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There's many times more insects than anything else: but they're insects, not people. I don't think the number of mice that the planet can support proves how many humans it can support.

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The human population is now so large and growing so rapidly that even popular magazines are referring to the possibility of a "demographic winter" (Time 1991). The current population of 5.5 billion, growing at an annual rate of 1.7%, will add approximately 93 million people this year, equivalent to more than the population of Mexico (unless otherwise noted, demographic statistics are from, or projected from, PRB 1991).

The slow progress in reducing fertility in recent years is reflected in the repeated upward revisions of United Nations projections (UNFPA 1991). The current estimate for the 2025 population is 8.5 billion, with growth eventually leveling off at approximately 11.6 billion around 2150. These projections are based on optimistic assumptions of continued declines in population growth rates.

Despite the tremendous uncertainty inherent in any population projections, it is clear that in the next century Earth will be faced with having to support at least twice its current human population. Whether the life support systems of the planet can sustain the impact of so many people is not at all certain.

Ecologists define carrying capacity as the maximal population size of a given species that an area can support without reducing its ability to support the same species in the future. Specifically, it is "a measure of the amount of renewable resources in the environment in units of the number of organisms these resources can support" (Roughgarden 1979, p. 305) and is specified as K in the biological literature.

Carrying capacity is a function of characteristics of both the area and the organism. A larger or richer area will, ceteris paribus, have a higher carrying capacity. Similarly, a given area will be able to support a larger population of a species with relatively low energetic requirements (e.g., lizards) than one at the same trophic level with high energetic requirements (e.g., birds of the same individual body mass as the lizards). The carrying capacity of an area with constant size and richness would be expected to change only as fast as organisms evolve different resource requirements. Though the concept is clear, carrying capacity is usually difficult to estimate.

For human beings, the matter is complicated by two factors: substantial individual differences in types and quantities of resources consumed and rapid cultural (including technological) evolution of the types and quantities of resources supplying each unit of consumption. Thus, carrying capacity varies markedly with culture and level of economic development.

Carrying capacity today. Given current technologies, levels of consumption, and socioeconomic organization, has ingenuity made today's population sustainable? The answer to this question is clearly no, by a simple standard. The current population of 5.5 billion is being maintained only through the exhaustion and dispersion of a one-time inheritance of natural capital (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990), including topsoil, groundwater, and biodiversity. The rapid depletion of these essential resources, coupled with a worldwide degradation of land (Jacobs 1991, Myers 1984, Postel 1989) and atmospheric quality (Jones and Wigley 1989, Schneider 1990), indicate that the human enterprise has not only exceeded its current social carrying capacity, but it is actually reducing future potential biophysical carrying capacities by depleting essential nautral capital stocks.

Carrying capacity for saints. Two general assertions could support a claim that today's overshoot of social carrying capacity is temporary. The first is that people will alter their lifestyles (lower consumption, A in the I = PAT equation) and thereby reduce their impact. Although we strongly encourage such changes in lifestyle, we believe the development of policies to bring the population to (or below) social carrying capacity requires defining human beings as the animals now in existence. Planning a world for highly cooperative, antimaterialistic, ecologically sensitive vegetarians would be of little value in correcting today's situation. In short, it seems prudent to evaluate the problem of sustainability for selfish, myopic people who are poorly organized politically, socially, and economically. http://dieoff.org/page112.htm

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I know they know exactly what they're doing. There's probably not a huge gap between man and squirrel in intelligence. Squirrels and mice both can figure out fairly complex machinery. I'm sure they can figure out where trees come from. It's not rocket science.

But okay, you want proof? Here's just a small inkling of it: If a squirrel didn't know jack about trees, then why would it wander all over the yard and plant trees 10 to 20 feet apart? Why wouldn't he just bury them all in the same place? Also, why bury them at a seed-depth. Why not just stockpile them in a warren. Oh, I'm sure he does the latter. Those are the ones he intends to eat. The squirrel who digs up nuts is the one who miscalculated, and ran out of food. But that's his backup plan.

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Red squirrels store conifer cones in middens, or piles, instead of burying them like their larger cousins do. The middens made by red squirrels can be up to 30 feet across and 1.5 feet deep!

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In temperate regions early spring is the hardest time of year for squirrels, since buried nuts begin to sprout and are no longer available for the squirrel to eat, and new food sources have not become available yet. During these times squirrels rely heavily on the buds of trees.

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To protect their winter food stocks from potential thieves, they put on an elaborate show of burying non-existent nuts and seeds, a study has shown.

Scientists say the fake burials are designed to confuse any rival squirrels, birds or humans who might be watching.

The incidence of fake burials goes up when they think their food is under threat. Dr Steele recruited a group of undergraduates to follow the squirrels and find out where they were burying food. The number of bogus interments shot up as soon as the human volunteers began to raid the food stocks - suggesting that the creatures were becoming even more deceptive as a reaction to the raids.

Experts are divided on whether the latest research means they are capable of reason or whether they simply get into routines which work for them.

