We're om our way to solving overpopulation -without cannibalism. (Page 5) Corwin: If vegetarians became responsible for eliminating the domestic cow species from the face of the Earth, I would, of course, have no choice but to switch to a vegetarian diet... ... I would eat vegetarians.   Geoff: On the grounds that proper shoes are made of leather. Having worked in an abattoir and on a farm, I have no illusions where my food comes from.  lori100: It does seem as humans evolve to a much higher level of consciousness that their physical needs diminish greatly. They need little sleep and food. Many saints ate and slept very little. Some only existed for years on water and communion wafers. St. Padre Pio (died in 1968, Italian monk) was a very robust, healthy man who ate and slept very little---about 4 hr a night ( he also drank beer to help him sleep). People were astounded that he was able to work the very long hours that he did. -------------Robert Monroe , when out of body , asked to meet the most highly evolved human on Earth still in a physical body. He met a Buddha like man who was a teacher at a university and had had various jobs and lived a very long life. When asked about food and sleep he said..."Oh, I gave those up a long time ago..". (Edited by lori100) Aura: "evolution towards vegetarian diet" Which would mean we evolve to survive on plants alone. Meaning our digestive track and teeth obviously...but also the rest of our bodies since we do need 5 essential amino acids that can only come from animal produced protein... Meaning we would have evolved into a different species. Not that that has to be a bad thing, but with that, a bunch of triggers that are human would have to be changed. For one, the lovely hour glass figure men like. Because the longer digestive track needed for all that plant food to get digested means we will get the squarish lines of...cows, goats etc..instead of the smaller sleeker bellies you see best in the big cats...  Not so sure I want to see what that becomes. To me it would look rather ugly.  LiptonCambell: We wouldn't have to evolve- evolution is a process that would take far too long to address the problems of today. But we can genetically modify ourselves to survive off plants alone.... What'ya think, Lori? Human Gmo's.....has a nice sound to it... LiptonCambell: Oh, and Aura- if Lori's unrelated preachy nonsense about 'Out of Body experiences' is unwelcome in this thread, just remember- thread starters can delete other peoples posts now.... lori100: I was making a point about human's physical needs lessening as we evolve....sorry it offends you.... Aura: Oh she's going on about the mind being somehow not a product of the brain. Not a view i agree with but a common one. Since this turned to evolution of humans, I'll allow it. LiptonCambell: Yep, just reminding you it's an option And Lori- one persons experiences isn't really proof of human evolution....I mean, I bet there's people out there who need less nutrients, and people who need more- it really is a crapshoot.  Littleboo99: I still like Corvin's first post... I got off a flight in Minnesota today and the pilot welcomed us to 'Antarctica'. As much of a hoopla this global warming thing is, the winters have gotten worse and worse! (at least in North America, can't speak for the rest of the world) (Edited by Littleboo99) Corwin: Well... increased warming of the globe increases the extremity of weather patterns, as this added energy infused into the global climate needs to release itself, often kinetically. This means more powerful hurricanes and typhoons, a greater occurrence of tornadoes, and up here in North America it has meant a more energetic Winter jet-stream pulling more Arctic air down on top of us. But this also means more extremes of heat in other places, more arid in one place, wetter in another... "change" above all. And when you take the entire global temperature average into account, the mercury is slowly and measurably rising... and a change of even a couple of degrees can have a surprising impact. Keeping in mind that the world of 100 million years ago was a world with no ice-caps and a tropical environment that extended even to the poles... and an average global temperature only about 10 degrees higher than it is today. --------------- How is all of this relevant to the topic of overpopulation? Well...... I suppose time will tell... considering hat 80% of the worlds population lives in coastal areas that will be underwater in another 50 to 500 years, it may prove to have some impact on our population... possibly even a positive one in the long run.  (Post deleted by staff ) Aura: "Will be underwater" and "will be under sea level" are two different things though, Corvin. Being under sea level isn't that big of a deal, the Netherlands have done quiet well for themselves. We'll probably need to raise the levies a bit Islands will be worse off, yeah. But in the end I don't see the rising of the sea be the sole factor in doing anything to world population of humans. (Post deleted by staff ) Aura: but that's due to a possible earthquake, not rising seas  Although, it would set off one hell of a tsunami....That could raise the sea for a while... LiptonCambell: I don't like the name "climate change" it doesn't offer any real suggestions of whats happening, and the supporters of it can never be wrong. In the 70's, people believed the world was getting cooler- "Global Cooling"- in the 90's, people believed the world was getting warmer- "Global Warming"- now the same people want to claim ANY changes, to ANY degree, is caused by this factor. It's lazy, and a self-fulfilling prophecy- because so long as changes occur, then it's proven "true" That been said, I saw this video a few days ago that address soe of your concerns; Corwin: Well, the predicted rise in sea-level that will occur with the complete melting of the ice-caps and glaciers (which may not occur for 1000 years, or may happen as soon as 100, but WILL happen eventually) is FAR more significant than the few meters that the Netherlands is holding back. Conservative predictions for sea-level rise by 2100 are around 1 to 2 meters, but in recent years the ice-caps have been observed disintegrating far more quickly and catastrophically than had first been predicted. When the entire volume of ice world-wide finds it's way into the oceans, we will have a predicted 80 to 100 meter sea-level rise, as existed millions of years ago. Here's a map of North America with an 80 meter rise. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hpUJPjLjGlc/Si9h4EEtFFI/AAAAAAAAAEs/ewBqAnGijvo/s1600/80m%2BNA%2B01%2BNAmerica.png In this map, no more Florida, the Maritime provinces of Canada are a chain of small islands, most of central California lowlands is now a bay, and even close to my home here Lake Ontario is now a salt-water gulf that would rise and fall with the tides, with a large number of major North American cities all swimming with the fishes. The entire coastline is reinvented, much more pronounced on the East coast. Brave new world.... won't happen in our lifetimes though.... Corwin: But as to how this will affect the population, will depend on how rapidly this melting will occur, and how long we stubbornly attempt to maintain our foothold on present coastal occupations. Attempting to hold back the sea could work for a time, but would make these large coastal cities ever more vulnerable to a catastrophic storm-surge and major loss of life. And with a 80 meter rise inevitable in the foreseeable future, it seems to make more sense to plan now for eventually migrating our cities inland to higher ground. Trying to rebuild New Orleans, for instance, seems to me to be an exercise in futility... and seeing how it's already pretty much destroyed, it seems like a perfect excuse to take the hint, and start over somewhere "above" sea-level instead. The simple fact is that the presence of ice-caps on this planet is not the norm, but rather the exception. Sea levels have been gradually rising for the last 15,000 years, since the peak of the last recent ice-age... there's ample evidence of this, Without our recent Human industrial activities, we could have slowly adapted to this change over the next 10,000 years. But we saw fit to pump a trillion tonnes of prehistoric CO2 back into the atmosphere... speeding the Earth's return back to it's status quo, more like it was during the Cretaceous Period, during which all of that CO2 was pulled out of the atmosphere and trapped onto the rock strata in the first place to become our present oil and coal reserves. We could stop CO2 emissions dead in it's tracks today, and it wouldn't make all that much difference. The deed has been done, and that CO2 isn't going anywhere. Change is inevitable... at least until the the chips have all fallen, and it reaches an equilibrium again. And how this pertains to this thread -- I think when that time comes, be it 500 years from now, 1000 years from now, or 5000 years from now.... there WILL be billions less Humans than there are today... either from wars, famine, pandemic, environmental catastrophe, social decline and upheaval, or probably all of the above. We can't keep going on the way we are now... something's gotta give. And hopefully this new world will have learned from the mistakes of this past and coming centuries, and we will be a more enlightened and thoughtful race of Man. (Jesus... I almost sound like Lori. )(Edited by Corwin) | Science Chat Room 1 Person Chatting Similar Conversations |
