Population growth
 

On 30/10/2015 10:32, Rod Speed wrote:


It didn’t. We didn’t even see another Black Death or anything like it.

In 1918 there was a flu epidemic that killed far more people than died
in WW1.

AIDS is still trimming the African population.

There will always be a new virus that will do a lot of damage before the
scientists learn how to control it, and then the question of the
affordability of the cure will limit its eradication.

Jim

Population growth
 

"Brian-Gaff" wrote in message
...
Funnily enough I heard it on LBC and a shorter version on their other
stations news.
Sounds like the indigenous population had better get their fingers out, or
maybe something else out....:-)



The facts are obvious from history of course. When infant mortality was
high, and there were no social services, people had to have more children
to maintain the population and to help as the older members got older.

It normally takes a couple of generations for the practice to slow down.
Unfortunately, many of the people in most developed countries are not
having enough children to maintain the population of tax payers to supprt
the next generation in tax paying. the solution is to import from cultures
and countries where the birth rate is still high.

I believe all this stuff from the Catholic Church about no birth control
was a thinly veiled attempt to get people with their views in the
majority.

Clearly isn't working in Italy.

Nothing new really.

"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
Apparently the ONC tells us that the population will increase by 10
million by 2035 as the direct and indirect results of immigration. The
report on the BBC website distorts the facts in several important ways.
If the matter makes to the broadcast BBC news please let me know. I
suspect that if it does it will be minimised.

Just seen it on Sky News. Quite a good report.

Bill

Population growth
 

"Indy Jess John" wrote in message
...
On 30/10/2015 10:32, Rod Speed wrote:


It didn’t. We didn’t even see another Black Death or anything like it.

In 1918 there was a flu epidemic that killed far more people than died in
WW1.

Nothing like the Black Death.

AIDS is still trimming the African population.

And trivially avoidable.

There will always be a new virus that will do a lot of damage before the
scientists learn how to control it,

In fact ebola didn’t do all that much damage.

and then the question of the affordability of the cure will limit its
eradication.

Tisnt what happened with smallpox and polio.

Population growth
 

"Wolfgang Schwanke" wrote in message
...
"Norman Wells"
wrote in :

Even here in nicely arable Britain, using all the farmland
available, we can currently only produce enough food to sustain just
60% of the population, or about 36 million.

You could do better if pressed (but there is no need to).

How exactly?

Rededicate unused grasslands to agriculture, intensify farming by
various methods (notably greenhouses) etc., obviously do away with
wasteful experiments such aus "biofules".

So, you dig up all the parks and gardens, you cover the country in glass, and rely
on non-renewable sources of energy. And you get, what? About 5% more produce you
can eat. What do you do next?

The Netherlands are not *net* exporters. They, like Britain, are huge
net importers. What they export are high value crops like tomatoes
and flowers, not stuff the world actually depends on to eat, like
wheat, which they have to import.

This paragraph makes no sense in several ways. First I don't dispute
that they import a lot, but at the same time they export a lot too.
Second the kind of produce is irrelevant, you can eat vegetables too
you know :).

We are talking about the food the world needs to sustain its population. That means
big crops. Staples like wheat, rice, other grains, and rapeseed. We're not talking
about peripherals and incidentals like tomatoes, lettuces and tulips.

No, it is far from being self-sufficient, just like Britain.

But it could be made to be with some restructuring, the volume of
produce would be sufficient to feed the Dutch.

I doubt it. I doubt it very much indeed.

They export about $19.8 million of agricultural
products, but import about $49.5 million.

You have to compare the sums by volume, or weight, or ideally calories,
not market prices.

Off you go then. Compare them.

But the problem is that The Netherlands produces high-priced luxuries from all its
expensive greenhouses, and *still* runs an enormous financial deficit. A comparison
by any other criterion would result in an even bigger proportional gap between what
it produces and what it consumes. There aren't many calories in lettuces and
tulips.

You can't live on tomatoes and tulips.

Yes you can live on tomatoes (even if I hate them), and the surface
currently dedicated to flowers would need to be rededicated for food
production.

Remember this is a thought experiment to prove a point, namely that
surface is not a limiting factor to feeding the world, not a symposion
on the actual economic structure of the Netherlands.

But surface *is* the major factor limiting global agricultural production. Always
has been, always will be.

