Thread: I call Jupiter!
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Old 11-22-2011, 10:32 AM   #11
SamIam
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Join Date: Jun 2007
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A basic tenet of ecology is "carrying capacity." This is the maximum population of any given species which can be sustained by the ecosystem in which it resides. Malthus predicted it back in the 1700's. Human population growth is rapidly reaching the point where the planet's resources can no longer sustain it - if it hasn't been surpassed already.

In addition, the "green revolution" has come at the expense of loss of much diversity in our grain crops. Mega-agriculture plants zillions of acres of the same mono-species which often can't even reproduce themselves using the seeds from the harvest. You have to buy special seed grains from big ag. This is nice for them, but a loss of genetic diversity will sooner or later prove fatal. Let a single plant virus mutate (which viruses do all the time) get loose in those fields, and everything will go because our crops have lost the benefit of what is called "hybrid vigor."

Ultimately the problem of carrying capacity and/or loss of genetic diversity in our grain crops will cause a major human population crash. It's been observed time after time with other different organisms and nature is not going to do us any special favors just because we think we're such a wonderful species - especially when we working against nature and know this, but continue to do it anyway.

But who knows? Maybe the remaining members of our species will evolve into a much more fit and adaptable homo common sensus in another 2 million years from now. Members of the new species will regard us the way we now do the neanderthals.
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