Human population numbers questioned

[skjl47]

These and many other of the lofty goals that some of us set for ourselves are pipe dreams.

Hello; Yes my tilt at the overpopulation windmill was a pipe dream. Apparently, I have a new pipe dream. I wrote this before, but it no longer exists because the thread it was in has been deleted rather than merely locked.

I am looking to find a woman with very poor eyesight and equally poor judgement.

 

[skjl47]

MSN

Hello; Afraid I am not knowledgeable of the source material of these particular "tipping points". I have known of the concept of tipping points for several decades. While my recall is a bit foggy of the post graduate Limnology class i took back in the late 1970's, I do think oxygen levels in bodies of water were well covered. The class focused more on ponds, lakes and streams as we were in Richmond KY.
Those who fish lakes likely know of the thermocline layers. Dive deep into a lake in late summer and you can get into the colder water below a thermocline layer.
In the fall the upper layer of water stays warm after the air temps drop.

A fisherman also likely knows to fish a bit deeper during late summer & early fall days. The big fish do tend to stay deeper, below the warm upper water layer and in the cooler water.
I like to top water fish with a fly rod and have learned it is best before June in my area. During the rollover when the water layers start to even out in temperature and the deeper water upwells mixing with nutrients and oxygen. Better chance of catching bigger fish when the water layers overturn.

One of the tipping points mentioned is well known. That being the excess fertilizer runnoff which tends to create "dead zones" in the Gulf of America (known as the Gulf of Mexico for most of my life) at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Can happen in ponds with extra fertilizer from sources. The fertilizer contributes to algae blooms which can deplete oxygen levels. Can be runoff from grazing pastures or agriculture.

I enjoy the videos made on ice covered lakes or ponds. Someone pokes a hole in the ice and uses a flame to light up the gas which escapes. They then try to imply it is Global warming or the newer and more generic "climate change". The gas is indeed methane but the phenomena is not new nor recent. The methane forms in the mud layers on the bottom of the pond/lake from anerobic bacteria. The gas is released all year around. Can be called swamp gas.

Afraid I am not up to date on the oxygen depletion of ocean waters. I cannot say if the situation is real or not. I tend to be a bit skeptical when such is used to push what is clearly an agenda. Off the top of my head, I would want to know more of the mechanisms. Could it be that the extra carbon in the water will become a resource for the phytoplankton in the parts of the ocean where cool waters are supposed to be warming up some?

But back to the thread topic a bit. My quest for ZPG back 50 + years was to a large degree based on known impacts of human populations of the time. Could be seen that a number of people flushing toilets had an impact on an area. Figure to double or triple the number of toilets and the impact doubled or tripled.
I lived near Wilmington NC for a couple of years. Back in 1998-1999 the city was beginning to have problems with the ability of the sandy soil to support septic tank fields.
I rented a room in Boiling Springs Lake, NC. There was a housing boom at the time with many new homes built while I was there. I rode my bike and saw how the septic fields were set up. They did not go deep like in TN or KY. They trucked in a different sort of sand to cover the filed pipes. One different sort of sand over the common sand of the area.
Seemed strange to me at first, but I was there during some torrential rains. The water could flood roads and ditches to the point of my being happy to have a 4x4 pickup. Then in an hour or so the water could be gone into the sandy soils. The man I rented from is still a friend. We exchange letters with Christmas cards. He tells me there are no empty lots around his home anymore. I wonder how the septic fields cope?

 

[Ulu]

I think many times in history we have told ourselves that if things keep going the way they’re going we’re going to be in deep trouble by such and such a date.

The thing is that things somehow never do keep going the way they are going, but somehow always tend to go sideways in the direction people don’t imagine.

I think we’ve all seen many movies where the ending is rather predictable, because of subtle clues throughout the film. Also, because as a culture, our shared stories tend to run in certain directions, we feel ourselves to be good predictors, when in fact we are so internally biased to be very poor ones.

I believe it’s because most of our predictions are based on our fears and not our historical record of problem-solving. As a species we have survived a lot of droughts and plagues and natural disasters, plus many man-made ones.

