26-Jul-16 World View -- People in Germany are reeling after a week of violence / Spiegel asks: Is this the Apocalypse

[John]

John,
> Overpopulation is a myth. Please visit the website pop.org to
> learn the truth, here are some excerpts from the site: ...

> 1) “Food: there isn’t enough!” Since the time of Thomas Malthus,
> who lived in the early 1800s, doomsayers have gloomily predicted
> that mankind would outbreed its food supply, resulting in
> catastrophic famines. Yet the world currently produces enough food
> to feed 10 billion people, and there are only 7 billion of
> us. That is, with 7 billion human minds at work, we produce enough
> food for 10 billion human bodies.[1] Imagine how much food we can
> produce with 10 billion minds! ...

I honestly don't know how any so-called scientist could be
so stupid as to write something as ridiculous as this.

The only reason that the Green Revolution worked is because WW II
killed off huge masses of people who no longer had to be fed.
Hundreds of millions were killed in Europe, China, Bengal, east India,
northern Africa, and other places. If there had been no WW II, then
the population today would be around 50 billion, and the Green
Revolution would have failed dramatically. Except that a new world
war would have started long before the population reached anywhere
close to 50 billion.

> I'd recommend you look into some of the stuff John wrote on this
> subject a while to get some context.
> http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... #lab100443
> Scroll down to Malthus effect.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Here's a graph from that article of the population of China from 200
BC to 1700 AD. Every time the population goes above the line, people
are starving -- until the next war kills enough millions of people so
that "food technology" can catch up, and the population falls below
the line.



That's the way the world works.

[Jack Edwards]

John,

Regarding your graph of Chinese population. My eyeball says that if I extrapolate that line out to the year 2000 that the Chinese population should be around 300 million and it's over a billion. Well, we've discussed the world losing 1/3 of it's population, but is it realistic to think it could lose 2/3 or it's population?
Am I missing anything?

Regards,
Jack.

[Coordinated fires]

Thanks for the kind words, John. I certainly hope you're right about that.

On the green revolution, many of the benefits of this technology hasn't even been allowed to come fully online yet, take the new Beta-Carotene fortified rice strains for example. these have the potential to make vitamin A deficiency in certain parts of the world a thing of the past. This would prevent hundreds of millions of deaths alone and, maybe even more profound, prevent the deficiency that leads to cognitive underdevelopment. Imagine entire generations having even a marginally higher level of cognition combined with education and the accumulative effects of just that one innovation. However there are some organizations lobbying against this that have some very bizarre reasons for opposing this, but I digress... politics.

I could also touch on thorium reactor and related technologies and the potential to produce practically limitless energy, certainly enough to desalinate all the sea water you want for not only drinking but irrigation, imagine the possibilities of simply irrigating the deserts if we so choose.

[Jack Edwards]

Coordinated fires wrote:
On the green revolution, many of the benefits of this technology hasn't even been allowed to come fully online yet, take the new Beta-Carotene fortified rice strains for example. these have the potential to make vitamin A deficiency in certain parts of the world a thing of the past. This would prevent hundreds of millions of deaths alone and, maybe even more profound, prevent the deficiency that leads to cognitive underdevelopment. Imagine entire generations having even a marginally higher level of cognition combined with education and the accumulative effects of just that one innovation. However there are some organizations lobbying against this that have some very bizarre reasons for opposing this, but I digress... politics.

I could also touch on thorium reactor and related technologies and the potential to produce practically limitless energy, certainly enough to desalinate all the sea water you want for not only drinking but irrigation, imagine the possibilities of simply irrigating the deserts if we so choose.

What you're describing here is exactly the natural processes baked into the generational dynamics theory. The ability to produce food will grow exponentially, the ability to produce energy will grow exponentially - BUT the population will grow exponentially too - and at a higher slope than the exponential growth of food or energy. At some point demand from population will exceed supply of food or energy. Or, rather, at some point the efficiency at distributing food will be such that areas like the US will have plenty of food and (for instance) Egypt will be starving and Egypt will feel motivated to go to war (which will reduce it's population). It's built into the species. It's what we do. Run out of resources due to overpopulation and let disease and war decrease our population. If our species didn't do that, some other species would be the dominant life form on earth.