Population growth
 

"Wolfgang Schwanke" wrote in message
...
"Norman Wells" wrote in
:
"Wolfgang Schwanke" wrote in message
...
Roderick Stewart
wrote in :

Whatever value the Malthusian limit may have at any time, it can
never be infinite, because we don't live on an infinitely big
planet.

You don't have to assume an infinite planet to know that
malthusianism is a fallacy.

If we continue to use *anything*
finite at an ever-increasing rate, we must eventually run out of it.

No, that is a fallacy. Besides the premise is wrong, we're not using
things at an ever increasing rate.

How very strange when the world's population is increasing by 50%
every 40 years or so.

How does that disprove anything I said?

People use things. More people use more things. It's pretty much a direct linear
correlation. If the population is ever-increasing, so too will consumption.

Are we each using 50% less? Eating 50% less food?

Population growth is likely to peter out.

That's a very pink and fluffy view of the world. But there's no evidence of it
happening, and there's no reason why it will, except for a few crackpot theorists
who think a mathematically exact exponential graph will suddenly change direction
based on wishful assumptions.

At the same time we are
steadily increasing efficiencies in usage of energy, resources,
surface. Most of the resources we have ever used are still on the
planet. The only ones that are really gone are fuels, but everything
else is still there, just in different places. A lot of it even easier
to find and in a refined state. And there is not the slightest hint
that we're close to running out of anything.

Apart from land that can be productively cultivated.

And oil.

And helium.

And rare earths.

Anything finite that is used will eventually disappear or be used to capacity.

This does not mean that _infinite_ growth is possible, or a call to
strive for it. But we don't have to assume that at all in order to know
that we won't have a problem for the coming millenia.

It's just a matter of time. And anything exponential has a habit of shortening time
enormously.

Population growth
 

On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 11:04:06 +0100, Wolfgang Schwanke
wrote:

If we continue to use *anything*
finite at an ever-increasing rate, we must eventually run out of it.

No, that is a fallacy. Besides the premise is wrong, we're not using
things at an ever increasing rate.

Your mathematics appears to be different from mine. My understanding
is that if you only have a finite amount of something and you keep
using it, then you'll eventually run out. If this isn't true, then why
does my phone need to be charged after a couple of days?

This will surely happen if something is used up at *any* steady or
increasing rate in excess of the rate at which it's being replaced. In
the case of my phone, while it's being used this replacement rate is
zero, and in the case of the fossil fules that so much of modern life
depends on, the replacement rate in comparison to the rate at which we
are using it is negligible, so please explain how it is a fallacy that
we will eventually use it all up?

Rod.

Population growth
 

On 30/10/2015 09:00, Norman Wells wrote:
"John Rumm" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 29/10/2015 19:48, Norman Wells wrote:
"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

Is there never to be a cap on the world's population?

Its starting to look like it will fix itself eventually.
Birth rates are dropping world wide now except
in places where its now so low that that place is
right down in the noise.

How come the world's population is increasing by 50% every 40 years
or so?

How come it will increase from the present 7 billion to 10 billion by
2050?

The truth is, it's out of control and exponentially rising.

Fortunately you are likely mistaken.

See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg

No, that's all wishful thinking dependent on if, if, ifs, which won't
happen. Even he admits the *only* way to prevent exponential growth is
to bring the third world into the first. The likelihood of that
happening however is, well, about zero.

Hans Rosling is one of the world's most respected experts on charting
modern human development - he has pioneered new ways of collecting,
interpreting, and presenting the data. (He has plenty of other videos on
similar theme).

If you watch the visualisations of the data from the last 30 years you
can very clearly see the trend, and his predictions seem like a
plausible extrapolation of the trend. These usually reach a destination
stable population of around 10 to 11 billion.

The graph of world population over time is inexorably upwards at an ever
increasing rate.

Which makes it a mathematical impossibility, unless you also have
infinite resources. We don't!

Even at the existing rate of growth, it will reach 16
billion by 2100 from the current 7 billion, and the harsh truth is that
it can't possibly produce enough food for that many. There just isn't
enough land that can be productively cultivated.

So we could not maintain the existing growth rate for that reason alone.

