Actually, Earth's human carrying capacity is One Trillion
Jay Hanson
>
>: Actually, Earth's human carrying capacity is One Trillion, more or less:
>
>: "The result of this analysis is that from a technological point of view
>: a trillion people can live beautifully on the Earth, for an unlimited
>: time, without exhausting any primary resource and without overloading
>: the environment." - C. Marchetti, "A Check on Earth Carrying Capacity
>: for Man." 1978 http://www.iiasa.ac.at/cgi-bin/pubsrch?RR78007
Actually, this is a lie. And for anyone to suggest the human carrying
capacity of Earth is one trillion is either a raving idiot or a liar.
Moreover, I don't think you even read the study.
"To put this in context, you must remember that estimates of the long-term
carrying capacity of Earth with relatively optimistic assumptions about
consumption, technologies, and equity (A x T), are in the vicinity of two
billion people. Today's population cannot be sustained on the 'interest'
generated by natural ecosystems, but is consuming its vast supply of natural
capital -- especially deep, rich agricultural soils, 'fossil' groundwater,
and biodiversity -- accumulated over centuries to eons. In some places soils,
which are generated on a time scale of centimeters per century are
disappearing at rates of centimeters per year. Some aquifers are being
depleted at dozens of times their recharge rates, and we have embarked on the
greatest extinction episode in 65 million years."
Paul Ehrlich (Sept. 25, 1998) http://www.dieoff.org/page157.htm
Jay
Bloody Viking
: Actually, this is a lie. And for anyone to suggest the human carrying
: capacity of Earth is one trillion is either a raving idiot or a liar.
Whoever that economist was, I take it he didn't care about quality of
life!
: "To put this in context, you must remember that estimates of the long-term
: carrying capacity of Earth with relatively optimistic assumptions about
: consumption, technologies, and equity (A x T), are in the vicinity of two
: billion people. Today's population cannot be sustained on the 'interest'
I already mentioned your 2 billion figure, which I'm inclined to agree
with. Even then, it might be a bit high. I'm sure you'd agree that smaller
is better when it comes to global population!
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charliew
Jay Hanson wrote in message <36300D7E...@oink.com>...
>>Don Libby:
>>
>>: Actually, Earth's human carrying capacity is One Trillion, more or less:
>>
>>: "The result of this analysis is that from a technological point of view
>>: a trillion people can live beautifully on the Earth, for an unlimited
>>: time, without exhausting any primary resource and without overloading
>>: the environment." - C. Marchetti, "A Check on Earth Carrying Capacity
>>: for Man." 1978 http://www.iiasa.ac.at/cgi-bin/pubsrch?RR78007
>
>capacity of Earth is one trillion is either a raving idiot or a liar.
>
>carrying capacity of Earth with relatively optimistic assumptions about
>consumption, technologies, and equity (A x T), are in the vicinity of two
>billion people. Today's population cannot be sustained on the 'interest'
natural
>capital -- especially deep, rich agricultural soils, 'fossil' groundwater,
>and biodiversity -- accumulated over centuries to eons. In some places
soils,
>which are generated on a time scale of centimeters per century are
>disappearing at rates of centimeters per year. Some aquifers are being
>depleted at dozens of times their recharge rates, and we have embarked on
the
>greatest extinction episode in 65 million years."
>Paul Ehrlich (Sept. 25, 1998) http://www.dieoff.org/page157.htm
Hell, according to Ehrlich, we should all be dead by now!
Jay Hanson
70pspp$d9v$3...@hirame.wwa.com...
>I already mentioned your 2 billion figure, which I'm inclined to agree
>with. Even then, it might be a bit high. I'm sure you'd agree that smaller
>is better when it comes to global population!
We Vikings agree. <G>
Jay
Peter
people. For one thing, unless we can synthesize food out of inorganic matter, it
looks like we can only go to a little over one more doubling because we now take
about 40% of the matter created by photosynthesis.
Donald L Ferry
Thats true! And the result of a lot more people is no pets, livestock
or wildlife. It would allow for a ten-fold increase!
Thomas ODell
patent nonsense
Harold Lindaberry
Peter wrote:
> >Hell, according to Ehrlich, we should all be dead by now!
> >
> I still think it's absurc to think that the earth can support one trillion
> people.
True a trillion is too high !!!!!
> For one thing, unless we can synthesize food out of inorganic matter, it
> looks like we can only go to a little over one more doubling because we now take
> about 40% of the matter created by photosynthesis.
40 % is way too high also.
“ Nature limits what we can do, Science limits what we understand,
Theory what we can think, and Religion what we can hope “ Lindaberry 1998
Harold Lindaberry reply E - mail har...@epix.net
visit OXGORE website at http://www.epix.net/~harlind
RESEARCH GOES WHERE RESEARCH LEADS
Bloody Viking
: I still think it's absurc to think that the earth can support one trillion
: people. For one thing, unless we can synthesize food out of inorganic matter, it
: looks like we can only go to a little over one more doubling because we now take
: about 40% of the matter created by photosynthesis.
Yes, it's absurd to say the planet can support a teraperson. For that,
you'd need one hell of a power supply to turn shit and CO2 into food! I
don't think that covering the whole planet with 100 percent efficient
solar panels would cut it with us living underneath it!
The whole trick to human activity is ENERGY, a la Jay Hanson. With a
sufficient power supply, we could recycle everything we dug up out of the
ground, BUT you can't recycle ENERGY. Also, living standards is a function
of per capita energy use. The only renewable power supply is solar.
In reality, we must both learn to make better use of solar (in all forms)
and get the most out of each kilowatt-hour. One way to cut back on energy
use is to cut population. It can be nice, like contraception, or ugly a la
Jay Hanson.
Here's a gratuitous example for Jay Hanson that my own brother did as an
experiment. One time, my brother got a 20 gallon fish tank, and 3 mice.
Before long, with an "infinite" food and water supply, that "closed"
container got REALLY overpopulated. Trust me, the results are pretty ugly,
especially since he also inadvertently added Pollution (in the form of
occasional pot smoke) to the system. The "pollution" generated at least
one mouse so fucked up that it was a nut case that would in an open place
just jump up like a kangaroo unless you held your hands over it, in which
case, it would just run in circles, even in the open without walls!
This shows that even with an infinite energy supply, overcrowding is bad
news. Of course, it was skewed with inbreeding of the 3 original mice.
I hereby invite Jay Hanson to email me about this "experiment" for
inclusion in his web page. I admit, I don't agree 100 percent, but he
does have his points! :) <straddling the fence>
Neil Gardner
accommodate 1 trillion human beings on planet earth, by harnessing alll available
resources and optimising urban development. Let's imagine the Sahara desert populated
by multi-storey greenhouses and solar panels, with water pumped, dissalinated and
treated from the Atlantic Oceans providing food, water and energy for a maze of
multilayer underground cities and efficient rapid transport systems. Mere Sci-fi?
Who's going to design, prototype, fund and develop this new technology?
The highest maximum carrying capacity (assuming the correct application of current
technology) I've heard is around 30 billion (Channel 4, Against Nature November 1997).
That's assuming complete control of the world's resources. International capitalism
boosts profits through globalisation, relying on cheap labour, and automation, thereby
discarding unskilled and semiskilled workers. In today's world only a tiny minority of
the world's population are educated well enough to meet the challanges of information
technology. The recent economic meltdown in Asia has shown us just how fragile our
economy and ecosystem is. As I write, millions of Bangladeshis risk disease and
malnutrition following the recent floods.
Why bother overpopulating the earth just to satisfy people's desire for more kids or
religious beliefs in perpetual proliferation? Most of our 6 billion fellow human
beings cannot develop to their full potential, so we are patently unable to gain from
the increased intellectual diversity afforded by our record population. To ensure rich
intellectual and cultural diversity, we only need a few hundred million human beings.
Why risk jeopardising our environment, triggering starvation and pandemics among many
of the poorest in our society? Why risk destroying our rich ecosystem?
We need to empower women through widespread male and female contraception, reduce the
birth rate worldwide to under 1.5 per woman, help develop countries with a high
birthrate, redistribute resources and wealth and then harness technology to improve
the living standards of all the world's people.
Otherwise, we will witness a mass die-off and unprecedent human suffering, the black
death all over again only this time it might kill off 2 billion plus individuals.
Neil
Bloody Viking
: For sake of argument, let's assume the application of advanced technology could
: accommodate 1 trillion human beings on planet earth, by harnessing alll available
: resources and optimising urban development. Let's imagine the Sahara desert populated
: Why bother overpopulating the earth just to satisfy people's desire for more kids or
: religious beliefs in perpetual proliferation? Most of our 6 billion fellow human
: beings cannot develop to their full potential, so we are patently unable to gain from
: the increased intellectual diversity afforded by our record population. To ensure rich
: intellectual and cultural diversity, we only need a few hundred million human beings.
: Why risk jeopardising our environment, triggering starvation and pandemics among many
Utilising human potential takes Energy use, that's for sure. You're right
in that it's much wiser to have a smaller population and more per-capita
energy use. I make a perfect example of energy use and human potential. I
would make a perfect actor, but I would need energy use in the form of
anti-anxiety drugs and plastic surgery.
There are a lot of bright but learning-disabled kids out there who'd need
either schools designed for them and/or Ritalin. They are "learning
disabled" mostly becuse of the traditional classroom environment! Having a
trillion people would be ridiculously wasteful of resources and there's
the quality of life issues. Would anyone really like a life like the mice
in the fish tank I described? DOUBTFUL!
DMcKRAE
From what you guys are saying it would seem hitler had the right idea. Kill of
the people whio you don't need or an excessive drain on your resources! This
kind of pseudo environmentalism is sickening. It degrades the entire
conservation movement into a quest to maintain western life styles at the
expense of the third world. This why people are instinctively reluctant to
sign upto Jay Hansons NEW EUGENICS ideas because when it gets right down to it
it smells of evil.
Who is going to decide which 1 billion will live and which will die Hanson has
a ready told us that he would not be in the group to be bumped off.
Of course there are problems to be overcome. But most of them can be over come
Frank Ormel
: sufficient power supply, we could recycle everything we dug up out of
the
: ground, BUT you can't recycle ENERGY. Also, living standards is a
function
: of per capita energy use. The only renewable power supply is solar.
Not quite true. Though many renewable energy sources are driven by the
sun (wind, hydro, biomass) it is a very strong statement to regard only
solar energy as renewable. Especially with new research on the energy
in waves of the ocean/sea. (Look up the Archimedes wave swing). This is
using energy from the moon, that would be wastes otherwise. Though the
moon is losing energy in this process (and therefore it is not quite
renewable) this is on such a long timescale that defacto this can be
considered a renewable energy source.
Apart from stressing energy, I think available room is also important.
Neil Gardner
> From what you guys are saying it would seem hitler had the right idea.
Hardly the only mass killer, what about European colonization of the Americas,
Australia and Africa. But let's confine ourselves to social and environmental
factors.
> Kill of the people whio you don't need or an excessive drain on your resources!
> This
> kind of pseudo environmentalism is sickening. It degrades the entire
> conservation movement into a quest to maintain western life styles at the
> expense of the third world.
For centuries the population of much of the world was quite stable with some
fluctuations. Only relatively recent high yield agriculture, industrialization and
high productivity combined with quantum leaps in medicine, hygiene and disease
control have allowed the world's population to multiply so fast.
0 AD = 300 million
1500 AD = 300 million
1750 AD = 750 million
1880 AD = 1000 million
1918 (After WW1 and Flu pandemic) = 1250 million
1945 = 2.6 billion
1960 = 3 billion
1974 = 4 billion
1984 = 5 billion
1998 = just under 6 billion
2020 = 7.5 billion
2040 = 6 billion (after start of die-off)
2060 = Anyone's guess
We should ask ourselves fearlessly if we can guarantee a high quality of living for
6 billion plus human beings on planet earth over several generations without
jeopardizing our ecosystem and without risking mass unemployment, under
achievement, badly distributed resources, e seriously impaired ecosytem,
malnutrition, starvation and cyclical pandemics caused by drug resistance and
mutant viruses and bacteria?
If the answer is no we can't, what is the world's ideal carrying capacity? i.e.
where all people can develop to their full potential with plentiful renewable
resources and a clean environmental and stable ecosystem (i.e. in which humankind
strikes the right balance between non-human nature and people's long term needs).
And how can we best reduce our numbers without killing innocent people whose only
crime is their existence.
Some environmental extremists may pitch the ideal carrying capacity at as few as
450 millions. Just imagine if 92.5% of our fellow citizens miraculously migrated to
another larger planet, with current technology the remaining 450 million could
create a fantastic world . However, any diminution in the current demographic
growth rate will ease environmental and social ills to the benefit of the world's
poorest. The main victims of overconsumption and overpopulation are the poor and
always will be. Failure to act now by encouraging birth control and alternative
development (i.e. without large families) will lead to suffering of untold
proportions.
The biggest crime is to dismiss the problems caused by unprecedented
socio-ecological changes over the last century. Should we deal with it humanely now
or wait for hundreds of millions to die in civil wars, under brutal dictators,
market forces, pandemics, floods, desertification etc...
Yours
Neil
Michael Tobis
the earth is that you have to take "spaceship earth" literally
at that point. The trillion would be supported by a complex machine,
not by a biosphere. (In some ways, the transition has begun - we can't
support the whole earth's population using "organic" farming - mineral
nitrogen is now necessary.) That means the population requires flawless
operation of the machine. Typically, machines have trouble lasting
over generations of human cultural shifts. So the "sustainable" population
ignoring risks is much larger than the practically sustainable population.
If you're going to support a huge human population in machines,
it makes sense to not have the machines be planets, because that
puts too many eggs in one basket - too high of a risk. Far better
to use smaller literal spaceships. It's hard to imagine the resulting
life style would be much different, and the system would be vastly less
fragile.
If you want to put all those people on planets for some reason anyway,
the earth is a remarkably stupid choice, because the earth has unique
properties that few if any other planets have, properties that it loses
if it supports a trillion people living exactly as they would on Ganymede
or Babylon 5.
Anyway, the system which could maintain a trillion people on earth is
too fragile to be maintained long enough to be called "sustainable",
I expect. It's also pointless, since it's the same system that could
support a trillion people on literal spaceships at lower risk and
vastly lower cost.
mt
Peter
>
>
>
>Peter wrote:
>> I still think it's absurc to think that the earth can support one trillion
>> people.
>
> True a trillion is too high !!!!!
>
>> For one thing, unless we can synthesize food out of inorganic matter, it
>>looks like we can only go to a little over one more doubling because we now take
>> about 40% of the matter created by photosynthesis.
>
> 40 % is way too high also.
Actually, what I've read is that we use 40% of the matter created by
photosynthesis not counting photosynthesis in the ocean. If we include the
ocean, it's 25%. I don't have a reference for you right now. I can look it up,
if you want.
Donald L. Libby
>
> The problem of keeping a trillion folks healthy on the surface of
> the earth is that you have to take "spaceship earth" literally
> at that point. The trillion would be supported by a complex machine,
> not by a biosphere.
>
> Anyway, the system which could maintain a trillion people on earth is
> too fragile to be maintained long enough to be called "sustainable",
> I expect. It's also pointless, since it's the same system that could
> support a trillion people on literal spaceships at lower risk and
> vastly lower cost.
>
> mt
Discussing the fragility and sustainability of human life support
systems - whether bio or techno - is likely to prove more fruitful than
insisting that earth has a human carrying capacity in any meaningful
sense. More directly to the point, discussing the system's
*desirability* would more quickly close on agreement, or at least place
disagreement on intellectually honest terms. I believe this fairly
reflects the consensus statement on the "carrying capacity" issue
published in _Science_
p. 520-521 APR 28 1995 and reprinted in several other scientific
journals.
Several have commented that they would prefer a population of one or two
Billion or less (Billion in the US sense of 10^9). Fine. It's how we
get from here to there that concerns me, because we're on track to peak
at 10-12 Billion at mid-century. I'm pretty confident that something in
this neighborhood would obtain, give or take a few Billion, because of
demographic momentum (those already born are likely to give birth at
slightly lower rates than their parents) and because it is technically
feasible with present technology to provide sustenance for a population
this size.
We can speculate about whether such a world will look and feel good to
its inhabitants, and how much wildlife habitat would remain, and design
our natural resource conservation strategies accordingly. We could
assure that sufficient "seed stock" would carry over the "arc" from six
B to ten B to two B such that wilderness would recover, if that's a
desireable goal. We can also speculatively weigh the costs and benefits
of taking actions to avoid the "arc" and dip directly to a more
"desireable" 2B, perhaps including but not necessarily limited to
involuntary mass sterilization, mass starvation, mass murder, etc. We
could also fail to construct the necessary machinery and institutions to
support 10 Billion and thus indeliberately accomplish Jay's prophesized
die-off. Though we all may desire a less populated world (which is
debatable), I doubt many of us would desire to allow our fear of a
(dubious) environmental catastrophe to unleash an unprecedented real
humanitarian catastrophe.
-dl
--
Donald L. Libby, PhD (dli...@facstaff.wisc.edu)
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Donald L. Libby
The 40% figure crops up (so to speak) from time to time as a limit on
human population size. For example Erlich and Erlich 1996 _The Betrayal
of Science and Reason_ pg.68 write in the aptly named chapter "Fables
about Population and Food": "A more fundamental but indirect indicator
of how close humanity has come to its limits is that it is already
consuming, co-opting, or destroying some 40 percent of the terrestrial
food supply of all animals (not just human beings)".
The original source of this figure is Vitousek PM, Ehrlich PR, Ehrlich
AH, Matson P. 1986. "Human appropriation of the products of
photosynthesis". BioScience 36: 368-373.
This argument is somewhat flawed, however, as pointed out by bioethicist
Mark Sagoff in his essay "CARRYING-CAPACITY AND ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS",
BIOSCIENCE 45: (9) 610-620 OCT 1995.
To quote Sagoff:
*begin quote*
To give empirical content to theoretical arguments about why the global
economy can no longer grow, ecological economists often refer to what
one describes as the "best evidence" (Goodland 1993) that economic
expansion has reached its natural limits--an estimate by Peter Vitousek
and his colleagues (1986, p. 372) that "organic material equivalent to
approximately 40% of the present net primary production in terrestrial
ecosystems is being co-opted by human beings each year." Vitousek and
his
colleagues (1986, p. 372) also state that "humans now appropriate nearly
40%...of potential terrestrial productivity. " Commentators conclude:
"If we take this percentage as an index of the human carrying capacity
of the earth and assume that a growing economy could come to appropriate
80% of photosynthetic production before destroying the functional
integrity of the ecosphere, the earth will effectively go from half to
completely full during the next...35 years" (Rees and Wackernagel 1994,
p. 383).
The argument that total net primary production limits gross domestic
product or economic growth rests on two premises. First, the total
amount of net primary production on which the global economy draws is
fixed or limited by nature. Second, as economies grow, they must
appropriate relatively more net primary production. Ehrlich and Ehrlich,
for example, cite the scarcity of net primary production to refute the
"hope that development can greatly increase the size of the economic pie
and pull many more
people out of poverty" (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990). They call this idea
"insane" because of "the constraints nature places on human activities"
(Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990). Such an expansion of economic activity,
Ehrlich and Ehrlich contend, "implies an assault on global NPP [net
primary production] far beyond that already observed" (Ehrlich and
Ehrlich 1990).
Vitousek and his colleagues (1986) calculated the assault of the global
economy on global net primary production in terms of three separate
percentages. First, they estimated the percentage of terrestrial net
primary production that people directly consume and, second, the
percentage they co-opt. By the term co-opted net primary production,
Vitousek and his colleagues mean "material that human beings use
directly or that is used in human-dominated ecosystems by communities or
organisms different from those in corresponding natural communities"
(Vitousek et al. 1986, p. 370). The amount of net primary production
that "flows to different consumers and decomposers than it otherwise
would" amounts to 42.6 petagrams (Pg) of net primary production or
approximately 19% of the terrestrial total. The 40% figure mentioned
earlier--the one constantly cited--is the third percentage that Vitousek
and his
colleagues calculated. It refers to the percentage of net primary
production that "human beings have 'co-opted' and potential NPP [net
primary production] lost as a consequence of human activities."
Vitousek and his colleagues (1986) calculated that the amount of net
primary production people directly consume as food is equal to 0.91 Pg
of organic material annually. They estimated the combined consumption of
plants by livestock and of wood by human beings at 4.4 Pg of dry organic
material annually, resulting in a total of approximately 5.3 Pg of
direct annual consumption of terrestrial net primary production by
humans and their chattel.
The amount of direct consumption, a little more than 5 Pg of biomass, is
less than the 15 Pg of organic material that Vitousek and his colleagues
(1986), using data collected in the 1970s, estimated is produced
annually on cultivated land. We may conclude from the figures cited
that, even by 1979, farmers produced much more biomass than people and
livestock directly consumed. This conclusion is consistent with expert
opinion, which estimates that world agriculture produces enough oil
seeds and grain today to provide a vegetarian diet adequate in calories
and protein for twice the world's population (Waggoner 1994).
Relying on 1970s data, Vitousek and his colleagues (1986) calculated
actual, not potential, net primary production; however, subsequent data
suggest global net primary production need not be fixed at 1970s levels
but may greatly increase, for example, in response to cultivation. For
instance, in developing countries, wheat yields per acre doubled from
1974 to 1994, corn yields improved by 72%, and rice yields by 52%
(Anderson 1995). The potential for further increases is enormous. US
farmers now average approximately 7 tons of corn per hectare (t/ha), but
when challenged, as in
National Corngrowers Association competitions, they have tripled those
yields (Waggoner 1994). Varieties of rice developed recently are
expected to boost average rice yields dramatically above the present 3.5
t/ha, with a conjectural biological maximum of approximately 15 t/ha
(Anderson 1995).
