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Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

nytimes.com

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Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#81

Post by bayesianhorse »

cnorgate wrote: post #53
bayesianhorse wrote: post #3

Good to hear that I'm not the only one with this opinion. While I'm all for keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I don't like what people say about overpopulatiion. Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by natural catastrophies or diseases. Or they caution the expansion of health services in Africa "because it would make the problems worse".

The reality is that the best way to control population expansion is by bringing good healthcare to a region. People in the third world have huge families for a number of reasons - a few of them include the reality that: 1) Many children will die young, so in order to have at least a few that survive they need to have a large number of them 2) They have no form of birth control available available to them, so even if…

Contraception, counter to intuition, doesn't affect population growth...

There's a nice course on EdX about global poverty.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#82

Post by phillnom »

gd1 wrote: post #55
grannyg00se wrote: post #51

"Who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future? " This entire argument is based on the idea that we should be able to continually expand carrying capacity by our inventiveness. Stating for example increased farming yield with technology. Not only is there a likely limit to our ability to squeeze more and more out of finite resources, but the author completely ignores the subtle long term damage…

In what possible way can freeing fossilized carbon back (where it came from) into the carbon cycle "reduce long term habitability of the planet"?. It may make it awkward for some low lying cities in the short term, but long term it guarantees a warmer, moister, more bountiful planet if anything.

In what way does it guarantee a more "bountiful planet" other than more extreme weather?

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#83

Post by fiter »

seclorum wrote: post #71
lutusp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure that the past situations and solutions will be the same as the future situation and non-/solutions. The future will be completely different than the past, but in the same way -- consistent with the Logistic function and its description of the relation between species and environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function There are any number of unpredictable aspects to how events unfold, but p…

We've already demonstrated that we can bend physical laws to our needs, or have you missed that point in your rush to cast away any faith in the human species' ability to manage its resources? Because: managing our resources is what makes the difference, entirely, between extinction and survival, and we've been doing precisely that for 200,000 years so far.

To be fair, we'd both agree that we're bending "natural laws" not physical laws. Right? I mean: we're not getting energy for free, we're just capturing more of it.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#84

Post by lutusp »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #78
lutusp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The logistic model especially assumes that the carrying capacity is constant. Yes, but the model easily accommodates scenarios in which more and more sustenance is squeezed out of the environment, which is the primary argument of the deniers. Finally, though, because big loaves of bread don't give birth to little rug-rat loaves of bread, the Logistic function predicts the same outcome -- mass birth balanced by mass…

"Squeezing out more resources" isn't exactly what's happening. Agricultural technology is still progressing and we could probably feed any population growth beyond any current prediction of human population.

> Agricultural technology is still progressing and we could probably feed any population growth beyond any current prediction of human population.

We already can't feed our present numbers, or haven't you been paying attention?

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20f...

Quote: "The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world, or one in eight, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012."

I love hearing from environmental deniers, who say there's no limit to how many people we can feed -- people who ignore the fact that this is already not true.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#85

Post by lutusp »

seclorum wrote: post #69
lutusp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fixed ideas being challenged is exactly what science - not superstition - is all about. Science isn't a political movement. Science can produce very reliable results if conducted efficiently, but it cannot get people to listen. That's the divide between science and politics. > The same area of land, supporting increasingly larger and larger populations, demonstrates that in fact we can manage our population growth…

Remind me, with science: When were we humans last wiped out, again?

> Remind me, with science: When were we humans last wiped out, again?

I bet you think there's no answer. But in fact, on at least one occasion in the past, human numbers dropped below 10,000 individuals, which means the fact that we still exist as a species can be attributed to chance, not destiny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck#Humans

Quote: "The Toba catastrophe theory suggests that a bottleneck of the human population occurred c. 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals[3] when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change. The theory is based on geological evidences of sudden climate change and on coalescence evidences of some genes (including mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome and some nuclear genes)[4] and the relatively low level of genetic variation with humans."

I emphasize this is an example that we can establish by studying the human genome from relatively recent times. Farther in the past, the genetic record is less easy to read, but it's very likely that the Toba near-extinction is only one of many similar events.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#87

Post by foobarbazqux »

lutusp wrote: post #80
glenra wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rate of both mass killings and individual killings is WAY down from what it's been historically. One interesting thing about news coverage is it covers NEWS - stuff that is new or that happens rarely. Once you've seen something happen a thousand times before, it stops being news. Auto accidents, being common, don't get national news coverage. High-profile kidnappings and large-bodycount school shootings, being mu…

> The rate of both mass killings and individual killings is WAY down from what it's been historically. You're making a common statistical error, one that climate change deniers use daily -- if you perform a moving average using a long averaging interval, the climate is warming up. If you perform a moving average using a short averaging interval, the climate is cooling off. The second measurement is an error because i…

> You're making a common statistical error

You are the one that said things are worse compared to 1932. You don't get to have your cake and eat it.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#88

Post by lutusp »

seclorum wrote: post #71
lutusp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure that the past situations and solutions will be the same as the future situation and non-/solutions. The future will be completely different than the past, but in the same way -- consistent with the Logistic function and its description of the relation between species and environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function There are any number of unpredictable aspects to how events unfold, but p…

We've already demonstrated that we can bend physical laws to our needs, or have you missed that point in your rush to cast away any faith in the human species' ability to manage its resources? Because: managing our resources is what makes the difference, entirely, between extinction and survival, and we've been doing precisely that for 200,000 years so far.

> We've already demonstrated that we can bend physical laws to our needs ...

Bend doesn't equal break. Obviously a species will adopt more and more ingenious measures to stave off the inevitable, but that doesn't change the inevitable, only its arrival date.

The basic equation collides a finite planet with an infinite capacity for growth. Ultimately the finite planet determines the outcome, not the infinite capacity for growth.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#89

Post by jezebel6 »

lutusp wrote: post #31
davidy123 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure if the baby of a famous couple was kidnapped today, it would make headlines, and if there were ongoing elements it would be a recurring story for years. And random violent acts do often lead to reform. At the same time, evidence shows better status and education yields fewer births. You take your gloomy point too far.

> Pretty sure if the baby of a famous couple was kidnapped today, it would make headlines ... The modern equivalent would be the kidnapping of a celebrity's child, by a stranger, for money. Such things happen every day now, but they don't become the focus of the world's attention. The Lindbergh kidnapping tells us something about the nature of the world before modern times. > And random violent acts do often lead to…

>The modern equivalent would be the kidnapping of a celebrity's child, by a stranger, for money. Such things happen every day now...

Really? Give one example.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#90

Post by dragonwriter »

seclorum wrote: post #69
lutusp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fixed ideas being challenged is exactly what science - not superstition - is all about. Science isn't a political movement. Science can produce very reliable results if conducted efficiently, but it cannot get people to listen. That's the divide between science and politics. > The same area of land, supporting increasingly larger and larger populations, demonstrates that in fact we can manage our population growth…

Remind me, with science: When were we humans last wiped out, again?

There a much longer time when one could have said that about any of large number of other species than there has been when one could have said it about humans.

And its an invalid argument to make for the future prospects of any of them.

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