World Population Grows Beyond 7 Billion 349
First time accepted submitter assertation writes in with a LA Times feature about the booming world population and the strain it puts on the environment and governments. "After remaining stable for most of human history, the world's population has exploded over the last two centuries. The boom is not over: The biggest generation in history is just entering its childbearing years. The coming wave will reshape the planet, and the impact will be greatest in the poorest, most unstable countries."
god damn it (Score:4, Funny)
Taco's wife needs to stop having kids.
leave! (Score:3)
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B5... ...and now we leave the cradle for the last time.
Re:leave! (Score:4, Insightful)
B5... ...and now we leave the cradle for the last time.
The problem of course is it's going to be super hard to find funding and staff at the beginning since we know ahead of time what happens to B1-B4.
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B5... ...and now we leave the cradle for the last time.
The problem of course is it's going to be super hard to find funding and staff at the beginning since we know ahead of time what happens to B1-B4.
Nah, it'll be fine. Remember, a war just ended. Gotta keep those factories in gear or risk recession!
Alarmist (Score:5, Insightful)
And fertility rates are dropping everywhere, and more people than ever are choosing to simply not have children. Of course by mentioning that, this article wouldn't be nearly as alarmist, so it was conveniently omitted.
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The population growth rate will explode again as more children are born of high birthrate religious parents and are increasingly high birthrate themselves. This slowing of population growth is only temporary.
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Re:Alarmist (Score:5, Insightful)
You are safe from overpopulation in the developed world, but it is still a major problem for the billions in the developing world.
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Thankfully, they are developing. Time and again, we've seen birth rates level off once countries attain a status closer to developed. With the world as interconnected as it is now, I honestly believe it's an exciting time that will see large changes over the next century throughout the developing world, bringing them quite a few more of the comforts enjoyed in the developed world.
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I don't see how you can avoid tangling with the pesky religious issues. Certain religions (names Roman Catholicism) forbid you from using contraception, no ifs and or buts. If people live longer in Catholic countries, the population will skyrocket (and it already is), because they'll still have 6-10 kids per family but they'll live longer, and modern medicine will mean more of them will live to adulthood and have more kids of their own. The only way around this is for those people to abandon Catholicism,
What problems? (Score:2)
The only problem with exploding population is that it's not profitable to move all the food around so some people throw 50% away and some people starve.
Oh and as for governments, they don't scale. We need to start chopping everything up into smaller bits.
100% serious.... (Score:2, Interesting)
....that if i had a button which if pressed, would kill every man, woman and child; I would push it without hesitation.
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Re:100% serious.... (Score:5, Insightful)
....that if i had a button which if pressed, would kill every man, woman and child; I would push it without hesitation.
The problem with that is that you're effectively dooming three billion years of evolution to comparatively short term extinction.
Humanity may be killing vast percentages of the biome, and may be causing substantial short term damage to the ecosphere, but its also the best opportunity the planet has had, or likely will ever have, to getting off the planet. And life that doesn't get off the planet will end, period. The odds are there won't be a second chance. Could intelligence arise again? Its possible. Its also possible it has arisen before.
The problem is one of opportunity. Getting life off this rock doesn't take intelligence. It takes intelligence, the right series of events making that kind of capability important to be developed, *AND*, most importantly, it will require some hypothetical future species to have access to vast amounts of energy.
Guess what, we've used up virtually all of the dense sources of energy that can be recovered without technology. The conditions that led to the development of coal, oil and natural gas involve geological and environmental conditions that in concert won't likely happen again.
So your short-sighted action would likely save one small potential set of life that otherwise wouldn't have a chance to exist, but would essentially guarantee an end to the entire chain of life in another half billion or billion years.
also 100% serious.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you kill yourself then the effect is the same, from your point of view.
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We could easily stop this (Score:5, Insightful)
By bringing middle classes to developing nations. People who don't have to have litters to ensure that one child survives have one or two children, below the replacement rate. People who have careers and money to spend and cultural activities to take part in don't spend so much time screwing. And when they do, they realize that having extra children will prevent them from enjoying those luxuries.
In short, the fight against overpopulation is the same as the fight against global inequality.
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That reduces population growth, but causes an explosion of per-capita resource consumption. That's not exactly sustainable either.
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People who have careers and money to spend and cultural activities to take part in don't spend so much time screwing.
Unlikely. "everyone knows" if you get a bachelor pad downtown in the hip urban areas then you'll get laid every night. Supposedly. Also see endless "I can't date until I buy a junker car" and "I can't get laid until I get an apartment and move out of mom's basement" and "rich guys get all the chicks" and "I need to get a job after school to pay for dating if boy and clothes so boys notice me if girl" etc etc.