Vitousek and his colleagues recognized that the net primary production
output of cultivated land may exceed that of natural ecosystems--but
when it does, "the amount of potential NPP [net primary production]
co-opted by human beings increases" (Vitousek et al. 1986, p. 372). The
amount of net primary production farmers co-opt, then, becomes an
artifact of the amount they create, not an indicator of a natural limit
on productivity.
It is important to see that rising yields do not imply the co-option of
more land but, in fact, may free land to return to nature. Between 1950
and 1989, the global output of major food crops rose by 160%, more than
keeping pace with world population (Brown et al. 1995). Most of the
increase is attributed to improved yields, not to the use of more land.
As a result of greater yields, the United States now idles 50 million
acres of farmland in conservation reserves, and the nation is far more
forested than a century ago, while remaining a major net food exporter
(Crosson 1994). Other industrialized nations, also net agricultural
exporters, have seen farms revert to forest (WRI 1994).
The most telling examples of net primary production appropriation
Vitousek and his colleagues present (e.g., the "6 Pg of organic material
[that] is consumed each year in fires associated with shifting
cultivation"; Vitousek et al. 1986) arise not as a result of economic
growth but from human activity associated with absence of economic
growth, or its opposite, destitution (Myers 1993). Displaced peasants,
driven by political and economic deprivation, are responsible for nearly
three-fifths of current tropical deforestation (Myers 1994). This
picture suggests that, for the environment, destitution is far worse
than economic development.
*end quote*
I haven't seen anyone actually criticising Marchetti's estimate of One
Trillion carrying capacity yet, absurd though it may be.
Jay Hanson
> I haven't seen anyone actually criticising Marchetti's estimate of One
> Trillion carrying capacity yet, absurd though it may be.
You didn't even read it did you?
Jay
Jay Hanson
> Discussing the fragility and sustainability of human life support
> systems - whether bio or techno - is likely to prove more fruitful than
> insisting that earth has a human carrying capacity in any meaningful
> sense. More directly to the point, discussing the system's
Scientists use the term every day. Of course it has "meaningful sense", but
you reject it on religious grounds. The longer you and your cohorts manage to
obscure the issue, the higher the body count.
--------------------------------------------
“Worldwatch Briefing: Sixteen Dimensions of the Population Problem”
Two hundred years ago, Thomas Malthus could only discuss the population-food
relationship in general terms, but we now have enough information for each
country to calculate with some confidence its population carrying
capacity--the number of people that can be supported at the desired level of
food consumption. We now know what the cropland area is and roughly what it
will be a half-century from now. In most countries there will be little
change. For water, current hydrological data give us a good sense of how
much will be available for each country in 2050, assuming no major changes
in climate. We also now can anticipate within a narrow range what grain
yield potentials are for each country.
U.S. Department of Agriculture plant scientist Thomas R. Sinclair observes
that advances in plant physiology now let scientists quantify crop yield
potentials quite precisely. The physiological limits of such metabolic
processes as tran-spiration, respiration, and photosynthesis are well known.
He notes that "except for a few options which allow small increases in the
yield ceiling, the physiological limit to crop yields may well have been
reached under experimental con-ditions.'' In those situations, national or
local, where farm-ers are using the highest-yielding varieties that plant
breed-ers can provide and the agronomic inputs and practices needed to
realize fully their genetic potential, there are few options left for
dramatically raising land productivity.
As noted earlier, the unprecedented worldwide rise in land productivity that
began at mid-century has slowed dramatically since 1990, with no foreseeable
prospect of a rapid rise being restored. In some of the more agriculturally
advanced countries, yields are showing signs of plateauing. A lack of new
technologies to raise land productivity is not the only constraint. As noted
earlier, the world's farmers now face a continuing shrinkage in the cropland
area per person, a steady shrinkage in irrigation water per person, and a
diminishing crop yield response to the use of additional fertilizer.
Given the limits to the carrying capacity of each coun-try's land and water
resources, every national government now needs a carefully articulated and
adequately supported population policy, one that takes into account the
country's carrying capacity at whatever consumption level citizens decide
on. As Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson observes in his landmark book The
Diversity of Life, "Every nation has an economic policy and a foreign
policy. The time has come to speak more openly of a population policy. By
this I mean not just the capping of growth when the population hits the
wall, as in China and India, but a policy based on a rational solution of
this problem; what, in the judgment of its informed citizenry, is the
optimal population?''
As a starting point, governments can calculate their population carrying
capacity by estimating the land avail-able for crops, the amount of water
that will be available for irrigation over the long term, and the likely
yield of crops based on what the most advanced countries with similar
growing conditions have achieved. Without such a calcula-tion, many national
governments are simply flying blind into the future, allowing their nations
to drift into a world in which population growth and environmental
degrada-tion can lead to social disintegration. Once projections of future
food supplies are completed, then societies can con-sider what combination
of population size and consump-tion level they want, recognizing that there
are tradeoffs between the two.
Governments of countries where the carrying capacity assessments show
growing grain deficits may assume they can cover these with imports. But the
projected growth in national grain deficits is collectively likely to far
exceed exportable grain surpluses, which have increased little since 1980.
(See Figure 13.) Even though the cropland held out of production under U.S.
farm commodity programs over the last half-century was returned to use after
these programs were dismantled in 1995, the United States--the world's
leading grain exporter--has actually experienced some shrinkage in its
exportable surplus in recent years as the growth in domestic demands has
exceeded the growth in production. [ pp. 71-73,
“Worldwatch Briefing: Sixteen Dimensions of the Population Problem” at
http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/pr98924.html ]
Jay Hanson
> Actually, what I've read is that we use 40% of the matter created by
> photosynthesis not counting photosynthesis in the ocean. If we include the
> ocean, it's 25%. I don't have a reference for you right now. I can look it up,
> if you want.
HUMAN APPROPRIATION OF THE PRODUCTS OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS
by Peter Vitousek, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich and Pamela Matson (1986)
http://dieoff.com/page83.htm
Jay -- www.dieoff.com
Jay Hanson
> involuntary mass sterilization, mass starvation, mass murder, etc. We
> could also fail to construct the necessary machinery and institutions to
> support 10 Billion and thus indeliberately accomplish Jay's prophesized
> die-off. Though we all may desire a less populated world (which is
It is not possible "to construct the necessary machinery and institutions to
support 10 Billion". At least five additional Earths would be needed.
-----------------
Revisiting Carrying Capacity: Area-Based Indicators of Sustainability
by William E. Rees
"Let us examine this prospect using ecological footprint analysis. If just
the present world population of 5.8 billion people were to live at current
North American ecological standards (say 4.5 ha/person), a reasonable first
approximation of the total productive land requirement would be 26 billion ha
(assuming present technology). However, there are only just over 13 billion
ha of land on Earth, of which only 8.8 billion are ecologically productive
cropland, pasture, or forest (1.5 ha/person). In short, we would need an
additional two planet Earths to accommodate the increased ecological load of
people alive today. If the population were to stabilize at between 10 and 11
billion sometime in the next century, five additional Earths would be needed,
all else being equal -- and this just to maintain the present rate of
ecological decline (Rees & Wackernagel, 1994)."
http://dieoff.com/page110.htm
Jay
Bloody Viking
: Not quite true. Though many renewable energy sources are driven by the
: sun (wind, hydro, biomass) it is a very strong statement to regard only
: solar energy as renewable. Especially with new research on the energy
: in waves of the ocean/sea. (Look up the Archimedes wave swing). This is
: using energy from the moon, that would be wastes otherwise. Though the
: moon is losing energy in this process (and therefore it is not quite
: renewable) this is on such a long timescale that defacto this can be
: considered a renewable energy source.
For a civilisation, it's pretty well renewable. It would take millions of
years to deplete tidal energy. :)
: Apart from stressing energy, I think available room is also important.
I stress quality of life, and room is part of that. Overcrowding is bad
quality of life.
--
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Bloody Viking
: Several have commented that they would prefer a population of one or two
: Billion or less (Billion in the US sense of 10^9). Fine. It's how we
: get from here to there that concerns me, because we're on track to peak
: at 10-12 Billion at mid-century. I'm pretty confident that something in
: this neighborhood would obtain, give or take a few Billion, because of
: demographic momentum (those already born are likely to give birth at
: slightly lower rates than their parents) and because it is technically
: feasible with present technology to provide sustenance for a population
: this size.
The biggest problem is the power supply. We have to get a power supply big
enough so we can make the transition to renewables from fossil fuels.
: desireable goal. We can also speculatively weigh the costs and benefits
: of taking actions to avoid the "arc" and dip directly to a more
: "desireable" 2B, perhaps including but not necessarily limited to
: involuntary mass sterilization, mass starvation, mass murder, etc. We
: could also fail to construct the necessary machinery and institutions to
: support 10 Billion and thus indeliberately accomplish Jay's prophesized
: die-off. Though we all may desire a less populated world (which is
: debatable), I doubt many of us would desire to allow our fear of a
: (dubious) environmental catastrophe to unleash an unprecedented real
: humanitarian catastrophe.
A Hansonian dieoff CAN be prevented, but we had better act on it. The
problem as Jay sees it is the total lack of political will to do anything
until it's too late. The trick is to work on renewables WHILE PETROL IS
STILL CHEAP.
One thing that might well occur after the Oil Max-Out is for governments
to get totalitarian as they struggle to maintain power with the dwindling
petrol supply for the tanks and cop cars. Poorer countries will be hit
hardest and first. Consider the Asia financial fiasco and Indonesia, where
the people are doing an Easter Island plundering nature - and we're
several years from the Hanson Oil Max-Out!
China is also desperate to maintain control as well. We already know about
the one-child rule there, enforced with a steel fist.
Consider our own government during the 1970s and the Oil Max-Out
rehearsal. Given our own government's propensity to ignore the
Constitution, our government getting totalitarian is a distinct
possibility.
Bloody Viking
: Scientists use the term every day. Of course it has "meaningful sense", but
: you reject it on religious grounds. The longer you and your cohorts manage to
: obscure the issue, the higher the body count.
"Yo Mama's stuck between my teeth!"
- Easter Islander "fighting words" (converted to modern Yank)
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Bloody Viking
:> involuntary mass sterilization, mass starvation, mass murder, etc. We
:> could also fail to construct the necessary machinery and institutions to
:> support 10 Billion and thus indeliberately accomplish Jay's prophesized
:> die-off. Though we all may desire a less populated world (which is
: It is not possible "to construct the necessary machinery and institutions to
: support 10 Billion". At least five additional Earths would be needed.
Most certainly, we'd need an awful big power supply to recycle shit fast
enough. Becuse you'll need an awful lot of energy to recycle shit and CO2
into food and oxygen, it's a safe bet indeed we will fail to build the
mythical machine. Who'd want to eat Soylent Green anyways? (Remember, we'd
have to recycle dead bodies for the biomass > food machine...)
Harold Lindaberry
Bloody Viking wrote:
> In sci.environment Jay Hanson <oi...@oink.com> wrote:
> : "Donald L. Libby" wrote:
>
> :> involuntary mass sterilization, mass starvation, mass murder, etc. We
> :> could also fail to construct the necessary machinery and institutions to
> :> support 10 Billion and thus indeliberately accomplish Jay's prophesized
> :> die-off. Though we all may desire a less populated world (which is
>
> : It is not possible "to construct the necessary machinery and institutions to
> : support 10 Billion". At least five additional Earths would be needed.
>
> Most certainly, we'd need an awful big power supply to recycle shit fast
> enough.
Actually the bacteria and other plant and animal + the sun of course species
can do a pretty efficient job and use the shit for the energy source.
> Becuse you'll need an awful lot of energy to recycle shit and CO2
> into food and oxygen, it's a safe bet indeed we will fail to build the
> mythical machine. Who'd want to eat Soylent Green anyways? (Remember, we'd
> have to recycle dead bodies for the biomass > food machine...)
The biomass involved in human bodies is pretty small peanuts in the total over
all C recycle system, just take what ever number population you want to use X 0.05
tons per person X 0.4 C dry weight( which is probably high ) and it will represent
a pretty low number in the total picture. Not that I think that higher human
population is better, but you can bet that the C will be tied up in something
either living or dead ( fossil fuel, carbonate, methane hydrates etc. ) or in the
air or ocean.
“ Nature limits what we can do, Science limits what we understand,
Theory what we can think, and Religion what we can hope “ Lindaberry 1998
Harold Lindaberry reply E - mail har...@epix.net
visit OXGORE website at http://www.epix.net/~harlind
RESEARCH GOES WHERE RESEARCH LEADS
>
>
Bloody Viking
: Actually the bacteria and other plant and animal + the sun of course species
: can do a pretty efficient job and use the shit for the energy source.
Even so, there's a quality of life issue. Would you really enjoy plankton
pie?
: The biomass involved in human bodies is pretty small peanuts in the total over
: all C recycle system, just take what ever number population you want to use X 0.05
: tons per person X 0.4 C dry weight( which is probably high ) and it will represent
: a pretty low number in the total picture. Not that I think that higher human
: population is better, but you can bet that the C will be tied up in something
: either living or dead ( fossil fuel, carbonate, methane hydrates etc. ) or in the
: air or ocean.
Well, we are unleashing a lot of carbon by burning up all the fossil fuel
adding it back to the biosphere, sort of recycling a jar of pennies at a
bank. That's the good news of our petrol folly. The bad news is we need a
power supply for our cars, trucks, and ships. Solar doesn't really cut it
for transportation of goods.
Still, in the ultimate case, we would have to recycle every scrap of
biomass including dead bodies. All in all, a smaller population is better!
Harold Lindaberry
Bloody Viking wrote:
> In sci.environment Harold Lindaberry <har...@epix.net> wrote:
>
> : Actually the bacteria and other plant and animal + the sun of course species
> : can do a pretty efficient job and use the shit for the energy source.
>
> Even so, there's a quality of life issue. Would you really enjoy plankton
> pie?
I don't know never tried it, but I do notice that there are people promoting
Chlorella algae as a great food source, but at $200 + a pound ( dry weight ) I doubt if
it will replace steak ;-). Every step down the food chain harvested you increase the
food potential by about 10.
>
>
> : The biomass involved in human bodies is pretty small peanuts in the total over
> : all C recycle system, just take what ever number population you want to use X 0.05
> : tons per person X 0.4 C dry weight( which is probably high ) and it will represent
> : a pretty low number in the total picture. Not that I think that higher human
> : population is better, but you can bet that the C will be tied up in something
> : either living or dead ( fossil fuel, carbonate, methane hydrates etc. ) or in the
> : air or ocean.
>
> Well, we are unleashing a lot of carbon by burning up all the fossil fuel
> adding it back to the biosphere, sort of recycling a jar of pennies at a
> bank. That's the good news of our petrol folly. The bad news is we need a
> power supply for our cars, trucks, and ships. Solar doesn't really cut it
> for transportation of goods.
Actually fossil fuels are just solar energy stored in the past and out of the active
recycling system.
>
>
> Still, in the ultimate case, we would have to recycle every scrap of
> biomass including dead bodies.
Formaldehyde just slows down the process, incineration speeds it up and it doesn't
take up as much space
> All in all, a smaller population is better!
Perhaps depending on where your OX resides. Some species will take up its position
in the cycle, based on the number of species it'll probably have 6 legs !
“ Nature limits what we can do, Science limits what we understand,
Theory what we can think, and Religion what we can hope “ Lindaberry 1998
Harold Lindaberry reply E - mail har...@epix.net
visit OXGORE website at http://www.epix.net/~harlind
RESEARCH GOES WHERE RESEARCH LEADS
>
>
Harold Lindaberry
Bloody Viking wrote:
> In sci.environment Harold Lindaberry <har...@epix.net> wrote:
>
> : I don't know never tried it, but I do notice that there are people promoting
> : Chlorella algae as a great food source, but at $200 + a pound ( dry weight ) I doubt if
> : it will replace steak ;-). Every step down the food chain harvested you increase the
> : food potential by about 10.
>
> Switching from meat to veggies saves on land use per human. However, if we
> were to directly eat algae used to process sewage, that's the limit. The
> Chinese come close with shitting and pissing into the rice paddies.
You don't have to go all the way to China - Montezuma gets his revenge on occasion in
Mexico.
> This
> has the obvious problem of diesease passed in shit making it's way to
> other humans.
Constructing sewage plants and running effluent in to streams has its problems also.
>
>
> : Actually fossil fuels are just solar energy stored in the past and out of the active
> : recycling system.
>
> Yep, sort of like a jar of pennies.
I don't think we have a clue as to the number of pennies being put in to the jar on an
annual basis, it would be interesting to have some numbers for the amount being dropped out of
the system and conversely the amount available for living systems. Just a note : using the
sargasso sea sea levels for primary production ( the lowest recorded for long term studies - 6
months to a year ) the figure is2 tons of biomass ( dry weight ) production per day - using
this minimum figure for the ocean as a hole this calculates to 278 million tons ( dry weight )
primary production per day in the oceans alone. When converting this to yearly figures - the
amount produced is sizable.
“ Nature limits what we can do, Science limits what we understand,
Theory what we can think, and Religion what we can hope “ Lindaberry 1998
Harold Lindaberry reply E - mail har...@epix.net
visit OXGORE website at http://www.epix.net/~harlind
RESEARCH GOES WHERE RESEARCH LEADS
>
>
> : Perhaps depending on where your OX resides. Some species will take up its position
> : in the cycle, based on the number of species it'll probably have 6 legs !
>
> Yep, the Cucaracha!
>
> --
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> A cult founder's rustbucket freighter is his battleship.
>
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Bloody Viking
: I don't know never tried it, but I do notice that there are people promoting
: Chlorella algae as a great food source, but at $200 + a pound ( dry weight ) I doubt if
: it will replace steak ;-). Every step down the food chain harvested you increase the
: food potential by about 10.
Switching from meat to veggies saves on land use per human. However, if we
were to directly eat algae used to process sewage, that's the limit. The
Chinese come close with shitting and pissing into the rice paddies. This
has the obvious problem of diesease passed in shit making it's way to
other humans.
: Actually fossil fuels are just solar energy stored in the past and out of the active
: recycling system.
Yep, sort of like a jar of pennies.
: Perhaps depending on where your OX resides. Some species will take up its position
Bloody Viking
: You don't have to go all the way to China - Montezuma gets his revenge on occasion in
: Mexico.
Mexico is a disaster waiting to happen. When it does, guess what country
they will gate-crash? (as they don't already gate-crash now...)
DMcKRAE
The science that supports the idea that the world is over populated is at least
as questionable as that which supports the idea of global warming (much much
more in my opinion) How ever there are no right wing denialists of over
crowding (at least not to the same degree) ever wonder why. Most extream right
wingers agree that there are to many african, mexicans etc. You are not
presumabley saying that there are too many americans or too many w.a.s.p.s or
that as the average american/ west european uses conservatively 10 times the
resources that a third word individual uses that we should adjust our standard
of living.
Concerns about the standard of living in third world countries is some what
hypocritical. Are we saying that the standard of living of the poor and
starving is so miserable that we should bump them of or prevent them from
breeding. These are still human beings your talking about not mice that have
being kept in your brothers glass case. Nor do WE or YOU provide them with a
standard of living. People of the third world by and large work hard and
provide their own living.
And if high density of population is such a bad thing how come no one wantsto
live in North Dakota.
Jay Hanson
> The science that supports the idea that the world is over populated is at least
> as questionable as that which supports the idea of global warming (much much
> more in my opinion)
All one has to do is measure it:
"Let us examine this prospect using ecological footprint analysis. If just
the present world population of 5.8 billion people were to live at current
North American ecological standards (say 4.5 ha/person), a reasonable first
approximation of the total productive land requirement would be 26 billion
ha (assuming present technology). However, there are only just over 13
billion ha of land on Earth, of which only 8.8 billion are ecologically
productive cropland, pasture, or forest (1.5 ha/person). In short, we would
need an additional two planet Earths to accommodate the increased ecological
load of people alive today. If the population were to stabilize at between
10 and 11 billion sometime in the next century, five additional Earths would
be needed, all else being equal -- and this just to maintain the present
rate of ecological decline (Rees & Wackernagel, 1994)."
Revisiting Carrying Capacity:
Area-Based Indicators of Sustainability
by William E. Rees
Jay
> And if high density of population is such a bad thing how come no one wantsto
> live in North Dakota.
"High density: is not how "overpopulation" is measured:
THE POPULATION EXPLOSION by Paul and Anne Ehrlich (1990)
Published by Simon and Schuster Tel. 212-698-7000
OVERPOPULATION
Having considered some of the ways that humanity is destroying
its inheritance, we can look more closely at the concept of
"overpopulation." All too often, overpopulation is thought of
simply as crowding: too many people in a given area, too high a
population density. For instance, the deputy editor in chief of
Forbes magazine pointed out recently, in connection with a plea
for more population growth in the United States: "If all the
people from China and India lived in the continental U.S.
(excluding Alaska), this country would still have a smaller
population density than England, Holland, or Belgium." *31
The appropriate response is "So what?" Density is generally
irrelevant to questions of overpopulation. For instance, if
brute density were the criterion, one would have to conclude that
Africa is "underpopulated," because it has only 55 people per
square mile, while Europe (excluding the USSR) has 261 and Japan
857. *32 A more sophisticated measure would take into
consideration the amount of Africa not covered by desert or
"impenetrable" forest. *33 This more habitable portion is just a
little over half the continent's area, giving an effective
population density of 117 per square mile. That's still only
about a fifth of that in the United Kingdom. Even by 2020,
Africa's effective density is projected to grow to only about
that of France today (266), and few people would consider France
excessively crowded or overpopulated.
