Past, present, and projected world population levels
Planetary carrying capacities
Ecological services
such as production of
food and oxygen
moderating climate, generating
rainfall
pollinating flowering
plants including crops)
recycling wastes
removing CO2 from the
atmosphere
Demographics
such as daily births and
deaths
daily net increase
and fertility rates -
births per woman per lifetime
Limiting factors
such as wastes
competition
disease,
aggression,
and
an environment's
limited capacity to accept, cleanse, and/or
recycle wastes
Notice that
(1) That
quite often, food is not the only, or even the
most immediate, limiting factor, and
(2) That "running
out of space" is not listed, as
organisms seldom squash themselves to
death because other limiting factors exert
their effects first.
Limits and Climb-and-collapse population curves
including overshoot
Unintended consequences
Climate
Overexploitation
Invasive species
Numerics
such as a cognitive understanding
of the enormous
difference between a MILLION and a BILLION
Exponential mathematics
the misleading,
deceptive, and powerful nature of an
exponential progression;
recognizing an exponential
progression;
understanding that most of the growth in
such a progression
occurs at the end of the sequence;
knowing that exponential
mathematics can convert
one cent into ten
million dollars in just thirty days - or
destroy a city like
Hiroshima in a matter of seconds;
correctly solve
riddles involving an exponential pro-
gression, and similar.
Thresholds
Tipping points
Ecological Release
Conservation biology
and the importance of
earth's biodiversity hotspots
Positive feedback loops
and their self amplifying,
self-intensifying behaviors
Negative feedback loops
and the stabilizing role that they can often play
Lag-times and delayed feedbacks
and the dangers they present in responding to change
Earth's oceans as a thin film
and earth's atmosphere as well
That we currently add approximately one billion
extra persons to world
population every twelve
to fifteen years
That despite declining birth rates in Europe and
several developed nations, population growth in Africa, the Middle East, and many less developed countries (LDCs) is still
following dangerous exponential patterns
That historically, population projections have
often underestimated actual population levels that eventually emerge
That current complacency about population growth
over the coming decades may be unjustified due to likely advances in medicine, genomics, and life extension.
