what happens when animals over-grace their environment?

[charles brough]

Does "over-population" of an organism result from being packed together or starving?

It is easily assumed that a population crash occurs because an organism has no more space or food. This is not necessarily so. Take us for example. When hunting/gathering groups became too large, they broke up not because of lack of food or space but because there is an optimal size to the troop pecular to us and other primates.

I believe this is how it works: the size in excess of the norm for the species leads to increasing stress. Their individuals "feel crowded," an instinctive response, and like all such social instincts, it is able to be conditioned in us by the group ideology ("religion"). Indeed, we have incorporated ideologies to serve that one single but vital role, that of enabling our group sizes to increase. We would still be living in hunting/gathering size groups if that had not happened. With ideologies, we have managed to unite into larger groups or "societies." Even our secular belief system is an ideology, one that has enable us to create the UN and the "Global Economy."

However, as ideologies grow old they tend to divide. That weakens the sense of belonging and tension-stress grows.

That seems to be where we are today.

Brough,
civilization-overview dot com

 

[charles brough]

They suffer a population crash! Their health deteriorates. In us, our medical costs shoot up. They die of shock (deer). We feel mounting stress. They gang up on each other (rats and mice). We suffer growing social problems. And/or their groups go to war on their other groups (chimps, meercats, lemurs, ants, etc---and humans.

Malthus described it.

So, why does society shun and ignore the threat of over-population? It is impossible to keep getting more and more out of less and less. If we bring it on by a nuclear war, it is all the same. There are no accidents, just people taking too much risk.

We need to control our numbers.

I'm not taking up space here just to advance something we SHOULD do but never will. What I am saying is that there is a solution short of a population crash and we are heading directly for it. We will build a new civilization when this one sinks down to a certain level, just as human civilization has done many times before.

Brough
civilization-overview dot com

 

[Me-Ki-Gal]

I can tell you what happened in Lena Lake on the Continental Divide. The fish population is way over populated . All the fish have big heads and little snake bodies . They end up all the same size at about 1/2 the size of a normal fish of the same species . It has been said that the fish have a parasite that makes them grow like that . I will tell you what though , in the evening when the fish start jumping for fly's it is like ever sq. inch of the lake is splashing . What a sight that is . Catching fish is easy too. They will bite on a bare hook if you give them a chance . They are a little mushy tasting . About the same mushiness as store bought trout

 

[orcot]

what happens when animals over-grace their environment?

They migrate...

In us, our medical costs shoot up

The average population is aging, older people need more medicale care then younger people in overall.
Also people have a wrong eating habits and do far to little sport.

We suffer growing social problems

A wide statement but we've never had it so good or have been safer.

And/or their groups go to war on their other groups

To find a day of global peace, you would have to go back to the point they simply didn't record every war.

does society shun and ignore the threat of over-population

Most of western europe population is rising because of immigration the local population is overal stagnant and sometimes even dropping.

It is impossible to keep getting more and more out of less and less.

As technology increases we get more and more I've heard that belgium got 7% of it's energy out of solar a couple of days back Countries like iceland reach 80% and that's only because it has that many fishing boats.

If we bring it on by a nuclear war, it is all the same.

Sure leaves a lot of nuclear rads, to bad even a event like chernobyl is better for the enviroment then if it never exploded it forced people out of the area and it turns out that's better for the enviroment then killer rads.

We need to control our numbers.

In places where it is not under control yeah sure. But it gets pretty racist because certain ethnic groups always get more kids then the others. Do you punish the total group when the indiginous (white) population has a 1 to 3 child policy that in itself is a stable group or only the immigrating groups (or those who have their culture) and have a average of +3 kids resulting in the bulk of the futurs overpopulation. And how is it fair to put restrictions on a stable group or put restriction on certain etnic groups (usually minorties).

 

[Ophiolite]

So, why does society shun and ignore the threat of over-population?

The issue of population growth has been addressed by thoughtful persons and organisations for many decades. current projections show that while global populaiton will continue to grow through this century it will have levelled off by the end and even begun to fall. Orcot has already referenced the dclining populaiton in some european countries.

In short, your statement is false and so renders the rest of your post irrelevant at best.

 

[charles brough]

ORCOT:

These are the real issues and I am interested in your opinion . . .

[Small group social animals (as we are) cannot escape crowding by migrating (moving their territory) when they are crowded in on all sides by other small groups of their own kind].

