How climate change could make Earth's space junk problem even worse

[Admin]

Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases decrease the atmosphere's ability to devour space junk, a new study finds.

How climate change could make Earth's space junk problem even worse : Read more

 

[magnoflux]

Climate change is linked to global population explosion as 50% of CO2 emissions are caused by the building of houses and infra structure out of cement which is burnt limestone. Electrifying cars would only save 1% CO2 emissions.
Answer is to encourage every country to limit its family size to 2 children.

See the worldometer stats

Population by Country (2025) - Worldometer

List of countries and dependencies in the world ranked by population, from the most populated. Growth rate, median age, fertility rate, area, density, population density, urbanization, urban population, share of world population.

www.worldometers.info

The countries with under 2 kids are the most prosperous and have the highest standard of living as they only need to build a few replacement homes and their children are really happy as they just inherit their parents houses.

But for those countries with over 3 children building more homes is causing global warming and with countries with over 5 a huge housing crisis with most people living in slums or worse still, in refugee camps in dire poverty which is terribly sad.

 

[Classical Motion]

I don’t believe any of those past facts, or the article’s facts, are relevant. Just China and India alone, and just to supply domestic use, more fossil emission is coming, much more than all previous emissions combined. And population has nothing to do with it.

Domestic, manufacturing and industrial energy……. Will wait in line after AI demands.

AI will demand more fossil fuel than ever before. All data will be permanently electrified. So it can be accessed by thousands of AIs. Not to mention the crunching of it.

AI will make coal king.

They just haven’t told us yet.

 

[magnoflux]

Global warming is linked to population increase because at end of world war 2 there were just 2 billion people. See data https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-historical
Now population 8 billion which means in just 80 years we have quadrupled all housing and roads etc ever build in the past 10,000 years and we have archaeological records to substantiate that claim .
It is not just the individuals CO2 breaths that counts but all the house and roads he builds plus his food, heat, cars, entertainment that he uses that increase the CO2 emissions the major one being the 50% construction emissions.
AI needs just one huge data centre but it must be accessible worldwide to everyone all the time.
Problem is bad actors or accidental implants corrupting the data which means that every country, state department, bank, wants its own protected data centre which is a ridiculous waste of energy but how to firm the mainframe data???

 

[Unclear Engineer]

While I basically agree that human population increase is the root cause of increasing human caused climate effects, it is not a simple relationship.

The more "affluent" countries are emitting the most CO2 per capita, but not necessarily increasing their populations by births. In-migrations of populations from less affluent countries are what is increasing the populations of the most affluent countries.

But the affluent countries are increasing their affluence by doing the manufacturing and agriculture required for feeding much more destitute populations in other countries. But, those populations are not necessarily living in concrete structures, or even driving on paved roads. so, their per capita emissions in their own countries look small.

However, those less affluent populations aspire to become affluent, and cause the same level of CO2 emissions as they see others have done. So, they tend to migrate to the affluent countries or try to industrialize where they live.

So, to really understand what amount of CO2 is emitted to support what populations, you need to track where the populations are born, and both where the products get consumed, and where the money collects and gets used for "recreational" purposes that do not directly support survival.

There are also other parameters, but those are the 2 biggest ones. A third that is not so tiny is the military preparedness and conflicts between populations. That is the "military industrial complex" and its requirements, starting with mining, going into manufacturing and transportation, and culminating in stock piles and explosions of weapons.

It is too easy to look at just parts of the data and cherry pick what you want to support the conclusion that it is "their fault" not "our fault".

Even where populations are having birth rates below replacement values, I believe that is more due to the stresses imposed on the populations than by some altruistic belief that they need to stop the global population increase. Being in an "affluent" society is not so wonderfully stress free as those outside of it tend to think that it is.

 

[magnoflux]

I want everyone to be prosperous and have a high standard of living and to achieve that is simple; only have 2 children per family.
UN is correctly supplying free aid but needs to insist with its $6 billion budget that it is used to primarily to improve the poorer countries infra structure which is possible only if the average family have only 2 kids. If 3 or above then no amount of aid will be able to catch up . Family planning and free contraception aid is needed to stop future global warming.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Getting enough people to agree to have only 2 children per "family" is the problem.

If you look at places like refugee camps and even slums in cities, where people are more or less subsidized in squalor, the birth rates are high. And the people who are being asked to do the work to make the money to pay for the subsidies are getting less tolerant of the stresses that causes on them. It is causing political backlashes in many parts of the world, now.

Trying not to get into politics here, but many of the programs Magnoflux is touting from the UN and US are getting shut down by political backlash. And, using the strife in Gaza as another example, the initial population of refugees was about 700,000, but they were not allowed to be assimilated into other countries, so were basically subsidized in-place for 70+ years, during which the population increased by about a factor of 7. And, the result is a continuing war over land. The same land that has been fought over for all of recorded history.

How do we get humanity overall to change its ways? Talking about saving the environment just does not get much priority from people who are more focused on just surviving, themselves. And, the people whose survival is not in immediate jeopardy are still worried about threats from others to their ways of more comfortable lives.

Those problems are caused by over population, but they also seem to cause population increases.

Are humans collectively smart enough to voluntarily change ourselves sufficiently to stabilize our population at a level that our planet's ecosystem can sustain? I am hoping we are, but I would not bet on it. We seem to be more willing to rationalize than to actually be rational.