When people think of crowded countries, they usually contemplate
places like the Netherlands (1,031 per square mile), Taiwan
(1,604), or Hong Kong (14,218). Even those don't necessarily
signal overpopulation -- after all, the Dutch seem to be
thriving, and doesn't Hong Kong have a booming economy and fancy
hotels? In short, if density were the standard of
overpopulation, few nations (and certainly not Earth itself)
would be likely to be considered overpopulated in the near
future. The error, we repeat, lies in trying to define
overpopulation in terms of density; it has long been recognized
that density per se means very little. *34
The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density
but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources
and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities;
that is, to the area's carrying capacity. When is an area
overpopulated? When its population can't be maintained without
rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources (or converting renewable
resources into nonrenewable ones) and without degrading the
capacity of the environment to support the population. In short,
if the long-term carrying capacity of an area is clearly being
degraded by its current human occupants, that area is
overpopulated. *35
By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is
already vastly overpopulated. Africa is overpopulated now
because, among other indications, its soils and forests are
rapidly being depleted -- and that implies that its carrying
capacity for human beings will be lower in the future than it is
now. The United States is overpopulated because it is depleting
its soil and water resources and contributing mightily to the
destruction of global environmental systems. Europe, Japan, the
Soviet Union, and other rich nations are overpopulated because of
their massive contributions to the carbon dioxide buildup in the
atmosphere, among many other reasons.
Almost all the rich nations are overpopulated because they are
rapidly drawing down stocks of resources around the world. They
don't live solely on the land in their own nations. Like the
profligate son of our earlier analogy, they are spending their
capital with no thought for the future.
It is especially ironic that Forbes considered the Netherlands
not to be overpopulated. This is such a common error that it has
been known for two decades as the "Netherlands Fallacy." *36 The
Netherlands can support 1,031 people per square mile only because
the rest of the world does not. In 1984-86, the Netherlands
imported almost 4 million tons of cereals, 130,000 tons of oils,
and 480,000 tons of pulses (peas, beans, lentils). It took some
of these relatively inexpensive imports and used them to boost
their production of expensive exports -- 330,000 tons of milk and
1.2 million tons of meat. The-Netherlands also extracted about a
half-million tons of fishes from the sea during this period, and
imported more in the form of fish meal. *37
The Netherlands is also a major importer of minerals, bringing in
virtually all the iron, antimony, bauxite, copper, tin, etc.,
that it requires. Most of its fresh water is "imported" from
upstream nations via the Rhine River. The Dutch built their
wealth using imported energy. Then, in the 1970s, the discovery
of a large gas field in the northern part of the nation allowed
the Netherlands temporarily to export as gas roughly the
equivalent in energy of the petroleum it continued to import.
But when the gas fields (which represent about twenty years'
worth of Dutch energy consumption at current rates) are
exhausted, Holland will once again depend heavily on the rest of
the world for fossil fuels or uranium. *38
In short, the people of the Netherlands didn't build their
prosperity on the bounty of the Netherlands, and are not living
on it now. Before World War II, they drew raw materials from
their colonies; today they still depend on the resources of much
of the world. Saying that the Netherlands is thriving with a
density of 1,031 people per square mile simply ignores that those
1,031 Dutch people far exceed the carrying capacity of that
square mile.
This "carrying-capacity" definition of overpopulation is the one
used in this book. *39 It is important to understand that under
this definition a condition of overpopulation might be corrected
with no change in the number of people. For instance, the impact
of today's 665 million Africans on their resources and
environment theoretically might be reduced to the point where the
continent would no longer be overpopulated. To see whether this
would be possible, population growth would have to be stopped,
appropriate assistance given to peasant farmers, and certain
other important reforms instituted. Similarly, dramatic changes
in American lifestyle might suffice to end overpopulation in the
United States without a large population reduction.
But, for now and the foreseeable future, Africa and the United
States will remain overpopulated -- and will probably become even
more so. To say they are not because, if people changed their
ways, overpopulation might be eliminated is simply wrong --
overpopulation is defined by the animals that occupy the turf,
behaving as they naturally behave, not by a hypothetical group
that might be substituted for them. [p.p. 37-40]
Neil Gardner
What kind of society to you want all our children and grandchildren to inherit.
Do you want?
1) A complete overhaul of our ecosystem with the destruction of most known species
of flora and fauna and many diverse human cultures.
2) More environmental depredation!
3) More economically driven civil wars, interethnic and intergang warfare.
4) Pandemics wiping out whole swathes of the world's poor.
5) A world in which only a tiny elite can develop their full potential.
Or would rather have?:
1) A world in which all people of any ethnic or class origin can develop to their
full potential.
2) A stable ecosystem in which we can safely maintain the earth's rich biological
and human cultural diversity in the long term.
I do not see our environmental problems merely in terms of overpopulation. What
about overconsumption? I believe all world citizens are entitled to the same
benefits of modern technology, but under our current economic system, i.e.
capitalism, such a dream is impossible indeed the rich / poor and north / south gap
is growing. 6 billion people cannot drive gas-guzzling cars on multilane highways.
I would like us to plan our future, i.e. that of all humanity, within the
constraints of nature and science. Unless we can colonise other planets, it is
irresponsible to argue that we can carry on proliferating without jeopardising our
future and causing untold suffering to billions of souls .
If you hate dictators, starvation, pandemics, futile wars and genocide as much as I
do, then you should be arguing for tougher birth controls, redsitribution of wealth
and environmentally responsible development . That means lower consumption in
so-called advanced capitalist countries and fewer kids per woman in countries with
a high birth rate. We should plan a gradual decrease in population without killing
one single human being (let's keep abortion out of the equation - it's a last
resort). Otherwise, our free.market economy will descend into a bloodbath.
BTW do you believe in perpetual motion?
Yours
Neil
DMcKRAE wrote:
> The science that supports the idea that the world is over populated is at least
> as questionable as that which supports the idea of global warming (much much
> more in my opinion) How ever there are no right wing denialists of over
> crowding (at least not to the same degree) ever wonder why. Most extream right
> wingers agree that there are to many african, mexicans etc. You are not
> presumabley saying that there are too many americans or too many w.a.s.p.s or
> that as the average american/ west european uses conservatively 10 times the
> resources that a third word individual uses that we should adjust our standard
> of living.
> Concerns about the standard of living in third world countries is some what
> hypocritical. Are we saying that the standard of living of the poor and
> starving is so miserable that we should bump them of or prevent them from
> breeding. These are still human beings your talking about not mice that have
> being kept in your brothers glass case. Nor do WE or YOU provide them with a
> standard of living. People of the third world by and large work hard and
> provide their own living.
Just Wondering
Jay Hanson <oi...@oink.com> wrote:
> >Don Libby:
> >
> >: Actually, Earth's human carrying capacity is One Trillion, more or less:
> >
> >: "The result of this analysis is that from a technological point of view
> >: a trillion people can live beautifully on the Earth, for an unlimited
> >: time, without exhausting any primary resource and without overloading
> >: the environment." - C. Marchetti, "A Check on Earth Carrying Capacity
> >: for Man." 1978 http://www.iiasa.ac.at/cgi-bin/pubsrch?RR78007
> Actually, this is a lie.
Is it? He says "the result of this analysis is...",
and you claim that he *lies*. That is, *his* conclusion is not
what *he* says it is? He has actually come to *different*
conslusions? Can you prove that? Have you even *read* the
analysis?
> And for anyone to suggest the human carrying
> capacity of Earth is one trillion is either a raving idiot or a liar.
You only support that by a quote from
Paul Ehrlich, a thoroughly discredited fraud.
"Human carrying capacity of Earth" is a misleading notion,
for the following two reasons.
(1) A carrying capacity of any area, for any species, depends
on the way this species supports its life. E.g., a grazing
species needs so much grass, and if it overgrazes, it starves.
Homo Sapiens, however, is a technological species -
and therefore continuously *changes* the way he supports
his life. When he overgathers, he goes to hunting, to fishing,
to agriculture, and so on - in an infinite sequence of changes.
For a large primate species, the "carrying capacity of Earth"
is about a hundred thousand - and so it was for early
hominids. Yet here we are, six billion strong *already*
(and even that fraud Ehrlich graciously grants us
at least two billion).
But we, as large primates, wouldn't be in billions if we were
subject to those biological "carrying capacity"
pre-human limitations. We'd number tens of thousands.
We've beaten that limit - and that disproves the
applicability of that concept to us.
Technology, not ecology, supports and limits our life.
And technology keeps developing, at an accelerating
rate, with no saturation point in sight.
If a limit exists at all, it is certainly very far off.
A trillion appears a reasonable but rather conservative
estimate - depending on the interpretation of the words
"of Earth" (see below).
(2) The second reason why "human carrying capacity of Earth"
is a misleading phrase is because the "of Earth" part is less
well-defined than it seems at first glance.
We utilize an ever-expanding 3-dimensional layer,
above and below the earth surface.
This layer is not so much "of Earth" as "off Earth".
Already, communication and observation satellites, hundreds of
kilometers above the surface, are an integral part of our
life support system.
When the layer grows much thicker - tens of
thousands, then millions of kilometers thick
- the expression "of Earth" will hardly fit. Conquest
of the 3d dimension is a gradual transition that started
in pre-history and never stopped. Since the process
is gradual (though now rapid) there is no moment when one can
say: before, people were limited to Earth, but not any more.
It is more meaningful, then, to speak of the "human carrying
capacity of the Solar System". And that is surely *much*
greater than a trillion.
> Moreover, I don't think you even read the study.
Have you? I've read other studies coming
to similar conclusions. Note also that such studies are
based on *existing* or *foreseeable* technology. They
don't take into account the inevitable *breakthroughs*,
the new ideas about to appear. Therefore, they inevitably
*underestimate* the limits. A trillion is, therefore,
a *conservative* estimate.
Now comes that quack Ehrlich with his moronic pontifications:
> "To put this in context, you must remember that estimates of the long-term
> carrying capacity of Earth with relatively optimistic assumptions about
> consumption, technologies, and equity (A x T), are in the vicinity of two
> billion people. Today's population cannot be sustained on the 'interest'
> generated by natural ecosystems, [etc.]"
Natural ecosystems are quite *beside the point*. They have *already*
been changed beyond recognition in areas of dense human habitation.
What remains of natural ecosystems may present scientific interest
or sentimental interest - that is another topic. But for life support,
we do incomparably better with artificial environments - the more
artificial the better. T in Ehrlich's formula will grow
indefinitely - and so will A - and so can P.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
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Michael Pelletier
Bloody Viking <nos...@tako.wwa.com> wrote:
>For a civilisation, it's pretty well renewable. It would take millions of
>years to deplete tidal energy. :)
The same can be said for atomic energy, given deployment of breeder
reactor technology and the uranium and thorium dissolved in sea water.
Not to mention the uranium and thorium contained in the wastes from
coal-burning.
-Mike Pelletier.
--
--
"[It will] be very hard to increase browser share on the merits of
[Internet Explorer] alone. It will be more important to leverage
the OS asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator."
-- Christian Wildfeuer, a Microsoft Manager
Just Wondering
to...@scram.ssec.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) wrote:
> The problem of keeping a trillion folks healthy on the surface of
> the earth is that you have to take "spaceship earth" literally
> at that point. The trillion would be supported by a complex machine,
> not by a biosphere.
Complex machinery, certainly - hardly one complex machine.
But so are even the existing six billion supported.
>(In some ways, the transition has begun - we can't
> support the whole earth's population using "organic" farming - mineral
> nitrogen is now necessary.)
Quite so, and in countless other ways we depend on our
technosphere. The transition is well under way, and irreversible.
"Organic" farming makes no difference
in this respect: it avoids some chemicals, but uses machines and
artificially developed breeds of plants and animals, and all the
consumer products and services of a technical civilization.
It is an integral part of our technological world.
>That means the population requires flawless
> operation of the machine.
That might be so with just one do-all machine.
In fact, that's not where we are heading. The
number of different machines and tools is constantly
increasing. There is a diverse, versatile, evolving
technosphere, with much redundancy;
and a living technological civilization capable of
quickly producing new tools to meet new needs.
> Typically, machines have trouble lasting
> over generations of human cultural shifts.
Nor do they need to: they become obsolete.
That's another reason why a single planetary machine
would be a bad idea: it would be difficult to replace,
frequently, such a machine with new models.
> So the "sustainable" population
> ignoring risks is much larger than the practically sustainable population.
That does not follow - in view of the above, but
also for another reason: the more people,
the more trouble-shooters.
A larger population is *less* vulnerable
to various misfortunes, including technological failures,
than a smaller population. There's safety in numbers.
The notion itself of a "sustainable" population level is
misleading, if it is used as a *maximum*, under the assumption
that a smaller population is *less* sustainable than a larger one.
The opposite makes much more sense:
for any number N, human population 2*N is *more* sustainable,
has a greater margin of error, than population N.
(For non-technological animals, there
is *both* a minimum and a maximum.)
A larger population generates a sufficient surplus -
of money, of talent, of many supportable R&D directions, of
their synergistic combinations - sufficient to overcome
such obstacles and avert such dangers as could be fatal to
a smaller population. E.g., AIDS has been a dreadful
menace, but is half-beaten by now. A smaller, poorer
society couldn't have supported this effort. A larger,
richer society could have done more, with greater
certainty of success.
We are safer now, with six billion, than we were
with just six hundred milion. Still, a single asteroid or
epidemic or war could finish us off, even now. We can be
surer of indefinite survival if we get to sixty billion, spread
across (at least) the solar system.
> If you're going to support a huge human population in machines,
> it makes sense to not have the machines be planets, because that
> puts too many eggs in one basket - too high of a risk.
One planet-machine, yes; but there is no obvious reason to do
that. There's also no obvious reason why a planet covered by
an advanced technosphere - including artificial living species -
must be more at risk than a planet with a natural, accidentally
evolved ecosystem.
Human technology does fail occasionally - but nature doesn't
even try. It would have killed us
long ago if we had relied on it. Why not continue in the
same direction, replacing old environment, piecemeal, with
artificial new environment, and the new with newer?
It works.
>Far better to use smaller literal spaceships.
There's no need to choose, we can have both.
But I quite agree that having many human populations,
separated by space, is a great factor of safety. In
this respect, indeed, small artificial space colonies promise
more than big planets - simply because there can be very
many of them.
The problem currently is the initial high cost of space
endeavor - and that is due to low demand - and that is due to
a small, and poor, population. Here, too, a critical mass is
needed to overcome an obstacle.
Jay Hanson
> > >: "The result of this analysis is that from a technological point of view
> > >: a trillion people can live beautifully on the Earth, for an unlimited
> > >: time, without exhausting any primary resource and without overloading
> > >: the environment." - C. Marchetti, "A Check on Earth Carrying Capacity
> > >: for Man." 1978 http://www.iiasa.ac.at/cgi-bin/pubsrch?RR78007
>
> > Actually, this is a lie.
>
> conslusions? Can you prove that? Have you even *read* the analysis?
Yes I have and this so-called "study" is about eight pages long. It's just
another rotten fucking Libertarian lie. But then lying is a way of life for
those who believe in gods -- assholes like you and Libby -- isn't it? No matter
how many innocent people you murder for your ideals, you lie, lie, lie.
Jay
Jay Hanson
> It is an integral part of our technological world.
Yes, it's great isn't it? I have been meaning to ask you, "how many people have
to die before the ruling paradigm is beaten back and we are rid of it
once and for all?" How much blood will it take before we are rid of you?
--------------
Faith and Credit: The World Bank's Secular Empire
There are no societies without religion, even, or especially, those which
believe themselves to be entirely secular. In our century, in our society,
the concept of development has acquired religious and doctrinal status. The
[World] Bank is commonly accepted as the Vatican, the Mecca or the Kremlin
of this twentieth-century religion. A doctrine need not be true to move
mountains or to provoke manifold material and human disasters. Religious
doctrines (in which we would include secular ones like Leninism) have,
through the ages, done and continue to do precisely that, whereas, logically
speaking, not all of them can be true insofar as they all define Truth as
singular and uniquely their own.
Religion cannot, by definition, be validated or invalidated, declared true
or false - only believed or rejected. Facts are irrelevant to belief: they
belong to another sphere of reality. True believers, the genuinely pure of
heart, exist in every faith, but the majority generally just goes along
lukewarmly out of cultural habit or material advantage. When, however, the
faith achieves political hegemony as well, like the medieval Church (or the
Bolsheviks, or the Ayatollahs), it is in a position to make people offers
they can't refuse, or to make their lives extremely uncomfortable if they
do.
The religion of development cannot be validated or invalidated either. It
doesn't matter whether it works or not, nor how many ordinary people's lives
are damaged or destroyed, nor how much nature may be abused because of it.
Development theory and practice cannot be validated because they are not
scientific. They have not established reliable and recognized criteria for
determining whether development has in fact occurred, except for internal
economic indicators like the rate of return of an individual project or the
growth of Gross National Product - themselves artificial constructions and
articles of faith. This being so, there is no established way to identify,
correct or avoid error either. When Susan George wrote the Afterword to A
Fate Worse than Debt, she put it this way:
"Scientists are trained to avoid error by testing their hypotheses
systematically. Normally, development theorists and practitioners should
also be trained to test their hypotheses by observing what they do to
people, since human welfare is presumably the goal of development. 'People'
here does not mean well-off, well-fed elites but poor and hungry majorities
whose fundamental needs are presently not being met. If decades of
application of the reigning development paradigm have failed to alleviate
their suffering and oppression or, worse still, have intensified them.., the
paradigm ought to be ripe for revolution."
She then asked, naively, "In short, how many people have to die before the
ruling paradigm is beaten back and we are rid of it once and for all?"
thereby largely missing the point. The point is that priesthoods are not
elected and they need not answer to the faithful; they are specially
invested with the truth and with sacramental functions from which, by
definition, the common herd is excluded. The faith they serve is itself a
greater good in whose name present suffering is mysteriously transformed
into future salvation. Or to borrow an old favourite from secular religion,
eggs must and will be broken. One's children, or theirs, or theirs, will
eventually sit down to enjoy the omelette.
This, for us, is the final and most compelling reason not to concentrate on
pointing out yet again how multifarious are the World Bank's ill-conceived
projects, how unresponsive its leaders, how impervious to criticism its
doctrine. Such things may be entirely or partially true, but are at bottom
expressions of a world-view. It is the foundations of that world-view we
shall try to dig for.
The Bank resembles the Church and this will be a guiding analogy in these
pages. Both believe themselves invested with a mission, both (the Church
historically, the Bank at present) have set themselves against the state.
Both celebrate the poor rhetorically while refraining from actually
improving their capacity to change their earthly lot.
The Church, more than the Bank, is like God himself "a mighty fortress, a
bulwark never failing" in the words of the splendid hymn. The Bank has lost
many of its fortress aspects - particularly compared to the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) - and is more open to exchanges with outsiders. The
overall vision that guides its practice cannot, however, seem to transcend
the narrowest of economic orthodoxies serving a smaller and smaller fraction
of transnational elite interests worldwide. The Bank's declared new, or at
least renewed, "poverty focus" shows that it is groping for a mission but in
practice it has no grand design beyond the casting of all economies in the
neo-classical mould and the refashioning of all men and women as Homo
economicus. [pp. 6-8]
It's a great book!
Faith and Credit: The World Bank's Secular Empire
by Susan George, Fabrizio Sabelli
Paperback - 282 pages (September 1994)
Westview Press; ISBN: 0813326079
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813326079
Bloody Viking
: "Human carrying capacity of Earth" is a misleading notion,
: for the following two reasons.
: (1) A carrying capacity of any area, for any species, depends
: on the way this species supports its life. E.g., a grazing
: species needs so much grass, and if it overgrazes, it starves.
: Homo Sapiens, however, is a technological species -
: and therefore continuously *changes* the way he supports
: his life. When he overgathers, he goes to hunting, to fishing,
: to agriculture, and so on - in an infinite sequence of changes.
: For a large primate species, the "carrying capacity of Earth"
: is about a hundred thousand - and so it was for early
: hominids. Yet here we are, six billion strong *already*
: (and even that fraud Ehrlich graciously grants us
: at least two billion).
Let's suppose we had an infinite power supply. Would you want to live on a
planet with a trillion poeople crawling over each other? Would you like
the commute to work? No thanks.
--
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A cult founder's rustbucket freighter is his battleship.
3240064 bytes of spam mail deleted. http://www.wwa.com/~nospam/
Bloody Viking
: The same can be said for atomic energy, given deployment of breeder
: reactor technology and the uranium and thorium dissolved in sea water.
: Not to mention the uranium and thorium contained in the wastes from
: coal-burning.
But is the U-235 in the saltwater easy to remove? The question comes up if
it takes more energy to extract it than you make when you fission it. The
Jay Hanson "energy profit" question.
Jay Hanson
> But is the U-235 in the saltwater easy to remove? The question comes up if
> it takes more energy to extract it than you make when you fission it. The
> Jay Hanson "energy profit" question.
The Viking is right! I reworded it a bit to make it easier to understand:
LIMITS TO ECONOMIC GROWTH
For those who are unfamiliar with energy issues (e.g., all economists), a
simpler lifestyle is not option. The only question is whether
"simplification" comes about by a conscious social decision (this is my
goal) or by an explosive disintegration and major loss of life (the is the
economist's goal).
Economists assume that whatever is theoretically, "economically" possible
is "physically" possible too. But in fact, it's the other way around: it
must first be physically possible in order to be economically possible.
The global economy burns energy to make money -- there is no substitute for
energy. Although the economy treats energy just like any other resource,
it’s not like any other resource. Energy is the precondition for all other
resources.
The global economy receives almost 80% of its energy subsidies from
nonrenewable fossil sources: oil, gas, and coal. They are called
"nonrenewable" because, for all practical purposes, they're not being made
any more. The reason they are called "fossil" is because they were
"produced" by nature from dead plants and animals over several hundred
million years.
The absolute dependence of the economy on "energy profit", clarifies the
"Limits to Growth" debate. "Energy profit" is an absolute physical limit
that is based on thermodynamic laws and can not be overcome by
economic means or technology.
