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Human Population Growth & Overpopulation

The pressure for new housing is emphasised by this piece from the West Briton:
Councillors discuss Ships and Castles and Quarry Hill Car Park as possible development sites
By WBHuw | Posted: August 23, 2015

SHIPS and Castles Leisure Centre and Quarry Hill car park are among several places in Falmouth that have been proposed as sites to be redeveloped for housing.
Councillors in Falmouth are being asked to submit a full list of brownfield sites in their wards. These sites will then be registered by central government as pressures grow on councils across Cornwall to fill housing demand.
At a meeting of Falmouth Town Council's planning committee, members were asked to submit their lists so a full list for Falmouth could be created.

In the discussions around potential brownfield sites in their wards, both Ships and Castles and the Quarry Hill Car Park were named.
Cornwall Council-owned Ships and Castles is run by Tempus Leisure but faces a significant maintenance backlog that could see it being sold off. It needs investment of at least £2 million, it was revealed, but with the entire maintenance budget of Cornwall Council being £4 million, it has started to explore options that include selling the site.
The town centre Quarry Hill car park was also specifically mentioned and could be prime development land if it were to be sold.

By building new homes on brownfield sites, councils would avoid the contentious issue of building on greenfield land on the outskirts of towns.
Recent proposals for a housing development at Swanpool in Falmouth were rejected in part because of an outcry over building on green land.

Falmouth councillors were expected to submit all of their lists last week, to go forward as part of the Government's Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment and Register of Brownfield Land.
The deadline for brownfield sites to be registered is September 7.

Read more: http://www.westbriton.co.uk/Council...tory-27651282-detail/story.html#ixzz3jcfuJNXQ

Brownfield sites sound a better option than greenfield sites, but these two are curious choices. Ships and Castles is the town's only swimming pool, apart from two or three in big hotels. But its location, high on Pendennis headland, with superb views over Falmouth harbour, means that it would only be suitable for luxury accommodation.
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The glass structure of Ships and Castles overlooks Falmouth town and harbour. (June, 2005)
And those looking for 'affordable' accommodation would not like the position because there are no nearby facilities such as shops. (Views and fresh air are all very well, but...)

Well, they could always drive into town... But Falmouth already has a shortage of parking, and if the Quarry car park is also built on, the problem would be even worse! We seem to have a real Catch 22 situation here. And in the end, I suspect that this may prove an excuse to use greenfield sites after all...

[Edit: Minor changes to picture and text.]
 
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Apart from war and famine, another way nature keeps populations in check is by means of disease:

'Super-gonorrhoea' outbreak in Leeds
By James Gallagher Health editor, BBC News website

Highly drug-resistant gonorrhoea is spreading in the north of England with an outbreak centred in Leeds, sexual health doctors have told the BBC.
One of the main treatments has become useless against the new strain of the sexually transmitted infection.

Twelve cases have been confirmed in Leeds and a further four have been reported in Macclesfield, Oldham and Scunthorpe.
However, there are likely to be more undiagnosed cases.

The strain in this outbreak is able to shrug off the antibiotic azithromycin, which is normally used alongside another drug, ceftriaxone.
Peter Greenhouse, a consultant in sexual health based in Bristol, told the BBC News website: "This azithromycin highly-resistant outbreak is the first one that has triggered a national alert.
"It doesn't sound like an awful lot of people, but the implication is there's a lot more of this strain out there and we need to stamp it out as quickly as possible.
"If this becomes the predominant strain in the UK we're in big trouble, so we have to be really meticulous in making sure each of these individuals has all their contacts traced and treated."

The outbreak started in March.
The British Association for Sexual Health and HIV says all cases have been in heterosexuals and some have reported sexual partners from across England.
Dr Jan Clarke, the organisation's president, told the BBC: "It was sufficiently serious to alert our whole national chain of clinics that there is the possibility that we've got a very resistant strain of gonorrhoea.
"We are really skating on thin ice as far as treating gonorrhoea is concerned at the moment."

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34269315

We're all doomed!

(Well, not me actually - on a list of things that will finally knock me off my perch, I think gonorrhoea would be right at the bottom.)
 
Maybe the super-tuberculosis will get us first?
 
This topic has got me thinking, what with our present circumstances concerning Europe and the influx of humanity on it's borders, and the disparity of health services between countries. My mind wanders to a dystopian bent, through no fault of its own, and can imagine an outcome more tragic than the worlds present parlous state

I think there will come a time when our commonly vaccinated diseases will leave us in a perilous situation, due to the fact that we no longer have the capability that we once had, to naturally fight these diseases.

