Is there any other brave soul out there in the Cyberhood that agrees that we are heading towards a world population problem? It’s getting lonely on this board on my side of the issue.
“All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.” F.Bacon
Brille
Okay, John John. What’s the ‘disaster’? Is a population of 7.5 billion a ‘disaster’? That’s what we’re heading for in the next 30 years. How about a population of 8.5 billion. The latest numbers are pointing to a population about that big, with the max population maybe hitting 10 billion by 2100.
Is that a ‘disaster’? Why? What is there about a population of 10 billion that is going to be a disaster for us or the Earth? Remember we’re going to have 100 years of technological development before we hit that number, if we ever do.
Be specific, please. No one here wants to hear vague ‘warnings’ about doom. Tell us what type of apocalypse this particular horseman is carrying.
BTW, I took issue with your comment that the earth’s population is growing ‘steadily’. The growth is not steady, and this is very important. It is slowing down, and will probably stop at some point. I’m guessing you don’t have any scientific training, or you would have understood that. I have no quarrel with the fact that the Earth’s population is currently increasing.
dhanson said
OK, so one impact of an increasing population, and a westernizing world, is increased carbon dioxide output. Since the mid 1980’s, global per capita carbon dioxide output has been about 1.1 metric tons/year (falling from about 1.2 metric tons/year in the 70s, but up overall 0.6 metric tons/year in the middle of the century). Total output has been rising, however, as the global population is increasing. Even if the population stabilizes at anywhere between 7 and 10 billion, that’s still a lot of carbon dioxide to dump in the atmosphere.
Per capita output should go down, as cleaner technologies, such as natural gas and hydrogen are utilized. Given the coal/petrochemical reserves in the world, and the location of many of these reserves (poorer countries eager to export for cash) I don’t see per capita output going down a whole lot, especially as industrializing nations increase their demands for energy as the standard of living is raised.
And the environmental establishment’s take on CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions is…?
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
Akatsukami said
Uhhh… I’m not quite sure what you mean by this. Why is the environmental establishment (whoever they might be) relevant to the probability of increased carbon dioxide emissions from an increased population?
Well, edward, granting that increased CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions are likely from a population that is increased in size and wealth over today’s, what of it? Your response to dhanson’s post, wherein he asked what the impending “disaster” was going to be, suggests that you feel such increased emissions are going to be of negative effect.
Now, I will heartily agree that the environmental establishment’s “take” on this doesn’t necessarily reflect what will happen. So, I will withdraw the question as irrelevant, and instead ask: Why should we consider the level of CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions as worthy of consideration?
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
dhanson
You’ll have to pay better attention. You might find some of the answers in a few posts in the last 5 pages.
World hunger, poverty and pollution are just some of the problems we’ll face, with a few billion more people. Edward was kind enough to add to the list. I might add that the ozone layer would further decrease with more pollution from more people and the green house effect would be excellerated. There is also the POTENTIAL for war from over crowded regions. History has shown that to be a key ingredient for war.
Ya know, dhanson, you can’t just open YOUR window and judge the rest of the world by what’s happening in Canada on YOUR street. Just because YOU have enough space doesn’t mean the rest of the world is as well off. India is a good example of the perils of unchecked population growth.
World population IS steadily increasing.
“All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.” F.Bacon
Brille
akats
Do YOU see it as a positive effect? Like, ah, do you think it would help clean out a person’s lungs and help to grow petunias?
Akats, what would we do with the garbage of another 3 billion people on this planet?
“All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.” F.Bacon
Brille
Akatsakumi said:
Well, carbon dioxide/global warming probably belongs in a great debate by itself, but…
Scientists have been debating for a while over the effects of increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The standard knee jerk reaction is to say “Hey, we’ve doubled the atmospheric CO2 levels in this century, this decade is the hottest on record, therefore global warming is real!” Unfortunately, just because they’re both happening at the same time doesn’t mean one is causing the other.