ENERGY PROFIT
We use up or "waste" energy in systems that supply energy -- such as
oil-fired power plants. Energy is wasted when exploring for oil, building
the machinery to mine the oil, mining the oil, building and operating the
power plant, building power lines to transmit the energy, decommissioning
the plant, and so on. The difference between the amount of energy generated
and the amount of energy wasted is known as the "energy profit".
We presently mine our fossil fuels from the Earth's crust. The most
concentrated and most accessible fuel is mined first, thereafter more and
more energy is required to mine and refine poorer and poorer quality fuels.
It has been estimated that by 2005, it will require more energy to look for
and mine domestic oil than the amount of energy recovered. In other words,
it won't make energy sense to look for new oil in the US after 2005, because
we will spend more energy than we will recover.
Decreasing energy profits set up a positive feedback loop: since oil is used
directly or indirectly in everything, as oil itself consumes more energy,
everything else will also consume more energy -- including other forms of
energy. For example, since oil provides about 50% of the fuel used in coal
extraction, as "energy profit" for oil falls, "energy profit" for coal falls
too.
GLOBAL OIL "PEAK"
Global oil production is expected to "peak" in about five years, and when it
does, our world is going to change forever.
Oil is the most important form of energy we use, making up about 38 percent
of the world energy supply. No other energy source equals oil's intrinsic
qualities of extractablility, transportability, versatility and cost. These
are the qualities that enabled oil to take over from coal as the front-line
energy source in the industrialized world in the middle of this century, and
these qualities are as relevant today as they were then.
As far as I know, there has been no study that shows the US economy could be
run on solar technologies. Here's one that shows it can't:
http://dieoff.com/page84.htm .
NONENERGY GDP GROWTH BECOMES PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE
As higher quality energy sources are replaced by lower quality sources, it
is physically impossible (thus, economically impossible) to maintain "energy
profit", thus, nonenergy GDP. This is because present "energy profit" must
be diverted to future energy production.
Once we start down the other side of the oil production curve, aggregate
"energy profit" will continue to decline for at least 30 years
(thermodynamic arguments).
FIRST WORLD SOCIAL COLLAPSE
Joseph Tainter has studied about two dozen collapsed civilizations and found
they collapse when they become too complex for their energy base. Gever
et al., has calculated that if we wait until the oil peak before starting a
crash program in alternate energy systems, energy profit could drop to
30% of present values before starting to climb again.
[ See the graph on http://dieoff.com/page143.htm ]
If the economists have their way, First World civilization will collapse
into anarchy under a 70% loss in energy profit -- probably within the first
two decades of the next century.
Jay
-------------------------
COMING SOON TO A LOCATION NEAR YOU!
http://dieoff.com/page1.htm
Jay Hanson
> I repeat: people create more *Lebensraum* than they
> occupy. The more people - the more elbow-room. The
> case is the same with this resource as with energy or metals.
Just Wondering reminds one of the "InsaneASimon"! <G>
A review of Julian Simon's
THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE
by Herman Daly
This book is an all-out attack on neomalthusian or
limits-to-growth thinking and a plea for more population and
economic growth, both now and into the indefinite future. It
is not a shotgun attack. Rather it is an attack with a
single-shot rifle aimed at a single (but critical) premise of
the neomalthusian position.
If Simon hits the target, then neomalthusian arguments
collapse. If Simon misses the target, then all neomalthusian
first principles remain unscathed, and Simon's progrowth
arguments collapse. The critical premise that Simon attacks
is that of the finitude of resources, including waste
absorption capacities. Other premises from which
neomalthusians argue include the entropy law and the
vulnerability of ecological life-support services.
Simon's theoretical argument against the finitude of resources
is that:
"The word "finite" originates in mathematics, in which context
we all learn it as schoolchildren. But even in mathematics
the word's meaning is far from unambiguous. It can have two
principal meanings, sometimes with an apparent contradiction
between them. For example, the length of a one-inch line is
finite in the sense that it bounded at both ends. But the
line within the endpoints contains an infinite number of
points; these points cannot be counted, because they have no
defined size. Therefore the number of points in that one-inch
segment is not finite. Similarly, the quantity of copper that
will ever be available to us is not finite, because there is
no method (even in principle) of making an appropriate count
of it, given the problem of the economic definition of
"copper," the possibility of creating copper or its economic
equivalent from other materials, and thus the lack of
boundaries to the sources from which copper might be drawn."
Two pages later he drives home the main point in connection
with oil:
"Our energy supply is non-finite, and oil is an important
example . . . the number of oil wells that will eventually
produce oil, and in what quantities, is not known or
measurable at present and probably never will be, and hence is
not meaningfully finite."
The fallacy in the last sentence quoted is evident. If I have
seven gallons of oil in seven one gallon cans, then it is
countable and finite. If I dump one gallon of oil into each
of the seven seas and let it mix for a year, those seven
gallons would no longer be countable, and hence not
"meaningfully finite, " therefore infinite. This is
straightforward nonsense.
The fallacy concerning the copper is obscured by the strange
fact that Simon begins with a correct distinction regarding
infinity of distance and infinity of divisibility of a finite
distance, and then as soon as he moves from one-inch lines to
copper with nothing but the word "similarly" to bridge the
gap, he forgets the distinction. It would be a wonderful
exercise for a class in freshman logic to find the parallel
between Simon's argument and Zeno's paradox of Achilles and
the tortoise. Recall that Zeno "proved" that Achilles could
never catch up with a tortoise that had a finite head start on
him. While Achilles traverses the distance from his starting
point to that of the tortoise, the tortoise advances a certain
distance, and while Achilles advances this distance, the
tortoise makes a further advance, and so on, ad infinitum.
Thus Achilles will never catch up.
Zeno's paradox confounds an infinity of subdivisions of a
distance, which is finite, with an infinity of distance. This
is exactly parallel to what Simon has done. He has confused
an infinity of possible boundary lines between copper and
noncopper with an infinity of amount of copper. We cannot, he
says, make an "appropriate count" of copper because the set of
all resources can be subdivided in many ways with many
possible boundaries for the subset copper because resources
are "infinitely" substitutable. Since copper cannot be
simply counted like beans in a jar, and since what cannot be
counted is not finite, it "follows" that copper is not finite,
or copper is infinite.
Simon has argued from the premise of an "infinite"
substitutability among different elements within a (finite)
set to the conclusion of the infinity of the set itself. But
no amount of rearrangement of divisions within a finite set
can make the set infinite. His demonstration that mankind
will never exhaust its resource base rests on the same logical
fallacy as Zeno's demonstration that Achilles will never
exhaust the distance between himself and the tortoise.
Simon's argument therefore fails even if we grant his premise
of infinite substitutability, which gets us rather close to
alchemy. Copper is after all an element, and the
transmutation of elements is more difficult than the phrase
"infinite substitutability" implies! Indeed, Simon never tells
us whether "infinite substitutability" means infinite
substitutability at declining costs, constant costs,
increasing costs, or at infinite costs! Of course Simon could
simply assert that the total set of all resources is infinite,
but this would be a bald assertion, not a conclusion from an
argument based on substitutability, which is what he has
attempted.
Simon appeals to the unlimited power of technology to increase
the service yielded per unit of resource as further evidence
of the essentially nonfinite nature of resources. If resource
productivity (ratio of service to resources) were potentially
infinite, then we could maintain an ever growing value of
services with an ever smaller flow of resources. If Simon
truly believes this, then he should join those neomalthusians
who advocate limiting the resource flow precisely in order to
force technological progress into the direction of improving
total resource productivity and away from the recent
direction of increasing intensity of resource use. Many
neomalthusians advocate this even though they believe the
scope for improvement is finite. If one believes the scope
for improvement in resource productivity is infinite, then all
the more reason to restrict the resource flow.
Those who are loud in their praise of Simon are the same
people who would have bet on the tortoise, and are now betting
on infinite resources. Simon's ultimate criterion for the
validity of an argument seems to be willingness to "put your
money where your mouth is." (See his grandstand offer on page
27 to bet anyone any amount, up to a $10,000 total, that the
real price of any resource will not rise.) He suggests that
the current heavy betting by speculators that the resource
tortoise will stay ahead of the Achilles of demographic and
economic growth is the best available evidence of the final
outcome of the race. But it could in fact be the best
available evidence that speculators are interested only in the
short run, or that there is a sucker born every minute! In
any case "put your money where your mouth is" is a challenge
to intensity of belief, not correctness of belief. It is the
adman's customary proof by bombastic proclamation.
But what about Simon's empirical evidence against resource
finitude? It fares no better than his fallacious attempt at
logical refutation. He leans heavily on two expert studies:
"The Age of Substitutability" by Weinberg and Goeller
(Science, February 20,1976), and Scarcity and Growth by
Barnett and Morse.*1 His use of these studies is amazingly
selective.
From Weinberg and Goeller he quotes optimistic findings of
"infinite" substitutability among resources, assuming a future
low-cost, abundant energy source. This buttresses Simon's
earlier premise of "infinite" subdivisibility or
substitutability among resources. But it does not lend
support to his fallacious conclusion that resources are
infinite and therefore growth forever is possible. More to
the point, however, is that Weinberg and Goeller explicitly
rule out any such conclusion by stating in their very first
paragraph that their "Age of Substitutability" is a steady
state. It assumes zero growth in population and energy use at
the highest level that Weinberg and Goeller are willing to say
is technically feasible. And they express serious
reservations about the social and institutional feasibility
of maintaining such a high consumption steady state.
Furthermore, the levels envisioned by Weinberg and Goeller,
though cornicopian by general consent, are quite modest by
Simon's standards: world population in the Age of
Substitutability would be only 2.5 times the present
population, and world energy use would be only 12 times
present use. This implies a world per-capita energy usage of
only 70 percent of current U.S. per capita use. The very
study that Simon appeals to for empirical support of his
unlimited growth position explicitly rejects the notion of
unlimited growth -- a fact that Simon fails to mention.
As further empirical evidence we are served a rehash of the
Barnett an Morse study. Their finding was that the scarcity
of most resources, as measure by per unit extractive costs and
by relative prices, was decreasing rather than increasing from
1870 to 1957. Simon gives these arguments as evidence the
resources are infinite.
There is no serious dispute about the Barnett and Morse
numbers, but the conclusion that resources are becoming ever
less scarce is hardly justified. The neomalthusians can reply
that of course the prices of resources fall during a epoch of
mineralogical bonanza. But the data cannot be decisive
between these two views, since they cover only that epoch.
Barnett and Morse are careful to report an important exception
to the general finding of falling resource prices: timber,
whose price increased during the period. Simon's way of
handling this exception is interesting. He first considers
only mineral resources and applies the criterion of price as a
measure of scarcity, explicitly rejecting all quantity-based
indices. He thus shows, decline in scarcity of mineral
resources. Later, in the context of food, he considers
timber. This is a fair enough context, except that he switches
his criterion of scarcity from price to quantity of timber
growth. In this way he ca show decreasing timber scarcity by
applying quantity measures, while showing decreasing minerals
scarcity by applying price measures.
But an equally shifty neomalthusian could use quantity
remaining in the ground to prove increasing scarcity of
minerals, and relative price to prove increasing scarcity of
timber. There is a serious debate about the proper measure of
scarcity, as the report by Resources for the Future, Scarcity
and Growth Reconsidered,*2 demonstrates, but Simon is not
engaged in that serious discussion. He grabs whatever number
may be moving in the direction that fits the needs of the
argument at hand and baptizes it as an index of whatever he is
talking about. Two examples will illustrate:
First, Simon claims, after warning us to "grab your hat,"
that pollution has really been decreasing rather than
increasing. To test this hypothesis most investigators would
probably look at parts per million of various substances
emitted into the air and water by human activities to see if
they have been rising or falling over time. Simon, however,
takes life expectancy as his index of pollution: increasing
life expectancy indicates decreasing pollution. If one
suggests that the increase in life expectancy mainly reflects
improved control of infectious diseases, Simon redefines
"pollutant" to include the smallpox virus and other germs. In
this way an increase in emissions of noxious substances from
the economy (what everyone but Simon means by "pollution")
would not register until after it more than offset the
improvement in life expectancy brought about by modern
medicine. Thus Simon "measures" pollution by burying it in
an aggregate, the other component of which offsets and
overwhelms it.
The second example is the claim (we are again told to grab our
hats) that the combined increases of income and population do
not increase "pressure" on the land. His proof: the absolute
amount of land per farm worker has been increasing in the
United States and other countries. One might have thought
that this was a consequence of mechanization of agriculture
and that the increasing investment per acre in machinery,
fertilizer, and pesticides represented pressure on the land,
not to mention pressure on mines, wells, rivers, lakes, and
so on.
Simon's demonstration that resources are infinite is, in my
view, a coarse mixture of simple fallacy, omission of contrary
evidence from his own expert sources and gross statistical
misinterpretation. Since everything else hinges on the now
exploded infinite resources proposition, we could well stop
here. But there are other considerations less central to the
argument of the book that beg for attention.
If, Simon notwithstanding, resources are indeed finite, then
the other premises of the neomalthusians remain in vigor. The
entropy law tells us not only that coal is finite, but that
you can't burn the same lump twice. When burned, available
energy is irreversibly depleted and unavailable energy is
increased along with the dissipation of materials. If
nature's sources and sinks were truly infinite, the fact that
the flow between them was entropic would hardly matter. But
with finite sources and sinks, the entropy law greatly
increases the force of scarcity.
Although the words "entropy" or "second law of
thermodynamics" remarkably do not occur once in a 400-page
book on The Ultimate Resource, the concept is occasionally
touched upon. There is a comment made in passing that marble
and copper can be recycled, whereas energy cannot. This
raises hopes that Simon may not be ignorant of the entropy
law. These hopes are soon dashed when he softens the
statement to "energy cannot be easily recycled." Later he
tells us that "man's activities tend to increase the order
and decrease the homogeneity of nature. Man tends to bring
like elements together, to concentrate them."
That is the only part of the picture that Simon knows about.
But the entropy law tells us there is another part葉hat to
increase order in one part of the system requires the increase
of disorder elsewhere, and that in net terms for the system as
a whole the movement is toward disorder. In other words, more
order and more matter and energy devoted to human bodies and
artifacts mean less matter and energy and less order for the
rest of the system, which includes all the other species on
whose life-support services we and our economy depend. Simon
is quite prepared to ruin the habitats of all other species by
letting them (and future generations) bear the entropic costs
of disorders that our own continuing growth entails. For
Simon, however, this problem cannot exist because he believes
resources and absorption capacities are infinite. But after
he has once mastered the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise
concerning infinity, his next homework assignment should be to
find out about entropy. Until he has done these two things he
should stop trying to write books for grownups about resources
and population.
Part II of the book is on population and is dedicated to the
proposition that the ultimate resource is people. The more
the better, indefinitely. We are told that: "Even the
proposition that population growth must stop sometime may not
be very meaningful (see Chapter 3 on 'finitude')." We have
already seen Chapter 3 on finitude and have discovered that it
is sheer nonsense. I will spare the reader a recitation of
all the propositions about population that self-destruct with
the demise of Chapter 3.
There is a puzzling methodological inconsistency between Parts
I and II. In Part I Simon is the total empiricist, trusting
only in the extrapolation of recent trends of falling resource
prices. Any a priori argument from first principles about
reversal of trends due to increasing cost, diminishing
returns, the end of a bonanza, or even the S-shape of the
logistic curve characteristic of all empirically observed
growth processes simply does not warrant consideration by
this hard-headed empiricist. Yet in Part II we find Simon
refusing to project population trends and relying on the
theory of demographic transition to reverse the recent trend
of population growth. His own graphs, used to demonstrate the
unreliability of past population predictions, also show that a
simple linear trend would have yielded much more accurate
predictions in the 1920s than did the then current "twilight
of parenthood" theories. Once again, whatever
epistemological posture serves the immediate needs of argument
is adopted. One is certainly free to choose whatever balance
of theory and empiricism one thinks is most effective in
getting at the truth, but the balance should not fluctuate so
wildly, so often, and so opportunistically.
Simon values human life. More people are better than fewer
people because each additional person's life has value for
that person, his loved ones, and for society as a whole should
he turn out to be a genius: an increase of 4,000 people is
more likely to yield another Einstein, Mozart, or Michelangelo
than an increase of only 400 people.
While I personally give zero weight to the notion that more
births among today's poor and downtrodden masses will increase
the probability of another Einstein or Mozart (or Hitler or
Caligula?), I do agree that, other things equal, more human
lives, and more lives of other species, are better than fewer.
And I think that most of my fellow neomalthusians would agree
than 10 billion people are better than 2 billion -- as long as
the 10 billion are not all alive at the same time!
This is the crucial point: neomalthusian policies seek to
maximize the cumulative total of lives ever to be lived over
time, at a sufficient per-capita standard for a good life.
Simon wants to maximize the number of people simultaneously
alive -- and, impossibly, to maximize per-capita consumption at
the same time. These two contradictory strategies are
possible only if resources are infinite. If they are finite
then maximizing the number of simultaneous lives means a
reduction in carrying capacity, fewer people in future time
periods, and a lower cumulative total of lives ever lived at
a sufficient standard.
The difference is not, as Simon imagines, that he is
"pro-life" and the neomalthusians are "anti-life." Rather it
is that neomalthusians have a basic understanding of the
biophysical world, whereas Simon still has not done his
homework on Zeno's paradoxes of infinity, on the entropy law,
on the importance of ecological life-support services
provided by other species, and on the impossibility of the
double maximization implied in his advocacy of "the greatest
good for the greatest number."
Simon seems to believe that an avoided birth today implies
the eternal nonexistence of a particular self-conscious person
who would have enjoyed life. But as far as I know, the
pairing of a particular self-consciousness with a particular
birth is the greatest of mysteries. Perhaps birth control
means that a particular existence is postponed rather than
canceled. In other contexts, however, Simon proclaims that
"birth control is simply a human right." When Kingsly Davis,
Paul Ehrlich, or Garret Hardin advocate birth control they
are sacrificing the unborn; but when Simon finds it convenient
to his argument to endorse birth control, he is proclaiming a
human right.
In this reviewer's opinion, Simon's book cannot stand up to
even average critical scrutiny. Lots of bad books are
written, and the best thing usually is to ignore them. I
would have preferred to ignore this one, too, but judging from
the publicity accorded Simon's recent articles, this book is
likely to be hailed as a triumph by people who are starved for
"optimism." Simon himself tells us that the optimistic
conclusions he reached in his population studies helped to
bring him out of a "depression of medically unusual duration,"
and he clearly wants to share the cure. But his cure is at
best a sugar pill.
We must abandon the shallow, contrived optimism of growthmania
once and for all. The end of growthmania is no cause for
despair; it is a hopeful new beginning. To me the optimistic
alternative is that of a steady state at a sufficient,
sustainable level in which many future generations can rejoice
in the loving study and care of God's creation.
Further prolongation of the current compulsive quest for
infinite growth, power, and control is what I find depressing.
We should learn to be good stewards of what is already under
our dominion rather than seek always to enlarge that dominion.
We who have done a poor job of managing a small domain should
not trust ourselves to take over control of an ever larger
"infinite" domain.
NOTE: This review appeared originally in Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, January 1982.
NOTES
1. Harold Barnett, and Chandler Morse, Scarcity and Growth
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963).
2. V. Kerry Smith, ed., Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1979).
Steady State Economics, by Herman E. Daly (1991) [p.p. 282-289]
Just Wondering
In article <71is8h$kjt$1...@hirame.wwa.com>,
Bloody Viking <nos...@tako.wwa.com> wrote:
> In sci.environment Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> : "Human carrying capacity of Earth" is a misleading notion,
> : for the following two reasons.
>
> : (1) A carrying capacity of any area, for any species, depends
> : on the way this species supports its life. E.g., a grazing
> : species needs so much grass, and if it overgrazes, it starves.
> : Homo Sapiens, however, is a technological species -
> : and therefore continuously *changes* the way he supports
> : his life. When he overgathers, he goes to hunting, to fishing,
> : to agriculture, and so on - in an infinite sequence of changes.
> : For a large primate species, the "carrying capacity of Earth"
> : is about a hundred thousand - and so it was for early
> : hominids. Yet here we are, six billion strong *already*
> : (and even that fraud Ehrlich graciously grants us
> : at least two billion).
>
> Let's suppose we had an infinite power supply. Would you want to live on a
> planet with a trillion poeople crawling over each other?
But they wouldn't be! They would live more spaciously than
we live now - as *we* live far more spaciously than our
less numerous ancestors did.
E.g., road congestion is not merely a function of
the number of people or cars - if that
were so, traffic would have halted everywhere
long ago. Instead, it is gaining speed.
Congestion is an outcome of a race
between car-building and road-building;
between more shopping and faster cash registers;
and of other similar races between demand and
supply.
Congestion on the roads goes up and down;
so does the length of cash register lines.
Similarly with living space availability,
and all other kinds of effective elbow room:
people *use it up*, but they also *add* it.
On the whole, in the long run,
*they add more than they use up*.
I repeat: people create more *Lebensraum* than they
occupy. The more people - the more elbow-room. The
case is the same with this resource as with energy
or metals.
In those times when population was much sparser,
traffic was slower, streets more clogged (two horsecarts often
found it impossible to pass each other), living quarters
more congested. A thousand years ago, an average baron had no private
bed for himself and his wife in his castle: the castle
was a necessity, the bed an unaffordable
luxury.
His peasants (the majority) were even more cramped in their hovels
which they shared with cattle.
Townspeople were no less congested. Yet population
was tiny compared to the present populous and spacious times.
As late as the eighteenth century, in English hospitals, two
patients per bed was the norm.
Before, with even sparser populations,
conditions were more crowded.
