"Just open this page...."

[Martha Adams]

"Just open this page...."

Hah!

Seems to me, some severe rubbish has been coming in here
lately.

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Sun 2012 Apr 29]

[Joy Beeson]

On Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:41:44 -0400, Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net>
wrote:

> Seems to me, some severe rubbish has been coming in here
> lately.

It appears that Eternal September filtered out the post you are
referring to.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

[Jay E. Morris]

On 4/29/2012 12:40 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:41:44 -0400, Martha Adams<mh...@verizon.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Seems to me, some severe rubbish has been coming in here
>> lately.
>
> It appears that Eternal September filtered out the post you are
> referring to.
>

Yes, they appear to be doing an excellent job at filtering the spam.
Sometime back on another group someone complained about spam
overwhelming the group and I hadn't seen any of it.

[Keith F. Lynch]

Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
> Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> Seems to me, some severe rubbish has been coming in here lately.

> It appears that Eternal September filtered out the post you are
> referring to.

So did Panix.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

[Martha Adams]

On 4/29/2012 3:59 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
> Joy Beeson<jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
>> Martha Adams<mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> Seems to me, some severe rubbish has been coming in here lately.
>
>> It appears that Eternal September filtered out the post you are
>> referring to.
>
> So did Panix.

==============================================
Well. And, *Well.* There's news in this thread for me, and I am
thinking about what it is. Some of that news is evidently, that
Verizon's filtering might look a little cheap and crummy, since
those posts *are* coming in here.

'Eternal September' is a really nice name, and it's reaching me.
I'm going to search on that and see what I can find. Thanks for
the pointer, Joy.

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Wed 2012 May 02]

[Jay E. Morris]

On 5/2/2012 8:37 PM, Martha Adams wrote:
> On 4/29/2012 3:59 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
>> Joy Beeson<jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
>>> Martha Adams<mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>> Seems to me, some severe rubbish has been coming in here lately.
>>
>>> It appears that Eternal September filtered out the post you are
>>> referring to.
>>
>> So did Panix.
> ==============================================
> Well. And, *Well.* There's news in this thread for me, and I am
> thinking about what it is. Some of that news is evidently, that
> Verizon's filtering might look a little cheap and crummy, since
> those posts *are* coming in here.
>
> 'Eternal September' is a really nice name, and it's reaching me.

You must not know what it refers to.

[Martha Adams]

======================================

> You must not know what it refers to.

Hi, Jay. I'm ok with that, as far as it goes, because in fact, I
don't know what *you think* it refers to.

To me, it points to the idea of an idealized September that goes
on indefinitely. Such ideas really reach me now I'm on the far
side of age 80. And that nothing of that sort is reality -- for
your information, when you get beyond age 80 that is a new and
not welcome reality that can reach deep into your feelings and
thinking. September can be a good time of year, too bad it does
not last.

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Thr 2012 May 03]

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <tIidnXd9vof4Cj_S...@giganews.com>,

Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
>On 5/2/2012 10:36 PM, Jay E. Morris wrote:
>> On 5/2/2012 8:37 PM, Martha Adams wrote:
>>> 'Eternal September' is a really nice name, and it's reaching me.
>> You must not know what it refers to.

...

>To me, it points to the idea of an idealized September that goes on
>indefinitely. Such ideas really reach me now I'm on the far side of
>age 80. And that nothing of that sort is reality -- for your
>information, when you get beyond age 80 that is a new and not welcome
>reality that can reach deep into your feelings and thinking.
>September can be a good time of year, too bad it does not last.

Having read that, I feel like a bit of a cad for pointing out what
"eternal September" means in terms of Usenet.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-ended.html

September that never ended

All time since September 1993. One of the seasonal rhythms of the
Usenet [sic] used to be the annual September influx of clueless
newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance
of themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting
their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to
learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies
could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL
users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the
old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically
recall the period before, this triggered an inexorable decline in the
quality of discussions on newsgroups. Syn. eternal September. See also
AOL!.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[David V. Loewe, Jr]

On Thu, 03 May 2012, Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:

>On 5/2/2012 10:36 PM, Jay E. Morris wrote:
>> On 5/2/2012 8:37 PM, Martha Adams wrote:
>>> On 4/29/2012 3:59 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
>>>> Joy Beeson<jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
>>>>> Martha Adams<mh...@verizon.net> wrote:

>>>>>> Seems to me, some severe rubbish has been coming in here lately.
>>>>
>>>>> It appears that Eternal September filtered out the post you are
>>>>> referring to.
>>>>
>>>> So did Panix.
>>> ==============================================
>>> Well. And, *Well.* There's news in this thread for me, and I am
>>> thinking about what it is. Some of that news is evidently, that
>>> Verizon's filtering might look a little cheap and crummy, since
>>> those posts *are* coming in here.
>>>
>>> 'Eternal September' is a really nice name, and it's reaching me.
>> You must not know what it refers to.
>>
>>> I'm going to search on that and see what I can find. Thanks for
>>> the pointer, Joy.

>======================================
>
>> You must not know what it refers to.
>
>Hi, Jay. I'm ok with that, as far as it goes, because in fact, I
>don't know what *you think* it refers to.
>
>To me, it points to the idea of an idealized September that goes
>on indefinitely. Such ideas really reach me now I'm on the far
>side of age 80. And that nothing of that sort is reality -- for
>your information, when you get beyond age 80 that is a new and
>not welcome reality that can reach deep into your feelings and
>thinking. September can be a good time of year, too bad it does
>not last.

Well it means pretty much the opposite of what *you* think.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September>

"Usenet originated among Northern hemisphere universities, where every
year in September, a large number of new university freshmen acquired
access to Usenet for the first time, and took some time to acclimate to
the network's standards of conduct and "netiquette". After a month or
so, these new users would theoretically learn to comport themselves
according to its conventions, or simply tire of using the service.
September thus heralded the peak influx of disruptive newcomers to the
network.[1]

Around 1993, the online services such as America Online, CompuServe and
Demon Internet began offering Usenet access to its tens of thousands,
and later millions, of users. To many "old-timers", these newcomers were
far less prepared to learn netiquette than university students. This was
in part because the new services made little effort to educate its users
about Usenet customs, or to explain to them that these new-found forums
were outside their service provider's walled garden, but it was also a
result of the much larger scale of growth. Whereas the regular September
freshman influx would quickly settle down, the sheer number of new users
now threatened to overwhelm the existing Usenet culture's capacity to
inculcate its social norms.[4]

Since that time, the dramatic rise in the popularity of the Internet has
brought a constant stream of new users. Thus, from the point of view of
the pre-1993 Usenet user, the regular "September" influx of new users
never ended. The term was used by Dave Fischer in a January 26, 1994,
post to alt.folklore.computers, "It's moot now. September 1993 will go
down in net.history as the September that never ended.""
--
"Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that
you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who
misunderstand you."
Sir Karl Popper

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"Endless semptember" (or sometimes "eternal") is the phrase that arose
in 1994 when the general public was first allowed onto the internet.

Previously, a lot of freshmen got internet access at college in the
fall, and there was a big uptick in clueless newbie behavior. In 1994,
it just kept going -- hence, "endless september".

--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

[Jette Goldie]

Uh, no. :-)

Yes, a September that goes on indefinitely - but in this respect
September is not to be considered "ideal".




--
Jette Goldie
jgold...@btinternet.com

Living in the Future!

[Martha Adams]

====================================================

Well, Thanks, David. My worldly knowledge is now updated as I needed,
but I don't feel much better for it. Reality. What a bummer. Your
Popper quote is very good too, here in rasff. Sometimes I see it
used here, to no progressive effect. And in Washington, to no
progressive effect.

I increasingly feel today's world is a very unpleasant science fiction
story, not expectable from the viewpoint of the 1930's and 40's which
were my most deeply formative years. Why is there this compelling
drift in human affairs to polluted grunge? I recall the idealism in
there with a lot of immature and hurtful foolishness in the 1970's,
and in fact, I was active in a consensus group that published a weekly
counterculture newspaper. I didn't know then, that that was a high
point in my life. Of course it all went away. Vietnam cooled; some
of the worms crawled out (ringers) and were heard from and that was
interesting. But early on past Vietnam, there began a noticeable
rightward drift, which finally brought us to ...*this* we see today.

As I'm trying to see roots of this degradation, it's obvious today's
Republicans are a central force promoting it; but where do they *get*
that stuff? That fascist and authoritarian based ignorance with
religion? And I think I see a root of it: the root is over
population. It turns out, population does not scale at all well.
And along with that, our human population is grown far beyond the
carrying capacity of this local world.

Which is, I read, around 2 billion people. But today we are over 7
billion aiming for 9 billion; of whom a large part are restless and
unthinking young people, so what can we look for except for a crash?
A *bad* crash, very possibly leading us into a future like Baxter
sees in his "The Children of Time."

So that is the world and future I foresee, as I'm on my way out of
it. I never saw it coming, and where else than in science fiction
can the topic of it be worked? So I'll move along with my Web pages
which feature a large background element of *my version of* Eternal
September; or by another name, Hobbiton.

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Fri 2012 May 04]

===============================================
** Space Frontier Now! **
http://www.mhada.info
===============================================

[David Friedman]

In article <972dndn-HKxiSz7S...@giganews.com>,

Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:

> And along with that, our human population is grown far beyond the
> carrying capacity of this local world.
>
> Which is, I read, around 2 billion people.

You are a very credulous lady. How do you think the people you read
discovered that "fact?"

One way of testing scientific theories is by their predictions. The
people who make such claims have racked up a string of false predictions
unmatched, I think, outside of the nuttier end of the world cults.
Predictions made by people the rest of that community took seriously.
Read _Limits to Growth_ and look at when the unavoidable catastrophes
were due to happen. For a more extreme example, look at the unavoidable
world famines that, by Ehrlich's account, should have happened decades
ago.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_

[David V. Loewe, Jr]

On Fri, 04 May 2012, David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com>
wrote:

> Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> And along with that, our human population is grown far beyond the
>> carrying capacity of this local world.
>>
>> Which is, I read, around 2 billion people.
>
>You are a very credulous lady. How do you think the people you read
>discovered that "fact?"
>
>One way of testing scientific theories is by their predictions. The
>people who make such claims have racked up a string of false predictions
>unmatched, I think, outside of the nuttier end of the world cults.
>Predictions made by people the rest of that community took seriously.
>Read _Limits to Growth_ and look at when the unavoidable catastrophes
>were due to happen. For a more extreme example, look at the unavoidable
>world famines that, by Ehrlich's account, should have happened decades
>ago.

"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small
increases in food supplies we make, ... The death rate will increase
until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to
death during the next ten years."
Paul Ehrlich in April 1970

"By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population
to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people."
Paul Ehrlich 1969

"I would take even money that England will not exist in
the year 2000."
Paul Ehrlich 1969

"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of
millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs
embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial
increase in the world death rate..."
Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1970
--
"No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who
does not want to adopt a rational attitude."
Sir Karl Popper

[Keith F. Lynch]

Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
> I increasingly feel today's world is a very unpleasant science
> fiction story, not expectable from the viewpoint of the 1930's
> and 40's which were my most deeply formative years.

Actually, it's a lot better than many predictions. _Brave New World_
was written in the 1930s, and _1984_ in the 1940s, and our world is
much better than depicted in either of those books. Not to mention
innumerable nuclear war novels, plague-kills-almost-everyone novels,
overpopulation-and-famine novels, crime-rate-increases-exponentially
novels, communism-or-fascism-win novels, etc. Alien invasions,
robots taking over, I could go on and on. Baxter recently recycled
the oldest worldwide disaster trope of all with his _Flood_.

> As I'm trying to see roots of this degradation, it's obvious today's

> Republicans are a central force promoting it; ...

Oh, give it a rest. There's very little difference between the two
major parties, and what differences there are aren't of a form that
paints one of them as better than the other, rather than as being
just as bad in subtly different ways.

> That fascist and authoritarian based ignorance with religion?

Religion may be bad, but it isn't new.

> And I think I see a root of it: the root is over population.

I hope you're right, as that means the problem will soon go away.
The world population is expected to peak within a generation or so,
not much higher than it is today, then slowly decline. Not because
of famine, disease, or war, but because people are choosing to have
fewer children.