When small social group animals' numbers exceed the norm for that species, some (deer) die of shock, others gang up on each other (rats and mice) or war on other groups (chimps, meerkats, lemurs, humans . . .) and stress builds up making them more subject to disease. What Malthus observed in us is common to other small group animals, in most animals.

World population growth is not slowing down.

You assume technology will continued to provide for our growing numbers (on Earth). I feel confident in presuming that people in all the past civilizations thought the same, even as their own civilizations all went into decline and their age of science came to an end. Biology does not limit our understanding of history and the other sciences.

You have explained some of the reasons why we do not control our numbers here on Earth, but how does that obviate the need to?

brough
civilization-overview dot com

 

[orcot]

I'm sorry if I offended you in previous post none the less here is my response:

Small group social animals (as we are) cannot escape crowding by migrating (moving their territory) when they are crowded in on all sides by other small groups of their own kind].

If you look at the urbanization urban vs rural you will see that people choose more and more to live in city's (where their is work).

So the human reaction on overcrowding is to cluster in even denser groupes. It is also a fact that most of the human growth these day is in third world counties so gaving less resources per individual will respond in having more offspring as weird as it might seem.

What Malthus observed in us is common to other small group animals, in most animals.

Who is malthus.

World population growth is not slowing down.

Unfortunatly it isn't.

You assume technology will continued to provide for our growing numbers (on Earth).

I hope so,

I feel confident in presuming that people in all the past civilizations thought the same, even as their own civilizations all went into decline and their age of science came to an end. Biology does not limit our understanding of history and the other sciences.

Nations rise and fall I'm afraid enviromental changes can be devastating and change the political maps of the world but I can't see it's collapse because of it at least not in the short run, their are other more dangerous factors like deseases how would society cope with a new version of the black plague that would kill 30-60% of the worlds population.

You have explained some of the reasons why we do not control our numbers here on Earth, but how does that obviate the need to?

It involves restriction on births or restriction on life... In the capatlist world... The world of plenty the world of abundance it is hard to sell.
and if you look at the predictions what else can you do then keep selling weapons to the poor

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

So, why does society shun and ignore the threat of over-population? It is impossible to keep getting more and more out of less and less. If we bring it on by a nuclear war, it is all the same. There are no accidents, just people taking too much risk. We need to control our numbers.

The fact that your data is thirty years out of date does not cast the rest of your scholarship in a good light.

The second derivative of population went negative in 1980. From that point the growth rate of population began to slow instead of continuing its acceleration. Since prosperity has proven to be the most effective contraceptive, birth rates are falling everywhere. Throughout the West they've dropped below replacement level and the only thing that's propping up our social security Ponzi Schemes is immigration. In emerging economic democracies where couples once had six children they now have three. Even in the saddest regions of the earth, where couples once had twelve children they now have eight. Those sad regions keep shrinking as even China and India now have healthy economies and their populations are slowly stabilizing. For the first time since anyone bothered to keep score, the poverty rate in Africa, the saddest of all places, has dropped below 50%.

It is now universally predicted that the human population will peak, still just barely in nine digits, before the end of this century. At that point it will start to shrink.

This will bring with it a whole set of new problems. The economics of all the industrial and post-industrial nations are based on perpetual growth as the engine that drives supply and demand, innovation and gradual improvement. The human population has been increasing steadily since the Neolithic Revolution, so no one has any idea what new forces will come to bear as the population of both producers and consumers begins to manifest "negative growth."

This is what we need to be worrying about. You and I will be dead before this landmark moment occurs, but given the amazing advances in medicine some of our younger members will be around to witness it. In any case their children and grandchildren--if they have any --will have to live in this new unfathomable world.

We owe it to them to do a better job of analyzing the future, and that starts with doing a better job of defining it. To continue to yammer about what scared us yesterday, when we know it's not going to happen, is to fail in our duties as elders.

Please catch up a little better on your own knowledge before you pass it on to others.

 

[Trippy]

To specifically address (and support) Fraggle Rockers statements consider this graph:

The blue line represents world population since 1950 (labled 'world')
The brown line represents the rate at which world population is increasing (labled 'first derivative).
The green line represents the rate at which the rate of world population growth is increasing (labled second derivative).
(Source)
Clearly we are entering an era where we will see a decline in world population.
Even the UN has recognized this, with only their 'worst case' scenarios predicting population growth beyond 2050, with some scenarios predicting the world population may already be in decline by that point.

