The Man Who Defused the 'Population Bomb'

[DarrinS]

It has been esimated that American agronomist, Norman Borlaug, has saved the lives of one billion people. You've probably never heard of him, but he died Saturday, at age 95.

A good read for you people that consider yourselves environmentalists.


http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-EL624_Borla_G_20090915193034.jpg





Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America's Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.

Born in 1914 in rural Cresco, Iowa, where he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work ending the India-Pakistan food shortage of the mid-1960s. He spent most of his life in impoverished nations, patiently teaching poor farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere the Green Revolution agricultural techniques that have prevented the global famines widely predicted when the world population began to skyrocket following World War II.

In 1999, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that Borlaug's efforts combined with those of the many developing-world agriculture-extension agents he trained and the crop-research facilities he founded in poor nations saved the lives of one billion human beings.

As a young agronomist, Borlaug helped develop some of the principles of Green Revolution agriculture on which the world now relies including hybrid crops selectively bred for vigor, and "shuttle breeding," a technique for accelerating the movement of disease immunity between strains of crops. He also helped develop cereals that were insensitive to the number of hours of light in a day, and could therefore be grown in many climates.

Green Revolution techniques caused both reliable harvests, and spectacular output. From the Civil War through the Dust Bowl, the typical American farm produced about 24 bushels of corn per acre; by 2006, the figure was about 155 bushels per acre.

Hoping to spread high-yield agriculture to the world's poor, in 1943 Borlaug moved to rural Mexico to establish an agricultural research station, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Borlaug's little research station became the International Maize and Wheat Center, known by its Spanish abbreviation CIMMYT, that is now one of the globe's most important agricultural study facilities. At CIMMYT, Borlaug developed the high-yield, low-pesticide "dwarf" wheat upon which a substantial portion of the world's population now depends for sustenance.

In 1950, as Borlaug began his work in earnest, the world produced 692 million tons of grain for 2.2 billion people. By 1992, with Borlaug's concepts common, production was 1.9 billion tons of grain for 5.6 billion men and women: 2.8 times the food for 2.2 times the people. Global grain yields more than doubled during the period, from half a ton per acre to 1.1 tons; yields of rice and other foodstuffs improved similarly. Hunger declined in sync: From 1965 to 2005, global per capita food consumption rose to 2,798 calories daily from 2,063, with most of the increase in developing nations. In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared that malnutrition stands "at the lowest level in human history," despite the global population having trebled in a single century.

In the mid-1960s, India and Pakistan were exceptions to the trend toward more efficient food production; subsistence cultivation of rice remained the rule, and famine struck. In 1965, Borlaug arranged for a convoy of 35 trucks to carry high-yield seeds from CIMMYT to a Los Angeles dock for shipment to India and Pakistan. He and a coterie of Mexican assistants accompanied the seeds. They arrived to discover that war had broken out between the two nations. Sometimes working within sight of artillery flashes, Borlaug and his assistants sowed the Subcontinent's first crop of high-yield grain. Paul Ehrlich gained celebrity for his 1968 book "The Population Bomb," in which he claimed that global starvation was inevitable for the 1970s and it was "a fantasy" that India would "ever" feed itself. Instead, within three years of Borlaug's arrival, Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production; within six years, India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals.

After his triumph in India and Pakistan and his Nobel Peace Prize, Borlaug turned to raising crop yields in other poor nations especially in Africa, the one place in the world where population is rising faster than farm production and the last outpost of subsistence agriculture. At that point, Borlaug became the target of critics who denounced him because Green Revolution farming requires some pesticide and lots of fertilizer. Trendy environmentalism was catching on, and affluent environmentalists began to say it was "inappropriate" for Africans to have tractors or use modern farming techniques.

Borlaug told me a decade ago that most Western environmentalists "have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things."

Environmentalist criticism of Borlaug and his work was puzzling on two fronts. First, absent high-yield agriculture, the world would by now be deforested. The 1950 global grain output of 692 million tons and the 2006 output of 2.3 billion tons came from about the same number of acres three times as much food using little additional land.