I am not an anti-vacciner, far from it, but I do remember when Mothers would send there pre-pubertic (sic) kids around to play with those children that had those common diseases, and at that time, it made sense. I also came from a generation, where iron lungs and polio myelitis was a common worry for all parents.

If we received life long immunity by suffering these diseases and were prepared to accept the percentage of mortality and morbidity that is inherent with these childhood diseases, wouldn't that be a better outcome, rather than weakening our immune systems, due to allowing our immune systems to not be confronted by these childhood diseases, than what we have now.

I can imagine one day where and when a pandemic sweeps the world with tens of millions perishing, or become moribund, due to our compromised immunology.

The question I ask myself, knowing the necessity for a stronger gene pool in any community is, are we doing a disservice to humanity/ourselves by immunisation, as seen recently in America, or should we be focusing more on some other form of immunity.


I know that I view this as a layman, and I'm sure that I could very well be missing the finer nuances of immunology, so, are there better informed professionals out there who follow this forum who can allay my unsubstantiated fears. All opinions would be appreciated.
 
I am not an anti-vacciner, far from it, but I do remember when Mothers would send there pre-pubertic (sic) kids around to play with those children that had those common diseases, and at that time, it made sense. I also came from a generation, where iron lungs and polio myelitis was a common worry for all parents.
When I was a toddler, my sister had mumps - so my Mum set about deliberately trying to infect me with mumps too (reasoning that catching mumps later in life is bad for we chaps). She made my sister chew on a rusk and then made me chew on it too. Nothing she did made me catch mumps!
So...either I am completely immune, or I will have problems if I do catch mumps later in life.
 
Mungoman: Vaccines generally work by introducing your body to a disease in a weakened form. So the body gets to know the disease, without needing to be made sick by it. It does not weaken your immune system.
 
Mungo, think of it like this.

Everyone gets the 'knowledge' of how to attack a virus from their parents in a genetic form. Consider this knowledge as a kind of secret arms cache in the war against illness. Now, when a virus/disease enters your body, your body looks in the arms cache and decides that a couple of it's weapons should be enough to eliminate the immediate danger, and sends out it's weapons in the form of antibodies. The weapons/antibodies to their thing. All watched over by the totalitarian regime known as 'your immune system'.

If those few weapons are sufficient to eliminate the threat, a minor skirmish if you will, then the 'arms cache' of weapons is restocked. If those weapons are not sufficient to eliminate the threat in a timely manner - a drawn out battle - then the arms cache is not just restocked, but increased, either with more of the same, so that a future incursion is dealt with in a heavy handed manner, or with a new 'secret weapon' that will eliminate the treat more economically.

Now, over time, the enemy will change it's tactics - mutate - and your arms cache will become more sophisticated in response to the increased threat level, giving your offspring a more sophisticated arms cache/immune system.

When you get immunised, yes a weakened version is introduced to your body. Think of this like a training exercise. Following the training exercise, a spy network is developed - antibodies - to keep an eye out for the first signs of attack. Again all under the watchful eye of the immune system.

As in the real world, should there be no attack from a specific invader, the department in the spy network that is responsible for that specific enemy is made redundant. Meanwhile, that specific enemy is developing it's attack strategies - mutation - so when it launches it's assault, your immune system does what all good regimes do. It starts to point the finger, launch a protracted investigation into cuts and failings and concludes that it's all the fault of the NWO. Because it has no response to the new tactics of the enemy, who in this period of consultation and confusion has been gaining ground, momentum and support. It may even have it's own Facebook page, creating a group page that other enemies can sign up to. In other words, not just the original enemy - virus - but other opportunist enemies jump on the bandwagon, causing more confusion.

This is the downside of immunisation, it also leaves a potential blind spot for a fifth column sneak attack to be more devastating than a head on confrontation.

The upside of immunisation is that the enemy might not be able to change it's tactics - mutate - in a way to make any incursion viable. This would make the enemy either sit around the table for peace process talks during a 'cease fire', which culminates in the disbanding of the armed wing of the enemy. Or the enemy becomes despondent and depressed, which as we all know is not an attractive quality, so none of your compatriots want to get jiggy with you, so the enemy dies a sad and lonely death. Eradicated.

The two key points in this long winded metaphor (is it a metaphor if it takes longer to give the metaphor than the technical answers, mmm?) are Potential and Might

I'm sorry there's no clear cut answer to the benefit/risk of immunisation. IMHO, immunisation is a short term solution that has the potential to help eradicate specific virus'. One such success is polio. But that doesn't rule out the possibility of super polio proliferating, or a polio like virus emerging.
 