 

[Stoniphi]

In this area we have a lot of deer. Too many for the environment to support by way of salient foodstuffs. They stripped the forest understory of vegetation. The deer began to get smaller and skinnier, they began to move around a lot - likely seeking better resources - and many more have been hit by vehicles. We now hold some kind of state record for deer-vehicle collisions.

Then a blood disease vectored by deer flies appeared in the area. Lots of deer died, you could smell their rotting corpses adjacent to the area trails. This is all still in process as deer affectionados have prevented any control measures from being implemented.

We have also experienced a lot of deer assaults on humans.

As for the USA population: as I recall, we hit ZPG a long time ago. Our population keep rising regardless due to immigration.

 

[charles brough]

I'm sorry if I offended you in previous post none the less here is my response:

If you look at the urbanization urban vs rural you will see that people choose more and more to live in city's (where their is work).

So the human reaction on overcrowding is to cluster in even denser groupes. It is also a fact that most of the human growth these day is in third world counties so gaving less resources per individual will respond in having more offspring as weird as it might seem.


Who is malthus.


Unfortunatly it isn't.


I hope so,

Nations rise and fall I'm afraid enviromental changes can be devastating and change the political maps of the world but I can't see it's collapse because of it at least not in the short run, their are other more dangerous factors like deseases how would society cope with a new version of the black plague that would kill 30-60% of the worlds population.


It involves restriction on births or restriction on life... In the capatlist world... The world of plenty the world of abundance it is hard to sell.
and if you look at the predictions what else can you do then keep selling weapons to the poor

I'm sorry but I have a unexplained hatred for quote and point, quite and point, quote and point responses such as this. I hate to be rude, but I just don't respond. I do suggest you look up Malthus. He is top of the Google wikapedia list even without his first name.

 

[charles brough]

In this area we have a lot of deer. Too many for the environment to support by way of salient foodstuffs. They stripped the forest understory of vegetation. The deer began to get smaller and skinnier, they began to move around a lot - likely seeking better resources - and many more have been hit by vehicles. We now hold some kind of state record for deer-vehicle collisions.

Then a blood disease vectored by deer flies appeared in the area. Lots of deer died, you could smell their rotting corpses adjacent to the area trails. This is all still in process as deer affectionados have prevented any control measures from being implemented.

We have also experienced a lot of deer assaults on humans.

As for the USA population: as I recall, we hit ZPG a long time ago. Our population keep rising regardless due to immigration.

Thanks for the response. I had read of this deer-shock-death syndrome only once before and have always wondered if it was correct when referring to it as I often have. What I read was that they could find no cause of death and had to assume it was shock.

brough
http://civilization-overview.com

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

In this area we have a lot of deer.

The North American deer population is something like 100x its level before the Christian occupation. We have killed off almost all of their predators and planted luxurious tracts of their favorite foods in our farms, parks, gardens and lawns. Deer have virtually taken over several Eastern cities like Buffalo, NY, where it's almost impossible to have a garden. Here in the Washington DC area there are probably more deer than humans.

Speed, wariness and agility are no longer survival traits, and the new key to survival is intelligence. They have to understand boundaries, traffic rules and the rhythm of human behavior. And they have done a magnificent job of that. As I have noted in several other threads, I have observed deer inside the Washington city limits standing on the curb along a busy highway, patiently waiting for the pedestrian signal to turn green. (Others have reported this too.) In regions where there are still a few predators, like back home in northwestern California, the deer have figured out that most dogs were at one time bred to be livestock guardians and still have that instinct, so they jump into our yards at night where they'll be protected from the bears and cougars.

We have also experienced a lot of deer assaults on humans.

Deer-vehicle collisions are one of the insurance industry's biggest problems. One ran into the side of my truck a few months ago and caused $7,000 worth of body damage. The insurance guy assured me that this is typical: Very few cars hit deer head-on. Deer hit cars from the side.

A little known fact is that bison kill more Americans than any other animal, but I'm sure deer are catching up. Bison don't jump out into the highway in the middle of the night.

As for the USA population: as I recall, we hit ZPG a long time ago. Our population keeps rising regardless due to immigration.

