Earth's Carrying Capacity

Fred K. wrote:
"Ian St. John" wrote in message
...
Fred K. wrote:
Read my comments below...

"Ian St. John" wrote in message
...
Gactimus wrote:
How many people can the earth support?

Bloated, wasteful Americans or semi starved African Pygmies?



But who'se dreaming? The people in charge are not looking for
solutions to the woes of the world. They are looking for thier own
advantage, so no amount of speculation will affect the reality of
declining ecosystems and increases in poor populations.

What exactly is a declining ecosystem? Be sure to define your terms.

Both words are well defiend in the dictinoary. "declining" is a an
adjective. Ecosystem is a noun.

They are well defined in the dictionary but they are mostly
meaningless in the context of what you are trying to communicate.

There are no meaningless words. Only meaningless minds who cannot understand
them.

Ecosystem is defined as:

The interacting system of a biological community and its nonliving
environment.
by www.cabq.gov/aes/glossary.html

So what exactly is declining?

The primary characteristic ( that you seem to have overlooked for your
'weight scale' approach) is 'interacting system'. The quality and variety of
that interaction is declining as we continue to throw monkey wrenchs in at
random.

(The Earth's mass = biomass + nonbiomass
= roughly constant) How is that connected to the "people in charge";
and who are they exactly?

The ones with the monkey wrenches. There are a variety of monkey wrenches,
from clearcutting to fishing licenses, to .. which is why you cannot
identify them except as the people who make the decisions ( the people in
charge).





I found this (see below) at
http://www.finfacts.com/biz10/global...epercapita.htm
which is a better indicator of what is happening in the world today
than your pesimistic statement.

GDP is a fairly crude measure of poverty. A person making $10k/year
in New York City is probably 'poorer' than a farmer in Zimbabwe who
uses cash only for a few luxuries and metal tools.

Quite possibly depending on how you measure poverty.

That was my point. Even in the U.S., comparing poor families with the same
income may have radically different levels of 'poorness' depending on
whether they own their own home, their location, how much they can tap into
the gray market for day to day necessities, etc.



I don't think your orginal assessment that poor populations are
increasing is a fair statement of the world situation.

It is a fact of life. One measure has been the 'wage parity' gap showing how
the lower levels of society are increasing being 'left out' of the wealth
generation. Another is taxation levels which are moving away from the
corporation and weatlhy to put the burden on the lower levels of society.
Generally state and local taxes are sufficiently 'anti-progressive' so as to
counter the progressive taxation of the federal level.
http://www.ctj.org/html/whopay.htm

Just looking at the fact that welfare, minimum wage, and other relevant
measures have been 'frozen' for decades while inflation reduces their levels
in real dollars shows how the problem is being 'covered up' deliberately.
The income levels that defined 'poor' in the thirties to fifties when such
things were first established, work out to about 30% of the real needs in
the current decade.

..

My point is
that the general trend across the world (with some local exceptions)
is toward more wealth, even among poor populations.

In article
s.com, Joe Strout writes
In article ,
"Jim Oberg" wrote:

So.. Nobody caught my John Brunner clue?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...8361/103-12560
31-0143026
?v=glance
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk//nonfiction/zanzibar.htm

Pretty funny, though -- "There are seven billion-plus humans crowding
the surface of 21st century Earth. It is an age of intelligent
computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by
assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes ... all
the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a
dazzlingly inventive style."

Seven billion is only about half a billion more than we have now. If he
wanted to portray such a dark, evil, overcrowded future, he certainly
should have picked a bigger number than that.

If there is less habitable surface - for instance as the ice caps
melt and the oceans rise - then it's going to be more crowded.
Maybe dangerously overcrowded if we already used all the oil and
the intelligent computers are still twenty years away from giving us
nuclear fusion power stations. Water is scarce, too - /now./

And assuming that it isn't a goof in the blurb and the book has
seventy billion. Or seven billion plus in the U.S.

Robert Carnegie at home, at large
--
I am fully aware I may regret this in the morning.

Rand Simberg wrote in message ink.net...

Any relation to Hugo Simberg? A very great painter--
and one who could be profoundly disturbing at times,
which is perhaps why you don't hear so much about him.

Mr. Palmer
Room 314

anxious triffid wrote:

"Jim Oberg" wrote in
:


So.. Nobody caught my John Brunner clue?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...103-1256031-01
43026 ?v=glance
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk//nonfiction/zanzibar.htm




I thought it was so blatant that it didn't require remark.

Me, too.

lid (John Savard) wrote in message ...
He noted that flax can do anything hemp can do - except make you high - and do it
better.

Make cheap rope? Make cheap high quality paper.

You'd have to smoke a ton of hemp to get as high as one roach worth of
marijuana. Hemp was included in the 1937 law strictly for the benefit
of the lumber industry and artifical fiber producers who wanted to
eliminate industrial hemp as competition.

In sci.space.policy Psalm 110 wrote:
On 17 Aug 2004 20:42:49 GMT, Ian Stirling
wrote:

It is possible (though expensive) to remove the salts from water used
for irrigation.
This would usually need to be combined with measures to reduce evaporation.

Idiot. Speaking before learning.

Could you explain why it is impossible?
(though not economically practical at this time).

On 17-Aug-2004, Psalm 110 wrote:

Idiot. Speaking before learning.

Three separate posts calling people idiots. If you say it three times, it
must be true.

Trouble is, most of us are interested in whys and wherefores.

"In 1974, former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne said
in a speech at the U.N.: "One day millions of men will leave
the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere.
And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go
there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons.
The wombs of our women will give us victory."

source:
http://www.nationalreview.com/script...0405040834.asp

__________________________________________________ ______________

Islam is growing faster than any other major religion.
Population of Haredim (jewish fundamentalists living in
Israel) is exploding. Religious fundamentalists are
determined to conquer the world and they are succeeding.

Bill Palmer wrote:

Any relation to Hugo Simberg? A very great painter--
and one who could be profoundly disturbing at times,
which is perhaps why you don't hear so much about him.

Not that I know of. He was a Finn, and my ancestors were eastern
European Jews, as far as I know. However, I've only recently become
Google prime over him.

: Andrew Nowicki
: "In 1974, former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne said in a
: speech at the U.N.: "One day millions of men will leave the southern
: hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. And they will not go
: there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they
: will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us
: victory."

The wombs of their women will produce weapons, ammunition, vehicles,
fuel, and resolve logistical problems of a supply pipeline that long?
I'm impressed. Stoic women, those.


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 20:09:53 GMT, Thomas Palm
wrote:

Anyway, I fear the real limit to carrying capacity is human greed and
stupidity, not any technological problem.

On the bright side, human greed and stupidity are fundamentally
results of our K-selected genes; in today's environment, though,
there's an enormously strong selection pressure in favor of
r-strategists. In other words, I think it's plausible to suggest that
the very adaptation that'll put the birth rate back above extinction
level, so as to make it possible to produce a couple of hundred
billion people in the first place, will also help to replace the genes
for thinking that killing your neighbors is a desirable goal.

--
"Sore wa himitsu desu."
To reply by email, remove
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