Mungoman: Vaccines generally work by introducing your body to a disease in a weakened form. So the body gets to know the disease, without needing to be made sick by it. It does not weaken your immune system.



Thank you both Xanatic and Cultjunky for your replies, it is much appreciated. Now, as you know, I have admitted to a layman's idea of the mechanics of vaccination and auto immunology, but I rationalise that an attenuated contact, via vaccines, does not stress our immune system enough, in comparison to a full potency contact from a 'wild' form of the disease - and this is why I see our immune system reaction, via vaccination, as being a 'less than', or weakened response.

With the number of children within our communities now having compromised auto-immune systems, evidenced by our ever growing allergies to certain foodstuffs, due to god knows what, and that situation growing larger by the year, it makes me more aware of the need to reduce or even eliminate the antiseptic/antibacterial aspects of goods that are sold for the bathroom, kitchen, and in handwashs, and instead focus more on self awareness of good hygiene, good nutrition, along with activities and contact with the great outdoors which will build up our children's immune system in a more realistic method.


It has been mooted recently in the near past, by some sections of the medical field, that gut (GIT) bacteria plays a much more significant role in homeostasis than has been previously thought, and there have even been suggestions that some of the increase of psychological cases (Aspergers, Autism, and even some forms of dementia), as well as physiological cases can be linked to our excessive uses of the anti-bios ingredients of modern life.

In typing the above, and ruminating upon it, can anyone see that there could be the possibility of my previous post being of some concern?
 
With the number of children within our communities now having compromised auto-immune systems, evidenced by our ever growing allergies to certain foodstuffs, due to god knows what, and that situation growing larger by the year, it makes me more aware of the need to reduce or even eliminate the antiseptic/antibacterial aspects of goods that are sold for the bathroom, kitchen, and in handwashs, and instead focus more on self awareness of good hygiene, good nutrition, along with activities and contact with the great outdoors which will build up our children's immune system in a more realistic method.
I've mentioned before that New Scientist, decades ago, had a cover photo of a young girl playing in the mud. I seem to remember a speech balloon - "It's OK Mum, I'm just building up my auto-immune system!"
 
I've mentioned before that New Scientist, decades ago, had a cover photo of a young girl playing in the mud. I seem to remember a speech balloon - "It's OK Mum, I'm just building up my auto-immune system!"


I was, at one time Ryn, the owner of a goat dairy, with about 80 odd milking does - I loved it and both my young daughters thrived on the farm.

The goatlings I discovered had to actually eat some of their mothers droppings to kick start their own rumen, otherwise, if the goatlings were removed from their Mothers and had no further contact with their mothers, they became quite ill with milk scour, and failed to thrive.

The cover photo of N.S. seems quite appropriate and could be a good example to follow.
 
You're not wrong about the problem with allergies, though that is a different issue than vaccines. We need to make people understand that they don't need to sterilize their houses.
 
You're not wrong about the problem with allergies, though that is a different issue than vaccines. We need to make people understand that they don't need to sterilize their houses.
Oh good. I won't bother to clean my bathroom then.

(There's too much sport on anyway!)
 
In typing the above, and ruminating upon it, can anyone see that there could be the possibility of my previous post being of some concern?

Certainly there is cause for concern. Likening the development of virus' versus humanities attempt to eradicate them to an arms race is quite fitting. Our attempts including, although not exclusively immunisation and wide spread use of anti-bacs, could leave ourselves open to infection from some very simple virus. Certainly new research does suggest that we may have shot ourselves in the foot in some instances. My caveat being...

Here in the more affluent and developed countries, it's still only a handful of generations ago that child mortality rates were worryingly high. I'm not going to google stats, as I think we can all agree that child mortality rates were higher in the most densely populated areas. Diseases like TB, influenza and plain 'ol mumps thrive in dense populations as the proximity to another infected person is significant in contraction rates. Better hygiene and improved waste disposal process' and systems contributed to the decline of illness' such as cholera.

Those handful of generations for us are thousands of generations for virus'. The rise in allergy prevalence is a couple of generations worth of stats. The rise in use of anti-bacs is also only a couple of generations worth of stats. It's false logic to assign a cause and effect equation to the two phenomena. (Fort would :banghead:)

Whilst there is a correlation between the two, we don't yet have ALL the relevant information. I know, I know, fence sitting. But I've been sitting on this fence for a while and it's molded to the shape of my bum, so it's nice and comfy.

