This article is dedicated to all sensible people on Earth starting a New Year 2024 today.
As we bid farewell to the Year of 2023 in a few hours ahead, I was thinking what I should write to end the old year?
Let us pause for a moment to think how long humanity can last on Earth if the human population continues to increase.
Every year there are more humans on
Earth than there were in the previous year. Each year the human species
occupies more room than on other species of life on this planet than in
previous years such that other species of life would eventually be crowded out
and be extinct. Would we believe that we can keep them in zoos instead? Let us
pause to ponder for a moment that there are about 25 trillion tons of all kinds
of other living creatures living and sharing a limited space with us in this
world, most of which belong to the plant kingdom. This ought to be since
animals depend on plants for oxygen and food to exist. This is so
even if we argue that there are carnivorous animals such as lions, tigers,
leopards, wolves, hyena, polar bear, cheetahs, giant panda, and even cats and
dogs.
Even though carnivores are a major
part of the food web they depend on other plant-eating herbivores for food
and nourishment until all animal life must depend on plants for their
existence.
No matter how long the food chain
goes from algae to herbivores, carnivores, to omnivores, all life depends on
plants that were the first to evolve, especially algae and planktons before
aquatic animals became possible.
Many aquatic animals such as
zooplankton, tadpoles, algae eater (algivore), small fish, crustaceans,
and water-dwelling insects eat algae as their primary food source. Snails,
crabs, and sea urchins also eat algae, but they are known to eat red slime
algae, green film algae, hair algae, brown film algae, and many other species
of algae in the saltwater. Other animals eat fish that feed on algae or
lions that feed on herbivores such as zebra, giraffe, buffaloes, warthog, and
antelope species and even elephants besides eating other carnivores as well. In
fact algae are the basis of different energy production for plants and
animals. Let’s look at what eats algae one by one down the food chain?
When one form of life is being
eaten, and another eating the eating animal in the long food chain the total
mass of the eater’s amounts does not exceed 10 % that of the eater. If the
eaters flourish too freely, then too much of the potential food is eaten and
famine sets in. The eaters die off and the eaten recovers. Overall, then the
total mass of animal life on Earth is approximately a tenth the total or 2.5
trillion tons.
Some of the animal life on Earth are human animals zoologically-speaking.
I make no apology for calling ourselves, including me, as a human animal. This label was not given by me, but by scientists who are expert zoologists. Here’s is what they classify us:
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animala (Animals)
Phylum: Chordata (animals with a notochord, dorsal hollow nerve cord, an endostyle or thyroid, pharyngeal slits, and a post-anal tail)
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates (examples: monkeys, apes and chimpanzees)
Suborder: Haplorhini
Infraorder: Simiiformes
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Homininae
Genus: Homo
Species: Homo sapiens
(Linnaeus, 1758)
As at the present moment in time of
writing in the year 2023 that shall end within a few hours the world human
population is 8.1 billion.
If we allow for evolving young
children, assuming the average weight of a human is 65 kg, then the total mass
of humanity is 5.3 x 10 11 kg (52,6500,000 metric tons).
But the total mass of other animals
on Earth is less than 10,000 times as much as human animals creeping on the
surface of this Earth. Since there are an estimated 2 million different animal
species competing for space with human species on Earth the mass of humans is
about 200 times as great if every species contributed equally to the total
mass. But unfortunately, the rise in human population far exceeds those
of other animal species. If this rapid increase in human animal population is
left unchecked, then the total mass of other animals’ life will only be less
than 4,800 times as much as human animals at the end of 2023.
If the doubling of humans continues unchecked, then in 423 years, in the year A.D. 2447 the total mass of human animals zoologically is equal to the total mass of all other animals on Earth. That’s a tremendous lot of doubling.
Can we afford all these doubling? In the last ten thousand years since the first human civilization, our population on this planet has doubled only a little over seven times. Can we afford to continue doubling our population a little over fifteen times in less than five hundred years?
For most of human history, the global population was a tiny fraction of what it is today. Over the last few centuries, the human population has gone through an extraordinary change. In 1800, there were one billion people. Today there are more than 8 billion of us. This growth includes not just birth, but death rates, the net sum of. You may check the human population growth yourself.