> But today we are over 7 billion aiming for 9 billion; of whom a
> large part are restless and unthinking young people, so what can we
> look for except for a crash? A *bad* crash, very possibly leading
> us into a future like Baxter sees in his "The Children of Time."

I think a finanical collapse in the US is inevitable due to the
immense federal debt, especially with Obamacare added to it, but it
probably won't be much more destructive than the 1930s depression if
it's allowed to run its course. (Of course if government tries to fix
it, anything could happen.)

[Martha Adams]

On 5/4/2012 11:33 AM, David Friedman wrote:
> In article<972dndn-HKxiSz7S...@giganews.com>,
> Martha Adams<mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> And along with that, our human population is grown far beyond the
>> carrying capacity of this local world.
>>
>> Which is, I read, around 2 billion people.
>
> You are a very credulous lady. How do you think the people you read
> discovered that "fact?"
>
> One way of testing scientific theories is by their predictions. The
> people who make such claims have racked up a string of false predictions
> unmatched, I think, outside of the nuttier end of the world cults.
> Predictions made by people the rest of that community took seriously.
> Read _Limits to Growth_ and look at when the unavoidable catastrophes
> were due to happen. For a more extreme example, look at the unavoidable
> world famines that, by Ehrlich's account, should have happened decades
> ago.

=======================================================
Hi, Dave. I think you have a point here, sort of; but that it fails
in a crucial element. There's a long range from hard fact out to
speculation, and to me, some piece of work doesn't need to be labelled
to tell the reader where it stands in this range. Yet here you are
in rasff apparently saying 'Limits to Growth' being not wholly right,
is therefore wholly wrong. In my view that work and such thinking is
not proved nor disproved by a more or loose connection to fact; and
I believe when we look at that, we are actually looking at thinking
which is plausible and has not been disproved. Rather, the models
are shown to be off in some of their parameters; and I quite think,
when the parameters are improved, the model will forecast better.
We've been seeming to defy Malthus, and we did it by improving our
technology and its applications. Do you believe we can go on doing
this indefinitely?

I think reasonable expectation is, *we can't* go on indefinitely as
we are doing now. I think rather, the more powerful the resources we
employ to put-off an eventual crash, the larger and more hurtful the
crash will be when it comes. Faster, too, once it starts.

And that that point will come, seems expectable. Because, those
people we assign to overall government and reckoning, only are there
for a few years and their ambition is not to do what is best for a
longterm future, but rather, to quickly extract as much as possible
for themelves and then retire, never mind that future out there.
Thus a fix does not get done; thus our culture moves slowly out to
the point where it all collapses. *That* is why I keep mentioning
Stephen Baxter's 'The Children of Time.'

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Sat 2012 May 05]

[David Friedman]

In article <CNadnRVHm6aGJTnS...@giganews.com>,

Have you read Malthus? What do you think he predicted?

> and we did it by improving our
> technology and its applications.

I don't think that is the reason that Malthus' prediction turned out to
be mistaken--he allowed for increasing productivity.

> Do you believe we can go on doing
> this indefinitely?

The model used for Limits to Growth was fundamentally wrong--I don't
think that, when it came out, I knew any economists who took it
seriously. It left out rational feedbacks.

Simple example, that I happen to remember. In their model, if the price
of food went up, farmers produced more but depleted the soil in the
process, so future output went down. But if farmers expect prices to
stay high, it's in their interest to both produce more in the present
and in the future, hence to take good care of the soil.

And we have some evidence on the matter. Food prices in Japan have been
high for a long time, Japan has a very high productivity per acre--and
it keeps having it.

You might as well try to predict the behavior of an automobile with a
model which includes everything except the driver actually looking out
the windshield and adjusting what he does accordingly.

Note also that some of the predictions, including both the ones I
mentioned, were made with great confidence. If someone tells you he is
sure something is going to happen and it doesn't, that gives you good
reason to distrust his judgement--hence other things he tells you.

Conventional end of the world cults have the same out you are
offering--they just got the parameters wrong, so the world is going to
end in another three years instead of yesterday. Do you believe them?

> I think reasonable expectation is, *we can't* go on indefinitely as
> we are doing now.

We can be confident that we won't, since technological change means that
what we do keeps changing.

> I think rather, the more powerful the resources we
> employ to put-off an eventual crash, the larger and more hurtful the
> crash will be when it comes. Faster, too, once it starts.

You are assuming your conclusion--the eventual crash.

> And that that point will come, seems expectable. Because, those
> people we assign to overall government and reckoning, only are there
> for a few years and their ambition is not to do what is best for a
> longterm future, but rather, to quickly extract as much as possible
> for themelves and then retire, never mind that future out there.

A correct description of political decision making but not of market
decision making. If I own land and am considering planting slow growing
but valuable hardwoods, it's in my interest to allow for effects beyond
my lifetime--because in twenty years I can sell the land, with partly
grown trees on it, at a price reflecting the fact that it is now 20
years closer to harvest. Long run planning requires secure property
rights, which we can and to some degree do have on the private market
but not the political market.

...

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> writes:

> Hi, [other] Dave. I think you have a point here, sort of; but that it

> fails in a crucial element. There's a long range from hard fact out
> to speculation, and to me, some piece of work doesn't need to be
> labelled to tell the reader where it stands in this range. Yet here
> you are in rasff apparently saying 'Limits to Growth' being not wholly
> right, is therefore wholly wrong. In my view that work and such
> thinking is not proved nor disproved by a more or loose connection to
> fact; and I believe when we look at that, we are actually looking at
> thinking which is plausible and has not been disproved. Rather, the
> models are shown to be off in some of their parameters; and I quite
> think, when the parameters are improved, the model will forecast
> better. We've been seeming to defy Malthus, and we did it by
> improving our technology and its applications. Do you believe we can
> go on doing this indefinitely?
>
> I think reasonable expectation is, *we can't* go on indefinitely as
> we are doing now. I think rather, the more powerful the resources we
> employ to put-off an eventual crash, the larger and more hurtful the
> crash will be when it comes. Faster, too, once it starts.

I'm on the fence. Lots of people think we can.

The key point is that expert projections show population peaking not much
higher than we are now, and then decreasing; not due to famine, but due
to choice to limit family size. One assumption behind this is more and
more people pulled into the middle class in developing nations, and more
education and rights for women, and there are forces working against
those things; any projection is based on assumptions, which may turn out
to be wrong.

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfkk40o...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> > I think reasonable expectation is, *we can't* go on indefinitely as
> > we are doing now. I think rather, the more powerful the resources we
> > employ to put-off an eventual crash, the larger and more hurtful the
> > crash will be when it comes. Faster, too, once it starts.
>
> I'm on the fence. Lots of people think we can.
>
> The key point is that expert projections show population peaking not much
> higher than we are now, and then decreasing; not due to famine, but due
> to choice to limit family size.

That's one relevant issue, certainly. But I think the claim that we run
into serious problems if population gets much larger is highly dubious.

Forty some years ago, when it was a widely accepted claim, I did some
simple calculations of population density by nation. The general
assumption was that densely populated countries were poor, with India
and China supposedly examples. If you did the arithmetic, it turned out
that neither of them was all that densely populated--big populations,
but also big countries. At the time, the five most densely populated
countries in the world consisted of two rich western European countries
and three "third world" countries that were in the process of becoming
rich. Hongkong, which wasn't a country, had a population density ten
times that of the most densely populated country in the world
(Singapore). A few decades later, its per capita income passed that of
the U.K.

At the time, there were lots of grim predictions, made with
confidence--both for the world as a whole and for individual countries.
So far as I can tell, all of them turned out to be false.

I don't think any of us is equipped to intuit the meaning of current
levels of world population--it isn't immediately obvious what the
difference is between a billion people, ten billion, and fifty, since
all the numbers are too big for our intuition, as is the area of the
world. We tend to greatly overestimate average population density,
because most of us spend most of our time in relatively densely
populated places--those being where the people are, and we being people.
So while the argument that there is some level of population density at
which serious problems arise is plausible, the only basis that most of
us have for guessing where that level is relative to present world
population is what "experts" tell us. And the relevant "experts" have a
record of past false predictions that makes their opinions very nearly
worthless.

The general view among the same people forty years ago was that things
were going downhill, with the only salvation strong government
intervention to promote population control. Except for China, that
didn't happen--and the poor people of the world have gotten
substantially richer over the past twenty years or so. That happened in
lots of places other than China, and it started happening in China not
when the one child policy went in but when China abandoned communism.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

_Salamander_: http://tinyurl.com/6957y7e
_How to Milk an Almond,..._ http://tinyurl.com/63xg8gx

[David Dyer-Bennet]

So what do numbers like acres in agricultural production show over this
period? And are there figures for suitable land not currently in
production that could be put in production? My feeling is that we're
using most of the viable arable land, and prices would have to change a
LOT to change what's viable by much.

And I think we've gotten the low-hanging fruit for increased production
on existing land; in fact we may have gone too far, since I'm not sure
how long-term sustainable current practices are.

It's trivially easy to prove there *is* an upper limit -- conservation
of mass/enerby guarantees it. Finding an actual value you can justify
in detail is of course much harder, and many people have failed. But
we're still talking about "the green revolution" in increasing farm
output dramatically; can we have another one so soon? Has there been
time to come up with enough new ideas to power GRII?

The thing people didn't expect in the 1960s was the impact of voluntary
control of fertility. Which is another reason why I hate the social
conservatives so much.

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfkpqaf...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> So what do numbers like acres in agricultural production show over this
> period? And are there figures for suitable land not currently in
> production that could be put in production? My feeling is that we're
> using most of the viable arable land, and prices would have to change a
> LOT to change what's viable by much.

A very large fraction--how large I don't know--of arable land is used to
grow feed for animals. Shifting most of that to food for humans wouldn't
lower quality of life by very much, and would greatly increase output.

Checking the stat abstract, the largest food crop in the U.S. is
soybeans, the second largest corn, the third largest wheat. I would
guess that most of the first two goes to animal feed, but the stat
abstract doesn't seem to say.

It isn't just a matter of using more land, although that's
possible--area of forest in the U.S. reached it's minimum c. 1930 and
has been going up since. It's also a matter of increasing yield per
acre, which varies quite a lot around the world.

> And I think we've gotten the low-hanging fruit for increased production
> on existing land; in fact we may have gone too far, since I'm not sure
> how long-term sustainable current practices are.

What is your reason for these opinions? How would you know if they are
true?

...

> The thing people didn't expect in the 1960s was the impact of voluntary
> control of fertility. Which is another reason why I hate the social
> conservatives so much.

That could explain false predictions for the year 2000, but it's hard to
use it to justify false predictions for the seventies.

Note that, while better contraception is probably responsible for lower
population growth (good or bad--you seem to be taking it for granted
that it's a good thing), it's also arguably responsible for the sharp
reduction in the percentage of children born to stable parental couples.
That's one of the big changes over our lifetime, and one not, as far as
I can recall, anticipated by anybody.

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <ddfr-98D71B.1...@news.giganews.com>,

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>A very large fraction--how large I don't know--of arable land is used to
>grow feed for animals.

http://www.agrarius.de/files/agrarius_infofolder_inf20090-01gb.pdf
claims "Use of harvested agricultural biomass worldwide (2008)
(source: nova-Institute)", apparently in tons, on page 2:

74% Feed
18% Food
4.3% Biomass for industrial material use
3.7% Biomass for energy use

Above that pie graph are slightly different figures, but from context,
I think they might be for the EU in particular.

http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/article.php?id=392 says "About 26
percent of the Earth's land has been dedicated to grazing, with an
additional 33 percent of all arable land being used to produce animal
feed. Seventy percent of all agricultural land is being used to
support animal industry. Seventy percent of deforested land in the
Amazon is now pasture land, with a majority of the other 30 percent
being used to produce animal feed. A huge majority of the land base
that has been cleared for agriculture in the Amazon is used for
soybean production. This soy, however, isn't destined to become a
block of tofu. Rather, it is bound for a European feedlot. In the US,
more than 60 percent of all grain produced becomes feed for animals."

As to whether these are reliable I know not. This is just the result
of cursory Google searches.

