[warriorscot]

Then whats it your business about NASA its not even your money, NASA also have a few bases in Aus last time i checked and actually bring money into Australia so i wouldnt complain about them, and its not some countries its all countries, but thats the way its always been the governments dont always make it like that the people with the money pay for it to be like that, and the governement doesnt want to annoy people like that as they are the biggest sources of tax income and are the people that pay the citiziens salarys.

A good example, here in britain we made like 14 million pounds profit on traffic cameras, we got twice that from simon cowell in just income tax, can you imagine how much money the US government makes of Bill gates, how much we in the uk make off say richard branson. It adds up and those are all major employers paying people that are then taxed again, it doesnt pay to make those people poor or drive them away most governments need the extra money for improvements to fundamental serivices

But on the overpopulation is there something useful to contribute we arent supposed to talk about politics.

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oooo, this is a good topic. Teens need to start using protection like they are suppost to. That is alot of the problem now adays. It would also help the aids problem too.

That is hardly the problem. The problem lies within people producing mass amounts of babies such as over in India.

When a teen gets pregnant she has a kid at an unstable time in her life usually, so she can barely support a child, much less ANOTHER one, where areas if a person who has settled into their life and is more stable can have a kid, still be stable, and have another child and perhaps a third.

If money was taken away from useless departments such as NASA, and redistributed to buy food/housing for the population of the planet it would be better. For all the billions of dollars invested in NASA, they havnt done anything useful since they communications network went up. I think that rather than going to other planets, we should be going underground and trying to fix all the damage weve done to the planet.

I agree and disagree. If we do not invest in technology we will not progress. And NASA has made quite a few nifty inventions that everyone uses in everyday life. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe one of them is the microwave.

Well, I don't know what kind of people you hang around (No offense intended here) with but I know that most of the people that I know share similar sentiments to me, especially on the NASA issue.

Well of course, when you only talk to people who have the same opionon, you're not going to change it. And warriorscot. is right. People like to say "why isn't something being done", or "this should be done" to make themselves feel better, but they don't do jack.

[nick_mi]

oooo, this is a good topic. Teens need to start using protection like they are suppost to. That is alot of the problem now adays. It would also help the aids problem too.

That is hardly the problem. The problem lies within people producing mass amounts of babies such as over in India.

When a teen gets pregnant she has a kid at an unstable time in her life usually, so she can barely support a child, much less ANOTHER one, where areas if a person who has settled into their life and is more stable can have a kid, still be stable, and have another child and perhaps a third.

If money was taken away from useless departments such as NASA, and redistributed to buy food/housing for the population of the planet it would be better. For all the billions of dollars invested in NASA, they havnt done anything useful since they communications network went up. I think that rather than going to other planets, we should be going underground and trying to fix all the damage weve done to the planet.

I agree and disagree. If we do not invest in technology we will not progress. And NASA has made quite a few nifty inventions that everyone uses in everyday life. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe one of them is the microwave.

Well, I don't know what kind of people you hang around (No offense intended here) with but I know that most of the people that I know share similar sentiments to me, especially on the NASA issue.

Well of course, when you only talk to people who have the same opionon, you're not going to change it. And warriorscot. is right. People like to say "why isn't something being done", or "this should be done" to make themselves feel better, but they don't do jack.

[warriorscot]

Im fairly certain they were responisble for the microwave as well, they do alot of humdinger ideas that go nowhere but so do most unis its only because its nasa that people complain about it.

One of the funniest screwups was speinding 14 million dollars when that was an awful lot of money on development of pens that write in space. Russians used a pencil instead. Although they are at least making money back from the pens as novelty items, in fact you can buy most of nasas screwups form their gift shop in some form or another.

[james_8970]

i havn't read this whole topic just the first post. I personnaly don't worrie about over population, it can be dealt with in a good manner. Food wise there should be no problem as for the agricultural secter is changing the way plants grow and for the first time ever there is a huge surplus a food! For enviromental reasons i think we just have to start building up more rather then building around on fertile land. Also find alternet energie other the folsil fuels since we still depend on them WAY to much. But i personnaly think its awsome what people are coming up with for alternate energie sources. Like the mirror project being built in astralia. But getting back on topic, over population is not going to be a major problem in the furture as the milddle class is expanding around there world and we are find fewer and fewer poorer countries as we all work togehter making the world a better place. What i'm saying here is that a spike in population is due to lack of money, the richer a area is the smaller the families.
James

Edited by james_8970, 01 March 2006 - 05:39 PM.

