You can visit the website behind this video here. Listen carefully for the Wilhelm scream in the video.
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
You have forgotten the many many famines in europe that did kill hundreds of thousands. Ever hear of the irish potato famine or the wheat famine, mini ice age, or holodomor? According to William L. Shirer germany only produced 85% of its food and had to import the rest. The japs starved prisoners of war in ww2 because they did not have enough food.
Oh, and food production is already in decline. We are getting less fish out of the ocean year over year over year since 1983 despite “improved” fishing technology. Don’t worry, only about a billion people rely on ocean fish for the bulk of their protein. And, ocean acidification may cause a complete collapse of the ocean’s fish by killing off the Pteropods that form the base of the food chain.
We have just about a 90 day surplus of grain, when we used to have around 270 days.
We’ve reduced arable land area through desertification by about 10% already.
We’re losing topsoil due to industrial farming.
We’re depleting our underground aquifers, such as the Ogallala at a far faster rate than it is replenished.
http://tinyurl.com/yrz6vh
We’re eating oil, in the form of industrial fertilizer, though it too is a limited resource.
Yes. There are many reasons to worry about overpopulation. We could all have our yard out in Texas. But, there still won’t be enough arable land, water, and oil to grow our food.
#12 – Benjamin,
#9 Oh come on now. By the time your doomsday scenario takes place, we will have built space ships and spread humanity to other planets where we can rinse and repeat.
Some facts you may be missing:
1) We haven’t been outside of LEO in over 30 years.
2) We have no way to live on any nearby planet.
3) We can’t terraform a planet until we know how to keep an already terraformed planet in that state, something we are obviously failing at.
4) We have no way to get to distant planets until we can get our meat containers to exceed the speed of light or go through a worm hole, neither of which appears feasible in the near future.
#31, Not to poo-poo Jeffrey Sachs’s baby too much, but one of the Millennium Development Goals is to also significantly reduce infant mortality. And then in countries like ours, we celebrate our ability to keep babies alive that are even as premature as three months.
It isn’t helping population growth when we keep more people alive long enough to do their own reproducing.
People are obviously discussing quantity here…
when they should be talking quality.
Can anyone link this thread up with the beautiful women reproducing more girls thread?
I don’t like where this blog is going.
Seems to be a call to hit beautiful women with ugly sticks.
Whoops. I forgot. You don’t have to have triplets every time you have sex.
Never mind.
#35, Scott, “We can’t terraform a planet until we know how to keep an already terraformed planet in that state, something we are obviously failing at.”
Think of it this way. We (the human race) are like a virus or bacteria. When we kill this host, we will migrate to another. Some will be able to adapt to that world’s immune system. Most won’t, but the survivors will be even more likely to adapt.
Use your common sense, folks.
It’s totally obvious there are way to many humans on earth.
#40–Greg==on what basis do you form the opinion that there are too many people?
I can think of many “statistics” showing that land, water, phosphate, oxygen etc are being used up but this is all in a system built to favor the few at the disadvantage of the many.
So, yea==the distribution of resources is out of whack, but that doesn’t go to the carrying capacity of the earth.
Imagine a new consciousness of honoring mother earth. What if we all grew food wherever we could? If we recycled? If we adopted healthy lower energy consumption life styles?
What is the carrying capacity of the earth. Does it vary under different variables? Are there variables sufficient to support 9 Billion?
Is it a limitation of resources, imagination, or good will?
((Scott==don’t chime in with the earth can’t support more than 3 dozen people without sacrificing the flu virus.===joke!)) -?-
#40, no wai, all we need is to improve our GMO tech and develop new chemicals to pump into our livestock to increase food output.
More people living less healthy is the way to go.
#41, Bobbo, having an extremely robust division of labor is why we have been able to achieve the level of technological and economic progress we have. It’s also the reason why millions of people can be fed by a relative handful of highly efficient food production operations. If we all went back to growing our own food, we would necessarily have to give up our advances elsewhere. We would also be producing that food less efficiently.
boboo,
You have to ask such an obvious question?
— water shortages.
— massive poverty
— over fished seas
— widespread threat or extinction of other species
— de-forestation
— global warming
— territorial wars
and those are the ones that come to the top of my mind.
I’m sure others could come up with other items on the list. I’m probably missing some obvious ones.
I just spent the weekend with a well-connected African and he reinforced my understanding about the likely de-population of Africa.
Despite massive population growth in the last century, life expectancy is dropping fast and the population trend will likely turn around.
http://tinyurl.com/lpf9js
Anyway, all I’m saying is that the earth might de-populate from AIDS, Swine Flu or some other disease. It seems kind of likely, actually. Tragic, if your kids are the ones who die, but likely none the less.
