Population Explosion: Is it sustainable?

Yes, the free market can accomplish it. We produce more food then ever, have less hunger then ever, have more comfortable lives then ever. You think we have an energy shortage now, you should see how it was back when we ran on whale oil. PLenty of land left.

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Subsidize abortions there and that will probably solve it. Killing the poor before they are born is a sure way to reduce population growth.

 

That assumes that everyone shares the same ideological assumptions you do, also that they vote and endorse policies that go against their own interests (to be fair, that does happen a lot).

Luckily, as the population becomes more educated and less religious, your point of view is fading into obscurity.

 

That is truly one of the most insane things I've ever read. Illogical to boot. We've personally eradicated small pox and polio, we are closing in on the cure for AIDS, and there is more than enough food and water to feed every human being on this planet indefinitely, and wealth to shelter everyone and to provide health care for all - assuming we have the will to make some changes.

Your hypocritical obsession with nature is nothing more than a shallow, desperate attempt to rationalize your own sociopathy.

 

Population is not too high...it's the management of the population and our resources that is the root problem...

 

People around the world are dying every day due to hunger and/or lack of nutrition...by the thousands...but no revolt yet?

 

Uh, I'm pretty sure there's tribal warfare going on in Africa all the time.

 

Taxcutter says:
Government can't manage a one-car funeral.

 

Exactly...it's tribal fighting and has little to nothing to do with hunger...

 

Fighting over resources is a classically petty reason for tribal warfare. Whether its food, slaves, or something those rich foreign companies will pay you to get, you name it, they'll fight over it.

 

of course it is sostainable, we invented the system for manage the "finite resources problem" thousands of years ago. It is called "price system"

 

Well. we'd better get on with resolving the management problem.

No matter how one slices it, more people = more problems.

 

I do not see this at all. The population is becoming MORE religious.. not necessarily about god or some specific religion, but the unscientific way of viewing life. Numbers, logic, & the scientific method are despised, while hysteria, propaganda, & 'truth by edict' is becoming more the norm. Witness the AGW hysteria. It is NOT based on science, but religious hysteria.. made up statistics, wild speculative extrapolations.. 'faith' in the high priests.. dictated 'science'. The source of this delusion? Your 'education', which has become a state sponsored propaganda campaign, no different than stalin or hitler.. indoctrinate the youth in matters of state importance, & you will rule the future.

"..education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." --Joseph Stalin

“State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day.” ~Noam Chomsky

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. ~Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

 

Like you, many people are willing to embrace unsubstantiated beliefs because they lead to desirable ideological outcomes. Many people concerned about global warming just want an excuse to support environmental standards. Similarly, there is an excellent chance that your skepticism is driven entirely by a desire to see some sort of libertarian political system put in place.

 

They are tribal wars, wars involving people who have not yet evolved into community, and food might be in the mix somewhere but food is not the reason they are mass-murdering each other...

 

More people = same problems = bigger problems.

I'll bet most all of our issues today are the same issues we've been discussing for the past 100 years. Most are not solved therefore they grow and grow as we see today becoming too big to solve...politically solve that is because politicians fear telling the truth and asking for sacrifice and hard work...

 

This is a pathetic response, you know. You don't rebut ANY points, but smear & imply things about my motivations or beliefs. I presented my opinion, with my observations over the years supporting it. You think 'education' has improved critical thinking? You think people are more 'scientific' in their opinions? Most high school graduates can't even spell, 'scientific', much less operate on its principles.

Seriously. Rebut my points with logic or evidence.. but some lame generalized smear is pathetic.

I posted quotes from famous world leaders & shapers of thought to support my view. You? Nothing. Just a general insult, with no substantiation. Is this your debating style? I'll avoid you in the future if this is your MO.

 

That you took my post so personally indicates a couple of things: first, that you don't apply empiricism anymore than anyone else, second, that your argument is deeply ideological, and based upon a whole range of assumptions about people.

The unavoidable truth is that climate is such an incredibly complex discipline that unless you have dedicated decades of your life to it, you don't know much about it, let alone enough to say one way or another what is going on. You rely upon experts as much as the AGW crowd does; more, in fact, since the number of denialists in the scientific community is actually quite small.