NonObSF: the stories collected in _Tuf Voyaging_, George
R. R. Martin's series of short fiction about Haviland Tuf, genetic
engineer. Specifically, the stories on the overpopulated planet.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[David Dyer-Bennet]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:

> In article <ylfkpqaf...@dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> So what do numbers like acres in agricultural production show over this
>> period? And are there figures for suitable land not currently in
>> production that could be put in production? My feeling is that we're
>> using most of the viable arable land, and prices would have to change a
>> LOT to change what's viable by much.
>
> A very large fraction--how large I don't know--of arable land is used to
> grow feed for animals. Shifting most of that to food for humans wouldn't
> lower quality of life by very much, and would greatly increase output.

Yeah? Just try that, and see what happens!

Besides, we don't do too well eating alfalfa. Soybeans and corn we can
do a bit more with, of course.

> Checking the stat abstract, the largest food crop in the U.S. is
> soybeans, the second largest corn, the third largest wheat. I would
> guess that most of the first two goes to animal feed, but the stat
> abstract doesn't seem to say.
>
> It isn't just a matter of using more land, although that's
> possible--area of forest in the U.S. reached it's minimum c. 1930 and
> has been going up since. It's also a matter of increasing yield per
> acre, which varies quite a lot around the world.

Yes, but we've had our first Green Revolution, and the question of
whether we can have another one so soon seems relevant to me.

>> And I think we've gotten the low-hanging fruit for increased production
>> on existing land; in fact we may have gone too far, since I'm not sure
>> how long-term sustainable current practices are.
>
> What is your reason for these opinions? How would you know if they are
> true?

For sure, only with time.

The remarkable jump in yields in a short time suggests a seizing of
low-hanging-fruit to me. The questions about sustainability are more
nebulous (at least in my head, actual scientists in the area presumably
know more).

>> The thing people didn't expect in the 1960s was the impact of voluntary
>> control of fertility. Which is another reason why I hate the social
>> conservatives so much.
>
> That could explain false predictions for the year 2000, but it's hard to
> use it to justify false predictions for the seventies.

It changed mighty fast, in a lot of places.

> Note that, while better contraception is probably responsible for lower
> population growth (good or bad--you seem to be taking it for granted
> that it's a good thing), it's also arguably responsible for the sharp
> reduction in the percentage of children born to stable parental couples.
> That's one of the big changes over our lifetime, and one not, as far as
> I can recall, anticipated by anybody.

Oh yes, clearly good; this planet is severely over-populated.

I think traditional families are severely over-rated, so that doesn't
concern me. The economic position of the custodial parent matters much
more I'm pretty sure.

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <ylfkipg7...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:
>
>> In article <ylfkpqaf...@dd-b.net>,
>> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>
>>> So what do numbers like acres in agricultural production show over
>>> this period? And are there figures for suitable land not
>>> currently in production that could be put in production? My
>>> feeling is that we're using most of the viable arable land, and
>>> prices would have to change a LOT to change what's viable by much.
>>
>> A very large fraction--how large I don't know--of arable land is
>> used to grow feed for animals. Shifting most of that to food for
>> humans wouldn't lower quality of life by very much, and would
>> greatly increase output.
>
>Yeah? Just try that, and see what happens!

I would have expected "Try that and see what happens" from DDFr, with
added comments about economics, specifically how market forces would
have already driven us to less meat consumption if people had actually
wanted that outcome.

>Besides, we don't do too well eating alfalfa.

... You have not considered that land that currently grows alfalfa
would likely be able to grow human-edible good?

>The questions about sustainability are more nebulous ...
...

>this planet is severely over-populated.

*head desk BANG*

Begging the question! Unless your criteria for deciding that the
planet is over-populated does not include food production capability,
like (say) a religious belief that living humans should be numbered
with a unique positive 31-bit integer ("The Two Billion Names of
Man").

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[David Dyer-Bennet]

tm...@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) writes:

> In article <ylfkipg7...@dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:
>>
>>> In article <ylfkpqaf...@dd-b.net>,
>>> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> So what do numbers like acres in agricultural production show over
>>>> this period? And are there figures for suitable land not
>>>> currently in production that could be put in production? My
>>>> feeling is that we're using most of the viable arable land, and
>>>> prices would have to change a LOT to change what's viable by much.
>>>
>>> A very large fraction--how large I don't know--of arable land is
>>> used to grow feed for animals. Shifting most of that to food for
>>> humans wouldn't lower quality of life by very much, and would
>>> greatly increase output.
>>
>>Yeah? Just try that, and see what happens!
>
> I would have expected "Try that and see what happens" from DDFr, with
> added comments about economics, specifically how market forces would
> have already driven us to less meat consumption if people had actually
> wanted that outcome.

One of the reasons we have these discussion so much is we *aren't* polar
opposites.

>>Besides, we don't do too well eating alfalfa.
>
> ... You have not considered that land that currently grows alfalfa
> would likely be able to grow human-edible good?

In rotation maybe; alfalfa is usually grown in fallow years, or on
marginal land, I thought. In general, pasture is not land that's good
for intensive cultivation.

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <ylfkehqv...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>tm...@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) writes:
>
>> In article <ylfkipg7...@dd-b.net>,
>> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>>Besides, we don't do too well eating alfalfa.
>>
>> ... You have not considered that land that currently grows alfalfa

>> would likely be able to grow human-edible good [I meant 'food']?

>
>In rotation maybe; alfalfa is usually grown in fallow years, or on
>marginal land, I thought. In general, pasture is not land that's
>good for intensive cultivation.

One of the Web pages pointed out that one common objection is that
land used for grazing is often not suitable for any crops (implying
that so much land being used for grazing is just an indication of low
productivity of that land, and has nothing to do with land that could
be repurposed). They replied that such grazing land is easy to damage
severly, which to me seems like a possible point but not really
answering the objection. I also wonder whether there are possible
crops: for example, the "Land of Red and Gold" series in the what-if
Alternate History newsgroup pointed out that wattle trees in Australia
produce useful seeds, inter alia. I'm pretty sure that there are
crops other than alfalfa that can be used in fallow years.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[David V. Loewe, Jr]

On Mon, 07 May 2012, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

>David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:

>> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>
>>> So what do numbers like acres in agricultural production show over this
>>> period? And are there figures for suitable land not currently in
>>> production that could be put in production? My feeling is that we're
>>> using most of the viable arable land, and prices would have to change a
>>> LOT to change what's viable by much.

>> Checking the stat abstract, the largest food crop in the U.S. is
>> soybeans, the second largest corn, the third largest wheat. I would
>> guess that most of the first two goes to animal feed, but the stat
>> abstract doesn't seem to say.
>>
>> It isn't just a matter of using more land, although that's
>> possible--area of forest in the U.S. reached it's minimum c. 1930 and
>> has been going up since. It's also a matter of increasing yield per
>> acre, which varies quite a lot around the world.
>
>Yes, but we've had our first Green Revolution, and the question of
>whether we can have another one so soon seems relevant to me.

By al means, click through. The graph is enlightening.

<http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/11/corn-yields-have-increased-six-times.html>

"1. Farmers today grow five times as much corn as they did in the 1930s
– on 20 percent less land. That is 13 million acres or 20,000 square
miles, twice the size of Massachusetts. The yield per acre has
skyrocketed from 24 bushels in 1931 to 154 now, or a six-fold gain.

2. The national average of 153 bushels produced on each acre in 2010 was
nearly 20 percent larger than the average yield in 2002 – and plant
breeding experts estimate yields may jump 40 percent before 2020 and,
perhaps, hit a national average of 300 bushels per acre by 2030."
--
"Many receive advice, few profit by it."
Publius Syrus

[David Loewe, Jr.]

On Mon, 7 May 2012, tm...@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) wrote:

>David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

>>Besides, we don't do too well eating alfalfa.
>
>... You have not considered that land that currently grows alfalfa
>would likely be able to grow human-edible good?

Indeed. Alfalfa and similar plants are often used as cover when letting
a field "rest" by lying fallow. I bailed hay in Indiana when I was 12
and 13. The fields we harvested would have been just fine for corn or
(soy)beans. In fact, there was a large pasture on my uncle's farm (I
bailed for one of his neighbors with my 4 years older cousin) that
cycled to wheat/soybeans [1] and corn before I graduated and stopped
coming by so often (and they moved).

[1] You can, if things go right, plant wheat, harvest the wheat and,
then, plant beans and get two useful crops in one year out of one field.
The bean yield will be significantly lower than if you'd planted
normally in the spring, but still enough to make it worthwhile.
--
"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we
should thank God that such men lived."
George Smith Patton, Jr.

[David V. Loewe, Jr]

On Mon, 07 May 2012, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

>In general, pasture is not land that's good for intensive cultivation.

That really depends. Pasture land in Indiana would be a godsend for
planting crops in eastern Colorado.
--
"Quantum particles: the dreams that stuff is made of."
- David Moser

[Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in
news:ddfr-642845.1...@news.giganews.com:

> In article <ylfkk40o...@dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> > I think reasonable expectation is, *we can't* go on
>> > indefinitely as we are doing now. I think rather, the more
>> > powerful the resources we employ to put-off an eventual
>> > crash, the larger and more hurtful the crash will be when it
>> > comes. Faster, too, once it starts.
>>
>> I'm on the fence. Lots of people think we can.
>>
>> The key point is that expert projections show population
>> peaking not much higher than we are now, and then decreasing;
>> not due to famine, but due to choice to limit family size.
>
> That's one relevant issue, certainly. But I think the claim that
> we run into serious problems if population gets much larger is
> highly dubious.

Depends on how you define "much larger."

>
> Forty some years ago, when it was a widely accepted claim, I did
> some simple calculations of population density by nation. The
> general assumption was that densely populated countries were
> poor, with India and China supposedly examples. If you did the
> arithmetic, it turned out that neither of them was all that
> densely populated--big populations, but also big countries.

It's rather more complicated than that. If you compute the
population density of the parts of China that people actually live
in, it's a *lot* higher. (Most of them live in the Yangtze river
valley.)

> At the time, there were lots of grim predictions, made with
> confidence--both for the world as a whole and for individual
> countries. So far as I can tell, all of them turned out to be
> false.

That's what happens when the general population gets it
prognistication from people who get paid royalties on books
predicing the end of the world. Of *course* they're wrong. If they
weren't, they couldn't write more books to sell you in the future.

Most common idiocy is to assume that bad trends - rising
population, for instance - will continue _without any change_ while
*no* good trends will *ever* start, much less continue. Turns out,
people aren't actually as stupid as we'd have to be to follow that
plan, and that smart people don't like to die, so they work against
negative trends, and, more importantly, _create positive ones_,
like figuring out how to grow more food on the same land with the
same amount of labor.. Duh.

(See Norman Borlaug, credited with saving a billion - with a "b" -
lives with dwarf wheat and other crop improvements.)

>
> I don't think any of us is equipped to intuit the meaning of
> current levels of world population--it isn't immediately obvious
> what the difference is between a billion people, ten billion,
> and fifty, since all the numbers are too big for our intuition,
> as is the area of the world.

The people who study wuch things don't rely on intuition, they rely
on carefully constructed science. (Unfortuantely, it seems most of
them also write books.)

--
Terry Austin

"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

[Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy]

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote in
news:ylfkpqaf...@dd-b.net:

You might, if you're intersted in actually understanding much of
anything, take a look at production per acre, and especially
compare it between the industrial west and the third world. India,
despite a population that will probably exceed China's soon, is a
net food exporter, after all.

>
> And I think we've gotten the low-hanging fruit for increased
> production on existing land; in fact we may have gone too far,
> since I'm not sure how long-term sustainable current practices
> are.

Sustainable enough to last until something new comes along, from
the looks of it.

>
> It's trivially easy to prove there *is* an upper limit --
> conservation of mass/enerby guarantees it.

We're orders of magnitude away from that, especially in the third
world, where farming technology often consists of a stick to push
seeds in to the ground and a bucket to collect shit in. The vast
majority of the land under cultivation on planet earth is still in
the 5th century, technologically.

[Keith F. Lynch]

Tim McDaniel <tm...@panix.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure that there are crops other than alfalfa that can be
> used in fallow years.

Yes. Peanuts, like alfalfa, fix their own nitrogen.

[Keith F. Lynch]

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> Yes, but we've had our first Green Revolution, and the question of
> whether we can have another one so soon seems relevant to me.

I doubt a revolution is necessary. Population is leveling off, and
within a generation or two will start to drop.

> Oh yes, clearly good; this planet is severely over-populated.

