You're painting some pretty morbid pictures this morning Mal. For the "Love's of my life" I certainly hope we are NOT. I do think catostrophic categories are in our future, but I also think mankind will overcome all obstacles.
I think it is possible and it could happen but it may not. Aren't animals becoming extinct due to countries trying to build more houses for the humans to live in which may be a problem for some because despite in these modernized years, some may look to feed off of animals because of the expensive prices we have reached and it will only go up. The destruction as mentioned in the trailor that is becoming of the pollution and than all of the seasonal winds we have occuring. It may not be too long before we witness something like Hurricane Katrina (god forbid) again and who knows what it could do. One common theme is that every thing has died out after a long period which certainly begs to ask, are we next? JMO. I really wanna see this though.
If we do Parrish, more than anything I blame it on over-population. A very wise man once told me (My father) that if Population isnt kept in check, we will exponentially dispose of ALL the resources our planet has to offer. Once gone, many/most of these resources won't be able to be reproduced, regardless of technology. He told me this some 20 years ago, and I am seeing it come more and more to fruition as time goes on. For the record, my dad is still one of the most intelligent people I have ever met.
The really sad thing is that the answers are already there: aquatic bio-fuel, compact cities, using recycled materials, soon even plant-based building foundations. We're just too set in our comfort zones to make radical changes.
I agree with that statement he made. The trailors that are shown http://earth2100.tv/here are interesting. Which leads to the questioning of, should we have a limit for the parents who want to have multiple like China? I think this should be thoroughly thought out before it gets out of hand if it hasn't already.
Problem is, most of the overpopulation exists in third world countries where education of these issues and protection arent prevelent or practiced.
True. What I don't understand is, if they see these problems occurring, why don't they look into it instead of doing other things that are not as important?
generally speaking, families who have a ton of kids are doing so to generate more income. You see it in either agrarian societies, where fairly young kids- especially boys- can work the fields. Throughout history and prehistory, you get population explosions shortly after the shift to agriculture (which is actually not as fast as once thought). You also see it in quickly developing urban societies, where kids are running deliveries, selling trinkets and begging on the street. In most of these third world cities, something like 90-99% of the population lives in abject poverty. I see three main issues we must address to make it past 2100 in good shape, 1) global warming, 2) disease & plague prevention, and 3) narrowing the gap between the haves and have-nots
Population>food supplies is what will do us in. The only thing that will save us it an airborne virus that kills about 70% of the population. Other than that, I'll be surprised if we make it another 30 years without some draconian measures. If you read the news food riots are a weekly occurance in more and more parts of the world.
Never heard of him before but did some research. Interesting expectations he laid out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malthus#The_Principle_of_Population One thing that I can't seem to understand is, how do they make these predictions and etc.? What do they base this off of?
I dont think we are going to be wiped out, but we could see some drastic changes yes. People always enjoy saying the sky is falling, they have been doing so since our age began. Granted there are plenty of things that can go wrong to impact humanity, but as a whole, it would take an incredible life ending event to kill us all. Something like an asteroid impact, spacial radiation, the implosion of a supercollider or ofc a nuclear exchange. We could certainly witness a regression back into a more primitive period until we salvage enough old research and recentralize ourselves enough to progress again, but that would likely result in a massive explosion of growth. As to why nothing is done, its because the people in charge generally are not young and dont look to the future. They look to the now, they look to what will keep them in power. That generally involves pleasing adults who again are living more for the moment than the future. Change will only start to come about when the youth of the world finally wake up and start to flex their muscle and/or catastrophic events start happening. The greatest threats and salvation right now is, ironically, science. As our society has advanced and progressed, science is continually finding new ways to destroy us. Nukes, bio weps, and now we are experimenting with particle accelerators and supercolliders and the like. They are likely perfectly safe, but we are in large part forging ahead into unknown territory with ever more destructive fury. On the other hand, science will and must play a key role in overcoming such things as global warming (oh sorry, climate change ....), viral outbreaks, food production etc etc. One thing is for certain, things will get far more interesting the further we inexorably go.
I've got to run for a bit, but I'll try to give some insight on Mathus soon. He was largely mocked throughout Europe for his short sighted and pessimistic predictions. He also used some very faulty population numbers. I brought him up because this kind of prediction isn't new.