It's the density of population that allows for diseases to spread. In a vulgar way, more people, more shit. Now here's were I go all hippy dippy on you. Nature doesn't want winners, man, she wants balance. Symbiosis. The fact that the current population is

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

is, IMHO, of greater significance than the use of anti-bacs and immunisation. We might have all eaten mud pies as children, but the mud wasn't a recently manured field. There are too many folks on the planet packed in close proximity. We all need our space, man. It's the density that will kill us - however you want to define dense. ;)
 
Professor Hans Rosling has another program on BBC2 tonight. After (successfully, in my opinion) debunking most popular misconceptions about the population "crisis" in his 2013 program
Don't Panic- The Truth About Population

(viewable here on youtube
Note- I cannot recommend this strongly enough -everyone who thinks the world is doomed should watch this at least once, and preferably numerous times)

He is tonight going to tackle poverty and why the world is in much better shape than many people think.
Don't Panic - How to End Poverty in 15 Years
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06drxls
Rosling is a genius, but I am still doubtful- the world political scene contains far too many people who are not motivated by logic or concern for wellbeing to make his sensible solutions irrelevant.
 
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Ooh, i'll give that a go laters, cheers Eburacum
 
Two threads have discussed the Anthropocene before - this one and Environmental Issues. But as this one already has Apocalypse in the title, I'll add this article here:
How humans are driving the sixth mass extinction
Scientists have been warning for decades that human actions are pushing life on our shared planet toward mass extinction. Such extinction events have occurred five times in the past, but a bold new paper finds that this time would be fundamentally different. Fortunately, there’s still time to stop it
Jeremy Hance
Tuesday 20 October 2015 09.12 BST

Periodically, in the vast spans of time that have proceeded us, our planet’s living beings have been purged by planetary catastrophes so extreme they make your typical Ice Age look like the geological equivalent of a stroll in the park. Scientists count just five mass extinctions in an unimaginably long expanse of 450 million years, but they warn we may well be entering a sixth.

According to a bold new paper in The Anthropocene Review, this time would be different from past mass extinctions in four crucial ways – and all of these stem from the impact of a single species that arrived on the scene just 200,000 years ago: Homo sapiens.
“There is no point in apportioning blame for what is happening,” said lead author and geologist, Mark Williams, with the University of Leicester, since humans “didn’t deliberately engineer this situation.”
“Rather we have to recognise that our impact is game-changing on this planet, that we are all responsible, and that we have to become stewards of nature – as a part of it, rather than behaving like children rampaging through a sweetshop,” Williams noted.

The impacts of a still-avoidable sixth mass extinction would likely be so massive they’d be best described as science fiction. It would be catastrophic, widespread and, of course, irreversible. In the past, it has taken life ten to thirty million years to recover after such an extinction, 40 to 120 times as long as modern-looking humans have been telling tales by firelight. Moreover, Williams and his team argue that future changes driven by humanity may go so far as to create not just a new epoch in geologic history – such as the widely-touted Anthropocene – but a fundamental reshaping of Earth on par with the rise of microbes or the later shift from microbes to multicellular organisms.

“Fundamental changes on a planetary system scale have already begun,” said co-author Peter Haff, a geologist and engineer with Duke University. “The very considerable uncertainty is how long these will last – whether they will simply be a brief, unique excursion in Earth history, or whether they will persist and evolve into a new, geologically long-lasting, planetary state.”

But what are these “fundamental changes” that would makes this mass extinction different from the previous five?
“Episodes of global warming, ocean acidification and mass extinction have all happened before, well before humans arrived on the planet,” co-author Jan Zaleasiewicz, a paleobiologist with the University of Leicester, said. “We wanted to see if there was something different about what is happening now.”
Turns out there is.

The team of geologists and biologists say that our current extinction crisis is unique in Earth’s history due to four characteristics: the spread of non-native species around the world; a single species (us) taking over a significant percentage of the world’s primary production; human actions increasingly directing evolution; and the rise of something called the technosphere.

The first real change is what the authors of the study call the “global homogenisation of flora and fauna.” Basically what this means is that you can eat tomatoes in Italy, hunt oryx in Texas, ride horses in Chile, curse cane toads in Australia, dig earthworms in eastern North America and catch rats in the Galapagos. None of these things would have been possible without human intervention: our penchant for globetrotting has brought innumerable species to new habitats, often wreaking havoc on existing ecological communities and sometimes leading to extinctions.

Secondly, over the last few centuries, humans have essentially become the top predator not only on land, but also across the sea. No other species in the past can claim such a distinction. In doing so, humanity has begun using 25 to 40% of the planet’s net primary production for its own purposes. Moreover, we have added to this the use of fossil fuels for energy, essentially mining primary production from the past.

