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[misko27]

My link even has the obvious counter points though. "You're talking about mass-murder general, not war" "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed! But I do say no more then 10, 20 million killed tops,  uhh depending on the breaks."

[Frumple]

... yeah, I didn't even notice it the first time. Looking at it now... it's a youtube link, which may have been why I filtered it out. Tend to not click those as a habit. Give me text, dagnabbit!

Is too late to do youtube. Would have to unmute sound and... no. But bah, whatever. Carry on.

[Gervassen]

The reason the Earth has oxygen at the levels to support human life is purely because billions of years ago an organism called cyanobacteria overpopulated the Earth and caused the great oxygen catastrophe. That's right. It's called the Oxygen Catastrophe.

Calm down. What happens because of human "overpopulation" is destined to happen. There will be no effective governmental action, neither global nor local. The earth will chug along, even if human overpopulation does break its stride for a few millennia somehow. Imagine if cyanobacteria had been sentient enough to decry all that nasty oxygen that their neighbors were putting unthinkingly into the air, formed a government of germs, and regulated new oxygen emissions. We humans would not be here in that case.

Life goes on. Panta rhei. Change is the essence of the universe. There's no great end-times coming, just a change of some sort, probably not even suitably sudden and dramatic enough a change to make a good movie out of, truth be told.

[Sergius]

My link even has the obvious counter points though. "You're talking about mass-murder general, not war" "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed! But I do say no more then 10, 20 million killed tops,  uhh depending on the breaks."

Well, parody or not, the guy in the video at least had a point: it was, all-out advantage on one side vs. mutual and coordinated destruction. So it's not even comparable to just wanting to solve unrelated stuff with killing people at random (in other words, this is like comparing bombing Hiroshima to "end" the war, to just bombing Hiroshima to stop them from hunting whales or whatever).

[Gervassen]

As for distribution of resources, et cetera, here's a fun statistic- a herd of 200 cows outputs as much CO2 as a car, not to mention the amount of methane, et cetera. And that's only 200 cows. There are 1.4 billion cows as of 2009, and it has only gone up since. Effectively, the amount of cattle on earth output as much CO2 as 700 million cars.

Unless I'm not getting something, you actually meant that 1.4 billion cows are the equivalent of 7 million cars. That's not nearly as impressive a statistic. That's a barely a fraction of cars existing. Time to relax and order a steak.

[Frumple]

The reason the Earth has oxygen at the levels to support human life is purely because billions of years ago an organism called cyanobacteria overpopulated the Earth and caused the great oxygen catastrophe. That's right. It's called the Oxygen Catastrophe.

Is there any actual point to bringing this up? Hadn't heard about the GOE, I think, so I checked in on it. Your overpopulation example, at the fastest, occurred over a period of several million years at the absolute minimum (nearly a billion, possibly even more, at the wider outliers). What our species is doing, and our actions? It's happening over the course of mere millennia. It's literally unprecedented change, and at a speed we've never seen before. The GOE is not really a comparable event, except maybe in the absolute broadest of strokes. What happened then is not a very good thing to pattern how we react now against.

As for the rest... calming down isn't exactly the best idea, really (though it would be perhaps more accurate to call it stopping being willfully blind, rather than something more panic-inclined.). We've been messing with stuff we only partially understand, and most of what we have come to understand is saying bad things at their most conservative, and very, very bad things not very far past that point. Life going on isn't really in question, sure. The issue is whether humans are going still be included in the list of objects still in that set for all that much longer (in a geological sense of longer, anyway). This sort of thing only makes a good movie when it's time lapsed, true, but an end-times of a thousand billion cuts spread out over a half thousand years is still an end-times. From the earth's perspective, things are about to become one hell of an action scene. And it's probably not going to do anything to make sure the media short it's watching doesn't end up a tragedy (from the perspective of the actors, in any case).

Insofar as effective action goes... we do actually see spats, here and there. Moreso on local than wider scale, and still very sporadic and spread out, but it's a start, and it's growing. Not nearly fast enough, from what we know, but every little bit helps. Not seeing as much in relation to population (and more importantly, population growth) specifically, but dealing with the consequences improves, piece by piece. But even population issues seems to be becoming more of a known subject of concern. Considering that it's one of the primary root causes of the problems we have... that's good. Acknowledging and addressing the fundamentals of a problem is one of the most effective ways of solving or mitigating that problem, especially over a longer time frame.

And destiny... destiny can shove off. "What will be will be" may be true, but it's no excuse to not try and make that eventuality better than it could have been without action. That things flow is no reason to not swim, especially when the rapids show signs of coming 'round the bend. Destiny is not and never has been reason to ignore the ethical considerations of one's actions... and that seems to be what your line there was suggesting we, as a species, as groups, and as individuals, should do.

