When Science is a Conveyor of Bad News

[Simpo Two]

Jinx said:

The over population meme has been running since the 1700's in one form or another. The benefactors of this meme are those in a position take advantage if the meme is believed and is false. Given as it has been proven false for over 300 years why would I start to believe it now?

Who are the benefactors and what advantage do they gain? The goalposts have of course been moved rather a lot since 1700; could Britain have supported 65,000,000 people then? But of course it cannot even now; vast amounts of what we need are imported.

The Earth is finite; it does not take a prophet to see that with an exponentially growing population eventually big problems are going to happen, somewhere, somehow.

Jinx said:

If over population and over consumption was truly a threat then where are the food wars?

Africa's a good place to start. The side with the guns take what they want and leave the rest to starve.

Nature ensures that populations cannot continue to grow indefinitely. Something, whether lack of food, water, air, or disease, will act to stop it. Not yet, but eventually.

[Jinx]

Simpo Two said:

Africa's a good place to start. The side with the guns take what they want and leave the rest to starve.

Most of the modern wars in Africa have little to do with food. Yes food supply runs low when all the farmers are chased/conscripted away to fight another civil/neighbour war. Famine is rarely nature caused (though can be nature exacerbated) - more often than not it is caused by man (in modern times) .

Simpo Two said:

Nature ensures that populations cannot continue to grow indefinitely. Something, whether lack of food, water, air, or disease, will act to stop it. Not yet, but eventually.

So kill everyone now to stop nature doing it for you? Such little faith in the ingenuity of man. I suspect nature doesn't do anything - if the growth is too quick then there may be a regression to the mean but a step change may only regress to the mean of a new paradigm.
Our lack of knowledge should make us wary of doing anything that could cause trouble for our species further down the line - if as has be postulated a new disease starts wiping out large populations; Is the most likely cure to be found in a lab or in the wild amoungst the multitude of people all slightly different in their genetic make-up? Limiting our population now on the evidence of fag packet economics could doom the human race.

[T S Magnum]

Jinx said:

Our lack of knowledge should make us wary of doing anything that could cause trouble for our species further down the line...

Exactly, well put! Our lack of knowledge concerning the future sources of food, shelter, energy etc. for 7 billion plus should have made us very wary years ago.

Is it wise to stake our civilisation's future on assumptions that hydrocarbons might actually regenerate as quickly as we use them and that climate change is a myth?

The Problem of Denial

[Jinx]

T S Magnum said:

Exactly, well put! Our lack of knowledge concerning the future sources of food, shelter, energy etc. for 7 billion plus should have made us very wary years ago.

Is it wise to stake our civilisation's future on assumptions that hydrocarbons might actually regenerate as quickly as we use them and that climate change is a myth?

The Problem of Denial

As I've said before the only measure of a species success is its numbers. Until we start seeing a decline in numbers we'll be ok for awhile. To take action on imagined threats without proper evidence is as dangerous (and probably more so) then not taking any action. In response to your CC referrence - what if it is only the additional CO2 in the atmosphere that is preventing the next ice age? A cold planet is a bigger threat to our species than a warm one.

[hairykrishna]

Realistically, what are we going to do anyway?

Persuade everyone in developing countries to stop having kids and stop developing their industries, so they use much less energy than we have been doing in the 1st world? Good luck with that.

When the st starts to hit the fan, with oil prices sustained at ~$150/barrel for long periods, I think we'll get over our irrational fears and start building nuclear like there's no tomorrow. The world, as is, can support a great deal more people provided we keep up with the energy demands.

[Jinx]

T S Magnum said:

The Problem of Denial

Wow what a load of badly thought out emotive rationalisations (thought I'd see Ehrlich again) - under "basic changes" only number one is not debatable though I would question it being a bad thing.
All I can say is that link is merely an expression of slow species suicide. If a species is "managed" and not allowed to grow it's fundamental Darwinian survival trait is inhibited. As such managed decline is all it's got to look forward to. This solar system has a limited life span - without growth and progress it will be our species' tomb.
As a particularly antagonistic organism much of that growth requires adversity (many of the most important scientific advances required a war) without adversity we become shadows of what we could have been. Bring on the food riots - bring on the oil wars - only then will we get the chance to build great things. Is this denial or an acceptance of the true face of humanity?