What's your evidence for that claim?

[Keith F. Lynch]

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> And are there figures for suitable land not currently in production
> that could be put in production? My feeling is that we're using
> most of the viable arable land, and prices would have to change a
> LOT to change what's viable by much.

As others have pointed out, a lot of farm land is used to grow crops
to feed animals. I'll point out that a lot is also used to grow
non-food crops such as tobacco and cotton.

Farmers get a very tiny percentage of what people pay for food, at
least in the US. If there was any food shortage, farmers could be
paid more than twice as much without the cost to consumers increasing
by more than a few percent.

> It's trivially easy to prove there *is* an upper limit --
> conservation of mass/enerby guarantees it.

True. However, we're nowhere close to it. Divide the number of
calories of sunlight that reach the ground by the number of calories
the average person needs to eat to get a rough idea of the upper
limit. Or divide the amount of fresh water by the amount the average
person needs to drink. Or the land area of the planet by the floor
space of the average apartment.

The old idea that population would continue to increase exponentially
until there was a sphere of human flesh expanding at the speed of
light is obsolete. World population is leveling off and will soon
start dropping.

[Martha Adams]

======================================================
Hi, Dave. I read you saying more food enables more people; and since
more food is basically not a problem, then more people isn't either. I
can't agree with that for the two basic reasons,

1) Can those more people constructively live with each other?

2) Natural resources such as oil, metals, gas, etc, are limited.

Which I think brings an end somehow and more likely decades not
millennia down the road. Thus we see, somehow that population
amounts to arithmetic but if you do that, it turns out population
does not scale.

Another issue is, yes, people can multiply remarkably; but somewhere
in there is the question, *What for?* Why, what for, those people
to live? Just to eat up resources and never mind the long term
future? Or do they live for a long term *reason*?

In my view, all our population here on Terra, fails this test so
completely that do you notice, nobody here even, mentioned it until
I fetched it out. So how about that ever-expanding population?

*What for?*

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Mon 2012 May 07]

[Keith F. Lynch]

Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
> Another issue is, yes, people can multiply remarkably; but somewhere
> in there is the question, *What for?* Why, what for, those people to
> live? Just to eat up resources and never mind the long term future?
> Or do they live for a long term *reason*?

Every family decides for itself how many children to have. There's no
central bureau deciding on what the ideal population would be.

> *What for?*

Economies of scale? Write a book that interests just one person in a
million, and sell a million copies. Have a million one-in-a-million
geniuses living at the same time.

[David Friedman]

In article <qrydnWR9hI6t6DXS...@giganews.com>,

Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:

> Hi, Dave. I read you saying more food enables more people; and since
> more food is basically not a problem, then more people isn't either. I
> can't agree with that for the two basic reasons,

That isn't what I said. I was responding to a particular argument about
why significantly more people than we now have would be a
problem--because it would be difficult to expand the food supply to feed
them. There are obviously lots of other possible arguments.

> 1) Can those more people constructively live with each other?

Any reason why it would be harder with more people?

> 2) Natural resources such as oil, metals, gas, etc, are limited.

Metals don't get used up, aside from U235. And the total amount of metal
in the earth is very large--enormously more than the amount we use.
Aluminum, for instance, is one of the more common elements.

What does get used up is useful energy, which basically means that
entropy increases. But we have a large thermonuclear reactor available
less than a hundred million miles away, and even without using that we
have technologies that can produce useful energy for a very long time.

> Which I think brings an end somehow and more likely decades not
> millennia down the road. Thus we see, somehow that population
> amounts to arithmetic but if you do that, it turns out population
> does not scale.

But you haven't done the arithmetic--just as you haven't, I suspect,
read Malthus, and so don't know what he actually said.

Increases in population have some negative effects and some positive
effects, and you have offered no shadow of an argument for the claim
that the former outweigh the latter.

> Another issue is, yes, people can multiply remarkably; but somewhere
> in there is the question, *What for?*

What do you exist for? If you have an answer, is it more valid for you
than for other people?

> Why, what for, those people
> to live? Just to eat up resources and never mind the long term
> future? Or do they live for a long term *reason*?

Each person lives for his reason. And you are simply assuming, without
evidence, that more humans mean the rest of us are worse off rather than
better off.

..

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfkipg7...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> > Note that, while better contraception is probably responsible for lower
> > population growth (good or bad--you seem to be taking it for granted
> > that it's a good thing), it's also arguably responsible for the sharp
> > reduction in the percentage of children born to stable parental couples.
> > That's one of the big changes over our lifetime, and one not, as far as
> > I can recall, anticipated by anybody.
>
> Oh yes, clearly good; this planet is severely over-populated.

Again--how do you know? You are making confident statements that you
cannot justify of your own knowledge, for reasons I pointed out. They
are almost certainly based on what other people tell you--as are many of
our beliefs.

But in this case, the other people who were saying the same thing forty
or fifty years ago turned out to be wildly wrong in their predictions,
which is a reason not to rely on their claims now.

[David Friedman]

In article <jo9bff$ku$1...@reader1.panix.com>,

tm...@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) wrote:

> >Yeah? Just try that, and see what happens!
>
> I would have expected "Try that and see what happens" from DDFr, with
> added comments about economics, specifically how market forces would
> have already driven us to less meat consumption if people had actually
> wanted that outcome.

The question was about what would happen if further increases in
population put serious pressure on agricultural land. So far they
haven't.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Sure, I didn't say you *had to* grow alfalfa in fallow years, I said
that's when it's commonly grown. Basically, you need crops in rotation
that draw and fix different nutrients, so the cycle (including
fertilizer inputs) comes out even (or slightly in surplus).

(And I should mention that I'm not an expert on this. I live in a farm
state so I see maybe a bit more in the news, and it builds up in my head
over a lifetime, but nowhere near an expert.)

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> writes:

> On Mon, 07 May 2012, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>>In general, pasture is not land that's good for intensive cultivation.
>
> That really depends. Pasture land in Indiana would be a godsend for
> planting crops in eastern Colorado.

And if they could move it there, I'm sure they would!

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:

> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>> And are there figures for suitable land not currently in production
>> that could be put in production? My feeling is that we're using
>> most of the viable arable land, and prices would have to change a
>> LOT to change what's viable by much.
>
> As others have pointed out, a lot of farm land is used to grow crops
> to feed animals. I'll point out that a lot is also used to grow
> non-food crops such as tobacco and cotton.

Yes, and?

> Farmers get a very tiny percentage of what people pay for food, at
> least in the US. If there was any food shortage, farmers could be
> paid more than twice as much without the cost to consumers increasing
> by more than a few percent.

No doubt.

>> It's trivially easy to prove there *is* an upper limit --
>> conservation of mass/enerby guarantees it.
>
> True. However, we're nowhere close to it. Divide the number of
> calories of sunlight that reach the ground by the number of calories
> the average person needs to eat to get a rough idea of the upper
> limit. Or divide the amount of fresh water by the amount the average
> person needs to drink. Or the land area of the planet by the floor
> space of the average apartment.
>
> The old idea that population would continue to increase exponentially
> until there was a sphere of human flesh expanding at the speed of
> light is obsolete. World population is leveling off and will soon
> start dropping.

Based on current personal preferences, yes. And it's still in the
"will" category. And there are already major political movements
reacting against that. I think it's too early to get really sanguine
about this; "hopeful" is more appropriate, I think.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:

> In article <ylfkipg7...@dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> > Note that, while better contraception is probably responsible for lower
>> > population growth (good or bad--you seem to be taking it for granted
>> > that it's a good thing), it's also arguably responsible for the sharp
>> > reduction in the percentage of children born to stable parental couples.
>> > That's one of the big changes over our lifetime, and one not, as far as
>> > I can recall, anticipated by anybody.
>>
>> Oh yes, clearly good; this planet is severely over-populated.
>
> Again--how do you know? You are making confident statements that you
> cannot justify of your own knowledge, for reasons I pointed out. They
> are almost certainly based on what other people tell you--as are many of
> our beliefs.

I don't have the time (or skills) to research everything from ground
zero, no. Neither does anybody else, there's just too much that's
important.

Oil, water, energy, and food are all looking very limiting to me. Sure,
we're working on things on all of them; no doubt some of those fixes
will work.

> But in this case, the other people who were saying the same thing forty
> or fifty years ago turned out to be wildly wrong in their predictions,
> which is a reason not to rely on their claims now.

Their arguments are inevitably true, at one level -- the technology to
go beyond mass/energy limits isn't in sight, isn't even conceivable.
The only question of any meaning is "how many" people can the earth
support sustainably in the long term. People, such as you, are using
the failure of the Club of Rome round of predictions to invalidate the
concepts; but the concepts seem to me to be unassailable.

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfkhavq...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> >> Oh yes, clearly good; this planet is severely over-populated.

(I replied)

> > Again--how do you know? You are making confident statements that you
> > cannot justify of your own knowledge, for reasons I pointed out. They
> > are almost certainly based on what other people tell you--as are many of
> > our beliefs.
>
> I don't have the time (or skills) to research everything from ground
> zero, no. Neither does anybody else, there's just too much that's
> important.

Correct.

> Oil, water, energy, and food are all looking very limiting to me. Sure,
> we're working on things on all of them; no doubt some of those fixes
> will work.

What does "looking very limiting to me mean?" You agree, I think, that
you aren't competent to evaluate the issues yourself. So does that mean
anything more than "other people claim they are very limiting?" If
that's what it means, surely the track records of those other people,
and of people in the recent past who shared their views, is relevant.

> > But in this case, the other people who were saying the same thing forty
> > or fifty years ago turned out to be wildly wrong in their predictions,
> > which is a reason not to rely on their claims now.
>
> Their arguments are inevitably true, at one level -- the technology to
> go beyond mass/energy limits isn't in sight, isn't even conceivable.
> The only question of any meaning is "how many" people can the earth
> support sustainably in the long term.

Yes. And that is what you are making a claim about--how many people. If
the right answer is a hundred billion, or even ten billion, than your
statement quoted at the top of this is false--yet you make it with
confidence.

> People, such as you, are using
> the failure of the Club of Rome round of predictions to invalidate the
> concepts; but the concepts seem to me to be unassailable.

The concept that there is some maximum number, perhaps, but that isn't
very interesting and provides no support for the claim of yours quoted
at the top of this post. If true now, it was true ten thousand years
ago--was the planet severely overpopulated then?

[rksh...@rosettacondot.com]

Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>> And are there figures for suitable land not currently in production
>> that could be put in production? My feeling is that we're using
>> most of the viable arable land, and prices would have to change a
>> LOT to change what's viable by much.
>
> As others have pointed out, a lot of farm land is used to grow crops
> to feed animals. I'll point out that a lot is also used to grow
> non-food crops such as tobacco and cotton.

A lot in absolute acreage, not so much as a percentage. For 2002 the
US estimate was 12.6 million acres, or 4.2% of active cropland. 12.4
million acres, or 98% of the non-food/-feed acreage, was in cotton.

Robert
--
Robert K. Shull Email: rkshull at rosettacon dot com

[David Dyer-Bennet]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:

> In article <ylfkhavq...@dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> >> Oh yes, clearly good; this planet is severely over-populated.
>
> (I replied)
>> > Again--how do you know? You are making confident statements that you
>> > cannot justify of your own knowledge, for reasons I pointed out. They
>> > are almost certainly based on what other people tell you--as are many of
>> > our beliefs.
>>
>> I don't have the time (or skills) to research everything from ground
>> zero, no. Neither does anybody else, there's just too much that's
>> important.
>
> Correct.
>
>> Oil, water, energy, and food are all looking very limiting to me. Sure,
>> we're working on things on all of them; no doubt some of those fixes
>> will work.
>
> What does "looking very limiting to me mean?" You agree, I think, that
> you aren't competent to evaluate the issues yourself. So does that mean
> anything more than "other people claim they are very limiting?" If
> that's what it means, surely the track records of those other people,
> and of people in the recent past who shared their views, is relevant.

Means that, to the extent I've looked, there are issues around.

I wouldn't especially group by conclusions; I'd group by arguments.
Same discredited information/argument, ignore. But same conclusion?
That's not nearly so convincing.

