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quote: Originally posted by Seskinreay:
The news from China today is that one maybe three "higher" forms of life (in the Yangtze River) have been declared extinct (the Fresh Water Dolphin for sure). The reason - two many people and too much industry along the river. Does it matter, probably as much as an expired Canary in a coal mine, but what the hell. Also, athletes around the world are not planning to acclimatise near the Beijjing Olympic site due to the overwhelming atmospheric pollution. They will instead, get in, run their race and get out!! It may be media spin but the images of the Yangtze and the Olympic sites were depressing (in my view). |
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I view populations in a different way.
The size of any population is a balance between a number of forces.
There's an upward force which is an inevitable consequence of evolutionary biology. Animals multiply. We can't help it.
There's a limiting factor in the form of resources. Limit the resources and the population stabilizes or declines.
And there is a downward force from predation, disease and disaster.
I don't believe humans are sufficiently different from animals to break this law. The increasing human population is a numerical indicator of our ability to thrive and succeed. If it's moving up, we are doing ok. If it's moving down we have cause to be very worried.
Where humans can out-do animals is to radically transform the resources factor. Hunter gatherer humans were limited by findable food. Which limited the UK to a population of a few tens of thousands.
Agricultural technology vastly increased the food supply and enabled the UK to support millions.
The paradigm-shif to industrial technology allowed the UK to support an even larger population.
A solar-powered, de-industrialised, semi-agrarian planet sounds like a utopia. But no shift back to a lower-tech world can occur without losing a few billions of people. Any volunteers?
So either we'll come up with something even better, or we won't.
If the resources tail-off, the population will flatten. If there's a crisis the population will fall. Nature does this stuff all the time. If it does, it won't feel very nice.
I don't believe it is possible to pre-empt a downward trend and take action to avoid it.
You can't ask lions to lay-off the antelopes a bit. Just because individual human beings have intelligence does not mean that the population has a whole has intelligence.
I'm banking on another paradigm-shift. We've done it three times already.
C.
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quote: Originally posted by Carniphage:
I view populations in a different way.
The size of any population is a balance between a number of forces.
There's an upward force which is an inevitable consequence of evolutionary biology. Animals multiply. We can't help it.
There's a limiting factor in the form of resources. Limit the resources and the population stabilizes or declines.
And there is a downward force from predation, disease and disaster.
I don't believe humans are sufficiently different from animals to break this law. The increasing human population is a numerical indicator of our ability to thrive and succeed. If it's moving up, we are doing ok. If it's moving down we have cause to be very worried.
Where humans can out-do animals is to radically transform the resources factor. Hunter gatherer humans were limited by findable food. Which limited the UK to a population of a few tens of thousands.
Agricultural technology vastly increased the food supply and enabled the UK to support millions.
The paradigm-shif to industrial technology allowed the UK to support an even larger population.
A solar-powered, de-industrialised, semi-agrarian planet sounds like a utopia. But no shift back to a lower-tech world can occur without losing a few billions of people. Any volunteers?
So either we'll come up with something even better, or we won't.
If the resources tail-off, the population will flatten. If there's a crisis the population will fall. Nature does this stuff all the time. If it does, it won't feel very nice.
I don't believe it is possible to pre-empt a downward trend and take action to avoid it.
You can't ask lions to lay-off the antelopes a bit. Just because individual human beings have intelligence does not mean that the population has a whole has intelligence.
I'm banking on another paradigm-shift. We've done it three times already.
C.
Carniphage, I agree with most of the above but not a move back to a low-tech, semi agrarian, de-industrialised regime. The BAUers are good at putting these words in the Eco-Concerned mouths. We have been successful so far at stretching our resources boundaries, but at some point is has to break along the lines you describe. The vast majority of people do not seem to understand this. We have become so far removed from the earth we think it just goes on and on. I heard a woman on R5 this morning say "Who Cares" when discussing the plight of UK farmers in the face of the lastest Foot & Mouth outbreak. She is probably one of a group of people that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall highlighted a while ago who genuinely believe their food comes ready wrapped in the supermarket ! The key point is the lack of intelligence shown by a mass of people viewed as a single entity. Yet one sentence from the Pope along the lines of "Condoms are OK" and another means of tackling the problem would be available. James Lovelock advocates a high-tech future (with food made artificially to allow the earth to recover) and a much reduced population. We need a "soft landing" in his words to avoid the extreme discomfort of "Gaia" sorting it for us. Its a difficult one but if we bury our heads in the sand we've no chance of fixing it. All the clever guys on this forum bicker about the rights and wrongs of AGW. I think, just gut feel (thanks to the quality of debate put forward by the AGWers), that AGW is probably happening but it is one symptom of a greater malaise. How do we get the bigger picture onto the agenda? |
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Seskinrey, World population will balance not through human action but through human inaction. You will not persuade people to stop breeding. What will happen is that as people become richer they will lose the fear that if they don't have lots of children no one will look after them in their old age and that most of their children will die. It will stabilise.