We can have *more* people
in a *less* crowded world, and that has
been the historical trend. People of less populated eras
lived in slum conditions, compared to us moderns.
Space fit for human beings is made by human beings.
The more human beings, the more space.
The more people, the less crowding.
>Would you like the commute to work? No thanks.
Yes, I would, very much! Commuting would, long before
that time, be virtual - and virtually instant.
Was commuting to work easier when there were
ten times fewer people in the world, than it is *now*? No, much harder;
instead of a trip in an airconditioned car, listening to the
music of one's choice, it typically involved trudging painfully
on blistered feet, in inclement weather.
The roads, the means of transportation, the high-rise buildings, the
communications - and all other conveniences that resolve congestion problems
- are built, and invented, by *people*, and in *cooperation*, so that
productivity is more than proportional to numbers.
Therefore, in the long run, the more populous the world gets,
the more spacious - and that can continue indefinitely.
Harold Lindaberry
Bloody Viking wrote:
> In sci.environment Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> : "Human carrying capacity of Earth" is a misleading notion,
> : for the following two reasons.
>
> : (1) A carrying capacity of any area, for any species, depends
> : on the way this species supports its life. E.g., a grazing
> : species needs so much grass, and if it overgrazes, it starves.
> : Homo Sapiens, however, is a technological species -
> : and therefore continuously *changes* the way he supports
> : his life. When he overgathers, he goes to hunting, to fishing,
> : to agriculture, and so on - in an infinite sequence of changes.
> : For a large primate species, the "carrying capacity of Earth"
> : is about a hundred thousand - and so it was for early
> : hominids. Yet here we are, six billion strong *already*
> : (and even that fraud Ehrlich graciously grants us
> : at least two billion).
>
> Let's suppose we had an infinite power supply. Would you want to live on a
> planet with a trillion poeople crawling over each other? Would you like
> the commute to work? No thanks.
A person for every 40 X 40 feet would be a little snug and it would be
kind of hard to find a place to throw your shit except in someone else's 40 X
40, Kind of like N Y City, and LA etc. etc. today -. What else is new ? Some
people must have a taste for shit.
“ Nature limits what we can do, Science limits what we understand,
Theory what we can think, and Religion what we can hope “ Lindaberry 1998
Harold Lindaberry reply E - mail har...@epix.net
visit OXGORE website at http://www.epix.net/~harlind
RESEARCH GOES WHERE RESEARCH LEADS
>
>
Just Wondering
har...@epix.net wrote:
>
>
> Bloody Viking wrote:
[...]
> > Let's suppose we had an infinite power supply. Would you want to live on a
> > planet with a trillion poeople crawling over each other? Would you like
> > the commute to work? No thanks.
> A person for every 40 X 40 feet would be a little snug and it would be
> kind of hard to find a place to throw your shit except in someone else's 40 X
> 40, Kind of like N Y City, and LA etc. etc. today -.
Not really: that's suburban density - on the average. Not the
most spacious suburb, but still suburb.
But that is *average* density.
In practice, with many people preferring to live in urban centers, that
would leave much more land to the remainder - accommodating all lifestyles.
And again, that does not include what today is ocean surface.
So, at one trillion, we're apparently still OK. However,
at that figure, we seem to be really *approaching* some kind of limit:
not just wrt dwelling area, but there would be problems with
getting rid of the heat generated by the power consumption
of so many people.
But that is because we are reasoning in obsolescent terms: people
living *on* the surface of the planet. This might have been
a good approximation in past ages.
But it was never precisely correct: people aren't Flatlanders,
they do not live *on* the surface, but in three dimensions,
in a rapidly expanding layer *off* the earth surface.
By the time this layer's thickness exceeds earth radius
(certainly long before population can reach a trillion)
the above aproximation will have long become meaningless -
and so will estimates of population density per *square* mile.
Density per *cubic* mile will be the more relevant measure -
and *that* won't be increasing, but falling.
> What else is new ? Some
> people must have a taste for shit.
Curious, isn't it? Especially as it would seem (given your
assumptions) to be the *majority* of people. The planet is rapidly
urbanizing. People are voluntarily moving into urban centers, leaving
near-empty areas even emptier. Is it "taste for shit"
that propels these people? That would be strange indeed.
When one arrives at a strange conclusion, one must check
one's premisses. In this case, the error is easily found:
your association of *urbanism* with *organic fertilizer* is
quite unreasonable. It is, rather, a *rural* kind of thing...
*Now* everything falls into place: people, by moving into
cities, display a *distaste* for shit, for dirt, for monotony,
for the narrowness and hopelessness of backwater existence.
Harold Lindaberry
Just Wondering wrote:
> In article <71k6ov$8fm$1...@news1.epix.net>,
> har...@epix.net wrote:
> >
> >
> > Bloody Viking wrote:
> [...]
> > > Let's suppose we had an infinite power supply. Would you want to live on a
> > > planet with a trillion poeople crawling over each other? Would you like
> > > the commute to work? No thanks.
>
> > A person for every 40 X 40 feet would be a little snug and it would be
> > kind of hard to find a place to throw your shit except in someone else's 40 X
> > 40, Kind of like N Y City, and LA etc. etc. today -.
With 1 trillion the amount of land to support a person would be 40 X 40 feet -
right now it is under 3 acres of of arable land or pasture or 6.6 acres per person
based on total land area. You would have a pretty difficult time supplying food on
40 X 40 of course the oceans could help.
>
>
> Not really: that's suburban density - on the average. Not the
> most spacious suburb, but still suburb.
>
> But that is *average* density.
> In practice, with many people preferring to live in urban centers, that
> would leave much more land to the remainder - accommodating all lifestyles.
>
> And again, that does not include what today is ocean surface.
>
> So, at one trillion, we're apparently still OK.
It'll be quite a trick - glad I won't be here to see it. There sure won't be
need for diet machines ;-)
> However,
> at that figure, we seem to be really *approaching* some kind of limit:
> not just wrt dwelling area,
Dwelling space will be the least of the problems
> but there would be problems with
> getting rid of the heat generated by the power consumption
> of so many people.
>
> But that is because we are reasoning in obsolescent terms: people
> living *on* the surface of the planet. This might have been
> a good approximation in past ages.
> But it was never precisely correct: people aren't Flatlanders,
> they do not live *on* the surface, but in three dimensions,
> in a rapidly expanding layer *off* the earth surface.
>
> By the time this layer's thickness exceeds earth radius
> (certainly long before population can reach a trillion)
> the above aproximation will have long become meaningless -
> and so will estimates of population density per *square* mile.
> Density per *cubic* mile will be the more relevant measure -
> and *that* won't be increasing, but falling.
>
> > What else is new ? Some
> > people must have a taste for shit.
>
> Curious, isn't it? Especially as it would seem (given your
> assumptions) to be the *majority* of people. The planet is rapidly
> urbanizing. People are voluntarily moving into urban centers, leaving
> near-empty areas even emptier. Is it "taste for shit"
> that propels these people? That would be strange indeed.
No not when they get to ship theirs somewhere else when you get to 1 trillion
you'll have to live in your own shit - there'll be no place to send it.
“ Nature limits what we can do, Science limits what we understand,
Theory what we can think, and Religion what we can hope “ Lindaberry 1998
Harold Lindaberry reply E - mail har...@epix.net
visit OXGORE website at http://www.epix.net/~harlind
RESEARCH GOES WHERE RESEARCH LEADS
>
>
Bloody Viking
:> But is the U-235 in the saltwater easy to remove? The question comes up if
:> it takes more energy to extract it than you make when you fission it. The
:> Jay Hanson "energy profit" question.
: The Viking is right! I reworded it a bit to make it easier to understand:
Shows I read your site pretty well. I'm sure a lot of people in
sci.environment did too, or certainly read your reposts, hence my use of
your name on the word "energy profit"! Continuing to repost stuff is your
example of using up a commons - the hard drive space on the news servers!
While you have your point to make, your reposting has annoyed quite a few
people, including myself. This doesn't help get the message across, only
gets others wo want to shoot the messenger. That's counterproductive, sort
of like a lessening of the energy profit of getting your message out!
It seems that a social resource like a bar (or newsgroup) is like every
other resource; it can be used up if the person has poor social skills. At
first, it's easy to get social results with little effort but over time,
you have to put more effort into it until some point where the social
benefit is no longer worth the effort due to pissing people off - exactly
like an energy profit of a resource!
Bloody Viking
: So, at one trillion, we're apparently still OK. However,
: at that figure, we seem to be really *approaching* some kind of limit:
: not just wrt dwelling area, but there would be problems with
: getting rid of the heat generated by the power consumption
: of so many people.
Where will we grow the food? We wouldn't be able to for a trillion people.
This is why I specified the "infinite power supply" so as to have energy
enough to recycle shit, piss, and CO2 into food, water and oxygen. Are you
willing to eat Soylent Green?
: By the time this layer's thickness exceeds earth radius
: (certainly long before population can reach a trillion)
: the above aproximation will have long become meaningless -
: and so will estimates of population density per *square* mile.
: Density per *cubic* mile will be the more relevant measure -
: and *that* won't be increasing, but falling.
Paolo Soleri proposed building super-size buildings. A mile high Rubik's
Cube could hold 30 million people. We'd need energy for A/C to get rid of
all the heat of the building's contents. Even current skyscrapers need A/C
year-round. Even in Chicago. If you want a taste of life in a Soleri
Building, consider a modern aircraft carrier. No thanks. I was on a guided
missile cruiser with a population of 600 that was 500 feet long, 55 feet
wide, and a few storeys. It was originally made for a population of 450
people. It was crowded.
A Soleri Building would approximate shipboard "life". Try before you buy!
Join the Navy!
: When one arrives at a strange conclusion, one must check
: one's premisses. In this case, the error is easily found:
: your association of *urbanism* with *organic fertilizer* is
: quite unreasonable. It is, rather, a *rural* kind of thing...
City life has it's advantages, but you can overdo a good thing. With that
Soleri Building above, everything of an entire metro area would be a walk
and elevator ride away. But would you REALLY like it? Aircraft carriers
have been called "floating cities" many times, and have populations of
5,000 people. That's right, a normal small town on one ship! With that,
ask yourself why people get out!
Just Wondering
Bloody Viking <nos...@tako.wwa.com> wrote:
> In sci.environment Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> : So, at one trillion, we're apparently still OK. However,
> : at that figure, we seem to be really *approaching* some kind of limit:
> : not just wrt dwelling area, but there would be problems with
> : getting rid of the heat generated by the power consumption
> : of so many people.
>
> Where will we grow the food? We wouldn't be able to for a trillion people.
Yes, we would.
E.g., hydroponic greenhouses, based on a fraction of
land surface, or, better still, a fraction of ocean surface, would do it.
I am sure there are other solutions, as well.
Grepping quickly through my archive, I found this quote
from an old article by Paul Dietz (sorry, no reference):
|More generally: I have read that it is possible to feed someone on the
|output of an area of just 30 square meters (intensively farmed; sorry,
|no reference). This comes to a average photosynthetic yield to food
|of about 2%. Now, a greenhouse of this area costs perhaps $1000 (maybe
|less). For this small an area, use of entirely synthetic soil or
|hydroponics is also quite feasible. Note that this demonstrates that
|agriculture as now practiced, even in western countries, is very
|inefficient at converting solar energy to food energy.
|
|(NASA experiments in trying to optimize yield for space applications
|have achieved photosynthetic yields (to biomass) of 9%; this research
|was a cover story in Bioscience a few years back.)
|
|If 1/10 the land area of the US were covered in such greenhouses, the
|US could feed 30 billion people. This would be a vegetarian diet, but
|converting some to fish or chicken (fish farming is very food-energy
|efficient) would not reduce this by a large factor. Production of
|animal feed from microorganisms raised on non-biological chemical
|energy sources (for example, from electrolytic hydrogen or methanol
|produced from hydrogen and CO2) could reduce the area needed still
|further.
> This is why I specified the "infinite power supply" so as to have energy
> enough to recycle shit, piss, and CO2 into food, water and oxygen.
I still do not understand why you would speak of an "infinite" power
supply. "Energy enough" to recycle *finite* amounts of stuff
surely must be *finite*...
Ah, I think I see: perhaps you meant *inexhaustible* power
supply. Well, the sun is practically inexhaustible, and so
are some nuclear energy sources.
>Are you willing to eat Soylent Green?
Never tried it. But I am willing to eat some things that
are willing to eat it...
StellrJ
>that time, be virtual - and virtually instant.
>
Rolling on Floor Laughing!!! When you order groceries or other goods online,
someone has to deliver them to your residence--unless you think we will have
Star Trek type transporters. And when you need a medical exam, either you or
the doctor must somehow get to the other. Will the construction workers who
build your residence have a virtual commute to a virtual construction site?
Even in the future, not everyone will be employed in making online
transactions and attenting teleconferences. Even today, the service industries
still require a solid base in the agricultural, mining, and manufacturing
industries--just where do you suppose restaurants get the food they serve, and
the trucks that deliver it to their doors? Virtual reality will never replace
real reality. Get Real!!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jason Hernandez
freelance researcher
Have you looked in Darwin's black box lately?
Bloody Viking
: E.g., hydroponic greenhouses, based on a fraction of
: land surface, or, better still, a fraction of ocean surface, would do it.
: I am sure there are other solutions, as well.
[snip soylent green proposal for brevity]
: I still do not understand why you would speak of an "infinite" power
: supply. "Energy enough" to recycle *finite* amounts of stuff
: surely must be *finite*...
OK, but the finite power supply had better be a lot bigger than what we
currently have.
: Ah, I think I see: perhaps you meant *inexhaustible* power
: supply. Well, the sun is practically inexhaustible, and so
: are some nuclear energy sources.
One non-solar power supply is the hydrogen in Jupiter! Getting it out of
that gravity well will be an interesting challenge, to be sure. :) A Dyson
Sphere would likely be a better choice.
: Never tried it. But I am willing to eat some things that
: are willing to eat it...
We had better learn to synthesise meat! :) Maybe I should calculate how
many population doublings it would take for humanity to consume Jupiter
using it's methane and ammonia as raw materials for Soylent Green before
we have to stabilise population and recycle shit... (Assuming a Dyson
Sphere around Sol) Sounds like yeast in a big jug!
--
CAUTION: Email Spam Killer in use. Leave this line in your reply! 152680
A cult founder's rustbucket freighter is his battleship.
3245431 bytes of spam mail deleted. http://www.wwa.com/~nospam/
Matt Hickman
>
>patent nonsense
>>
>> Hell, according to Ehrlich, we should all be dead by now!
I remember looking through a book called _World Dynamics_ by
Jay Forester who was bankrolled by the Club of Rome. This was
1972-73. They later came out with a more famous work, _Limits
to Growth_. All their projections have have turned out to be
wrong. The jury is still out on if the work was flawed on the
most basic of levels or the projection was merely wrong in
regards to timing.
Still the projections assumed the Earth was closed system, which
it is not.
--
Matt Hickman
It is never safe to laugh at Dr. Malthus; he always has the
last laugh. A depressing man. I'm glad he is dead.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
_The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_ c 1966
Jay Hanson
> to Growth_. All their projections have have turned out to be
> wrong. The jury is still out on if the work was flawed on the
It's the economists who are wrong all the time. No one has made as many failed predictions as the
economists, all day long, every day of the year.
"The fed is going to raise ..."
"The fed is going to lower ..."
"It's a bull ..."
"It's a bear ..."
"Go to the sidelines, go to bonds, go bottom fishing ..."
"Look at the fundamentals ..."
"Look at the technicals ..."
Do you have a web browser? Just look at these wrong, pukie predictors
http://www.smartmoney.com/smt/pundits/
Abby Cohen -- "The Queen of the Bulls" -- says stocks are still undervalued
by 12% to 15%, and she is keeping her year-end price targets of 1,150 for
the S&P 500 and 9,300 for the Dow industrials. (Goldman Sachs Research,
Sept. 1)
Edward Kerschner thinks the Fed will allow rates to sink lower. And that,
combined with an increase in corporate earnings, will drive stocks higher.
Yardeni sees the Dow falling further to about 7,400 through October,
especially if the Fed fails to ease at the Sept. 29 meeting.
David Jones bla bla bla.
( Why is it that he is so often wrong on which direction the Fed is heading?
In the first half of 1995, Jones stuck with his belief that the Fed would
hold steady on rates, or gradually raise its target rates one point.
Instead, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan lowered target rates from a
high of 6% in early 1995 to 5.25% by the end of the year.)
This is science? So many wrong predictions! It make you wanna puke!
Jay Hanson
> I remember looking through a book called _World Dynamics_ by
> Jay Forester who was bankrolled by the Club of Rome. This was
> 1972-73. They later came out with a more famous work, _Limits
> to Growth_. All their projections have have turned out to be
> wrong. The jury is still out on if the work was flawed on the
> most basic of levels or the projection was merely wrong in
> regards to timing.
This is just another Libertarian lie. Limits to Growth made no
prediction less than 100 years in the future.
----------------
ENVIRONMENTAL AND NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMICS (third edition),
by Tom Tietenberg; Harper Collins, 1992; ISBN 0-673-46328-1.
THE BASIC PESSIMIST MODEL
One end of the spectrum is defined by an ambitious study
published in 1972 under the title The Limits to Growth. Based
on a technique known as systems dynamics, developed by
Professor Jay Forrester at MIT, a large-scale computer model
was constructed to simulate likely future outcomes of the
world economy. The most prominent feature of systems dynamics
is the use of feedback loops to explain behavior. The feedback
loop is a closed path that connects an action to its effect on
the surrounding conditions which, in turn, can influence
furtheraction. As the examples presented subsequently in this
chapter demonstrate, depending on how the relationships are
described, a wide variety of complex behavior can be described
by thistechnique.
Conclusions of Pessimist Model
Three main conclusions were reached by this study. The first
suggests that within a time span of less than 100 years with
no major change in the physical, economic, or social
relationships that have traditionally governed world
development, society will run out of the nonrenewable
resources on which the industrial base depends. When the
resources have been depleted, a precipitous collapse of the
economic system will result, manifested in massive
unemployment, decreased food production, and a decline in
population as the death rate soars. There is no smooth
transition, no gradual slowing down of activity; rather, the
economic system consumes successively larger amounts of the
depletable resources until they are gone. The characteristic
behavior of the system is overshoot and collapse (see Figure
1.1).
The second conclusion of the study is that piecemeal
approaches to solving the individual problems will not be
successful. To demonstrate this point, the authors arbitrarily
double their estimates of the resource base and allow the
model to trace out an alternative vision based on this new
higher level of resources. In this alternative vision the
collapse still occurs, but this time it is caused by excessive
pollution generated by the increased pace of industrialization
permitted by the greater availability of resources. The
authors then suggest that if the depletable resource and
pollution problems were somehow jointly solved, population
would grow unabated and the availability of food would become
the binding constraint. In this model the removal of one limit
merely causes the system to bump subsequently into another
one, usually with more dire consequences.
As its third and final conclusion, the study suggests that
overshoot and collapse can be avoided only by an immediate
limit on population and pollution, as well as a cessation of
economic growth. The portrait painted shows only two possible
outcomes: the termination of growth by self-restraint and
conscious policy—an approach that avoids the collapse—or the
termination of growth by a collision with the natural limits,
resulting in societal collapse. Thus, according to this study,
one way or the other, growth will cease. The only issue is
whether the conditions under which it will cease will be
congenial or hostile.
The Nature of the Model
Why were these conclusions reached? Clearly they depend on the
structure of the model. By identifying the characteristics
that yield these conclusions, we can examine the realism of
those characteristics.
The dominant characteristic of the model is exponential growth
coupled with fixed limits. Exponential growth in any variable
(for example, 3% per year) implies that the absolute increases
in that variable will be greater and greater each year.
Furthermore, the higher the rate of growth in resource
consumption, the faster a fixed stock of it will be exhausted.
Suppose, for example, current reserves of a resource are 100
times current use and the supply of reserves cannot be
expanded. If consumption were not growing, this stock would
last 100 years. However, if consumption were to grow at 2%
per year, the reserves would be exhausted in 55 years; and at
10%, exhaustion would occur after only 24 years.
Several resources are held in fixed supply by the model. These
include the amount of available land and the stock of
depletable resources. In addition, the supply of food is fixed
relative to the supply of land. The combination of exponential
growth in demand, coupled with fixed sources of supply,
necessarily implies that, at some point, resource supplies
must be exhausted. The extent to which those resources are
essential thus creates the conditions for collapse.
This basic structure of the model is in some ways reinforced
and in some ways tempered by the presence of numerous positive
and negative feedback loops. Positive feedback loops are those
in which secondary effects tend to reinforce the basic trend.
An example of a positive feedback loop is the process of
capital accumulation. New investment generates greater
output, which, when sold, generates profits. These profits can
be used to fund additional new investments. This example
suggests a manner in which the growth process is
self-reinforcing.
Positive feedback loops may also be involved in global
warming. Scientists believe, for example, that the
relationship between emissions of methane and global warming
may be described as a positive feedback loop. Since methane is
a greenhouse gas, increases in methane emissions contribute
to global warming. As the planetary temperature rises,
however, it could release extremely large quantities of
additional methane, and so on.
Human responses can intensify environmental problems. When
shortages of a commodity are imminent, for example, consumers
typically begin to hoard the commodity. Hoarding intensifies
the shortage. Similarly, people faced with shortages of food
commonly eat the seed that is the key to more plentiful food
in the future. Situations giving rise to this kind of downward
spiral are particularly troublesome.
A negative feedback loop is self-limiting rather than
self-reinforcing, as illustrated by the role of death rates in
limiting population growth in the model. As growth occurs, it
causes larger increases in industrial output, which, in turn,
cause more pollution. The increase in pollution triggers a
rise in death rates, retarding population growth. From this
example it can be seen that negative feedback loops can
provide a tempering influence on the growth process, though
not necessarily a desirable one.