“It’s not hubris to say this,” Williams contended. “Never before have animal and plants (and other organisms for that matter) been translocated on a global scale around the planet. Never before has one species dominated primary production in the manner that we do. Never before has one species remodelled the terrestrial biosphere so dramatically to serve its own ends – the huge amount of biomass in the animals we eat.”

Thirdly, humanity has become a massive force in directing evolution. This is most apparent, of course, in the domestication of animals and the cultivation of crops over thousands of years. But humans are directing evolution in numerous other ways, as well.

“We are directly manipulating genomes by artificial selection and molecular techniques, and indirectly by managing ecosystems and populations to conserve them,” said co-author Erle Ellis, an expert on the Anthropocene with the University of Maryland. He added that even conservation is impacting evolution.
“As human management of ecosystems and populations increases, even when aimed at conservation, evolutionary processes are altered. To sustain processes of evolution that are not guided by human societies intentionally and unintentionally will require a sea change in management approaches.”

Finally, the current extinction crisis is being amplified by what the researchers call the technosphere.

etc...

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...he-four-horsemen-of-the-sixth-mass-extinction
 
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UK population 'to top 70 million in 12 years'

The UK population is to increase beyond 70 million in the next 12 years, official projections suggest.
The Office for National Statistics said the population was expected to increase by 4.4 million in the next decade, before reaching 70 million in 2027.
That increase is roughly the size of the Irish Republic.

The population is projected to grow by 9.7 million over the next 25 years, to 74.3 million. Latest figures show there are 64.6 million people in the UK.
The statistics predict an ageing population, with some 29.5% of people aged over 60 by 2039 - up from 23.2% this year.
By then, more than one in 12 UK people are expected to be aged 80 or over.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said its latest projections assume that more people will come to live in the UK than emigrate, accounting for about half of the projected population increase.
The remainder is attributed to births outnumbering deaths.

Projections were also revised upwards in the latest figures. The population estimate for 2024 is now 249,000 more than the previous projection in 2012.
The overall trend is "very similar" to past figures, said Prof Christian Dustmann, director of the Centre for Research and Analysis on Migration at University College London.

"What we see in many European countries, in particular the larger economies such as Germany, is actually a trend in the opposite direction," he said.
"Population is decreasing in Germany, as it is in Italy or Spain. That puts these countries in a very difficult situation.
"[When] populations are decreasing, you're dealing with a shrinking working-age population, which basically has to be confronted with an increasing ageing population which is not productive any more."

In the UK, where migration is contributing to population growth, the challenge was to ensure immigrants paid more in taxes than they cost in public services, he said.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34666382
 
In the UK, where migration is contributing to population growth, the challenge was to ensure immigrants paid more in taxes than they cost in public services, he said.
I was surprised to learn recently that apparently a household (which I guess could mean either a single person living alone or a couple cohabiting) has to earn £27,000 p.a before the amount of tax paid actually equals the cost of public services received.
 
The rising population already triggers much talk about the need for more housing, but the population doesn't stop breeding, so the next generation needs to be catered for too...
Warning Over Full To Bursting Cornish Classrooms
6:01am 4th November 2015

One in five Cornish primary schools is already full to bursting - and more pupils are on the way.
The council says it is particularly bad around Bude, Truro, Newquay and St Austell.

Officials are deciding whether twenty schools across the Duchy can expand.
It is after the number of primary pupils in Cornwall rocketed by more than 2,000 in the last five years.
That is before the effect of the recent rising birth rate has been felt - with another influx expected to start school next September.

While there is spare capacity overall in Cornwall, some areas have particular pinch points.
Nineteen schools have already won funding to expand, including Indian Queens Primary, Mount Hawke Academy and Stratton Primary.

A report going in front of councillors warns pressure in some areas is "critical."
Officials are already assessing whether 21 more schools have room to expand to fit the extra pupils.
Housing developments in Launceston and Saltash already mean that new schools are planned in those areas.

http://www.piratefm.co.uk/news/latest-news/1782279/warning-over-full-to-bursting-cornish-classrooms/
 
The migrant crisis is a mere gust of the hurricane that will soon engulf Europe
Huge population growth in Africa and Asia makes it imperative the EU manages its borders — and promote stability abroad
By William Hague

A major study published recently found that many members of the public can forecast economic and political events at least as accurately as the experts, and that some of them do consistently better than the pundits and economists we always turn to for advice.
Pollsters proved hopeless at forecasting our general election, and economists had little clue that the price of oil would plummet at the end of last year. It is a lesson of the modern world that having more data does not inevitably mean more accurate forecasting.

