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Human Population Growth & Overpopulation

AlchoPwn,

..nobody really puts enough of a case for the negative, and there are HUGE negatives. ..

Got to agree.
 
Mungoman,

Yes, family trees are always interesting. I suspect my earlier family will have ties to Eastern Europe. One day I may send of for the kit and see what they say. Whatever is shows, I am what I am.

Going back to the family sizes. Infant mortality, very hard work conditions and wars, disease etc did hold the population count down.
These days there is no need for the large family as a means to look after the farm etc. One man with a tractor and the attachments is all that is needed. This allows the farm to produce than needed for immediate consumption and thus for trade.

The future will tend more towards this 'no work' situation. Of course, there will always be some things that will need direct hands-on attention. But it will steadily reduce.

And not everyone is suited to being a computer programmer. So what is left ?

In the ideal world the machines and the people who service them should be able to provide for the rest. I mean, what else are machines for ? But it won't turn out that way.

Everything will gravitate to a privileged few. The rest will be on subsistence level income.

A gradual reduction in population will help resolve this problem. There will be (should be) less of those in the 'left behind' group.

But it all depends upon a more equitable division of the products of the machine labour.

And, of course, all the above only applies to the West. The countries who are completely controlled by hard line religions or similar bounds will go to Hell in a handcart; possibly taking the rest of us with them.

INT21.
 
Another manifestation of gross overpopulation in the UK is that an acute water shortage is looming:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47620228

But rather than do something sensible like strive to limit our population to a more sustainable level, the emphasis will be very much on discouraging water use.
Obviously the cost per cubic metre will go up substantially and all new-build houses will presumably be equipped with a shower-room rather than a bathroom.
 
Another manifestation of gross overpopulation in the UK is that an acute water shortage is looming:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47620228

But rather than do something sensible like strive to limit our population to a more sustainable level, the emphasis will be very much on discouraging water use.
Obviously the cost per cubic metre will go up substantially and all new-build houses will presumably be equipped with a shower-room rather than a bathroom.
Yes. And here we are, importing people and building on every available plot of land.
 
Control the population growth and you won't need the new build houses.

Exactly.
I was a paid-up Green Party/ Ecology Party member back in the Jonathon Porritt days, when they advocated a sustainable rate of population.
Sadly they subsequently sold out.
I know it's not the trendy thing to say, but pretty well every problem facing humanity today stems from overpopulation.
 
Another manifestation of gross overpopulation in the UK is that an acute water shortage is looming:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47620228

But rather than do something sensible like strive to limit our population to a more sustainable level, the emphasis will be very much on discouraging water use.
Obviously the cost per cubic metre will go up substantially and all new-build houses will presumably be equipped with a shower-room rather than a bathroom.


I reckon that it's time to add a rainwater tank to, at least, every new built dwelling.
 
Yes. And here we are, importing people and building on every available plot of land.


G'day Myth. Our federal government is importing 160,000 migrants every year, and is now trying to make it a prerecquisite that to get residency here, the new Australian and their family must live in a regional area for a specified time.

Regional and remote areas are not amused.
 
Such things do help, but they have to be managed.

I have a couple of hundred gallon of rainwater in butts. Use it mostly on the plants (I have a water meter) in summer.

But the biggest consumer of water in our home is the toilet. 9 litre per flush.

The water from the butts is quite suitable for that purpose and could be set up to supply the toilet.

Another project .

INT21.
 
Such things do help, but they have to be managed.

I have a couple of hundred gallon of rainwater in butts. Use it mostly on the plants (I have a water meter) in summer.

But the biggest consumer of water in our home is the toilet. 9 litre per flush.

The water from the butts is quite suitable for that purpose and could be set up to supply the toilet.

Another project .

INT21.

A while back, the advice doing the rounds on the Internet ecology forums was to put an object, such as a house brick wrapped in a plastic bag, in your toilet cistern. This reduces the water flow by 1 to 1.5 litres per flush. Great! Except that the reduced water flow proved insufficient to dispose of toilet paper, which just swirled around without disappearing. So you had to flush 2 or 3 times, instead of just one full flush, which of course defeated the purpose.
Some modern systems, including the toilets at my work, have the option for a half or full flush, with the former being just enough to remove evidence of a "number one".
Of course, there's always the Greek option; toilets with minimal flushing capability and which cannot cope with toilet paper at all. It was a bit of a culture shock to find, even in a decent hotel, that you have to deposit used toilet paper in a bin next to the toilet. Can't see that system catching on elsewhere!
 
G'day Myth. Our federal government is importing 160,000 migrants every year, and is now trying to make it a prerecquisite that to get residency here, the new Australian and their family must live in a regional area for a specified time. Regional and remote areas are not amused.
Look on the bright side. Regional Australia is pretty uniformly "white-bread". At least migrants might get some decent restaurants going out in the bush. On the other hand, from what I understand, the real problem is Australia's water supply, which is erratic. How many gallons of fresh water does a human consume to keep them fed and clean every day? Has your government considered that?
 
