SEVEN BILLION

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Once again, you're a fuckin' idiot. Darwin had nothing to say about "the gene pool." Genes were not even known to exist in Darwin's lifetime. Darwin had absolutely nothing to say about "the stength of the human gene pool."

Given that you are such an idiot, i'm not surprised to learn that you are also a crypto-Nazi.

His theory of natural selection was about genetics, only he had no capacity to know how this worked at the cell level, as we now do. The fact that he never mentioned "genes" does not mean that he was not talking about what we now call "genes"

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@hawkeye10,

Wrong. His theory was based on morphology, as was Wallace's identical conclusion. Your penchant for displaying your ignorance is at least entertaining.

Come on, Crypto-Nazi, shows us your sources.

For those who are interested, knowing already about fresh water sources in the world and rice and other grain production, the search criteria i used were "Great Lakes+proportion of world's fresh water," "Lake Baikal+proportion of world's fresh water," "World rice production by nation," "Rice production+United States," "World grain production by nation," and several others. None of this is rocket science.

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@Setanta,

I googled it right after I posted that. Found this recent article:

"UN Population Predictions: Up To 15 Billion by 2100"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/10/23/un-population-predictions-up-to-15-billion-by-2100/

Setanta wrote:

It has been pretty well established now that the fertility of people in industrialized nations with constant, reliable food sources falls off. So, in the industrial world, population is static or falling. The ten billion plateau assumes that increasing prosperity will reduce the birth rate to a level equal to or less than the death rate. If this occurs, it will have occured by 2100.

The article wrote:

The other thing about these numbers is that we don’t want to immediately conclude that the solution is to just hand out contraception to everyone...

There’s nothing wrong with offering it to those who want it of course but it just isn’t a solution to anything other than the unmet desire for contraception. For giving condoms to a woman who desires to get pregnant doesn’t help matters very much: what changes population is the desire to have children in the first place. And here we do know what changes this desire: wealth. Increasing wealth brings with it falls in fertility. So, to reduce population we want to grow the economy, increase the wealth of those who currently don’t have it.

There’s good news on this front too. We advanced economies might be mired in economic gloom but the global economy, powered by the currently developing nations, is growing very nicely indeed. Increasing wealth and thus reducing population.

Now I'll admit my cynical nature here. But doesn't the reliance on increasing worldwide prosperity seem extraordinarily optimistic?

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@thack45,

Sure, i'd agree with that. However, i need to repeat that i'm just reporting the claim--i am neither confirming or denying it.

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@thack45,

By the way, simplistic statements about economic conditions are not as germane as they would appear on a superficial examination. Prosperous nations, even when they are in recession, still provide reliable medical care, reliably clean water for drinking and cooking, sewage and garbage removal and public education. Being in economic trouble doesn't change those things, and those are the measures of economic security which seem to have lead to the decline in fertility in industrialized nations.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

For those who are interested, knowing already about fresh water sources in the world and rice and other grain production, the search criteria i used were "Great Lakes+proportion of world's fresh water," "Lake Baikal+proportion of world's fresh water," "World rice production by nation," "Rice production+United States," "World grain production by nation," and several others. None of this is rocket science.

Current pools of fresh water are not a solution...even if you could get the water were it needs to be you are still left with drawing down a finite stash of the resource. Cleaning salted water might be a solution but no one imagines that it can be done with little energy, so this will not work until and unless we come up with a plentiful cheap and clean energy source. THe capacity to support more humans is much more decided by our energy situation than any other factor, and still we will need to figure out how to manage the rubbish that humans create so that will dont kill the Earth to the point that we cant live here even with our big brains.

EDIT: Before we even started to draw down the great lakes we would need to block them from the ocean, thus greatly negatively impacting the economies of two nations. I dont see that happening. Africans and asians will starve before we slit our own throats.

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Put up or shut up, Crypto-Nazi. You'll get exactly as much respect for your ranting as equates to the sources you provide for your claims.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Put up or shut up, Crypto-Nazi. You'll get exactly as much respect for your ranting as equates to the sources you provide for your claims.

