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The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

rogerpielkejr.substack.com

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Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#141

Post by OrbitRock »

eloff wrote: post #134
xyzzyz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change definitely is the next one. It is most surely happening, and probably faster than we want or expect, but if you listen to scientific consensus (eg. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report), it is pretty clear that, while serious and troublesome issue, it most definitely is not an existential threat.

Probably not directly. It will cause mass migration and refugee crises as coastal cities and low lying areas slowly flood. That seems inevitable at this point. That could maybe lead to wars, and nuclear war is still an existential threat. If the changes somehow disrupt the ability to support cereal crops in the northern hemisphere (which actually is also the biggest risk from nuclear winter), that could lead to wides…

What worries me most is the patterns of precipitation shifting.

If we saw significant changes to where is wet and where is dry, we’d be scrambling to catch up and the fallout could be pretty large.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#142

Post by simonh »

xyzzyz wrote: post #138
slibhb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Proof of Malthus' farsightedness is that none of his predictions have come true yet"

All of Malthus’ predictions have come true. They just did so in his past, not future. Malthusian model is the standard one to describe evolution of human populations up until 17th century or so. If you are familiar with scientific literature, with economic history, with population genetics etc, the Malthusian model is pretty much the consensus view these days. See, for example Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms” or Sh…

Thank you, I think that's very useful historical context. Yes Malthus had useful and valuable insights, but also yes we have since discovered mechanisms and processes that can largely mitigate these risks which he could not have foreseen.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#143

Post by xyzzyz »

eloff wrote: post #134
xyzzyz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change definitely is the next one. It is most surely happening, and probably faster than we want or expect, but if you listen to scientific consensus (eg. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report), it is pretty clear that, while serious and troublesome issue, it most definitely is not an existential threat.

Probably not directly. It will cause mass migration and refugee crises as coastal cities and low lying areas slowly flood. That seems inevitable at this point. That could maybe lead to wars, and nuclear war is still an existential threat. If the changes somehow disrupt the ability to support cereal crops in the northern hemisphere (which actually is also the biggest risk from nuclear winter), that could lead to wides…

No large coastal city will become flooded on a permanent basis. Building levees is just too easy and cheap relative to cost of giving up on a city, just ask medieval Dutchmen. By the way, the scientific consensus for predicted sea level rise in the worst temperature growth scenario is still less than 1 meter by 2100. That’s less than the difference between low and high tide. Some areas will get flooded (eg large parts of Florida Everglades), but 1 meter is really not a big deal.

Similarly, there is no reason to be very concerned about crops: we already are able to grow crops in a very wide variety of climates, and we have cultivars specially selected for local climate conditions. While climate change is very fast on geological scale, it’s rather slow on human scale, which gives us plenty of time to adjust our crops and farming patterns.

This is the biggest reason why climate change is not an existential threat: we are not going to sit on our thumbs, and watch the steamroller slowly ride over us, at speed of 1 cm per day. That’s not going to happen: mitigating the problems associated with climate change is rather simple, relative to other problems our societies solve on a regular basis, and we have a lot of time for it.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#144

Post by xyzzyz »

slibhb wrote: post #139
xyzzyz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of Malthus’ predictions have come true. They just did so in his past, not future. Malthusian model is the standard one to describe evolution of human populations up until 17th century or so. If you are familiar with scientific literature, with economic history, with population genetics etc, the Malthusian model is pretty much the consensus view these days. See, for example Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms” or Sh…

"Predictions" are about the future, not the past.

When the past is as murky as the future, there is little reason to distinguish between the two.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#145

Post by lotsofpulp »

BurningFrog wrote: post #105
jaegerpicker wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure and I agree with that but that doesn't mean that armageddon isn't coming either. For example Climate Change and the Covid19 pandemic, both are examples of very real problems with the potential to severally harm/kill large numbers but both are dismissed with that attitude. I'm not sayin that the sky is falling in either case, though with Climate Change I can't imagine not thinking that, but if we continue to igno…

> For example Climate Change and the Covid19 pandemic, both are examples of very real problems with the potential to severally harm/kill large numbers but both are dismissed with that attitude. No. I have that attitude, and I'm not dismissing either! I think they're both serious problems that will cause a lot of pain as they're being worked through. What I disagree with is doomsday scenarios where they'll be the end…

> What I disagree with is doomsday scenarios where they'll be the end of human civilization.

I don’t know anyone that’s concerned about end of human civilization. What they are concerned about is the end of their lifestyle, part of which is due to relative world peace, which is in turn due to resources being somewhat available, at least to those with power.