Perhaps the best-known planetary-scale example of a negative
feedback is provided in a theory advanced by James Lovelock,
an English scientist. Called the Gaia hypothesis after the
Greek concept for Mother Earth, this view of the world
suggests that the earth is a living organism with a complex
feedback system that seeks an optimal physical and chemical
environment.
Deviations from this optimal environment trigger natural,
nonhuman response mechanisms which restore the balance. In
essence, according to the Gaia hypothesis the planetary
environment is a self-regulating process.
The model of the world envisioned by the Gaia hypothesis is
incompatible with that envisioned by the Limits to Growth
team. Because of the dominance of positive feedback loops,
coupled with fixed limits on essential resources, the
structure of the Limits to Growth model preordains its
conclusion that human activity is on a collision course with
nature. While the values assumed for various parameters (the
size of the stock of depletable resources, for example) affect
the timing of the various effects, they do not substantially
affect the nature of the outcome.
The dynamics implied by the notion of a feedback loop is
helpful in a more general sense than the specific
relationships embodied in this model. As we proceed with our
investigation, the degree to which our economic and political
institutions serve to intensify or to limit emerging
environmental problems will be a key concern. [p.p. 4-9]
Jay -- www.dieoff.com
Jay Hanson
> to Growth_. All their projections have have turned out to be
> wrong. The jury is still out on if the work was flawed on the
It's the economists who are wrong all the time. No one has made as many failed predictions as the
StellrJ
>failed predictions as the
>economists, all day long, every day of the year.
>
Makes me glad I did NOT make any major changes in life after reading _After the
Crash: Life in the New Great Depression_ the author predicted that the crash
would happen "in the early 1990's." Is 1998 early in the 90's?
Jay Hanson
> >It's the economists who are wrong all the time. No one has made as many
> >failed predictions as the
> >economists, all day long, every day of the year.
> >
>
> Makes me glad I did NOT make any major changes in life after reading _After the
> Crash: Life in the New Great Depression_ the author predicted that the crash
> would happen "in the early 1990's." Is 1998 early in the 90's?
Here is a really good book about the Worb Bank. As you might expect, the World
Bank is full of the "best" economists in the world.
Find out how consistently off -- orders of magnitude off -- economic forecasts are:
--------------------
"In short, how many people have to die before the ruling
paradigm is beaten back and we are rid of it once and for all?"
-- Susan George
al_j...@usa.net
In article <71jdl8$7ar$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > Let's suppose we had an infinite power supply. Would you want to live on a
> > planet with a trillion poeople crawling over each other?
>
> But they wouldn't be! They would live more spaciously than
> we live now - as *we* live far more spaciously than our
> less numerous ancestors did.
We do? Not the last time I looked in any metro area. And where do you
propose that animal species will live as hordes of people take over their
already shrinking habitat? In all your posts I've not seen a shred of
concern for their plight (typical of those who claim overpopulation is a
myth). I suppose you think it's fine that animals only survive in zoos?
Same goes for fragile plant species as well. The catch-phrase is "loss
of biodiversity."
> E.g., road congestion is not merely a function of
> the number of people or cars - if that
> were so, traffic would have halted everywhere
> long ago. Instead, it is gaining speed.
That's a ridiculous lie. The pitfalls of urban sprawl are all over the news.
Do you live in some antiseptic bunker where your entire world is a state of
mind with no physical parameters?
> Congestion is an outcome of a race
> between car-building and road-building;
> between more shopping and faster cash registers;
> and of other similar races between demand and
> supply.
And to hell with the pristine land we pave over in the rush to build more
roads for more cars, right? All your schemes are devoid of side-effects.
It's like playing "Sim City" where resources appear out of thin air if you
tweak the program. Step outside sometime; the Earth isn't like that.
> Congestion on the roads goes up and down;
> so does the length of cash register lines.
> Similarly with living space availability,
> and all other kinds of effective elbow room:
> people *use it up*, but they also *add* it.
More lies. Those things are getting worse, not better. I can personally
assure you that road-widening projects and "three's a crowd" policies at
supermarkets are not keeping up with the flood of people in California.
The same is true anywhere the population is growing steadily. It's a
"Sisyphusian" routine of more people, more construction, more people, more
construction, ad infinitum, just so we can "create jobs" to support more
people, more construction, more people and more construction... Meanwhile,
nature is getting pushed further and further back to satisfy this pyramid
scheme of "progress."
> We can have *more* people
> in a *less* crowded world, and that has
> been the historical trend. People of less populated eras
> lived in slum conditions, compared to us moderns.
In a certain context that was true in the past, but we're long past the
glory days where there were plenty of greener pastures to raid. Take a
trip to Rio DeJaneiro or India or Asia if you think slums are diminishing.
Little that's occurring in the modern world validates your crazy outlook.
> Was commuting to work easier when there were
> ten times fewer people in the world, than it is *now*? No, much harder;
> instead of a trip in an airconditioned car, listening to the
> music of one's choice, it typically involved trudging painfully
> on blistered feet, in inclement weather.
Here I've caught you in a classic time-line deception. You know full well
that the comparison is cars today vs. cars 10 or 20 years ago (congestion is
*much worse* now). By comparing cars today to horses and buggies 100 years
ago you are deliberately trying to confuse the issue. Here is a link that
goes into detail about Rush Limbaugh's similar tactics:
http://www.regalweb.co.uk/the-book.html
> The roads, the means of transportation, the high-rise buildings, the
> communications - and all other conveniences that resolve congestion problems
> - are built, and invented, by *people*, and in *cooperation*, so that
> productivity is more than proportional to numbers.
Fine and dandy unless you give a damn about nature and the way it keeps
getting paved over by the GNP-growth machine. Don't you realize that your
vision for the world is highly unappealing to many people, even if it were
physically possible?
> Therefore, in the long run, the more populous the world gets,
> the more spacious - and that can continue indefinitely.
What an insane statement! Try telling that to the people of Honolulu or NYC
or Los Angeles. If you're reading this (jw...@ix.netcom.com) please satisfy
my curiosity by visiting this link and giving a precise answer to the
question posed. It's basically a sanity test:
http://www.jps.net/zpg/efinite.htm
A.J.
Bloody Viking
: And to hell with the pristine land we pave over in the rush to build more
: roads for more cars, right? All your schemes are devoid of side-effects.
: It's like playing "Sim City" where resources appear out of thin air if you
: tweak the program. Step outside sometime; the Earth isn't like that.
Actually, I liked Sim City. In city planning classes, they actually use it
as part of the cirriculum. An even cooler game is Civilization, or as I
call it, "Sim Dictator". I have an old version and I know about the spy
satellite cheat (an easter egg left by the programmers) and the drug money
cheat .exe file that pumps up the treasury with drug money so you can buy
more weapons. What would be really cool would be a Sim Dictator where you
have to deal with a finite power supply. "Sim Hanson"! The object of Sim
Hanson would be to prevent the dieoff!
: More lies. Those things are getting worse, not better. I can personally
: assure you that road-widening projects and "three's a crowd" policies at
: supermarkets are not keeping up with the flood of people in California.
You can thank our insane immigration policies for the population growth in
California.
: Fine and dandy unless you give a damn about nature and the way it keeps
: getting paved over by the GNP-growth machine. Don't you realize that your
: vision for the world is highly unappealing to many people, even if it were
: physically possible?
A world of a trillion people living in mile-high Ribik's Cubes is about as
appealing as living on an aircraft carrier. If you want to expierence life
in an "archology" (a Paolo Soleri Building of Soleri's wet dreams), your
opportunity is as close as a Navy recruiter office. Been there, done that.
No thanks.
The nut case never did come up with a reply to my mentioning of
"archologies" and how the "lifestyle" would be - even with an infinite
power supply - quite unattractive. I compared it directly to the Navy and
living on ships. Ouch. For a sneak preview of like in an archology:
http://www.wwa.com/~nospam/Seppo_Navy.html
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al_j...@usa.net
Bloody Viking <nos...@tekka.wwa.com> wrote:
> A world of a trillion people living in mile-high Ribik's Cubes is about as
> appealing as living on an aircraft carrier. If you want to expierence life
> in an "archology" (a Paolo Soleri Building of Soleri's wet dreams), your
> opportunity is as close as a Navy recruiter office. Been there, done that.
> No thanks.
>
> The nut case never did come up with a reply to my mentioning of
> "archologies" and how the "lifestyle" would be - even with an infinite
> power supply - quite unattractive. I compared it directly to the Navy and
> living on ships. Ouch...
Mr. "Just Wondering" has been posting his trillion-people insanity for quite
awhile. At first I thought he was a troll trying to make cornucopians look
nuts (which they are) but I think he really believes the lie. I'd like to
know how he lives and what sort of background led him to such beliefs.
The dangerous thing is that many people take lesser versions of his fantasies
seriously, like the notion of indefinite resource-substitution (which makes
people ignore conservation) and the idea that we can sustain 10-12 billion
people with no loss in quality of life (which makes people apathetic about
birth control).
A.J.
http://www.jps.net/zpg/islands.htm
Just Wondering
al_j...@usa.net wrote:
> (I realize this is an older post, but I had to respond to this lunatic.)
>
> In article <71jdl8$7ar$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > E.g., road congestion is not merely a function of
> > the number of people or cars - if that
> > were so, traffic would have halted everywhere
> > long ago. Instead, it is gaining speed.
>
> That's a ridiculous lie.
For example, traveling across France took at least
three weeks around 1765 AD.
(France is about 80 percent of Texas in area.).
Between 1765 and 1780, the introduction of faster stage coaches
(*turgotines*) cut that time, on some routes, in half.
(Source: Felix Braudel, _The Perspective of the World. Civilization and
Capitalism, 15th-18th cenrtury_ Harper & Row, 1979, Volume 3, page 315. )
Nowadays, it is a matter of hours by land, less by air...
Bloody Viking
: Mr. "Just Wondering" has been posting his trillion-people insanity for quite
: awhile. At first I thought he was a troll trying to make cornucopians look
: nuts (which they are) but I think he really believes the lie. I'd like to
: know how he lives and what sort of background led him to such beliefs.
Maybe he actually did like living on an aircraft carrier or never tried
it. I lived on a guided missile cruiser (USS Belknap) but didn't like it.
Living in an archology would be similar. The proof that it's undesirable
is the fact that most people don't re-enlist in the Navy, where the
mini-archologies lay on their side and float.
About the best possible situation in an archology would be like a
cruiseliner - and we don't see too many people living onboard cruiseliners
except the sailors of such vehicles.
: The dangerous thing is that many people take lesser versions of his fantasies
: seriously, like the notion of indefinite resource-substitution (which makes
: people ignore conservation) and the idea that we can sustain 10-12 billion
: people with no loss in quality of life (which makes people apathetic about
: birth control).
At this point, I'd like to see the crop-dusting of overfertile people with
estrogen-like dioxins. Mexico, the biggest source of US population growth,
would be a good candidate for such crop-dusting. Almost surprising that
the Chinese government didn't crop-dust their own people yet. If a
totalitarian government like China's has pulled off planned famines,
crop-dusting with dioxins would be a no-brainer.
Somehow, I don't think Mexico would want me to be the dictator of
America...
Bloody Viking
: For example, traveling across France took at least
: three weeks around 1765 AD.
: (France is about 80 percent of Texas in area.).
: Nowadays, it is a matter of hours by land, less by air...
But you never did reply about the undesirable fact that living in an
archology would be like living on a Navy ship. For us to house a trillion
people (assuming one hell of a power supply) we'd have to adopt a
lifestyle "enjoyed" by sailors on aircraft carriers.
And when the petrol runs out from our follies, the commute time to France
from England will bet really long again...
Don Libby
>
snip
> more weapons. What would be really cool would be a Sim Dictator where you
> have to deal with a finite power supply. "Sim Hanson"! The object of Sim
> Hanson would be to prevent the dieoff!
Sim Hanson is supposed to be available from Donella Meadows at the
University of Delaware (but you need a Mac and they may not answer your
letters). It's the old Club of Rome model for "limts to growth" slicked
up a bit for GUI types, as far as I can gather. Maybe Jay knows.
-dl
--
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* IF YOU'RE HAVING TROUBLE REPLYING *
* REPLACE "SPAMNOT" WITH "DONLIBBY" *
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Bloody Viking
: Sim Hanson is supposed to be available from Donella Meadows at the
: University of Delaware (but you need a Mac and they may not answer your
: letters). It's the old Club of Rome model for "limts to growth" slicked
: up a bit for GUI types, as far as I can gather. Maybe Jay knows.
Too bad I don't own a Mac. Sounds like a fun game. I sure did make up a
good name for it!
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al_j...@usa.net
Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > > E.g., road congestion is not merely a function of
> > > the number of people or cars - if that
> > > were so, traffic would have halted everywhere
> > > long ago. Instead, it is gaining speed.
> >
> > That's a ridiculous lie.
>
> For example, traveling across France took at least
> three weeks around 1765 AD.
> (France is about 80 percent of Texas in area.).
>
> Between 1765 and 1780, the introduction of faster stage coaches
> (*turgotines*) cut that time, on some routes, in half.
>
> (Source: Felix Braudel, _The Perspective of the World. Civilization and
> Capitalism, 15th-18th cenrtury_ Harper & Row, 1979, Volume 3, page 315. )
>
> Nowadays, it is a matter of hours by land, less by air...
That's the same time-line diversion you pulled before. You're comparing
transportation from centuries past to modern technologies, when the REAL
issue is road/airspace/waterway congestion in *modern* times relative to
10, 20 or 30 years ago when the same basic technologies were already here.
Please don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Traffic
congestion is getting worse, airspace is getting more hazardous and lakes
and rivers are further packed with boats as we add 80 million people
annually. It's bad enough with six billion people. Do you honestly think
1,000 billion people will be no big deal? Unbelievable.
You offered no response to the other criticisms of your "trillion" fantasy,
so I assume you don't care what happens to nature as growth tramples it.
A.J.
http://www.jps.net/zpg/finite.htm
Just Wondering
al_j...@usa.net wrote:
> In article <73p037$3ta$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> > > > E.g., road congestion is not merely a function of
> > > > the number of people or cars - if that
> > > > were so, traffic would have halted everywhere
> > > > long ago. Instead, it is gaining speed.
> > >
> > > That's a ridiculous lie.
> >
> > For example, traveling across France took at least
> > three weeks around 1765 AD.
> > (France is about 80 percent of Texas in area.).
> >
> > Between 1765 and 1780, the introduction of faster stage coaches
> > (*turgotines*) cut that time, on some routes, in half.
> >
> > (Source: Felix Braudel, _The Perspective of the World. Civilization and
> > Capitalism, 15th-18th cenrtury_ Harper & Row, 1979, Volume 3, page 315. )
> >
> > Nowadays, it is a matter of hours by land, less by air...
>
> That's the same time-line diversion you pulled before.
No, my sources are all from the same time-line, different points
on it.
If you live in a different *time-line*, I hope you can quote sources
from there/then... and cross-posting to a science fiction
group would seem appropriate. :-)
>You're comparing
> transportation from centuries past to modern technologies,
Indeed I do.
That is exactly the way to observe a long-term trend
on a curve: compare *remote* points on it.
>when the REAL
> issue is road/airspace/waterway congestion in *modern* times relative to
> 10, 20 or 30 years ago when the same basic technologies were already here.
The "basic technologies" in 1765
were the same as in 1780; yet the travel time (as you see) was cut in half.
A more convenient model of stage coach; more posts for changing
horses: this is what did it.
Technologies change all the time. Innovations come in all sizes;
incremental change alternates and interacts
with major inventions like steam or the air plane.
Some innovations are simple and low-tech - yet revolutionary in effect.
Such was, for example, macadamizing .
|| "To Britain the new surface came in time for the heyday of coaching:
|| by 1832 speeds on all main routes averaged 10 m.p.h., and Edinburgh,
|| which in 1776 was still four days' journey from London, could
|| be reached in 42 1/2 hours."
(T. K. Derry and Trevor I. Williams, _A Short History of Technology
from the Earliest Times to A. D. 1900_, Dover Publications, 1993,
p. 433).
> Please don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.
Do you know that yourself?
> Traffic
> congestion is getting worse,
No, better.
>airspace is getting more hazardous
No, less.
> and lakes
> and rivers are further packed with boats as we add 80 million people
> annually.
Somebody has deceived you on all this...
> It's bad enough with six billion people.
No, it is not bad: it is glorious.
> Do you honestly think
> 1,000 billion people will be no big deal? Unbelievable.
What nonsense.
No, I don't think it is "no big deal"!
"Big deal" is a weak expression to describe that.
These trillion people, compared to us, will be like gods and will
live like gods.
> You offered no response to the other criticisms of your "trillion" fantasy,
I had no time to read them so far. Perhaps I will later.
> so I assume you don't care what happens to nature as growth tramples it.
I handled that issue before. I do care: we are improving nature,
and I am glad we are. Stay the course!
Just Wondering
Bloody Viking <nos...@tekka.wwa.com> wrote:
> In sci.environment Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> : three weeks around 1765 AD.
> : (France is about 80 percent of Texas in area.).
>
> But you never did reply about the undesirable fact that living in an
> archology would be like living on a Navy ship.
I never discussed "archologies".
I did respond to the underlying point many times, including
the time when you made it, as follows:
[Bloody Viking]
>>] Let's suppose we had an infinite power supply. Would you want to live on a
>>] planet with a trillion poeople crawling over each other?
[Just Wondering:]
>] But they wouldn't be! They would live more spaciously than
>] we live now - as *we* live far more spaciously than our
>] less numerous ancestors did.
> For us to house a trillion
> people (assuming one hell of a power supply) we'd have to adopt a
> lifestyle "enjoyed" by sailors on aircraft carriers.
Compare the comparable: sailors on today's aircraft carriers
have vastly better, far more roomy accommodations than galley
rowers had in the days when population was still small.
Likewise, the trillion people (if and when we get that many)
will live far more spaciously than our six billion do.
The reason is that space fit for human beings - like all other consumer
goods - is produced by human beings; and that human beings get much
more productive in greater numbers: through the
exchange of ideas, economies of scale, diversity of skills,
and numerous other effects.
If N people can produce so much living room, twice N can produce
not *twice* as much, but more than that. Two heads are better than one,
and two billion heads are better than one billion. The more of us, the more
there will be for each of us. All history bears this out - and the
progress is accelerating.
Bloody Viking
: Compare the comparable: sailors on today's aircraft carriers
: have vastly better, far more roomy accommodations than galley
: rowers had in the days when population was still small.
Sure, the aircraft carrier sailors have it better than the rowers of
Viking ships. Vikings didn't get fame for nothing, BUT that's irrelavant
to the issue of archology living compared to modern homes. The vast
majority of modern humans prefer single family homes to aircraft carriers,
the best analogy I know of to archology living.
: Likewise, the trillion people (if and when we get that many)
: will live far more spaciously than our six billion do.
But the only way to house the trillion people would be in archology
buildings. At best, living in such buildings would be like living onboard
a cruiseship. Way more likely, it would resemble living onboard a carrier
of vast proportions.
: The reason is that space fit for human beings - like all other consumer
: goods - is produced by human beings; and that human beings get much
: more productive in greater numbers: through the
: exchange of ideas, economies of scale, diversity of skills,
: and numerous other effects.
But again, archology living is highly undesirable. Proof can be seen now
by the re-enlistment rate of the Navy. Most people upon ending the
contract get out. Then, there's the issue of taking the Power Supply to
manufacture soylent green from the shit...
: If N people can produce so much living room, twice N can produce
: not *twice* as much, but more than that. Two heads are better than one,
: and two billion heads are better than one billion. The more of us, the more
: there will be for each of us. All history bears this out - and the
: progress is accelerating.
That's only the case if all the people have it well off. Poor people don't
come up with cool inventions; they're too busy trying to survive. For the
trillion people to innovate like no tomorrow, you'd need a hell of a power
supply. What do you propose we use as the power supply? Fusion? Well, you
have to invent it first. Even coating the planet with solar panels - even
the top of the line Siemens ones - won't cut it for the power supply for a
trillion people.
You are obviously living in a fantasy world. The planet can't support a
trillion people by any means. Not even with living in archology buildings
and eating soylent green synthesised from shit. We don't have a sufficient
power supply, even if living in archologies were desirable, which is not.
Don Libby
> > Do you honestly think
> > 1,000 billion people will be no big deal? Unbelievable.
>
> What nonsense.
> No, I don't think it is "no big deal"!
> "Big deal" is a weak expression to describe that.
>
> These trillion people, compared to us, will be like gods and will
> live like gods.
Well, gods in the sense that they would create their own self-sufficient
worlds, but they would live like gods on an aircraft carrier. Most of
the giant self-sufficient cities would be floating on the oceans (or
perhaps more likely, floating in space).
>
> > You offered no response to the other criticisms of your "trillion" fantasy,
>
> I had no time to read them so far. Perhaps I will later.
>
> > so I assume you don't care what happens to nature as growth tramples it.
>
> I handled that issue before. I do care: we are improving nature,
> and I am glad we are. Stay the course!
The trampling of nature as a consequence of growth is largely a function
of poverty - we must continue to fight poverty vigorously if we care
about what happens to nature, and we must work on solving conservation
problems where they exist.
Population policy is an extremely ineffective way to solve wildlife
conservation problems. The worthy goals of reducing poverty and
reducing the social and economic costs of family planning techniques
would probably continue the fertility transition. But in the decades it
will take for this to occur, who will be tending to wildlife
conservation?
In the hypothetical 10^12 world, 90% of the continents and a much larger
fraction of the oceans would be uninhabited by humans, so there is
potential room for wildlife. Regardless of the size of the future human
population, the trick will be getting through the next 100 years or so
with many wild populations and ecosystems still intact. That is the job
of conservation biologists.
