Latest report out says that we have over-populated the earth by 1.7 billion - in other words, there is that many more people than there are resources to sustain them. So what we have been doing is taking more and more resources and slowly we are stripping things, the extinction rate has raised dramatically.
Latest report out says that we have over-populated the earth by 1.7 billion - in other words, there is that many more people than there are resources to sustain them. So what we have been doing is taking more and more resources and slowly we are stripping things, the extinction rate has raised dramatically.
If you are correct that there are 1.7 billion more people on earth than there are resources to sustain them, then why haven't those 1.7 billion people died? What is sustaining them?
You say "the extinction rate has raised dramatically." The extinction rate of what? Compared to when? What does "dramatically" mean in verifiable numbers and facts?
From which "activist" organization's propaganda did you copy your post? They must have a very low opinion of the intelligence of their target audience.
Facts are always helpful to support policy positions on scientific issues.
Ummm, you do know this is an internet thread and not a policy workshop right?
Where did I get this info? Well, from the front page of the news today for one. But having googled it, where is it not on the web? Have you been living in a cave today?
Now, then I had to choose a link for you, so Scientific American seems like a good one:
October 26, 2007
The World Is Not Enough for Humans
Humanity's environmental impact has reached an unprecedented scope, and it's getting worse
By David Biello
ONE WORLD: The Earth cannot support the demands humanity is placing on it, according to the United Nations Environmental Program.
Since 1987 annual emissions of carbon dioxide—the leading greenhouse gas warming the globe—have risen by a third, global fishing yields have declined by 10.6 million metric tons and the amount of land required to sustain humanity has swelled to more than 54 acres (22 hectares) per person. Yet, Earth can provide only roughly 39 acres (15 hectares) for every person living today, according to the United Nation's Environmental Program's (UNEP) Global Environment Outlook, released this week. "There are no major issues," the report's authors write of the period since their first report in 1987, "for which the foreseeable trends are favorable."
Despite some successes—such as the Montreal Protocol's 95 percent reduction in chemicals that damage the atmosphere's ozone layer and a rise in protected reserves of habitat to cover 12 percent of the planet—humanity's impact continues to grow. For example:
Biodiversity—The planet is in the grips of the sixth great extinction in its 4.5-billion-year history, this one largely man-made. Species are becoming extinct 100 times faster than the average rate in the fossil record. More than 30 percent of amphibians, 12 percent of birds and 23 percent of our own class, mammals, are threatened.
Climate—Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.76 degree Celsius) over the past century and could increase as much as 8.1 degrees F (4.5 degrees C) over the next unless "drastic" steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from, primarily, burning fossil fuels. Developed countries will need to reduce this globe-warming pollution by 60 to 80 percent by mid-century to stave off dire consequences, the report warns. "Fundamental changes in social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes, are crucial if rapid progress is to be achieved."
Food—The amount of food grown per acre has reached one metric ton, but such increasing intensity is also driving rapid desertification of formerly arable land as well as reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers. In fact, four billion out of the world's 6.5 billion people could not get enough food to eat without such fertilization. Continuing population growth paired with a shift toward eating more meat leads the UNEP to predict that food demand may more than triple.
Water—One in 10 of the world's major rivers, including the Colorado and the Rio Grande in the U.S., fail to reach the sea for at least part of the year, due to demand for water. And that demand is rising; by 2025, the report predicts, demand for fresh water will rise by 50 percent in the developing world and 18 percent in industrialized countries. At the same time, human activity is polluting existing fresh waters with everything from fertilizer runoff to pharmaceuticals and climate change is shrinking the glaciers that provide drinking water for nearly one third of humanity. "The escalating burden of water demand," the report says, "will become intolerable in water-scarce countries."
The authors—388 scientists reviewed by roughly 1,000 of their peers—view the report as "an urgent call for action" and decry the "woefully inadequate" global response to problems such as climate change. "The amount of resources needed to sustain [humanity] exceeds what is available," the report declares.
"The systematic destruction of the earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged," Achim Steiner, UNEP's executive director, said in a statement. "The bill we hand our children may prove impossible to pay."
Hold onto the seat of your pants, cos the resource wars are a'coming.
Also found this interesting link about developing or converting to sustainable cities as a way to avoid the self-destructing elements of capitalism, which unchecked can consume us into extinction because economic growth and not people is the driving force:
Educated people know that the one who makes an assertion is responsible for identifying the factual sources supporting that assertion if the assertion does have a factual basis .
That said, where is the factual support for your following patently illogical statement: "Latest report out says that we have over-populated the earth by 1.7 billion - in other words, there is that many more people than there are resources to sustain them."