>> > But in this case, the other people who were saying the same thing forty
>> > or fifty years ago turned out to be wildly wrong in their predictions,
>> > which is a reason not to rely on their claims now.
>>
>> Their arguments are inevitably true, at one level -- the technology to
>> go beyond mass/energy limits isn't in sight, isn't even conceivable.
>> The only question of any meaning is "how many" people can the earth
>> support sustainably in the long term.
>
> Yes. And that is what you are making a claim about--how many people. If
> the right answer is a hundred billion, or even ten billion, than your
> statement quoted at the top of this is false--yet you make it with
> confidence.

Not much confidence, really. I just see the machinations of people
trying to discredit anything suggesting a limit all around in public
discourse. Since limits are blatantly obviously present, these people
are presumably self-interested, and not pushing truth.

Also, I don't want one of those worlds where everything is just-in-time
logistics and the rain coming 10 minutes later than predicted results in
the deaths of millions by starvation (exageration!). There needs to be
a good deal of slack; the weather, climate, biosphere, solar input, and
human residents are all somewhat unpredictable!

>> People, such as you, are using the failure of the Club of Rome round
>> of predictions to invalidate the concepts; but the concepts seem to
>> me to be unassailable.
>
> The concept that there is some maximum number, perhaps, but that isn't
> very interesting and provides no support for the claim of yours quoted
> at the top of this post. If true now, it was true ten thousand years
> ago--was the planet severely overpopulated then?

"Existence of limit" does not imply we're anywhere near it of course.

However, "existence of limit" makes me very suspicious of people who
either explicitly or by inference deny any such limits.

[rksh...@rosettacondot.com]

Range land has the advantage that one isn't trying to grow a particular
crop, just have enough vegetation present to graze the livestock. The
problem is that it's marginal from an economic standpoint unless the land
is very cheap. The rancher is pressured to have a high density of stock to
pay for the investment in land. That means either having them damage the
land (reducing later return) or investing in feed as a supplement (reducing
or eliminating profitability.)
It also doesn't help that the US definition of beef grades is essentially
Fat=Good so there's strong pressure to either feed continuously or "finish"
at a feedlot, making "natural" grazing even less attractive.

[Steve Coltrin]

begin fnord

rksh...@rosettacondot.com writes:

> Range land has the advantage that one isn't trying to grow a particular
> crop, just have enough vegetation present to graze the livestock. The
> problem is that it's marginal from an economic standpoint unless the land
> is very cheap.

Cheap or better yet free. I once encountered an asshole rancher who
knew damn well he couldn't exclude other people from using the public
lands he was grazing on but clearly thought he was entitled to.

--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org Google Groups killfiled here
"A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel
to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed."
- Associated Press

[rksh...@rosettacondot.com]

Steve Coltrin <spco...@omcl.org> wrote:
> begin fnord
> rksh...@rosettacondot.com writes:
>
>> Range land has the advantage that one isn't trying to grow a particular
>> crop, just have enough vegetation present to graze the livestock. The
>> problem is that it's marginal from an economic standpoint unless the land
>> is very cheap.
>
> Cheap or better yet free. I once encountered an asshole rancher who
> knew damn well he couldn't exclude other people from using the public
> lands he was grazing on but clearly thought he was entitled to.

That's another issue...it's a much easier choice when the land you're
destroying by overgrazing isn't even yours and restoring it will be
Somebody Else's Problem.

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfkipg6...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:
>
> > In article <ylfkhavq...@dd-b.net>,
> > David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> >
> >> >> Oh yes, clearly good; this planet is severely over-populated.

> "Existence of limit" does not imply we're anywhere near it of course.

But "is severely over-populated" implies we are above it. And that is
what you wrote. If you don't believe it, why did you say it? If you do
believe it, on what basis?

> However, "existence of limit" makes me very suspicious of people who
> either explicitly or by inference deny any such limits.

I don't think I know of anyone who denies that there is some limit. The
question is whether we have good reason to believe that increased
population is currently a bad thing. The people who made that claim with
confidence, and predictions, fifty years ago, were wrong. I have seen no
good reason to think that those who make a similar claim now are right.

Or in other words, you are attacking a straw man. How do you distinguish
between someone who believes that the limit is at a world population of
a trillion--probably still well below the population density of Hong
Kong, although I haven't run the numbers to be sure--and someone who
thinks there is no limit?

[Keith F. Lynch]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
> How do you distinguish between someone who believes that the limit
> is at a world population of a trillion--probably still well below
> the population density of Hong Kong, although I haven't run the
> numbers to be sure--and someone who thinks there is no limit?

Coincidentally, I recently looked at photos online of Kowloon walled
city, a very densely populated part of Hong Kong until it was torn
down in 1992. 50,000 people in 6.5 acres. If the entire land area of
our planet were that densely populated, the world population would be
about 280 trillion, about 40,000 times higher than it is today. The
photos are at
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walled-City.html

[Keith F. Lynch]

I'm surprised and pleased to hear that the tobacco numbers aren't
comparable to those of cotton.

I wonder how much land in the US is used to grow marijuana and other
illegal crops. :-)

[Keith F. Lynch]

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>> As others have pointed out, a lot of farm land is used to grow
>> crops to feed animals. I'll point out that a lot is also used to
>> grow non-food crops such as tobacco and cotton.

> Yes, and?

And, as I thought went without saying, that land can, if necessary, be
shifted to growing food.

>> The old idea that population would continue to increase
>> exponentially until there was a sphere of human flesh expanding at
>> the speed of light is obsolete. World population is leveling off
>> and will soon start dropping.

> Based on current personal preferences, yes.

Yes. But there's no reason to think that might change. Worrying
about overpopulation is like worrying about cities all being buried in
horse manure -- since the current preference for cars and bikes rather
than for horses could change.

> And there are already major political movements reacting against that.

There are downsides to decreasing population. For instance it makes
Social Security and Medicare less viable. And, of course, if you
project current trends far enough, the population drops to zero and
we go extinct. But such projections would be silly.

[rksh...@rosettacondot.com]

Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:
> <rksh...@rosettacondot.com> wrote:
>> Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:
>>> As others have pointed out, a lot of farm land is used to grow
>>> crops to feed animals. I'll point out that a lot is also used to
>>> grow non-food crops such as tobacco and cotton.
>
>> A lot in absolute acreage, not so much as a percentage. For 2002
>> the US estimate was 12.6 million acres, or 4.2% of active cropland.
>> 12.4 million acres, or 98% of the non-food/-feed acreage, was in
>> cotton.
>
> I'm surprised and pleased to hear that the tobacco numbers aren't
> comparable to those of cotton.

Apparently down by over 90% since 1963.

> I wonder how much land in the US is used to grow marijuana and other
> illegal crops. :-)

Probably up by a similar percentage since 1963.

[rksh...@rosettacondot.com]

Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:

> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>> How do you distinguish between someone who believes that the limit
>> is at a world population of a trillion--probably still well below
>> the population density of Hong Kong, although I haven't run the
>> numbers to be sure--and someone who thinks there is no limit?
>
> Coincidentally, I recently looked at photos online of Kowloon walled
> city, a very densely populated part of Hong Kong until it was torn
> down in 1992. 50,000 people in 6.5 acres. If the entire land area of
> our planet were that densely populated, the world population would be
> about 280 trillion, about 40,000 times higher than it is today. The
> photos are at
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walled-City.html

I'm reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's speculation that places are only
considered overpopulated when they're populated with the wrong sort of
people...a subtle form of racism.

[Andy Leighton]

On Wed, 9 May 2012 02:25:55 +0000 (UTC),
Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>>> As others have pointed out, a lot of farm land is used to grow
>>> crops to feed animals. I'll point out that a lot is also used to
>>> grow non-food crops such as tobacco and cotton.
>
>> Yes, and?
>
> And, as I thought went without saying, that land can, if necessary, be
> shifted to growing food.

Well the biggest change you can is reduce the amount of food waste.
OK some of the stuff the supermarkets won't accept from the farms
probably goes into animal feed or gets turned into energy. But the
supermarkets throw out considerable amounts of still edible food, and
the consumer even more so.

However that is a very difficult social change.

--
Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_

[David Dyer-Bennet]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:

> In article <ylfkipg6...@dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:
>>
>> > In article <ylfkhavq...@dd-b.net>,
>> > David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >> >> Oh yes, clearly good; this planet is severely over-populated.
>
>> "Existence of limit" does not imply we're anywhere near it of course.
>
> But "is severely over-populated" implies we are above it. And that is
> what you wrote. If you don't believe it, why did you say it? If you do
> believe it, on what basis?

I'm not single-mindedly arguing a solid position here!

And I don't believe it; I suspect it.

>> However, "existence of limit" makes me very suspicious of people who
>> either explicitly or by inference deny any such limits.
>
> I don't think I know of anyone who denies that there is some limit. The
> question is whether we have good reason to believe that increased
> population is currently a bad thing. The people who made that claim with
> confidence, and predictions, fifty years ago, were wrong. I have seen no
> good reason to think that those who make a similar claim now are right.

Okay, but your immediate opposition to any claim of a limit comes off as
being opposed to the concept.

> Or in other words, you are attacking a straw man. How do you distinguish
> between someone who believes that the limit is at a world population of
> a trillion--probably still well below the population density of Hong
> Kong, although I haven't run the numbers to be sure--and someone who
> thinks there is no limit?

Since Hong Kong isn't claimed by anybody that I've ever heard to be a
sustainable self-contained ecology and economy, I don't see the
relevance of comparing world population density to Hong Kong.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:

> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>> How do you distinguish between someone who believes that the limit
>> is at a world population of a trillion--probably still well below
>> the population density of Hong Kong, although I haven't run the
>> numbers to be sure--and someone who thinks there is no limit?
>
> Coincidentally, I recently looked at photos online of Kowloon walled
> city, a very densely populated part of Hong Kong until it was torn
> down in 1992. 50,000 people in 6.5 acres. If the entire land area of
> our planet were that densely populated, the world population would be
> about 280 trillion, about 40,000 times higher than it is today. The
> photos are at
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walled-City.html

And there would be no land to grow food for them, no reservoirs, no
place to dispose of waste, and so forth and so on. This is not a viable
model for a world!

[David Loewe, Jr.]

On Wed, 09 May 2012 09:41:58, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

>"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:

>>> How do you distinguish between someone who believes that the limit
>>> is at a world population of a trillion--probably still well below
>>> the population density of Hong Kong, although I haven't run the
>>> numbers to be sure--and someone who thinks there is no limit?
>>
>> Coincidentally, I recently looked at photos online of Kowloon walled
>> city, a very densely populated part of Hong Kong until it was torn
>> down in 1992. 50,000 people in 6.5 acres. If the entire land area of
>> our planet were that densely populated, the world population would be
>> about 280 trillion, about 40,000 times higher than it is today. The
>> photos are at
>> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walled-City.html
>
>And there would be no land to grow food for them,

There *could* be...

<http://inhabitat.com/amazing-skyscraper-farm-for-vancouver/>

<http://inhabitat.com/abandoned-food-factory-to-be-transformed-into-chicagos-first-zero-energy-vertical-farm/>

<http://inhabitat.com/london-farm-tower-sustainable-skyscraper-could-meet-20-percent-of-city-food-demands/>

>no reservoirs, no place to dispose of waste, and so forth and so on.
>This is not a viable model for a world!
--

"It's raining soup and we haven't built any soup bowls."
Dr. Jerry Pournelle

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfk1umt...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>
> > David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
> >> How do you distinguish between someone who believes that the limit
> >> is at a world population of a trillion--probably still well below
> >> the population density of Hong Kong, although I haven't run the
> >> numbers to be sure--and someone who thinks there is no limit?
> >
> > Coincidentally, I recently looked at photos online of Kowloon walled
> > city, a very densely populated part of Hong Kong until it was torn
> > down in 1992. 50,000 people in 6.5 acres. If the entire land area of
> > our planet were that densely populated, the world population would be
> > about 280 trillion, about 40,000 times higher than it is today. The
> > photos are at
> > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walle
> > d-City.html
>
> And there would be no land to grow food for them, no reservoirs, no
> place to dispose of waste, and so forth and so on. This is not a viable
> model for a world!

So you are confident that the maximum is less than 280
trillion--unreasonably confident for an sf fan, since one can imagine a
future where technological change has eliminated the problems you
mention.

But why are you confident that that the maximum is more than four orders
of magnitude lower than that, which is what you need to justify what you
have been saying?