Is the Soylent Green method the answer ?

Or maybe the 29 th of February should be designated 'Kill a pensioner day'.

Don't see it as a problem, more an opportunity.

INT21.
 
Such things do help, but they have to be managed.

I have a couple of hundred gallon of rainwater in butts. Use it mostly on the plants (I have a water meter) in summer.

But the biggest consumer of water in our home is the toilet. 9 litre per flush.

The water from the butts is quite suitable for that purpose and could be set up to supply the toilet.

Another project .

INT21.

Before we got half flush toilets 21, the majority of us in Australia would put a house brick in the cistern - to save a bit of water. Then there was the motto on the dunny wall- "if it's yellow, let it mellow but if it's brown, flush it down" - your butt water (sniggers), is just so much better for plants I reckon (sorry 21...school boy humour has never left me).

I have a 10,000 litre tank out the back which is used for watering vegies and consumption, while tap water is used for domestics. Tap water is bore water and stinks of fish(?), will blacken any silver jewelry and tastes salty and kills plants.
 
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Look on the bright side. Regional Australia is pretty uniformly "white-bread". At least migrants might get some decent restaurants going out in the bush. On the other hand, from what I understand, the real problem is Australia's water supply, which is erratic. How many gallons of fresh water does a human consume to keep them fed and clean every day? Has your government considered that?


Things have changed AP...Whitebread isn't an expression that I'd use - unless you are talking about some of the major rural cities, and to a certain degree that would be an exaggeration.

I live in a village, 400k's inland, where one local garage is run by Rose and Cyril, a middle aged black couple from South Africa, and the road house is run by an extended family from the Sub Continent - ditto the delicatessen/smallsupermarket, while The cooks at the bowling club and at the returned soldiers club are both from Korea.

There are three families in the district, comprising a couple of hundred of local Wiradjuri people with one family who run the local school, the other family runs the land Council and employment agency, and the other family runs the local precinct council. The only whitebread here are farming families who've been here since the the invasion and we don't see much of them at all, but water is as you say, the problem.


We've been on bore water since 2016, and it won't get any better - Our governments (both) seem hellbent on flogging off the water in our inland rivers to foreign governments and corporate multinationals, allowing our major farms to be bought by chinese interests who export the product directly to mainland China, while the majority of frozen fruit and vegetables is from China - via NZ. We are surrounded by sea yet 228,000 tonnes of our seafood consumption is imported - mainly from Asia, while in 2012 we exported 35,000 tonnes in sea food products

Our governments see water and land as a commodity to be sold, and wouldn't have thought any further than the next election. Chinese interests own 140,000 square kilometres of Australia - which is an area of land that is more than twice the size of Tasmania...this includes, on 99 year leases, every major Sea Port in Australia.

It will take revolution before the incumbent governments take note of our total discontent.
 
your butt water (sniggers), is just so much better for plants I reckon (sorry 21...school boy humour has never left me).

vital for our compost heaps! We dug one of them out into the raised beds we (re)built last year and it was lush!
 
Mungoman,

Our version of a 'brick in the bog tank' is a two liter bottle of water. Serves the same purpose. And at two litre a time it does add up.

And defiantly let it mellow; Flush every second visit. Although my wife says it tends to stain the porcelain. The problem with roof water is that you have to take care to remove all the leaves etc. I have a couple of mesh filters to help reduce this. Having trees all around the garden doesn't help.

As for newbie Australians, I suppose a few month up in the Darwin area will either make them or break them.

INT21.
 
Research into fruit flies as a future protein source

https://www.theflyingspark.com/


Salted cave cockroaches in Thailand - bloody Yum!
IMG_4461001.jpg
 
vital for our compost heaps! We dug one of them out into the raised beds we (re)built last year and it was lush!


It's quite amazing how that works, isn't it Frides...If I was uneducated in the soil sciences, my natural inclination would say - 'But it's rubbish - how can it be good for the soil'...but of course it is, and being educated, we know why... I have an alternative composting method, which I use Frides.

I allow all weeds like amaranth, wild lettuce, mallow, chenopodium and purslane to grow till it starts to form seed, then I pull it up and use it as mulch. for some reason the seed doesn't add to the soils seed bank and it mulches wonderfully, taking twice as long to break down, and because each plant has a deep root system each plant has access to minerals that are prone to leaching out of the A and O horizons - a sort of long term release plan...

It also suits my lazy bachelor/too bloody hot/ what! double bloody dig!/can't wait till winter gardening style.
 
Male contraception.

