In nearly every premise or situation facing us every OTHER variable seems to be bandied about or discussed EXCEPT the impact of Humanity on the Planet...WHY???

I have become increasingly aware of the fact that MANY Humans on this planet in certain geographical areas have NOT yet figured out where babies come from.

Enquiring minds wanna know!!!

Or so it seems to me...

Human population numbers often have major impact on the planet. I don't know of anyone who disputes this.

It is absurd, though, to think that humans virtually anywhere "have not yet figured out where babies come from." The problem is not ignorance of the biological facts, but having practical and affordable access to dependable birth control.

In many countries, religious and social and legal pressures work against practical access to birth control--but the main problem is that, even if these religious/social/legal pressures did not exist, financial and medical deficiencies would not allow practical access to birth control either.

In countries around the globe where girls cannot go to school during their menstrual periods because their families cannot afford monthly sanitary supplies, how are those families supposed to buy condoms--let alone have effective access to birth control pills (or surgical options)? In countries where children are put to work starting around age four or five (gathering agricultural products from the forests and fields, going into mines, etc.), every working child's income, no matter how small, contributes to keeping the family (at minimum) alive. Every new baby born, within a fairly short period of time, provides the family with that little bit more which may be incredibly important in keeping ALL of them alive.

Rape can also be a major factor in countries worldwide. Rapists seldom use condoms (either because they are prohibitively expensive, or because use of condoms would reduce a given male's sense of masculinity), and girls who get pregnant as a result of rape are seldom able to get abortions (no matter how young the girl is). Instead, the girls become mothers at incredibly young ages, after which there is practical economic pressure to become pregnant again, and rather quickly, so the very young mother and the very young mother's offspring, and often siblings and parents and grandparents and other relatives, can have a little bit better chance of surviving.

Human population impact is not, in my experience, a taboo discussion topic, but it is a kind of hopeless one.

If you have any suggestions which might have a positive impact on this global problem, I am certain there is a wide audience of people worldwide ready to consider them.

It might be a taboo topic among the folks you interact with, but not among my friends.

I have a friend that never stops talking about overpopulation as THE problem in the world anytime i talk to him it always comes back to the billions of people on the planet as THE problem. If i were to talk to him now about the cause of the coronavirus he would still bring it back to overpoplution somehow as the root cause. He is a smart cat so i don't know what to think about his opinion.

I remember in the 70s and 80s if overpopulation ever raised it's head in church it was quickly decapitated with an obscure scripture from the D&C about the world has an abundance for all.

It's the 800 pound gorilla nobody want to talk about in the climate change debate. 8 billion people equaling CO2...and when did CO2, the main fuel source for all plant life, become the bad guy. I will now put on my flak jacket as all the hate mail arrives from the eco weenies.

The main source of life on earth is not CO2 but rather a fairly precise balance of several different elements. CO2 became "the bad guy" when it grew so abundant as to upset the balance.

Humans cannot live without cholesterol. An excess of cholesterol is nonetheless fatal. Humans cannot live without carbohydrates but an excess thereof kills people every day.

A complex system requires balance. It's that simple.

Lethbridge Reprobate Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's the 800 pound gorilla nobody want to talk
> about in the climate change debate. 8 billion
> people equaling CO2...and when did CO2, the main
> fuel source for all plant life, become the bad
> guy. I will now put on my flak jacket as all the
> hate mail arrives from the eco weenies.


[Not hate mail and not an "eco weenie" here (I don't think so, anyway, but I couldn't find a precise definition anywhere on the web, not even at urbandictionary.com !)]

If by "fuel source" you mean energy source, then the virtually *exclusive* fuel source for nearly *all* life on earth is the sun, not CO2. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis

"impact of humans on the planet" what impact is that? We just don't know enough about this planet to say in any terms of certainty that Humans are making it any worse. Now if a person actually believes the establishment and their statement that CO2 is raising the temperature, then why isn't there a fight to kill termites? Termites emit more C02 than humans. And then there are earth worms all over the place especially in the rain forest! We should bulldoze the rain forest and pave it over with asphalt to kill those termites and worms! It would obviously lower the CO2 emissions if we did that. (I'm being sarcastic)

But this is where the logic leads if one believes the official narrative,... don't be fooled.

I am totally with you on this.

I won't believe anything about global warming until someone shows me a dog turning into a duck.

Well, since you believe in the biblical Great Flood, you can blame Noah for all the termites. If he'd kept them off the ark, we wouldn't have any.

(but the termites should have been munching on the ark for the entire time it was being built, and for the year it was on the water, and since there was no way to repair the ark, its hull structure would have been compromised and likely would have sunk)

> Well, since you believe in the biblical Great
> Flood, you can blame Noah for all the termites. If
> he'd kept them off the ark, we wouldn't have any.

An excellent observation!

Do provide a link to the data on how much CO2 termites emit, preferably from a peer reviewed journal article. I'll then provide the current human output of CO2 in gigatonnes. I have a link to an 18 page EPA appendix that lists all CO2 sources in great detail. It is fascinating reading. Well, for people like me. I learned that 85% of recycled used motor oil is not recycled back into motor oil. It is burned as bunker fuel in ocean freighters. Who knew?

