Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

rogerpielkejr.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 280 posts

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#221

Post by munificent »

BurningFrog wrote: post #63

As I've gotten older and seen predicted doomsdays come and go, I've started to think that expecting armageddon is an innate part of human psychology. I'm not aware of any era or place where many people have not expected the world to meet disaster soon. It's a part of all major religions.

I read an interesting anecdote years ago hypothesizing that the impulse to imagine the end of the world is a selfish subconscious response to not being comfortable imagining the world continuing on without us.

If the world blows up in your life time, at least it means you aren't missing out on anything after you're gone.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#222

Post by slibhb »

xyzzyz wrote: post #217
slibhb wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a tortured semantic argument. We were talking about whether Malthus is still relevant, whether we can still use him to make predictions. Malthus being "correct up until the 17th century" is beside the point. You've also made bizarre arguments elsewhere in this thread. Apparently Malthus can't be proven wrong because the Earth can't support an infinite number of people. That's true, of course, but it's n…

> We were talking about whether Malthus is still relevant, whether we can still use him to make predictions. We can, and we do, just not for human population in future. Again, Malthusian models are completely standard way to model past human populations, and also animal populations. > Apparently Malthus can't be proven wrong because the Earth can't support an infinite number of people. That's true, of course, but it'…

> Yes, that's why Malthusian model is so popular: because it is obviously correct

It's not correct right now, for humans, which is what we were talking about.

> and because its assumptions cover very wide range of observed past and future conditions

Ah yes, those magical "observed future conditions".

> We live in pretty unique circumstances when they don't

There are no grounds for insisting that we "live in unique circumstances". That statement is either a tautology (like your interpretation of Malthus) or it's meaningless.

> I believe that in around 200-300 years we will return to high-fertility regime, that will require governmental measures to curb, if we want to preserve the quality of life.

I like science fiction as much as the next person but that's all this is.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#223

Post by lucian1900 »

lupire wrote: post #190
lucian1900 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is the cause of poverty, not what ends it. If you look at the last decade, global poverty outside China has increased. Only within China has it decreased, for now by enough to offset the rest of the world. The problem is the constant expansion (which comes with warfare and extreme waste) that capitalism mandates.

China is capitalist and imperialist.

It allows limited forms of private property and profit seeking in order to develop the productive forces. It’s a way to avoid invasion or sanctions by the US while keeping the working class in control of the state.

China doesn’t extract profits through the export of capital at usury rates from other countries at gunpoint, though. It is not imperialist.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#224

Post by BurningFrog »

mint2 wrote: post #166
BurningFrog wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should always value humans over other species, and if you disagree you're an enemy of our species.

What if we found a living Neanderthal village. They’re taking up space that an equivalent human village could, should we get rid of them?

I mean, I'd say Neanderthals are humans. I'm 2.x% Neanderthal myself, according to my DNA vendor.

If we're talking about other sentient and moral species, those are admittedly hard questions.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#225

Post by roenxi »

megiddo wrote: post #113
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…

Malthus was refuted by the early 19th century on economic grounds - namely that the pricing system prevents people from over-exploiting scarce resources. While there has certainly been some poor husbandry of the earth's resources, there have been and continue to be significant efforts to improve resource utilization in environmentally friendly ways - not the least of which is increased costs of basic resources leadin…

Picking something unlikely but possible, imagine if water becomes scarce enough that half the population of India can't afford market price and must do without.

That thought is pretty much enough to refute the refutation. The idea that a resource can't run out because "economics happens" is simply a non-sequitur. Economics is perfectly comfortable with optimising a bunch of humans out of the system because they can't produce enough to justify their resource consumption. That is what a Malthusian collapse would look like economically speaking.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#226

Post by toomuchtodo »

snarf21 wrote: post #214
8draco8 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO education plays huge role. More often people decide to go to collage, then have a career, people also learn what a huge effort have to be put into rising child. On top of that there is so many fantastic things that person can do and have to give up at least to some extend if having a baby. In my opinion those are huge factors. This is a reason why on average successful, well educated people tend to have less chi…

Agreed, the best way to raise the standard of living is to educate women and loan them money. They now have options. They are stuck being baby factories. When this happens, population growth quickly follows.

Citation to back up your comment: https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#227

Post by BurningFrog »

eloff wrote: post #218
BurningFrog wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any flooding of cities will take decades. This gives plenty of time for people to build and/or move to new cities on higher ground.

Where do you move the hundred million people in Bangladesh? What do you do in Florida?

First of all, people can move themselves. They don't need someone else to move them.

Floridians have a continent of 49 other states to move to.

The Bangladeshis are in a tougher spot, since they're approaching 200 million and might need to cross a political border.

If the rest of the world closes its borders, maybe they'll have to look into landfills, flood walls etc. Or maybe they can settle the newly habitable Siberian lands.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#228

Post by eloff »

xyzzyz wrote: post #143
eloff wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 part…

We're going to have sea level rise in the region of 1-2 metres by end of the century, and 5-10 longer term.

Levees are expensive, and not always viable. It depends on the geography, the wealth of the city / county, the porosity of the ground, etc.

Some places will be sure to use levees, some won't.

With regards to crops, we don't know the outcome. If the Gulf stream stops or some regions dry out it could greatly affect crop yield, especially over the short-term. And that's all that matters for starvation to occur. The term year average yield isn't as important as this year's harvest.

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#229

Post by weakfish »

phkahler wrote: post #203
dwaltrip wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it is a shame that many people make over-confident predictions such as “in exactly 10 years, X will happen”. You often have to dig when reading a story to find out which parts are strongly supported by our scientific understanding, which can be frustrating. However, nonsense like that doesn’t change the fact that more co2 in the air increases the Earth’s temperature. And unfortunately we don’t seem to be…

If humans did nothing, we could expect glaciation in the next 100 years or so. Do people really think what we're doing can prevent that? If so, do they really think we can regulate the planet well enough to avoid both bad outcomes?

Source?

Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was

#230

Post by pmiller2 »

thu2111 wrote: post #206
pmiller2 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land? The trend is obvious, and we probably don't have anything like Haber-Bosch to save us in the next 50-ish years. https://tradingeconomics.com/world/arable-land-hectares-per-...

Land? Enormous amounts of land are used to raise animals or food for animals, many of which could be replaced with slightly improved Impossible Burgers. Artificial meat is already pretty much acceptable and its primary constraint is the cheapness of real meat. Land is unlikely to ever be a constraint given demographic trends. If there's ever any pressure on food prices due to lack of land, meat prices will go up and…

The graph I linked is of arable land per capita. "Arable" means capable of growing crops. It does not matter that we raise animals on it currently.
Post reply on HN