As regards the pope, he decided that if you ban condoms then more catholics will be born and his power will grow. So no way that position will change.
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quote: Originally posted by Son of Mulder:
Seskinrey, World population will balance not through human action but through human inaction. You will not persuade people to stop breeding. What will happen is that as people become richer they will lose the fear that if they don't have lots of children no one will look after them in their old age and that most of their children will die. It will stabilise.
As regards the pope, he decided that if you ban condoms then more catholics will be born and his power will grow. So no way that position will change.
SoM, not sure about the inaction bit. Re the Pope, that is the sort of paradigm shift I'm talking about. Its interesting that many religious commentators I see on my screen these days react to Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens by dropping the mumbo jumbo and explaining religion in terms that many more (agnostic/atheistic) people can accept, so maybe there is hope there. This is the 21st century, yet in religious dialogue terms we are only just emerging from the dark ages and other groups appear to want to take us back again. |
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With HIV around, will condoms reduce the population or increase it?
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quote: Originally posted by Carniphage:
With HIV around, will condoms reduce the population or increase it?
It will help reduce it (as one line of attack) and hopefully save many of the living from a terrible disease. Your not advocating something as crude as HIV as a means of reducing population are you? I absolutely do not want to see a single soul die of a terrible disease if it can be avoided. Interestingly, the implication a few posts back was that anybody who suggested population reduction as the solution to all known ills was an advocate of the Khmer Rouge ! For the record, I advocate sensible solutions such as birth control leading to natural attrition and (gasp) education. |
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quote: Originally posted by Seskinreay: quote: Originally posted by Carniphage:
With HIV around, will condoms reduce the population or increase it?
It will help reduce it (as one line of attack) and hopefully save many of the living from a terrible disease. Your not advocating something as crude as HIV as a means of reducing population are you? I absolutely do not want to see a single soul die of a terrible disease if it can be avoided. Interestingly, the implication a few posts back was that anybody who suggested population reduction as the solution to all known ills was an advocate of the Khmer Rouge ! For the record, I advocate sensible solutions such as birth control leading to natural attrition and (gasp) education.
Oh, and raising the third world out of poverty !! |
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quote: Your not advocating something as crude as HIV as a means of reducing population are you?
Oh not at all. But I am just not sure that catholic condoms would increase or decrease the world population. |
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quote: Originally posted by Carniphage: quote: Your not advocating something as crude as HIV as a means of reducing population are you?
Oh not at all. But I am just not sure that catholic condoms would increase or decrease the world population.
Are you not aware that b/millions blindly follow the dictates of religious leaders for fear of hell fire or promises of paradise? |
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Like I said earlier, I don't believe in the notion that population growth is a cause of problems.
I certainly don't buy the notion that animals can manage their fertility and hence avoid problems. Population growth is a force of nature as much as gravity.
If individuals did take measures to curtail their fertility, nature has a way of dealing with that kind of variation. You are politely asked to leave the gene pool.
Instead, I think populations are almost always a numerical indicator. A real-time read-out of the amount of resources available. If there's a mis-match between resources and population - it gets adjusted very rapidly indeed. Within a generation.
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quote: Originally posted by Carniphage:
Like I said earlier, I don't believe in the notion that population growth is a cause of problems.
I certainly don't buy the notion that animals can manage their fertility and hence avoid problems. Population growth is a force of nature as much as gravity.
If individuals did take measures to curtail their fertility, nature has a way of dealing with that kind of variation. You are politely asked to leave the gene pool.
Instead, I think populations are almost always a numerical indicator. A real-time read-out of the amount of resources available. If there's a mis-match between resources and population - it gets adjusted very rapidly indeed. Within a generation.