"Without high-yield agriculture," Borlaug said, "increases in food output would have been realized through drastic expansion of acres under cultivation, losses of pristine land a hundred times greater than all losses to urban and suburban expansion." Environmentalist criticism was doubly puzzling because in almost every developing nation where high-yield agriculture has been introduced, population growth has slowed as education becomes more important to family success than muscle power.

In the late 1980s, when even the World Bank cut funding for developing-world agricultural improvement, Borlaug turned for support to Ryoichi Sasakawa, a maverick Japanese industrialist. Sasakawa funded his high-yield programs in a few African nations and, predictably, the programs succeeded. The final triumph of Borlaug's life came three years ago when the Rockefeller Foundation, in conjunction with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced a major expansion of high-yield agriculture throughout Africa. As he approached his 90s, Borlaug "retired" to teaching agronomy at Texas A&M, where he urged students to live in the developing world and serve the poor.

Often it is said America lacks heroes who can provide constructive examples to the young. Here was such a hero. Yet though streets and buildings are named for Norman Borlaug throughout the developing world, most Americans don't even know his name.

[coyotes_geek]

Interesting read. Thanks for posting.

[ChumpDumper]

I heard of him years ago.

RIP.

[jman3000]

I think WH posted this earlier this week.

Pretty amazing.

[Winehole23]

If someone posted it here, it wasn't me.

This news is a few days old, isn't it? I think I saw this bouncing around in my chat-lists last week.

[DarrinS]

By the way, the man who wrote "The Populuation Bomb", Paul Ehrlich has published works with John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar.


From the wiki on John Holdren:





Overpopulation was an early concern and interest. In a 1969 article, Holdren and co-author Paul R. Ehrlich argued that, "if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come."[17]

In 1973 Holdren encouraged a decline in fertility to well below replacement in the United States, because "210 million now is too many and 280 million in 2040 is likely to be much too many."[18]

In 1977, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich, and Holdren co-authored the textbook Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment; they discussed the possible role of a wide variety of solutions to overpopulation, from voluntary family planning to enforced population controls,including forced sterilization for women after they gave birth to a designated number of children, and recommended "the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences" such as access to birth control and abortion.[19][7]

Other early publications include Energy (1971), Human Ecology (1973), Energy in Transition (1980), Earth and the Human Future (1986), Strategic Defences and the Future of the Arms Race (1987), Building Global Security Through Cooperation (1990), and Conversion of Military R&D (1998).[10]







Oh, and here is a document called "What Needs to be Done" by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, which was a memo sent to then President-elect, Barak Obama.

http://www.populationmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/paul-ehrlich-obama-advice.doc




Good stuff.

[ChumpDumper]

So what is Obama doing in response to the memo?

[DarrinS]

So what is Obama doing in response to the memo?


Hopefully he threw it in the trash.


It does suck that Obama's science czar is/was a proponent of eugenics.

[DarrinS]

If dems really wanted to have a "population control policy", they'd probably have to call it something else, like universal health care.


Just kidding.

[ChumpDumper]

Hopefully he threw it in the trash.


It does suck that Obama's science czar is/was a proponent of eugenics.He never was. None of the ideas presented in the book were endorsed as policy by the authors.

[Winehole23]

I thought you wanted to talk about Martin Borlaug.

[Winehole23]

I guess he was just a springboard for another stale political rant.

[ChumpDumper]

I guess he was just a springboard for another stale political rant.Yep, one he apparently missed the first time.

[DarrinS]

I thought you wanted to talk about Martin Borlaug.


Actually, a better point than Holdren being a collegue of Paul Ehrlich, is that, historically, people that predict catastrohpe are often wrong. And also, that people in the environmentalist movement, no matter how well-intentioned, may often do more harm than good.

[ChumpDumper]

I thought you wanted to talk about Martin Borlaug.

[Winehole23]

And also, that dinosaur rampages, no matter how well-intentioned, may often do more harm than good.Fify.

[DarrinS]

I thought you wanted to talk about Martin Borlaug.


What if environmentalists had stopped Martin Borlaug's work?

[ChumpDumper]

More people would have gone hungry.

They didn't.

[Winehole23]

What if environmentalists had stopped Martin Borlaug's work?They might have done harm if they were influential, or had they even tried to stop Borlaug. They weren't, and they didn't.