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfk62c5...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> > I don't think I know of anyone who denies that there is some limit. The
> > question is whether we have good reason to believe that increased
> > population is currently a bad thing. The people who made that claim with
> > confidence, and predictions, fifty years ago, were wrong. I have seen no
> > good reason to think that those who make a similar claim now are right.
>
> Okay, but your immediate opposition to any claim of a limit comes off as
> being opposed to the concept.

You make a claim. I argue that you have no basis for it. Your defense is
not to offer any basis for it, since you have none, but to conclude that
I must be arguing that another and much weaker claim is false, and
defend that. Do you see something odd about that pattern of behavior? Is
my description unfair?

> > Or in other words, you are attacking a straw man. How do you distinguish
> > between someone who believes that the limit is at a world population of
> > a trillion--probably still well below the population density of Hong
> > Kong, although I haven't run the numbers to be sure--and someone who
> > thinks there is no limit?
>
> Since Hong Kong isn't claimed by anybody that I've ever heard to be a
> sustainable self-contained ecology and economy, I don't see the
> relevance of comparing world population density to Hong Kong.

Since we are discussing possible populations in the future--your claim
has been about impossibilities--I don't see the relevance of statements
about what is or is not self-sustainable at present.

Considering the implications for world population of actual population
densities in various places isn't a perfect way of figuring out what is
workable, but it beats your approach, which so far as I can tell
consists of pulling conclusions from thin air.

Again ... . Do you have any basis for your opinion about
population--that current population is too high--other than your trust
in what other people tell you, unsupported by whatever evidence they may
have and you don't know? Do you have any reason to trust those people,
other than that they support the same political party you do?

[David Dyer-Bennet]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:

> In article <ylfk1umt...@dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>>
>> > David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>> >> How do you distinguish between someone who believes that the limit
>> >> is at a world population of a trillion--probably still well below
>> >> the population density of Hong Kong, although I haven't run the
>> >> numbers to be sure--and someone who thinks there is no limit?
>> >
>> > Coincidentally, I recently looked at photos online of Kowloon walled
>> > city, a very densely populated part of Hong Kong until it was torn
>> > down in 1992. 50,000 people in 6.5 acres. If the entire land area of
>> > our planet were that densely populated, the world population would be
>> > about 280 trillion, about 40,000 times higher than it is today. The
>> > photos are at
>> > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walle
>> > d-City.html
>>
>> And there would be no land to grow food for them, no reservoirs, no
>> place to dispose of waste, and so forth and so on. This is not a viable
>> model for a world!
>
> So you are confident that the maximum is less than 280
> trillion--unreasonably confident for an sf fan, since one can imagine a
> future where technological change has eliminated the problems you
> mention.

Depends a lot on the time-span involved. Longer time-span, more chance
of breakthrough changes (plus of course more time for smaller
evolutionary changes to add up).

> But why are you confident that that the maximum is more than four orders
> of magnitude lower than that, which is what you need to justify what you
> have been saying?

Not all *that* confident. Just seem very likely. Preponderance of
evidence compared to the claim that we *can* sustain such a population.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:

> In article <ylfk62c5...@dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> > I don't think I know of anyone who denies that there is some limit. The
>> > question is whether we have good reason to believe that increased
>> > population is currently a bad thing. The people who made that claim with
>> > confidence, and predictions, fifty years ago, were wrong. I have seen no
>> > good reason to think that those who make a similar claim now are right.
>>
>> Okay, but your immediate opposition to any claim of a limit comes off as
>> being opposed to the concept.
>
> You make a claim. I argue that you have no basis for it. Your defense is
> not to offer any basis for it, since you have none, but to conclude that
> I must be arguing that another and much weaker claim is false, and
> defend that. Do you see something odd about that pattern of behavior? Is
> my description unfair?

I react to what you've said in a way that seems justified by the history
of what you've said on the topic, you ask me about my reaction, and I
explain that basis.

>> > Or in other words, you are attacking a straw man. How do you distinguish
>> > between someone who believes that the limit is at a world population of
>> > a trillion--probably still well below the population density of Hong
>> > Kong, although I haven't run the numbers to be sure--and someone who
>> > thinks there is no limit?
>>
>> Since Hong Kong isn't claimed by anybody that I've ever heard to be a
>> sustainable self-contained ecology and economy, I don't see the
>> relevance of comparing world population density to Hong Kong.
>
> Since we are discussing possible populations in the future--your claim
> has been about impossibilities--I don't see the relevance of statements
> about what is or is not self-sustainable at present.

The Earth is a nearly-closed system (sunlight coming in) and will remain
so for all practical purposes for the forseeable future. Raising the
question of the whole Earth populated at Hong Kong densities is absurd
unless you're asserting it would be sustainable. The fact that Hong
Kong itself isn't a closed system and isn't anywhere close to capable of
being one today seems very directly relevant to that.

And I'm having a very hard time really believing you're discussing in
good faith here.

> Considering the implications for world population of actual population
> densities in various places isn't a perfect way of figuring out what is
> workable, but it beats your approach, which so far as I can tell
> consists of pulling conclusions from thin air.

Trying to pull conclusions about the Earth, a closed system, from the
current state of Hong Kong, a very open system, is absurd.

> Again ... . Do you have any basis for your opinion about
> population--that current population is too high--other than your trust
> in what other people tell you, unsupported by whatever evidence they may
> have and you don't know? Do you have any reason to trust those people,
> other than that they support the same political party you do?

I have no idea what political party most of the columnists and essayists
I read support. And I'm more oppposing a party than supporting one; the
republicans have behaved so badly over essentially my entire political
life that the brand is totally soiled; it has about the emotional
freight for me that "traitor" does to a Marine, say.

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfkr4ut...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> > But why are you confident that that the maximum is more than four orders
> > of magnitude lower than that, which is what you need to justify what you
> > have been saying?
>
> Not all *that* confident. Just seem very likely. Preponderance of
> evidence compared to the claim that we *can* sustain such a population.

"Preponderance of evidence," none of which you have so far offered. As
best I can tell, in this case as in the case of Social Security, it's
pure faith. You don't seem disturbed by the terrible track record of
such predictions in the past, or by the fact that, during the period
when things were supposed to be going to hell, especially for the third
world, the condition of the populations of the third world was rapidly
improving. That isn't proof that we can sustain the current
population--proof of what will happen in the future is hard to get--but
it's surely evidence.

Again ... . Think about the implication of the fact, readily
demonstrable, that what you have been told is Republican propaganda (SS
is set up as a Ponzi scheme) was the publicly stated view of a top
economist on your side of the political fence. That ought to convince
you that you are being misled.

[Thomas Womack]

In article <ddfr-1AFE40.1...@news.giganews.com>,

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>In article <ylfkipg6...@dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:
>>
>> > In article <ylfkhavq...@dd-b.net>,
>> > David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >> >> Oh yes, clearly good; this planet is severely over-populated.
>
>> "Existence of limit" does not imply we're anywhere near it of course.
>
>But "is severely over-populated" implies we are above it. And that is
>what you wrote. If you don't believe it, why did you say it? If you do
>believe it, on what basis?
>
>> However, "existence of limit" makes me very suspicious of people who
>> either explicitly or by inference deny any such limits.
>
>I don't think I know of anyone who denies that there is some limit. The
>question is whether we have good reason to believe that increased
>population is currently a bad thing. The people who made that claim with
>confidence, and predictions, fifty years ago, were wrong.

They were wrong, it seems, for much the same reason that Marx was
wrong; confident predictions of doom given a set of circumstances tend to
lead to an awful lot of action to change the circumstances, and fifty
years ago takes you to just before the period when Borlaug's work led
crop yields to double in five years in a number of poor countries.

Mines refill now no more than they did when _Limits to Growth_ was
written; that we can manage to get by without some of the minerals
that are now harder to come by doesn't necessarily mean this will
continue forever.

Tom

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfkmx5h...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> > You make a claim. I argue that you have no basis for it. Your defense is
> > not to offer any basis for it, since you have none, but to conclude that
> > I must be arguing that another and much weaker claim is false, and
> > defend that. Do you see something odd about that pattern of behavior? Is
> > my description unfair?
>
> I react to what you've said in a way that seems justified by the history
> of what you've said on the topic, you ask me about my reaction, and I
> explain that basis.

At some point in the past I said that there was no upper limit to human
population? I can't remember saying that. But that's the only view you
seem prepared to offer arguments against.

...

> > Since we are discussing possible populations in the future--your claim
> > has been about impossibilities--I don't see the relevance of statements
> > about what is or is not self-sustainable at present.

> The Earth is a nearly-closed system (sunlight coming in) and will remain
> so for all practical purposes for the forseeable future. Raising the
> question of the whole Earth populated at Hong Kong densities is absurd
> unless you're asserting it would be sustainable. The fact that Hong
> Kong itself isn't a closed system and isn't anywhere close to capable of
> being one today seems very directly relevant to that.

I wasn't claiming it would be sustainable, although I can't see any
reason to be confident that, allowing for future technology, it wouldn't
be. I was offering a real world picture of a population density
enormously higher than the ones we currently face.

But I don't see much to your "closed system" argument, given that you
haven't shown that Hong Kong couldn't be self-sustaining with some
future technology. Complete recycling of water, for example, isn't all
that far fetched an idea--it isn't as if we really consume the stuff.

> And I'm having a very hard time really believing you're discussing in
> good faith here.

Whereas I'm confident you are doing so--and a little surprised at just
how strongly you are willing to cling to faith based beliefs.

> > Considering the implications for world population of actual population
> > densities in various places isn't a perfect way of figuring out what is
> > workable, but it beats your approach, which so far as I can tell
> > consists of pulling conclusions from thin air.
>
> Trying to pull conclusions about the Earth, a closed system, from the
> current state of Hong Kong, a very open system, is absurd.

I didn't. What I wrote was:

> How do you distinguish
> between someone who believes that the limit is at a world population of
> a trillion--probably still well below the population density of Hong
> Kong, although I haven't run the numbers to be sure--and someone who
> thinks there is no limit?

I cannot see how you can read that as offering any conclusions about the
earth. And, of course, you never answered the actual question, aside
from what seems to amount to "if people question current population
claims, I interpret that as their believing that there is no limit to
population."

You, however, are trying to offer conclusions. And unwilling to provide
any support for them.

> > Again ... . Do you have any basis for your opinion about
> > population--that current population is too high--other than your trust
> > in what other people tell you, unsupported by whatever evidence they may
> > have and you don't know? Do you have any reason to trust those people,
> > other than that they support the same political party you do?

> I have no idea what political party most of the columnists and essayists
> I read support.

So what is your basis for believing them? You haven't offered any
arguments to support your conclusion, so presumably it isn't that they
provided you with convincing arguments.

[Martha Adams]

On 5/9/2012 10:41 AM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
> "Keith F. Lynch"<k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>
>> David Friedman<dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>>> How do you distinguish between someone who believes that the limit
>>> is at a world population of a trillion--probably still well below
>>> the population density of Hong Kong, although I haven't run the
>>> numbers to be sure--and someone who thinks there is no limit?
>>
>> Coincidentally, I recently looked at photos online of Kowloon walled
>> city, a very densely populated part of Hong Kong until it was torn
>> down in 1992. 50,000 people in 6.5 acres. If the entire land area of
>> our planet were that densely populated, the world population would be
>> about 280 trillion, about 40,000 times higher than it is today. The
>> photos are at
>> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walled-City.html
>
> And there would be no land to grow food for them, no reservoirs, no
> place to dispose of waste, and so forth and so on. This is not a viable
> model for a world!

===========================================================

> And there would be no land to grow food for them, no reservoirs, no
> place to dispose of waste, and so forth and so on. This is not
> a viable model for a world!

Yes, but no. Yes, it's true as it stands; but it doesn't reach back
to the *systems modeling* required to put it into some meaningful
perspective. "50,000 people in 6.5 acres"? Sure, *But*!! What
sort of systems are we talking about that bring consumables in and
waste out? Taking these systems as example and model, can we scale
those to a larger environment? To all Terra, even?

Until we know that in some perspective of systems and human
experience, we may be throwing out impressive ideas and words, but
we aren't yet saying anything useful.