How many members of ZPG or NPG will be moved by their concern for nature
to become conservation biologists or to work toward improving the living
standards of the world's poor or to negotiate and enforce conservation
treaties? Is whipping up anti-immigrant fervor the best you can do?
Erlich made a mistake when he strayed from biology, IMHO.
Don Libby
>
> In sci.environment Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> : Compare the comparable: sailors on today's aircraft carriers
> : have vastly better, far more roomy accommodations than galley
> : rowers had in the days when population was still small.
>
> Sure, the aircraft carrier sailors have it better than the rowers of
> Viking ships. Vikings didn't get fame for nothing, BUT that's irrelavant
> to the issue of archology living compared to modern homes. The vast
> majority of modern humans prefer single family homes to aircraft carriers,
> the best analogy I know of to archology living.
JustWondering did implicitly mention archology living since as BV
correctly points out, that is the solution suggested by Marchetti, the
author of the 10^12 world.
But wait a minute BV, let's not overgeneralize. There is a big
difference between what "the vast majority of modern humans" prefer and
what suburban upper middle-class Americans prefer. You could probably
find several million people who would rather take shelter from tropical
storms inside an aircraft carrier than ride out the storm in their
present condition, clutching little pieces of plastic and cardboard.
You could probably find billions who would rather live on a luxury ocean
liner than in their present conditions too, probably every sailor who is
now serving on an aircraft carrier would be among them.
With that said, you are right of course that by today's standards, the
10^12 world is undesireable, and that is the key point: it is not
NATURE that determines the ultimate size of the human population (up to
and including 10^12) it is up to PEOPLE to determine this.
The next obvious question then is whether we let individual people make
their own reproductive decisions, or do we intervene with government
policy to meet some approved population size limit (and who gets to
approve the limit?)
>
> : Likewise, the trillion people (if and when we get that many)
> : will live far more spaciously than our six billion do.
Er, well, the density suggested by Marchetti is roughly five times the
present density of Holland inside the giant self-contained cities, but
the countryside would be vacant, for the most part, except for wildlife
and a smattering of traditionalists.
snip
> : The reason is that space fit for human beings - like all other consumer
> : goods - is produced by human beings; and that human beings get much
> : more productive in greater numbers: through the
> : exchange of ideas, economies of scale, diversity of skills,
> : and numerous other effects.
>
> But again, archology living is highly undesirable. Proof can be seen now
> by the re-enlistment rate of the Navy. Most people upon ending the
> contract get out. Then, there's the issue of taking the Power Supply to
> manufacture soylent green from the shit...
Well, I don't know if renlistment rates for the Navy are lower than the
other services, or if the discomfort of living aboard ships is the
reason why Navy reenlistment is so low. Probably better proof would be
the preference of fairly affluent people for low density suburban living
rather than highdensity urban living. But then, the poor tend to flock
to cities in preference to country living.
>
> : If N people can produce so much living room, twice N can produce
> : not *twice* as much, but more than that. Two heads are better than one,
> : and two billion heads are better than one billion. The more of us, the more
> : there will be for each of us. All history bears this out - and the
> : progress is accelerating.
>
> That's only the case if all the people have it well off. Poor people don't
> come up with cool inventions; they're too busy trying to survive. For the
> trillion people to innovate like no tomorrow, you'd need a hell of a power
> supply. What do you propose we use as the power supply? Fusion? Well, you
> have to invent it first. Even coating the planet with solar panels - even
> the top of the line Siemens ones - won't cut it for the power supply for a
> trillion people.
The energy considerations suggested by Marchetti begin with maintaining
the energy balance of the Earth by offsetting any non-solar thermal
input with greater reflection of solar insolation. Basically this means
painting the roofs of the archologies white and spacing them out evenly
over 10% of Earth's surface to avoid "cool spots" or seasonal
irregularities.
This allows for sustained energy contributions of nuclear or fossil
origin of 10Kw/person, roughly comparable to USA percapita energy
consumption in 1978. The energy would be distributed 6 units to
manufacturing, 2 to transportation, 1 to communication, and 1 to space
conditioning. Space conditioning is mostly accomplished by "passive
solar" design, transportation is mostly accomplished by walking and
other conventional means within the cities and maglev trains between
them, and communications are fibre-optic. Conventional nuclear power
with fuel breeding is the suggested power supply, extracting uranium
from seawater if and when that becomes necessary.
>
> You are obviously living in a fantasy world. The planet can't support a
> trillion people by any means. Not even with living in archology buildings
> and eating soylent green synthesised from shit. We don't have a sufficient
> power supply, even if living in archologies were desirable, which is not.
Many affluent people today are willing to pay higher prices for
vegetables "recycled from shit" as you say, in organic grocery stores.
Most food would be produced by micro-organisms (think beer), though
there would be nothing to stop you from "growing your own" in your
apartment, or from visiting a farmer's market in the countryside to buy
foods grown by agricultural traditionalists (it may cost a little more,
but it's worth it!).
Yes, the 10^12 world is a fantasy world, but there is no physical reason
on earth why it could not be real, except the human desire to live a
different lifestyle. I say, give the people what they want.
Just Wondering
Bloody Viking <nos...@tekka.wwa.com> wrote:
> In sci.environment Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> : three weeks around 1765 AD.
> : (France is about 80 percent of Texas in area.).
[...]
> : Nowadays, it is a matter of hours by land, less by air...
[...]
> And when the petrol runs out from our follies, the commute time to France
> from England will bet really long again...
It runs out from our *follies*, you say?
And if we are wise and commit no follies, petroleum will
*never* run out?
But that would mean we do not use it at all - right?
And if we don't use it, what does it matter that it does not run out?
The age of petroleum will end, of course. Oil will become
obsolete. The wise thing to do with a finite resource in an era
of rapid technological progress is to use it up ASAP - before it
gets obsolete.
Commute time will continue to shorten after the last
of oil-burning cars is scrapped - as it has continued to shorten
after the end of stage coaches, and then after the end
of coal-burning locomotives...
Human conquest of distance does not stop - particular resources
and technologies are used, passed by and left behind.
Just Wondering
al_j...@usa.net wrote:
In article <71jdl8$7ar$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> > > Let's suppose we had an infinite power supply. Would you want to live on a
> > > planet with a trillion poeople crawling over each other?
> >
> > less numerous ancestors did.
>
> We do? Not the last time I looked in any metro area.
An illogical answer. You did not look at urban areas in the days
of your less numerous ancestors. Comparison between two
situations cannot be achieved by looking at one of them, but
not the other. The fact that you made such a conclusion
from looking at just one, shows how strongly biased
you are. So biased that it makes you incapable of elementary
logic where your obsession is concerned...
> And where do you
> propose that animal species will live as hordes of people take over their
> already shrinking habitat?
I've discussed that many times. Extensive wiild areas *could*
easily be preserved even with a trilllion people on the planet - but
I believe they *should* not be. They are too dangerous, as a
source of new, yet unknown epidemics. Species ought to
be preserved for reserach - as many as possible - *ex situ*.
Wild habitats should not be preserved. We are evolving
towards a *controlled*, user-friendly, environment, in which only
those species surround us that we know we need.
> In all your posts I've not seen a shred of
> concern for their plight (typical of those who claim overpopulation is a
> myth).
"Plight" is a word that can well be used when describing a higher
mammal or bird, capable of suffering - but not an insect, not a plant -
and certainly not a *species*. Species do not suffer, only individual
creatures do.
I am all for being kind to animals - but wild nature treats
them with unspeakable cruelty.
So kindness is not a valid argument against change.
>I suppose you think it's fine that animals only survive in zoos?
And labs.
> Same goes for fragile plant species as well. The catch-phrase is "loss
> of biodiversity."
Biodiversity is not all good. With the elimination of smallpox,
it has diminished - and that has been a Good Thing.
Every infectious disease, every disease agent and
every disease carrier, is a case of
*excessive biodiversity*. So are parasites infesting
humans or domestic animals or plants, and pests
like mosquitoes; and irritants like poison ivy, and
weeds, bllights, moulds etc. They should all be
either eliminated or re-engineered into something
more friendly.
Of course, biodiversity is not all bad, either. But we need
to make it all good. The direction of progress here, as in all
things, is *from the natural towards the artificial*.
We are already surrounded by artificially-bred varieties,
and they have become exceedingly useful symbionts.
Even natural species don't live in the same areas and
in the same combinations as in pre-human times: the
ecology in all populated parts of the world is
already manmade. There's nothing to conserve
here except past results of human activity.
Soon, artificial species - and later even artificial genera
and higher taxons - will begin to enhance the planet's biodiversity -
all genetically engineered to serve humanity.
Since anything can be improved, in time few
pre-human species will be left, except as control samples.
The planet will be a new Garden of Eden - its biodiversity
all custom-made for human needs and human delight.
Just Wondering
> But you never did reply about the undesirable fact that living in an
> archology would be like living on a Navy ship.
The word is apparently "arcology".
I have no idea, and little interest, what life in it would be like.
The word is a hybrid between "architecture" and "ecology".
Let green econuts discuss it between themselves.
It has nothing to do with me.
As a public service, I'll quote, with thanks, two authors
from rec.arts.sf.written:
[ Lance Purple wrote:]
|>"Arcology" is a word coined by Paolo Soleri to describe architecture
|>based on ecology (and he was talking about real biology-and-science
|>ecology, before New Age hippies got hold of the term).
[Elf Sternberg wrote:]
| I have a copy of his seminal book, "Arcology: City In The
| Image Of Man" (if you're an s/f writer, this is a fabulous book to
| own) and there's a very good reason why the hippies got ahold of
| "ecology"; reading Soleri's own words, he sounds like one. Consider:
| Life's bulk are negated when megalopoly and suburbia are taken as
| the ecological bulk... Antivector forces collect themselves in
| the unlimited resevoirs of entropy. In this context utopia is
| the disavowal of any vectorial urge that might exist in the
| species of man and a settlement for something less than
| engrossing.
| The whole book is much like that.
Ughh...
Joshua Halpern
> In sci.environment al_j...@usa.net wrote:
SNIP....
> You can thank our insane immigration policies for the population growth in
> California.
You mean the Okies?
josh halpern
Just Wondering
> > so does the length of cash register lines.
> > Similarly with living space availability,
> > and all other kinds of effective elbow room:
> > people *use it up*, but they also *add* it.
> More lies. Those things are getting worse, not better. I can personally
> assure you that road-widening projects and "three's a crowd" policies at
> supermarkets are not keeping up with the flood of people in California.
> The same is true anywhere the population is growing steadily.
Special pleading! If you selectively notice the ups of congestion, not the
downs, that is what you are sure to see. If congestion were only going up,
never down, then all traffic would have stopped long ago. Instead, people and
goods are more mobile than ever - which of course causes congestion problems
- which get solved, leading to *less* congestion than before the problems
started. This is how it goes.
Here is an excerpt from the last book of the great
Julian Simon, who studied this process:
| "Donald Glover and I made a cross-national study
| of the relationship between road debsity and population
| density, and we found that the relationship to be very strong,
| as figure 25-1 shows Population growth clearly
| leads to an improved transportation system, which in
| turn stimulates economic development and further
| population growth. [...]
|
| When roads and other infrastructure become burdened
| and congested with an increased population and the
| traffic that accompanies increased income,
| a variant of the basic theoretical process
| described in this book comes into play:
| More people, and increased income, cause problems
| of strained capacity in the short run.
| This causes transportation prices to rise and
| communities to become concerned. This same state
| of affairs also presents opportunity to
| busenesses and to ingenious people who wish
| to contribute to society by improving roads,
| vehicles, and services or inventing new forms
| of transportation. Many are unsuccessful, at
| cost to themselves. But in a free society, new
| facilities are eventually designed and built.
| And in the long run the new facilities leave us
| *better off than if the problems had not arisen*.
| That is, prices end up lower, and access to
| transportation becomes greater, than before
| the congestion occurred."
| (Julian Simon, _The Ultimate Resource 2_,
| Princeton University Press, 1996. pp 362-363)
al_j...@usa.net
Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > > Nowadays, it is a matter of hours by land, less by air...
> >
> > That's the same time-line diversion you pulled before.
>
> No, my sources are all from the same time-line, different points
> on it.
Now you're applying yet another diversion by twisting the context once
more. Clearly I am wasting logic on a brick wall.
> > Please don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.
>
> Do you know that yourself?
I know that you're either a troll or mentally ill.
> > Traffic
> > congestion is getting worse,
>
> No, better.
Liar.
> >airspace is getting more hazardous
>
> No, less.
Moron.
> > and lakes and rivers are further packed with boats as we add 80 million
> > people annually.
>
> Somebody has deceived you on all this...
No, I actually get out and visit those places instead of pretending the
world is a big mathematical abstraction.
> These trillion people, compared to us, will be like gods and will
> live like gods.
Is life in Bellevue a godly experience? Are the nurses angels?
> > You offered no response to the other criticisms of your "trillion" fantasy,
>
> I had no time to read them so far. Perhaps I will later.
No, you're just trying to change the subject. That's all you ever
do when confronted with logic. In fact that's all you *can* do since
very little in your fantasy world jibes with reality.
> > so I assume you don't care what happens to nature as growth tramples it.
>
> I handled that issue before. I do care: we are improving nature,
> and I am glad we are. Stay the course!
Driving species to extinction by destroying their habitat via population
growth is "improving" nature? What a nutcase. Please tell me you're a
troll trying to make cornucopians look stupid.
A.J.
http://www.jps.net/zpg/finite.htm
al_j...@usa.net
Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Likewise, the trillion people (if and when we get that many)
> will live far more spaciously than our six billion do.
Is your padded cell comfortable? Don't spill your food - the janitors
hate that.
> The reason is that space fit for human beings - like all other consumer
> goods - is produced by human beings; and that human beings get much
> more productive in greater numbers: through the
> exchange of ideas, economies of scale, diversity of skills,
> and numerous other effects.
I guess space in the real, physical world (that we actually have to
live in) is meaningless to you. Life is just a big calculus problem.
> If N people can produce so much living room, twice N can produce
> not *twice* as much, but more than that. Two heads are better than one,
> and two billion heads are better than one billion. The more of us, the more
> there will be for each of us. All history bears this out - and the
> progress is accelerating.
That's like Julian Simon's insane "logic" about copper being infinite because
a line is infinitely divisible in theory.
Be kind to the night nurse and she might give you a cookie.
Just Wondering
> And to hell with the pristine land we pave over in the rush to build more
> roads for more cars, right? All your schemes are devoid of side-effects.
Oh no! I keep the side effects - the unintended consequences,
very much in mind! I also take into account the
unintended consequences of *not* doing it...
Here is an excerpt from an older posting:
| [...] one can't
| foresee all consequences: therefore, only the *experience*
| can decide. And it *has* decided. For example, much of
| Western Europe used to be swamps and nearly uninhabitable.
| Through long centuries, woods were felled,
| swamps drained, fields cleared for cultivation,
| roads built. All this, not with any centralized grand plan in
| mind, but in a grass-roots manner. Now we can estimate the results:
| the area is incomparably more hospitable to human life
| than it had been at the start of the huge experiment.
| No doubt there have been some negative effects, but they
| have been overwhelmingly outweighed by the good ones.
| There are always unintended consequences
| when you tinker with the status quo - and some people
| conclude from this that one should always conserve the status quo.
| But not all unintended consequences are bad. Some are even better
| than the intended ones. Experience is the final judge...
And from another older posting:
| >If you slash-and-burn to keep around only
| > those species which you deem valuable, something's gonna bite you on the
| > ass.
|
| But that *has* been done - with very beneficial results.
| The fauna and flora of Western Europe,
| for example - and of many other areas - is
| totally changed by humans. Few pre-human species and varieties
| remain, many have been imported or bred - because
| "deemed valuable" - and it works just fine.
| To some extent, the same has happened globally, over
| many thousands of years: people have
| slashed and burned, hunted down some species,
| bred others, changed the ecology of the planet-
| and have never been so healthy as now.
|
| It is too late to say: you can't that, it won't
| work. It works, and the more we do it, the better
| it works.
And from another older posting:
| Of course, there'll always be unintended consequences.
| But that is no good reason for inaction - for inaction, too,
| has unintended consequences - mostly bad ones.
| [...] I readily admit that
| *sometimes* the human impact on the environment has
| *some* bad consequences. An example such as yours -
| or several or many examples - can't prove anything more, even if
| the causal chain is exactly as you interpret it.
| There are always good and bad consequences to *any* act.
| For one Lyme disease victim, there may be
| many people saved from pneumonia by the warmth of
| these old trees - or, say, saved from cancer by doctors
| whose tuition was paid by the money inherited from
| those who made it logging those old trees.
|
| Etc. Consequences are uncountable - yet they can be integrated.
| *On the whole*, the northeast US is incomparably healthier
| and more hospitable than it was at the time when its old forests were
| still standing. Far more people are able to live here - and they
| live much longer. Thus, it works.
| >Change the local environment
| > to one that you believe suits you better, and you'll be likely to find
| > out you'd have been better off dealing with the devil you knew.
| No: that has been amply disproved by historical experience.
| On the whole, people are better off after the change.
| On the whole, it works - in spite of any number of
| bad examples. And my explanation for
| that is simple: a natural environment is so
| suboptimal, so *hostile*, so *deadly*, that even *random* change
| is often for the better - much more a change whose *immediate*
| consequences, at least, are known and good.
Steinn Sigurdsson
You mean the Okies?
Nah, clearly the anglos.
Personally I think the place went downhill with the Russians
in the 18th C (?) and never recovered.
StellrJ
>cruiseliner - and we don't see too many people living onboard cruiseliners
>except the sailors of such vehicles.
Who can blame them? I hear that cruises can cost over a hundred dollars per
day--so, at my wages, I could live on a cruise ship for about four days on two
weeks' salary.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jason Hernandez
Naturalist-at-Large
StellrJ
>it has diminished - and that has been a Good Thing.
>
Smallpox has NOT been eliminated. It lives on in remote, poor, unsanitary
places, waiting for a chance to return to the no-longer-vaccinated
population-at-large.
>Every infectious disease, every disease agent and
>every disease carrier, is a case of
>*excessive biodiversity*. So are parasites infesting
>humans or domestic animals or plants, and pests
>like mosquitoes; and irritants like poison ivy, and
>weeds, bllights, moulds etc. They should all be
>either eliminated or re-engineered into something
>more friendly.
If smallpox is any example, we can never be sure that a germ has been rendered
extinct. And while you can certainly attempt to re-engineer them into
something more friendly, they will still exist in their original form unless
you can come up with a way to round up every individual--which, as smallpox has
shown, would necessitate a thorough cleanup of remote, poor, unsanitary places.
You'd better get busy with that mop.
>Soon, artificial species - and later even artificial genera
>and higher taxons - will begin to enhance the planet's biodiversity -
>all genetically engineered to serve humanity.
>
I will believe it only when I see it.
>Since anything can be improved, in time few
>pre-human species will be left, except as control samples.
How arrogant you are. So far, all human attempts at "improvement" have led to
more unforeseen consequences than any of us know what to do with.
>The planet will be a new Garden of Eden - its biodiversity
>all custom-made for human needs and human delight.
ROFL!!!! Have you forgotten the inescapable fact of human imperfection? The
imperfect cannot create perfection. Your pipedream would result in problems
none of us can possibly forsee.
Do us a favor--refrain from trying to impose your notion of paradise on those
us who prefer reality.
al_j...@usa.net
Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > > But they wouldn't be! They would live more spaciously than
> > > we live now - as *we* live far more spaciously than our
> > > less numerous ancestors did.
> >
> > We do? Not the last time I looked in any metro area.
>
> An illogical answer. You did not look at urban areas in the days
> of your less numerous ancestors. Comparison between two
> situations cannot be achieved by looking at one of them, but
> not the other. The fact that you made such a conclusion
> from looking at just one, shows how strongly biased
> you are. So biased that it makes you incapable of elementary
> logic where your obsession is concerned...
No, you're just a mental patient trying to redraw reality. Once again
you've twisted the time-line to compare pre-industrial life to today. I will
say for the 3rd time that the REAL comparison involves modern people using
modern technologies in modern times, with obvious increasing congestion as
the population grows. It's a blatant lie to claim that congestion isn't
growing on land, air and water every year, and it's pointless to keep
using pre-technology days as a baseline.
> > And where do you
> > propose that animal species will live as hordes of people take over their
> > already shrinking habitat?
>
> I've discussed that many times. Extensive wiild areas *could*
> easily be preserved even with a trilllion people on the planet - but
> I believe they *should* not be.
I don't really care what the mentally ill believe.
> Wild habitats should not be preserved. We are evolving
> towards a *controlled*, user-friendly, environment, in which only
> those species surround us that we know we need.
We've already tamed most of nature and many people would find life dull with
all the risk and adventure stripped away. Why do you think people go camping
and hiking? You'd have us taking vacations in stainless steel museums with
photos of vanished wilderness on the walls. For many it would be the
equivalent of looking at photos of dead relatives. I suspect that a
disability prevents you from getting outdoors and you want to see everyone
robbed of the privilege.
> I am all for being kind to animals - but wild nature treats
> them with unspeakable cruelty.
> So kindness is not a valid argument against change.
I get it. Let them go extinct to put them out of their so-called misery.
What sort of upbringing led to those twisted, anthropomorphic priorities?
> >I suppose you think it's fine that animals only survive in zoos?
>
> And labs.
I'd be wasting time explaining the arrogance of that position.
> The planet will be a new Garden of Eden - its biodiversity
> all custom-made for human needs and human delight.
So all that matters is what a certain percentage of selfish people desire?
What a noble philosophy you've got there.
A.J.
http://www.jps.net/zpg/analogy.htm
al_j...@usa.net
Joshua Halpern <j...@IDT.NET> wrote:
> In sci.environment Bloody Viking <nos...@tekka.wwa.com> wrote:
>
> > You can thank our insane immigration policies for the population growth in
> > California.
