Prophecies Nobody Wants to Hear, part I of V

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I was sorting through a huge stack of my old army pictures, and it suddenly hit me...What happened to that smartass kid with the smoke hanging out of the shit-eating grin he had plastered on his face?

Jesus, I can remember those days only in a hazy, dreamlike manner.  I believed different things, then.  I thought the world could be saved, I mean, shit...The problems are obvious, the solutions are common sense, right?  All you had to do was organize things a bit, and there's nothing we, as a species, can't do.

Obviously, I was wrong.

It seems the one thing we can't do is organize and look at root causes of failure.  People have become so attached to non-functional, political points of view that they can't even look at a problem anymore, because that would be a betrayal of the ideals they hold.  The ideals that say "there's nothing wrong", or "It's the other side's fault", or "What the hell is on the tube tonight?".

This is, of course, deliberate.  It's easier to control people if you give them some things to hate, and some things to fear...So, in the 60s, we went to the moon for all the wrong reasons, and once we got there ahead of the Soviets, we just stopped.  No moon base.  No Mars.  No anything, other than a space-going pickup truck that makes sure that satellites are in place to allow people in Botswana to watch re-runs of Lost. 

As a result, we are exactly as well equipped to stop a killer asteroid as the dinosaurs were.  Hell, we can't even see the near-misses coming, most of the time, because we don't have enough platforms.

But that asteroid would probably be doing us a favor.  The most serious threat we face also happens to be about the most dismal fate we could possibly fear...We're going to stack humans on top of humans until we drown in our own shit.  We're already fighting over resources, and that trend will accelerate.  The population stands at over 7 billion now, and 200 more people are born than die every minute. 

If we don't get a handle on our population, nothing else matters.

The punch line to all of this, the really grotesque part, is that the more crowded mammals become, the less rational they become as a group.  We studied this in rats in the 1950s, and we're observing it in humans today.  The more we fight over resources, the more resources get used or destroyed in place, by the very act of fighting...So the worsening of the problem makes the problem less and less likely to be solved.

So, when the last few people with any motivation other than catching rats or other people for food get together to carve our epitaph in the side of a mountain, for the benefit of whatever alien archeologists come along, the epitaph will be remarkably easy:

"We couldn't stop breeding."

The point of all of this is fairly simple.  There's only one meme worth repeating right now, and that is "Zero Population Growth".  Each adult should do no more breeding than is necessary to replace themselves.   In fact, it would be better if there were only one child per two adults.

I don't see this as being very likely to succeed, of course.  It flies in the face of most religions and most cultures, particularly the poorer cultures who have no means to receive the message in the first place.

But when we're all gagging on our own sewage, I'll be gurgling "I TOLD YOU SO!" on my way under.

Stupid monkeys.

Or Kill Me.

[Cainad (dec.)]

  It's a prophecy in the same style the Greek tragedies. It's bound to come true, and people will most likely try to prevent it in a way that will only hasten it along (i.e. consuming more resources to try and fight each other for control of the remaining resources).

Damn you, Malthus.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's a prophecy in the same style the Greek tragedies. It's bound to come true, and people will most likely try to prevent it in a way that will only hasten it along (i.e. consuming more resources to try and fight each other for control of the remaining resources).

Damn you, Malthus.

Malthus didn't do this shit.  WE did this shit.  He just pointed out the natural progression of things.  He was mistaken only in the amount of time it would take, because he didn't take into account new technology.

And new technology might still bail us out...Which means we'll have MORE people.

Eventually, we'll drop the ball.  We have to win every time, and the universe only has to win once.

Roger's 1st Law of Ecology:  Feeding people doesn't stop a famine.

There's a pretty cold equation in there. 

[Adios]

Who's driving the asteroid?

In 2004, NASA scientists announced that there was a chance that Apophis, an asteroid larger than two football fields, could smash into Earth in 2029. A few additional observations and some number-crunching later, astronomers noted that the chance of the planet-killer hitting Earth in 2029 was nearly zilch.

Now, reports out of Russia say that scientists there estimate Apophis will collide with Earth on April 13, 2036. These reports conflict on the probability of such a doomsday event, but the question remains: How scared should we be?

"Technically, they're correct, there is a chance in 2036 [that Apophis will hit Earth]," said Donald Yeomans, head of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office. However, that chance is just 1-in-250,000, Yeomans said.