Aside from examples and logic, if its anecdote time, it certainly applies to the first half of my
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Bringing billions of people around the world to the middle class is much more difficult than controlling population growth.
Re:We could easily stop this (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why I call the birth control pill the greatest boon to mankind since the smallpox vaccine.
Except it means that the sensible people have few or no kids while the nutty cultists continue to have dozens. Doesn't take long for that to result in a world of nutty cultists and few sensible people.
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Doesn't take long for that to result in a world of nutty cultists and few sensible people.
Only about 52 years apparently.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
fixed that for you (Score:4, Informative)
Biology got us into this situation.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
The thing about nature... (Score:2)
Nature has a way of equalizing the population to it's confined space. We may not like it, but it will happen one way or the other. I like how the video tries to tell you that the problem is solvable by government action. It isn't by any realistic measure. The more you provide resources to people, the more they will consume, and the worse the problem becomes. Wars, while not ideal, do a fairly good job of removing large numbers of the population quickly, as does desease. However, we like to think that
That's the thing about a J-curve... (Score:2)
fwiw (Score:3)
Population Cap (Score:4, Interesting)
Obligatory TED links, that might actually be a bit more insightful than TFA.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html [ted.com]
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html [ted.com]
While I am skeptical that we'll have enough resources either way, I think that humans are going to have to adapt hard or the entire race will just fade away. This won't necessarily be a problem for a few generations, but there is very little left in this world that is untouched, or that we can leave untouched. Solutions to the energy crisis aside, food and water are still major concerns, and we can't infinitely increase the amount of farming, because we'll also need to increase our living spaces; however, this is unless we go full Tokyo and build above and below ourselves and learn to live in cramped situations. Even still, it will be an incredibly difficult feat to convince most Westerners that they aren't allowed cars anymore and that they need to walk or use trains to go to work. I don't mind myself, since I'm a student who uses trains and busing all the time, but few people want to give up the luxury of driving to work in favour of using a subway system (similar to how most east asian countries operate).
In the meantime, I'm going to be developing my zombie formula so that I can do my part to end overpopulation. Call me if you can help, I'm trying to put a patent together so I can sue others who want to destroy the Earth while the zombies and lawyers (?difference) take over.
Little left untouched (Score:2)
"There is very little left in this world that is untouched, or that we can leave untouched"
I'm not sure how true this is. In terms of natural resources (mines, forestry, oil) things will get tougher. However, there are lots of places with places for people.
However, most people tend to
a) Prefer to live in the big, already-crowded cities
b) Not want to start new towns
Technology allows us to cultivate land that was previously quite un-usable. The big problem is that we're dirty pests that tend to f*** up said l
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There is still a *lot* of empty space. Also, if we managed to convert even a fraction of the developing world to the level of output that US farms have, we have plenty of food. Mostly the issue is water and sanitation.
But even then... the real issue is energy. We can deal with getting water to where it is needed if energy is cheap enough.
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Solutions to the energy crisis aside, food and water are still major concerns, and we can't infinitely increase the amount of farming, because we'll also need to increase our living spaces; however, this is unless we go full Tokyo and build above and below ourselves and learn to live in cramped situations.
Everything comes down to ready supply of cheap energy. If we have that, nothing much matters.
With cheap energy you can grow food indoors without any farm land. With cheap energy you can build huge skyscrapers where everyone has more living space than they do today. With cheap energy you can dig up all the materials you want, recycle what you can't find, and ship more down from space if you really have to.
Which is probably why so many on the left hate cheap energy so much.
A little late, isn't it? (Score:2)
It's not "the Coming Wave," we're right in the midst of it, and have been for some time. It's not in front of us, we're well into it. That's not to say it won't get much, much worse, but it's very important to realize that we have entered the effects of overpopulation.
Just ask the Atlantic Cod fisheries, the Pacific garbage patch, that dry lake somewhere in the former USSR - heck, there are too many to list.
Get... (Score:2)
We're all going to die! (Score:5, Interesting)
"This natural inequality of the two powers, of population, and of production of the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that appears to me insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society."
Thomas Malthus, 18th century.
People have been saying that the "end is near" since human beings developed speech. None have been right. Ockam's razor and the law of induction tells me they won't be in the future.
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All that said, yup, there's a lot we can do to improve life for the people who do live here, and we should strive to do so. All of us atheists get it, and most religious f
Birthrate... (Score:2)
The birthrate will in the long term tend toward one birth per person (or two children per woman given a 50:50 sex ratio). The only question is whether this happens because most children that are born die of famine or violence before they get the opportunity to reproduce or whether it happens by a more benign mechanism.