[10ebbor10]

The GOE might be slower, but it was far more farreaching. It killed of all nearly all life on Earth. But really, what happens to the rest of the planet is not priority. Most humans prefer to keep living.

A first-world standard of living is doable without using as much as we do now. For example, it would be fair to say that Americans and Canadians have a similar standard of living to most Europeans. Yet, Europe only uses about half of the resources the US and Canada do, and could even do much better than that.

Still not enough though. If you believe in the ecological footprint system*, we can safely say that we should easily be capable of sustaining all humans at a HDI between 0.7/0.8.
With technology and such that should be increasable to 0.8+, but some luxuries will be things of the past. For one, the urban sprawl needs to be stopped.


*Which I don't. There are some errors in the calculation, particularity in carbon reabsorption. They assume you need to use trees for that, which is horribly inefficient. They also ignore fresh water use.

[Loud Whispers]

Calm down. What happens because of human "overpopulation" is destined to happen. There will be no effective governmental action, neither global nor local. The earth will chug along, even if human overpopulation does break its stride for a few millennia somehow. Imagine if cyanobacteria had been sentient enough to decry all that nasty oxygen that their neighbors were putting unthinkingly into the air, formed a government of germs, and regulated new oxygen emissions. We humans would not be here in that case.

We are looking for information and solution. Rolling over and accepting a future that is worse for a greater majority is beyond stupidity.
Now please, in your apathy consider this:
We are not cynobacteria. We are humans, willing to destroy all other creatures for our continued survival. Cynobacteria had no understanding of their impacts on the planet nor how it would affect their success. They had no concept of suffering, of mass extinction or conservation. Cynobacteria caused the oxygen event by living, we have caused global catastrophes through our actions. Actions which we can take precaution and further action for, lest we screw up this planet for its current inhabitants - both humans and all others in the living kingdom. Throw disregard for hypothetical future creatures, our children will thank us for it. We are the first sapient creatures on this planet, we carry a certain responsibility for it.
The Cynobacteria caused their mass extinction over the course of billions of years. We are doing it in decades.

There are so many fundamental differences as to not see what relevance there is.

[Glowcat]

If anything more access to food seems to kill our population off.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Agricultural revolution kicks off at the 15th century. Given time that graph may soon resemble DF's difficulty curve and all will be horrible and depressing.

Because it bothers me to be misread, I was referring to that in the context of a modern industrialized country and issues with obesity. Technically that's an issue with the qualities of food available and not quantity though, but I was making a joke. Obviously population has been rising at an incredible rate overall across the globe during recent history.

[Loud Whispers]

As for distribution of resources, et cetera, here's a fun statistic- a herd of 200 cows outputs as much CO2 as a car, not to mention the amount of methane, et cetera. And that's only 200 cows. There are 1.4 billion cows as of 2009, and it has only gone up since. Effectively, the amount of cattle on earth output as much CO2 as 700 million cars.

Unless I'm not getting something, you actually meant that 1.4 billion cows are the equivalent of 7 million cars. That's not nearly as impressive a statistic. That's a barely a fraction of cars existing. Time to relax and order a steak.

The average cow requires 7kg of cow feed a day. On the low end of cow feed, cows require 5kg, on the high end... 22kg.
If we just use the average, that's 9,800,000,000kg of feed devoured by cows a day. Then consider further that the feed had to have come from somewhere, a farm. This would have required its own supply of fresh water too, that's where the cost to humanity rises.

[10ebbor10]

Yup, If I recal correctly, 1 hamburger required 2400 liters water.

Not as bad as other things (cotton for example), but still quite a lot.

[Gervassen]

There are so many fundamental differences as to not see what relevance there is.

The relevance is that the earth is not perfectly balanced without humans, which seems to be a tenet of belief to some. The earth has never been a particularly well-balanced system, but it continues to work somehow. Here's the standard predator-prey relationship, showing that even the more balanced animal populations have never been static ratios. Everything booms and busts.



The growth curve for humans will eventually reach a steady-state value somewhere due to pressures on resources, else crash abruptly if allowed to grow too far beyond the sustainable. Either way, we'll still be here when the dust clears. Whenever I talk to people stricken with panic about the state of the earth for one reason or another, I always come away with the feeling that they expect everything to have balanced perfectly and unchangingly without the effects of mankind. It never worked that way. The earth is not a stranger to imbalances, and eventually things have always worked out in some fashion.

We are not cynobacteria. We are humans, willing to destroy all other creatures for our continued survival. Cynobacteria had no understanding of their impacts on the planet nor how it would affect their success ... We are the first sapient creatures on this planet, we carry a certain responsibility for it.

Sapience isn't all that great a thing. Do we understand our impact on the planet? That's a questionable conceit, at best. From this very thread, I have learnt that human populations exploded when we made agriculture more efficient in the 15th century. I have also learnt that the only way to react to human overpopulation is to eat like a vegetarian in order to make agriculture more efficient still. For some reason that would not be a continuation of the trend that more agricultural efficiency generates larger human populations.

