Numbers of the Beast. The Manburger Box.

This xombyte is an account. It is a true story. Obliquely, it has to do with the Meaning of Life.

This story has a beginning. It has content. And this story has an ending.

This story "even quot; has a conclusion.

Yes, even when it seems 'Life' has no purpose or content or substance, Your Stories should contain and relate content or substance. This one does, and I hope you enjoy it.

This story of an illustration is an illustration.

It will literally illustrate some things you likely have never thought or felt.

Numbers of the Beast. The Manburger Box.

This xombyte is an account. It is a true story. Obliquely, it has to do with the Meaning of Life.

This story has a beginning. It has content. And this story has an ending.

This story "even" has a conclusion.

Yes, even when it seems 'Life' has no purpose or content or substance, Your Stories should contain and relate content or substance. This one does, and I hope you enjoy it.

This story of an illustration is an illustration.

It will literally illustrate some things you likely have never thought or felt.

 

Image: NASA, Goddard

It begins:

Many years ago, a beautiful young woman, a student from Hong Kong, moved with her parents to the City of Houston.

The move to Houston occurred several years before the British lease of Hong Kong ended.

Susana posted a question to one of the science newsgroups, probably sciastro, but it could have been any one of the science newsgroups.

There Susana posted a request for help in getting a "perspective on population." She wanted to obtain a characterization of the "scale" of human population.

I returned a brief response. Then, Susana engaged me via e-mail, and solicited help. And I responded.

I had been writing an article on the subject she was exploring. So, I "tuned" it for her.

Susana's question was an intricate question. It reflected her complex, young, and startlingly beautiful mind.

Some of you know what a "beautiful mind" looks like. Some of you don't.

Susana's question, in part, dealt with how many people "lived" on planet Earth; in part, her question dealt with "what" these many many many people were doing to Earth; and in part, how could she characterize it for a class she was taking?

To put her question in personal terms, I counted YOU, and HER, and ME, and many, many, many others as part of the whole human complex. In other words, every one counts, each and every one is important. Each of us must count for something, and be counted as significant.

HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE THERE? Are you being counted? Do YOU count?

In those heady days, a decade and some ago, the world's human population was something like 5.5 billion, and each of those people counted for something. Many of you remember those days, last century. (At least I counted you. From that alone, you gotta know you counted for something.)

POPULATION by The Tick of Time:

Image: US Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov

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But world population is NOW approaching 6.7 billion.

A variety of Clocks on the web, Click to a list.

Find one you like -- I like them all!

I think I was using a UN site when I wrote a characterization for Susana.

For this characterization of the true story, updated for the present, I am going to use the number "6,700,212,563" which is a near future number from the Berkeley page "popclock" of Galen Huntington. This is a number his program yields for about a year from now. September 20, 2008 = 6700212563.

Other clocks will yield other numbers.

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THE MEANING OF THE NUMBER: 6,700,212,563

--The Number of the Beasts--

Wherever you are, wherever on this world you live -- YOU are in that number somewhere. (Me too!) With a number that has "meaning," we can convert it into something all of us can visualize! Otherwise it is just a "Number."

Do we count you, or leave you out? If we leave you "out" that means you are no longer with us; you died.

Since I am looking at a projection of population for 1 year (or so) from now, and even though YOU are a part of that number -- a unit within it -- will YOU be here as a part of this "number of us" in one year? Or should I figure this illustration with 6700212562, people, leaving YOU out?

One of the websites also has a "death clock." It tells how many people die as the seconds of time tick by. Right now there are more people being born than are dying, and the increase is a little less than three (3) people per second. This graphic shows what the US Census Bureau thinks is the "growth" rate of world population:

July 2007 version of Census Bureau growth rate of population.
Image: from US Census

The Population Illustration -- Part One -- The Line. Scale in One Dimension.

Stay in line!

A great many of you stand in a "line" or a queue to do something. (I do not like lines -- though I have been in my share of linear circumstances) But you do it, most of you, to go to a movie, to go to a restaurant, to get into a dancing-drinking ear-damaging musical establishment -- where you can do whatever you want to do when you get to the end of the line. What you do when you get there is of no concern in this visualization.

But the line, the queue -- that is what I'm interested in using for illustration.

Let us compose a line of every man, woman, and child, with a distance of one meter between each standing point in the queue. That is, slightly more than three feet (39.37 inches; or 1.09361 yards) between each mark to stand upon.

Directly below is a literal written characterization of the line, a spacious queue, in written form (and it should tickle you as a writer. If not, you probably, literally, aren't a writer.) :

"person -- 1 meter -- person -- 1 meter -- person -- 1 meter -- person -- 1 meter -- person -- 1 meter . . . "

Of course, the ellipsis, as used here, indicates the line continues . . . Just like in mathematics, to indicate an implied series. There it is; I wrote a line! A descriptive line of people (persons?) and without descriptions of them, that is about the way a line can be rendered literally!

That works out to a queue 6,700,212.563 kilometers long. That is a distance of 4,163,319.0669 miles or 17.3 times as far as it is to the Moon. This people-queue would wrap around the Earth's equator some 167.2 times and the shuttle could orbit for 9.9 days crossing above each person only once.