Borlaug crushed their Malthusian premises. We're all better off for it.

[baseline bum]

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134876

[Winehole23]

access to land and money to buy perhaps more decisive than crop yields, as relates to hunger:


The debate over how to "feed the world" amid population growth and climate change often hinges on crop yields. The theory is that if we can squeeze as much crop as possible per acre of farmland, we'll have abundant food for everyone. This idea dominates the marketing material of giant agrichemical firms like Monsanto (http://www.monsanto.com/improvingagriculture/Pages/producing-more.aspx). "In order to feed the world's growing population, farmers must produce more food in the next fifty years than they have in the past 10,000 years combined," proclaims the company's website (http://www.monsanto.com/improvingagriculture/Pages/producing-more.aspx). "We are working to double yields in our core crops by 2030." Such rhetoric is routinely echoed by policymakers like US Department of Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack (http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2011/06/0249.xml&navid=TRANSCRIPT&navtype=RT&parentnav=TRANSCRIPTS_SPEECHES&edeployment_action=retrievecontent).


But jacking up yields—even if Monsanto and its peers can accomplish that feat, which they haven't so far (http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/failure-to-yield.html)—won't solve the hunger problem on its own. The globe's farms are already producing enough food to feed 12 billion people (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/poverty-matters/2012/oct/05/jean-ziegler-africa-starve)—twice the current population and a third again more than the peak of 9 billion expected to be reached in 2050. Yet at least 925 million people lack access to enough (http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/92495/icode/)to eat. What causes hunger isn't insufficient crop yields but rather people's economic relationships to food: whether they have access to land to grow it, or sufficient income to buy it.


Unfortunately, rising food prices and competition for resources appear to be making the situation worse. Take the trend of rich-country investors buying or leasing huge, highly productive tracts of farmland in low-income countries, and exporting the resulting crops. In a scathing report (http://www.oxfamamerica.org/files/our-land-our-lives.pdf)on these "land grabs," the global anti-hunger group Oxfam reports that an "area of land eight times the size of the UK" has been sold off in the past decade—a combined swath of land that "has the potential to feed a billion people," or more than the 925 million who live in hunger. "[V]ery few if any of these land investments benefit local people or help to fight hunger," Oxfam adds.


Investors in these deals aren't agribiz companies like Monsanto, which just want to sell inputs like seeds and agrichemicals, not take on the risk of farming. Rather, they are US or European hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds from nations like China or Saudi Arabia, or companies like Iowa's AgriSol (http://agrisolenergy.com/our_projects.html), owned by GOP stalwart, large-scale hog farmer, Iowa university regent, and all-around charmer Bruce Rastetter, whom I wrote about here (http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/03/will-agribiz-tied-governor-keep-iowas-factory-farms-shielded-view).


While some land grabs involve domestic elites taking land in low-income areas of their own countries, the more typical cases involve rich-country investors gobbling land in poor countries. According to an April 2012 analysis (http://landportal.info/landmatrix/media/img/analytical-report.pdf) by the Land Matrix, cited by Oxfam, the average investor in these deals come from a country with a per capita GDP of $18,918, while the target countries' per capita GDPs average $4,404—a more than five-fold disparity.



Oxfam presents a devastating analysis:

Two thirds of agricultural land deals by foreign investors are in countries with a serious hunger problem. Yet perversely, precious little of this land is being used to feed people in those countries, or going into local markets where it is desperately needed. Instead, the land is either being left idle, as speculators wait for its value to increase and then sell it at a profit, or it is predominantly used to grow crops for export, often for use as biofuels.
Nearly a billion people live in hunger today, and yet the land that could be used to sustain them is being bought up by investors and being put to other uses, including speculation.


Let's get this straight. Nearly a billion people live in hunger today, and yet the land that could be used to sustain them is being bought up by investors and being put to other uses, including speculation. Now, defenders of these deals claim that the targeted land is typically abandoned and marginal farmland that can only be made productive with outside intervention.


Not so, Oxfam says. "Most agricultural land deals target quality farmland, particularly land that is irrigated and offers good access to markets," the report states. And "much of this land was already being used for small-scale farming, pastoralism, and other types of natural resource use." Since 2000, according to the Land Matrix's analysis, about 140 million acres of African farmland, or nearly 5 percent of the continent's total agricultural area, have been snapped up in deals. That's a land mass nearly the size of Alaska (http://www.statemaster.com/graph/geo_lan_acr_tot-geography-land-acreage-total).

