SEVEN BILLION

You're not going to force me to be serious about this are you?

I'm glad smoking is going out of favor. Imagine 7 billion cigarettes, lighted at the same time.

Sheesh . . . it's not like Roswell has that many chairs . . .

Actually, I just wanted to call you Shirley.

I think that if everyone of the 7 billion would send me a single cent I too could join the 1%.

Rap

Hey . . . don't i get a cut for bringing this wonderful business opportunity to your attention?

I found this interesting, since I was born in 1968, I was roughly the 3.5 billionth person to be born. I'm only 43, and the population has doubled in my lifetime. Half the population is therefore older than me, and the other half younger. (I am the very definition of "middle-aged" Ugh.) Can the population double again in the next 43 years, by the time I'm (Spaghetti Monster willing) 86?

farmerman has it right I think. All populations demonstrate the boom/bust cycle, we have the ability to delay but not prevent it without an expansion of the environment.

There is only one solution to the problem of starving children in Africa, and that is to poor enormous amounts of money into space exploration. (I expect lots of folks will think that's sarcasm, but I think it's the blatantly obvious truth.)

It kinda freaked me out to hear the last billion of the 7 were all born within the last 12 years. Did I hear that right? Sorry for being a little serious about it (some of the remarks have been pretty funny), but should that concern us, like, that maybe our great grandkids will be competing for elbow room or something?

Never any points off for being serious, and along with the tongue-in-cheek, i was serious when i started this thread. What floors me is that there just two billion when i was a boy, and had reached the point where i could understand the concept of world population--that's only a little over fifty years ago. The population of the United States was under 200,000,000. That has almost doubled since then--but world population has more than tripled.

I don't think the problems of the future will be competition for actual space--but for things like drinking water and enough food to eat.

I wish I had the energy to answer this question.

We dont, not for long. The mass die offs will be here very soon. Forget current stories of thousands dying in Africa , it will not belong before the media reports millions have recently died of hunger, thirst and pestilence .

OH WAIT! I am chicken little...scratch that.

It's a pretty rare event when you say something sensible.

Be careful, by starting this thread you have come way too close to figuring out the Hawkeye is too right for comfort. Dont you have some pills to pop or some Canadian to drink so that you can get back to your Pollyanna world view?

Kiss my red Irish ass, you flannel-mouthed bullshit artist. There is absolutely nothing about this thread which confirms your idiotic Chicken Little ranting. There is nothing Pollyanna about my world view, either.

If you had actually bothered to read the thread, instead of jumping in on a feeble chance of taking a cheap shot, you'd have seen that predictions are that the world's population will level off at about ten billion. There is sufficient carrying capacity to feed that population, and, just barely, there is enough potable water. The problems which will arise will the products of a commercial communications system not sufficiently well-developed to cope with the situation, and the overweening greed of capitalists who would be happy to see millions on the edge of starvation if it meant they could get a better price for the grain they purchased as speculation.

One thing there will never be a lack of though, and that's idiots who run around shouting that the sky is falling.

Says who? The earth is rapidly heating, the oceans are dying faster than anyone predicted, and the war against the microbes is going far worse than anyone predicted up until a few years ago....from whence do you get your optimism Polly?



DAMN,, you just slipped again. Dont do that if you want to avoid admitting that I am right!

Agricultural carrying capacity has nothing to do with the warming of the climate--2000 years ago North Africa was the granary of the Roman Empire at a time when the climate was warmer than it is now. I'd be interested to see your source on the "death" of the oceans. That the Japanese are raping the oceans just as fast as they can cannot be denied, but the oceans have never been a major source of food other than locally--the entire world population has never relied heavily on the production of the oceans. The undoubted problem with the evolution of microbes that are resistant to antibiotics also has nothing to do with the carrying capacity of the planet to produce food.

Will lots of people die of malnutrition and disease in the years to come? Certainly. Is that any different from what humans have always known thoughout history? Not at all.

You can drop that "Polly" bullshit. Both that and your Chicken Little screed are, as is always the case with you, offered without substantiation. Even now you have evidently not read the thread. I trust Farmerman's analysis of carring capacity far more than i do any of the bullshit you peddle.

If prospects are so immediately dire as you claim, it should be simplicity itself for you to provide sources to back you up. Said sources will be, of course, subject to review for reliability. Not that i expect that you'll provide any sources for your claims--you never do. But then, you are "zen," aren't you? You don't need no steenking sources.

You Bubba, it's a sure sign of a delusional view of oneself when you begin referring to yourself in the third person. You do provide excellent comic relief, i'll give you that.

Once again you don't pay attention. I don't need a clown like you to tell me about the flaws of capitalism, and i've been discussing that in these fora long before you ever started your idiotic and disjointed rantings.

Bullshit, Peak agricultural capacity it closely tied to the earth climate being near the traditional climate, because the quality of the soil is dependent upon the amount of organic material that has decomposed into it. We are already seeing the change in climate move production, but it will not be long before we see the right climate for production being in areas where the soil is too weak to support production for long. You can only throw so much expensive and climate polluting fertilizer onto a patch of earth before your kill it with salts and other undesirables. And you need massive amounts of water. We are already seeing, in the face of famine mind you, a lot of acreage around the world being pulled out of production because the limited water is being saved for direct use by humans..... but then I have every expectation that you are not paying close enough attention to reality to know this....chump.

Got a source for that, Chicken Little? I see you choose to ignore the evidence we have for agriculture in the Roman empire and in China 2000 years ago, when the climate was warmer than it is now.

Clown