The Overpopulation Myth

Junto Society ^ | Bob Sperlazzo

[stoney]

The Over Population Myth Part 1

Provided by Bob Sperlazzo Informed Christian Digest 01/09/2003

The Overpopulation Lie is Killing Us! (Part 1) . "There are now 6 billion people on Earth. The planet's population will most likely continue to climb until 2050, when it will peak at 9 billion; other predictions have the world's population peaking at 7.5 billion in 2040. In either case, it will then go into a sharp decline. The world may soon be facing an under-population crisis -- a prospect that has all but escaped media scrutiny." -- Anthony C. LoBaido (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19076) . "The world is NOT over-populated. More than 97% of the land surface on Earth is empty.... Yes, certain cities are over-populated, of course. Yet the entire population of the world could fit inside the state of Arkansas. So, then, how is the world 'over-populated'? Europe and Japan will be facing under-population crises in the coming decades, even according to UN studies on population." -- Anthony C. LoBaido (http://w114.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28797) . ========================================= Overpopulation? -- 10 Myths by Dr. Jacqueline R. Kasun, Economist and Author . It's a day like any other. Your child comes home from school with an assignment. Only today, the assignment is to detail the problems that "overpopulation" is causing the world's ecosystem. . And part of this assignment is to educate you about the world's population "problem." . What do you do? Do you go along with what s/he's being taught? After all, this is what you've been hearing on television and in the newspapers for decades. Or do you have some counter-arguments? Might you, in fact, need to defend yourself and your child from a very real threat? . You should be aware that the question of "overpopulation" is no longer merely a topic of conversation, if it ever was. It is a burning matter of policy and action at the local, national and international level. Our national government is actually committed by law and by international agreement to reducing the worldwide rate of population growth. . Government spokesmen, such as Ambassador Timothy Wirth, insist that this effort must also apply to the population of the United States. Your chances of having grandchildren depend on whether and how this program is carried out. In many countries already, governments sterilize and abort their citizens by force, often with financial help from the United Nations, the United States and government-supported private agencies such as Planned Parenthood. . There are many government policies that make it difficult for families to bring children into the world, and for those children's fathers to support them and their mothers to stay home and raise them. Those policies include levying heavy taxes on families with children, discrimination against men in the job market, building codes and land use restrictions which increase the cost of housing, regulations which discourage productive activity. The groups which have supported these policies have plainly stated their intent to reduce population growth. . The United States government and the United Nations have promoted sex education in the schools, teaching children that there are too many -- far too many -- people in the world. The programs teach that abortion, sterilization and contraception are necessary to reduce "excessive" population growth. . If you familiarize yourself with the myths surrounding "overpopulation," you'll be in a better position to defend yourself and your family against these idealogical threats. . MYTH 1: The world is overcrowded and population growth is adding overwhelming numbers of humans to a small planet. . In fact, people do live in crowded conditions, and always have. We cluster together in cities and villages in order to exchange goods and services with one another. But while we crowd together for economic reasons in our great metropolitan areas, most of the world is empty, as we can see when we fly over it. It has been estimated by Paul Ehrlich and others that

[Poohbah]

I have observed that one symptom of overcrowding is an increased tendency to intolerance and violent thinking.

Not intolerance at all.

If you think we shouldn't be using so much oil, ditch the SUV, the 9,000 sqft house, and the private planes.

If you think we shouldn't get a tax cut, then don't use any of the deductions out there.

If you think there's too many people--specifically, 5,000,000,000 too many, as you indicated--then either lead by example, or give us your master plan for getting rid of 5,000,000,000 people.

[Axenolith]

The one that defines "fresh water" as a finite resource rather than one that will ALWAYS be there depending on what your willing to pay for it, that price being ultimately dependant upon the price of electricity and reverse osmosis filters...

[Axenolith]

Can anyone tell me why we would need a lot of people?

There always has to be lots of people or the socialist countries will begin to run short of bullet absorbers. Its hard to put on a really good genocide without lots of teeming masses... </sarcasm

[Axenolith]

Do you really want to go messing with the salinity of the oceans, upon which a good deal of our climate depends? The weather sucks enough already.

If you desalinated an amount of fresh water equal to the entire known planetary surface quantity (ice included) and put the salt in the oceans, you'd be lucky to increase the salinity by 1 part per 10,000...

[discostu]

Many historians feel the first fence was put up to keep livestock in, not to keep people out.

