GM to shutdown Factories

[Royal Tiger]

Global warming is a myth. In the 1970’s the experts declared an ice age was coming. It’s on the cover of Time Magazine. We have had record cold 2 of the last 3 years here. Now the wettest in recoded history. Truth is the earth is always changing. Pollution is man made and needs to be stopped.

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by Doc

A "quick google search" on global warming and population growth is like asking a politician's PR spokesperson if what the politician said was true...

Consider this. It took however long we've been on this planet until 1962 to reach a global population of 3 billion. 50 years later in 2012 the global population was 7 billion; we added 4 billion in only 50 years. We more than doubled the growth of all time in only 50 years. Only 6 years after 2012, we've passed 8 billion. We're adding more people at a rate faster than the rate between 1962 and 2012. It took 50 years to add 4 billion, we just added over 1 billion in only 6 years. If that rate simply stabilizes, doesn't increase, we'd be adding 1 billion every 6 years which means adding 4 billion in only 24 years; less than half the time it took to add 4 billion between 1962 and 2012.

There's no reason to expect the growth rate will stabilize. It's a matter of sheer numbers. If half the women in China simply have one child, that will add more people in 9 months than the entire population of the United States. And that's just China. India has reached 1 billion too.

We've got a problem.




Lag time? With regards to what? Not sure what you're saying.

Environmental consequences vs population, assuming that population is a cause of environmental consequences (I'm not going to argue whether it is or it isn't).

Perhaps more accurately, rate of increase in adverse environmental effects vs rate of population growth. Clearly the element of 'time' is involved, so changes in the cause take time to show up in the consequences.


Norm

[Doc]

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

Environmental consequences vs population, assuming that population is a cause of environmental consequences (I'm not going to argue whether it is or it isn't).

Perhaps more accurately, rate of increase in adverse environmental effects vs rate of population growth. Clearly the element of 'time' is involved, so changes in the cause take time to show up in the consequences.


Norm

Well sure, we have an effect on our environment no question. Just how much of an effect is usually the consequence of numbers, but not always. Generally speaking, the most devastating effects are caused by industry but that's a good and bad situation. We need industry to make the things that make our lives better and easier, and we need industry for jobs. However the byproducts of industry can be fatal if not managed properly.

As far as population, just as a matter of the fact that they exist, they're going to consume water, food, electricity, gas, and need a place to dispose of their trash and waste. The effect of that is also based on numbers.

So what has changed since 1962, that didn't exist prior to that? A few very key things changed, and it pretty much started in America. A huge change was medicine. We went from country doctor home remedy type medicine, to actual science based medicine. The biggest breakthrough was penicillin. The diseases of influenza, measles, tuberculosis and polio were responsible for killing hundreds of millions of people in mass pandemics because they didn't even know how they were created and spread, much less how to cure them. Medical science after World War II brought cures for all 4 of those traditional killers, and combined with penicillin and other breakthroughs, many millions of lives were saved that otherwise would have died. This all happened in the 50's mostly, so the baby boom wasn't decimated by childhood diseases the way previous generations had been.

The other breakthrough was food quality and production. We began to be able to produce massive quantities of food, and transport it rapidly just about anywhere. This made it possible for growth and expansion into areas that previously wouldn't have been able to support a population, or grow the one that was already there. Combine vastly superior medicine, with much better food supplies, and the death rate that the world had been used to suddenly dropped dramatically. We don't see the 100 million deaths in a plague now like the world used to have.

Another thing is people are living longer now as a result of all the benefits of better medicine and medical care, and better food. Just 50 years ago, people were considered middle age once they hit 30, and retirement age was 55 because people weren't expected to live much beyond that. You were considered old at 55. Now, 55 is considered middle age, and people are commonly living into their 80's and 90's; even 100 isn't unusual anymore.

Better food, better medical care, longer healthier lives means the death rate cycle has dramatically been reduced, which means more people living longer. People are having children in their 30's and 40's now because giving birth isn't the roll of the dice the way it used to be. It's very unusual for a woman to die in childbirth now, whereas even 100 years ago it wasn't unusual at all.

Our industry and technology has made it possible for us to live better, longer and with greater ease and comfort than at any time in history. Which is great. Except, we're still reproducing like we did when the death rate was so much higher. If we don't figure out how to get that under control and balance it, at some point we're going to overwhelm our environment, overwhelm our infrastructure, overwhelm our ability to sustain our population, and when that happens... it's going to get real ugly real fast. It'll be like something out of a science fiction movie, except it won't be a movie.