[Simpo Two]

Well you dodged my first questions but anyway:

Jinx said:

Most of the modern wars in Africa have little to do with food. Yes food supply runs low when all the farmers are chased/conscripted away to fight another civil/neighbour war. Famine is rarely nature caused (though can be nature exacerbated) - more often than not it is caused by man (in modern times) .

Famines happen when there are too many people for the food supply. Of course there are human factors as well, but there always will be - because we are humans. Famine is still famine whatever the cause, and when it happens, the population affected declines. It declines until the food supply matches the population again.

Simpo Two said:

Nature ensures that populations cannot continue to grow indefinitely. Something, whether lack of food, water, air, or disease, will act to stop it. Not yet, but eventually.

Jinx said:

So kill everyone now to stop nature doing it for you? Such little faith in the ingenuity of man. I suspect nature doesn't do anything - if the growth is too quick then there may be a regression to the mean but a step change may only regress to the mean of a new paradigm.

You need to research population ecology, not clever phrases. I am saying that population is finite and will be controlled eventually by a limiting factor; you seem to be saying it can go on increasing forever. Paraphrasing my statement as 'kill everyone now' is quite ridiculous.

Jinx said:

Our lack of knowledge should make us wary of doing anything that could cause trouble for our species further down the line - if as has be postulated a new disease starts wiping out large populations; Is the most likely cure to be found in a lab or in the wild amoungst the multitude of people all slightly different in their genetic make-up? Limiting our population now on the evidence of fag packet economics could doom the human race.

The population will limit itself. Man will always keep breeding until a limiting factor is reached. Even if one country manages to control breeding by law, like China, there will be plenty of others pumping out babies. The selfish gene and all that. You only have to look at a graph of global population to see the situation.

[T S Magnum]

Simpo Two said:

You only have to look at a graph of global population to see the situation.

I've knocked one up, although the data will no doubt be questioned...

I'm not sure how sustainable recent trends look once you factor in a reducing availability of fossil fuels



I don't think Mr Joe Average has any real appreciation of how historically disconnected recent population growth is.

[IainT]

I'll see your graph and raise it with one from the UN projections showing three levels of estimates...



Other estimates, such as from the WHO, provide a different peak to eh 'average' estimate of a little over 9bn:

[Traveller]

T S Magnum said:

I've knocked one up, although the data will no doubt be questioned...

I'm not sure how sustainable recent trends look once you factor in a reducing availability of fossil fuels



I don't think Mr Joe Average has any real appreciation of how historically disconnected recent population growth is.

Has a certain "hockey stick" feel to it, it would be interesting to find out how the world population numbers for 100 BC were arrived at, or even 1000 BC?

[T S Magnum]

Thanks Iain. The UN have a 10 billion person variance by 2100! So basically they haven't got a clue how things will pan out. Not sure why they bothered producing a graph!

[kerplunk]

Traveller said:

Has a certain "hockey stick" feel to it, it would be interesting to find out how the world population numbers for 100 BC were arrived at, or even 1000 BC?

Tree rings?

But look at the scale - they could be out by millions, even a billion, and it wouldn't make much difference to that picture.

[ewenm]

T S Magnum said:

Thanks Iain. The UN have a 10 billion person variance by 2100! So basically they haven't got a clue how things will pan out. Not sure why they bothered producing a graph!

Like all of these global subjects (population, climate change, economy, etc) we just don't know enough about them to accurately predict anything. We have too little data and our models are far too simple and full of assumptions, so anything that is produced by them is at best described as a guess.

Trying to base humanity's strategy for population/economy/climate going forward on these guesses is foolish at best, and that is ignoring the fact that we have no global strategy leadership as there are ~200 soverign nations. The UN can attempt to get people to sign treaties but actions speak far louder than treaty signatures.