During the 9.9 days the shuttle takes to pass over each human once, the queue, the line, extends itself by 211,086 meters a day (211.086 km/day or 131.162 miles per day) longer than it was the day before. That is line growth at 8.8 km/hour or 5.5 miles/ hour) a bit too fast for a walk, but fine for a jogger; a jogger with true stamina. Joggers, could you keep up with the extending line for a day? Any distance runners?

The line increases by 2089.75 km(1298.5 miles) in the time it takes the orbiting shuttle to reach the end of the human line, the 9.9 days after it sped across the beginning of the line!

This line of people is 4.8 times the Sun's diameter.

If this number were a measure of time, where each human represented one year, that time in years would be 1.467 times the age of the Sun and Earth.

That time in years would be roughly half the age of the universe.

But in seconds of time this 6,700,212,563 seconds = 212 years 4 months and change.

6 billion 700 million 212 thousand, 563 is a large number. Many large numbers (of things) exist in nature.

For example, if we have 6,700,212,563 molecules of water, one for each person, how much does that quantity of water weigh? ( 2.00445 x 10^-13grams which would be such a tiny drop of water as to be visible only in your normal biological laboratory optical microscope. This would be about a fourth the size of an Escherichia Coli Bacterium (7x10^ -13 grams.)

But if you were to divide the Stars of our home galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy among the population of Earth, and give all the stars human ownership, each human would own 60 stars!

What color of stars do you like? (They come in all colors of light.) Of course, I must say I hope you like red stars, since most of the Milky Way Galaxy's stars are red dwarf stars -- stars whose internal nuclear fire burning lifetimes are in the hundred billion to several trillions of years, according to our grasp of the way Stars are fired.

Think of it! Our Sun will become a red giant a white dwarf, then a black dwarf, (a cold white dwarf ember) in the time the slow burning red dwarfs take to embark upon and then reach maturity! We yet know the young red dwarfs "flare", possibly a result of the metallicity of the dwarf. But I mention this because those cool little campfire kind of stars virtually explode with a doubling or more of their energy output in seconds or minutes or hours and if you were to camp around one of your 60 suns, watch out for the flares of the dwarfs. Metallicity? Anything heavier than Helium in Astronomy, is traditionally a "metal."

The universe's count of stars is a very large number, with the number of galaxies probably in the range of billions of galaxies, or even hundreds of billions of galaxies. Imagine owning 600 billion stars! What would you do with even one?

And yet, the number of fundamental particles, the particles smaller than atoms in the universe is thought to be in the 10 ^ 80 or so range.

I suggest, if you want to believe in God, you might want to be sure that the God you believe in is very large, or very integral, that is, deeply and intimately embedded into the fabric of a very large universe. Compared to us and our numbers, it is a very large universe.

Still, for a planet, like Earth, that is a large number of people. 6,700,212,563 people. Are you able to get a feel for the scale of humanity? Perhaps a hint of the scale at least?

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The Population Illustration -- Part Two -- The State. Scale in Two Dimensions.

Okay? Now, how large an area would that many people standing occupy, not in a line, but in an "array." Like rows and columns? Like a large chess or checker board. Could world population cover a large chunk of desert or prairie or something like Utah's Lake Bonneville Salt Flats? You know, where they hold the land speed record challenges? Would that be large enough? (Yes, actually it would be.)

But we can figure this out. To illustrate, we provide each of the 6,700,212,563 people a stool and a square meter (10.764 square feet each) on which to sit or stand in columns and rows. How much space would that occupy. That is easy. An area of 6.7 billion square meters is how large?

Just take the square root of the number and you have how "long" and how "wide" the area is in meters that could be used to stand the entire human species.

The square root of 6,700,212,563 square meters = 81,854.826 meters on a side or roughly 81.855 km on a side (50.86 miles.) That is roughly an area of 2587 square miles(670029 hectares and 9241.439 square kilometers. Beaver County in Utah has an area of 2586 square miles, so it is an almost!.

The Human Square is roughly twice the area of Rhode Island. Human population could easily stand within the city limit area of Juneau, Alaska, and would need an area 3.4 times as large as Jacksonville (Duval County) Florida. Yes. Humans could stand comfortably within the borders of many counties, as well as many states and easily within all but a few nations.

The array of rows and columns filled with all the people of Earth has a density of 2,590,000 people per square mile. (I know, I should have allocated portable toilets, you know, the plastic or fiberglass kind used at temporary human gatherings, where there is a temporary over-population of the 'facilities'? Yes, I know -- we could calculate various quantities of various substances in relation to servicing the human square -- but I touch on it below in the Condo's part of this xombyte.)

Yes. Humanity, stood upon a square meter each, would not cover nearly as much area as most Western United States larger counties.

A square area on the surface of the Earth 51 miles, or 82 km on a side, would contain our species.

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Image: NASA In My original versions I had a diving board on the edge.

The Population Illustration -- Part Three -- The Box. Scale in Three Dimensions.

The Manburger Box.
Yes, Manburger.
Okay. Let's talk Meat. Let's talk Manburgers!