Also lost in the generally high rasff noise level, is the question,
"What for? *What for* all of those people?" What is their long
term significance? Do us humans exist only to do (Biblical) sex
and make more humans -- on and on, indefinitely into the future?

(That won't happen.)

But that's an idea I disagree with. We can do better than that,
or some of us can. (Republicans are an organized constituency
that can't.)

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Wed 2012 May 09]

===============================================
** Space Frontier Now! **
http://www.mhada.info
===============================================

[Keith F. Lynch]

Thomas Womack <two...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Mines refill now no more than they did when _Limits to Growth_ was
> written; that we can manage to get by without some of the minerals
> that are now harder to come by doesn't necessarily mean this will
> continue forever.

Except for fossil fuels, minerals aren't actually *consumed*. They
can be recycled endlessly, if only by mining landfills.

[David Loewe, Jr.]

On Thu, 10 May 2012, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

>Thomas Womack <two...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

>> Mines refill now no more than they did when _Limits to Growth_ was
>> written; that we can manage to get by without some of the minerals
>> that are now harder to come by doesn't necessarily mean this will
>> continue forever.
>
>Except for fossil fuels, minerals aren't actually *consumed*. They
>can be recycled endlessly, if only by mining landfills.

ObSF: Madaket Mall (aka the Nantucket dump/landfill) from Stirling's
Nantucketer series.
--
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about
something."
- T.H. Huxley

[Keith F. Lynch]

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> And I'm more oppposing a party than supporting one; the republicans
> have behaved so badly over essentially my entire political life that
> the brand is totally soiled; it has about the emotional freight for
> me that "traitor" does to a Marine, say.

I feel exactly the same way about Republicans. And about Democrats.
Both parties are basically just criminal gangs.

[Keith F. Lynch]

Andy Leighton <an...@azaal.plus.com> wrote:
> Well the biggest change you can is reduce the amount of food waste.

Is that really the *biggest* change?

> OK some of the stuff the supermarkets won't accept from the farms
> probably goes into animal feed or gets turned into energy. But the
> supermarkets throw out considerable amounts of still edible food,

I believe they're required to once it reaches its expiration date.
I suppose they could keep closer track, and reduce the price
asymptotically toward zero as the expiration date approaches.

Do food banks accept food past its expiration date?

> and the consumer even more so.

Because of carelesness? Or because of silly diet advice that you
should always discard much of the food in front of you?

[Keith F. Lynch]

<rksh...@rosettacondot.com> wrote:
> I'm reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's speculation that places are only
> considered overpopulated when they're populated with the wrong sort
> of people...a subtle form of racism.

"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." -- Yogi Berra

[Keith F. Lynch]

<rksh...@rosettacondot.com> wrote:
> Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:
>> I'm surprised and pleased to hear that the tobacco numbers aren't
>> comparable to those of cotton.

> Apparently down by over 90% since 1963.

Are you sure? The proportion of smokers in the US is unfortunately
still well over ten percent, and certainly wasn't over a hundred
percent in 1963. (I for one didn't smoke in 1963.) And the total
population is higher. How much of that decrease consists of growing
more tobacco on less land?

>> I wonder how much land in the US is used to grow marijuana and
>> other illegal crops. :-)

> Probably up by a similar percentage since 1963.

Really? I associate marijuana mostly with the 1960s. Is its
consumption up since then?

[rksh...@rosettacondot.com]

Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:
> <rksh...@rosettacondot.com> wrote:
>> Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:
>>> I'm surprised and pleased to hear that the tobacco numbers aren't
>>> comparable to those of cotton.
>
>> Apparently down by over 90% since 1963.
>
> Are you sure? The proportion of smokers in the US is unfortunately
> still well over ten percent, and certainly wasn't over a hundred
> percent in 1963. (I for one didn't smoke in 1963.) And the total
> population is higher. How much of that decrease consists of growing
> more tobacco on less land?

That's certainly possible. One source (American Lung Association?)
showed the percentage of smokers dropping by half in the same period but
didn't have data on tobacco consumption changes.
Checking other statistics, it looks like imported tobacco went from 0.7%
to 47% of the total between 1969 and 2005 while total consumption
dropped by 35%.
So it looks like a combination of imports displacing domestic production
as well as an absolute drop in consumption (note that the second source
didn't go back to 1963.)

>>> I wonder how much land in the US is used to grow marijuana and
>>> other illegal crops. :-)
>
>> Probably up by a similar percentage since 1963.
>
> Really? I associate marijuana mostly with the 1960s. Is its
> consumption up since then?

My perception is that it went from counterculture to mainstream in the
intervening period. How that corresponds to overall usage I don't know.
My personal memory doesn't go back as far as that and the statistics
seem unreliable...way too much variation between the studies.

[David Friedman]

In article <_96dnQ8YbP9ulTbS...@giganews.com>,

Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:

> Also lost in the generally high rasff noise level, is the question,
> "What for? *What for* all of those people?" What is their long
> term significance?

I responded--by asking you what you exist for. And you never answered.

I presume that each person exists for his own purposes, as do I. But it
sounds as though that sort of answer doesn't satisfy you.

[David Loewe, Jr.]

On Thu, 10 May 2012, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

><rksh...@rosettacondot.com> wrote:

>> I'm reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's speculation that places are only
>> considered overpopulated when they're populated with the wrong sort
>> of people...a subtle form of racism.
>
>"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." -- Yogi Berra

I've actually been to the restaurant he's talking about (Rigazzi's on
The Hill in St. Louis) in that quote.
--
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
- Yogi Berra explaining how to get to his home
which can be reached regardless of which branch
of the fork you take

[Jay E. Morris]

On 5/9/2012 11:20 PM, David Loewe, Jr. wrote:
> On Thu, 10 May 2012, "Keith F. Lynch"<k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>
>> <rksh...@rosettacondot.com> wrote:
>
>>> I'm reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's speculation that places are only
>>> considered overpopulated when they're populated with the wrong sort
>>> of people...a subtle form of racism.
>>
>> "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." -- Yogi Berra
>
> I've actually been to the restaurant he's talking about (Rigazzi's on
> The Hill in St. Louis) in that quote.

I came across a web site once that explained why Yogi's statements
weren't as dumb as they seemed to be but my Google-fu is weak this
morning. Anyone happen to know it?

[Andy Leighton]

On Thu, 10 May 2012 02:33:57 +0000 (UTC),

Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

> Andy Leighton <an...@azaal.plus.com> wrote:
>> Well the biggest change you can is reduce the amount of food waste.
>
> Is that really the *biggest* change?
>
>> OK some of the stuff the supermarkets won't accept from the farms
>> probably goes into animal feed or gets turned into energy. But the
>> supermarkets throw out considerable amounts of still edible food,
>
> I believe they're required to once it reaches its expiration date.

Yes, but a lot of the "expiration date"s are really sell by dates.
These are usually set fairly early on in the food's life. For example
something like potatoes or leeks will last far longer and still be
edible than the date the supermarket will put on the pack.

>> and the consumer even more so.
>
> Because of carelesness? Or because of silly diet advice that you
> should always discard much of the food in front of you?

I don't think so. Not understanding best before and sell by and use by
dates is a big reason. Some people think that the food must be eaten
before that date and then add in their own margin (just to be sure) in
addition. Inconvenient pack sizes coupled with people not freezing or
using odd bits and pieces (like bread crusts). People not using leftovers
for food the next day. Also a suprising amount is thrown away unopened.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:

> Thomas Womack <two...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>> Mines refill now no more than they did when _Limits to Growth_ was
>> written; that we can manage to get by without some of the minerals
>> that are now harder to come by doesn't necessarily mean this will
>> continue forever.
>
> Except for fossil fuels, minerals aren't actually *consumed*. They
> can be recycled endlessly, if only by mining landfills.

Well, *elements* aren't consumed. Some minerals are particular
compounds in particular arrangements, and they may well be consumed --
the product after our use may not contain those compounds in that
arrangement.

There's also a quite trivial amount sent off-planet, but that's nowhere
near significant (if it preferentially used something rare that might
be, I guess).

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:

> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>> And I'm more oppposing a party than supporting one; the republicans
>> have behaved so badly over essentially my entire political life that
>> the brand is totally soiled; it has about the emotional freight for
>> me that "traitor" does to a Marine, say.
>
> I feel exactly the same way about Republicans. And about Democrats.
> Both parties are basically just criminal gangs.

See, the party I'm somewhat willing to vote for is the one that has
consistently advanced human rights throughout (and before) my lifetime,
while the other one is the one that has consistently opposed all
advancements of human rights. I see a huge, night-and-day, difference.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:

> <rksh...@rosettacondot.com> wrote:
>> I'm reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's speculation that places are only
>> considered overpopulated when they're populated with the wrong sort
>> of people...a subtle form of racism.
>
> "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." -- Yogi Berra

I stopped going to Green Mill when they opened the new location on
Hennepin avenue, and it just got too crowded. This might have been as
long ago as the 1980s. At that point they just fell off my radar.

In the 2000s, I went back to that location, and found it wasn't crowded
any more, and the pizza was just as good as it had been, so I've been
going several times a month again.

So the quote resonates a lot for me, and I use it.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

For me, it means it's over-crowded with people who buy into some fad
associated with the place, and hence it's not worthwhile for sensible
people such as myself and my friends to go there.

[David Loewe, Jr.]

On Thu, 10 May 2012, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

>"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

>>> And I'm more oppposing a party than supporting one; the republicans
>>> have behaved so badly over essentially my entire political life that
>>> the brand is totally soiled; it has about the emotional freight for
>>> me that "traitor" does to a Marine, say.
>>
>> I feel exactly the same way about Republicans. And about Democrats.
>> Both parties are basically just criminal gangs.
>
>See, the party I'm somewhat willing to vote for is the one that has
>consistently advanced human rights throughout (and before) my lifetime,

^^^^^^^^^^

>while the other one is the one that has consistently opposed all
>advancements of human rights. I see a huge, night-and-day, difference.

Which Party supported slavery again? Which Party opposed it and,
eventually, abolished it?
--
"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail
fast; for I intend to go in harm's way."
- John Paul Jones

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"David Loewe, Jr." <dlo...@mindspring.com> writes:

> On Thu, 10 May 2012, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>>"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>>> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>>>> And I'm more oppposing a party than supporting one; the republicans
>>>> have behaved so badly over essentially my entire political life that
>>>> the brand is totally soiled; it has about the emotional freight for
>>>> me that "traitor" does to a Marine, say.
>>>
>>> I feel exactly the same way about Republicans. And about Democrats.
>>> Both parties are basically just criminal gangs.
>>
>>See, the party I'm somewhat willing to vote for is the one that has
>>consistently advanced human rights throughout (and before) my lifetime,
> ^^^^^^^^^^
>>while the other one is the one that has consistently opposed all
>>advancements of human rights. I see a huge, night-and-day, difference.
>
> Which Party supported slavery again? Which Party opposed it and,
> eventually, abolished it?

Yeah, there was a brief period when the Republicans killed off slavery.

[Thomas Womack]

In article <ylfkvck4...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>
>> Thomas Womack <two...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>> Mines refill now no more than they did when _Limits to Growth_ was
>>> written; that we can manage to get by without some of the minerals
>>> that are now harder to come by doesn't necessarily mean this will
>>> continue forever.
>>
>> Except for fossil fuels, minerals aren't actually *consumed*. They
>> can be recycled endlessly, if only by mining landfills.
>
>Well, *elements* aren't consumed. Some minerals are particular
>compounds in particular arrangements, and they may well be consumed --
>the product after our use may not contain those compounds in that
>arrangement.
>
>There's also a quite trivial amount sent off-planet, but that's nowhere
>near significant (if it preferentially used something rare that might
>be, I guess).

I have seen one or two optimistic mission designs which involved
non-trivial fractions of Earth's xenon production (which is of the
order of thirty tons a year); Dawn has taken 425kg of it off-planet to
drift away in the solar wind. There is a fair amount of xenon in the
atmosphere, 85 parts per billion of 5*10^18kg of atmosphere.