Additionally, climate modeling is a very inexact science. The primary literature on this topic notes this. Check out Kerr, * Science*, 1997, 276[/o], 1040 for a discussion on this. The consensus seems to be that “we don’t know for sure, but it’s becoming increasingly more likely that global warming is being caused by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.” A good summary of the probabilities of what may happen may be found in “Uncertainties in Projections of Human-Caused Climate Warming,” Mahlman, * Science, 1997, *278[/o], 1416. This is in the Policy Forum of Science, and Mahlman notes that there is a greater than 9 out of 10 chance that a “doubling of atmospheric CO2 over preindustrial levels is projected to lead to an equilibrium global warming in the range of 1.5 to 4.5 C.”
Would this be disastrous? Frankly, I don’t know. I’m not an atmospheric scientist, nor a climatologist. The best that the experts are doing is predicting global trends, such as rising sea levels and changes in oceanic circulation patterns. It’s easy to become hysterical about global warming, or jaded by predictions of doom. Mahlman notes that “Characterizations of the state of the science of greenhouse warming are often warped in differing ways by people or groups with widely varying sociopolitical agendas and
biases. This is unfortunate because such distortions grossly exaggerate the public’s sense of controversy about the value of the scientific knowledge base as guidance for
the policy deliberation process.”
It seems to me that the prudent course would be to limit carbon dioxide emissions. If global warming occurs, humans will most likely adapt. However, the process of adaptation could be expensive and messy. If current models are correct, the planet will warm as a result of human activities. In this light, lowering carbon dioxide emissions seems like a sensible precaution so as not to make any impending climate changes worse.
Whoops!
Sorry about the formatting errors in the previous post. I guess I still need to work on my URL! 
Ed
Would you agree that NOT adding a few billion more people to the world would avert climatic and environmental diasters?
“All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.” F.Bacon
Brille
John John:
There is less hunger and poverty now, in a world with six billion, than there was when we had 3 billion. And that includes food availability and wealth in even the poorest nations, which have all improved.
So, if adding 3 billion people did not create more hunger and poverty, by what logic do you assert that adding 1.5 billion more will?
This has been said about a dozen times, but I’ll say it again: Poverty and hunger are political problems, not problems of overpopulation. Some of the poorest, hungriest people in the world live in the most fertile areas, whereas Hong Kong is one of the wealthiest areas on earth and they are packed in like sardines and have no real resources to speak of.
As I said before, the first settlers in California starved to death. Now there are something like 30 million people living there in high style.
There is simply, inarguably, no connection between wealth and population density.
dhanson
Cite?
You simply ignore the fact that overpopulation CAUSES political problems. There are basic facts about the ill effects of overpopulation that you are not understanding. Too many people in areas that cannot support them are only sustainable if that group EXPANDS.
Do you think our current energy sources can sustain another 3 billion people? What about the billion more cars belching out fumes? What about the material to build them?
You need to take the rose tinted glasses off and contact the Sierra Club for the real picture.
“All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.” F.Bacon
Brille
Okay, we’re back into the religious assertions area again. After six pages of messages, we’re back to square one. So I think I’ll just bow out at this point.
dhanson
Any time you are asked some hard questions you claim it’s a religious discussion, it most cerainly is NOT, and bow out. If I were asserting any religious view I would say just say, keep birthing babies and population be damned. That is not what I’m saying.
Why do you think China wisely instituted population controls? Do you think they thought that more people would be a strain on the current population and cause problems? Of course they did. They would have MAJOR problems feeding, housing and controlling another few billion people and that is why they HAD to do something.
Canada has room for a few billion more, hey. So why don’t we put them there, hey? Do you think that would degrade the environment? You bet your bippy it would! All the clear rivers would get polluted, the timber would disappear, the wild life would disappear, the climate would change, the economy would change, politics would change, more poverty and hunger etc. Get the picture?
“All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.” F.Bacon
Brille
John John writes:
Cite?
