a problem, be it shortage or over abundance in relation to Keynesian Economics.

With this theory, perpetual growth is sustained with perpetual consumers. The need for ever more consumers requires certain levels of population growth per the birth/death cycle in order to sustain such levels of economic growth. This is the key reason for massive immigration in Europe and the US, because our native population cannot expand fast enough in order to spur the required economic growth under our philosophies of Keynesian Economics.

You don't have to actually "make" anything, and you don't have to be worth anything, so long as every year there is someone to buy a car, eat out, shop, and buy a house. If you ever fall short.... invite the immigrants they will be only to glad.

Stop population increases the Western economies stagnate and collapse.

We have neither a population shortage or over population .... we have the wrong type of Economy.

Originally posted by aliengenes
you could put every man woman and child from every country in the world in Texas, and give them all one acre of land,and they still wouldn't overpopulate the state. thats how many people there are.

overpopulation of the planet is impossible at the rate we die

did you even bother to check how many acres are in texas? this is the kind of stuff that irritates me about forums, baseless assertions.

there are approximately 167,672,913 acres of LAND in texas, nowhere near your supposed 6,500,000,000 acres.

If you want to do the math yourself:
texas is about 268,820 square miles
1 sq mile= about 640 acres
approximately 2.5% of texas land is covered by water

Now I don't necessarily believe one way or another as to the overpopulation debate, however it's not always how many people their are but how resources are allocated. Those guys who said that the limit was 3 billion probably weren't that far off considering the technology available to them. If we still plowed with oxen it seems likely that we wouldn't be able to support our current population. So while I believe that there may be an upper limit to sustainable population, new technologies can make that upper limit much higher.
Does anyone believe that the planet can support a trillion people? how about ten trillion?
Those graphs are both interesting and useful but they use algorithms based on current trends and those trends are always subject to change.

reply to post by black cat


Seen it. It works by means of calculating the current birth rate and death rate. Which, fyi, changes. It is not accurate. In addition to this, there's always a good genocide or two. And not to mention technology.

The simple fact is that vertical farming is getting ready to come out. Do tell. How is population going to be a problem with a square mile farm can be put into a tower that's a hundred square feet?

You think with today's technology, just as so many before have. And it is for that very reason that peak population get's larger and cast further down every decade or so.

Do realize you are not the first generation to think the world's going to end, but you certainly are not the last to be wrong about it.

Originally posted by black cat
I've been to India twice. Once to Bangalore and once to Mumbai. Overpopulation is not only a serious problem there, it's an epidemic! There's no way you can convince me overpopulation is a myth when I've seen the masses huddled in shanties alongisde the roadways and in the dividers between the roadways!

[edit on 17-8-2010 by black cat]

And if there were 10,000,000 people there, or only 1,000, those shanties would still exist.

reply to post by Aeons


lol.

Let's not forget New Caprica. hmm?

Originally posted by Starbug3MY
The problem is not over population, it is the concentration of large numbers in areas that can't handle them. If we could move a lot of people to sustainable areas they could probably sustain themselves (unless they are to old or sick).

Starbug3MY is the first person to post the intelligent response and gets little attention for it.

I quit reading at Starbug's post because that should have been the end of this thread.

God DID say, "fill the earth"... not "fill up a few cities on the earth".

But what do I know.

As a P.S. to those who claim that our resources are lacking...

The very same people who claim that the earth is made up of materials that are billions of years old and exist everywhere in the universe are the same people saying that we will run out? Trees don't grow? Maybe they just always been here because when you were born they were there.

People do realize that everything that exists on the earth right now is made from it, right? Your cars... all earth. Your planes... all earth. Your computers... all earth. Everything. Even our brains. Oh snap.

For those who believe the universe is infinite, we have infinite resources. Hello? For those who believe the universe is finite, nothing goes to waste. It all recycles eventually.

The real issue is not the earth itself, but human preservation. People are complaining because they feel like if the earth isn't well that we won't be well.

But we are of the earth!!! And so there are people who are telling others here to feel guilty because the earth has made us and we are reproducing as we were intended? Or, as in my way of thinking, God made us for this earth and made us to reproduce - so people are trying to make others to feel guilty about reproducing? IT doesn't matter what religion or brain you have... it's the same argument.

Trust me... if we become overpopulated by some insane miracle, the earth will figure itself/be figured out. Who are we as the children to tell the other children to stop reproducing because they're hurting mommy with their kids...

And yet, did anyone tell our mommies and daddies to not create us? Those jerks for not warning your parents!

One thing that makes me scratch my head is the ability of people to convince themselves that they are passionate about something about which they put no honest thought.

[edit on 8/17/2010 by TarzanBeta]

reply to post by ipsedixit


I addressed your post - you certainly ignored everything in mine.

Though to answer the very first part of your post, probably the only part you actually wanted answered - I am beyond lucky. I am so lucky that I stand astounded every day by it.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by Aeons

 

lol.

Let's not forget New Caprica. hmm?

That in wallowing in one and alls worst traits, and indulging in self-destructive personal and global hate that one and all tend to manifest that self-destruction?

I do think that probably an excellent lesson.

The world could easily support, say, 12 billion...if everyone wanted to live like factory-farmed chickens in cages with tubes of genetically-engineered goo down their throats.

Quality versus quantity. You usually can't have both. We can flood the planet with more humans, but life will become increasingly miserable. Nevertheless, as others have noted, you get into real thorny moral problems when you start dictating who can live, who can breed, and who can die. Moreover, falling populations cause serious economic problems.

On a sane planet, the key would be something like a voluntary one-child policy adapted by everyone out of common sense, with the economy retooled somehow to handle it, rather than a mass population explosion followed by some kind of culling just so we can remain slaves to an unsustainable economic/social ideology. It's incredable the lengths people will go to just to prove to themselves and others that they aren't wrong..."Sure, ruin the quality of my life, poison my air and water, just as long as I don't have to admit I made a mistake in my assumptions." Millions will go on cheering the broken system until they themselves die.


[edit on 8/17/10 by silent thunder]

I have a theory about the rates of birth decreasing world wide.

As the rich get richer and the gap between the rich and the middle-class and poor widen, and the middle class slowly getting smaller and adding into the poor category, more people on less money, less able to support more children.

Originally posted by CHA0S
reply to post by snowen20

 

Overpopulation give me a break. Lets make more jobs by developing undeveloped land and spread the hell out.

It's your type of thinking that makes me think human kind truly is some kind of virus..."spread and multiple"...go ahead and plumage and destroy the Earth...I couldn't care less anymore, dirty humans can live on a dirty planet, it suites them.

[edit on 17/8/10 by CHA0S]

Humans are inhabitants of this planet just as any other animal. The difference is that humans were given the ability to adapt their environments to their needs and desires. Nature provided us with this ability. Why should you think you are smarter than nature? Or God, if that's your choice? What makes you think that nature made a bad decision? She obviously decided we should be allowed to do this. Why do you think you know better than her?

reply to post by TarzanBeta


You are brilliant. I am friending you for that post.

Second.