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/10/want-feed-world-first-stop-land-grabs

[boutons_deux]

Wealthy Countries and Investors Buying Up Farmland in Poor Countries
http://stephenleahy.net/2012/05/17/wealthy-countries-and-investors-buying-up-farmland-in-poor-countries/

[LnGrrrR]

Cool read. Thanks DarrinS.

[boutons_deux]

"Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced a major expansion of high-yield agriculture"

.. is that BigChem/BigOil fertilizer agriculture? Knowing Billy G's faith in science (vaccines for everyone!), I bet it is.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

They might have done harm if they were influential, or had they even tried to stop Borlaug. They weren't, and they didn't.

Borlaug crushed their Malthusian premises. We're all better off for it.

He didn't disprove Malthus. He just expanded the wiggle room before the thresholds for death checks. You don't really think that we can just breed unchecked can you?

East Africa is proving to be a proving ground. Border conflict over water between Kenya, Ethipoia, Eritrea and Sudan has been rising and will stand to grow worse considering the region is experiencing a drought worse than the one seen in the early 80s. Malaria, AIDS and a whole slew of parasitic waterborn diseases that are not much talked about are rampant. Measles came back.

We can pat ourselves on the back for being so wonderful by importing food and staving off the worst of the disaster because of the groundwork Michael Jackson and friends put in but it's not sustainable. There was a whole bunch of famine and death last year. How about we put up one of the articles about the East African famines?

As the price for fuel rises then it is going to be more problematic for nitrogen production domestically as well as transportation required to get the food necessary to feed the millions that do not have the domestic production. We going to build the desalination plants they already don't have to handle seasonal variations? All guys like this guy and Sarin Haber did was push it back and present this illusion that current and technologies of the future will stave off famine and disease in infinitum.

[RandomGuy]

He didn't disprove Malthus. He just expanded the wiggle room before the thresholds for death checks. You don't really think that we can just breed unchecked can you?

East Africa is proving to be a proving ground. Border conflict over water between Kenya, Ethipoia, Eritrea and Sudan has been rising and will stand to grow worse considering the region is experiencing a drought worse than the one seen in the early 80s. Malaria, AIDS and a whole slew of parasitic waterborn diseases that are not much talked about are rampant. Measles came back.

We can pat ourselves on the back for being so wonderful by importing food and staving off the worst of the disaster because of the groundwork Michael Jackson and friends put in but it's not sustainable. There was a whole bunch of famine and death last year. How about we put up one of the articles about the East African famines?

As the price for fuel rises then it is going to be more problematic for nitrogen production domestically as well as transportation required to get the food necessary to feed the millions that do not have the domestic production. We going to build the desalination plants they already don't have to handle seasonal variations? All guys like this guy and Sarin Haber did was push it back and present this illusion that current and technologies of the future will stave off famine and disease in infinitum.

Our natgas boom has already changed the plans of a lot of companies who want to build chemical plants of one sort or another, and a lot of planned plants for overseas have been brought back here because of the cheap natgas as feed hydrocarbons.

We don't need to stave off these things forever, just long enough for urbanization and industrialization to catch hold and naturally cut back on population growth rates, which is happening globally.

Flatter population growth rates buy us even more time to bump up yields, and this will happen with mechanization and modern farming methods as they get introduced to more and more arable land globally.

Humanity will be fine, we just need to work on distribution and capital investment for food. There is enough food now, even with biofuel diversion. Famines tend to be because of civil wars and breakdowns in local distribution channels.

If my understanding of this is correct, natgas is about as good as oil for use as feedstock for making fertilizer. Have to double check on that, as I am not really certain though. If so, fertilizer is about to get wicked cheap as the US cranks up its natgas production.

[Homeland Security]

Yep. We've got at least another century of cheap energy ahead, and the global population is expected to top off around 9 billion and then start to decline.

