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Carrying Capacity/Human Overshoot; Pt. 3, 21st century perspecti

Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Tue 06 Jan 2015, 22:11:19

Not just food, heat too, and all the stuff petrochemicals make, like clothing.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby DesuMaiden » Tue 06 Jan 2015, 22:16:09

Newfie wrote:Not just food, heat too, and all the stuff petrochemicals make, like clothing.

When fossil fuels become inaccessible (due to scarcity and high price), we would have to resort to cutting down and burning wood for heat. I wonder how fast all of the trees in North America will be gone when people start burning wood as their primary fuel. What will we do when we burned all of our wood? There would be little coal left. During the industrial revolution, people turned from wood to coal because they depleted most of their forests for fire wood. We would have nothing to turn to but coal, but coal would be depleted pretty soon too. Without coal, only wood would be our only option for heating.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby careinke » Wed 07 Jan 2015, 04:41:16

DesuMaiden wrote:
Newfie wrote:Not just food, heat too, and all the stuff petrochemicals make, like clothing.

When fossil fuels become inaccessible (due to scarcity and high price), we would have to resort to cutting down and burning wood for heat. I wonder how fast all of the trees in North America will be gone when people start burning wood as their primary fuel. What will we do when we burned all of our wood? There would be little coal left. During the industrial revolution, people turned from wood to coal because they depleted most of their forests for fire wood. We would have nothing to turn to but coal, but coal would be depleted pretty soon too. Without coal, only wood would be our only option for heating.


I could pull ten cord of wood a year off our 20 acres of forest with no management at all. Heck, I could pull that off without even chopping down a tree, dead fall alone would take care of it. With a little effort designing, and using coppicing and pollarding techniques, I could probably pull 50 cord off, and it would not even require a chainsaw, lopers would work. Of course I would be using rocket stoves and other highly efficient designs so I would really only require about two cords. I could also produce biochar, and the whole system would be carbon negative.

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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby DesuMaiden » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 15:35:13

Anyone here wants 15 billion humans?
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 18:33:00

From what I read sounds like a few do.

More the merrier.

But mostly they just can't wrap their minds around the idea of what has to be done to effect control. I'll admit that is pretty hard to do. Grisly. 8O
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 18:49:13

Yes in the end the taboo of overpopulation is the implication of mass premature deaths ie. killing as a policy. It should make everyone uncomfortable. Yet Nature would have no problem doing what is needed. I hope and pray it never gets to that point.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby DesuMaiden » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 20:18:36

Why does this thread keep on getting locked? I would like to know that.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 20:56:25

haha, it seems like a lot of complaints about functionality of site, seems like a call out to the Mods.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 21:12:42

I haven't noticed it locked.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby DesuMaiden » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 22:05:22

Overpopulation is a taboo topic because mankind believes in the following verses of the Bible...

""Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Genesis 1:28

And everyone went on to be as fruitful as possible and filled the Earth with fifth and pollution. We destroyed most of the habitat for all of the species on this planet. We indeed rule the Earth right now because we live in anthropocene.

Of course, the Bible is BS, but people still follow it anyways, because they believe the Bible is the word of God. Of course, the Bible isn't the word of God. The Bible is the word of ancient men from the Middle East.

Let's throw the Bible in the trash can where it belongs, and let's start embracing a philosophy that gives mankind a future instead of no future.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 22:13:06

careinke wrote:
DesuMaiden wrote:
Newfie wrote:Not just food, heat too, and all the stuff petrochemicals make, like clothing.

When fossil fuels become inaccessible (due to scarcity and high price), we would have to resort to cutting down and burning wood for heat. I wonder how fast all of the trees in North America will be gone when people start burning wood as their primary fuel. What will we do when we burned all of our wood? There would be little coal left. During the industrial revolution, people turned from wood to coal because they depleted most of their forests for fire wood. We would have nothing to turn to but coal, but coal would be depleted pretty soon too. Without coal, only wood would be our only option for heating.


I could pull ten cord of wood a year off our 20 acres of forest with no management at all. Heck, I could pull that off without even chopping down a tree, dead fall alone would take care of it. With a little effort designing, and using coppicing and pollarding techniques, I could probably pull 50 cord off, and it would not even require a chainsaw, lopers would work. Of course I would be using rocket stoves and other highly efficient designs so I would really only require about two cords. I could also produce biochar, and the whole system would be carbon negative.

Knowledge is power.

:mrgreen: Your numbers are bogus. Average forest in the middle latitudes can only support one cord per acre per year sustainably. Any more then that and you steal matter that needs to be added to the topsoil to maintain fertility. And there are just so many acres of forest to harvest and now way too many people needing fuel for them to suffice. The forest being depleted was most probably the main cause of the decline of Rome and just one billion people had pretty much done in the worlds forest before the age of coal.
The only way to rely on wood is to first return to a sub one billion population.
Forests cover some 3.9 billion hectares (or 9.6 billion acres) which is approximately 30% of the World's land surface.

http://forestry.about.com/od/forestreso ... _Cover.htm
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 22:45:21

Yup, probably well below one billion because we will likely make the whole world look like Haiti in the process and it will take a long, long time to recover the topsoil.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby DesuMaiden » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 22:51:57

Newfie wrote:Yup, probably well below one billion because we will likely make the whole world look like Haiti in the process and it will take a long, long time to recover the topsoil.

What is well below 1 billion?
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 23:13:46

Our worst nightmare.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby DesuMaiden » Fri 09 Jan 2015, 23:15:09

Newfie wrote:Our worst nightmare.

Overshoot is always followed by a die off. There is no case where any population grows exponentially without a collapse afterwards.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 10 Jan 2015, 03:49:12

DesuMaiden wrote:
Newfie wrote:Our worst nightmare.

Overshoot is always followed by a die off. There is no case where any population grows exponentially without a collapse afterwards.

While true of animal populations it may not fallow for sentient humans. Several countries have achieved stable or declining populations and may take steps to prevent over population elsewhere from immigrating and importing overpopulation to their borders. Once a country runs out of resources to export it will be left to it's own devices and die off and population crash will be a country by country affair.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 10 Jan 2015, 10:32:52

We started this mini thread talking about wood for heat.

The point being that as a too large population tries to sustain itself during contracting resouce availability, they will turn to alternatives, and then deplete them, driving the whole system into deep resource deficits.

Thus....our worse nightmare.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby careinke » Sat 10 Jan 2015, 19:44:54

vtsnowedin wrote: :mrgreen: Your numbers are bogus. Average forest in the middle latitudes can only support one cord per acre per year sustainably.

[/quote]

You should probably own and live in a forest before challenging what can and cannot be done. We pull 5 cords of deadwood a year off it now 9(20 acres), and the forest floor matter continues to build. Plus we are FSC certified as a sustainable forest. Heck, just one of our broad leaf maples has at least 3 cords in it alone and we lose two to three a year from windfall.

You could not pull 50 off using standard techniques, but using Pollarding and coppicing with the right species it would be possible (not that I would do it, way to much work).
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby DesuMaiden » Sat 10 Jan 2015, 20:30:00

So is there enough wood for us to rely solely on wood instead of coal?
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 10 Jan 2015, 20:43:27

then what happens when the wood runs out?
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