[The Wookie]

T S Magnum said:

I've knocked one up, although the data will no doubt be questioned...

I'm not sure how sustainable recent trends look once you factor in a reducing availability of fossil fuels



I don't think Mr Joe Average has any real appreciation of how historically disconnected recent population growth is.

One could argue that in a developed economy that the number of children a couple successfully raises to adulthood has ceases to be a function of survival and becomes more of a practical decision based on cost.

In which case, gradually changing oil prices (or simply energy costs) could quite feasibly affect population growth. If oil steadily becomes uneconomical then either technology will replace it or the developed world population will shrink.

I suspect only a large oil price shock would cause a catastrophic drop, and only major supply issues would cause that, the stuff's not going to disappear overnight.

Also i'd imagine third world, where famine and drought are already an issue, food and water will remain the limiting factor.

[The Wookie]

T S Magnum said:

The author talks about batteries that can replace fossil fuels. Can the battery technologies on the horizon make the leap such that planes, ships, trains, lorries, tractors etc. could be battery powered?

Perhaps one day, but not as soon as cars. Electric drive is sufficient for most of that application, but I suspect the energy storage medium will vary from just simple batteries.

Plus it's always been horses for courses, steam engines were still being used for certain applications long after the IC engine became practical and fuel synthesis is a practical technology it just needs to be efficient enough and powered by 'clean' energy sources.

[Simpo Two]

The Wookie said:

One could argue that in a developed economy that the number of children a couple successfully raises to adulthood has ceases to be a function of survival and becomes more of a practical decision based on cost.

To you and I perhaps, but the main growth is not in developed economies, and even in Western economies there's a skew to the lower classes as the State supports them beyond their own means. So the ABC1s will realise that school fees are £5,000 a term and stop at two; the opposite end will keep pumpimg them out because either they don't have the thinking capacity, or know that the State (ie everybody else) will pay for them. The natural human state is, of course, to pump out as many as possible because nature has made sex feel nice.

I believe Neanderthals ate each other when times got tough; it makes perfect sense but I don't see H. sapiens doing it for a while!

[The Wookie]

Simpo Two said:

To you and I perhaps, but the main growth is not in developed economies, and even in Western economies there's a skew to the lower classes as the State supports them beyond their own means. So the ABC1s will realise that school fees are £5,000 a term and stop at two; the opposite end will keep pumpimg them out because either they don't have the thinking capacity, or know that the State (ie everybody else) will pay for them. The natural human state is, of course, to pump out as many as possible because nature has made sex feel nice.

I believe Neanderthals ate each other when times got tough; it makes perfect sense but I don't see H. sapiens doing it for a while!

Exactly, in less developed economies it's still based on simple nature, if there's not enough food, water and space for hygiene then life expectancy will be much shorter and the population will stop growing. If the heart of the population boom is in sub-saharan africa then you've got to say that unless aid is tampering excessively then it can only be unsustainable for a short while otherwise it'll peak and drop, then it will be sustainable again.

We don't really share a food supply so whilst without trying to sound callous it's nature and not our problem. It only becomes our problem if there's a sudden boom in development and there's a big increase in the resources that we do share (i.e. oil).

Totally agree on reliance on the state, it's got out of control and I think most people acknowledge it isn't a sustainable system, either economically or naturally.

[Mr E]

Simpo Two said:

I believe Neanderthals ate each other when times got tough; it makes perfect sense but I don't see H. sapiens doing it for a while!

Having watched mid morning television, it's a possibility.

[MikeGTi]

Mr E said:

Having watched mid morning television, it's a possibility already happening.

Fixed that for you.

[Jinx]

T S Magnum said:

I've knocked one up, although the data will no doubt be questioned...

I'm not sure how sustainable recent trends look once you factor in a reducing availability of fossil fuels



I don't think Mr Joe Average has any real appreciation of how historically disconnected recent population growth is.

I see your graph and raise you a far more disturbing trend....


Or even worse

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_CnkEC3jCeP0/SjLBE4-ExSI/AAAA...