Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by T A A on November 15, 2012 at 9:03pm

Erin, and another one you may enjoy ... :)

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Permalink Reply by Strega on November 15, 2012 at 10:24pm

Eventually, without a pandemic, there will be too many humans.  Perhaps the Christians who are so pro-life (is that anti-abortion?) can just ask their god to make another world. He could start over again, without the sin bit.  Hey, maybe he already has!  Meanwhile, on planet Earth...

Can you imagine a society where everyone is implanted with contraception (or sprayed, or in the water or whatever) and you have to apply to have a child, and demonstrate you have the ability to support it before you can be made fertile?.  No?  

OK can you imagine a society where everyone uses effective contraception so as not to have children unless they are fully able to support them (emotionally and financially)? No?

Can you imagine a society where the more intelligent or better off element decides not to have children but the poorer and less educated have them all the time?  Er, not looking good, is it?

We have a massive escalating population.  You would think we might reward people who have abortions.  But no.  At the moment we are even debating whether contraception is murder.

Unbelievable.  It is not as if you can ban abortions.  You can only ban legal doctors in sterile environments from carrying them out. The back-street dirty abortions will always fill the gap - and get the mothers too, with a bit of septicemia or such.

Prohibition is such a successful technique. (there so needs to be a font type for sarcasm)

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Permalink Reply by Blondin on November 16, 2012 at 9:02am

Excellent points, Strega.

"Can you imagine a society where the more intelligent or better off element decides not to have children but the poorer and less educated have them all the time? Er, not looking good, is it?"

This is the premise of Mike Judge's movie, "Idiocracy" - an extrapolated view of current trends.

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Permalink Reply by T A A on November 16, 2012 at 10:40am

Which was a most entertaining film!

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Permalink Reply by Melvinotis on November 16, 2012 at 6:50pm

Strega, I agree with everything except the massive population growth. Take a look at this and Hans Rosling's video from TED. He basically says that the world will top off at 10 billion people but it will take a long time to get to that, mostly due to developing countries having fewer and fewer babies. 

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Permalink Reply by T A A on November 16, 2012 at 9:40pm

IT'S NOT ABOUT FUTURE SLOWED GROWTH!!!

We are so past that!

We have been overpopulated for half a century! All previous faunal extinctions on this planet were due to geological events. This extinction phase the planet's been going though the past couple of thousand years is the FIRST TIME IN EARTH's history where mass extinction is attributable to a single species instead of a geological event.

So forget about all the charts that sooth people into thinking our growth is not growing as fast as it used to, they are entirely irrelevant, this is a long standing problem we're dealing with here, which will require massive lifestyle reorganisation.

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Permalink Reply by Arcus on November 17, 2012 at 2:14pm

IFF humans were overpopulating the earth, biology would have ways of shutting that whole thing down.

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on November 17, 2012 at 2:31pm

IFF... That's an acronym for what organization?

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Permalink Reply by Arcus on November 17, 2012 at 2:52pm

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

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Permalink Reply by T A A on November 17, 2012 at 7:29pm

False in the short term. Biology does not devise ways to correct things. Equilibrium is a long term processes and Homo sapiens has screwed the system over by effecting our changes at such a fast pace. At this point it is unlikely that any disease could make any significant dent in our population.

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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on November 17, 2012 at 9:25pm

I think it was a Todd Akin joke. (It made me crack a smile at least).

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Permalink Reply by Arcus on November 18, 2012 at 4:39am

Define "long term" and "fast" as it pertains to the biological processes which are valid for controlling overpopulation. HIV is certainly taking a toll in Africa, Ebola is a major threat, and you better hope next years HxNx virus isn't highly lethal (or the year after that, etc). That's not to speak of potential natural disasters, man-made war, or a breakdown in the food supply system.

Just because humans are on top of the food chain and believe ourselves to be highly intelligent doesn't mean we are no longer governed by natural processes. 

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