New Population Projections Show Us Growing Unsustainably, But We Can Put on the Brakes

[Yosoccerboy]

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/20...g-unsustainably-but-we-can-put-on-the-brakes/

Pencil in October 31, 2011 on your calendar. According to the United Nations Population Division (UNPD)—the demographers who rule over all demographers—that's the day when the 7 billionth person on the planet will be born.

 

[Nicole]

Blame Africa on that.

 

[wmayers99]

How can we send 1 Billion condoms to Africa. uch:

 

[Sylar- Goodbye for now.]

Does the 7 billionth person get a special prize???

 

[??? cam ???]

Holy crap, twice in one day!! I'm on a roll!!! (being right that is).

I was right about the planet not being able to sustain the population at the current growth rate and

I was right about introducing contraception to african nations.....

*ouch*

(I hurt my shoulder patting myself on the back! lol)

 

[dh0pe.]

We just need a nice epidemic or war to thin the herd. Also, food production could be increased quickly...the amount of grain used to make ethanol alone would feed a bunch of people. Lots of farmland lays unused. I think we could go 8 billion easy! :he:

 

[acidcrap]

But you have to remember: we're building over a lot of farmland too, and polluting a lot, and ruining the water table so a lot of farmland will be unusable.

One big issue is (like in south america) they are destroying forests and rainforests for food production and those forests are (or were) cleaning out air. But like in S.A., the land is so poor for grazing that they have to clear an acre per cow just so the cow can have enough grass to grow properly. So yeah, there's lots of land that can be used for food production, but at what cost?

(for you old timers there used to be farms from york mills/yonge and north....what's there now?...concrete....)

 

[Diana]

I was just thinking of all the unused farmland here in the US. I agree that rainforest has some of the worst soil for agriculture...but I'm not going that far from home (so to speak). Also, we're constantly discovering and applying new technologies to agriculture. Current farmland already produces way more than the same land decades ago...in the future, we may have supercrops that produce many more times than what we produce now.

There is always a cost. What is the cost of preserving "natural habitats"? The starving person might say that the cost is worth it. Who's to tell him he's right or wrong. :666:

 

[Jourdan]

As for your starving person example, ask that person to choose between breathing and eating? Eventually that is what it will come down to if we keep clearing our air filtration system.

I forget the exact numbers but from a Nova program, they were highlighting "man made trees". Scientists have been studying how trees clean our air for decades and finally came up with a semi-viable alternative. They discovered it was the flickering of the leaves that allowed the trees to work more efficiently. However, the stats weren't promising. Just from 1 adult's exhalation of CO2, in one day, takes a mature tree a year to remove. So for 1 adult, you need 365 mature trees just to neutrailize our breath. Now add to that all the other emissions each of us produce and you see where we're heading....yet we keep cutting them down. Plus not all trees absorb CO2. Some release it plus you have to factor in when a tree dies naturally, and begins to rot in the forest, it releases all the CO2 it absorbed in its lifetime. Plus only mature trees, 15 yrs or older, absorb CO2. Now what we do (in our infinite wisdom) is cut down trees to clear land for building homes, so more people can be born so we cut down more trees etc etc etc. Take a regular sized apartment building for example. The amount of trees cut down to make room for the building cleaned the air of 1 person's exhalations. So what do we do? Put 120 people on that land....where are the trees to clear all THEIR exhalations? No where that's where......

Ok, so never mind the tree loss, and we have megafarms running way more efficently than in olden times. But to gain that efficiency, we are using tractors, combines, processing plants all of which emit CO2. Now a team of horses produces CO2 as well, the ratio compared to a modern tractor I can't tell you but I doubt it is even close. (plus the horse's "exhaust" can be used as fertilizer, not so with a tractor's exhaust).

I think the starving man question is the key to our future. Sure, his immediate need is for food, but we can't only think in immediate needs. That is guaranteeing our demise as a species. Our planet can only sustain us for so long, its resources aren't infinite. I used this example once before:

Put 1 flea on CG while he's riding and he doesn't even notice.
Put 1,000,000 fleas on him and he won't be going anywhere and will probably die in a day (a flea weighs about a gram so 1M is 1,000 Kilos). He'd probably die of blood loss since fleas consume a fair amount of blood. Same as our planet: we can't keep consuming its resources wholeheartedly, there's nothing happening to replenish them....in fact, we are doing things to reduce the reserves more rapidly without any real benefit (just think of how much energy and resources have been wasted on say, WWII......never mind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.....and don't even get me started on things like NASCAR lol (not that I'm saying we should stop all non-essential things like NASCAR but there WILL come a point where we won't have any choice....)

I forget where I heard this but it is 100% true:
The cleanest method of travel is the trip not taken......(basically what they are saying is don't travel somewhere just for the sake of travel)

 

[chad]

Actually, all plants use CO2...and they also produce it. That line about a tree having to reach 15 yrs before it absorbs CO2 is completely false. Megafarms with growing plants would actually take in more CO2. The faster a plant is growing, the more CO2 it is consuming. That CO2 goes into producing sugars, starches and cellulose (the stuff that makes up the structural body of the plant). And lets not forget all of the aquatic algae...do you have any numbers on how much CO2 they're sucking up...I'm pretty sure its way up there.

Mostly, I was just playing devils advocate with that last message. But then I see a completely inaccurate statement and I have to respond...

The thing to remember is that the entire ecosphere of the planet is a huge and complex thing. Scientist don't actually know what is going to happen as CO2 levels rise. They can't 100% attribute it to humans. And no one can honestly say what the CORRECT levels should be. Don't worry about any of it, natural processes will bring back equilibrium. If we overpopulate, then something will come along to restore balance through loss of life (famine for example) or new resources will become available (Algae farms that produce products to feed the masses for example).

Just relax and enjoy your life.

As for CG covered in fleas...now that's funny!

 

[Boli Loquita]

Well, I got that statement about trees from a Nova website and they are rarely inaccurate. As for "all plants absorb CO2" that is inaccurate as stated, some give off CO2.....

The thing about being able to measure the difference between what humans are producing and what is being produced naturally, is irrelevant. We don't need to know what percentage we are producing, only how much and how much is being removed and at what rate. If we produce more than is being removed then eventually our air will become unbreathable (take a submarine for example). People don't realize our planet really isn't any different than a closed biosphere like a submarine.

For example, at this second in time, if all the plant life combined is removing (just for arguments sake) 200M metric tons of CO2, and we're producing 220M metric tons annually, eventually, our air will be unbreathable. You don't need a PHD to realize that we're producing more than is being removed...all you have to do is remember when there wasn't such a thing as a pollution index to realize that when we have to give warnings when the pollution is high, it's time to start doing something...MAJOR.

BTW: everyone is so focused on CO2, what about all the other toxins we're pumping into our air, land and water that aren't being removed?

As for simply relaxing and enjoy life, that's the problem. Every man woman and child on the planet should be concerned to the point that everytime they turn something on, it's on their mind so they remember to turn it off....