Back at you, pal.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

That's not anything i'm worried about. You can rant to your heart's content. As Thack has just demonstrated, it's easy to find souces for these subjects.

Put up or shut up, Crypto-Nazi.

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@Setanta,

And that's the way I read it. Besides... looks like you've got your hands full as it is. Smile

I was surprised at the point that wealth (or as you later basically stated, a nation with a civilized infrastructure) reduces (or seems to reduce) fertility. I'd never heard that before. I wonder if that's some sort of evolutionary measure. Are people in destitute situations instinctually more compelled to procreate?

1 Reply

@thack45,

Those are good questions. Years ago, i linked some studies done in Europe which specifically alleged that male fertility declines in industrialized nations. That might be worth a search--but i'm not going to bother doing it again.

There are two obvious and well established reasons for large families in pre-industrial societies, and evidence from European records that these once applied there, too. The first is that "many hands make light work." Having many children provides the labor necessary in an agricultural society which cannot rely on heavy machinery. The other is a primitive form of old age pensions. The more children you can produce who reach adulthood, the better the prospect that you'll have someone to support you as you age. There are several other considerations, of course. Whether or not there will be land for them to farm, or prosperous young men for them to marry, and whether or not they'll be willing to support you are two rather obvious ones.

Manor court records from the middle ages in Europe frequently show widows who secure an agreement from a son or a daughter and son-in-law to provide certain necessities and comforts in return for the right to farm the field strips which devolved on her when her husband had died. Many of them are quite specific--a seat by the fire, a straw-filled pallet by the fire, a new suit of clothes each year (manors provided this to all the serfs, who were working), two meals a day, meat once a week--it was the pension system of the day. It would seem to me that the fact that there weren't more of these agreements suggests that many parents knew they could rely on their children, or continued to hold the land and let the children work it and recieve the benefit so long as they were providing what mom or dad expected. Of course, in those days, old age began somewhere north of 35 years of age, and most people didn't live to see 50. However one looks at it, though, there are many clear reasons why large families would appeal to poor farmers in a pre-industrial society.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Those are good questions. Years ago, i linked some studies done in Europe which specifically alleged that male fertility declines in industrialized nations. That might be worth a search--but i'm not going to bother doing it again.

I don't blame you. Laughing

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@thack45,

I got curious...

http://able2know.org/topic/141106-144#post-4417705

Setanta wrote:

I have read in more than one source that the fertility rate in industrialized countries is declining, and that it may be an evolutionary response to sufficient food and shelter options. Can't say if that's true or not, but it is an interesting thesis.

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I scrolled through that thread for a few pags, but that's not the thread in which i linked some studies. However, just down the page from the post you quoted is one from Hingehead linking a chemical used in plastics to reduced male fertility.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Right you are. Here it is...

http://able2know.org/topic/88570-5#post-2443926

(The first link was broken but here's what google found)...
The Population Reference Bureau's Fertility Page

The ballgames on are boring today...

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Cool Boss . . . thanks for the contribution to the discussion . . .

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@hawkeye10,

If only stupid people are breeding, then they are superior. That's how it works.

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@Eorl,

Eorl wrote:

If only stupid people are breeding, then they are superior. That's how it works.

No, they just dont care about the overload of people on this planet, often times because they have gotten in the habit of being charity cases, they expect the rest of us to support them when they start starving.

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@Eorl,

If only stupid people were breeding, then one day Chicken Little here, the Crypto-Nazi, might actually become the intellectual he now only pretends to be . . . if he lives long enough . . .

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@Eorl,

By the way, i would appreciate it if you didn't encourage that jackass, he's already done enough to trash the thread, without providing a single thought of any substance for which he can provide some evidence. All that he's done, essentially, is run around shouting the the sky is falling. I have no illusions that he'll go away, but you really shouldn't encourage him to think that anyone intelligent is actually going to have a conversation with him.

3 Replies

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