Excess population growth is and remains the planet's primary, fundamental problem - from which all others (job dearth, pay inequity, crime, global warming, approaching Peak Oil etc.) derive.

Noted science writer and biochemist Isaac Asimov- in various essays written over decades- has warned of severe constraints on humanity’s use of resources, particularly in terms of how population growth impinges on finite resources and sets limits to growth. Isaac Asimov was probably also the first to use the term “carrying capacity” which he estimated to be 3 billion humans for this limited world.

Asimov warned that humans had two choices: decrease their population to the carrying capacity limit to live in an equilibrium with the Earth and its resources, or let nature “increase the human death rate” (e.g. by starvation, pestilence, wars over resources etc.)

Author Aurelio Peccei, in his One Hundred Pages for the Future, made similar pleas for humans to notch their numbers down to replacement levels or lower since they exceeded the Earth’s ability to support them. (Part 1: ‘The Ascent and Decline of Humankind’). Peccei refers to an enormous supplemental population – one that exists beyond the ability of additional resources, energy as a “human bomb threatening the planet”.

More recently, an article appearing in Physics Today (July, 2004 issue) set the stage starkly for what we face in a bleak energy future. ‘Thoughts on Long-Term Energy Supplies: Scientists and the Silent Lie’ by Albert Bartlett (p. 53) pinpoints the failure to name human population growth as a major cause of our energy and resource problems.

Bartlett avers that “their (scientists’) general reticence stems from the fact that it is politically incorrect or unpopular to argue for stabilization of population – at least in the U.S. Or perhaps scientists are uncomfortable stepping outside their specialized areas of expertise”.

One last point, the basic limiting factor on human population - apart from energy (e.g. once Peak Oil hits, population will crash to half its current level) is water. In the ‘State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), it was noted that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars” by 2025.As they note (p. 47):

"“When a country’s renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita (what some analysts call the water stress level) it becomes difficult for the country to mobilize enough water to satisfy all the food, household, and industrial needs of its population.”

The same State of the World’ report notes at present rates of decline and even without factoring in the worst global warming influences – the number of people living in water-stressed countries will rise from 470 million to 3 billion by 2025. More than a sixfold increase. Add in projected new climate change data and likely effects (see. eg. recent issues of Eos) and the stressed populations increase nine or tenfold.

The cold, brutal fact that Ferguson and many others refuse to accept is that this planet DOES have a carrying capacity and it is in the 3 billion range. If we don’t bring our numbers down, nature will indeed do it for us, and we may not like the mode she chooses.

This article from Reuters explains that the study, which was a small, 40-men affair at McGill University in Montreal, found that uncircumcised men "received no more sexual sensation than circumcised men."

RIIIIGHHHT! And if you truly buy that codswallop then I have an acre of beach front land on Barbados' east coast for you - at one dollar an acre! I'll even toss in a beach house for five bucks!

Look, the nerve endings - ten to twenty times more than in the rest of the penis, are concentrated in the foreskin. You cut - foreskin goes, so do nerve endings. This is not that difficult to understand.

I can understand that the poor slobs in this study who had the unkind cut done to them, might want to believe they experienced the same intensity of pleasure - but all it amounts to is wishful thinking in the end.

Call it a "penile placebo effect".

melthough wrote:

Why don't they do a larger study of men who were circumcised after puberty and just ASK them which way feels better?

Well, they would tell you because the videos and sensors ensure it is more "objective" and "scientific". No subjective feedback, or what they call "anecdotal evidence".

In truth, the gizmos provide the veneer of scientific objectivity but don't ensure it. You have to implicitly trust in the integrity of the work. Forget that micro-ammeters and other sensors can easily be re-calibrated to be more sensitive, say for the circumcised subjects.

"But they would never do that! They'r scientists!" Right, like David Baltimore and his incredibly spotted genetic hybrid mice!

Look, scientific publications now are enough each year to fill the ancient Alexandria library ten times over. This means the only way for many to get published is to be contrarian - but that means getting evidence for the contrarian claim.

Because a claim that is contrarian must by definition seek "extraordinary evidence" - and this may not be forthcoming- it follows that they may instead go to extraordinary means to obtain it! Like ol' David Baltimore did!