Citing world leaders is an appeal to authority. And what relevance do a dictator, a communist from a century ago, and a linguist have on this debate? Next to none. The average person has never read any of them, and policy is never set according to what they think.

Also, you didn't present any evidence either. All you said is that people are unscientific because they didn't come to the same ideological conclusions you did.

 

It isn't complicated.

As the standard of living for people rises, they have less children (lower rates of infant mortality) overall and the population is more sustainable.

Really the solution is simple... help the poor, don't make it worse.

 

Absolutely. As I said earlier, when people get richer, they get less religious and more educated, and they have drastically less kids. This has been shown again and again throughout history.

 

so what, you think you can just dazzle us with more bull$h*t? I took your post personally? don't flatter yourself. You're beginning to come off as a progressive dweeb, with no concept of reason or logic.
tell me, You think 'education' has improved critical thinking? You think people are more 'scientific' in their opinions?
You discount the quotes of authority, but offer nothing in its place. I'll break it down for you.

1. you asserted (with no evidence or supporting reasoning):
Luckily, as the population becomes more educated and less religious, your point of view is fading into obscurity.

2. I rebutted:
I do not see this at all. The population is becoming MORE religious.. not necessarily about god or some specific religion, but the unscientific way of viewing life. Numbers, logic, & the scientific method are despised, while hysteria, propaganda, & 'truth by edict' is becoming more the norm.
I provided an observation about agw to support this opinion, plus the quotes from stalin, lenin, & chomsky.

3. Your response, a general smear:
Like you, many people are willing to embrace unsubstantiated beliefs because they lead to desirable ideological outcomes.

4. I challenged your smear:
This is a pathetic response, you know. You don't rebut ANY points, but smear & imply things about my motivations or beliefs. I presented my opinion, with my observations over the years supporting it. You think 'education' has improved critical thinking? You think people are more 'scientific' in their opinions?

Now you may think this is a reasonable debate.. but you have not provided ANY evidence or logic or support for YOUR opinion, which you casually toss out as asserted fact.

I'm pathetic for going through this charade, which is something leftist posters do all the time. I'm sick of it. It is a sleazy, dishonest tactic to deflect, distract, & distort from the discussion. But it confirms my original point:

The population is becoming MORE religious.. not necessarily about god or some specific religion, but the unscientific way of viewing life. Numbers, logic, & the scientific method are despised, while hysteria, propaganda, & 'truth by edict' is becoming more the norm.

So you can stick to your voodoo style of witchdoctor debating, where facts are meaningless, & evidence can be made up or dismissed by decree.

 

A decade ago I did some research on the topic where the best estimates of the time said that the population of the Earth would balance out at 10 Billion people in 2050. The research I read was 10 years ago so I am not sure if the data has since changed.

 

You still haven't provided any actual evidence, just posited the idea that people are accepting scientific consensus as dogma, and therefore are"more religious." At the same time, you argue that people know nothing about science, on the grounds that you - like many tens of thousands of other internet ideologues on both sides of the debate - disagree with them.

I didn't really imply much about your beliefs at all, other than hazarding a guess that your believe in some sort of libertarian philosophy and that you rely upon experts, without truly understanding the subject matter, as much as anyone else.

So that's your evidence. My evidence is that people are more educated and that they are less religious. All the facts bact this up. You have simply decided that their education is ideologically impure, and therefore not "real" education.

 

I don't think religion has that much to do with population sustainability. However, I do remember reading (and just being logical) that the more educated a person is, the less religious they are (generally speaking).

Population sustainability really is just about uplifting the poor so that they have more stable households. With more stable living conditions, people have 1-4 kids (just over 2 on average) rather than 4+ kids. It is a hard fact that poorer people have more children.

 

Religious belief tends to encourage monogamous, married sexual relations with the goal of having children. Some religions also look down upon birth control, abortion, etc. Finally, there are plenty parts of the world where fertility and religion are tied together pretty tightly.

The bigger influence is poverty though, absolutely.

 

It'd be nice to sterilize the overpopulated third world.