It’ll stop being a concern after the appocalypse.
#44–Greg==Can’t answer the question huh? And Sea Lawyer–you certainly aren’t helping. I assume this “we” you talk about are the privileged few taking a totally disproportionate share of the planets riches.
Growing food, conserving water, recycling etc as one’s own daily absolution to Mother Earth in no way substitutes for the pile-on centralized corporate/industrialized wasting of the Earth. Just a nice adjunct to keep it going.
Water Shortage. No such thing. Same with everything that properly might be considered on your list.
So, how much “proof” is you making an affirmative statement? Thats right===NONE. Same with my Negative response.
But I’ll give some “logic” to it anyway. Water can be recycled, cleaned, reused. It becomes more expensive but that is all. So, yea==”free water” will disappear but not reclaimed water such as with reverse osmosis and what not.
Silly chicken littles. Yes, the world can’t maintain 9 Billion People and use water the same way that was done when there were only 2 Billion people. Thats why I introduced the elusive concept of “variables.” You know what variable are don’t you?===things that change, like how we approach/treat our resources.
Silly. Do I even need to negate the power of prayer?
funny clip..
my first thought.. -was that it “sounds like the standard propaganda of some pro-life or [converting] religious organization..
-a quick look at who sourced the video will take you to overpopulationisamyth.com, which links to its parent, pop.org.
-low and behold, on the front page of pop.org
is a recent blog post titled: Compassion for the Unborn? Which of course, is a pro-life puff peice that that focuses on that great unknown mystery:
Where does Sonia Sotomayor stand on abortion..?
the article ends with:
“All we can hope is that Sotomayor’s “compassion” and “common touch” might lead her to see the terrible injustice of the practice of abortion, an injustice carried out every day on our nation’s children.”
to put the irony on the cake, pop.org is located in the home of “overpopulated families”: Utah
Also, there is no need to hem and haw over the numbers. they have been so oversimplified that they are in fact, meaningless. (an old schooll WMD)
This vid clip was meant to be one of those meeme thingies..a Mind virus.
Do us all a favour and do not propagate the video any further. to do so would only further lies and religion. -the ultimate “terrorist” of humanity.
second [after] thought.. after seeing the “do the math” statement at the end, you know its intent is to intimidate any simpletons who have little or no math skills into thinking “wow, this must be true, -they did the math”
I suggest that anytime someone starts threatening you with math to support their argument, take away their pencil.
Make them support their argument without any math. Odds are they’ll look at you with a blank stare.
If they cannot, or bumble and stumble trying and make little sense in the process, chances are they were counting on scaring you with some fancy convoluted math that you could not readily do in your head.
Interestingly enough, they can do the same with extremely oversimplified math that you *can* do in your head. -hoping that when you relize “OMG, the numbers really do add up” -you’ll instantly convert to their brand of dogma.
This actually a very old, tried and true type of WMD:
Weapon of Maths Destruction.
sadly, modern science has used it to completely corrupt the scientific process. it’s why we have the Big Bang Theory and Black Holes. -but i digress..
-s
>> bobbo, when the obvious isn’t
>>> #44–Greg==Can’t answer the question huh?
You refused to accept the common sense, patently true answer I gave.
This video was produced by the Population Research Institute, which is right-wing funded group that champions pro-life causes. They wrap themselves in the mantle of “science” and “facts”, but are merely producing propaganda for the purpose of opposing abortion.
>> bobbo, when the obvious isn’t #2 said,
>> Water Shortage. No such thing.
Holy smokes, man. You need to travel more.
I, myself, have personally lived in cities where there are water riots. And that’s for ANY WATER AT ALL — not drinkable water.
In the developing world, rivers that served whole civilizations for millennia have been totally sucked dry.
Hah, hah. Greg, I admire your earnestness. Shortages due to distribution faults is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT QUESTION to what is the carrying capacity of the earth.
My favorite example: during the Great Irish Potato Famine, millions died while Irish farmers exported grain to England to make a profit. See how it works? The earth may or may not be able to support more people than existed in the early 1800’s, but pointing to shortages here and there, or always in africa in modern times, says NOTHING!!!!@!!!!!
Its like thinking dividing the population into the land mass of Texas.
I’ll let you do the math.
#15
“5.4 acres of land for every human being on this planet and about 18.6 acres of ocean. ”
I hope you didnt consider Farming the ALPS, mount everest, the andies, or even consider living on a Vertical slope.
