GEOLOGY WITH JEFF SIMPSON
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The population debate: Are there too many people on the planet?

3/13/2022

 
In the once-seedy district of Soho, about 10 minutes’ walk from New Scientist‘s London offices, a pump, a plaque and a pub commemorate one of the greatest ever breakthroughs in human history: a decisive step made almost 200 years ago towards conquering infectious disease. Our current global health crisis is a reminder of how little we want to return to the days when deadly infections carried away most of us. Yet also in some way, advances back then were a first step on a path towards planetary perdition. The success against infectious disease, alongside other major developments, dramatically improved our survival and set humanity’s numbers soaring, from little more than 1.25 billion people back then to 7.7 billion now. Now, climate change, biodiversity loss, the degradation of the biosphere and, yes, coronavirus are forcing us to consider the legacy of that success. The pandemic is becoming the latest focus for an old, uniquely contentious question: are there just too many of us on the planet? - New Scientist




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Whatever Happened to the Population Bomb (Video 12:36)

2/24/2022

 
In the 1960s, fears of overpopulation sparked campaigns for population control. But whatever became of the population bomb?- NYTimes

Amid a Baby Boom, Texas Gains 1,000 Residents Every Day

2/24/2022

 
Every one and a half minutes, a child is born somewhere in Texas. At one hospital in North Texas, 107 babies were delivered over 96 hours this summer, shattering local records. At a hospital in San Antonio, more than 1,200 babies have been born this year, up nearly 30 percent since 2018. One of the nation’s fastest-growing states ends each day with about 1,000 more Texans, a net gain primarily made up of newborns. - NYTimes
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The Plans for the World’s Next Largest City Are Incomplete

2/24/2022

 
Within eight years, Delhi is expected to surpass Tokyo to become the largest megalopolis in the world, making it the epicenter of a global phenomenon: Fifteen years ago, most of the world’s population lived in the countryside, and today, most live in cities. The U.N. says two-thirds of people will live in urban areas by 2050. Delhi is one of the most extreme barometers of this transformation. - NYTimes

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China’s Births Hit Historic Low, a Political Problem for Beijing

2/24/2022

 
China announced on Monday that its birthrate plummeted for a fifth straight year in 2021, moving the world’s most populous country closer to the potentially seismic moment when its population will begin to shrink, and hastening a demographic crisis that could undermine its economy and even its political stability. The falling birthrate, coupled with the increased life expectancy that has accompanied China’s economic transformation over the last four decades, means the number of people of working age, relative to the growing number of people too old to work, has continued to decline. That could result in labor shortages, which could hamper economic growth, and reduce the tax revenue needed to support an aging society.- NYTimes
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India’s population will start to shrink sooner than expected

1/25/2022

 
When something happens earlier than expected, Indians say it has been “preponed”. On November 24th India’s health ministry revealed that a resolution to one of its oldest and greatest preoccupations will indeed be preponed. Some years ahead of un predictions, and its own government targets, India’s total fertility rate—the average number of children that an Indian woman can expect to bear in her lifetime—has fallen below 2.1, which is to say below the “replacement” level at which births balance deaths. In fact it dropped to just 2.0 overall, and to 1.6 in India’s cities, says the National Family Health Survey (nfhs-5), a country-wide health check. That is a 10% drop from the previous survey, just five years ago. - The Economist (via Google Groups)

How to Feed the World Without Destroying the Planet

8/17/2021

 
Agriculture already uses almost half of the world’s vegetated land. It consumes 90 percent of all the water used by humanity and generates one-quarter of the annual global emissions that are causing global warming. And yet of the seven billion people living today, 820 million are undernourished because they don’t have access to—or can’t afford—an adequate diet.  “We have to produce 30 percent more food on the same land area, stop deforestation, [and] cut carbon emissions for food production by two-thirds,” says Waite in an interview.  All of that must be done while reducing poverty levels and the loss of natural habitat, preventing freshwater depletion, and cutting pollution as well as other environmental impacts of farming.​- National Geographic
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Only 3% of Earth’s Land Hasn’t Been Marred by Humans

4/28/2021

 
The vast majority of land on Earth — a staggering 97 percent — no longer qualifies as ecologically intact, according to a sweeping survey of Earth’s ecosystems. Over the last 500 years, too many species have been lost, or their numbers reduced, researchers report April 15 in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Of the few fully intact ecosystems, only about 11 percent fall within existing protected areas, the researchers found. Much of this pristine habitat exists in northern latitudes, in Canada’s boreal forests or Greenland’s tundra, which aren’t bursting with biodiversity. But chunks of the species-rich rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and Indonesia also remain intact. - Science News
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Demand for Water is Rapidly Increasing as Supply Dwindles - Video & Article

4/22/2021

 

Limited access to clean water remains a struggle for millions of Americans. And lack of water access is expected to become an even greater problem in the coming years across the U.S. and around the world. In West Virginia, many households in McDowell County rely on collecting water from fresh springs, which might freeze over in the winter or run dry in the summer. Bob McKinney is the Appalachia Water Project manager for DigDeep, a nonprofit that works to provide water to Americans who wouldn't otherwise have access. He says he estimates that about half of McDowell's population doesn't have reliable running water in their homes. - CBS News
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Humanity’s Greatest Ally Against Climate Change is Earth Itself

4/22/2021

 
Warming waters & worsening storms caused by climate change have weakened the kelp forests. Sewage & sediment spill onto them from cities on the shore. Most significantly, the demise of important predators such as otters and sea stars has led to an explosion in the population of sea urchins, which eat kelp. Huge swaths of underwater forest are being replaced by urchin “barrens” — denuded landscapes, desolate but for the spiky, spherical animals. Eventually, even the urchins start to starve.  Humans have put our planet on a path toward disaster. If people keep polluting at the current rate, scientists say, climate change will cause prolonged droughts, devastating storms, collapsing ecosystems and vanishing species. Coastal cities will be deluged by sea level rise; widespread food and water shortages will lead to the deaths of millions. To avoid this fate, civilization must rapidly transform — cutting carbon emissions 40 percent by 2030 and reaching “net zero” by the middle of the century. - Washington Post
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Unprecedented Energy Use Since 1950 Has Transformed Our Geologic Footprint

10/16/2020

 
In the past 70 years, humans have exceeded the energy consumption of the entire preceding 11,700 years—largely through combustion of fossil fuels. This huge increase in energy consumption has then allowed for a dramatic increase in human population, industrial activity, pollution, environmental degradation and climate change. - Phys.Org


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Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration

10/1/2020

 
Across the United States, some 162 million people — nearly 1 in 2 — will most likely experience a decline in the quality of their environment, namely more heat and less water. For 93 million of them, the changes could be particularly severe, and by 2070, our analysis suggests, if carbon emissions rise at extreme levels, at least 4 million Americans could find themselves living at the fringe, in places decidedly outside the ideal niche for human life. The cost of resisting the new climate reality is mounting. Florida officials have already acknowledged that defending some roadways against the sea will be unaffordable. And the nation’s federal flood-insurance program is for the first time requiring that some of its payouts be used to retreat from climate threats across the country. It will soon prove too expensive to maintain the status quo. - Pro Publica


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    GeoNews

    This is a way to share science-based info from reliable sources. Click the source link after text to read more. Use this Google Doc or this Google Slides template to summarize an article. An occasional podcast featuring news and topic experts will be included.

    The sources below often include quality energy, climate, & geology news.
      Geology.com
      EENews
      Wash Post Climate / Env
      NYTimes
      Bloomberg Green
      Grist Energy
    ​
      Grist Climate

    Contact Prof Jeff to share items.

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