Yet the leaders gathering in Malta today to discuss Europe’s migration crisis will only make rational decisions if they pay close attention to the one area of forecasting which can be more accurate – the growth or decline of populations. If they do not, they risk repeating some of the serious errors they have already made.

A glance at such projections to the middle of this century points to dramatic variations between countries and continents, changing in one generation the political and economic landscape of the world.
We learn that the UK is likely to overtake Germany as the most populous of the nations now in the EU; that the US will boom in numbers while most European countries decline; that many emerging economies have populations ageing more rapidly than they might have expected, constraining their future growth.

Above all it is clear that, according to the UN, fully half of all the population increase globally in the next 35 years is expected to be in one continent: Africa. What is more, that increase will mainly be in poorer, less stable countries, alongside massive growth in numbers in the most war-torn areas of the Middle East, such as Yemen and Iraq.

The numbers that emerge are stark. The increase in Africa’s population alone is set to be 1.3 billion by 2050, about two-and-a-half times the entire population of the EU today. Put another way, the number of people in Africa and western Asia is expected to increase by over 110,000 every single day for decades to come.

Such figures put into perspective a crisis caused by the arrival of several thousand migrants a day. What we have seen in recent months is only a hint of what might happen next, mere gusts of wind before the approach of a hurricane.

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...e-hurricane-that-will-soon-engulf-Europe.html
 
We seem to have lost the just posting the 'gist' of an article idea. Putting the first bit and then randomly cutting it off doesn't really work the same way..... and the sad thing is I am probably missing out 'coz I can't be bothered reading the whole thing.

*now cat is amongst the pigeon - goes to get gin to have whilst awaiting execution*
 
The gist of it is, Hague is looking at the big picture, the whole Malthusian view of the dangers of overpopulation.
That's why I posted here, and not in the migrant/refugee thread.

But then if I'd just posted the 'gist', would you have read the whole article? If not, I'm not communicating anything to you anyway. Some subjects are just too big and complex to be reduced to a gist. We can't discuss 'gists', we can only discuss facts or alleged facts.
 
The gist of it is, Hague is looking at the big picture, the whole Malthusian view of the dangers of overpopulation.
That's why I posted here, and not in the migrant/refugee thread.

But then if I'd just posted the 'gist', would you have read the whole article? If not, I'm not communicating anything to you anyway. Some subjects are just too big and complex to be reduced to a gist. We can't discuss 'gists', we can only discuss facts or alleged facts.

My point was I didn't read the article or even beyond the first two lines of the post, because I didn't know whether it would be of interest. Giving the gist, would enable me to make a better decision as to whether to read into it further. As I said, my loss...... but as we have discussed before many others might also do the same, and therefore the point you wanted discussing might not get discussed because no-one knows what it is.
 
The Malthusian view of continued population growth is that it will eventually lead to some combination of famine, disease, and war. These act as controls, reducing the population back down to sustainable levels.
Now (as I've posted elsewhere) we are passing another milestone on the road to apocalypse:

Antibiotic resistance: World on cusp of 'post-antibiotic era'
By James Gallagher Health editor, BBC News website

The world is on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era", scientists have warned after finding bacteria resistant to drugs used when all other treatments have failed.
Their report, in the Lancet, identifies bacteria able to shrug off colistin in patients and livestock in China.
They said that resistance would spread around the world and raised the spectre of untreatable infections.

Experts said the worrying development needed to act as a global wake-up call.
Bacteria becoming completely resistant to treatment - also known as the antibiotic apocalypse - could plunge medicine back into the dark ages.
Common infections would kill once again, while surgery and cancer therapies, which are reliant on antibiotics, would be under threat.

Chinese scientists identified a new mutation, dubbed the MCR-1 gene, that prevented colistin from killing bacteria.
It was found in a fifth of animals tested, 15% of raw meat samples and in 16 patients.
And the resistance had spread between a range of bacterial strains and species, including E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
There is also evidence that it has spread to Laos and Malaysia.

Prof Timothy Walsh, who collaborated on the study, from the University of Cardiff, told the BBC News website: "All the key players are now in place to make the post-antibiotic world a reality.
"If MRC-1 becomes global, which is a case of when not if, and the gene aligns itself with other antibiotic resistance genes, which is inevitable, then we will have very likely reached the start of the post-antibiotic era.
"At that point if a patient is seriously ill, say with E. coli, then there is virtually nothing you can do."