Population Growth brings change (Score:2)
This is not the first time population growth drove change.
not to many posts but by reading them you might comprehend what is happening, why and where we are heading
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Abstraction-Physics-101/170311386325230 [facebook.com]
Random things... (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, TFA is dead wrong in stating that human population has been relatively stable throughout most human history. This is blatantly false, for anyone who has bothered to look at the historical record. In pre-history, human populations have varied wildly, from up to several dozen million to possibly as low as several tens of thousands. Likewise, once "civilization" has started, human populations have obeyed a rather steadily increasing geometric curve. We notice now because we're finally at the heel portion of the hockeystick curve where the numbers start increasing quickly.
Secondly, the decline in number of children per woman is primarily tied to increasing Woman's Rights in a society. The closer women are treated like property (both culturally and legally), the higher the number of children borne, and the inverse when women and men are treated equally. Women's Rights is also closely correlated (and, likely a causative factor) in development of a significant middle class. Religion only has an impact in so far as it affects Women's Rights (which, it certainly can have a very negative impact).
Also, there are two major factors that aren't really addressed in TFA: lack of energy, and water. Advanced civilizations require ludicrously larger amounts of power than low-tech societies, and, even with conservation, this isn't going to change. We need power to run our 1st world countries, and the more everyone else tries to emulate us, power requirements will be exponential (probably high exponential) in growth. Until we have real clean energy, this energy demand and the side effects of providing energy is going to be the number one environmental pressure. On the other hand, (decreasing) access to clean water for both drinking and agriculture is something that is radically reshaping societies, as we can't really de-salinize enough to make a difference at this point, and we're well on our way to draining many historical water sources out of existence. Water will be the new oil which people fight over, likely very, very soon. It's already a major friction point in the Middle East and Indian subcontinental areas.
To quote the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
Go forth and multiply (Score:2)
Mission accomplished breeders. Enough already.
Bad news everyone (Score:5, Funny)
It also means that you've only got a 0.0000000143% chance of getting that coveted first post.
Re:And the news gonna be badder still (Score:4, Insightful)
Not science, technology. Learn the difference.
Since you want to split hair -
Where are you going to get any advancement in technology without advancement and more understanding in Science?
Technology advanced by trial and error for millennia before science AWKI existed. Maybe you could say that trial and error is a form of science, but I wouldn't. Trial and error doesn't require understanding *why* the new idea works better.
Even today technology isn't entirely science-driven. We have rigorous mathematical approaches to engineering, but we still get sent beck to the drawing board whenever a bridge collapses or an airplane falls out of the sky.
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The top 1% is based on income, not population.
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Maybe, maybe not.
If you have 100 people, and 50 of them are worth $1000 and 50 are worth $500. Where is the top 1%? It's not 1, it's 50.
Nothing to see here. (Score:2)
Re:Good news everyone (Score:5, Funny)
The top 1% is based on income, not population.
I may have found a contributing factor to you not being in the 1% ...
Re:Good news everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can't be serious.
Okay, I'll bite. What is this glorious math that you understand that we've all apparently missed? Because near as I can tell, the top 1% of any group is going to be equal in number to 1% of the sample size. Since the sample size here is 7B, we can say that the top 1% will be made up of 70M. How the wealth is distributed among the members of that top 1% is wholly irrelevant in determining how many are in the top 1%.
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First, you have the subset of people who own the top echelon of the world's wealth (though this measurement is far easier to parse as owners of 99% of all wealth instead of the top 1% of wealth owners; I digress). Second, you have the 1% of the population that have the highest net worth. These two numbers are not necessarily the same; I'd think the first group is far larger than the second, but I'm not really sure.
Exactly *why* he believe
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Let's not even begin to mention how misguided your use of the word "vector" is.
Re:Good news everyone (Score:5, Funny)
Yet you aren't either. Likely because you don't actually understand how math works. You're using a simplistic equation that assumes everyone is worth different amounts, and thus you get a nice linear vector where you can chop off 1%. That's not likely true at all.
Actually, if we're going to go there, I am... and comfortably so. Although the reality is the 99% of the 1% have a lot more in common with the bottom 1% of the 99% than the 1% of the 1%.
And, of course, my original post was mocking your brain fart, not really attempting to make any socio-political statement about any correlation of internet gaffes to wealth or the intelligence or lack thereof of any particular income bracket.
Now, I suppose the fact that everyone else seems to understand that and you missed it might suggest an additional set of evidence related to my original assertion, so perhaps the joke was a little too close to home.