Carniphage, other animals are very much subject to the forces you describe but humans have been able to artificially widen their boundaries massively. That makes us unique. The explosive growth in world wide population since the 1950s (from 2bn to 6bn plus) has been due largely to a decreased death rate thanks to better health and welfare. This is good and long may it continue but the balance is becoming dangerously distorted surely? The population should level off at 11bn by 2050 according to Lomborg, but I can't help but think that this will hinder the ability of the third world to improve welfare and thus reduce the birth rate. If you accept that its much easier to manage a good standard of living and welfare for 1-2bn people rather than 11bn then surely we have to do something (artificial) about the birth rate? |
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Disagree strongly.
You are adopting a line that goes....
Human Population Growth is a sort of conscious decision. This decision is "unwise". It puts pressure on resources. And that pressure causes "danger".
It's a human-centric point of view but it's the wrong way round. It's resources that determine population size. The population can never be too big or too small. It is always just right. Always has been.
Over-population is effectively impossible, if there were just ten people more than the planet could handle, the death rate would exceed the birth rate until balance is restored.
Under population *is* occasionally possible. In Europe, following the black death, there were more resources than people. But within a generation or so the balance was rapidly restored.
Suggesting that humans are in some way in control of these numbers is implying that we have some special abilities to defy nature. We don't.
The only unique ability we have that distinguishes from animals is technology. Specifically the ability to turn things that previously were not resources, like soil and coal and rocks, into resources.
Our population growth will only tail-off if our ability to resource-ize the world tails off. And if the resource pool should decline, because one of the resources is finite (cough Oil cough)... Then a downwards adjustment will occur.
I think you are expressing a notion that it is somehow uncomfortable to live in a world where population is up against the resources buffer. But think about it, it *always* has been there.
Your idea that this natural balance should be "managed" is an utterly fascist and dangerous notion. You are literally calling on the intentional de-population of the planet. A mass cull of the many for the benefit of the elite few.
Yes living on nature's knife edge is all a bit red-in-tooth-and-claw. But I'd much prefer that to the Global Fertility Authority. Those guys are much meaner than Mother Nature.
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quote: Originally posted by Carniphage:
Disagree strongly.
You are adopting a line that goes....
Human Population Growth is a sort of conscious decision. This decision is "unwise". It puts pressure on resources. And that pressure causes "danger".
It's a human-centric point of view but it's the wrong way round. It's resources that determine population size. The population can never be too big or too small. It is always just right. Always has been.
Over-population is effectively impossible, if there were just ten people more than the planet could handle, the death rate would exceed the birth rate until balance is restored.
Under population *is* occasionally possible. In Europe, following the black death, there were more resources than people. But within a generation or so the balance was rapidly restored.
Suggesting that humans are in some way in control of these numbers is implying that we have some special abilities to defy nature. We don't.
The only unique ability we have that distinguishes from animals is technology. Specifically the ability to turn things that previously were not resources, like soil and coal and rocks, into resources.
Our population growth will only tail-off if our ability to resource-ize the world tails off. And if the resource pool should decline, because one of the resources is finite (cough Oil cough)... Then a downwards adjustment will occur.
I think you are expressing a notion that it is somehow uncomfortable to live in a world where population is up against the resources buffer. But think about it, it *always* has been there.
Your idea that this natural balance should be "managed" is an utterly fascist and dangerous notion. You are literally calling on the intentional de-population of the planet. A mass cull of the many for the benefit of the elite few.
Yes living on nature's knife edge is all a bit red-in-tooth-and-claw. But I'd much prefer that to the Global Fertility Authority. Those guys are much meaner than Mother Nature.
Interesting points here and I agree there is much danger in the Global Fertility Authority, but would this not be preferably to the mass extermination that could happen at the hands of Gaia if we push the boundaries too far? Re some specific points: "Suggesting that humans are in some way in control of these numbers is implying that we have some special abilities to defy nature. We don't." As you go on to say, our skills with technology (eg agriculture) suggest we can to a certain extent, so long as we don't completely exhaust the earth in the process, which is the danger we now face? A strength overdone becomes a weakness. "Your idea that this natural balance should be "managed" is an utterly fascist and dangerous notion. You are literally calling on the intentional de-population of the planet. A mass cull of the many for the benefit of the elite few." If it is fascist I did not intend it to be so. I merely thought it preferrable to Gaia's possible intervention. The scientists tell me that positive feedback is bad in environmental matters. I keep stating I don't advocate a mass cull. Its birth rate not death rate I am concerned with (why do you keep suggesting otherwise BTW?). What are your thoughts on the extinction of "higher" forms of animal life? Does it matter or can we afford to be totally selfish in our stewardship of the planet? |
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quote: Originally posted by Carniphage:
Yes living on nature's knife edge is all a bit red-in-tooth-and-claw.