Resistance to colistin has emerged before.
However, the crucial difference this time is the mutation has arisen in a way that is very easily shared between bacteria.
"The transfer rate of this resistance gene is ridiculously high, that doesn't look good," said Prof Mark Wilcox, from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

His hospital is now dealing with multiple cases "where we're struggling to find an antibiotic" every month - an event he describes as being as "rare as hens' teeth" five years ago.
He said there was no single event that would mark the start of the antibiotic apocalypse, but it was clear "we're losing the battle".

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34857015

EDIT: An earlier, related article:
Antibiotics: Are we reckless drivers when it comes to drugs?
By James Gallagher Health editor, BBC News website

18 August 2015
...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33963353
 
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Population growth is linked to Global Warming, but the two are linked by another population growth which, George Monbiot claims, is the 'elephant in the room' that nobody's talking about....
There’s a population crisis all right. But probably not the one you think
George Monbiot
While all eyes are on human numbers, the rise in farm animals is laying waste to the planet
Thursday 19 November 2015 16.45 GMT

Not a long article, so worth a read, and it offers some surprising ideas and statistics, eg:

"If we want to reduce our impacts this century, [a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes], it is consumption we must address. Population growth is outpaced by the growth in our consumption of almost all resources. There is enough to meet everyone’s need, even in a world of 10 billion people. There is not enough to meet everyone’s greed, even in a world of 2 billion people."

"Livestock farming creates around 14% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions: slightly more than the output of the world’s cars, lorries, buses, trains, ships and planes. If you eat soya, your emissions per unit of protein are 20 times lower than eating pork or chicken, and 150 times lower than eating beef."

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...on-crisis-farm-animals-laying-waste-to-planet

Recently I have been eating more chicken instead of beef, but not because I knew about the emissions problem. But now I do know, I'm unlikely to switch back.
 
The Malthusian view of continued population growth is that it will eventually lead to some combination of famine, disease, and war. These act as controls, reducing the population back down to sustainable levels.
Now (as I've posted elsewhere) we are passing another milestone on the road to apocalypse:

Antibiotic resistance: World on cusp of 'post-antibiotic era'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34857015

EDIT: An earlier, related article:
Antibiotics: Are we reckless drivers when it comes to drugs?
By James Gallagher Health editor, BBC News website

18 August 2015
...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33963353

And now...
'Almost too late': fears of global superbug crisis in wake of antibiotic misuse
Antibiotic Research UK director says chances of salvaging most important drugs are 50-50 after resistant bacteria found in pigs and humans in England and Wales
Press Association
Tuesday 22 December 2015 06.04 GMT

It is “almost too late” to stop a global superbug crisis caused by the misuse of antibiotics, a leading expert has warned.
Scientists have a “50-50” chance of salvaging existing antibiotics from bacteria which has become resistant to its effects, according to Dr David Brown.
The director at Antibiotic Research UK, whose discoveries helped make more than £20bn ($30bn) in pharmaceutical sales, said efforts to find new antibiotics are “totally failing” despite significant investment and research.

It comes after a gene was discovered which makes infectious bacteria resistant to the last line of antibiotic defence, colistin (polymyxins).
The resistance to the colistin antibiotic is considered to be a “major step” towards completely untreatable infections and has been found in pigs and humans in England and Wales.
Public Health England said the risk posed to humans by the mcr-1 gene was “low” but was being monitored closely.

Performing surgery, treating infections and even travelling abroad safely all rely to some extent on access to effective antibiotics.
It is feared the crisis could further penetrate Europe as displaced migrants enter from a war-torn Middle East, where countries such as Syria have increasing levels of antibiotic resistance.

Dr Brown said: “It is almost too late. We needed to start research 10 years ago and we still have no global monitoring system in place.
“The issue is people have tried to find new antibiotics but it is totally failing - there has been no new chemical class of drug to treat gram-negative infections for more than 40 years.
“I think we have got a 50-50 chance of salvaging the most important antibiotics but we need to stop agriculture from ruining it again.”

Resistance is thought to have grown due to colistin being heavily used in pockets of the agricultural industries, particularly in China, often to increase the physical size of livestock.
Worldwide, the demand for colistin in agriculture was expected to reach almost 12,000 tonnes per year by the end of this year, rising to 16,500 tonnes by 2021.

In the UK, nearly half of all antibiotics used are in farming, according to reports, although the use of it as a growth agent has been banned in the EU since 2006.

The unnecessary prescription and use of antibiotics as a form of treatment is also believed to be an aggravating factor.
Although the imminent threat of the resistant bacteria spreading throughout the UK remains small, it could worsen in Europe next year, Dr Brown added.

etc...

http://www.theguardian.com/society/...-superbug-crisis-in-wake-of-antibiotic-misuse
 
Huge expansion of Cardiff approved by planners
By Nick Servini Political editor, Wales

A controversial plan for the biggest expansion of Cardiff in a century has been approved by a planning inspector, BBC Wales understands.
It was the final major barrier to building more than 30,000 homes in the city over the next decade.

