Too many people?

[Politesse]

The human population is simply too high*. I do NOT offer any remedy (though some Infidels will pretend that I advocate massacring babies), but let's not bury our heads in the sand and pretend that overpopulation is not a major problem.

How perfectly useless, to demand inaction on the real issues that threaten the planet in favor of solving "overpopulation", but offer no solution for overpopulation either.

Hunh?

Where did I "demand inaction" on any threatening issues, real or not?

And I am not allowed to discuss overpopulation if I don't provide a remedy?

In a math thread, may I discuss the Riemann Hypothesis if I can't prove it?
If someone asks for an explanation of the Poincare Conjecture I won't be allowed to answer unless I understand Perelman's proof??

Yes, I realize that I'm overworking the confused emoticon. That's because I find your comment UTTERLY BAFFLING.

Of course you're allowed to do all those things. But if you have no intention of working on any of those problems, I don't really see the point.

 

[Politesse]

Suppose, as a hypothetical, that we were to execute and incinerate or bury half of the world's children over the course of next five years. What ecological problems would be immediately resolved, and how? Specifically?

 

[Elixir]

Fertilizer shortages would be mitigated.
Is that sufficient to address your demand?
I think it would be more humane to bury half the adults.

 

[bilby]

Not really.

I don't know how to describe how utterly Christian that view is.

People are not the point and frankly, I think the problem can be addressed a third way: encouraging all the lifestyles that people can be and are generally happy with that don't lead to folks having children.

To me it seems like the point is to enjoy our time while we are here, and that can be done without so many babies.

I didn't say babies were the point of the exercise.

I said people. Actual living-right-now people, (some of whom like the idea of having children).

Children are certainly not the point of the exercise; Some people like the idea of playing football, and no reasonable society would prohibit them from doing so, unless and until their particular choice of lifestyle was clearly and demonstrably preventing others from doing whatever it is that they want to do.

People are the point, and people like freedom.

Given that we have now shown that when people are given control over the number of children they have (without having to do something absurdly distasteful, like completely abstain from the kinds of sexual activities that can result in pregnancy) choose, on average, to have fewer babies than are necessary to sustain the current population, there's bugger-all reason to tell those who do want children that they mustn't have them. It would be just as pointlessly cruel as telling them that football is now prohibited.

The Christians (and others) who think adding more people is the point can go fuck themselves, or each other, or whatever. They're wrong, on almost every possible level. But the main way in which they are wrong is that they want to tell everyone else what to do. Which is just as wrong when you tell everyone that they should have loads of children as it is when you tell them they should have none.

People are the point of the exercise, and people should not be forced to do stuff by other people, without a very good reason. Religion is a shit reason, and population alarmism has a LOT in common with other religions. It's a doomsday cult that is based on pure conjecture being sold to the gullible as the Truth.

 

[bilby]

To me it seems like the point is to enjoy our time while we are here

Yes, that's exactly what I said.

We = People = Population.

 

[Politesse]

Fertilizer shortages would be mitigated.

How? Why?

 

[bilby]

Mars?! 1% Earth gravity, solar radiation, no oxygen to breath Mars?!

Wait, 1% Earth gravity?

Is Mars really much smaller than everyone thinks? Perhaps it's tiny, but not as far away as we thought...

 

[Elixir]

Fertilizer shortages would be mitigated.

How? Why?

Decomposed bodies and ashes make great fertilizer!

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Mars?! 1% Earth gravity, solar radiation, no oxygen to breath Mars?!

Wait, 1% Earth gravity?

Is Mars really much smaller than everyone thinks? Perhaps it's tiny, but not as far away as we thought...

I have no idea where I heard that, but yeah, 1/3 or so-ish. My bad. Think there was a crossed wire with the atmosphere of Mars.

 

[Politesse]

Fertilizer shortages would be mitigated.

How? Why?

Decomposed bodies and ashes make great fertilizer!

They do not, in fact.

 

[rousseau]

we're already seeing mass starvation due to global warming

No, we aren't.

Mass starvation was a twentieth century phenomenon, and hunger on that scale hasn't been seen anywhere for thirty years or more - during which time the population in the last place to see a major famine, Ethiopia, has almost quadrupled.

The problem, then and now, that leads directly to large numbers of people suffering from hunger and even starvation, is war.

Not global warming; Not population growth; War.

The key thing that changed at the end of the 1980s, that led to the end of mass starvation, was that the end of the Cold War meant an end to the proxy wars between the Cold War powers that had plagued the third world since the "end" of WWII.

My reading of the situation is that climate change is already affecting the African Sahel. Would you say that's not the case?

It certainly is. It's not causing mass starvation though.

Would you say that it's exacerbating food insecurity? What impacts were you thinking?

Stresses are on the system, but it'd be a stress if there were 1 billion people on Africa or 100 million... because the issue is much much more supply lines, than lack of food. And the supply line issue is caused by geopolitical instability and crap governance.

Just look at Ukraine and the impact an invasion can have on the supply chain for grains. That isn't being caused by population values, it is being caused by assholes (metaphorical ones).

Right, but climate change is being caused by population numbers (not the literal number of people - but a population density that's achieved high energy use per capita). And climate change is disrupting supply lines and leading to more severe and frequent weather events in the African Sahel. So if you connect those two - we've reached a critical mass of population density / technical ability to the extent that we've impacted the environment. Those environmental effects are leading to millions of people being more food insecure than they were before. This is just the start of global warming's impact.

If we're waiting for a plague of locusts to swarm down and kill a billion people, over-population is never going to have an impact. But the severe effects we've caused to the environment are already being seen. The actual, literal number of people is a distraction.

 

[Elixir]

Fertilizer shortages would be mitigated.

How? Why?