 

[magnoflux]

QUOTE "using the strife in Gaza as another example, the initial population of refugees was about 700,000, but they were not allowed to be assimilated into other countries, so were basically subsidized in-place for 70+ years,"
Now 2.6 million people to deal with because no requirement to limit family size to 2 children or free contraception was granted by UN with their other subsidies.
Gaza needs Hamas to admit it is defeated are go into voluntary exile with their families in tow.
Average family has 4 kids so Hamas families and their supporters families about half the population number about 300.000 families who need to go into exile by asking UN to grant them refugee status and issuing their whole family with free transport to any country that will accept them.
Arab states will presumable be their favourite choices but if their choice have insufficient housing then their chosen country could pay other countries to take them in like China which has a huge apartment surplus at present thus reducing CO2 emissions in new buildings.
Presumably the other half of population mostly older residents and business people will choose to stay on, in which case why not split Gaza into two with the north side applying for an Israel passport and southern Gaza side for Egyptian passport splitting the demolition and tidying up work in two. Hopefully, once that tidying up is finished they can each build a self sufficient economy with just 2 children per family who can inherit their parents houses and have an excellent standard of living in their beautiful climate.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Magnaflux, the problems in the Middle East, and elsewhere, are largely due to competition for land and resources "on the ground" and competition for control within national boundaries.

One of the reasons that Egypt does not want to let Palestinians enter Egypt is that the Egyptian Government fears that they might take over the Sinai area and affect the Canal traffic. Or, if absorbed into the total population, change the voting ratio to favor more radical religious priorities, internally and in foreign policy.

Limiting "you own" population while "others" do not limit theirs is a non-starter idea there and most everywhere else. And, in places like Japan, which is "suffering" from population decline and successfully resistant to immigration by other races/cultures, the goal is to increase population. And, until recently, the Japanese have been "shielded" by the U.S. against foreign invasion, against which a large population, as well as industrial capability and capacity, is important to national security - so that probably is not even a factor, there. But, they still are not happy about their population decline.

However, most ecologists seem to think that total world population must decline to stabilize our planet's ecosystem. That is not just a "climate change" issue - it is a freshwater availability, forest products availability, even food availability set of interconnected issues. To which are added war effects and chemical pollution issues and extinctions of other species.

 

[magnoflux]

Parents should love, guide and honour their children. The Victoria idea of little children should be seen and not heard is totally unacceptable.
I can remember large families where the father would tell off a child but call him by his brothers name! What an insult, how can that father say he loves that child if he cannot even recognise him?
No problem if parents only have 2 children ; their kids are special, always nearby and they will do their upmost to support them individually even after they have left your home. More importantly, parents can prepare a worthwhile inheritance for them individually.
To save the planet from global warming we must have smaller loving families.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Still trying to stay out of politics, I will just cite the Chinese attempt to limit their population growth. To some degree, it worked, in that the rapidly increasing population has become a (slightly) decreasing population. But, it was not done with nice persuasion, it was accomplished with pretty severe threat and even use of force on the entire population by a totalitarian government.

And, that policy was abandoned due to its economic and sociological side effects. Now the government is trying to increase birth rate there.

China did try for too much reduction too fast with its one child per family policy. Two per family would probably have been more sustainable. Working people there now are complaining that they each have 2 parents and 4 grandparents to support. They hardly have time to pay attention to children.

So, now India is the most populous nation on our planet, with much less space per capita than China has. It is not trying to control its population, so we will see how that tops out. If you extrapolate the population density in India to the rest of the habitable land on Earth, it comes to a total population of about 50 billion.

Economists keep telling us that population stabilizes when the individuals achieve a specific level of income. I think that is bunk. It fails to properly deal with the migration parameters and subpopulation parameters.

My opinion is that the population of self-sufficient middle income people stabilizes and even declines as they try to support the non-self-supporting parts of populations, due to the additional stresses involved. But, the total population will continue to increase because the poor people do not limit their number of children, and become an increasing fraction of the total population. That leads some to propose that the solution is to eliminate poverty. But, you can't actually eliminate poverty with subsidies. Perhaps we can eliminate poverty with better education for all. But, that is not a clear path either.

Regarding what constitutes a "perfect family", there is a wide variety of opinion as to whether both parents should work outside the home, how to deal with long-term medical incapacitation of parents and children, amount of responsibility for family duties that should be placed on children, even whether and how to discipline children who do not "behave".

Probably nobody's opinion of what a "perfect" family should be like is universally applicable. There is too much variability in personalities and environment. I tend to think of it as an ongoing experiment.

 

[magnoflux]

Agreed, but the UN was set up in 1945 with the following objectives Wiki quote " The UN Charter mandates the UN and its member states to maintain international peace and security, uphold international law, achieve "higher standards of living" for their citizens, address "economic, social, health, and related problems", and promote "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion".[2] As a charter and constituent treaty, its rules and obligations are binding on all members and supersede those of other treaties."
So UN need to "achieve higher standards of living" but exploding population is leading to poverty in many member states and must be address by UN urgently to avoid global warming.
See worldometers website to see where the most assistance is needed.

Population by Country (2025) - Worldometer

List of countries and dependencies in the world ranked by population, from the most populated. Growth rate, median age, fertility rate, area, density, population density, urbanization, urban population, share of world population.

www.worldometers.info

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Please note that the UN Charter, the Ten Commandments, and many other written documents have failed to achieve their stated objectives. Laws, regulations, customs, taboos, etc. are all regularly broken.

There is also the problem that those given enough power to actually enforce such things all too frequently abuse those powers to avoid compliance for themselves and their favored few.

That is the nature of us humans.

Writing objectives is only the first step.

We seem hung-up getting to the second step - compliance.