6,700,212,563 people, humans, friends and enemies, religious or not, god-fearing or not, young babies, kids, middle-aged, old, fat, skinny, perfectly built or imperfectly composed, beautiful or 'ugly'; ALL of them! -- what is the scale of our collective "volume."

In about 1972 the world population passed 4,000,000,000. 4 billion was such a nice number of humans to work with, simple --something you could get your mind easily around. And mentally manipulate.

Do this in your head! ? I'll show you what I mean.

How much does an average human weigh? Honestly, I have no exact idea. I know that some good looking women often weigh in the 125lb (56.7 kg) range. It depends on ethnic group, it depends on age; and many other factors so the best I can do is enlist a very reasonable approach.

4 billion people, little, big, babies, fat, skinny, slender -- I postulate on average, weigh about 125 lbs each.

That is not unreasonable considering the skinny and slender, the malnutrition group, the thin ones seem to outnumber the large and fat, and the children of course don't weigh 125 lbs. But the average works out to 125lbs. Why? (I want to make this "easy" to think about! That's Why!)

We humans are mostly water. A cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 lbs. Two cubic feet of water weighs 124.8 lbs -- and wow, how convenient! That is close enough for back of the envelope. But with 4,000,000,000 (4 billion) people as the world population--YOU can do this in your head!

Volume of Humanity with 4,000,000,000 people = 4 billion x 2 cubic feet = 8 billion cubic feet.

Okay 4,000,000,000 people occupy 8 billion cubic feet. The size of the box that could contain 4 billion humans is the cube root of 8 billion. Okay, all in your head. The cube root of 8 is 2, and the cube root of 1,000,000,000 is 1000. That means a cubic box 2,000 feet on a side!

A box 2000 feet on a side is a big box.

However, we humans could build one if we were properly motivated. We could leave the top open, and sink the whole box in solid rock. Then start dumping the meat in. The goo at the bottom when we get the box even half full is of manburger consistency. Ground to a pulp, prior to dumping in the box, and with seasonings and such -- manburgers, as a mass of meat, like spam, loaded with salt and preservatives to keep spoilage down -- could be prepared to feed armies of meat-eating alien invaders.

That was with 4 billion humans.

For next year's world of 6,700,212,563 humans how large need the Manburger Box be?

6,700,212,563 people x 2 cubic feet, = 13,400,425,126 cubic feet. Unlike 8 billion, we can't do this as easily in our heads. (At least I can't. When/if it reaches 27,000,000,000 . . ?)

So, breaking out the calculator, quick as a flash, we take the Cube Root of 13,400,425,126 cubic feet and this yields the value of 2375.2 feet on a side! Humanity still fits in a mine-able, build-able box! Large, but we have mines much larger by volume. The humanity box is 2375.2 feet.high, wide, and deep.(723.960 meters on a side.)

And everyone you know could fit inside. 13400425126 cubic feet x 62.4 lbs/ cubic feet yields a weight of 836,186,527,862.4 pounds of meat. The manburger inside weighs 418,093,264 tons.

If filled with 2 cubic foot units of water for each human, this is over 100 billion gallons. (100,242,140,793 gallons or 379,457,782,616 liters or kgs.)

The "bottom" of the box is supporting all the mass of manburger above in the Earth's gravitational field. Since the manburger is at least a little fluid, there is plenty of transfer of pressure to the wall and the floor. We will only calculate the pressure of the meat at the bottom of the box. The bottom area in square inches = (12 x 2375.2)^2 = 812,386,805.76 square inches. Or 5,241,194,716 square cm.

Lets say you are one of the first into the box! But you get to wear a hardsuit, a deep sea diving suit. These are called ADS( atmospheric dive suits) since you do not get wet and you never will get the bends. Could your best dive suit withstand the pressure?

The mass of humanity above you would exert on the bottom of the box a pressure of 1029 lbs per square inch, or 72.4kg/cm^2.

It turns out that the Navy's best hard suit is rated for 2000 feet depth. This manburger box is 375.2 feet deeper than the current best hardsuit can reach, in water..

Our man box is less than 1/2 mile on a side. A half a mile is 2640 feet. Although it is a squeeze, Mankind will fit in the described 2375.2 foot cubed box. So, if humanity can fit in a little old box, what is the problem with excessive human population?

By now, you can imagine what Susana is thinking about "the help" she is getting, can't you?

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Note on the word Manburger:

A group of editors and writers and contributors were having a scheduled meeting. The "Scale of Humanity", my little article had been circulated. It meant different things to different people. Everyone liked it, but the illustration of it with Cartoons or more vivid words was a conceptual log jam.

I had already computed the actual scale of humanity -- back in the early 1970's, when our numbers reached and passed 4 billion. This had been on my mind's back-burner for a long time. . . but in 1995 or so . . .

"If you put them in naked it saves space. If you get say to 10 or 12 layers deep, all you have is ground meat at the bottom. Man-burger, so to speak."

"I was thinking about a diving board on the edge of the box, and people lined up to jump in. You know, a kind of cartoon illustration. The line of people extends to the horizon . . ."

"It would work if you had a bunch of diving boards."