At some point, it's predicted that computers will start designing computers and the whole slope of the exponential growth of our technological break throughs will change. That point is discontinuous with the exponential curve and it's why it's termed the singularity. So - if we can avoid global war and starvation and disease before that happens, then it's possible that we can change the growth curve and change the generational dynamics cycle maybe. But - I don't think we'll make it that long.. A big war is in our future with a lot of people dying

As a father to Millenials, I surely hope John is right and that they will step up when the time comes.

Jack

[Coordinated fires]

Reminds me a bit of r/K selection theory, but cyclical in the same species.

On a side note, it seems the wealthier a nation becomes,the lower its birth rate falls. Most western countries I believe are now below replacement rate, hence the drive for such open immigration policies in the European welfare states which require lots of new bodies at the bottom of the entitlement pyramid.

I wonder if some of the developing counties responsible for much of the global population growth will also see declining birth rates as they grow wealthier, or if this is purely a western phenomenon. how would this fit into the framework?

[Jack Edwards]

coordinate fires said:
On a side note, it seems the wealthier a nation becomes,the lower its birth rate falls. Most western countries I believe are now below replacement rate, hence the drive for such open immigration policies in the European welfare states which require lots of new bodies at the bottom of the entitlement pyramid.

I wonder if some of the developing counties responsible for much of the global population growth will also see declining birth rates as they grow wealthier, or if this is purely a western phenomenon. how would this fit into the framework?

I would agree on your first paragraph. Immigration is a natural consequence of having too many people in one place and not enough in another. We can fuss all we want about immigration, but one of the ways we've been growing economies relies on growing the population - and when economies don't grow - it's perceived as a very bad thing... But just like water will flow to the lowest level, people will flow to opportunity, resources and space. And as much as our leaders might rail against immigration, they like economic growth more than they dislike immigration.

On your second paragraph - personally I think it's a sign of an unhealthy society/culture when population replacement/growth isn't occurring. Ultimately, it will lead to extinction and/or irrelevance of that culture. I believe John has discussed a cycle where after crisis wars there are cycles of increased birth rates. I expect we'll have a massive depopulation occur from war - sickness related to war and nuclear bomb usage. I expect after that that some cultures will spontaneously decide to reproduce more than others, and those that do will be the dominant cultures eventually.

Just my two cents. Time will tell,
Jack

[John]

> Regarding your graph of Chinese population. My eyeball says that
> if I extrapolate that line out to the year 2000 that the Chinese
> population should be around 300 million and it's over a billion.
> Well, we've discussed the world losing 1/3 of it's population, but
> is it realistic to think it could lose 2/3 or it's population? Am
> I missing anything?

I don't know the answer to your question. I note the following:

• China's population was so large in 1980 that it imposed an
  extremely harsh one-child policy. The policy was recently abandoned,
  not because China's policy is small enough, but to quell internal
  political dissent, meaning that the population explosion is growing
  even faster.
• China began not being able to feed itself as of the mid-2000s
  decade, and has been scouring the world, especially Africa, for huge
  wheat and rice imports.
• The South China Sea is an existential need for China, as it needs
  the fish to feed its people.
• Most people will not be killed by missiles, even nuclear missiles.
  Most will be killed the "old-fashioned way," with ground wars and
  famines.
• When China's war finally begins, they will face wars with Vietnam,
  India, Japan, Russia, and other countries, and will receive the
  support of Cambodia, Pakistan, and other countries, which means that
  there will be huge, massive slaughter throughout Asia.
• In addition, Chinese will face a massive civil war among different
  ethnic groups, including the Tibetans, Uighurs, and various sub-groups
  of the Han.