And where is your answer to my simple two-part question, which I will repeat being as you ignored it: "If you are correct that there are 1.7 billion more people on earth than there are resources to sustain them, then why haven't those 1.7 billion people died? What is sustaining them?"
From the newspaper article I have here in front of me:
Increase in world population, which has risen almost 34 per cent from 5 billion in 1987 to 6.7 billion today, were blamed for many of the pressures on resources. Consumption, heightened by a three-fold increase in trade since 1987, means more is being produced than can be sustained. Each person needs 21.9 hectares of Earth's surface to supply their needs whereas, it was calculated Earth's capacity is 15.7 hectares per person.
DO THE MATH - we might be getting by for the most part right here and now - but this math will have future consequences and they will not be pretty.
WATER: Overfishing was singled out as an issue that needed to be tackled as a priority - or billions of people could face food shortages in the coming decades. "Marine catches are being maintained only by fishing ever further offshore and at deeper levels, devastating some species very quickly, and increasingly further down the food chain". It was pointed out that 60 per cent of the world population lived within 65 miles of a coast and many were likely to have to move because of sea level rises from global warming over the coming century. Availability of fresh water was highlighted as a problem. By 2025 (that's not very far away), 1.8 billion people were forecast to be suffering severe shortages.
We are feeding people right now because we are over-farming lands and this, in the end, will strip the land of the nutrients required to grow produce, leading to desertification. We are quite simply overdrawn on our resources and there are going to be foreclosures in the future. All of this is happening within a current economic system that is built upon the premises of 'take now, pay later' and requires continued growth to sustain it. Unless we change that economic model now, this monster will destroy itself by ultimately destroying us. Greed and sloth my friend.
I've just learnt that the UK government is planning to build 4 million new homes - another 4 million homes on an Island as small and over-populated as England? That will further decrease sustainability within the UK (land available for produce making), making reliance on resources from other countries higher, which are going to face their own resource issues in the future. What will happen to England after it has traded so much of its own sustainability away and these other countries stop giving them the goods they require to feed the people because they have issues providing enough for their own people? Desperation, war, all sorts of ugly things. But it does not have to be this way. Certain countries in the world enjoy great wealth and comfort through their strength in banking systems - but such money lending systems only have worth under certain conditions. The writing is on the wall that those conditions are evaporating.
It was not so long ago that we did more for ourselves and we knew how to take care of our basic needs better. Sure, we didn't have 100 and 1 little plastic items we didn't need but could buy for $2 at the local store that was open till 8pm every night, 7 days a week, but we also had more time for our families and healthier lifestyles. I think we were happier then too. We can take that back, we can teach our kids basic skills as well as the newer technologies, and we can have a more sustainable future. Enough with the politics of fatalism - that this is the way it is and the way it will continue to be. So long as we embrace the politics of fatalism then we will make no changes to save ourselves and will be doomed to lament our willfully destructive ways in the future with the clarity of 20/20 hindsight.
Doom-mongering documents that spell out a bleak future for the planet have become 10-a-penny in recent years.
Barely a month goes by without some grim new prognosis from an environmental activist group, such as Greenpeace, and many observers will doubtless ignore the World Environmental Outlook report as more of the same.
The review, commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme, is much more than campaigning propaganda from a group with an agenda. Its findings carry considerable credibility because of the way they have been assembled.
Though the report's language might sound extreme, with talk of "humanity's very survival" at risk, its structure actually lends itself to conservatism. Its findings deserve to be taken very seriously as a result - this is not scaremongering to make a point.
Like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has transformed political thinking about global warming, and which won this year's Nobel Peace Prize, it operates by consensus and strict peer review.
It was compiled by a group of more than 380 scientists, all leading figures in fields such as climate science, ecology, fisheries or land use, subdivided into 10 expert groups that prepared the chapters. Some 157 of these were appointed by 48 governments - and were thus unlikely to adopt an extreme position.
A further 1000 scientists took part as peer-reviewers, poring over the conclusions in the areas of their expertise to challenge any misleading claims. More than 13,000 comments on the draft of the full report, and 3000 comments on the summary for decision-makers, were recorded and considered by the expert groups writing each chapter.
The result of such a process is that conclusions have tended to err on the side of caution. Only claims that have reasonably robust support in published scientific literature have been made, and wilder hypotheses have been rejected. Its alarming conclusions appear rather more compelling in this light.
Hopefully your education taught you to be open minded and you might be interested to learn more about sustainable living. If not, perhaps others here are:
When the last ice age ended, did anyone blame the melting of the ice on human activity? And yes, temperature and CO2 are correlated, but correlational studies cannot determine causality. It is faulty logic to determine that CO2 emissions rising causes the temperature to rise.