Once those resources stop being so (cheaply) available, then you’ll see conflicts start emerging again. I already see it in my country, the US, with the widening gaps in places with economic opportunity and those left behind.

Add in water, electricity, changing weather patterns and there will be some pain in the future.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#146

Post by undefined1 »

eloff wrote: post #134
xyzzyz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change definitely is the next one. It is most surely happening, and probably faster than we want or expect, but if you listen to scientific consensus (eg. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report), it is pretty clear that, while serious and troublesome issue, it most definitely is not an existential threat.

Probably not directly. It will cause mass migration and refugee crises as coastal cities and low lying areas slowly flood. That seems inevitable at this point. That could maybe lead to wars, and nuclear war is still an existential threat. If the changes somehow disrupt the ability to support cereal crops in the northern hemisphere (which actually is also the biggest risk from nuclear winter), that could lead to wides…

it's not an overnight disaster, so it won't work like that.

people are moving to Miami in droves right now and there's a big push to turn it into the next Silicon Valley. that's an aspirational goal and future facing in a geography that's among the most vulnerable to climate change. they know we can solve slow moving disasters.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#147

Post by xyzzyz »

simonh wrote: post #142
xyzzyz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of Malthus’ predictions have come true. They just did so in his past, not future. Malthusian model is the standard one to describe evolution of human populations up until 17th century or so. If you are familiar with scientific literature, with economic history, with population genetics etc, the Malthusian model is pretty much the consensus view these days. See, for example Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms” or Sh…

Thank you, I think that's very useful historical context. Yes Malthus had useful and valuable insights, but also yes we have since discovered mechanisms and processes that can largely mitigate these risks which he could not have foreseen.

Yes, we quite obviously have much higher carrying capacity, thanks to improvements in farming technology and in expanding farming into places that haven’t been farmed before. Right now, Europe has more forests and less farmland in use than it had during medieval times, despite having much higher population.

We devised ways to mitigate the problems associated with population growth, but we have not solved it: the fundamental logic of Malthus is still very much valid. The carrying capacity of Earth may be much larger than he thought: it may be 50 billion, or 100, or 500 (but probably not 1 trillion), some people surely have created an analysis to get a good estimate given current technology and available land. But, make no mistake, it is very much finite. The good news is that with current trends in population growth, we aren’t likely to hit it in the next few hundred of years.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#148

Post by simplicio »

refurb wrote: post #35
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

the dismissal of Malthus seems itself ideological. It's not due to any necessary reason that Malthusianism itself is wrong, quite obviously putting population pressure on restrained resources is an actual disaster. What was wrong with Malthus or the food scare talked about in the article is simply that they made their argument about the wrong thing and at the wrong time, the rebuttal is based on contingent facts. The…

But that was exactly why he was so wrong - he thought that the limits to resources was static, and they are not always.

People always say this, but it isn't true. Malthus lived in a time of quickly increasing productivity, he of course knew crop yields, etc. would likely increase. But he also knew there were eventual limits to that increase, the Earth only gets so many watts of solar energy, only has so much land area to cultivate, etc. So he thought that the exponential growth of human pop. would necessarily eventually hit those limits.

Indeed, Malthus actually ages better then he's given credit for. His solution to the problem he poses is pretty close to the modern one, that a more educated and well-off population will decrease their fertility, so that eventually population growth will level off. (Malthus's actual view of the mechanism here is pretty Victorian, he talks a lot about "Public Morality" and I don't think he mentions "birth-control" in any form, but his basic idea is correct)

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#149

Post by saddlerustle »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #128
saddlerustle wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, exactly, will "run out" that affects most food production? The remaining soil lifespan in societies with developed agriculture is hundreds of years, and relatively cheap practices can extend that to thousands of years.

Water https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/grace/study-third-of-big-groundwate...

Managing groundwater is an economic co-ordination problem, not a limit to food production. We currently produce crops that are very, very inefficient in terms of water per calorie, because people like them and some jurisdictions like California don't have effective water markets.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#150

Post by mpweiher »

m0llusk wrote: post #58

This is interesting political analysis, but the fact remains that the global population is topping out at several billion with almost all arable land already being farmed and ecological impacts accumulating. All these related problems may have solutions, but reframing the situation doesn't really address potential for improvement.

Fortunately land use has been pretty much steady since 1990[1], despite world population increasing by around 45%[2].

This is due to land use for agriculture per person dropping rapidly[3].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-agricultural-area-o...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?time=1985..lat...

[3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-agricultural-land-u...

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