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The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

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Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#11

Post by gojomo »

pyre wrote: post #4
shrughes wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth's population isn't growing exponentially or even linearly, though.

Source? Numbers? I know that a few first-world countries like Japan have negative population growth, but is that the case everywhere? Are the countries that having negative population growth enough to offset those with positive?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Human_populat...

From a peak growth rate of 2.2% on a base of 3.2 billion in 1962-1963, the world population growth rate declined to 1.2% on a base of 6.6 billion in 2007. That's about 79 million net new people in 2007.

Wikipedia elsewhere reports that 1989 was the year with the largest absolute increase in population, 87.8 million net new people. So shrughes' report of not-even-linear growth seems true, at least for the last 20 years.

Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#12

Post by biohacker42 »

The man achieved great things, specifically the way in which he solved the problem is phenomenal. It reveals not a just a great mind, but a great character. Not to be glib, but you'd look for something like that in a founder. Except the he didn't create yet another web 2.0 site, he saved billions of lives.

Having said that, lets keep in mind that the green revolution is not as often described a low risk/high yield deal.

Low risk/high yield things often tend to be Utopian and are most often revealed to not be at least one of those things.

The green revolutions is HIGH risk/high yield. It is high risk because it relies on very few, very genetically similar varieties. And those are at high risk for decimation due to disease.

They themselves might not be more susceptible to any one disease, but their near universal use carries a high risk of unforeseen food shortages when some fungus wipes out a sufficiently large percentage of the global wheat crop.

We should carry on Norman Borlaug's work and develop more genetically diverse strains which maintain similarly high yields.

It would also be nice if we could find a way to fertilize without creating hardpan soils or fertilizer runoff into rivers/lakes/oceans.

Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#13

Post by Periodic »

tomjen2 wrote: post #7

He saved an estimated ONE BILLION people. That really puts things in perspective.

I'd like to know the methods for estimating this number. Malnutrition deaths, children that were able to be born because their parents felt secure enough to have another child, food-shortage violence deaths, there are many indirect factors when you're talking about affecting scarcity for a population.

Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#14

Post by gte910h »

m_eiman wrote: post #2

He didn't defuse it, he just added a few more feet to the fuse. As long as Earth's population grows exponentially (or even linearly), we'll hit a wall sooner or later. Malthus is still right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

Omce birth control becomes free or affordable, and societites move out of agrarian only production, that is untrue.

Reliable birth control pretty much leads to voluntary replacement only reproduction

Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#15

Post by zacechola »

biohacker42 wrote: post #12

The man achieved great things, specifically the way in which he solved the problem is phenomenal. It reveals not a just a great mind, but a great character. Not to be glib, but you'd look for something like that in a founder. Except the he didn't create yet another web 2.0 site, he saved billions of lives. Having said that, lets keep in mind that the green revolution is not as often described a low risk/high yield de…

You misstate the arguments of some green farming techniques. For example, rejecting monoculture on a patch of land is low risk/high yield. 15 different crops (not 15 varieties of one crop) is much less susceptible to total failure due to a single catastrophic event than a monoculture.

Secondly, is high yield even a good thing? Many crops produce more yield but do not produce more (or produce very little more) nutritionally valuable product. Corn being the exemplary plant in this case. Germ size has barely increased, while starch has grown considerably. Which is great if you're feeding cattle, but biomass from starch doesn't necessarily mean protein-rich biomass, rather it becomes animal fat. Delicious animal fat, to be sure, but not necessarily a good yield/nutrition trade-off.

Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#16

Post by Periodic »

shrughes wrote: post #3
m_eiman wrote: post #2

He didn't defuse it, he just added a few more feet to the fuse. As long as Earth's population grows exponentially (or even linearly), we'll hit a wall sooner or later. Malthus is still right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

Earth's population isn't growing exponentially or even linearly, though.

Isn't it a law in ecology that a population will grow to the limit of its scarcest resource? In some countries that is food, in many modern societies now it seems to be time.

We know that the population can't grow exponentially forever, but other than a recent dip in fertility rates, we have seen a fairly steady exponential growth.

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/Papers/gkh1/chap1.htm

Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#17

Post by biohacker42 »

zacechola wrote: post #15
biohacker42 wrote: post #12

The man achieved great things, specifically the way in which he solved the problem is phenomenal. It reveals not a just a great mind, but a great character. Not to be glib, but you'd look for something like that in a founder. Except the he didn't create yet another web 2.0 site, he saved billions of lives. Having said that, lets keep in mind that the green revolution is not as often described a low risk/high yield de…

You misstate the arguments of some green farming techniques. For example, rejecting monoculture on a patch of land is low risk/high yield. 15 different crops (not 15 varieties of one crop) is much less susceptible to total failure due to a single catastrophic event than a monoculture. Secondly, is high yield even a good thing? Many crops produce more yield but do not produce more (or produce very little more) nutriti…

is high yield even a good thing?

It is if you want to feed more people, More people may not be a good thing, but it often just is an inescapable reality and if you want to keep them from death by starvation you need higher yield.

And I'm not sure rejecting monoculture on a patch of land is high yield. Not if you want to harvest and distribute it all and do it before it spoils and the "patch" is large enough. Then you need machines, huge machines, and those demand monoculture.

Or you could go with human labor but then you'd need a whole other patch of land, harvested with machines, to feed the laborers harvesting the first patch.

Corn is a good example of high calorie/poor nutrition. But most other crops are not that bad.

Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#18

Post by tokenadult »

Periodic wrote: post #16
shrughes wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth's population isn't growing exponentially or even linearly, though.

Isn't it a law in ecology that a population will grow to the limit of its scarcest resource? In some countries that is food, in many modern societies now it seems to be time. We know that the population can't grow exponentially forever, but other than a recent dip in fertility rates, we have seen a fairly steady exponential growth. http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/Papers/gkh1/chap1.htm

Isn't it a law in ecology that a population will grow to the limit of its scarcest resource?

Who says so? Why would an observation that may (or may not) apply to bacteria or even to wolves apply to human beings?

Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#19

Post by zacechola »

m_eiman wrote: post #2

He didn't defuse it, he just added a few more feet to the fuse. As long as Earth's population grows exponentially (or even linearly), we'll hit a wall sooner or later. Malthus is still right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

To continue the analogy, he added more explosives to the bomb. More food begets more people.

Re: The Man Who Defused the ‘Population Bomb’

#20

Post by ivankirigin »

Periodic wrote: post #16
shrughes wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth's population isn't growing exponentially or even linearly, though.

Isn't it a law in ecology that a population will grow to the limit of its scarcest resource? In some countries that is food, in many modern societies now it seems to be time. We know that the population can't grow exponentially forever, but other than a recent dip in fertility rates, we have seen a fairly steady exponential growth. http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/Papers/gkh1/chap1.htm

Just to be clear: that could be a sudden shift that causes starvation. At least, that is the fear.
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