Thank you for being very concerned about our environment, especially when it comes to global warming. I'm sure you have studied this extensively and your conclusions are based on the latest scientific research. There are a few things, however, that I am unclear about. I have tried to understand, but there are a few loose ends that need to be tied up. Perhaps you can explain them to me.
Greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide, are blamed for global warming. This is supposed to be causing the polar ice and glaciers to melt and raise sea levels. People breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Maybe people are talking too much. People also breathe a lot more when having sex, making more carbon dioxide. It would seem that, according to your logic, that sex would be a contributor to global warming too. I bet you're afraid to propose that theory If you did, no one will like you.
The ground in Miami, Florida is made of "coral rock" (as it is called by the locals), which are old coral beds. I've been there on vacation, and saw it myself. Coral grows under water. Miami is above sea level. Does this mean South Florida was once under water? If so, where did the extra water come from? If not, how did the coral get on land? Is there an ancient type of coral with legs? Could an amphibious dinosaur moved the coral on to land? I'm not sure how the coral could have been moved from the ocean to land. I'm not an expert, but it sure seems to me that Miami was once underwater. Please explain.
Gogo fish fossils have been found in the rocky outcrops of Australia which were once a coral reef according to really smart people. How did the fossils get there? Was Austrailia once underwater like Miami was, or did someone move the fossils? If they were moved from the sea to the land, how was that done? It must have been really hard to move the coral and the fish fossils without breaking them. Is there such a thing as a submersible front-end loader?
A Trilobite is an extinct marine animal that once roamed the sea floor. Trilobite fossils are found in The United States, Russia, Canada, Europe, China, and many other countries. School children learn all about these fossils, and even get to see and touch them. How cool is that ?!?! In the United States, one of the places they are found is Missouri. Missouri is pretty far inland, according to my map. I checked the Google map, and Missouri is in the same place as my map, so it hasn't moved too much recently. Does this mean that Missouri was once the sea floor? Could a really super high tide washed them there? Or, it could have been the submersible front end loader again. You know, it is not nice to fool the children.
I am told glaciers have formed sometime in the past, over a long period of time. It must have been a while ago, since not much about glacier formation is in the news these days, Snow and ice fell, and did not melt, but accumulated over time, and formed glaciers. I read that on Wikipedia. Makes me sound smart, eh? If the ice built up over time, where did the water come from? Did global cooling cause the coast line to recede and the water formed the glaciers? Where else would the water have come from? I am not an expert, but maybe, just maybe, the water in the glaciers used to be covering Miami and Austrailia. How do you cause global cooling anyway? Perhaps the prehistoric people did not burn enough trees so greenhouse gasses fell to unacceptably low levels. The prehistoric people must have been a lot smarter than us to figure out how to cool the Earth off. What did their government do to prevent global cooling and preserve the environment for future generations?
They now say the polar ice caps on Mars are melting. Are greenhouse gasses on Mars causing this? Maybe they are redhouse gasses, since Mars is called the red planet. Do you think the exploration vehicles we sent to Mars are causing the ice caps to melt? Or, maybe it's the Sun, like the Russian scientists say it is. Americans and Russians are sort of like enemies who pretent to be friends, so Americans would never agree with them on anything because that would be admitting the Russian scientists are smarter. Even I can figure that out.
I am waiting eagerly for your explanations. I'm sure, that when I read them, it will all make perfect sense. Thank you so very much for answering these questions and setting the story straight. Please feel free to use big words and use math equations with lots of Greek letters. I have lots of degees after my name too, so I'm sure I'd understand them.
By the way, I have ruled out the submersible front-end loader. I called the local Caterpillar dealer, and the manager assured me they do not manufacture one. For some reason, he also use the word psychiatrist like it is a bad thing. I haven't checked Hitachi yet. If the Japanese have one, maybe they are keeping it a secret.
Joined: 02 Feb 2008 Posts: 627 Location: Worcestershire UK
Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 11:51 am Post subject:
Why around 1980, were scientists scare mongering that there would be another ice age?
If man made CO2 was really the problem, we would try to reduce everyone's CO2 production. Taxation only stops poor people from producing CO2, whilst it becomes a status symbol for the rich to have high CO2 emission cars.
In the USA, they may have bigger CO2 producing cars, but their exhaust smells far less than British cars and they don't seem to produce the visible carcinogenic exhaust clouds that you see in the UK, so you don't need to shut the ventilation/recirc as often in the USA, as a defence against the exhaust of the vehicle in front .
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