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The BBC reports that sperm quality continues to drop. Specifically, researchers "found a 52.4% decline in sperm concentration, and a 59.3% decline in total sperm count in men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand." While alarmist publications tout this as a 60% drop, the decline is accelerating and the researchers are concerned that inaction may lead to species extinction despite the effect not being observed in regions with high machismo, such as South America, Asia and Africa.
The study "aggregates 185 studies between 1973 and 2011, one of the largest ever undertaken." It supposedly overcomes selection bias occurring from patients attending fertility (virility?) clinics and selection bias of null results not being published in journals (churnals?). My intuition is that insights can be gained from studying transsexualism. Practitioners claim patients increase at the rate of 15% per year (doubling every five years), over many decades and with no end in sight. This is akin to Moore's law, Kryder's law, Butters' law, Hendy's law, Rider's law, Carlson's law or any other exponential halving or doubling. So, it doesn't take a genius to understand that it will become an increasingly widespread issue.
Regardless, masculine medical problems are vastly under-represented. By some estimates, spending on male medical problems is about 1/4 of spending on female medical problems. For example, when a man seeks help for a legitimate medical issue, such as declining testosterone, a patient at the lower end of the "normal" range may be denied treatment even if he is constantly exhausted.
Well, take care of yourself. Eat properly. Drink properly. Rest properly. Stay active. And if healthy food and exercise won't fix accumulated problems, consider hormone replacement. You may also want to watch two films which seem to be mentioned with increasing frequency and seem to predict our era with some accuracy: Children Of Men and Colossus: The Forbin Project. Children Of Men is the second bleakest film I've ever seen and the film I've seen most during its initial cinema release. It explores the scenario of global infertility leading to economic collapse. In addition to a nexus of cast and crew, the seamless plot and astounding compositing, the film is a fantastic example of mise-en-scène which is best explained by example.
Anyhow, enjoy the films and get your medical problems addressed.
Disclosure: People in my family are affected by virility and hormone problems. I have a professional interest in film, media encoding and art education.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 04 2017, @11:18PM (2 children)
What most of us don't realize is what the long term impact of that stress will be. It's not just about the dodo bird and carrier pigeon, it's about a crash in bio-diversity and the instability and vulnerability to plagues that brings.
is indeed a noble pursuit, but is progressing far too slowly to head off major extinction problems. I think this guy: https://eowilsonfoundation.org/half-earth-our-planet-s-fight-for-life/ [eowilsonfoundation.org] is beating the right drum, but not enough people who matter are listening.
All depends on what pollution you are looking at. From the polar bears' perspective, you're all wet.
Your confidence in your crystal ball will be your undoing.
Blame is not at issue, viable solutions for the whole planet are. Ignoring what is going on in Asia is even more dangerous than ignoring an approaching asteroid on a collision course, and we certainly wouldn't be "to blame" for that event, either.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 05 2017, @12:30AM (1 child)
Remember me talking about Pascal's wager? I already noted several actions that supposedly reduced the stress, but probably had the opposite effect.
Since the global warming myths are about polar bears drowning, I'd have to say they apparently are the ones who are all wet.
I don't make predictions willy nilly nor do I expect them to be perfectly accurate. It is remarkable how dismissive people are of modern civilization despite several centuries of remarkable progress which, due to modern globalization, has now been experienced by everyone except the completely isolated. Even the poorest have better access to knowledge, health care, wealth opportunities, and technology that their forebears. And the worst problems, overpopulation, habitat and arable land destruction, societal corruption, etc has been significantly addressed by our best societies.
Immediate population reduction is not viable. Making the world so free and wealthy that it naturally has a negative population growth rate is viable.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 05 2017, @04:23AM
The really remarkable progress seems to have come in the last 100 years, fueled by non-renewable resources. It will be remarkable how unpleasant the end of cheap energy will be.
Too slowly to save the Titanic from a fatal gash in the hull.
Keep wishing, I hope I'm wrong and you're right - I see no evidence in the historical record, even up through yesterday, only rosy predictions from people with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.
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