Another voice chimes in. "Just line 'em all along the edge of the box, all four sides, a thousand on each edge; have them jump in 4000 at a time. The edges of the box's bottom would fill first, but eventually the slope would flow into the middle."

"Manburger, huh? I was just thinking of a humorous illustration . . ."

A woman on the periphery of the discussion, "I don't think that's funny."

"It is just an illustration."

"You don't have to get defensive."

"Come up with some less descriptive visualizations and maybe we can put it in the newsletter. . ."

"I still don't think its funny."

A different woman. "Yeah. Well,I think it is hilarious. Nice way to visualize the vast numbers of people on the planet. Nice piece of creative writing. It also shows that our footprint does not have to be as large as it is becoming. Manburger might not be a good way to describe what comes out the bottom of the box, though. Yech."

---
I know everyone who read the original characterizations of the box of humans never forgot the imagery the descriptions conjured up. Yes, it does depend on your imagination.

I eventually withdrew the piece and the descriptions for consideration for the newsletter publication. Some people were disappointed. They could not get the images out of their heads . . . either. . .

More people were born than died. Population increased. The problems are becoming more pronounced.

=================================

But, for Susana, from Hong Kong, from Houston I wrote a further illustration.
=================================

The Population Illustration. Part Four. The Habi's. Scale an added Dimension!

Mankind in Luxury Condo's. . .

If Mankind, entire, can fit in the box less than a half-mile on a side, what's the problem?

Many problems we have are with the way we live.

Here are a couple:

Climate forcing quantities of CO2 is one of the problems. It is a complication of the energy we extract from fossil fuels -- the way we live now.

Destroying life around us: Eating too deeply (from the oceans) or forcing all the other life forms to extinction by the mindless exponential population increase of our numbers and consuming other species habitats or invading them, destroying life's legacy, and future. A big manburger box might be the appropriate 'just' solution. With the proper cleaning and grinding, like a processed Mack-Chicken Nugget, good food (like Soylent Green) can be made.

But another thing that occurred to me while outlining the scale of human population for the young student (Susana, in Houston), was a means of removing people from the environment being destroyed -- a better way perhaps, than grinding them into the manburger box. . .and of course, for some, maybe they would be better ground and served. (I'm thinking names, reasons, that kind of stuff. . .)

A solution!

Let us articulate a solution then. I start by asking you how large a floor space you think you need in your house, your home, your abode? In the United States we look at 2500 square feet (232.257 square meters) as a modest house, or home, for a family.

Look at Bill and Melinda Gates place: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1835+73rd+Ave+NE,+Medina,+WA+98039&ll=47.627635,-122.242813&spn=0.005042,0.009927&t=k&hl=en

Or http://local.live.com/default.aspx?cp=47.627515%7C-122.242272&style=h&lvl=17&v=1

Reportedly, much of the abode is underground. And some have said the estate is valued at from 57 to 97 million dollars. Somewhere I read the floor space was 40,000 square feet? Is that enough? An acre is 43,560 square feet and does not make a "pretty" square being about 208.7 feet on a side . But we have many commercial operations and business structures and buildings with a much larger footprint than one acre. In fact, that is a modest commercial building, but would be quite large for a dwelling.

This Bill Gates scale of things I could compute, but I will use luxurious enough and certainly modest values for the average people (like you and me) that populate the planet.

I want you ALL to move into the new huge buildings we will build and stop screwing up the planet! Stop forcing every other species except cockroaches and jellyfish and slime molds and poison algae into extinction. Leave the environment alone by removing yourself from it. I want to move you into an "apartment." A luxurious, you design it yourself, apartment.

The new program for humanity has some Rules. I won't delve into all of them I envision, but a few.

One of the rules is your human birthright.

In the basic form, I recommend each human born be endowed with a birthright of 4000 square feet of floorspace within the building, within the habitat. That is -- each human is allocated 4000 square feet (371.61 square meters) of floorspace as his personal space, his personal room, his territory. A family of 4 gets 16,000 square feet (1486.44 square meters) of floorspace abode to design and fill as they wish for their personal convenience. To do this takes incredible infrastructure; incredible support facilities, heating, cooling, sewer, water, power and light and transportation access to get around inside the building.. But do-able.

To do this, that is, to have infrastructure support for the human residents, I allocate each human a volume of 80,000 cubic feet (2265.3477 cubic meters.) That is, 4,000 square feet of footprint space. To support that 4,000 square feet of livable space, say 8 feet tall (ceiling height) , and having a volume of 32,000 cubic feet, the birthright of 80,000 cubic feet provides 48,000 cubic feet of additional space to support your "living" volume. you know, the sewer, and stuff like that, the sidewalk, the road, the power, and such things as needed to assure your comfort, and keep you alive.

Another way to think of this is that each human has 4000 square feet of room with a 20 foot high ceiling. Say 8 feet is open with a ceiling, and 12 feet is support structure, or the volume of space needed to supply water and sewage and air and heat and cooling and power and light for your abode.

No one cares how you shape or decorate your abode -- but your 32,000 cubic feet of domicile has a 48,000 cubic foot allotment to support it.