Tom

[David V. Loewe, Jr]

On Thu, 10 May 2012, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

>"David Loewe, Jr." <dlo...@mindspring.com> writes:
>> On Thu, 10 May 2012, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>>"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>>>> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>
>>>>> And I'm more oppposing a party than supporting one; the republicans
>>>>> have behaved so badly over essentially my entire political life that
>>>>> the brand is totally soiled; it has about the emotional freight for
>>>>> me that "traitor" does to a Marine, say.
>>>>
>>>> I feel exactly the same way about Republicans. And about Democrats.
>>>> Both parties are basically just criminal gangs.
>>>
>>>See, the party I'm somewhat willing to vote for is the one that has
>>>consistently advanced human rights throughout (and before) my lifetime,
>> ^^^^^^^^^^
>>>while the other one is the one that has consistently opposed all
>>>advancements of human rights. I see a huge, night-and-day, difference.
>>
>> Which Party supported slavery again? Which Party opposed it and,
>> eventually, abolished it?
>
>Yeah, there was a brief period when the Republicans killed off slavery.

Which Party had a higher percentage of members of the respective
Congressional Delegations vote in favor of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Civil_Rights_Act#By_party>
--
"Oh now feel it comin' back again
Like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind
Forces pullin' from the center of the earth again
I can feel it."
- Ed Kowalczyk,Chad Taylor,Patrick Dahlheimer
& Chad Gracey

[David Loewe, Jr.]

We can make Xenon. ;-)

It just normally doesn't last very long.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon-135>
--
"Same dances in the same old shoes
You get too careful with the steps you choose
You don't care about winning but you don't want to lose
After the thrill is gone."
Don Henley & Glenn Frey

[David V. Loewe, Jr]

On Wed, 09 May 2012 20:16:59, Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:

>On 5/9/2012 10:41 AM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>> "Keith F. Lynch"<k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>>> David Friedman<dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:

>>>> How do you distinguish between someone who believes that the limit
>>>> is at a world population of a trillion--probably still well below
>>>> the population density of Hong Kong, although I haven't run the
>>>> numbers to be sure--and someone who thinks there is no limit?
>>>
>>> Coincidentally, I recently looked at photos online of Kowloon walled
>>> city, a very densely populated part of Hong Kong until it was torn
>>> down in 1992. 50,000 people in 6.5 acres. If the entire land area of
>>> our planet were that densely populated, the world population would be
>>> about 280 trillion, about 40,000 times higher than it is today. The
>>> photos are at

>>> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walled-City.html
>>
>> And there would be no land to grow food for them, no reservoirs, no
>> place to dispose of waste, and so forth and so on. This is not a viable
>> model for a world!

>Yes, but no. Yes, it's true as it stands; but it doesn't reach back
>to the *systems modeling* required to put it into some meaningful
>perspective. "50,000 people in 6.5 acres"? Sure, *But*!! What
>sort of systems are we talking about that bring consumables in and
>waste out? Taking these systems as example and model, can we scale
>those to a larger environment? To all Terra, even?
>
>Until we know that in some perspective of systems and human
>experience, we may be throwing out impressive ideas and words, but
>we aren't yet saying anything useful.
>
>Also lost in the generally high rasff noise level, is the question,
>"What for? *What for* all of those people?" What is their long
>term significance? Do us humans exist only to do (Biblical) sex
>and make more humans -- on and on, indefinitely into the future?
>
>(That won't happen.)
>
>But that's an idea I disagree with. We can do better than that,
>or some of us can. (Republicans are an organized constituency
>that can't.)

Why do you insist on insulting other posters?
--
"When it is broken down, the philosophy of environmentalism is the
philosophy of life on earth without humanity at all. Green becomes
the color of a forest that grows over unmarked graves."
Michelle Minton

[David Loewe, Jr.]

On Thu, 10 May 2012, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

>Andy Leighton <an...@azaal.plus.com> wrote:

>> Well the biggest change you can is reduce the amount of food waste.
>
>Is that really the *biggest* change?

It IS a big factor.

<http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Supply-Chain/Half-of-US-food-goes-to-waste>

>> OK some of the stuff the supermarkets won't accept from the farms
>> probably goes into animal feed or gets turned into energy. But the
>> supermarkets throw out considerable amounts of still edible food,
>
>I believe they're required to once it reaches its expiration date.
>I suppose they could keep closer track, and reduce the price
>asymptotically toward zero as the expiration date approaches.
>
>Do food banks accept food past its expiration date?

I know, from personal experience, that they accept food that is past its
"best by" and "sell by" dates. I don't believe I ever saw anything
labeled as past its expiration date.

>> and the consumer even more so.
>
>Because of carelesness? Or because of silly diet advice that you
>should always discard much of the food in front of you?

Advice I've never heard of.

My own food waste is more a case of stuff going bad. Milk turning.
Stale bread. Fixed a bit too much and what is left isn't worth saving.
That kind of thing.
--
"How's your life been going on?
I got a wife now years we been going strong.
There's just something I got to say,
Sometimes when we make love I still see your face.
Just try to recall when we were as one."
David Pack

[David V. Loewe, Jr]

On Thu, 10 May 2012, Andy Leighton <an...@azaal.plus.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 10 May 2012, Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>> Andy Leighton <an...@azaal.plus.com> wrote:

>>> Well the biggest change you can is reduce the amount of food waste.
>>
>> Is that really the *biggest* change?
>>
>>> OK some of the stuff the supermarkets won't accept from the farms
>>> probably goes into animal feed or gets turned into energy. But the
>>> supermarkets throw out considerable amounts of still edible food,
>>
>> I believe they're required to once it reaches its expiration date.
>
>Yes, but a lot of the "expiration date"s are really sell by dates.
>These are usually set fairly early on in the food's life. For example
>something like potatoes or leeks will last far longer and still be
>edible than the date the supermarket will put on the pack.

I recently had a pack of sealed Canadian Bacon that was way past the
date. Because it was vacuum sealed, I opened it and gave it the sniff
test. It was good enough to use on my homemade Egg McMuffins.

>>> and the consumer even more so.
>>
>> Because of carelesness? Or because of silly diet advice that you
>> should always discard much of the food in front of you?
>
>I don't think so. Not understanding best before and sell by and use by
>dates is a big reason. Some people think that the food must be eaten
>before that date and then add in their own margin (just to be sure) in
>addition. Inconvenient pack sizes

There are a lot of items I'd like to get, but they are "dinner for two"
and the extra (when dining alone) doesn't normally keep well.

>coupled with people not freezing or
>using odd bits and pieces (like bread crusts). People not using leftovers
>for food the next day. Also a suprising amount is thrown away unopened.
--

"I'm warning you: I'm very dangerous when I don't know what I'm doing..."
- The Fourth Doctor

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfkr4us...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> See, the party I'm somewhat willing to vote for is the one that has
> consistently advanced human rights throughout (and before) my lifetime,

For instance by putting American citizens in concentration camps because
they were of Japanese ancestry? Locking up critics of WWI? More
recently, attacking medical marijuana dispensaries that are legal under
state law?

[David Friedman]

In article <ylfk8vh0...@dd-b.net>,

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:

> Yeah, there was a brief period when the Republicans killed off slavery.

Do you not count state slavery? Which party was it that abolished the
draft--within your lifetime?

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"David V. Loewe, Jr" <dave...@charter.net> writes:

> On Thu, 10 May 2012, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>>"David Loewe, Jr." <dlo...@mindspring.com> writes:
>>> On Thu, 10 May 2012, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>>>"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>>>>> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> And I'm more oppposing a party than supporting one; the republicans
>>>>>> have behaved so badly over essentially my entire political life that
>>>>>> the brand is totally soiled; it has about the emotional freight for
>>>>>> me that "traitor" does to a Marine, say.
>>>>>
>>>>> I feel exactly the same way about Republicans. And about Democrats.
>>>>> Both parties are basically just criminal gangs.
>>>>
>>>>See, the party I'm somewhat willing to vote for is the one that has
>>>>consistently advanced human rights throughout (and before) my lifetime,
>>> ^^^^^^^^^^
>>>>while the other one is the one that has consistently opposed all
>>>>advancements of human rights. I see a huge, night-and-day, difference.
>>>
>>> Which Party supported slavery again? Which Party opposed it and,
>>> eventually, abolished it?
>>
>>Yeah, there was a brief period when the Republicans killed off slavery.
>
> Which Party had a higher percentage of members of the respective
> Congressional Delegations vote in favor of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Civil_Rights_Act#By_party>

You have heard of the "dixiecrats", right? The racist homophobic
retrogressive assholes we were saddled with by "reconstruction"? Who
had no actual commonality of beliefs or interests with the actual
Democrats?

[David Harmon]

On Thu, 10 May 2012 09:36:25 -0500 in rec.arts.sf.fandom, David
Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote,

>There's also a quite trivial amount sent off-planet, but that's nowhere
>near significant (if it preferentially used something rare that might
>be, I guess).

Helium?

[David Loewe, Jr.]

A) You're *deep* in denial.

B) "No true Scotsman."

C) When were these miscreants (the Dixiecrats) kicked out of the august
Democratic Party? Surely if they had nothing in common with "actual
Democrats" they would have been kicked out. None of those guys who
filibustered The Act would have been Democratic Senators 44 or more
years later [1] and have been chosen as Majority/Minority Leader after
such behavior, right? Certainly none of those who filibustered The Act
could have possibly been awarded the Presidential Medal Of Freedom by a
Democratic President [2], right?

D) 80% or more of Federally Elected Republicans voted *for* the Act.
Regardless of the truth of your accusation that those who filibustered
were not "actual Democrats," The Act would *not* have passed without
Republican votes.

E) When racists try to run under the Republican banner, the Party does
what it can to prevent such things [3].

[1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd#Filibuster_of_the_Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964>

[2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidential_Medal_of_Freedom_recipients#U.S._members_of_Congress>
William Fulbright

[3]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke#1992_Republican_Party_presidential_candidate>
--
"Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
- Hannah Arendt

[Keith F. Lynch]

David Harmon <b...@example.invalid> wrote:
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote,
>> There's also a quite trivial amount sent off-planet, but that's
>> nowhere near significant (if it preferentially used something rare
>> that might be, I guess).

> Helium?

It's true that helium in Earth's atmosphere in constantly escaping
to space, as Earth's gravity isn't enough to hold such a light gas
for very long. But it's being replenished by radioactive decay.
(A helium atom is just a tired alpha particle mated to a tired beta
particle, after all.) Essentially none of the helium in Earth's
atmosphere is primordial.

So after a few thorium half-lives, helium will become quite scarce
on Earth. Stock up while you can.

[Keith F. Lynch]

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> You have heard of the "dixiecrats", right? The racist homophobic
> retrogressive assholes we were saddled with by "reconstruction"?

You're confused. The Dixiecrats were founded 71 years after
Reconstruction ended. And when they were founded, *every* major
political party was homophobic.

> Who had no actual commonality of beliefs or interests with the
> actual Democrats?

No? Why had the South almost invariably voted for Democrats for
nearly a century after Reconstruction?

[Keith F. Lynch]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>> See, the party I'm somewhat willing to vote for is the one that
>> has consistently advanced human rights throughout (and before)
>> my lifetime,

> For instance by putting American citizens in concentration camps
> because they were of Japanese ancestry? Locking up critics of WWI?
> More recently, attacking medical marijuana dispensaries that are
> legal under state law?

Not to mention sending Elian back to Cuba after his mother gave her
life to get him to the US. And burning children to death in the Waco
raid. And wanting to disarm crime victims. And wanting to punish
people who choose to do without medical insurance.

[Keith F. Lynch]

David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>> Except for fossil fuels, minerals aren't actually *consumed*.
>> They can be recycled endlessly, if only by mining landfills.

> Well, *elements* aren't consumed. Some minerals are particular
> compounds in particular arrangements, and they may well be consumed
> -- the product after our use may not contain those compounds in that
> arrangement.

I meant "mineral resources." Generally the new form is more useful
than the original -- scrap steel rather than iron ore, for instance.

> There's also a quite trivial amount sent off-planet, but that's
> nowhere near significant (if it preferentially used something rare
> that might be, I guess).

Much more arrives as meteors than leaves as space probes. I think
all the probes ever launched beyond Earth orbit would fit into my
apartment. (They may need to be run through a crusher first.)
(Things in Earth orbit will re-enter eventually, so they're not
really lost to the planet.)

[Steve Coltrin]

begin fnord

"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:

> (A helium atom is just a tired alpha particle mated to a tired beta
> particle, after all.)

CTBP: two beta particles.

--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org Google Groups killfiled here
"A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel
to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed."
- Associated Press