Re:Good news everyone (Score:4, Informative)
Your question is too vague. Do you mean what percentage of people fall within the top 1% of personal wealth? That doesn't have a 1:1 correlation with population.
"top 1%" requires definition of what the 1% applies to specifically, and how it's measured.
For example, suppose you add up all the total wealth, then take 1% of that and figure out how many people are in that category? You will come out with a different number than if you take the wealthiest person and the poorest person, and take 1% of that range and figure out how many people fall in that 1%.
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I was a lurker on SD for ~5 years, finally decided to make an account, got excellent karma, etc - and realized I can't post in any discussion I do modding in. I find it impossible to spend mod points, because any topic I get engaged enough in to reasonably moderate posts I want to contribute to. I much prefer the reddit system to the SD system in that regard, especially since the quality of posts has fallen since so few people are actively spending their mod points it seems.
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I misspoke, I meant net worth.
There's 70 billion people of Earth (Score:2)
Where are they hiding?
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I'm not saying one should, but one could. I don't want to ruin anyone's day you know...
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So, if I understand correctly, the average human weighs 70 tonnes? And my Doctor says I am obese.
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The thing is, hundreds of years ago, the mortality rate was right up there with the birth rate. Even if you cancel out infant mortality with births, it was still pretty high.
If you had a family of 10, you were lucky if 3 survived. Often times, it was only 1 or 2 that survived, making a pretty break even population growth.
With the advent of medicine, however, mortality rates plummeted but birth rates did not.
Re:What nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
With the advent of medicine, however, mortality rates plummeted but birth rates did not.
I'm not sure that's the case - at least not here in the US. If you go back to my parents generation all the families had 5-7 children without fail. Some had more than that (my grandfather on my mother's side came from a family of 14).
Fastforward to modern times. None of my aunts or uncles had more than 3 kids per family. Between my own generation I'm seeing more like 1 or 2 kids per family. Part of it may be the increased cost of raising children - part of it may be the increased number of women in the workplace (where each child is not only time off from work for recovery but without a parent at home each is another daycare bill). I'm sure a large part of it is simply the invention of birth control.
Regardless, birth rates per family (if not for the planet as a whole) seem to have come down significantly in the last 50 years.
Re:What nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just Stop! (Score:4, Informative)
How many of those people starve to death everyday? People who cannot provide for their kids need to make a conscious effort to stop having them.
It usually works the other way - when child mortality rate is high, you hedge your bets by getting more children so at least some grow up.
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The reason people in poverty have more children is in the hope that one of them will rise out of that misery, and at the very least grow to adulthood and have children of their own. But a most of their problems are a consequence of government corruption, not a true lack of food or medicine.
Most developed Asian nations, generally still more densely populated, are seeing fertility rates barely above 1. Hell, even China is starting to see the impact of population decline and has been experiencing the consequen
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I think the US is one of the exceptions, where the more affluent population continues to have more than multiple children.
LOL its the other way around, pretty intensely. High school dropout and no skills and no job = minimum 7 kids in the trailer, "career oriented woman" = no kids.
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I don't see why they need to be mutually exclusive. Trailer park patrons do indeed have a higher birthrate, but that doesn't negate the claim that affluent people are having more children in the US than their counterparts elsewhere in the developed world. Do they have as many as redneck Joe? No. But do they have enough to cause a population increase, rather than a decline? Yes, according to what was said.
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Exactly. A lot of people scream about statistics that 1 in 6 US children are born into poverty, and there's a reason for this: it's the poor people that have all the kids. The rich(er) people are too busy with their careers to have more than 1 or 2, if any. A lot of people even put it off because of their careers, only to find out they missed their window.
Re:Just Stop! (Score:5, Interesting)
the us native-born reproductive rate is 2.
2.1 is required for the population to stay the same.
The US only has a growing population because of the higher birth rate among immigrants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#United_States [wikipedia.org]
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I think the US is one of the exceptions, where the more affluent population continues to have more than multiple children.
Can you share a source that cites just how many more than multiple? :)
Re:Just Stop! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the US is one of the exceptions, where the more affluent population continues to have more than multiple children.
The intelligent hardworking people I know have two, one, or no children. The dumbest and poorest just keep pushing them out. It's exactly like the movie Idiocracy.
It doesn't help that we have a social system that rewards low income high birth rate. My wife and I will have to make a tough decision when it comes to offspring #2. Can we afford it or not? If we can't, I'll get snipped and we'll just go on working to pay for other people's children through welfare, food stamps, WIC, EIC, Section 8, school lunch vouchers, head start, etc, etc, etc. Our standard of living would improve if we both just quit working and had more children.
