Last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service, an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), received results from an extensive study showing that the north Pacific humpback whale population has been growing 4-7% a year over the past few decades.

But, is that sufficient reason to delist the humpback whale?

Environmentalists disagree.

Some say that emerging threats, such as climate change and ocean acidification, continue to endanger marine mammals.

Others, like Ralph Reeves, who chairs the cetacean specialist group at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), feel that conservationists must “embrace success,” and support delisting if populations have recovered.

There has been an international ban on commercial whaling since 1966.

Currently, researchers estimate that the global humpback population is about 60,000.

Slums in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

According to one of the studies— conducted by the United Nations and titled the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, smaller or poorer countries could be destroyed by disasters which would relatively affect little those places that are protected by size or wealth.

The study compared, for example, the impact of cyclones in the Philippines and Japan. While more people in Japan are exposed to cyclones, the estimated annual death toll from cyclones is 17 times higher in the Philippines!

The second study— conducted by the Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction, a grouping of private non-governmental groups, says that some isolated examples where communities acting on their own have found ways to lessen losses from disasters. However, the study warned that many governments were not even now making sufficient efforts to tackle catastrophes.

According to experts, the report prepared by the United Nations is the “the most ambitious effort ever to compare data on all kinds and scales of disasters against population and economic trends.”

Could overpopulation be the roots of all evil going on today? And do we have the solutions for it?

[NYTimes] Image via worldresourceinstitute

Their oldest boy, Joshua, and his wife, Anna, are three months along.

I love kids as much as the next guy. And I am a family name. However, 18 kids! More on the way. And, how much is 18 X 18. It’s 324 I think. And 324 x 18 = 5,832. In just three generations this family could be 5,800 strong. One hundred thousand strong in four generations.

Were this a small country, family planning, abortion activists and all such folk would be all over them. So, when are too many kids, too many? This is something that should be decided BEFORE a child is born, of course.

But, the Duggar Family … yeah, they are taxing our world’s resources.

Thinking out loud here… What if everyone in China had been like the Duggars when they heeded Mao’s cry to “Populate the Middle Kingdom”?

Today, I’ve just heard that Paul Krugman Won the Nobel Prize in Economics, but since I don’t know this guy (ashamed!), I had to Google it and find out more.

As to my surprise it wasn’t his housing bubble or financial warning that got a smile on my face, but his “thinking about food”. Supply, Demand, and English Food is one of his essays on how bad the British food used to be and how heavenly it tastes today.

There may be truth in what he said – that if you consider supply and demand, but I’d honestly like to know if people in less developed countries care how sophisticated their dinner is. They just thank God for the little “something” on their tables, instead of thinking macro-economics. There’s no such thing as bad-food for them.

Congratulations for the deserved prize, but how about we two talk a little about food? What would you say Mr. Krugman? Maybe this 9-year old would eat the “bad” British food, if not I’m sure those African farmers would.

Image via Alan Cordova

Reborn, born again, recycled, all seems the same to me. There’s a baby maker in Foutainhall, Scotland – near Edinburgh, who makes, well, um, babies. Except her babies are not real. For some, they are too much like real babies. They are crafted in vinyl and have become quite popular with collectors and nostalgic grandparents, not to mention parents who have lost their little ones.

I’m not buying it. A plastic baby can’t replace a real baby. Still, these babies are painted over several times to create the newborn skin feeling. They have mohair (not sure what that is) and eyelashes (I know what they are). The babies are also weighted to feel as heavy as a human baby.

So, why don’t people who buy these babies try the adoption thing? There are children looking for parents. Can you say India and China? Why would anybody want a plastic doll when they could have a living doll in need of a real parent? Our planet is crowded enough. Why recycle babies?

Our last question is if these babies need green diapers or not. Guess not, right?

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The challenge of a greener world will be the ever growing number of Earthlings to keep on track. The world population is expected to hit 7 billion by 2012, 10 billion in the 2050s.  It took 6000 years, give or take a few, to reach 6 billion in 1999. In just 13 years, another billion will be added. The world population was under 1 billion in 1800.

Medical and nutritional advances are given the credit. The good news is that the world population growth is slowing down. The population doubled from 3B to 6B in 40 years from 1959-1999. Growth is expected to be only 50% from 1999-2049. In 2050, global growth is expected to sloe to 0.5% from the current 1.2%.

In the meantime, the world is growing older. Currently, 1.5% of the world’s population is over 80 (estimate). In 2050, that number is expected to grow to 5%. By 2050, India is also expected to overtake China as the most populous nation.

Well, I done my part for world population growth, with a little help from my wife. We added a daughter to the crowd this year.

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