It's very difficult to project time schedules with something like this, because at any moment, something could happen that could change the equation. Something like Ebola, the new form of Polio that's shown up, or a plague of some kind could dramatically change things like it used to when those type of events happened. We've had an uncharacteristic quiet period in history because of our ability to prevent those things from happening with our technology. But how far can technology go? We don't know. It's a numbers game. If nothing dramatic happens to change things, we probably have 10-15 years before things really start to get worrisome. We'd be somewhere around 10-12 billion and who knows how that will play out; where the big concentrations will be, and what the pressures will be at that time.

There's a lot at stake, and it's bearing down on us at an uncomfortable rate. I just wish we had the politicians and industrial/technology leaders who recognized it, understood it, and were working on a humane and reasonable way to avoid it. Unfortunately, so far it looks like we don't.

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by Doc

Well sure, we have an effect on our environment no question. Just how much of an effect is usually the consequence of numbers, but not always. Generally speaking, the most devastating effects are caused by industry but that's a good and bad situation. We need industry to make the things that make our lives better and easier, and we need industry for jobs. However the byproducts of industry can be fatal if not managed properly.

As far as population, just as a matter of the fact that they exist, they're going to consume water, food, electricity, gas, and need a place to dispose of their trash and waste. The effect of that is also based on numbers.

Let me try another tack . . . if a billion more people were to be born tomorrow, the environmental situation wouldn't be 12% worse by next week even if population was the sole determinant of such change. Probably not next by year either.


FWIW, China actually used to penalize those who gave birth to a second child - this was an official government policy. Sometimes even other family members were penalized or jailed.


Norm

[ZED SLED]

Doc, just curious. How many words do you type per minute?

[Doc]

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

Let me try another tack . . . if a billion more people were to be born tomorrow, the environmental situation wouldn't be 12% worse by next week even if population was the sole determinant of such change. Probably not next by year either.


FWIW, China actually used to penalize those who gave birth to a second child - this was an official government policy. Sometimes even other family members were penalized or jailed.


Norm

The demands of a billion newborns isn't going to be the same as a billion adults obviously, so it will be a few years before the serious effects would start to be noticed. However it isn't all done in nice, neat and tidy number sets. There's a birth rate by the day, and over time it builds up like a ground swell tsunami of population.

Ideally you want to head off the problems before they reach tsunami levels because at that point, you start going into survival mode instead of reasonable management mode.

Originally Posted by ZED SLED

Doc, just curious. How many words do you type per minute?

Lol well you know, I'm not really sure. I haven't measured it. I've been working on a research project for the past 3 years that involves a tremendous amount of word processing, so I have to do a LOT of typing. The project involves search, discovery, comparison, analysis and other thought processes. As a result, I'm in that mental mode almost all the time, and that's really changed how I view things. It's somewhat of a mixed blessing though. I see more and understand more, which is both good and bad. The old saying "ignorance is bliss" has a lot of truth to it. You can't be concerned about something if you don't know about it, which is probably why the majority of the population doesn't know and doesn't want to know much beyond their own individual 'world'.

Knowledge and understanding have a weight to them, which weighs upon you mentally, emotionally and psychologically. I personally think it's better to have those things than not have them, but not everyone wants that.

[ZED SLED]

Originally Posted by Royal Tiger

The more Doc speaks the more I like him. He’s dead on. Want to drive a tree hugger crazy? Ask him why the temps are rising on Mars too. No SUV’s there

The real reason for global warming on Mars.

[Bretts]

Originally Posted by ZED SLED

The real reason for global warming on Mars.

I would contribute to this interesting thread, but all my rants and information sharing up here on the Canadian internet news/feeds is draining the heck out of me. I think we may get it back to normal, only if Trudeau is booted hard so that a majority government can help with our competitiveness and reward investors to come back

[Royal Tiger]

Originally Posted by ZED SLED

The real reason for global warming on Mars.

[Bretts]

Funny that real Mars true story? here's one from the moons Colder dark side



https://youtu.be/ky2rtCpbn7k

[mlee]

Originally Posted by Bretts

Funny that real Mars true story? here's one from the moons Colder dark side

That dude puts out some crazy videos.

[ZO6 Bryan]

[Bretts]

[pyroguy]

How the hell did we get from GM to shutdown factories to a global warming debate?