The Russian scientists are basing their predictions of a collision on the chance that the 900-foot-long (270 meters) Apophis will travel through what's called a gravitational keyhole as it passes by Earth in 2029. The gravitational keyhole they mention is a precise region in space, only slightly larger than the asteroid itself, in which the effect of Earth's gravity is such that it could tweak Apophis' path.

"The situation is that in 2029, April 13, [Apophis] flies very close to the Earth, within five Earth radii, so that will be quite an event, but we've already ruled out the possibility of it hitting at that time," Yeomans told Life's Little Mysteries. "On the other hand, if it goes through what we call a keyhole during that close Earth approach ... then it will indeed be perturbed just right so that it will come back and smack Earth on April 13, 2036," Yeomans said.

The chances of the asteroid going through the keyhole, which is tiny compared to the asteroid, are "minuscule," Yeomans added.

The more likely scenario is this: Apophis will make a fairly close approach to Earth in late 2012 and early 2013, and will be extensively observed with ground-based optical telescopes and radar systems. If it seems to be heading on a destructive path, NASA will devise the scheme and machinery necessary to change the asteroid's orbit, decreasing the probability of a collision in 2036 to zero, Yeomans said.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20030674-501465.html

[The Good Reverend Roger]

We have neither the means nor even the technology to change its orbit.  We don't even have a spacecraft that can reach the moon anymore, let alone get far enough out to deflect an asteroid.

[Adios]

We have neither the means nor even the technology to change its orbit.  We don't even have a spacecraft that can reach the moon anymore, let alone get far enough out to deflect an asteroid.

So there is hope! 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

We have neither the means nor even the technology to change its orbit.  We don't even have a spacecraft that can reach the moon anymore, let alone get far enough out to deflect an asteroid.

So there is hope! 

No, some wiseass will build a big fucking laser, and heat up the leading edge of the asteroid, slowing it down so that it drops into a lower orbit around the sun.

We'll all cheer, and go back to mass producing people.

[Luna]

The problem, of course, being that, really, who's thinking about 2036?  Who (with money) cares NOW about something that MIGHT happen in 25 years?

There's more money in selling whatever sorry excuse for asteroid fallout shelters to whatever idiot will buy them than there is in solving the problem, anyway.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Point entirely obscured by an incidental I shouldn't have included.

Carry on.

TGRR,
Witnessing his second law of ecology being proved before his very eyes.

[Suu]

I saw this in a movie once. Bruce Willis dies in the end.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

People can't look at the population issue.   

GO, LEMMINGS, GO!

[Cainad (dec.)]

There's such a massive cultural roadblock to this, too. There are many places around the world where having loads of children that live to adulthood is still considered something to aspire to. People are much more likely to cling to "traditional" ideals than to ones that make any kind of mathematical sense.

And then there's the issue that faces America now with the Baby Boomers, and Japan is feeling it even more strongly: no one wants to be the generation that gets stuck supporting a big population of elderly and retired.

[Luna]

People can't look at the population issue.   

GO, LEMMINGS, GO!

Same answer to that issue as to the meteor.

By the time that turd hits the rotating blades, everybody who now has the resources to push the solution to the issue will be dead.  They don't care... and more people means more people to whom they can sell worthless crap.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

The problem, as I see it, is this.  There is only so much land on this earth.  As well, only so much of it is open land that can be farmed.  This is not something that is open for negotiation, it just is.

We can only add so many hormones and other chemical boosts to the seeds we plant and the animals we raise for food.  

At some point, either a global law of population control is going to have to be put in place or they are going to have to invent those food replicator things.  As I don't see food replicators being a prime goal, people are going to have to stop popping out kids.  

We can't make more land and no matter how well you farm it, everything has a limit of production.

My comment from a different thread, but I still think the same here.  However, I will take it a step further, one child per female.  If you say per couple then you are going to have to decide how to deal with those who are married 4 or 5 times.  What then?  That is 5 different couples and 5 different kids.....

[The Good Reverend Roger]

By the time that turd hits the rotating blades, everybody who now has the resources to push the solution to the issue will be dead. 

This is incorrect.  Population growth is logarithmic, and we're on the steep part of the curve.

If something doesn't give in less than 20 years, everything goes.  

But you are correct in the only sense that actually matters...Nobody with the means to accomplish anything will even LOOK at the problem, because it's a HUGE fucking problem that isn't going to bite us THIS WEEK.