The birth rate among native-born Americans has fallen below replacement level. The only thing that's propping up our Social Security Ponzi Scheme is immigration. The same is true in Europe. Xenophonic Japan, which neither invites nor welcomes immigrants, has perhaps the world's lowest birth rate and its population is shrinking at drastic speed. This is a major factor in its economic problems, since every economic model since Adam Smith assumes growth as a primary driver of prosperity.

I'm sorry but I have a unexplained hatred for quote and point, quite and point, quote and point responses such as this. I hate to be rude, but I just don't respond.

I notice that you didn't even respond to my rebuttal of your O.P. Since it is not in that format, I consider this not only rude but intolerable conduct in any scholarly discussion. Let me put on my Moderator hat for a moment and remind you of the rules of the scientific method, which guide this entire website:

Your assertion has been refuted, and the refutation is based upon evidence of the same degree of rigor as your own. You are not allowed to repeat the substance of your assertion on this thread or any other until you respond to the challenge by either refuting it or at least raising reasonable doubt. Failure to abide by this rule of debate is considered trolling on SciForums and is a bannable offense.

Given that another member has jumped into this discussion and provided even more rigorous data than I did, you have quite a bit of work to do if you honestly intend to prove us wrong.

I do suggest you look up Malthus. He is top of the Google wikipedia list even without his first name.

But Malthus lived when the Paradigm Shift of the Industrial Revolution was just beginning to be felt and understood. He couldn't possibly foresee how it would play out, with vaccines and antibiotics reducing infant mortality before prosperity and leisure lowered the birth rate. He certainly couldn't foresee the next Paradigm Shift of the Electronic Revolution and the prosperity- and leisure-driven precipitous decline in the birth rate. (The first commercial telegraph went into service a couple of years before he died, but I doubt that anyone alive at that time could have extrapolated that clever little device to automated food production and the internet.)

Malthus thought that population growth would inhibit our evolution toward a perfect society. He could not imagine that a merely less-imperfect society would inhibit population growth.

The reversal of population growth is a late 20th-century phenomenon, and it's unique to our species, back into the dark eons of the Stone Age. If you want to challenge it you're going to have to cite arguments by people who have actually observed it, not scholars from the Enlightenment--which, from our perspective, was only moderately advanced beyond the Stone Age.

 

[Trippy]

Thread moved to pseudoscience as the OP refuses to address counter-points.

I'm half tempted to lock it and cess it, however, I'm always willing to give people the chance - or the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Ophiolite]

I'm sorry but I have a unexplained hatred for quote and point, quite and point, quote and point responses such as this. I hate to be rude, but I just don't respond.

However, you obviously don't hate being rude enough to honour the function of a discussion forum and actually discuss questions raised and points made. That's not just rude, it is ignorant, offensive and blatantly anti-social into the bargain.

 

[charles brough]

The fact that your data is thirty years out of date does not cast the rest of your scholarship in a good light.

The second derivative of population went negative in 1980. From that point the growth rate of population began to slow instead of continuing its acceleration.

No, its not "out of date." The population of the world is in a steep rise. it is supposed to level off around 2050, but that assumes people will have fewer children because of better education and living standards---or plagues and, let us say, nuclear war and starvation.

Will education and living standards rise? They are not doing so in the US unless you speak only of the wealthy. The billions in India and China are trying to do so but they face much the same problems we do and they are more crowded with even fewer natural resources than we have.

 

[Trippy]

No, its not "out of date." The population of the world is in a steep rise. it is supposed to level off around 2050, but that assumes people will have fewer children because of better education and living standards---or plagues and, let us say, nuclear war and starvation.

Will education and living standards rise? They are not doing so in the US unless you speak only of the wealthy. The billions in India and China are trying to do so but they face much the same problems we do and they are more crowded with even fewer natural resources than we have.

Actually, the only assumption that is required is that current trends that are being observed, will continue.

 

[Orleander]

Oh come on! I can't be the only one who thought 'over-gracing' was funny.

 

[pjdude1219]

The birth rate among native-born Americans has fallen below replacement level. The only thing that's propping up our Social Security Ponzi Scheme is immigration.

I get your a libertarian but a science thread even a pseudoscience one is no place to push the libertarian agenda. and using libertarians propaganda and talking points.

 

[Trippy]

I get your a libertarian but a science thread even a pseudoscience one is no place to push the libertarian agenda. and using libertarians propaganda and talking points.

You might have a point if any science had been presented by the OP, but there isn't any.