All depends on your definition of good real estate, there's an 80 mile stretch of prime real estate between Tuscon and Phoenix that's wide open. I wouldn't live on a beach having my foundation erode out from under me isn't my idea of a good investment.

To say anti-pollution regulation is "paying" for air is one of the grandest Clinton style word redefinitions I've heard in my entire life. And to blame that on overpopulation is rediculous in the extreme, it only takes one person to polute the hell out of the air, or did you sleep through this summer's forest fires?

Having to buy something doesn't mean there's a shortage of it, having to pay a lot for it does. But once you get out of the liberal population centers land get really cheap, if you have to pay for it at all. There's TONS of unsettled perfectly habitable land you can homestead in this country.

I refuse to think of my dollar as anything other tan a dollar. It isn't a rationing coupon and thinking of it that way would be lieing to myself. Of all the people in the world you shouldn't lie to, yourself is #1 on the list.

The freedom problems we're having currently again have nothing to do with the population, though a lot of liberals jag-offs have used a made up "population problem" to pass idiotic freedom reducing laws. Open your eyes and stop helping the bad guys.

Well considering that we only occupy around 5% of the land, and 67% of the surface of the planet is water I think we're a couple MILLION years away from fencing off the ocean.

Face it you just don't like people. Which is fine, I don't either. But just because neither of us likes people doesn't mean the world is overpopulated. All it means is that you and I are anti-social misfits, a label I wear proudly.

[Axenolith]

You could go build a city on the Moon and it will still be ultimately dependent on food from that finite arable land.

No, you would create arable land on the moon. All the resources are there (minerals, water, even if you have to get it from mineral structure), you just need to add bacteria, plants and humans...

[AntiGuv]

Good point. Come to think of it, all the resources are in wisps of intersteller gas as well, you just need to rearrange the atomic arrangement.

[Axenolith]

Yea, but extrapolated out that far you're approaching an asymptotic cost curve. On the moon, light and heat are easily and cheaply (once you have a base infrastructure in place) available and managed. The initial investment is high. As long as equivalents are available here and barring finding something like a huge deposit of native platinum or some other economic incentive the justification is not there.

Personally, I'm for a human presence on the moon from an "all of our eggs not in one basket" standpoint. Another incentive which might see us colonize it is the existance of water in polar craters (snazzy source of fuel for intrasolar work at 1/6 the gravity cost). Alas, another country like China or India will probably do the exploiting unless we experience an economic and political rebirth, we're just not as enamored of pushing frontiers as we used to be...

[Snidely Whiplash]

If you desalinated an amount of fresh water equal to the entire known planetary surface quantity (ice included) and put the salt in the oceans, you'd be lucky to increase the salinity by 1 part per 10,000...

It's not an increase in the salinity that's a problem. It's a decrease that'd really screw things up. And it wouldn't take much of a change at all.

The melting of the icecaps (and it is going on, don't be fooled - it's just not necessarily our fault) - not all of the ice, just some of it - would increase the salinity of the North Atlantic enough to disrupt the thermohaline circulation of that area, which would have a significant effect on the climate in Northern Europe among other places.

See here: Thermohaline Circulation

Regards,
Snidely

[Darksheare]

"misanthrope" used in post #74?
Who's calling names?
I think you'd better heel it in there, mein freund.

[Eternal_Bear]

I don't know about the Earth but our highways are way overpopulated. I could cruise in the Western states during daytime and nary see another vehicle. This was in the 70's on the interstate. Now it seems like bumper to bumper traffic in even the most remote places. I like to spread out and live in wide open spaces without a neighbor for 10 miles. An earth teeming with thousands of stinking Calcutta-like feces infested hellholes does not appeal to me one wit and that's what our country is being transformed into!

[Axenolith]

I was responding to your allegation that desalination would screw up the ocean...

There was an article in the June or July 1996 issue of EOS where the authors proposed building a dam across the straight of Gibraltar to alter what you're talking about here. They hypothesized that the gulf stream was being pushed northward from an increased density current emanating from the Med (due to the Aswan dam and global warming), which was going to frost Europe. Quite the speculative leap for a 100 billion dollar project :)

[Age of Reason]

All depends on your definition of good real estate, there's an 80 mile stretch of prime real estate between Tuscon and Phoenix that's wide open. I wouldn't live on a beach having my foundation erode out from under me isn't my idea of a good investment.

If the climate is so hostile you need to build a house with a foundation, it's not prime real estate.

[Age of Reason]

Many historians feel the first fence was put up to keep livestock in, not to keep people out.