Dr Lisa Leaver at the University of Exeter said: "They may just have learned through trial and error that certain behaviours protect their food from theft."

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I have always looked askance at folk who keep tellin me humans are wicked, nasty sociopaths who need to be controlled "for their own good" along with a heap of social darwinist crap

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remaining poor is the only way to live in the US….who are largely in a condition I consider little better than slavery….who are largely in a condition I consider little better than slavery….it is a slave state….Most Americans live in quarters that are smaller than a commercial rest room, and less clean….Given that they're roughly as intelligent as humans, the idea that this, so essential to their survival, is a concept that eludes them is preposterous….This is because academics are at heart all religious human supremacists….There's no difference between a mouse and a human other than metabolic rate, size, and the whole furry belly long tail thing. But biochemically, no….

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All animal intelligence tests show that there are a fair number of animals that are substantially smarter than humans.

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Please feel free to accept facts and accepted theories of intellectuals, but don't expect me to give them any more credence than your average edict from any other religious zealot….

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Most people in the world would give their right arm (or in many cases their right kidney) to live in a country like America or Australia or any country in Western Europe. They sure as hell aren't risking life and limb because they love baseball… For many to live in poverty in these countries is to live pretty well....Someone born elsewhere once said to me that I didn't realise that being born in a country like Australia (or America or Britian et al) you've pretty much won the lottery in the eyes of most of the world population.

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It's not my job to educate you.

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I don't think anything I posted is in any serious doubt.

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What is beyond the bounds of reality to you is well recorded scientific fact to me.

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I suspect your background here is academic, and I mean no slight to say that it is therefore academic. What you have been told, which is what academia is, a collection of what you've been told, in lectures and in books, is itself a form of religious creationism which pretends to be science.

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My supposition that intellectualism is a religion and not a science is based on experience. It clings to its dogma like nothing else. It lives in abject terror that it might have to let its accepted premises stand the test of actual trial and error.

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to put America, Australia and Western Europe into one sentence as equals is beyond ignorance.

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Now we're a destitute nation of subsistence slavery. If you don't believe me, visit the US sometime.

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live in a small apt or trailer, and they own nothing. Debts outweigh assets, and they achieve economic freedom in poverty at the time of retirement. Statistically, two years later, they are dead. That's just raw statistics.

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The standard of living in the United States is one of the top 20 in the world by the standards economists use as measures of standards of living. Per capita income is high but also less evenly distributed than in most other developed countries; as a result, the United States fares particularly well in measures of average material well being that do not place weight on equality aspects.

On comprehensive measures such as the UN Human Development Index the United States is always in the top twenty, currently ranking 15th. On the Human Poverty Index the United States ranked 16th, one rank below the United Kingdom and one rank above Ireland.[4] On the Economist's quality-of-life index the United States ranked 13th, in between Finland and Canada, scoring 7.6 out of a possible 10. The highest given score of 8.3 was applied to Ireland. This particular index takes into account a variety of socio-economic variables including GDP per capita, life expectancy, political stability, family life, community life, gender equality, and job security.[5]

The homeownership rate is relatively high compared to other post-industrial nations. In 2005, 69% of Americans resided in their own homes, roughly the same percentage as in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Israel and Canada.[6][7][8] Residents of the United States also enjoy a high access to consumer goods. Americans enjoy more radios per capita than any other nation [9] and more televisions and personal computers per capita than any other large nation.[10][11]

The median income is $43,318 per household ($26,000 per household member)[1] with 42% of households having two income earners.[12] Meanwhile, the median income of the average American age 25+ was roughly $32,000[2] ($39,000 if only counting those employed full-time between the ages of 25 to 64) in 2005.[3] According to the CIA the gini index which measures income inequality (the higher the less equal the income distribution) was clocked at 45.0 in 2005,[13] compared to 32.0 in the European Union[14] and 28.3 in Germany.[15] |The US has... a per capita GDP [PPP] of $42,000... The [recent] onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a "two-tier labor market"... Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households... The rise in GDP in 2004 and 2005 was undergirded by substantial gains in labor productivity... Long-term problems include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable trade and budget deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups.

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In good times and in bad, Americans are better off than most of the world. About 1.4 billion people of Earth's inhabitants live in abject poverty. A more meaningful comparison is with those who live in Europe, Japan, Australia and a handful of other members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The U.S. fares well, even when compared with its industrial peers.

The U.S.' per capita gross domestic product (GDP) ranks only 16th in the world, behind Ireland, Sweden, Australia, France and others. But this understates U.S. living standards. Adjusted for cost of living, U.S. is tops among large, industrialized nations. In the whole world, it trails only Qatar, Luxembourg, Norway, Singapore and Brunei.

In housing, the average U.S. family enjoys nearly twice as much living space as the Germans, French or Brits. Even the 20% of Americans with the lowest incomes tend to have larger residences than is typical for households in Western Europe. In food affordability, the U.S. shines: Just 5.7% of household spending is dedicated to food. Most European and Canadian households devote between 9% and 14% to feeding their families. For Japanese consumers, food takes nearly 15% of household spending.

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