[warriorscot]

Are you kidding there are more people below the poverty line than in the entire history of the earth. What you are talking about is depopulation in the developed nations of the world that isnt a problem(well it is for different reasons).

Its not the fact that there is so many people, but that they all want a high standard of life which is unsupportable with the amount of people that currently have the high standard let alone the people that want it, its a very serious problem for the entire planet we are coming to the end of our resource supplies on earth and the gathering of resources from off the planet pose major difficulties from an engineering and logistics point of view.

[Kat]

and for the first time ever there is a huge surplus a food!

How do explain hundreds of thousands of starving people in this world then?

I actually think whoever talked about teen pregnancy hit on a very good point here. Ok..so teen pregnancy in and of itself is not what is causing all of the population problems. But it IS a huge problem, and it's getting worse instead of better. My daughter goes to a VERY small high school, in a small rural area. They graduate about 80 kids per year. This school year alone, two girls have already had babies, and there are FIVE others pregnant. You take that number...and spread it througout every high school just in the US alone. That is a LOT of babies being born. Please don't talk to me about loving adoptive families waiting for babies. I know there are. However, the sad thing is that most of these teen moms actually end up keeping the child, or the teens parents help raise it. That is a path that is a giant struggle, and very hard to climb out of that poverty level once you've started. Trust me. I was a teenage mom, and I kept my daughter. Wouldn't change it for the world...but it has been a very hard road at times.

I truly think we need to focus more money and time/energy towards trying to curb teen pregnancy. Will that solve the overpopulation problem? Absolutely not. But it's a start.

[warriorscot]

Ah but thats not a problem in fact in most countries where teen pregnancy is considered a "problem" have what is becoming a heavilly decreasing population, the US population isnt decreasing yet but its capping out and the size of the country is only compensating and as people become more afluent in the 1st world nations under population gets worse, the west is facing a huge underpopulation problem then native peoples of Europe and the decendants of colonial immigrants in the US are quite literally dying out. Its in the 2nd and third world nations where overpopulation is a huge problem as there simply isnt enough resources in there respective nations to support them given there current state of infrastructure and general development.

There is a MASSIVE food surplus in most developed nations, Britian has a population of over 60 million living in an area smaller than almost every US state, yet we produce almost as much food surplus as we consume or export. It is quite possible to feed the entire world for free, however free doesnt make economic sense, the reason governments dont release there surplus and landfill it instead as it means they cant sell some of the excess usually to poorer nations or charities.

[dsenette]

the reason for all the hurricanes this year is every so many years there are really big hurricanes its part of the weather pattern for the areas afected.

actually saw a thing on i believe the national geographic channel...that directly llinked this year's strong hurricane season to global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps...don't remember exactly how...but sounded good...though....i'm still not 100% convinced that humans are solely responsible for global warming....as history shows a distinct warming and cooling cycle

[six330ml]

Over-population is a concept applied to an observation.

Without having observed an over-population and its (presumed) deliterious effects how can an increasing population be a bad thing?

The more the merrier...

K

[warriorscot]

Well if you look its a simple case of maths, we have xxx many years of resources left at current use levels, population increases by Y number of years of resources decreases by a factor of Y = nothing left huge wars famine disease.

There is a cooling cycle for the earth humans can have a fairly large affect, the cooling of middle age britian and Europe was caused by the plague killing off so many rural areas that reforestation occured reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

So we are warming the planet but it warms itself naturally anyway, and technically we are overdue an ice age which i probably partly our fault. Not that im complaing, although there was large hurricanes predicted for this years wether pattern, they essentially could have told you twenty years ago yeah theres gonna be some hum dingers of huricanes in 2005.

[six330ml]

Persistent insult of an infinitely complex system will eventually skew the 'normal' enough to fringe the insulter...never eliminating the insulter completely (being an integral part of the system) but minimising the insulter's influence on the system.

The seriousness of this type of problem is subjective.

I vote Gaia





K