ON A RECENT morning in Los Angeles, Michael Medrano dabbed a teaspoon-sized glob of cold gel onto his shoulders. It’s just another part of his routine these days: Brush teeth, apply deodorant, comb hair, dab gel.

The gel, which Medrano describes as having the consistency of hand sanitizer, contains testosterone and progestin, a hormonal composite that suppress his body’s natural production of sperm. Massaged into his skin, it functions as the only birth control he and his wife, Julia, will use for the next year and a half.

A few years ago, Julia stopped taking Depo-Provera, an injectable form of hormonal birth control, which had caused her weight to fluctuate and made her, in Medrano’s words, “kind of moody.” Condoms worked fine, but Julia worried about slipping up. So when Medrano came across a post on Reddit recruiting participants for a clinical trial of this new kind of male contraceptive, it seemed worth a shot. Julia, happy to be relieved of the burden of managing the couple’s birth control, agreed.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-we-... NL 032719 (1)&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl
 
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In the 1960s, when the world’s population had just crossed 3 billion people, there was a common belief across the experts in the academic and scientific communities that we were approaching “peak humanity”. That this was largest number of people the planet could support, based on the amount of food the planet could produce. Policymakers feared global famine, mass starvation and a collapse in the social order.

156527625326170400428049402409798091157090388680838.jpg


Thanks to the Green Revolution that was spurred in part by Norman Borlaug’swork to develop heartier and higher-yielding strains of staple crops like wheat, food production doubled without significantly expanding land use. With the global population now some 7 billion we are told by experts in the academic and scientific communities that this we are facing a “climate crisis”. Policymakers fear climate induced global famine, mass starvation and a collapse in the social order.

If this is true wouldn’t world food prices being a leading indicator? Food costs would be rising as environmental constraints reduced supply and population growth increased demand.

food-cost.jpg


So it is incredible that within a generation food costs have dropped so dramatically in India and China, countries that at one time were frequently on the brink of famine. Environmentalists who campaign against agri-tech advances have argued for population reduction rather than increased food production. Fortunately policy-makers have taken the humane option and have better fed bigger populations as a result.

https://order-order.com/2019/08/08/climate-crisis-populism-versus-data-food-production/

maximus otter
 
If this is true wouldn’t world food prices being a leading indicator? Food costs would be rising as environmental constraints reduced supply and population growth increased demand.

food-cost.jpg


So it is incredible that within a generation food costs have dropped so dramatically in India and China, countries that at one time were frequently on the brink of famine. Environmentalists who campaign against agri-tech advances have argued for population reduction rather than increased food production. Fortunately policy-makers have taken the humane option and have better fed bigger populations as a result.
https://order-order.com/2019/08/08/climate-crisis-populism-versus-data-food-production/
maximus otter

I think it is possible to argue that perhaps the market is getting it wrong on the pricing of food. I mean, the market often gets it wrong. Look at the price of Helium for example. Helium is presently a mined non-renewable gas that is used for numerous advanced electronic manufacturing procedures, but is also blasted into space in childrens' party balloons for pennies on the dollar. There is a very limited supply of Helium and while there are some methods for extracting more from coal, they are expensive. Now looking at food, we don't even really grasp the price of clearing and fertilizing extra land, or how the use of pesticides, ground water, etc is going to affect that land's productivity in the future. I suspect that a lot of the price for food is being distributed into fuel costs and other expenses. After all, without petrol and diesel being readily accessible, many farms would cease to be viable, and often the finished product is subsidised. I would also point out that I wouldn't trust the biggest player in agribusiness, Monsanto to tell the truth about the time of day, given that they generally come up with some sort of genocidal nightmare scandal once every decade.

On the other hand, and not to be unfair, such subsidies vary considerably from nation to nation, and even province to province. I know that there have definitely been immense improvements in many areas of agriculture, as you clearly point out M.O. and I seriously hope that we can dodge that Malthusian bullet for a good while to come.
 
After all, without petrol and diesel being readily accessible, many farms would cease to be viable, and often the finished product is subsidised.
Without oil, coal and gas, a population of 7 billion would quickly become unsustainable. There's always the chance that it might run out (OK, Britain has loads of coal, but some other countries don't). That might be the real reason for trying to limit population size.
 
Without oil, coal and gas, a population of 7 billion would quickly become unsustainable. There's always the chance that it might run out (OK, Britain has loads of coal, but some other countries don't). That might be the real reason for trying to limit population size.

I hope that the transition from fossil fuel to renewables is like the transition from whale oil to fossil fuels i.e. unthinkable until it was done. I am so impressed by the level of intellect and entrepreneurship of people developing alternative forms of transport and energy production and improved battery tech, that it restores my faith in humanity quite a bit. I am in little doubt that the next great fortunes will be made in these areas.
 
Population should start to decline between 2050 and 2080 --we'll see if we can make it that long. My bet is probably not or not well.
 
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