6,700,212,563 people x 80,000 cubic feet = 536,017,005,040,000 cubic feet (15,178,402,372,653.0665 cubic meters) of building to lavishly house our species.

----Or a building with 3641.471 cubic miles of volume (15,178.4023726530665 cubic km)-----

When you take the cube root of that volume number, it is a box 81,232 feet (24,759.51) meters on a side.

A CUBE 81,232 feet / 5280 feet/mile = 15.4 miles (24.75951 km) on a side.

A cube that size, sitting on the surface of the Earth rising to an elevation of 81,232 feet gets high enough into the thin air where there IS NOT enough partial pressure oxygen for us and other living animals to breathe.

Both you and your house pet would not be able to respirate, to breathe.

That is inconvenient, isn't it?

We can't conveniently make the building to house humankind that tall -- but we can make a large number of buildings of a moderate height.

So. We take our 81,232 foot tall cube and thin-slice it into 81 slices, 15.4 miles square. 80 slices are 1000 feet thick, say 50 floors, tall. And for the numbers I am using we leave one slice thicker, at 1232 feet tall.

These are "manageable" buildings, even if they are vast and 15.4 miles square. We build 81 of them, and each 1000 foot tall building holds 82,718,674 people. Imagine that! A population density of nearly 350,000 people per square mile -- each and everyone of them with a 4,000 square foot condo to design and fill as they choose.

To Susana, in Houston, I tried to explain that each of these buildings would be internally autonomous -- that is places to live and to work.

These 81 buildings are self-contained and keep human interference with the environment at a minimum.

Sure, farmers get to spend time, outside but mostly to do farm maintenance tasks still too complex for the robotic operators of the farms. Most degrees in Farming deal with cyber work and land management modifications to keep food production for the habitats at a sustainable level and to prevent invasive life forms from encroaching into food production areas. Other degrees in Farming are akin to bioscience in the development of foods that can produce foodstuffs with high efficiency and modest to lowered energy inputs -- through gene modifications that are kept from encroaching upon natural external systems or interfering with naturally evolving forms of life.

The residents "windows" would be electronic screens, but optical fibers could pipe sunlight miles from the Habi's skin to the interior, as well as focusing and optically conveying light from distant source collection locations. The inhabitants electronic wall-sized screens could be programmed for scenes from anywhere in the world. Say in the north you watch Greenland's ice melt with several high definition cameras, to which thousands or millions of other people may be linked. On another wall you link to the Grand Canyon South Rim panorama view watching the colors change as though you were there. Only a relative handful of scientists are allowed there now, but you never see anyone from the position of the cameras. Hawaii is on another wall, live surf but no one's surfing -- though in two weeks the sports competition there will be displayed live, a yearly competition with contestants drawn from the entire world. No one allowed there now. Surf training for your Habi occurs in one of the roof's artificial lakes where mechanical devices are able to generate artificial waves up to 15 meters high. Your cousin's (Julian's) boy, an 18 year-old, is one of the leading contestant who last year placed 4th in the world competition.

You have a job. Your job is done from your abode, and involves bacterial classification. You and a few hundred thousand others around the world are progressing toward the completion of the genome classification of bacteria. New methods of making proteins have been gleaned from your work and you have a real window in your part of the habitat, as one of the perks of learning a living, but giving back the knowledge you gleaned in your bacterial research. Not luck either, but examining the specific way some bacteria assemble proteins -- just hard knowledge work.

There is a busy airport on the roof. The engines that power flight burn hydrogen, and water collectors collect water out of the humidity in the air for the aircraft fuel from the condensers and water entrapment devices that cover several square miles of the roof near the airport. Picnics and even some outdoor camping are permitted in the 10 square miles reserved near the edge of the condensers. But reservations are required.

At thirteen years of age, each child is educated for an outdoors solo walkabout with a three day duration to give them a feeling for the planet they were born to inhabit . . . education is the primary activity youngsters are involved in, and jobs are made available for every interest and ability. Of course, learning a living leads to the jobs with the highest reward potential --but no one has to work for basic sustenance. Most people do, however.

The Habitats are interesting places. They manufacture things. They recycle everything. They interfere as little as possible with the environment. Every natural source of energy that can be exploited without damage to the environment is exploited. Vast amounts of energy are gathered from geothermal sources, and nuclear energy power production facilities are integrated with each of the buildings. Materials research develops materials that are capable of higher efficiency solar energy collection, but such collectors are made to not interfere with naturally evolved biosystems exploiting solar energy for life and growth.

Clarke Orbit solar power collectors and microwave transmitters coupled with Earth-based rectennae arrays integrated non-invasively with food production areas, collect vast amounts of solar energy for use in withdrawing the Carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it as well as providing supplemental energy for many of the habitats.

The Habitats are deemed necessary for human survival and most people think that in 10 or 12 more generations, and with reductions in population the possibility of non-invasively resettling the surface intelligently might be allowed.

----------------------
Okay? BUT SUSANA COMPLAINS! Vociferously! Respectfully, but vociferously.

Susana, the young woman from Houston states to me, "I would not like to live in one of these "Habi's" and even if it were a good idea what could possibly motivate people to live in them?"