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Granted, I'm sure they get some pretty significant tax breaks, but they are by no means the dumbest *well, in terms of marketable intelligence; why anyone would WANT 8 kids is beyond me) and/or poorest.
Here's why I'm happy with my two: my family fits in all Disney
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Starvation still exists, but global malnourishment has actually gone down.
Forgive me for going a bit partisan on this one issue (I don't belong to either party) but using the alarmism of the population boom generally comes from Democrats, who in turn also argue that genetically modified foods are evil. They're worried that people around the globe are starving while at the same time trying to stop food shipments to third world countries. I can't understand the hypocrisy on this issue. And when it comes to pe
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It's time to start colonizing Mars,
Antarctica is closer, not quite as harsh, yet a reasonably good engineering challenge.
I don't mean colonize in either the current forward military base where its more of a logistics achievement than an actual "colonization" nor do I mean some weird lovecraftian stuff or hollow earth flakery, but literal colonization complete with algae and fish farms for dining or whatever. Even if its never done the planning process would be pretty good training.
Even KSR's mars trilogy began with a year on Antarctica.
Re:Colonization (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oceans and deserts are even closer, and probably the investment needed to sustain a lot of people is smaller.
We've already done New Orleans, not so well, and Vegas, OK so far. The hard part is making a colony thats not a drain on the rest of the environment; self contained.
Also too close makes it too easy to cheat, look at everything we send to N.O. and Vegas. Antarctica would have to be self contained, other than O2 and H2O and solar energy which makes it a good training ground... tough, but not too tough.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Colonization (Score:4, Informative)
The Netherlands?
Not the same situation. While you can also question the wisdom of "reclaiming land from the sea" as the Dutch have done, they did it in modern times using dikes. Further, the Dutch have a stable landmass with bedrock underneath. New Orleans literally goes away over time without fresh annual flooding, as it's nothing but delta silt built up over time with no bedrock underneath. People can't live with flooding, but without flooding, the landmass eventually goes away. New Orleans may be the single worst place to build a city in North America. And nothing we do can change that.
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The arctic, or the antarctic? In the arctic, you have to ancient spirits called "Wendigo" killing you. In the antarctic, however, that's not a problem, but instead you have to worry about shape-shifting aliens [imdb.com]attacking you and using your body to attack your coworkers and friends.
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Actually, I disagree about the "training" aspect. Training is worthless when the person trained never uses it, or dies before it's used. Sure, it'd be cool if a bunch of people figured out how to live in Antarctica, but if they don't do it, what good is it? It's not like they're going to somehow pass that knowledge on to the next generation. We learned that with the space program; some of the basic designs were preserved, but a LOT of stuff simply wasn't, and this happens every time some industry goes u
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Yeah, I wish. More likely is that they'll just dome it up and burn fuel to generate heat and electricity to live the temperate zone life there.
Um, Antarctica or Mars? You've just kind of made my point for me.
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Antarctica is ... very restricted to military/scientific missions.
Not for any technical reason just flaky politics. Preparation for a mars colony counts as "scientific mission" anyway.
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If you examine the logistics it's basically impossible with any feasible technology to launch people into orbit faster than they are currently being born. Now if we get Star Trek transporters that may change.
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Malnourishment has been going down steadily for decades. And people have made the claims that the world will starve because of population growth for decades.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Population-Bomb-Paul-Ehrlich/dp/1568495870 [amazon.com]
Those claims continue to prove false.
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Err, they've been saying that since Malthus at least, so for centuries.
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Really, though, any given day, the largest number of people enter their childbearing years than ever in history, and that number is always greater than those leaving childbearing years.
Calling it a "generation" is a bit silly, but it's certainly a less wordy way of saying it that still sends the message.
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Actually, if this graph [wikipedia.org] is to be trusted, it's very far from an exponential growth. You can see two breaks: one at about -5000, where the population started growing; and one at about 1700, where the growth rate increased dramatically. Also a hint for another, more recent break (~1950?), where the growth rate increased again. (Note for the mathematically impaired: an exponential growth means a straight line in a log graphic. You can divide this graphic in 3-4 different straight lines, so you have 3-4 differe
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
easy solution, that nobody wants to use (Score:2)
The most effective, and least oppressive way to reduce birth rates is to give women an education. I would rather make college mandatory than get into the business of regulating people's sexual behavior.
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Oh I see that "ichthus" has posted it already:
"Hans Rosling: Religions and babies" --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVk1ahRF78 [youtube.com]