WORLD POPULATION JUST CRESTED EIGHT BILLION!

 

CASSANDRA WARNING

 

The world population just crested eight billion.   People worry about political unrest, climate change, pollution, wars, pandemics, and nuclear weapons…  But, all of these concerns have one hidden root driver: uncontrolled population expansion.    

It is obvious, that we will reach a point where human consumption and pollution will become unmanageable. 

Where is that critical maximum?  Ten billion? Twelve billion?   At the present rate of population growth, we could exceed fifteen billion people populating the earth by the end of this century.

Increased consumption.

Increased pollution.

Accelerated climate change.

Worldwide pandemics.

Increased conflicts and wars.

Depletion of finite natural resources.

Government population control (one-child families)  is an unpopulated subject and it is easy to place blame for burgeoning population on other countries.

I would not presume an answer, but uncontrolled population growth poses the biggest danger to the human race in the future.

I am old, so I don’t have a dog in this hunt, and I won’t be here to tell you ‘I told you so.’

WORLD POPULATION CLOCK

Last week I looked at some boots online, and now boot commercials are spamming my searches.  Sorry.

the Ol’Buzzard

 

THE GREEN NEW DEAL

This is an old drum that I have beat until the membrane is thin.    Controlling carbon emissions is the vaccine, because carbon emissions is not the root cause of climate change. 

It took two million years from the time Lucy walked across the savannas of Africa for the race of man to reach a population of one billion (circa 1804.)

In only 123 years (about 1927) we doubled the population to two billion.   

The move to three billion (1960) took only 34 years.  

To four billion (1974) was a 14-year span.   

Thirteen years later (1987) we added our fifth billion:  1999 (12 years) six billion; 2011 (twelve years) seven billion. 

 

The more people we have the more energy we require, the more natural resources we consume, the more devastating we are on the environment.

Billions	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
year	1804	1927	1960	1974	1987	1999	2011
interval years	2 Million	123	33	14	13	12	12

The present world population at the beginning of 2019 is listed as 7.7 billion and growing steadily.

This is the elephant ignored in the Green New Deal.

the Ol’Buzzard

THE SIXTH EXTINCTION

The world has been through five major extinctions: Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic/Jurassic, and the Cretaceous.   I won’t go into the evolutionary progression at the end of each period; but each extinction has been the results of climate changes, volcanic eruptions or asteroid/meteor impacts.

These extinction periods happened gradually due to circumstances that kicked off changes, that became self-sustaining and progressed over a time line of from twenty-five to two hundred million years - resulting in a drastic restructuring of life on this planet.

 

The sixth extinction is not going to be caused by a natural phenomenon, but as the result of a destructive life form with the ability to bring about rapid atmospheric, oceanic and climate change.

Animal, bird and insect species are going extinct at an alarming rate due to the destruction of rain forest.  

Most African large animals are endangered due to poaching and decrease of natural habitat.  

Trump sons

There is over fishing in the oceans and whale populations are barely surviving. 

  Carbon dioxide emissions from cars, power plants and animal populations are increasing the surface temperatures resulting in glacial melt, which results in exposing long frozen tundra which releases methane and carbon dioxide – that self-perpetuating system that could eventually sustain its own change.   

 The human population is increasing at an almost exponential rate resulting in more consumption, more waste products and more habitat expansion; with famine and water shortages predicted in the foreseeable future.  

Chemical pollutants are in every phase of our water and food supply: the breast milk of Greenland Inuit women, that depend on whale and seal fat in their diet, is so polluted that it would be classified hazardous by the EPA. 

Now on top of that, mankind has the ability of mass destruction with nuclear weapons.  

We are not a dependable creature to have such power.  Up until now, men with some degree of restrain have has control of these weapons; but it only takes one fanatical religious group or one or two unstable individuals with launch codes to bring about almost immediate world destruction – Kim Jong-um… Donald Trump?

We are in the process of the sixth extinction – and it will not take millions of years. 

What can we do about this?

Judging by the history of mankind I would say enjoy yourself while you can, because eventually mankind will have to bend over and kiss its own ass good-by.

Have a good day

the Ol’Buzzard

2050: A BRAVE NEW WORLD

It all started in the year of 2050; what we now call The Great Slide.  

The population of the earth had breached ten billion.  That is when the environment tipped over the edge: the CO-2 levels reached an historic high; ocean levels rose by two feet; the ozone layer all but disappeared; oceans acidified; the air became barely breathable; temperature rose to extreme high norms and the sun became deadly.    What resulted was a mass extermination which killed off most of the primitive third world populations and practically all animal life – the rats survived – and humans that were left became nocturnal – most living underground.  

The surface of the earth is now a fearful place.  The sun is deadly and daytime temps reach well above one hundred degrees, the humidity is always high and there are constant violent storms. 

The Slide was strange: Christians claimed it was the Apocalypse, and identified a God figure they proclaimed as savior.  The Christians became militant and Christian militias roamed the streets killing and torturing and looting in the name of the new Jesus.    Finally after a decade the government had to put them down.

I don’t believe in the Apocalypse or Gods; but a strange thing did happen at the beginning of the Slide: the dead came back to life.   They were reanimated, but only the fresh dead walked.   The recently deceased arose from the morgues and from shallow graves.    They staggered around in a grotesque semblance of living persons.  They weren’t dangerous except as disease carriers, but the noises they made as they tried to speak were unbearable.   It was quickly discovered that the best way to exterminate them was with fire; and most were burned within the first few weeks.

 

However, it is still eerie to walk through a cemetery, because your steps result in a cacophony of moans and shrieks from beneath the ground, from the corpse locked in caskets, entombed in concrete crypts and buried six feet below the earth.  The newly dead no longer walk but are cremated as a precaution – otherwise the rats would dig them up and eat them.  

 You are welcome to add to it - or not.

the Ol'Buzzard