Texas Prof. Wants You (and almost everyone else) Dead

[editor]

You've got to read it to believe it .

I suggest he put his money where his mouth is, and take the first step himself.

[sevfiv]

That's 5.8 billion lives - lives he says are turning the planet into "fat, human biomass."

just imagine 5.8 billion "fat, [dead], human biomasses" cluttering the earth

*gag*

[YakuzaIce]

I suggest he put his money where his mouth is, and take the first step himself.

I agree, he should lead us by example. Also for someone whining about how society has grown fat, he could stand to shed a few pounds. (left)

[Jeebus]

5.8 billion bodies.. You know how much soylent green that would be for the rest of us? Talk about living high on the hog for the rest of your days!

He is yet another reason I'll never move to Austin.

[TJones]

It seems that if his "premonitions" come true, then The Ebola, Bird Flu and AIDS, will do most of the work according to him. I was a little shaken by the 85% increase of population within the last 25 years, OUCH ! The guy is obviously just trying to scare people into believing the world is coming to an end tomorrow. This will all be forgotten in about 2 weeks, so just let it roll off like water on a duck's back.

[RedScare]

It seems that if his "premonitions" come true, then The Ebola, Bird Flu and AIDS, will do most of the work according to him. I was a little shaken by the 85% increase of population within the last 25 years, OUCH ! The guy is obviously just trying to scare people into believing the world is coming to an end tomorrow. This will all be forgotten in about 2 weeks, so just let it roll off like water on a duck's back.

Frankly, I may forget it tomorrow, but that doesn't mean the population stops growing. It sounds to me that he is incorporating the comments on this forum into his predictions. In other words, if we all ignore him, we may be creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.

[RedScare]

Do people not understand that it's the job of a college professor to encourage his or her students to think?

Apparently, not.

One of the most depressing things I see is that MY alma mater (Texas A&M) is never in the news for the outrageous comments that it's professors make.

[TJones]

It just makes me laugh everytime one of these "forward thinkers" comes up with what is supposedly an evolutionary theory. Then, when you get to the heart of the matter, it always turns out that he/she is just another "crackpot" Doomsday Anarchist, who thinks everyone else in the world deserves to be kicked off the planet besides him/her because THEY are the only ones who make any sense in the world. Red, give 'em the picture !

[Jeebus]

I give this guy about as much credibility as that crackpot racist who got on C-Span talking about how Katrina was the fault of the white man, and if black people want to rebuld Zion, they're going to have to kill all the white people.

TJ, the only time I've ever seen one of these predictions come true, was in a movie. I think it was "The Day After Tomorrow". Science-fiction.. Go figure!

[Lowbrow]

There is absolutely nothing new here. Just someone saying it a bit louder.

Bio 101 - Carrying Capacity (known as K)

"Carrying capacity refers to the number of individuals who can be supported in a given area within natural resource limits, and without degrading the natural social, cultural and economic environment for present and future generations. The carrying capacity for any given area is not fixed. It can be altered by improved technology, but mostly it is changed for the worse by pressures which accompany a population increase. As the environment is degraded, carrying capacity actually shrinks, leaving the environment no longer able to support even the number of people who could formerly have lived in the area on a sustainable basis. No population can live beyond the environment's carrying capacity for very long."

[editor]

The part that the professor seems to be conveniently ignoring is the fact, as stated above, that carrying capacity can be increased.

When I was in school we were taught that the planet couldn't support more than four billion people. Oops. Guess they were wrong about that, too.

Here's a great example: Back in the 50's and 60's, poverty and starvation were serious problems across most of Asia. That's where the cliche, "Eat your peas! Don't you know there are children starving in Japan!?!" comes from. The governments of Europe and the United States identified this as a problem that could destabilized the region and came up with a program to fight it. I forget the name, but it had the word "Green" in the title. The idea was that Western nations would teach the Asian nations how to grow more and better crops on the land they had and how to convert non-productive land into land that could support people.

Well, it did a pretty good job of working. Sure, there are still lots of poor places, but then we have that in the United States and Europe, too. But we ended up with large, stable economies in most of Asia, and both stabilized and improved diets for a billion or so people. Not surprisingly, the places that didn't sign on to the program (North Korea) ended up with starving people and dictatorships.

Again, I'm not saying it's a complete victory. But it is an example of how human intervention can change the carrying capacity of a fixed geographic region.

[west20th]

, "Eat your peas! Don't you know there are children starving in Japan!?!"

Heard that one a million times, except in my house in was India. I thought it would be clever to suggest we mail the peas to India. "They need them a lot more than we do!". Mom didn't think that was so clever. Ouch!

[Montrose1100]

The only sucess he will create is a breif "movement" in a few online journals of his listeners.