--------Hey. I just "build" the things. Well, perhaps "imagine" or create the ideas would be a better description than build. But the young woman, Susana, has a major point. What circumstance would motivate the building and compel habitation of these huge human hives?

Okay. I knew what would get humanity into the habitats, I'd just have to describe the situation. So I laid my plans, outline and fleshed out, via stories, stories with characters that could communicate the motivation . . .
===================

Right now the US and Canada would have to build 4 buildings and one of them could be the 1232 foot tall building. Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean, 2 buildings. China would need 16 buildings, and India would need 14, but you might as well build 4 more for Bangladesh and Pakistan. Indonesia would need three buildings. Russia and Eastern Europe would need 3 buildings . . . and you get the idea.

To save the environment, people need to be removed from it, prevented from causing the pollution of it, and with the people invasion of the planet -- the destruction of other life forms habitats, as well as our own.

Put humans into their "own human habitat" and save the planet. Each standard human built habitat covers 237.16 square miles, so the human species could make a much smaller footprint on Earth's surface.

81 buildings x 237.16 square miles area each = 19,210 square miles.

That area would fit very easily within the boundaries of beautiful West Virginia, which covers 24,231 square miles, or San Bernardino County in California with an area of 20,062 square miles.

In the Habitats, you, you sexy animals, can only reproduce for replacement level population. No one cares who you have sex with, but you can only have one offspring each as a couple, (a couple is allowed a couple of kids (2)) and you will care for your child and your mates child. Good genetic records will be kept, and birth control will be rigidly enforced. Human population will be brought under social control. Population will not continue to increase exponentially.

Will anyone get to live "outside?"

Not many, and not for a long time. With a long term goal of stabilizing the population and protecting the environment, much remedial work will need to be done. Farming and food, energy.
Water.

Okay?

===============

No wonder Susana, from Houston, wonders what would motivate people to want to have 4000 square feet as their part of a 'condo', heated, watered, fed, and not have to work unless you improved mankind's situation. It would be a tough life.

======== Gee. Would "I" like to live in a Habi?

As a youth, hmm? I could design my own 4000 square feet. I could link to others around the world with similar scientific interests, also physical interests, like climbing, like diving, like running, like astronomy, physics, bioscience, cybernetics, geology, astrophysics, astrobiology. . . climate, planetary atmospheres, poetry, communications. . .

I could spend time on the roof near or at one of the Very Large Telescopes, maybe. Or perhaps near one of the hydrogen motor bike trials areas. I mean "trials" kind of riding. The highest art of motorcycle balance and control. Structure climbing and running, all of which can be done indoors, but also on the roof.

Under the right circumstances, yeah. But what would persuade others?

Motivation! Motivation! Don't tell "ME" what to do!

How would you motivate 7.3 billion bright monkeys? (Population at the time of the motivation)

Okay, here is my fictional motivation: This is a very small piece of a story I created in answer to Susana's question of why and how. Much deeper in this segment, in the short story the following is excerpted from, there becomes a gradual development of a military intervention in the human species attempts to preserve the small remaining numbers of North Atlantic right whales, in 2017 as a show of 'good faith' and as a means of demonstrating commitment to "new" ideas about "life and it's value". . . but what happens just before this story is the following . . . It is a kind of "Motivational," like a beatitude for some.

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Image: Earth and Moon. NASA,NEAR on its way out, passing Earth, on its way to Eros.

Visitor’s Arrival© Les Porter 2007

As Visitor approached the inner solar system it flashed at 6th magnitude – one second “on” – one second “off”. It traveled at a velocity of 1414.213(...5623730950488016887242097) kilometers per second. The period of flashing exactly matched the clock mankind used to conduct its affairs – to 7 decimal places. Nearly everyone saw significance in that fact.

When Visitor reached the ecliptic beyond the orbit of Mars, it brightened instantly to minus 17th magnitude, nearly 60 times brighter than the full moon. In that instant, Visitor stopped flashing. In that instant, Visitor changed direction. In that instant and remarkably Visitor changed its velocity to 707.106(...78118654752440084436210485) kilometers per second.

In that instant Visitor headed directly toward Earth.

The velocity change went a step further in confirming one astronomer's hypothesis about the exact velocity, but not Why. It had been the square root of 2 times 1000 kilometers per second, then half of that.

Visitor’s approach could be seen in broad daylight. It was much brighter than Earth’s full moon in a bright blue daytime nitrogen sky. When Visitor reached Earth, it established itself in Earth orbit. Within minutes, Visitor dimmed, faded, and became a colorless perfect spherical reflector, 1500 kilometers in diameter.

Image: From NASA, Goddard

Every telescope and eye on planet Earth was directed toward Visitor.

Earth was reflected upon Visitor’s perfect reflector surface, along with the vast empty blackness of space around Earth. Visitor commandeered all broadcast television bands and transmitted images of thousands of alien worlds. We humans had no choice but to watch. Visitor repetitiously transmitted a message. We had no choice but to listen. Below is that message. Heed it.

Greetings:

This will be a one way communication. We will transmit.

