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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Can there be too many trees?
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As a matter of fact, yes :-) Ever seen an area that's been burned or logged, and thousands of seedlings sprout? And as they grow, they crowd each other out, so that in a few years you have a dense stand. Then most of them die off, shaded out by the strongest or luckiest, and you have a patch that's mostly standing dead timber. A good place for me to get firewood, but likely to burn to the soil in the next fire.
While if you've ever seen a patch of old-growth forest of the same type of trees, they will generally be giants, fairly widely spaced.
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Originally Posted by IamIan
I've pointed out what is actually happening ... thus none of those are extraordinary claims ... rate of population growth % has been declining for over 40 years (true) ...
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This frankly seems like extraordinary blindness. It doesn't matter what the growth rate is. As long as it's a positive number, the population still grows. You're also ignoring the mountains of evidence showing that current population levels and practices are not sustainable. You are, it seems to me, just indulging in a lot of hand-waving, arguing that a bunch of 'and then a miracle occurs' changes will allow a larger population to be supported, but give us absolutely no reason to think that those miracles will appear on schedule.
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we do not currently utilize all the global space , resources, etc that would be possible for us to use (true)...
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But we over-use many resources that are limited, and not replaceable by others.
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You're claiming a greater total magnitude event of global extinction ... and more than 1,000x faster ... and without some of the contributing factors that were part of that event.
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Yes, because the fossil carbon burning of today is happening at least 1000x faster - a few centuries vs several hundred thousand years. The more rapid shock would, I think, produce more drastic results.