the elephant in the room ::: syrinx

the elephant in the room

submitted by daniel on tue, 2007-07-31 07:35.

The Toronto Star ran an article last Sunday which explores a discussion Susan and I had on that same day! I just found it today through TreeHugger as I don't read the Star.

There are many environmental issues people are trying to solve in the world, such as global warming, species extinction and pollution, to name a few. The elephant in the room that nobody talks about is human overpopulation. That is the base problem behind all of the environmental issues we're facing.

Since my birth the population of this planet has doubled. According to Wikipedia, "Humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, but they now inhabit every continent, with a total population of over 6.6 billion as of 2007". That's ludicrous. The population at my birth was three billion. It took less than fifty years to double that.

If it took 60 years (1900-1960) to go from 1.6 billion to 3 billion, then less than 50 years to double again to 6 billion, where are we headed?

I think Agent Smith is right about us.

tags: environment globalwarming overpopulation wikipedia treehugger

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some more data

submitted by robertkamper on tue, 2007-07-31 16:33.

http://mindprod.com/environment/population.html

ebola?

submitted by daniel on tue, 2007-07-31 22:02.

From that article: "Being proud of being human is like being proud of being an ebola virus". Agent Smith: "You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area".

Harsh, yes, but the reality is that we ARE acting just like a virus on the planet. We have to stop. But we won't.

nothing to sneeze at

submitted by robertkamper on wed, 2007-08-01 11:23.

By definition, though, humans are not viruses, although the analogy is interesting.

Very tiny parasites that penetrate into cells, and then use the cells’ machinery to multiply and eventually contaminate other cells. Viruses are molecular constructs made of a genome ( DNA or RNA ) and a protein envelope. To reproduce themselves, they hijack the life processes of the host cell. The human immune system can destroy certain viruses (e.g. cold viruses) or limit their reproduction (e.g. herpes viruses), while others escape the body’s vigilance (e.g. AIDS). There are anti-viral medications (e.g. acyclovir for herpes) that inhibit viral replication without completely eliminating the virus. Vaccines, when they exist, offer the best protection. In the treatment of cancers and genetic diseases , like cystic fibrosis, gene therapy makes use of certain deactivated viruses as “vectors” to transfer healthy genes into damaged or deficient target cells.

http://www.lexicon-biology.com/biology/definition_5.html

http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Virus

http://www.answers.com/topic/virus?cat=health

animation of virus replication

a solution to the problem

submitted by robertkamper on wed, 2007-08-01 22:26.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64

conchords!

submitted by daniel on thu, 2007-08-02 05:38.

I can't believe you posted that! Susan and I spent much of yesterday evening watching and laughing at Conchord videos on YouTube. And because of that, the first thing that popped into my mind when I read the title to your comment was "The humans are dead"! Imagine my surprise when the link lead to that very song!

In the interest of completeness, here's a link to the "studio" version of the same song:

The Humans are Dead

And here's another couple of hilarious Flight of the Conchords videos, though these are a bit off-subject for this thread...

The Boom King
Hiphopopotamus

Binary solo!

i thought about putting a conchord vid up yesterday..

submitted by susanjillian on thu, 2007-08-02 09:16.

ok mind melt.. we are all thinking the same thing now.
Still my fave is the robot one as I told Dan yesterday.