Without this thread, I would have made the mistake of assuming that keeping farming inefficient on some level would cause a lower maximum value for human population. Therefore, I would eat as much beef as possible to ensure that our farming output is still fairly inefficient than it otherwise could be, and more like the efficiencies obtained in prior centuries. Making a supply to feed 15 billion people would have seemed to ensure 15 billion eventually. Now I will drop this hamburger and nibble on some grass.

[Gamerlord]

There are so many fundamental differences as to not see what relevance there is.

The relevance is that the earth is not perfectly balanced without humans, which seems to be a tenet of belief to some. The earth has never been a particularly well-balanced system, but it continues to work somehow. Here's the standard predator-prey relationship, showing that even the more balanced animal populations have never been static ratios. Everything booms and busts.



The growth curve for humans will eventually reach a steady-state value somewhere due to pressures on resources, else crash abruptly if allowed to grow too far beyond the sustainable. Either way, we'll still be here when the dust clears. Whenever I talk to people stricken with panic about the state of the earth for one reason or another, I always come away with the feeling that they expect everything to have balanced perfectly and unchangingly without the effects of mankind. It never worked that way. The earth is not a stranger to imbalances, and eventually things have always worked out in some fashion.

We are not cynobacteria. We are humans, willing to destroy all other creatures for our continued survival. Cynobacteria had no understanding of their impacts on the planet nor how it would affect their success ... We are the first sapient creatures on this planet, we carry a certain responsibility for it.

Sapience isn't all that great a thing. Do we understand our impact on the planet? That's a questionable conceit, at best. From this very thread, I have learnt that human populations exploded when we made agriculture more efficient in the 15th century. I have also learnt that the only way to react to human overpopulation is to eat like a vegetarian in order to make agriculture more efficient still. For some reason that would not be a continuation of the trend that more agricultural efficiency generates larger human populations.

Without this thread, I would have made the mistake of assuming that keeping farming inefficient on some level would cause a lower maximum value for human population. Therefore, I would eat as much beef as possible to ensure that our farming output is still fairly inefficient than it otherwise could be, and more like the efficiencies obtained in prior centuries. Making a supply to feed 15 billion people would have seemed to ensure 15 billion eventually. Now I will drop this hamburger and nibble on some grass.

Finally someone who thinks like me on this issue.

[Loud Whispers]

There are so many fundamental differences as to not see what relevance there is.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The relevance is that the earth is not perfectly balanced without humans, which seems to be a tenet of belief to some. The earth has never been a particularly well-balanced system, but it continues to work somehow. Here's the standard predator-prey relationship, showing that even the more balanced animal populations have never been static ratios. Everything booms and busts.

You just demonstrated the relevance of irrelevant examples with a point no one in this thread has made.

The growth curve for humans will eventually reach a steady-state value somewhere due to pressures on resources, else crash abruptly if allowed to grow too far beyond the sustainable. Either way, we'll still be here when the dust clears. Whenever I talk to people stricken with panic about the state of the earth for one reason or another, I always come away with the feeling that they expect everything to have balanced perfectly and unchangingly without the effects of mankind. It never worked that way. The earth is not a stranger to imbalances, and eventually things have always worked out in some fashion.

Addressing the part that has relevance, nothing is certain. What will happen is that the billions without food, water and electricity will increase to even greater numbers. Industries will seek to continue expanding, the oceans will continue to get more acidic, our planet's climate will continue to change, weather conditions and catastrophes will ever so continue to get stranger while mass extinction blooms across the world. Everyone on this planet will be affected.
What happens when usable fresh water is nearly totally exhausted by ever increasing populations? Those cities that can afford to desalinate sea water can provide for their citizens with greater cost to persons and the environment, but necessary standards of living would still be met. But then what of agriculture, the greatest water sink of all?
The whole issue is that the world's populations still increase at rates faster than our current technology and lifestyles can manage. To wait until resources run out and populations suddenly 'balance' out would be too late, forgetting how the ecological damage will have already been done to present day Earth - all those billions dying would not choose to balance out quietly.

Sapience isn't all that great a thing. Do we understand our impact on the planet? That's a questionable conceit, at best. From this very thread, I have learnt that human populations exploded when we made agriculture more efficient in the 15th century. I have also learnt that the only way to react to human overpopulation is to eat like a vegetarian in order to make agriculture more efficient still. For some reason that would not be a continuation of the trend that more agricultural efficiency generates larger human populations.

In this day and age with great indexes and information banks at hand ignorance is no longer an excuse.

[10ebbor10]

Yup, just because a problem might not kill all of us is no reason to ignore it.

Humans are one of the few species, if not the only species, capable of long term planning. Maybe we should do it.