C, there may also be a sting in the tail Wake up! The bees are on their knees"The implications for humanity of the disappearing bee are enormous: honeybees pollinate about 80 per cent of flowering crops, which in turn furnish one third of the human diet." Are we about to test your theory? |
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Great debate on population, I've been away. Actually in deepest Algeria where shortly at midday it will be 45 deg C!
Anyway WTF is a "BAUer" I take that is nothing to do with the Great Jack Bauer who will surely save us from environmental disaster in the next "greener" series of 24?
Seriously though.
I think the western worlds greatest risk of catastrophic depopulation will come at a point where food supply becomes yet more intensive and reliant more on technology than traditional farming methods. If this occurs then we are very vulnerable to famine if some aspect of this technology is impared
e.g. war, fuel shortage etc...
At the moment as has been said before population will be controlled by natural supply and demand. It would be wise not ot over intensify/extend farming methods to allow population to rise.
Aside from this if we were to hold food production steady would population stabilise or would it alternate between famine/growth?
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Could be an interesting experiment - I expect there will be a great deal of war and conflict in there though, which will probably last until the ecogarchs at the top holding the food supplies are overthrown and production goes on the increase again.
¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸ ¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸ buzz buzz buzz¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸ ¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸
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quote: Originally posted by Mubbers:
Great debate on population, I've been away. Actually in deepest Algeria where shortly at midday it will be 45 deg C!
Anyway WTF is a "BAUer" I take that is nothing to do with the Great Jack Bauer who will surely save us from environmental disaster in the next "greener" series of 24?
Seriously though.
I think the western worlds greatest risk of catastrophic depopulation will come at a point where food supply becomes yet more intensive and reliant more on technology than traditional farming methods. If this occurs then we are very vulnerable to famine if some aspect of this technology is impared
e.g. war, fuel shortage etc...
At the moment as has been said before population will be controlled by natural supply and demand. It would be wise not ot over intensify/extend farming methods to allow population to rise.
Aside from this if we were to hold food production steady would population stabilise or would it alternate between famine/growth?
Agree, take the siuation in China: encrouching desert, huge population (accounting for 60% (together with India and Pakistan) of world population growth (Lomborg)), not to meation the apparent threat from the "Asian Brown Cloud". Where is it heading? Not a good place? You surely wouldn't plan it that way? |
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Back to the thread... I saw this on eBay advertised as an "eco-friendly weed killer" and had a good giggle... Weed WizardThe Weed Wizard is an effective, eco-friendly method of weeding pathways, patios and walls without using hazardous chemicals or any hard work! It has a long handle to prevent any stooping and simply burns the weeds using Butane gas [not a hazardous chemical - oh no! - and very eco-friendly]. The gas ignites at the end of the Weed Wizard and targets the weeds with a flame. The garden is safe for use by children and pets immediately after use and the weeds die off in 1 or 2 days. This handy piece of equipment can also be used to de-ice pathways and frozen brass water pipes or to light the bbq. Making it is useful all year round! Any more for the bandwagon?
¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸ ¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸ buzz buzz buzz¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸ ¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸
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Maybe it would have been more correct to call it "organic"!
¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸ ¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸ buzz buzz buzz¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸ ¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸
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quote: Originally posted by Lucibee:
Back to the thread... I saw this on eBay advertised as an "eco-friendly weed killer" and had a good giggle...
Weed Wizard
The Weed Wizard is an effective, eco-friendly method of weeding pathways, patios and walls without using hazardous chemicals or any hard work!
It has a long handle to prevent any stooping and simply burns the weeds using Butane gas [not a hazardous chemical - oh no! - and very eco-friendly].
The gas ignites at the end of the Weed Wizard and targets the weeds with a flame. The garden is safe for use by children and pets immediately after use and the weeds die off in 1 or 2 days.
This handy piece of equipment can also be used to de-ice pathways and frozen brass water pipes or to light the bbq. Making it is useful all year round!
Any more for the bandwagon?
Weed burners have been around for years - this is so bandwagon it's untrue!! |
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