Even here in nicely arable Britain, using all the farmland available, we
can currently only produce enough food to sustain just 60% of the
population, or about 36 million. We have to import the rest. That
proportion will fall to just over 50% if the latest projected increase
to 70 million people happens by mid 2027, ie in just an astonishingly
short 12 years from now.
The only way to stop catastrophic world population growth is to have
global government with Draconian powers over life and death. And that
just won't come about by 2027, 2050, 2100, or any time before it's far
too late.

Food and resources alone make the growth self limiting.

Sorry to be so apocalyptic so early in the morning, but the writing is
on the wall, and it's as well to read it.

Given neither of us are about the be elected as a "global government
with Draconian powers over life and death", it seems like a moot point.


--
Cheers,

John.

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Population growth
 

On 30/10/2015 08:36, Indy Jess John wrote:
On 29/10/2015 19:09, [email protected] wrote:
On 29/10/2015 16:45, Adrian wrote:



The real answer has to be working for longer, better spreading of
available resources or a drop in the expected standard of living.

Of course. But people really don't want to do that.

Those of us that have paid into real pension funds rather than just
paying for the current retired folk don't have to. Not that it means we
can't work if we want to.


The main other option has been explored in fiction from Trollope's
"Fixed
Period" through to "Logan's Run" and beyond.


Thats what the experiments with flu, TB and SARS is about in'it.

The obvious answer is to encourage the young to smoke.
It doesn't stop them working and paying taxes when they are young, and
they pay extra into the system through tobacco taxes (I haven't got
actual figures but I am pretty sure that a smoker on 20 a day pays more
in tobacco taxes than it costs in medical treatments).

However, statistically a high proportion will die before they take much
out of the system in pensions.

So they pay more in and get less out. Win-win as far as the ones who do
live longer are concerned.

Jim


I would agree apart from the figures show the ones that linger on cost
more than the total contribution, now if treatment were cheaper or
withheld you might be onto something.
Maybe tax on vaping if it doesn't result in costly long term illness
would work.

Population growth
 

In message , Andy Cap
writes
On 29/10/15 16:01, Adrian wrote:

years (to 2039, since it's on 2014 figures)?

No mention of demographics there, though, and I think we all know which
way the average age is going... Rapidly.

Woo. With zero migration, we could be looking at the world's biggest
retirement home just off the northern shore of France... But at least
there won't be brown people working, earning, growing our economy, paying
taxes to cover our pensions.


How does this constant expansion of the young, paying for the elderly,
work indefinitely? Is there never to be a cap on the world's population?

In this morning's LBC Nick Ferrari phone-in, a phoner-inner made a very
good point.

He pointed out that encouraging the immigration of young workers, so
that their taxes could provide funding for the increasing number
long-living old folks, was actually a ponzi pyramid scheme.

Even if the immigrants can find homes and work, they themselves will
eventually join the ranks of long-living old folks - thus requiring more
immigrants to come and work to pay taxes etc etc, ad infinitum.

The real answer has to be working for longer, better spreading of
available resources or a drop in the expected standard of living.
There's no doubt the present generation have done very well but it's
not exactly their fault. Personally, I don't really care if my house is
worth £50,000 or £500,000!

Andy C

--
Ian

Population growth
 

"Wolfgang Schwanke" wrote in message
...
"Norman Wells"
wrote in :

Even at the existing rate of growth, it will
reach 16 billion by 2100 from the current 7 billion, and the harsh
truth is that it can't possibly produce enough food for that many.

Never mind your figures are made up, but why the hell not?

There just isn't enough land that can be productively cultivated.

There is, besides productivity can be increased.

Even here in nicely arable Britain, using all the farmland available,
we can currently only produce enough food to sustain just 60% of the
population, or about 36 million.

You could do better if pressed (but there is no need to).

Some facts to make you think: The largest exporter of agricultural
goods in the world are the USA. Which country do you reckon is no. 2?
Wait for it: The Netherlands.

One of the most densely populated countries on earth, a quarter of it
is taken up by what is basically one giant metropolis. But it cannot
only sustain itself, but even export groceries

But that's because 100% of the land mass is "flat" and has a benign climate.

many of the world's areas of low population density are mountainous and many
of the areas of low agricultural production are climatically unsuitable
(and/or mountainous).

It isn't anywhere near as simple as "if the Dutch can do it ..."

tim