If you have to trouble about building serious amounts of fencing FOR ANY REASON, you have overpopulation.

Why bother anchoring oneself to a piece of property or to husbanding animals or to performing the drudgery of farming--unless there have become too many people to be sustained by naturally occurring resources?

[discostu]

How in the hell do you build without a foundation? Unless you're using a vastly different definition of the word than I've ever seen, here's what I mean (from dictionary.com, my close friend):
3. (Arch.) The lowest and supporting part or member of a wall, including the base course (see Base course (a), under Base, n.) and footing courses; in a frame house, the whole substructure of masonry.

Might be just a slab of concrete, but you've gotta have a foundation.

[discostu]

Oh I see, you're just being silly. What in blazes does not wanting live stock to wander off have to do with population? If anything "over population" would help to keep that problem away, there's not so much open space for the critters to wander off in and hopefully somebody will recognize the beast as yours via branding or collaring or something. It's when you've got a farm 10 miles from anybody on the planet that you need to keep those animals fenced up because if they ever wander off in the middle of the night they're GONE you'll never see them again.

You anchor yourself to a peice of propertty or husbanding animals to EAT. Again you've got your cause and effect bassackward. In a highly populated region you don't have to farm to eat, you can do something else and buy food from farmers. If you're all by yourself in the middle of nowhere there's nobody to buy food from, you eat what you grow. Farming IS a natural resource, that's what happens when people realize that hunting and gathering sucks and they prefer sleeping out of the weather and they get sick of hauling infants all over the place; they switch to growing and harvesting, build a house and settle down.

[Age of Reason]

Having to buy something doesn't mean there's a shortage of it, having to pay a lot for it does.

If there's enough of something, it should be free for the taking.

For example: There are places where it naturally snows so abundantly snow is free.

There are other places where they have to pay for snow, by having machines make it.

Therefore, when there is enough of something, it doesn't cost anything.

But when there is not enough of something, you have to start paying for it.

But once you get out of the liberal population centers land get really cheap, if you have to pay for it at all. There's TONS of unsettled perfectly habitable land you can homestead in this country.

Homestead?

If you have to build a permanent dwelling and farm--then it's depleted land in a hostile climate.

It's not prime real estate.

[discostu]

Not necessarily so. If there's enough of a NON-finished resource then it probably pree for the taking. But it's really hard to find tables running around in the wild just waiting for you to harvest them.

Oh please, now you're just being a jackass. So according to you anyplace where you might want to get out of the elements for a while is a "hostile climate", prithy tell me just where in the sam hell on this planet is there that you'd want to sleep outside every single night?! There isn't one. This tells me that you're just making up a BS definition of "prime real estate" to "prove" your 100% non-existent point. When you're ready to talk about the real world you go ahead and let me know. But it's becoming quite clear that all you're doing is pissing and moaning because you don't like people. Tell you what, go do the Jeremiah Johnson thing, be a mountain man and leave the real world for those of us that know how it works.

[Age of Reason]

Hunting and gathering sucks because

1) overpopulation has depleted naturally occurring resources.

2) overpopulation forces people to live in climates hostile to human life.

If hunting and gathering sucks, why are people so eager to spend their recreational time by hunting, fishing, camping, hiking--all the very activities of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle?

And if farming is so wonderful, how come people don't rush to spend their vactions plowing fields?

[discostu]

No, hunting and gathering sucks because you don't have a home and live out in the elements, because random conditions of weather and migratory patterns determine what you eat and whether or not you eat. People enjoy it as a recreational activity because there are a lot of things in this world that are fun when you don't HAVE to do them. Climbing mountains can be fun, but it's a lousy way to get to work every morning, same goes for riding a bike. Hunting is plenty of fun if failing to be succesful won't result in starvation, the minute you HAVE to kill something or die hunting sucks. Farming isn't wonderful, but it's a hell of a lot better than having your entire society spend all of it's time wandering through the forest eating bugs.

Basically what you're trying to say here is that if we aren't living like gorillas randomly grabbing berries and grub worms and sleeping in the trees getting rained on then it's because of over population. I've participated in threads on pyramid power and crop circles and I have to say that the position you're staking out is hands down the stupidest damn thing I've read on FR. Building permanent structures only happens because of over population?! Foundations are only used because real estate sucks?! Farming only happens because of over population?! Face it, there is absolutely no REASON in your position and your arguements, change your handle or be labeled a hypocrit.