Putting all this together means that China is massively
over-populated, and so will receive a huge population adjustment from
the war. Whether that means that they'll be down to 300 million, I
don't know, but it's certainly possible.

[John]

Here's an article on the history of population control in China

Towards a better understanding of past fertility regimes: the ideas and practice of controlling family size in Chinese history

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... se_history

[Guest]

John,
> Overpopulation is a myth. Please visit the website pop.org to
> learn the truth, here are some excerpts from the site: ...

> 1) “Food: there isn’t enough!” Since the time of Thomas Malthus,
> who lived in the early 1800s, doomsayers have gloomily predicted
> that mankind would outbreed its food supply, resulting in
> catastrophic famines. Yet the world currently produces enough food
> to feed 10 billion people, and there are only 7 billion of
> us. That is, with 7 billion human minds at work, we produce enough
> food for 10 billion human bodies.[1] Imagine how much food we can
> produce with 10 billion minds! ...

I honestly don't know how any so-called scientist could be
so stupid as to write something as ridiculous as this.

The only reason that the Green Revolution worked is because WW II
killed off huge masses of people who no longer had to be fed.
Hundreds of millions were killed in Europe, China, Bengal, east India,
northern Africa, and other places. If there had been no WW II, then
the population today would be around 50 billion, and the Green
Revolution would have failed dramatically. Except that a new world
war would have started long before the population reached anywhere
close to 50 billion.

> I'd recommend you look into some of the stuff John wrote on this
> subject a while to get some context.
> http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... #lab100443
> Scroll down to Malthus effect.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Here's a graph from that article of the population of China from 200
BC to 1700 AD. Every time the population goes above the line, people
are starving -- until the next war kills enough millions of people so
that "food technology" can catch up, and the population falls below
the line.



That's the way the world works.

That does not even make sense. Indeed that answer was very stupid. Put simply more people = equals more food. By killing off the producers of food and the creators of food technology, then a food shortage will result. The graph about ancient China, was before any modern technological revolution. You might as well used a graph from the Neolithic era. The world has changed so much you need to use a more updated model. Did you even look at the website? You may have well have said that vaccines are useless. "The only reason the vaccine revolution worked was the WWII killed 50 million people. So those 50 million people did not need to be vaccinated. Had there been on WWII then those 50 million people would still be around and the vaccine revolution would have failed miserably".

[John]

> That does not even make sense. Indeed that answer was very
> stupid. Put simply more people = equals more food. By killing off
> the producers of food and the creators of food technology, then a
> food shortage will result. The graph about ancient China, was
> before any modern technological revolution. You might as well used
> a graph from the Neolithic era. The world has changed so much you
> need to use a more updated model. Did you even look at the
> website? You may have well have said that vaccines are
> useless. "The only reason the vaccine revolution worked was the
> WWII killed 50 million people. So those 50 million people did not
> need to be vaccinated. Had there been on WWII then those 50
> million people would still be around and the vaccine revolution
> would have failed miserably".

Actually, this is one of the dumbest things I've seen on this
issue.

Let's start with, "Put simply more people = equals more food." I
don't even know why anyone would think this, given that farmers are a
small percentage of the population, and the number of farmers is
dependent not on the size of the population but on the amount of
farmland available.

But what has been happening for millennia and is happening today is
that as population grows, they build cities on farmland and use up
scarce water resources. This is particularly happening today in
China, India and other countries.

Next: "The graph about ancient China, was before any modern
technological revolution." So first off you're not disagreeing with
the Malthusian concept in the past, only saying that "This time it's
different." That's the trouble with kids like you. You think that
anything you didn't think of yourselves is from the Neolithic era, and
so is wrong. The reason that Generational Dynamics works is because
kids like you refuse to learn from the past. At any rate, the
population is still growing faster than the food supply.

I don't know what vaccines have to do with this, but here's an article
on the antibiotic crisis, which may provide some lessons for the food
crisis in terms of smug reliance on technology:

The Antibiotic Resistance Crisis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/