[ssullivan]

Heard that one a million times, except in my house in was India. I thought it would be clever to suggest we mail the peas to India. "They need them a lot more than we do!". Mom didn't think that was so clever. Ouch!

I said the same thing to my grandmother once when she was trying to get me to eat eggplant. She said there were starving children in Africa who'd love to have that. I told her the post office was down the street and I bet we could mail the eggplant to them.

I not only had to eat the eggplant (one of the few vegetables I still cannot develop a taste for) but got no cake after dinner either.

[dbigtex56]

The part that the professor seems to be conveniently ignoring is the fact, as stated above, that carrying capacity can be increased.

When I was in school we were taught that the planet couldn't support more than four billion people. Oops. Guess they were wrong about that, too.

Here's a great example: Back in the 50's and 60's, poverty and starvation were serious problems across most of Asia. That's where the cliche, "Eat your peas! Don't you know there are children starving in Japan!?!" comes from. The governments of Europe and the United States identified this as a problem that could destabilized the region and came up with a program to fight it. I forget the name, but it had the word "Green" in the title. The idea was that Western nations would teach the Asian nations how to grow more and better crops on the land they had and how to convert non-productive land into land that could support people.

Well, it did a pretty good job of working. Sure, there are still lots of poor places, but then we have that in the United States and Europe, too. But we ended up with large, stable economies in most of Asia, and both stabilized and improved diets for a billion or so people. Not surprisingly, the places that didn't sign on to the program (North Korea) ended up with starving people and dictatorships.

Again, I'm not saying it's a complete victory. But it is an example of how human intervention can change the carrying capacity of a fixed geographic region.

Well, sure. Technology has done what otherwise would have been impossible, and the Earth is populated to a degree which would have been unthinkable even a hundred years ago.

The point I think the professor is making is that huge populations will eventually fall. Due to factors we still do not understand (and perhaps never will) eventually something will come along to thin out the herd. By packing people into increasingly smaller spaces, and through unprecidented opportunities for travel, a new pathogen -whether it's bird flu, AIDS, Ebola or something yet discovered or evolved - has the opportunity to spread through dense populations and wipe them out at an unprecidented level and at dizzying speed. Those who have the dubious luck of surviving will have to rebuild whole economies, societies and political systems. What the professor is saying is that this isn't just possible - it's probable. I've seen no reasonable rebuttal.

Think of the human misery. Is this really progress? Is it merciful? The Black Plague looks insignificant in comparison.

Anther point: we've artifically bolstered the Earth's capacity to support human life at the expense of the Earth itself. Every day, species which we haven't even discovered or explored are rendered extinct. Human activity has undeniably done damage to some ecosystems - possibly to the climate itself. Natural resources which were once plentiful have become scarce.

How many people do we need, anyway? Every life is precious, of course, but couldn't mankind reach its highest potential with fewer people? And won't those people - and the Earth itself - be better off?

edit: Before anyone asks: yes, I've read Stephen King's The Stand. I've also read Huxley, Orwell and H. G. Wells. Society discounts the Futurists out of hand at its peril.

[Guest Plastic]

I don't see the article. I just see a main page with lots of different stories.

[editor]

Well, sure. Technology has done what otherwise would have been impossible, and the Earth is populated to a degree which would have been unthinkable even a hundred years ago.

The point I think the professor is making is that huge populations will eventually fall. Due to factors we still do not understand (and perhaps never will) eventually something will come along to thin out the herd. By packing people into increasingly smaller spaces, and through unprecidented opportunities for travel, a new pathogen -whether it's bird flu, AIDS, Ebola or something yet discovered or evolved - has the opportunity to spread through dense populations and wipe them out at an unprecidented level and at dizzying speed. Those who have the dubious luck of surviving will have to rebuild whole economies, societies and political systems. What the professor is saying is that this isn't just possible - it's probable. I've seen no reasonable rebuttal.

Think of the human misery. Is this really progress? Is it merciful? The Black Plague looks insignificant in comparison.

Anther point: we've artifically bolstered the Earth's capacity to support human life at the expense of the Earth itself. Every day, species which we haven't even discovered or explored are rendered extinct. Human activity has undeniably done damage to some ecosystems - possibly to the climate itself. Natural resources which were once plentiful have become scarce.

How many people do we need, anyway? Every life is precious, of course, but couldn't mankind reach its highest potential with fewer people? And won't those people - and the Earth itself - be better off?

edit: Before anyone asks: yes, I've read Stephen King's The Stand. I've also read Huxley, Orwell and H. G. Wells. Society discounts the Futurists out of hand at its peril.

I guess I just read the article differently than you did. You seem to have seen it as the professor predicting these things are possible. When I read it, the impression I got was that the professor thought it was necessary, past due, and we should start eliminating people now.

[Montrose1100]

and we should start eliminating people now.

I have a pretty good list, Starting with the majority of people on Skyscraper City.