The Local Development Plan (LDP) sets out where new houses can be built, based on a forecast that the population will grow by a quarter over 20 years.
Cardiff council said the city was in "dire need" of the plan.
The details will be formally set out next week and a final decision will be made by the local authority in the coming weeks, but it is expected to be rubber stamped by the council.

Under the plan:
  • 41,400 new homes will be built between 2006 and 2016, half of them on brownfield sites or old industrial areas
  • 12,200 homes have already been built, with 10,800 either already in construction or given planning permission
  • 18,000 remain to be built - 13,000 of them on greenfield sites in north west Cardiff, north of M4 junction 33, north east Cardiff and east Pontprennau
BBC Wales also understands that the inspector has not given as much protection to the greenbelt on the edge of the city as a number of councillors and residents had campaigned for.

The process has been long and controversial.
Supporters say the expansion is needed to deal with the shortage of housing in the city, while opponents claim the city's infrastructure will not be able to cope.
The plan is based on projections of a growth in the population from the 320,000 to nearly 400,000 over the period between 2006 and 2026.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-35241858
 
'Case is made' for Anthropogenic Epoch
Jonathan Amos Science correspondent

There is little doubt now that we have entered a new geological age, believes an international scientific panel.
The team, which has been tasked with defining the so-called Anthropocene, says humanity's impacts on Earth will be visible in sediments and rocks millions of years into the future.

The researchers are working towards a formal classification of the new epoch.
An open question is the formal start date, which some panel members think could be the 1950s.
This decade marks the beginning of the "Great Acceleration", when the human population and its consumption patterns suddenly speeded up.
It coincides with the spread of ubiquitous "techno materials", such as aluminium, concrete and plastic.

It also covers the years when thermonuclear weapons tests dispersed radioactive elements across the globe. Their long-lived activity will still be apparent to anyone who cares to look for it hundreds of millennia from now.

The report by the Anthropocene Working Group, published in Science magazine, is not a full and final statement on the subject.
Rather, it represents an interim position - an update on the panel's investigations.
But the key finding is that humanity's impacts on Earth should now be regarded as pervasive and sufficiently distinctive to justify a separate classification.

"The paper looks at the magnitude of the changes that humanity has made to the planet," explained group secretary Dr Colin Waters.
"Have they been sufficient to significantly alter the nature of the sediments now being accumulated at present, and are they distinctive from the existing Holocene Epoch that started at the end of the last ice age? That case has now been made," the British Geological Survey scientist told BBC News.

"Within the Working Group - and we have 37 members - I think the majority of them now agree that we are living in an interval we should call the Anthropocene. There's still some discussion as to whether it should be a formal or informal unit, but we'd like to have a specific definition. And a majority of the group are moving towards the mid-20th Century for the start of this new epoch."
In due course, the group will produce some final recommendations.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35259194
 
'Case is made' for Anthropogenic Epoch
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35259194

Plastic now pollutes every corner of Earth
From supermarket bags to CDs, man-made waste has contaminated the entire globe, and become a marker of a new geological epoch

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday 24 January 2016 00.05 GMT

Humans have made enough plastic since the second world war to coat the Earth entirely in clingfilm, an international study has revealed. This ability to plaster the planet in plastic is alarming, say scientists – for it confirms that human activities are now having a pernicious impact on our world.

The research, published in the journal Anthropocene, shows that no part of the planet is free of the scourge of plastic waste. Everywhere is polluted with the remains of water containers, supermarket bags, polystyrene lumps, compact discs, cigarette filter tips, nylons and other plastics. Some are in the form of microscopic grains, others in lumps. The impact is often highly damaging.

“The results came as a real surprise,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jan Zalasiewicz, of Leicester University. “We were aware that humans have been making increasing amounts of different kinds of plastic – from Bakelite to polyethylene bags to PVC – over the last 70 years, but we had no idea how far it had travelled round the planet. It turns out not just to have floated across the oceans, but has sunk to the deepest parts of the sea floor. This is not a sign that our planet is in a healthy condition either.”

The crucial point about the study’s findings is that the appearance of plastic should now be considered as a marker for a new epoch. Zalasiewicz is the chairman of a group of geologists assessing whether or not humanity’s activities have tipped the planet into a new geological epoch, called the Anthropocene, which ended the Holocene that began around 12,000 years ago.

etc...

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/24/plastic-new-epoch-human-damage





 
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