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Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

nytimes.com

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Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#91

Post by lutusp »

seclorum wrote: post #23
hannibal5 wrote: post #17

The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. Currently world produces enough food for everyone. Then why do we have 700 - 800 million malnourished people, even more people facing food insecurity, why we are destroying farmland and why are we wasting the primary macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K). Overpopulation i…

>The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that this is the case. 200,000 years of evidence suggests that, in spite of our superstitions, we humans are capable of managing our resources and replenishing the world from which we derive our sustenance. Are you sure yo…

> The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that this is the case.

DO you know what they say on Wall Street? "Past performance is no guarantee of future returns"? The same rule applies to biology. The reason the future diverges from the past is because it's guaranteed to be different. As to human population growth, there's no basis for comparing the future to the past. But I will say this -- on at least one occasion in the past, humans were nearly wiped out by just one volcanic eruption:

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

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."

Ten thousand humans. The only reason we survived as a species is because of chance, not destiny. And that event is easily seen in the genetic record -- it's very likely to be just one of many examples where we survived only by chance, on a planet where 90% of all species have been wiped out.

> Are you sure you're not just harboring a fixed superstition on the subject ...

I just quoted the scientific record. I can also describe the Logistic function, a scientific biological modeling tool that reliably predicts the future of species who try to exceed the carrying capacity of their environments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

The curve is nearly flat at the left because there are too few organisms to sustain a higher growth rate.

The curve is nearly flat at the right because mass starvation results in too few surviving organisms to sustain a higher growth rate.

Welcome to natural selection, and to science.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#92

Post by glenra »

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…

In the case of murder, the murder rate today is no higher than it was a century ago and much less than it was 30 years ago. So how big an interval do YOU think is appropriate to look at for the murder rate? Go back too far and you get into measurement problems. Merely counting incidents (as the wikipedia page does) is nonsense for several reasons (1) a vastly better news network is going to make more incidents easy to find today than in the past, (2) incidents that happened since the internet and in recent people's memories are going to be overrepresented, (3) population growth means we expect more incidents even if the base rate were flat or declining.

In the case of climate change, the trend for the last decade is flat/cooling - that's more than "a year or two". Which is not terribly consistent with the models - the models clearly have been running hotter than observations and are have been unreliable predictors.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/last:120/plot/wti/last:...

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#93

Post by hannibal5 »

seclorum wrote: post #66
hannibal5 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'm 100% sure. If you don't believe me go and look at how we are capable of managing our resources in Sahelin region.

.. okay, fine: then you go and see how we've managed our resources in .. oh, lets just take - The Whole of Europe - and compare. Just because some humans 'are stupid' doesn't mean all humans are. There is a lot of evidence that we, who choose to manage, will outlive those who choose to be stupid. 200,000 years of it, in fact. (Stupidity might be contagious; the point is though: so is intelligence.)

Population growth in Europe (whole continent) has stopped and is currently in decline.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#94

Post by lutusp »

IsThisObvious wrote: post #16
lutusp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I'm all for keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I don't like what people say about overpopulatiion. That's your argument? That you don'e like it? I don't like it either, but mass death is how nature deals with species who exceed the carrying capacity of their environments. > Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by natural catastrophi…

> We're already seeing the first stages. Can you support this? We're not seeing any mass deaths which are sufficient to even slow the population growth rate, and instead, seem to simply be seeing more statistically unlikely events as the population grows larger - which is what we would expect.

> Can you support this?

Of course. Just look at the number of people who are on the brink of starvation:

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. Almost all the hungry people, 852 million, live in developing countries, representing 15 percent of the population of developing counties. There are 16 million people undernourished in developed countries."

> We're not seeing any mass deaths which are sufficient to even slow the population growth rate ...

Not true, and in any case, that's not how an uncontrolled population expansion works -- such a process involves more mass death accompanied by more and more people surviving at the same time. The model is the Logistic function:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

The curve is nearly flat on the left because there are too few organisms available to produce a higher growth rate.

The curve is nearly flat on the right because mass death prevents enough surviving organisms able to produce a higher growth rate.