Ok, then lets think about how much in FOOD you do eat. THE BEEF/CHICKEN/FISH you eat in 1 year. and the room that they need to feed. I hope you dont deforest the land for that..you DO need oxygen and so does your cow and chicken(pun needed)
#22
go watch the movie insted.
#29
POINT SET AND MATCH…
then lets add the Oxygen absorption of AIR from flowing water..
lets add Crop failure, and that 1/2 of texas is Hurricane alley.
Lets add that WHY house all these people in a Arable area, WHY not in the middle of NON-ARABLE lands..a large desert.
Have we added enough for Feeding our Animals? pets?? And without a few cats and dogs, what will happen to the rodent populations??
#30,
very true..I hope you like CORN and cereal. because FRUIT and Vegetable is going to be scarce.
I suggest we ask for volunteers for space explorations.. REALLY.
we have Tech that cant be proven until we send them OUT into space..
Get to another planet..
Find NEW resources..
BUILD NEW AGAIN..
i don’t buy the notion that the entire population of earth could live (not just merely FIT but LIVE with a home and a yard) on land the size of Texas.. That’s complete horseshit.
though i do tend to belive we aren’t over populated (cept maybe china).
#3
“… Dupont and Rockefeller families, who were a part of the Business Plot to remove FDR…”
That’s just conspiracy theory!
Next you’ll be telling us that “Poppy” Bush was part of a CIA operation to assassinate JFK!
I will admit though, it is plausible that they used their creature, the UN, to foist birth-control on the third world so that they wouldn’t use up all the oil before the Robber Barons could steal it.
But that way lies madness. You’ll become a “global warming” denier if you continue along these lines.
The only reason the population of the United States isn’t falling is immigration but Obama and company do believe population growth is a major problem or at least they are on record as believing it.
Of course one member of the Obama Admin is an avoid Communist and not even the Russians by that BS any more.
Sure, we can keep on breeding, and most of us may survive, but I would hope for more than just survival. I would like huge parts of this planet to remain unspoiled, just so I can know they are there, perhaps to go and look at them perhaps once in my lifetime.
Is that selfish? If so, why? There is no MINIMUM number of people this planet needs. I don’t have to be here, and had I not been born I would not know or care about that. There might not be a maximum population, either, but if it keeps increasing, there will come a time when we can’t see the planet for the people. I’m not as selfish as the Baby Boomers who want to see more children born, to take care of THEM in their old age. Can’t they see that the current age imbalance is temporary, and a necessary side-effect of more stable population growth?
I’m not “pro-life”. Does that make me “pro-death”? That’s what “pro-lifers” tell each other, it seems.
Why no mention of birthrate in industrialized nations?
The USA is barely at replacement levels. Most other industrial nations are below replacement levels and a few are way down (see Japan).
Women are in the workplace now. Settling down to have a family is put on the back burner to focus on career. By the time women do decide to have children, they are averaging less than two in most industrial countries.
No doom and gloom here… liberating women (mostly because of technology advancements) has significantly dropped the birthrate. I see nothing that will curtail this trend.
Appx world population 6.774 billion. Area of Texas 268,601 square miles. Over 25,000 persons per square mile. Do the math, indeed.
LOL!!!
On a joking but serious note, I can’t believe that no one suggested building Arcologies!!! Population density is the answer to space for the people AND the food!!! There is no reason that large multi-floor buildings for plant and animal farming cannot be built. Matter of fact, there are already practical studies of doing just this with plant life so that they are totally within the range of the people needing the food so that transportation costs are reduced/eliminated.
IIRC, the postulation is that ~50k people can be supported on a 5 story building that has a “city block” footprint. Most of the productivity comes from the fact that multiple crop cycles can be fit within the same period needed by traditional farming.
I will totally agree that a runaway population growth mixed with the wanton greed of the current age is a really bad combination. However, to totally get “Chicken Little” on a subject because you have the inability to see a way around or through the problem OTHER than forced mass execution just shows how small your mind really is.
Americans are always going on about their history of innovation. That is all that is needed for this issue.
Oh, and it should be pointed out that in the USA, there are massive percentages of the arable land that is PAID to NOT be used. Also, there are equally massive tracts of land in the Russian “bread basket” that are nowhere near modern farming levels. So, to simply sit there and blabber on about available arable land without pointing out that much of it is not even used is yet another example of how small your mind really is.
Don’t consider this a problem, make more babies so my great master in the sky can collect tithes.
When we get overcrowded we can just reduce the crowding with a new war.
#10
Ya see a problem….what are you going to do about it – sit around and bitch or take action?