The opposite view has much data to support it, which has, at best, simply been ignored – not refuted, not opposed with other data, but ignored. At worst, we see that those holding those pessimistic views are apparently incapable of looking at these data and drawing conclusions from them, but can repeat the cherry-picking that “environmental” organizations do.
You need to take off the blue-tinted glasses, stop staring at those Sierra Club press releases, and look at the data.
Now, on edward’s conjecture that anthropogenic CO[sub]2[/sub] releases may contribute to global warming, I agree that acting strictly according to the Precautionary Principle would require limiting those emissions at least to the point where they are lost in the background. Of course, strictly following the Precautionary Principle would lead to the sort of world favored in the propaganda of the more radical “environmental” organizations: a severely impoverished world of a few hundred million where vast, arbitrary, and irresponsible bureaucracies spend their time and energy ensuring that humanity will never again rise from its Iron Age condition. The “environmental” nomenklatura, of course, give the impression that, somehow, they will be exempted from this impoverishment – much in the same way that people would express a belief in reincarnation have always been Cleopatra, Napoleon, or Marie of Romania in a previous life, never some nameless peasant toiling in the fields.
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
akats
Do you see the contradiction? You are saying, the problms are not problems. So, why are they called problems?
Overpopulation has SEVERE political ramifications and has been shown to be a key element in causing border problems that lead to war.
akats
“All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.” F.Bacon
Brille
You know John John, we’ve been down this road before. When you came out claiming wildly exaggerated population scare numbers, we refuted them. You demanded cites. We backed it up in excrutiating detail, listing many different publications, excerpting them here, providing links for you to follow, etc. You apparently didn’t read them, or don’t know how to read critically, because you missed the point and kept repeating the same claims. We spelled it out in fine detail, even including some graphs. Your next tactic was then to attack the source and claim that the data was bogus because the U.N. was a puppet organization. You then ‘proved’ that by quoting some numbers from your favorite organization which were taken from the same source. You apparently never even bothered to read your own organization’s material other than the scare headlines (as they hoped). So now you were caught with you hand in the cookie jar, attacking the very source of the data that your own organization used.
When this was pointed out to you, and we finally came to some kind of agreement that your original premise was totally false and based on numbers that were simply wrong, you then moved on to plan B), which was to drop that whole line of attack and start from scratch somewhere else.
This is sophistry, not debate. You are incapable of learning, and it’s completely clear to me that no minds will be changed on this matter.
Your latest ad hoc statements are just as wrong as the first ones you made, but I have no desire to spend another 20-30 hours of my time doing research you should have done already, just to prove a point I already understand, and which you will simply ignore anyway. If others want to take up the battle on these new fronts, more power to them. I, for one, have learned my lesson - never try to win a debate with a zealot.
Oh, one more thing - I’m not surprised to hear that you approve of China’s forced birth control policy, even though it violates every human rights standard we know and has been denounced by most countries and Amnesty International. However, you might consider that India’s birthrate fell at the same time, and by roughly the same amount, without the government stomping all over the rights of its citizens. So much for enlightened policy.
I, too, have given up on arguing with a zeolot who has no skills for critical analysis. This is someone who still can’t grasp the difference between ‘growth’ and ‘rate of growth.’ (Hint: there is a very big difference in these concepts!).
And J-J’s endorsement of China’s one-birth policy speaks volumes on how he would solve the population “problem.” China’s policy involves forcing mothers to have abortions on any pregnancy after the first, and tacitly encouraging infanticide of millions of baby girls. This is reprehensible. The Chinese government knows infanticide is very common becuse of thousands of years of cultural tradition elevating males in the society, even if it may not be official policy. Silence breeds acceptance.
dhanson, I tried to warn you back on 11/03 07:53 (board time):
I’ve been watching this for two years, which is why I bowed out so quickly.
Sorry you had to spend all that energy to get to the same place.
Akatsukami, your point that you can’t let silliness go unanswered is a valid one, however, you may find, here, that Sisyphus had an easy chore.
Tom~