Decomposed bodies and ashes make great fertilizer!

They do not, in fact.

Ooookay …. I won’t ask how you know. But maybe you’re doing it wrong.

 

[Politesse]

Fertilizer shortages would be mitigated.

How? Why?

Decomposed bodies and ashes make great fertilizer!

They do not, in fact.

Ooookay …. I won’t ask how you know.

Took a course on epidemiology back in the day.

It is possible to compost human bodies safely and the practice is becoming more popular lately, but it uses more energy than it saves to do so, so people are mainly doing it for sentimental reasons rather than ecological.

 

[Elixir]

Fertilizer shortages would be mitigated.

How? Why?

Decomposed bodies and ashes make great fertilizer!

They do not, in fact.

Ooookay …. I won’t ask how you know.

Took a course on epidemiology back in the day.

Not horticulture then? Hmph.

 

[bilby]

The actual, literal number of people is a distraction.

QFT.

Population isn't relevant to any solutions to any of our problems.

We have a lot of people who want to use a lot of energy? OK, we need a way to get that energy without burning fossil fuels.

To suggest that we could continue to burn fossil fuels, but first we should kill off a lot of the people so that we don't generate too much carbon dioxide, is batshit insane.

It's neither a solution to the problem, nor the kind of suggestion a non-psychopath would even consider.

Yet in neo-Malthusian circles, it's considered not only to be a possible solution, but to be the only solution. These folks are nuts.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It certainly is. It's not causing mass starvation though.

Would you say that it's exacerbating food insecurity? What impacts were you thinking?

Stresses are on the system, but it'd be a stress if there were 1 billion people on Africa or 100 million... because the issue is much much more supply lines, than lack of food. And the supply line issue is caused by geopolitical instability and crap governance.

Just look at Ukraine and the impact an invasion can have on the supply chain for grains. That isn't being caused by population values, it is being caused by assholes (metaphorical ones).

Right, but climate change is being caused by population numbers (not the literal number of people - but a population density that's achieved high energy use per capita). And climate change is disrupting supply lines and leading to more severe and frequent weather events in the African Sahel.

Climate change was caused by the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere starting in the Industrial Revolution and aggregating upon itself well into the 20th century. Poor planning due to population expansion, agricultural methods, and deforestation helped create conditions that would lead to devastating floods and dust storms in the US in the first half of the 20th century. It'd be better planning in the 50s that'd allow for a massive population expansion in the United States, but that'd continue to poison the environment, until we stopped allowing that in the 1970s.

We've been ruining out environment repeatedly, learning (eventually), and improving on the issues. We have gotten pretty good. In fact the US improved so much, our air is much cleaner... in part thanks to the off shoring of pollution to China, as well as some other environmental modifications. But overall, we are generating a lot less pollutants than we were. But, the trouble is, we still have a lot of CO2 that we already added to the atmosphere... and we are continuing to add more CO2 these days because some belong to a dino shit cult that won't let us see to more progress. They yearn for the days when rivers burned and the sky looked like Beijing's.

So if you connect those two - we've reached a critical mass of population density / technical ability to the extent that we've impacted the environment. Those environmental effects are leading to millions of people being more food insecure than they were before. This is just the start of global warming's impact.

If we're waiting for a plague of locusts to swarm down and kill a billion people, over-population is never going to have an impact. But the severe effects we've caused to the environment are already being seen. The actual, literal number of people is a distraction.

No one is starving in the world due to a lack of food being produced. In fact, the US isn't producing as much as it could!

 

[laughing dog]

The absolute number of people is not simply a distraction. The population total influences the order of magnitude of the problems.

Now, that doesn't mean a partial solution is to systematically reduce the number of people on the planet.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The actual, literal number of people is a distraction.

QFT.

Population isn't relevant to any solutions to any of our problems.

We have a lot of people who want to use a lot of energy? OK, we need a way to get that energy without burning fossil fuels.

To suggest that we could continue to burn fossil fuels, but first we should kill off a lot of the people so that we don't generate too much carbon dioxide, is batshit insane.

It's neither a solution to the problem, nor the kind of suggestion a non-psychopath would even consider.

Yet in neo-Malthusian circles, it's considered not only to be a possible solution, but to be the only solution. These folks are nuts.

Population growth requires planning. The United States didn't expand like it did in the 50s and 60s without planning! The trouble starts when irrational political pressures impede on planning.

Oh and money... it's gonna take money. A whole lot of spending money. It's gonna take plenty of money. To do it right. And in some places like the US, the mere concept of innovation, investment, and change is treated as if it were a cancer.

 

[Merle]

Where's the evidence that today's population is too high?

Its in the math.

This thread jogged my mind back to an old blog that I loved 10 years ago and had forgotten. Tom Murphy is a physicist who writes an excellent blog, Do the Math, in which he uses physics and math to show the extent of the human predicament. He has a few posts there that address your question.

Finite Feeding Frenzy Spoiler alert: This story doesn't have a happy ending.

Why Worry about Collapse? "If we don’t heed these concerns, it seems the likely outcome is overshoot; collapse; failure."

Peak Oil Perspective A big problem.

The Energy Trap Ah, no worries, you will just build some windmills? Where is the energy going to come from to make them all?

Why Not Space? Uh, no, you won't just trash this planet and find another one to move to.

Galactic-Scale Energy It doesn't matter how smart we are. We can't continually increasing energy usage 2.3% each year.

The Alternative Energy Matrix Which one of these can save us?

The Cult of Civilization Some surprising insights, including that Thomas Malthus was an optimist!

Post Index

 

[laughing dog]

From what I can tell, earth's population was estimated to be about 2 billion people about 100 years ago (1927). It is insane to think it is possible to intentionally return to that level without inhuman behavior.