But somehow people will easily be scared by theories like zero population growth. As I said we all were, and we were writing songs about it!

One of the songs was based on very simple mathematics, which said we would all be doubling every 32 years.

2×2 is 4
2×4 is 8
2×8 is 16
and the hour’s growing late…

But because of wars and disasters and pandemics and the natural proclivities of some people, it didn’t actually happen.

When that was written the population was 3.2 billion. 57 years later it should be topping 14 billion, but is just over 8.

That missing 6 billion population wasn’t because of westerners buying condoms and having vasectomies.

And the rest of the world was breeding as fast as humanly possible from what I can understand.

See, when we wrote that song we forgot about war and plague and starvation and natural disasters. Without those things the worlds population would be unbelievably huge by now.

All we managed to do in our ignorance was shave a few percent off of the most civilized parts of the world while the rest grew like riot.

 

[skjl47]

I believe it’s because most of our predictions are based on our fears and not our historical record of problem-solving. As a species we have survived a lot of droughts and plagues and natural disasters, plus many man-made ones.

When that was written the population was 3.2 billion. 57 years later it should be topping 14 billion, but is just over 8.

That missing 6 billion population wasn’t because of westerners buying condoms and having vasectomies.

And the rest of the world was breeding as fast as humanly possible from what I can understand.

Hello; Had a friend whose outlook was "somebody will think of something" when talk of potential future problems came up. Sometimes such has happened. One example is perhaps older agriculture vs modern agriculture. I have read that older agriculture methods could have at best supported a population of around five billion. We are at around 8+ billions with some counts and if the link I started the thread with is correct the number is much higher. Modern industrial agriculture is working in the absolute sense of food production the last few decades.
There are potential flies in the ointment so to speak. Modern industrial agriculture is based on practices which may not be sustainable. There are several but let me mention one or two. First being the loss of topsoil. The time it took natural processes to lay down inches to many feet of topsoil varies from place to place. The issue is using modern agricultural tools we are depleting top soils at a much faster rate that it can be formed. The huge tractors and implements cannot do soil conservation very well. A prime example is how the practice of contour plowing has fallen aside. The big machines don't do contour plowing so well so often such is no longer tried. Let me lump with that several old school soil conservation methods which have fallen away.
A second but linked to soil loss is the need for artificial fertilizers most places. Along with the runoff which washes away topsoil is the included runoff of excess fertilizers. It is not that modern farmers want to waste ammonium nitrate fertilizer. More that volume application works better on large scale farms.

The modern farming practice most concerning to me is the depletion of ground water aquifers. The huge aquifer under several mid-western states is being depleted as I type this. (Ogalla sp) Center pivot irrigation powered by V8 engines have been draining that vast supply for decades now. Much of our food depends on that water. But you are correct in that we are clever and often have solutions for such problems. The center pivot irrigation rigs & wells were a past clever solution to farming in a dry area. Now we need a clever solution to the center pivot irrigation depletion of the ground water.

Hello; To the second point. I agree that the theoretical maximum possible increase of the human population did not happen. However, the population did increase and continues to increase. Droughts, famine, war, disease and such have an impact. I take a minuscule credit for the numbers being less than was predicted by some. I married the first time in 1966. That could have resulted in as many as three children or more. With each of them starting to have children every twenty years or so. So, grandchildren by 1986. Great grandchildren by 2006, Great -great grandchildren by 2026. All those offspring that did not happen are not competing with real offspring for resources today. I do admit my decision to be childless is not a huge deal in the overall scheme of life.

That the theoretical maximum population did not happen is a good thing I strongly suspect. But even the lesser numbers are not without impact from my place of observation.

 

[skjl47]

Worldometer - real time world statistics

Live world statistics on population, government and economics, society and media, environment, food, water, energy and health. Interesting statistics with world population clock, forest loss this year, carbon dioxide co2 emission, world hunger data, energy consumed, and a lot more

www.worldometers.info

Hello; I often take a look at this linked site. Been doing so for years. Have yet to see a drop in the overall human population. Births, so far, for years and decades have always exceeded deaths. An ongoing net increase of human population.