Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,888
A levy Is a tax by another name as we have no choice but pay it.
The world's higher population must have an effect simply because that population has needs, for Tom to dismiss that arguement in such a dismissive way is rather silly in my opinion.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
#21
Jan,
"that population has needs"
It is my firm belief that it is 'needs' that begets the population in the first place.
It is the dread of death and disease, and knowledge of an despicably uncertain future that drives many in the developing world to breed regardless of the objective view taken by we in the west/developed world.
The really important question is not...
"How are we to cater for a continuing and seemingly endless population explosion?"
But,
How can people in the developing world come to know that a stable future is not only possible, but that all efforts in the developed world are bent to that end?
'We' hand out fish after fish, and wonder where our fish shall come from. When, instead, we should be walking the talk of gifting the developing world the fishing rods in order for them to become self-sufficient.
Really, if anybody in the UK wishes to effect this perceived population increase in a positive way, each could do far worse than to cease expecting to find out of season fruit and vegetables upon the shelves of our Supermarkets.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 664- Registered: 23 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,039
Lesley, good luck on this one.
Last year, I believe, AGW was abolished by about half a dozen posters on the Dover Forum.
It amuses, and amazes, that some lay people think they know better than the overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion.
Just because we have had some bad summers and cold winters in recent years locally in SE England it does not mean that the world is not getting hotter. We need to take off our blinkers and look beyond out small island.
The smart money is on a temporary local cooling caused by ice melt actually making the ocean temporarily colder, leading to High Pressure to our north, thus blocking the mild Atlantic and sucking in cold air from Russia and Scandinavia. In a few years the northern ocean will have been warmed again by the ambient Atlantic waters and normal service will be resumed.
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,888
I do not think anyone on here has dismissed the fact that the Earth is getting warmer the big question is whether it is man's fault as posed by some or a natural cycle of climate change.
I believe it is the latter but man must do his bit not to make things worse than they need be.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
that's fine Lesley
theres more than 2 of us
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
there are simply too many people on the planet which can only mean famine for some.
we all know about the logic in the third world where it is believed that the more offspring one has the richer one becomes.
much the same as the logic over the past 50 years in those same countries where they reject their hand to mouth way of life in rural areas to live in squalor in shanty towns of the big cities.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
howard,ther is enough food thrown away every year,enough to feed the third world 3 times over.and its all perfectly good to.
Guest 977- Registered: 27 Jun 2013
- Posts: 1,031
Tom Austin wrote:Population concerns are vapid, empty and wrong-headed.
Trying to work out if, from your intellectually superior viewpoint, that is a greater or lesser insult than a "Deary Deary Me"
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Well, you are at least consistent Ray.
What are the concerns about over population if not vapid and groundless?
Maybe the short answer is to take all cameras out of Africa, problem 'solved'.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
you may well be right about food waste brian but food binned in america is of no use to villagers in equatorial africa.
rather a silly statement when you don't say why our concerns are "vapid, empty and wrong headed" tom.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Howard, Kath, Ray, etc....
The 'apparent' fact, (and an all too bald statement), tha'. Is hardly something that can be claimed as being owned by anybody other than the original estimator. Simply because this statement is repeated and repeated over and over again, does not make it any more useful or pertinent. It was this bald statement that I took against as 'vapid'.
I do not pre-suppose that anybody who is concerned about population density is demanding that something 'drastic' has to be done to reduce such population-density to a manageable level.
But, why is this 'factoid' so often repeated? And what can its statement and restatement achieve?
Is it/ can it be, more than just something to say as one's hands are thrown-up in despair?
I hope that people who voice their own concerns about ever-increasing population density, are in fact worried about how at all we can all manage to survive and prosper, how it is that we all could be fed and watered.
These things, even in my own estimation, are legitimate concerns, but worrying about something has never produced a solution to a problem yet.
I was trying to say that quite apart from this problem being looked at as ever-worsening, it should be viewed as solvable, and efforts should be made to solve it. This is why I took against the bald statement as 'wrong-headed'.
The issue about out-of-season-fruit & veg.
As we act and behave currently so much of what we do makes the problem of increased population density worse and worse.
The best, it seems, that we are able to do with regard to feeding people is to insist upon hungry people in Africa working their butts off to grow vegetables they do not eat and flowers they cannot eat, in order to make us in the developed world feel better about ourselves. This, I say, is not right.
There will be many reasons why people in the developing world breed as they currently do. I am trying not to be flippant and mention, long dark nights with no lighting or TV. Yet we in the UK will have heard of population spikes nine months after a power outage.
It strikes me that a person's reaction to a given stimuli is pretty much the same the world over. The minute we in the UK expect (rationally or irrationally) a shortage of something, what is the first thing a great many of us do?
We panic. We panic buy, and we panic stockpile.
To my mind, people in the developing world are little different.
Even in average times the common tiller in Asia and Africa and elsewhere feels it a natural imperative to father many sons, just so as to have one or two that grow-up to help him in his work and to carry on his line.
We in the west have made great inroads into the field of child-mortality. So much so that these aforementioned tillers found themselves with an excess of maturing sons, and for a while common sense, the realisation of better prospects - the forced sterilisations carried out by Indira Gandhi, things were improving - birth-rate wise.
Much, much water has flowed under the bridge since those heady days, much of it drowning out hope in the hearts of the people in the developing world.
And yet, instead of redoubling our efforts to give back to these places some small portion of that which we have taken, we instead continue to simply exploit them for all they are worth (and more) and then through many the 'bald statement' blame them for their ills.
The new thing is the creation of reliance on all things GM/Monsanto etc. among the farmers of the third-world.
In short, I too am concerned with the plight of 'people';you, me, them, us...everybody, yet will anything actually be done to help us all out? Will anything be done while we all chant, "there are now living more people than have ever lived"?
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
Yes I did read that earlier Howard. Better still this guy put the J into real journalism. Of course he's not a scientist (as virtually every BBC environmental correspondent is too not grounded in a scientific background nor any Guardian or Independent green writer) but listen to his words and see what proper investigative journalism really is.
[URL]#t=75[/URL]
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
I just can't imagine what happened but searching for the IPCC online brought me here:
http://www.december212012.com/2012-prophecy-fulfilled/
I guess they use the same methodology in their future forecasting - they certainly use the same excuses when their projections don't quite go their way.
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
Courtesy Radio 4 interview....George Osborne confirms the government believes climate cgange is man made.
Tory closets must be a bit miffed ?
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
Why are you so obsessed with closets Reg?
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
Do you know what I've been thinking the same thing. A closet is a small confined space. Of course there are ways to use the term closet in derogatory ways (closet tory, closet socialist, closet climate catastropist like many) but to use the term closet in the way Reg does sounds odd when read.
It's like whenever I've talked to labour and liberal supporters and open the discussion on any topic which I have a feeling they take the contrary view invariably they will say stuff like "Which branch of UKIP do you belong to?"
Harrr haarrrr harrrrr.
Hilarious.
But such is the mindset of such people.
Still It'd be nice to know the meaning of the word closet framed in the terms that Reg does.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
so he can hang a suit or two peter,unless its a water closet,then it would be a roll or two of andrex.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
Philip, in reg's lexicon, closet is an abusive term for broad-minded people.

I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,888
Very true Peter, Reg can not cope with people who are not affiliated to a political party, we must all fit into a neat little slot in what appears to be his rather narrow mind, note my signature.

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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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