BTW, scientists figured out that CO2 was a greenhouse gas within just a couple of years after CO2 itself was discovered. Thomas Jefferson was president (1804). One of the discoverers was Joseph Fourier, more famous for developing that math algorithm now known as the Fourier Transform, which, among other things, made audio MP3s possible.

You won't believe scientists when they say we share small percentages of DNA with Neanderthals, but you'll swallow the termite thing hook line and sinker. Interesting.

The technical name for this is "confirmation bias". Or as Paul Simon sang in The Boxer: Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest, hmmm

In 1995, the eminent J. Faust spoke with approval of the idea that the earth could handle a population of one TRILLION. That is not a typo.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1995/09/serving-the-lord-and-resisting-the-devil?lang=eng

[The USN&WR article referenced in the talk is 9/12/1994, pp. 57-62. I don't have a link. This footnote seems not to appear in the online version of the Ensign address, but is in the magazine itself. One reason not to toss the old paper copies, I suppose.]

And for good measure, Faust subsequently engages in some old-fashioned homophobia. Totally fossilized thinking from one of the walking dead.

A trillion is only 150 times what we have right now. Utah is mostly empty. There shouldn't be any problem putting another 150 Wasatch Front populations into the state. I'm sure there would be enough water, and roads, and think of all the new wonderful temples that we would be blessed with. ::eye roll::

That projection is right up there with Rodney Stark or whoever it was projecting there would be, what was it, 285 million Mormons by 2080?

OK, I found an article from Science, 5 Nov 1982. It is a reputable peer reviewed journal.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/218/4572/563

Abstract
Termites may emit large quantities of methane, carbon dioxide, and molecular hydrogen into the atmosphere. Global annual emissions calculated from laboratory measurements could reach 1.5 x 10^14 grams of methane and 5 x 10^16 grams of carbon dioxide. As much as 2 x 10^14 grams of molecular hydrogen may also be produced. Field measurements of methane emissions from two termite nests in Guatemala corroborated the laboratory results. The largest emissions should occur in tropical areas disturbed by human activities.

OK, now for the conversion to gigatonnes.
There are 1000 grams in a kg, and 1000 kg in a metric tonne, So, to convert grams to tonnes, subtract 6 from the exponent. (a million is 10^6).

Sooooo, termites produce ...
1.5 x 10^8 tonnes of methane (a potent greenhouse gas, BTW, though, unlike CO2, it will slowly break down in the atmosphere)
5 x 10^10 tonnes of CO2
2 x 10^8 tonnes of molecular hydrogen (I do not believe molecular hydrogen is a greenhouse gas, but I am guessing)

To convert from tonnes to gigatonnes, you subtract 9 from the exponent.

Soooo, part II: termites produce
1.5 x 10^-1 gigatonnes of methane ( 0.15 gigatonne)
5 x 10^1 gigatonnes of CO2 ( 50 gigatonnes)
2 x 10^-1 gigatonnes of H ( 0.2 gigatonne)


Now, human production of CO2 was estimated at 40 gigatonnes in 2015.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities

Well I'll be damned, it looks like macaRomney was technically correct. Assuming the data from 1982/2015 are correct, termites do produce more CO2 than humans, though not a lot more.

However, I found the following on stackexchange, a website full of software engineers, who veer off topic from time to time.

From
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/45290/do-termites-produce-10-times-more-co2-than-humans

You can read the full question at the link. Here's the response:

1. Termites are not burning fossil fuels. The carbon they produce comes from decomposing wood. This carbon came from the atmosphere, and as the wood rots this carbon will wind up back in the atmosphere whether termites eat it or not. Over the lifespan of a tree this is a carbon neutral process, and is accordingly treated as a net zero in global CO2 accounting. So from a global climate point of view the statement is flat wrong.

2. Termites produce a mixture of methane and CO2. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, but is much less persistent in the atmosphere. For global climate purposes the various greenhouse gasses are counted as the equivalent mass of CO2, but for termite emissions the amounts vary greatly between wet and dry seasons. We don't have good estimates for the global amount, and it would also need to be set against the balance of CO2 and methane that would be produced by other decomposition processes. Complicating this even further is the fact that bacteria in the termite mounds seem to be oxidising anything from 20% to 80% the methane into CO2. So if you are comparing the tailpipe emissions of termites with human industry without regard to the source of the carbon then the answer is "we don't know".

3. Termites are spreading into new areas due to anthropogenic climate change, and places where they are endemic can also see increases in populations due to tree cutting. So some termite gas production is an indirect result of human activity.


Lastly, we know from examining air bubbles in glacial ice cores, that over the last 800,000 years, the CO2 level has fluctuated between 170 ppm during glacial periods, and 270 ppm during the warmer interglacial periods. (NB macaRomney rejects that glacier are 800,000 years old because he doesn't believe scientists can distinguish between an annual ice layer, and the melting and refreezing caused by a warm day in May).

However old they are, the CO2 levels varied between 170 and 270 over a very long period of time. They have been climbing steeply for about 200 years now, and currently sit at 414 ppm.

https://www.noaa.gov/news/global-carbon-dioxide-growth-in-2018-reached-4th-highest-on-record.

Edit to add: the 2019 numbers should be out later this month. They are expected to be up another 3 ppm, give or take a fraction of a ppm.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2020 09:50PM by Brother Of Jerry.