Correct. These days is more surgical minimizing losses on both sides. In the Gulf war the Collation lost less than 400 people. It is estimated that around 20k Iraqis perished. (Numbers vary by source)
In Afghanistan, since 2001 there have been a little over 1000 casualties for the collation.
I think you are overlooking the obvious. Even if you do not believe we are overpopulated, just look at our water consumption around the world.
If you look at China they built the Three Gorges Dam for fresh water control. They officially state it is mostly for electrical generation, but that is not the entire truth.
Beijing is becoming starved of water.
Here in the US we have the Colorado river. It basically no longer flows into the Pacific Ocean. The water hungry southwest uses it all up.
Our members in the south are all too familiar with the drought that was big news last year. If I remember correctly it was the worse in over 100 years. Severe water restrictions were put in place.
Here in the NW we are supposed to be insulated from all of this. Yet in my short life on this planet, we went from carefree summers with green lawns, to mandatory water restrictions with dead lawns.
And finally you just have to look at what billionaire T. Boone Pickens is doing. Part of his wind energy plan "Pickens Plan" (which I totally agree with) is water rights. He has purchased huge swaths of water rights in west Texas. Now I know he seems to have good intentions with his energy plan, but he is a business man at heart. Instead of investing his fortune in more oil exploration, he now a water baron. I suspect he is setting his family up for one hell of a legacy.
I loved the 70's........100 million less people in the USA(fully 1/3 less people than now). Lot's of elbow room in where ever you went,what ever you did. Want to go camping at Spring Lake? Just show up and register.........now you have to reserve a space ahead of time. Go grocery shopping....... and no wait at the check outs. Hear some foreign jabbering.........it's just a visitor from the old country,not your permanent neighbor. Gas money wasn't a burden,even with a bean walking job. Go squirrel hunting in the local timber and never see another hunter. Go to the State fair and actually park inside the grounds. Go the the Mall on a Saturday afternoon to get a new pair of boots and belch or fart between stores...and nobody hears it. Take a night course at the college......pay the enrollment fee with pocket money. Want to go swimming in the creek.......jump in,it wasn't polluted...... and you could drink the water right out of the field tile outlet.Bring you own popcorn in a brown grocery sack to the movie theater and it was totally OK. High school girl pregnant.....practically unheard of. YMMV,but ah,the Midwest in the 70's. The 40's.......my Dad has a picture of his Harley, parked within feet of Old Faithful.......and he was the only soul there................
Ummmm. Last I checked, 3/4 of the Earth's surface is covered by water.
Yes, salt water...
How exactly do you plan to filter the salt?
Desalination? Very costly, extremely energy intensive.
Reverse Osmosis? Ever seen the electrical requirements for small ship board water maker system?
There are only a few places in this world where large scale desalination plants exist. A good portion of the middle east (especially Saudi Arabia) get their drinking water from desalination. They of course can do that because of low energy costs.
Other places like Israel do for national security reasons. But the cost is extremely high.
In this country I do not think we could afford to produce the volume of water needed to supply our irrigation needs. Without irrigation, we do not eat...
And that brings up the next point, what do you do with the salty brine left over from desalination?
You can't just release it back into the ocean. The salinity level of the worlds ocean are a very delicate balance. We are already seeing the damage of increased salinity, the coral reefs are disappearing before our eyes.
GE has been running high efficiency desalination plants for years. The costs for desalination has decreased dramatically.
When the price of water climbs, what is seen as a "reasonable" cost will change.
As far as the "salty brine", we mine several thousand tons of salt each year for winter road work. I'm pretty sure that we can find a use for it other than dumping it back into the ocean.
Not too long ago, a well accepted science was Eugenics.
It was thought that by letting stupid people breed lots, and smart people breed little, you would end up with a dumber population. It makes a lot of sense.
Now in reality, the "unfit" became many minorities and poor people ( if they are poor, they must be stupid, right? ) selected by the racism of the people deciding the shape of the future.
The whole eugenics movement lost anyone willing to praise it in public after the leader of Germany put the concept into wide use, and was then defeated, and committed suicide in 1944.
I'd be real careful about any plan to reduce the population.
I'm also a big fan of extra planetary colonies. While a Mars colony is unlikely to be able to survive for quite some time, it would be nice to have a backup when the next Dinosaur Killer Asteroid arrives. & it will. ( pity we don't have warp drive. Or a viable space program )
I'm also a big fan of extra planetary colonies. Just don't put them on the Moon! They might throw rocks down at us! (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, R. Heinlein)
GE has been running high efficiency desalination plants for years. The costs for desalination has decreased dramatically.
When the price of water climbs, what is seen as a "reasonable" cost will change.
As far as the "salty brine", we mine several thousand tons of salt each year for winter road work. I'm pretty sure that we can find a use for it other than dumping it back into the ocean.
Wow you know so much....how have you stayed unemployed or underemployed now, for so long?? You would think people would be lining up to pay you for all your vast knowledge, amazing...I am truly amazed.
Not so much that wars are killing less people in general, just that they're killing less of OUR people.
We have different sorts of wars.
There's the old genocidal tribal wars still going on in parts of Africa, aided by the ubiquitous AK & his derivatives, that kill hundreds of thousands, pretty cheaply on a relative scale because life isn't worth a great deal there.
Then there's the techno wars, not belittling you guys in harms way by any means, but modern warfare from a western point of view is about about protecting your highly (& expensively) trained human assets while turning over your (extremely expensive) weapons stocks to justify your defense budget.
That's obviously a simplistic view, but I'm just a, mostly self educated, truck driver.
Then there's the techno wars, not belittling you guys in harms way by any means, but modern warfare from a western point of view is about about protecting your highly (& expensively) trained human assets while turning over your (extremely expensive) weapons stocks to justify your defense budget. I can roll with that, don't think it's simplistic at all.
There are X number of resources on this rock to support human population. Something will become the limiting factor. I'm not sure exactly what that is. Water? maybe. Air quality? Idk. I do know I don't want to be around when we hit the 95% of maximum capacity. Then again what do I know, I'm only 1 in 6,800,000,000. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world -factbook/print/xx.html
So, If I buy a house today and we have a pandemic that drops 50% of the population, will my home value drop because we have a surplus in the housing market? Will my part of the national debt be $70,000 instead of the $35,000 on the debtclock? More importantly, would the media be worried about 'John or Kate +4' instead of 'John and Kate +8'