Notice about the Logistic curve that the trend is always positive -- more people, but more death, at the same time. I emphasize that the Logistic curve is matched by any number of laboratory experiments -- it's more than a hypothesis about biology, including human biology.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#95

Post by bsullivan01 »

hannibal5 wrote: post #17

The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. Currently world produces enough food for everyone. Then why do we have 700 - 800 million malnourished people, even more people facing food insecurity, why we are destroying farmland and why are we wasting the primary macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K). Overpopulation i…

Exactly. But take away that incentive (of having more than the person next to me) and IMO the entire system collapses.

>>Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

But Of course it is. It's much easier to feed 500 million people instead of 7.5 billion or 15 billion so . The world produces food as it is and will but at what ecological cost? (think of pesticides, pollution, GM etc)

>>There is no environmental reason for people to go hungry now or in the future.

I take this wonderful professor will give up movies, fancy cars, air conditioning and all that is unnecessary to feed xxx kids in Africa :-)

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#96

Post by seclorum »

lutusp wrote: post #91
seclorum wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that this is the case. 200,000 years of evidence suggests that, in spite of our superstitions, we humans are capable of managing our resources and replenishing the world from which we derive our sustenance. Are you sure yo…

> The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that this is the case. DO you know what they say on Wall Street? "Past performance is no guarantee of future returns"? The same rule applies to biology. The reason the future diverges from the past is because it's guaranteed to be different. As to human population growth, there's no basis for comparing the future to the past. But I will say this…

We managed to survive. We'll continue to manage to survive: if we manage.

Welcome to logical positivism. :P

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#97

Post by seclorum »

lutusp wrote: post #46
jasonkolb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a myopic view. I think Joseph Stalin had the perfect response to your argument: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic."

> Joseph Stalin had the perfect response ... That's not a perfect response to people's attitude toward population control by mass death, which is what I'm describing -- it's exactly the same argument that's offered in the linked article: "In moving toward a better Anthropocene, the environment will be what we make it." Indeed it will. > What a myopic view. It's myopia to imagine, as the linked article does, that we c…

Actually, its a view supported by evidence, whereas your view is supported by .. superstition, scientifically described but nevertheless: still superstition.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#98

Post by lutusp »

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…

> The reality is that the best way to control population expansion is by bringing good healthcare to a region.

That's a very good idea, and consistent with civilized standards and compassion, but it will not "control population". Population is a different issue with its own rules and constraints.

> but there are humane, concrete solutions ...

There are no "humane, concrete solutions". There are no solutions at all, not for a civilized people who honor individual rights. We can force people to reduce their numbers and abandon any right to call ourselves a civilized people, or we can honor individual rights and watch the unfolding of a catastrophe.

This is not a movie where all the problems get resolved in the third act. This is reality, and nature is in charge.

People who (like the author of the linked article) wave their hands in the air and say it will all work out, just don't understand biology and natural selection.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#99

Post by glenra »

fedvasu wrote: post #73
glenra wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population density of Fremont, CA is about the same as the population density of Bangladesh, and it's not a bad place to live. The population density of Hong Kong is much higher still, and it's also a pretty nice place to live. In short, the countries you name have a poverty problem, NOT a population problem. And the poverty problem is generally declining, last I checked.

Dude(I hope you are,or else Ma'am), HongKong is an urban conglomerate(yes it is independent region). It is a city you can't apply the same logic of cities to a an entire nation.My point is still valid.

> My point is still valid.

WHAT point? Dude, you need to spend some time with gapminders.org . Follow the links below and press the "play" button beneath the charts.

India and Bangladesh have in the last few decades had a rapidly falling birthrate (down to around replacement level) along with rapidly improving child mortality rates. Watch this in the form of blue dots marching down and to the left.

http://www.bit.ly/1azLeVo

Meanwhile, per-capita income and life expectancy are improving - watch the blue dots march up and to the right:

http://www.bit.ly/16sSKR8

So where's the impending disaster? I don't see it in any of the relevant metrics.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#100

Post by bayesianhorse »

lutusp wrote: post #84
bayesianhorse wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The article actually says we produce enough to feed the whole world.

Massive death tolls from famines always come down to political stupidity. (Refusing food aid for example)

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