>
> You mean the Okies?
He was obviously talking about the Mexican border and refugees from
overpopulated Asian lands. You must not live in California.
A.J.
al_j...@usa.net
Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > More lies. Those things are getting worse, not better. I can personally
> > assure you that road-widening projects and "three's a crowd" policies at
> > supermarkets are not keeping up with the flood of people in California.
> > The same is true anywhere the population is growing steadily.
>
> Special pleading! If you selectively notice the ups of congestion, not the
> downs, that is what you are sure to see. If congestion were only going up,
> never down, then all traffic would have stopped long ago.
You're in dire need of a critical thinking course. That's like saying a sink
"must be overflowing" the minute the water begins to rise. You offer no
time-frame or physical parameters for that wild claim. The truth is that
congestion is increasing in most places, but it hasn't peaked everywhere.
The *process* of population growth and congestion is what intelligent people
look at. I defy you to explain how L.A.'s traffic (or that of any metro area)
will get better with *more* people - and don't change the subject with fantasy
technologies.
> Here is an excerpt from the last book of the great
> Julian Simon, who studied this process:
<snip>
There is little sanity in Simon's thinking. You may as well quote an
astrologer's forecast. See: http://www.jps.net/zpg/dalysimon.htm
Here are two famous (indefensible) quotes from Simon's "The Ultimate
Resource:"
1) "Our energy supply is non-finite, and oil is an important example...the
number of oil wells that will eventually produce oil, and in what quantities,
is not known or measurable at present and probably never will be, and hence
is not meaningfully finite."
2) "For example, the length of a one-inch line is finite in the sense that it
bounded at both ends. But the line within the endpoints contains an infinite
number of points; these points cannot be counted, because they have no
defined size. Therefore the number of points in that one-inch segment is not
finite. Similarly, the quantity of copper that will ever be available to us
is not finite, because there is no method (even in principle) of making an
appropriate count of it, given the problem of the economic definition of
"copper," the possibility of creating copper or its economic equivalent from
other materials, and thus the lack of boundaries to the sources from which
copper might be drawn."
Quote #1 is blatantly insane, and in case you didn't figure it out, quote #2
becomes nutty when Simon assumes the word "Similarly" applies to a physical
resource like copper the same way it applies to a theoretical line. Simon's
writings are full of similar false assumptions; he can't be forgiven for
"occasional mistakes." The basic disease of cornucopians is that they fail to
draw distinctions between abstract and tangible entities.
A.J.
http://www.jps.net/zpg/efinite.htm
Bloody Viking
: In article <73ssv8$8...@nnrp1.farm.idt.net>,
: Joshua Halpern <j...@IDT.NET> wrote:
:> In sci.environment Bloody Viking <nos...@tekka.wwa.com> wrote:
:> > You can thank our insane immigration policies for the population growth in
:> > California.
:> You mean the Okies?
: He was obviously talking about the Mexican border and refugees from
: overpopulated Asian lands. You must not live in California.
I live in Chicago, and we get our share of immigrants. If you want an
immigration flamefest, try alt.politics.immigration and
misc.immigration.usa and flame away.
You get plenty of people on both sides, with people like "Just Wondering"
who insist that we can house a billion people and the opponents, some of
whom are racist, of course. Let's face the sad fact. Mexico is an
environmental disaster from overpopulation, fuelled in large part by
outdated, ludditic, Catholics. And when Mexico City deteriourates, guess
where they will come?
Bloody Viking
: You're in dire need of a critical thinking course. That's like saying a sink
: "must be overflowing" the minute the water begins to rise. You offer no
: time-frame or physical parameters for that wild claim. The truth is that
: congestion is increasing in most places, but it hasn't peaked everywhere.
: The *process* of population growth and congestion is what intelligent people
: look at. I defy you to explain how L.A.'s traffic (or that of any metro area)
: will get better with *more* people - and don't change the subject with fantasy
: technologies.
He'll probably recycle that time-line fallacy. Which I can help dispel
now. One time, I saw in a book of wierd facts that in 1900 average traffic
speed in New York was 11 mph, and as of writing of the book, 8 mph.
Bloody Viking
: The age of petroleum will end, of course. Oil will become
: obsolete. The wise thing to do with a finite resource in an era
: of rapid technological progress is to use it up ASAP - before it
: gets obsolete.
Actually, you could use the leftovers for petrochemicals. So, you don't
want to use it all up. To make it last longer, you make only recyclable
plastics with it.
--
CAUTION: Email Spam Killer in use. Leave this line in your reply! 152680
Humans never fly. They either ride a flying bus or drive it.
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Joshua Halpern
> In article <73ssv8$8...@nnrp1.farm.idt.net>,
> Joshua Halpern <j...@IDT.NET> wrote:
> > In sci.environment Bloody Viking <nos...@tekka.wwa.com> wrote:
> >
> > > You can thank our insane immigration policies for the population growth in
> > > California.
> >
> > You mean the Okies?
> He was obviously talking about the Mexican border and refugees from
> overpopulated Asian lands. You must not live in California.
Oh sorry, I was just thinking of the 30s when they put up roadblocks
at the border to stop the Okies. What goes around, comes around.
josh halpern
n2mp
>Wild habitats should not be preserved. We are evolving
>towards a *controlled*, user-friendly, environment, in which only
>those species surround us that we know we need.
>Every infectious disease, every disease agent and
>every disease carrier, is a case of
>*excessive biodiversity*. They should all be
>either eliminated or re-engineered into something
>more friendly.
>Of course, biodiversity is not all bad, either. But we need
>to make it all good. The direction of progress here, as in all
>things, is *from the natural towards the artificial*.
>We are already surrounded by artificially-bred varieties,
>and they have become exceedingly useful symbionts.
The
>ecology in all populated parts of the world is
>already manmade
>Soon, artificial species - and later even artificial genera
>and higher taxons - will begin to enhance the planet's biodiversity -
>all genetically engineered to serve humanity.
You don't really believe that! Do you ?
Do you hope that one day, mankind will be able to destroy all unwanted
species or control a single animal specy ? Sweet dreams !
Don't forget that Nature (or God, depending on the way you see the world)
has been very creative and numerous lifeforms appeared on Earth during the 4
last billions years. Many today living species haven't been discovered yet,
and many are still apperaring and disapearing. Evolution is still operating
in every free available ecologic systems. And if mankind achieve in
destroying a specy, a new one will take the free space and devellop itself
without beeing under control. Moreover, genetic mutations are totally ramdom
and unpredictable, can occur anytime in any specy and then will be selected.
So any specy, even those that could be created in labs, can undergo a
random uncontrolled mutation, which will create a new specy. This new specy
could even become a threat for mankind or for our domestic animals. Don't
forget that those genetics mutations are responsible for appearing of virus
and bacterias resistance to drugs and for insects resistance to chemicals.
>Since anything can be improved, in time few
>pre-human species will be left, except as control samples.
>The planet will be a new Garden of Eden - its biodiversity
>all custom-made for human needs and human delight.
Oh, oh ! Wake-up ! :)))
What about unknown and uncontrolled viruses, such as Ebola, which can
destroy in less than one year 90% of mankind ? Only those who are lucky
enough to get the right protective genes will survive. Don't forget that
there no known drug or vaccine against those viruses and that they can
travel around the world within one day (carried by infected people).
And such cases already occured in the past : smallpox was the conquistador's
supreme weapon against native americans, bubonic plague killed more than the
half of european people during the 14th century, ...
And how will you eradicate species such as mosquitoes, rats and al. ?
Increasing amounts of chemicals are flooded in nature with less and less
efficiency, because resistant individuals are progressively selected and
reproduce.
Also remember that man is the single specy which can destroy itself. Already
he undergoes its silly world ruling ambition drawback : more and more people
are ill because of pollution. Mankind is even unable to control its own
wastes and you hope that it will be able to control the world !!!
Nature remains the master. During the past, many ecological disasters
occured, most of living species were destroyed (even dinosaurs have been
destroyed from a 100m diameter rock from space !). But some others survived,
muted and progressively gave rise to all the present living species, and man
is one of those. Biodivesity is made from genetics mutations and we still
operate even when man will have disappeared. Man will never control Nature
but if he doesn't take care of its environement by taking an increasing
controll of its own activities, he will destroy itself.
Sorry, but I had to bring your feet back on the ground. :)))
Best regards.
Thanks to Eurythmics for this message title.
N.B. : English is not my mother language. So, please, be compliant with me
for my grammar and my expressions.
Just Wondering
al_j...@usa.net wrote:
> In article <73sv79$5rj$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> > > > But they wouldn't be! They would live more spaciously than
> > > > we live now - as *we* live far more spaciously than our
> > > > less numerous ancestors did.
> > >
> > > We do? Not the last time I looked in any metro area.
> > An illogical answer. You did not look at urban areas in the days
> > of your less numerous ancestors. Comparison between two
> > situations cannot be achieved by looking at one of them, but
> > not the other. The fact that you made such a conclusion
> > from looking at just one, shows how strongly biased
> > you are. So biased that it makes you incapable of elementary
> > logic where your obsession is concerned...
> No, you're just a mental patient trying to redraw reality.
In that case why argue with me? Bad logic again.
>Once again
> you've twisted the time-line to compare pre-industrial life to today. I will
> say for the 3rd time that the REAL comparison involves modern people using
> modern technologies in modern times,
Then why have you not been able to make any such comparison?
>with obvious increasing congestion as the population grows.
Congestion is, on the whole, decreasing in every respect - with
short-term fluctuations. The fluctuations are not accidental
but necessary - because they convey to the market what problems
need to be solved.
> It's a blatant lie to claim that congestion isn't
> growing on land, air and water every year,
There you go again... working yourself into a rage
to convince at least yourself, if no one else.
If you want to observe such things year by year, and not
decade by decade - look at the fast technological lane, at
computers; look at the Internet. *Its* imminent
death by congestion was predicted yearly - the number
explosion is fantastic - yet here were are, with
better connectivity than ever.
>and it's pointless to keep
> using pre-technology days as a baseline.
It is pointless to speak of "pre-technology days" - there
haven't been any for the last
two million years. Man is a technological animal.
It is especially illogical to complain about "pre-technology days"
in response to being shown how *technology* solved congestion
problems in those very days!
As for the baseline: *long-term* trends can only be discovered by
examining *long-term* data. But global population cannot possibly
reach a trillion in the short term - perhaps even you
understand that. This cannot occur in a century
or two; therefore, to predict the results, it is proper to
compare data over similar intervals.
Fortunately, population growth has been going on for many
centuries; it has been explosive for the last
two centuries - so there is enough long-term data on how
it affects congestion. The answer is unmistakable:
the more people, the less crowded their life gets.
Just Wondering
> > > And where do you
> > > propose that animal species will live as hordes of people take over their
> > > already shrinking habitat?
[Just Wondering:]
> > I've discussed that many times. Extensive wild areas *could*
> > easily be preserved even with a trillion people on the planet - but
> > I believe they *should* not be.
> I don't really care what the mentally ill believe.
Referring to me? And yet you have just asked what I
"propose"... Are you quite healthy?
> > Wild habitats should not be preserved. We are evolving
> > towards a *controlled*, user-friendly, environment, in which only
> > those species surround us that we know we need.
> We've already tamed most of nature and many people would find life dull with
> all the risk and adventure stripped away.
There's still too much unwelcome risk in our lives. Look at
the road casualty statistics and the homicide statistics.
As for adventurous people, they have no difficulty
in getting more risk. There are so many dangerous sports
and lifestyles. Why find problems where none exist?
>Why do you think people go camping
> and hiking?
Well, that is one way - though of course most camping and
hiking isn't risky.
> You'd have us taking vacations in stainless steel museums with
> photos of vanished wilderness on the walls.
We could have parks of carefully managed wilderness, full
of well-staged dramatic and aesthetic effects.
Nature has nice spots, but they are separated
by wide dreary expanses. For example, trees are
seen to their best advantage in an arboretum, not
in a wild wood.
What's more, virtual reality can bring all nature
from all continents to one's bedside, with all the
delights concentrated, recombined and customized to
one's taste. Even now, I enjoy watching wild
nature shows on TV. It took many skilled cameramen
many years to find these wonderful scenes - one can't expect
to be as lucky in one vacation. Yet TV is only a feeble hint
of what advanced virtual reality can be - more lifelike
than life.
> For many it would be the
> equivalent of looking at photos of dead relatives. I suspect that a
> disability prevents you from getting outdoors and you want to see everyone
> robbed of the privilege.
I do get out, to walk my dog to the lake. He is a
Labrador and likes water. We both enjoy the outdoors.
Do you realize that the global average population density,
even with a trillion people, would be suburban?
Just Wondering
> > I am all for being kind to animals - but wild nature treats
> > them with unspeakable cruelty.
> > So kindness is not a valid argument against change.
> I get it. Let them go extinct to put them out of their so-called misery.
That, or live in artificial pleasant conditions, not starved,
not riddled through with countless parasites, cared for
in sickness. Also explored for development potential, and
helped to evolve into something even better.
> What sort of upbringing led to those twisted, anthropomorphic priorities?
Well, higher animals *can* suffer. It is only anthropomorphic to
*exaggerate* their similarities with people, not to recognize them.
But if one is so hardbolied as not to pity animals, why
should one then care - emotionally - if they go extinct?
One can have empathy for a warm living thing, but
for a cold abstraction like a *species*? What sort of
perverse upbringing can lead to *such* attitudes?
The loss to science, of course, is a real consideration
- but saving them *ex situ* can take care of that.
> > >I suppose you think it's fine that animals only survive in zoos?
> > And labs.
> I'd be wasting time explaining the arrogance of that position.
Then it must remain unexplained.
> > The planet will be a new Garden of Eden - its biodiversity
> > all custom-made for human needs and human delight.
> So all that matters is what a certain percentage of selfish people desire?
> What a noble philosophy you've got there.
Humanism...
Just Wondering
al_j...@usa.net wrote:
> In article <73tvnv$vc6$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> There is little sanity in Simon's thinking.
How would *you* know?
> You may as well quote an
> astrologer's forecast.
I have quoted, not a forecast, but a statistical survey,
and an analysis of how an economic mechanism works.
But forecasts are exactly what has proved Simon right.
*His* forecasts have worked, and not by some accident, but
through exactly the mechanisms that he described.
His opponents' forecasts, based on the opposite
assumptions, failed ignominiously. He has *proved*
his case, conclusively. He is, simply, right.
Simon has finally put paid to Malthus, as Copernicus
and Kepler have put paid to Ptolemy.
> See: [...]/zpg/[...]
I have Simon's books - there's no need for some /zpg/
dimwit to introduce them to me by means of out-of-context
quotes.
> Here are two famous (indefensible) quotes from Simon's "The Ultimate
> Resource:"
The quotes are very good if you understand them.
> 1) "Our energy supply is non-finite, and oil is an important example...the
> number of oil wells that will eventually produce oil, and in what quantities,
> is not known or measurable at present and probably never will be, and hence
> is not meaningfully finite."
>
> 2) "For example, the length of a one-inch line is finite in the sense that it
> bounded at both ends. But the line within the endpoints contains an infinite
> number of points; these points cannot be counted, because they have no
> defined size. Therefore the number of points in that one-inch segment is not
> finite. Similarly, the quantity of copper that will ever be available to us
> is not finite, because there is no method (even in principle) of making an
> appropriate count of it, given the problem of the economic definition of
> "copper," the possibility of creating copper or its economic equivalent from
> other materials, and thus the lack of boundaries to the sources from which
> copper might be drawn."
> Quote #1 is blatantly insane, and in case you didn't figure it out, quote #2
> becomes nutty when Simon assumes the word "Similarly" applies to a physical
> resource like copper the same way it applies to a theoretical line.
Physical objects and mathematical objects can of course
be similar in important ways. That's why mathematical physics
works so well.
There is nothing wrong in applying the word "similarly"
to objects of a totally different nature.
E.g., if I had said: you are incapable of gazing long
at the sun; similarly, you can't understand Julian Simon's
logic - that would not imply that gazing and understanding are
psychologically or biologically the same. The similarity is
limited, but it would be sufficient for my point.
That mathematical object and that
economic (not _physical_) resource are indeed totally
different - however, they are both finite in one sense, but not
in another sense. That is the only intended similarity.
The word "finite" can have very different
meanings, and confusing them can lead to false conclusions.
In particular, some of Zeno's famous paradoxes are based
on such confusion wrt space and time.
*Similarly*, confusing different senses
in which an economic resource can be finite has led
to some false predictions. This is what Simon was
telling you.
These quotes are, however, not a good
introduction to Simon's work: they are excerpts from
a philosophical *digression* discussing the many meanings
of finitude. They are quite intentionally paradoxical
in form, intended to challenge the reader's old
preconceptions and to flex his brain. To those who understand
them, they are a pleasant way to take a break between chapters.
Those who do not understand them, can skip them.
>Simon's
> writings are full of similar false assumptions; he can't be forgiven for
> "occasional mistakes." The basic disease of cornucopians is that they fail to
> draw distinctions between abstract and tangible entities.
This is the exact opposite of the truth. Simon makes
a specialty of drawing such distinctions where many
others do not.
A good example is the mistake you have made above -
calling copper a "physical resource". This fails to
draw a distinction crucial to undertanding Simon.
The *mineral* is physical; but only economic conditions make
a *resource*. The _word_ "copper" can be used for both,
but not with the same meaning. Each of the two meanings is on a
different level of abstraction, appropriate to a different
class of problems.
The resource may be scarce even if the mineral is
abundant - e.g., if it is too hard to extract.
On the other hand, the resource can be effectively infinite
even when the amount of mineral in earth core is finite.
One simple scenario (not the most important) where this is
logically possible is unlimited recycling: one can have a
ton of copper, yet utilize a hundred tons of it over time.
The mineral's abundance can be measured in tons; but the
abundance of a resource - its present and anticipated future
availability - is measured by its market price.
Bloody Viking
: I have quoted, not a forecast, but a statistical survey,
: and an analysis of how an economic mechanism works.
But economists don't get it right every time. Can an economist predict
when Greenspan is going to trash-talk?
: But forecasts are exactly what has proved Simon right.
: *His* forecasts have worked, and not by some accident, but
: through exactly the mechanisms that he described.
And so has the people who say there's no wolf around when the wolf cryer
bitches about wolves. Sooner or later, the wolf cryer is right, the sheep
are eaten, and everyone's pissed off.That's the problem with wolf-cryers.
: Simon has finally put paid to Malthus, as Copernicus
: and Kepler have put paid to Ptolemy.
You are the equal but opposite of a Jay Hanson. Who ever is eventually
right doesn't matter in that EITHER outcome sucks. A dieoff sucks, but so
does a planet crawling with people scratching for a step better than total
poverty and regimentation. Yuck. I don't know which is worse, an
overcrowded planet with an infinite power supply to enable us to crowd
ourselves to death, or a dieoff.
If those are the only two choices, I want a brand new starship. With all
the options.
al_j...@usa.net
Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > I don't really care what the mentally ill believe.
>
> Referring to me? And yet you have just asked what I
> "propose"... Are you quite healthy?
I am quite sane. You however....!
> > We've already tamed most of nature and many people would find life dull with
> > all the risk and adventure stripped away.
>
> There's still too much unwelcome risk in our lives. Look at
> the road casualty statistics and the homicide statistics.
And what the hell does that have to do with nature? You've mastered the
art of changing the subject whenever it's convenient.
> >Why do you think people go camping and hiking?
>
> Well, that is one way - though of course most camping and
> hiking isn't risky.
You missed my entire point, and I know it will never sink in.
> We could have parks of carefully managed wilderness, full
> of well-staged dramatic and aesthetic effects.
Our national parks are already basically that. They are becoming so
overcrowded that they are starting to resemble museums.
> Nature has nice spots, but they are separated
> by wide dreary expanses. For example, trees are
> seen to their best advantage in an arboretum, not
> in a wild wood.
Can I at least get you to admit that your value system is radically different
from most people's? Even if you think your trillion fantasy will fly, at
least acknowledge that few people would *want* it to work.
> I do get out, to walk my dog to the lake. He is a
> Labrador and likes water. We both enjoy the outdoors.
> Do you realize that the global average population density,
> even with a trillion people, would be suburban?
Not true at all, unless we paved over most remaining wilderness - which you
would approve of. This is not really a debate; it's a clash of value systems,
and your values are alien to me. If you have a list of others who share your
"vision" I'd like to see it. I don't think even Julian Simon wanted to see a
trillion people.
A.J.
al_j...@usa.net
Just Wondering <jw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > Once again you've twisted the time-line to compare pre-industrial life to
> > today. I will say for the 3rd time that the REAL comparison involves
> > modern people using modern technologies in modern times,
>
> Then why have you not been able to make any such comparison?
I don't understand what you are asking. You tend to snip comments heavily to
remove context, but I'm sure I addressed your point (whatever it is)
somewhere.
> >with obvious increasing congestion as the population grows.
>
> Congestion is, on the whole, decreasing in every respect - with
> short-term fluctuations. The fluctuations are not accidental
> but necessary - because they convey to the market what problems
> need to be solved.
That is absolute horseshit, but since you don't believe ME, I invite you to
paste this link into your browser:
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&kl=XX&q=%2B%22population+growth%22+%
2Bcongestion+%2B%22urban+sprawl%22&search=Search
If it doesn't paste accurately, go to http://www.altavista.com/ and use this
exact string: +"population growth" +congestion +"urban sprawl"
I suppose the 250+ links you find and the wealth of data therein will be
invisible to your eyes? Having said that, I'm done wasting time with
this.
A.J.
http://www.jps.net/zpg/islands.htm
StellrJ
>even with a trillion people, would be suburban?
>
There are many people for whom the suburbs are too crowded. That is why those
who can afford to buy vacation homes in the mountains.