We are an assemblage of beings representing many worlds in this galaxy. We engage life-bearing worlds, worlds that were long ago seeded with life. This life-filled world, this Earth, is such a world. We note that you have discovered neither the Purpose of Life, nor your own Purpose. Indeed. Life has Purpose. Life has meaning.

Nothing in the Universe is as precious as Life. Life's promise is the most important reason there is to cross the gulf between stars.

Those who seeded this world long ago vanished from this galaxy, indeed, from this Universe. We did not meet them; we emerged much later as their children. You, too, are one of their children, along with the multitude of other life forms with which you share this world.

This world, this Earth you think of as "belonging" to you. It does not. You simply emerged here. You belong to this world. Though the Seeders are gone, this world has not been abandoned.

We serve now in their place. We are tenders of worlds. We are gardeners. We nurture life where possible. We ensure that life's purpose is neither threatened nor damaged. We weed and prune the threads of life as needed. We sometimes eliminate a thread of life to allow other threads to flower. The Seeders Codes of Life were unique, designed and tailored to each stellar system. Some forms, some ex­pressions take immense time to unfold.

We have gathered vast knowledge, but we, too, learn from the Seeder's sometimes-subtle mes­sages. We, too, learn of Life. We have studied you. We have many times observed the successful emer­gence of life forms similar to you. We have also witnessed devastating failures orchestrated by life forms similar to you.

This gave us pause. You beings are not the only lifework of this planet with extraordinary potential. Many other life forms on this world are promising and of great interest to us and to the ser­vice of Life's Purpose. Your thread of life troubles and concerns us.

The Message of Life and its Purpose is writ within all living forms. It unfolds all around you and within you. You must discover the Message within all life and study it. You must understand it. You must learn from it. Your future depends upon that progress. We cannot reveal the Message to you. You must reveal it to yourselves.

The life forms of great interest to us, as well as all other life forms on this planet, are threatened by your shortsighted exponential population growth. The major threat to this world's other life forms are a result of your defective grasp of Life's Nature, and Purpose.

You will control your population.

Know this with certainty: We will not allow you to continue to interfere with the destiny of the other life forms on this world. We are disturbed with what your thread of life has done to the other life forms on this planet. We are concerned that a thread of such promise has become so malignant. We have examined the program running within you. We know its flexible potential. Your behavior defies this potential.

We do not state this casually: You interfere with Life's Purpose. You threaten the integrity of its mes­sage. You have placed yourselves on the edge of termination for cause. Know that it is within your power to change your behavior. We have hope for you.

­You will conserve and protect this world so that other life forms with which you share it can continue to exist and evolve to reach their potential. You will preserve this planet and the vast array of life upon it.

You have 50 of your years to begin solving the problem outlined here. You may not think that time enough, but that is all the time you have. If you have not been able to make true progress in that amount of time, we know other life forms on this planet will do better.

If your behavior does not change, your thread of life will be extinguished.

You are warned!

When we next appear, it will be to judge . . . and we will judge. Use these 50 years wisely.

 

 

The North Atlantic

My name is Adam Gregory Nelson. I am Captain Gregory Nelson, United States Navy, Commanding Officer of the USS Connecticut, a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed, Seawolf-class attack submarine.

My boat was undergoing a complete and thorough up-grading and I was ashore with my family when Visitor arrived, settled into Earth orbit, and broadcast the Message. The Message was disturbing to me; but it offered hope. It outlined a part of what humanity needed to do to survive – or to fail to do, and become extinct. Terminated for cause.

Like everyone else on planet Earth, I watched and listened for five days as the images of thousands of alien worlds and alien artifacts were broadcast by Visitor for all to see. The Message was repeated over and over. There was no doubt it was understood by mankind. Children, even if they did not really grasp the meaning of the Message had memorized it. As they grew and matured, they would understand it.

We saw the thousands of worlds, their images intriguing. The implication was of a galaxy filled with isolated worlds; collections of evolved or evolving beings on worlds seemingly without end. I especially noticed and watched the images of thousands of alien seas and oceans, arrayed in a seemingly infinite variety on the planets of other stars.

A common thread of many planetary images was water. In some instances the oceans or seas of these other worlds were tiny and in other instances, almost planetary in their coverage. Some worlds were nearly balls of ice, with narrow equatorial open ocean bands, others like deserts with waters at the poles. Some worlds seemed to be tropical paradises. I wondered what it would be like to cruise and sail those mysterious far distant seas. What would it be like under those alien skies and stars? What storms on their seas? What vast chains of life within them? Even a submariner can wonder these things about seas far from Earth. I am a simple man.

NASA Image: After the first touchdown on the Moon, coming back. Apollo 11.

 

The period of Visitor’s orbit about the Earth was exactly five days. As Visitor approached the first complete orbital circuit, the 1500 kilometer diameter perfect reflector edge of Visitor began to slide in front of the Moon as seen from Earth. When it completely eclipsed the Moon, those watching Visitor saw moving snaking fiery tendrils of violet and blue-white crawling and dancing upon Visitor’s perfect reflector surface.