If the total mass of human animals
becomes equal to the total mass of all other animals sharing a limited space
here on this Earth in A.D 2446, it would take all the plant life on this planet
to feed all the vast humans alone who hopefully will still be alive. The total
mass of humanity and the total mass of all other animals will be equal, and
there will be no room at all, no room, no room at all for any other animals
except for human animals.
By then it will not just be rare and endangered species like tigers, Amur leopards, black rhino, Bornean orangutan, cross river
gorilla, hawksbill turtles that will be gone, but even cats and dogs will be
gone forever. There is just no room at all for any other animals that includes
birds, frogs, squirrels, crocodiles, elephants and giraffes, but only human
animals will be left in just five hundred more years to go at the present rate
of human explosions in a world initially given to plants. There would also be
no room for eligible plants to grow for sure except for remnants of tree
trunks, wood, barks and roots. Maybe the tide of humanity may have to go back
to the time when simple organisms first appeared on this planet 3.7 billion
years ago and learn how to mass culture these microorganisms that first gave
life on earth. That would be the only edible food left for humans as it was for
all other animals from the
fossil record around 574 million years ago. The arrival of other animals
appears as a sudden 'explosion' in rocks from the Cambrian period 539 million
years ago to 485 million years ago.
In A.D. 2446, which is 422 years from this first day of this new year of
2024 there will be only human creatures left creeping on the surface of Earth
except over the oceans. They would have to live on plant paste, and there would
be no other life or animal left to compete with human animals for food.
Since plants that produce food through photosynthesis may also have to
compete with human animals for space, advances in science may force humans to
produce other forms of food synthetically using solar energy similar to
photosynthesis, making plants redundant. This may be a dream without
considering the presence of plants that provide the recycling of carbon dioxide
into oxygen. Even if humans think they can recycle accumulating carbon dioxide
into oxygen without plants, but at the rate of human population increase by
doubling himself every generation at the present rate, then by the year A.D.
3500 – 1,476 years from the beginning of this new year in 2024, the mass of
human animals will be equal to the mass of this Earth. But of course, this is
practically not possible since the mass of Earth is fixed at 6 x
10 24 kg or 6 x 10 21 (6, followed by
21 zeros metric tons). Earth cannot get extra mass just because of human
population increase. What was extracted out from Earth shall be put back to
Earth with no net gain or loss.
Fortunately there is hope for humanity with signs of declining population in certain countries such as Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, Japan, and even China currently the most populous country in the world as in the year 2023 that has just ended with further decline hopefully begining with a fresh morning today, January 1, 2024.
If not checked, perhaps humanity may think of
venturing out into space to occupy other worlds to do the same. But if we were to continue
multiplying at this rate, mathematical calculation would tell us that by the
year A.D. 6,800, that is 4,776 years from the beginning of this New Year 2024
this article is written, the mass of humans would be equal to the mass of the
entire Universe.
So, we need drastically to do something about our insane increase, no
matter how we are going to do this, we must do it the right way. But if we are
unable, then it is not the other animals that will disappear first, but it will
be us – humans animals creeping all over the surface of this Earth that will be
the endangered species. We were the last to appear on Earth, but we shall
also be the first to disappear from this planet. All other animals
considered to be the meekest and the humblest of life God created, shall take
over Earth once again, and Earth shall regain her former glory where the
meekest of animals like planktons and algae that were the first to appear on
Earth, shall reign over this this Earth once again as foretold by Jesus.
Jesus also said it is also best for women to be baren and not to have children as children will add to the misery of overpopulation
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
(Matthew 5:5)
For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!’
(Luke 23:29)
See also article:
“Our
Dilemma of Over Population”, published on Monday, August 1, 2022 here:
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=over+population
3 comments:
A first-class article to end the old year 2023 to begin a new one how humanity shall end with Nature regaining her glory once again when we are gone with the lower creatures taking over to fulfil the prophecy of Jesus: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”
(Mathew 5:5)
Beautifully written with such intellectual foresight
Happy New Year 2024 to you Dr Lim
Great thoughts to begin the year 2024
Wow! We never thought our selfish reprouction will bring to our own destruction of all life on earth including ours.
Great thoughts penning this alarm for all humanity
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