This electically firey display coincided with the final reading of the Message, and the last image transmission. The last alien world images from Visitor were of a truly beautiful planet with large deep-blue black oceans and green gold and reddish continents, and white water clouds, and ice and ice caps, and visages of complex life forms on its land, in its oceans, and in its air.

Five seconds later, after the image of the strangely beautiful alien world faded to black, one more image appeared on television screens all over the Earth. It was Earth’s moon, the Moon, with the number “50” upon it. Then it too, faded to black. In space, between Earth and Moon, Visitor vanished. It was there, its perfect reflector surface dancing with tendrils of violet and blue-white electrical looking fires. Then it was gone.

It was as though an opaque cloak was removed between Earth and Moon. Upon the Moon the number “50”appeared. It was huge. It was easily visible to anyone with average eyesight. Where the Moon was lit by the Sun, the number was black. Where the Moon was black and in shadow, the number was a bright golden yellow color, bright enough to be seen in the daylight. No one could imagine what composed it, or how it was placed there. But there was no doubt what it meant.

The number on the Moon was clearly a way to hold human attention.

It was visible when the phase of the Moon was “new” or nearly new. As the moon circled the Earth, and moved toward or from thin crescents, the number glowed a golden yellow “50”, just hanging in space. When line of sight took it closer to the Sun each month, you might have to shade the Sun with your hand, but not far from the Sun in the sky, you could see the number glowing in the blue of a daylight sky. It was visible day or night.

As the terminator’s shadow traversed the Moon, the number would darken or lighten.

When the number on the Moon appeared and Visitor vanished, there was a “thump,” a perceptible, slight but definite “thump.” It was a low frequency “thump,” but everyone who was outside felt it as much as heard it.. It was a worldwide phenomenon. Instruments that measure pressure, measured a fall then rebound of pressure and the people only heard or felt the tiny but definite thump, something like a distant muffled explosion.

Three days later, James Harmsen, the Administrator of NASA with the presence of the Directorate of NOAA, the Secretary of the Department of Energy, and the top management of the IPCC, made the announcement from Goddard, in Maryland.

“It depends on your perspective, but Visitor left mankind and all life on planet Earth a gift.” Harmsen looked up from his prepared remarks, and smiled. “Perhaps we really need to say, “two” gifts. At the moment Visitor vanished, the “thump” most of you heard or felt coincided with the removal of 100 parts per million of the Carbon Dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. This removal leaves the concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the air at 297 parts per million. There is now every reason to expect the survival of many Arctic species we were certain we were going to lose to global warming – including the polar bear and the ringed seal.” A cheer rose from the assembled media representatives. Harmsen continued after a moment. “ We expect the effect of the removal to take as long as ten years to restore the Arctic sea ice to substantive levels -- though it may be less time than that. We will follow with interest what Visitor has done to allow the Arctic Ocean to cool and life there to return to historic levels."

James Harmsen smiled again, eyes absolutely twinkling, "One other note of interest is that the oxygen was left in the air. Only the carbon was removed. Some have suggested that the carbon removed from the air was used to make the Moon Number. Perhaps it was.” Harmsen nodded to the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Alexis Smith Romney.

Alexis Romney stepped to the podium and adjusted the microphone to her height. “Jim said it depends on your perspective. He calls these “two” gifts. The second gift is this: half of the oil producing wells have been stopped from producing oil. This was done by turning to asphalt the oil that was being pumped from the Earth. Seismic sensing has shown that half of the producing oil fields have been turned into a dense asphalt. . . . we also have three Super Tankers whose contents were changed to this heavy asphalt. The ships are now useless.” She paused to let that be absorbed by the journalists. “ Coal and Natural Gas are so far as we can tell unaffected.”

“Yes, in a market economy, the price of oil would rise to an incredible level. Effective now, all oil holdings are nationalized. There are many tankers who are still carrying oil and we think Visitor is sending us a clear message. The end of the use of Carbon fuels is at hand. There will be some hardships. Perhaps the Carbon was reburied.”

After exactly one year, more than five billion people stood outside, or watched on the world's television broadcasts, as well as broadcasts from the space station -- and witnessed the number on the face of the moon change to "49."

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Image:NASA  At present, 5 billion people live on the land area in this image . . .
Click here for a "big image"
http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/2429/globe_east_2048.jpg

Of course, Susana aced her class.

I put Susana in touch with women mentors in the Houston area, and with my changes of places have lost track of her. I know she remembers the principle characterizations I described above.

Most likely, you will too.

---The excerpts above are from current and recent works.
---They contain fully developed characters. And of course, there are good guys and bad guys. . .
Captain Nelson is a minor character. . . but not an insignificant figure . . .

[There is an entire novel, a fleshed out tale which this space is much too small to contain. . .]

But you get some of the the ideas, don't you?
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A few Clock Links.

[Remember when Xomba allowed you to use HTML to leap from top to bottom or middle?  Not Now!]

Many places on the internet yield population "clocks" or other "clocks," and here are some:

http://www.panaga.com/clocks/clocks.htm (NOTE There are thousands of links at this site, (well, quite a few) and some of them work. There are page links to code segments, too!)

http://math.berkeley.edu/~galen/popclk.html (I liked this one and used it. Sometimes it is down.)

http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/pcwe