There are still sustainability challenges out there, like water. And handling the entry of 2 billion people into the middle class.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Our natgas boom has already changed the plans of a lot of companies who want to build chemical plants of one sort or another, and a lot of planned plants for overseas have been brought back here because of the cheap natgas as feed hydrocarbons.

We don't need to stave off these things forever, just long enough for urbanization and industrialization to catch hold and naturally cut back on population growth rates, which is happening globally.

Flatter population growth rates buy us even more time to bump up yields, and this will happen with mechanization and modern farming methods as they get introduced to more and more arable land globally.

Humanity will be fine, we just need to work on distribution and capital investment for food. There is enough food now, even with biofuel diversion. Famines tend to be because of civil wars and breakdowns in local distribution channels.

If my understanding of this is correct, natgas is about as good as oil for use as feedstock for making fertilizer. Have to double check on that, as I am not really certain though. If so, fertilizer is about to get wicked cheap as the US cranks up its natgas production.

And here we have the technology will solve all our problems argument.

Calling the population curves flatter does not make them flat nor does attributing the decline in population growth to "urbanization and industrialization" make it so. I don't like the "Let it grow and we're sure to find a way' plan.

For a US population policy it's not so much a problem but considering the living conditions in East and Central Africa, India and Bangladesh's of the world I don't see the bomb has been defused. India is a wonderful example of your industrialization and urbanization and their industrialized urban centers sport slums that are the envy of the world.

Other than a warzone, where do you think the worst place in the world to live is right now? The Ethipoia-Somali border? A Sau Palo or New Dehli slum? The places where this 'population bomb' was supposedly defused?

Better get flattening and urbanizing because while Darrin likes to label people that have concerns about negative outcomes as doomsayers and dismiss 'alarmists' because the world didn't end, that doesn't mean that the world isn't already pretty shitty and getting worse all the time. That's in a whole lot of places. May not be here but giving East Africa and the Indian peninsula more capacity for population growth wasn't doing them any favors.

[RandomGuy]

And here we have the technology will solve all our problems argument.

Calling the population curves flatter does not make them flat nor does attributing the decline in population growth to "urbanization and industrialization" make it so. I don't like the "Let it grow and we're sure to find a way' plan.

The UN has had to adjust its forcasts downward.

Europe, China, Japan all have and a few other countries have negative growth rates. The only reason the US doesn't is primarily because of Mexican immigrants, Mexico has a negative population growth rate at the moment, if I remember correctly.

There is a century long trend globally in almost every single country on the planet for smaller and smaller family sizes.

This happens because of a host of reasons that go hand in hand with industrialization. I am not "just saying" anything, other than I have no reason to think that 200 year old trends will change somehow.

The majority of India is still rural, and that is changing just as it has in every other country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India

China has seen a massive shift, the greatest human migration in the history of our species, equal to the population of the entire United States, shift from rural to urban and industrialized.

Population growth curves are flatter because that is what is happening. If you don't think this is happening, I will be happy to give you the data.

There is a wonderful series of youtubes by Hans Rosling you should watch, his data is actually pretty darn good, and forms the basis for my assertions on this.

Don't take my word for it. Go digging, watch Hans' lectures, they are quite engaging. The 70 year old swedish economist even famously ends his second lecture by swallowing a sword.

If you want, give me some time this weekend, and I will compile a list of supporting links to articles about the economic and demographic data that support this.

[RandomGuy]

For a US population policy it's not so much a problem but considering the living conditions in East and Central Africa, India and Bangladesh's of the world

Respectfully:

Your thinking is outdated. Each of those countries and regions are seeing, and have seen increases in living standards. They are still poor relatively, and there is much misery, but each of them has clear trend lines that would surprise you.

It is happening now, and will likely continue. It doesn't take much of a bump up to make for huge increases in well-being. (look for the "magic washing machine" lecture)

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I am more than aware of population growth models. I have studied systemic flow and population models are a major topic in the subject. Most all of the projections have diminishing returns but the nature and quantity of the limiting effect is not some agreed upon phenomenon. The practice much like economics uses what are at best approximations to account for trends.

Ethiopia is going to follow the same socioeconomic route that England did 200 years ago? You sure about that? I think you are dismissing the arguments made by the jesterhat youtube global warming risk assessment person you like to link.

China has a massive decades old program to limit population growth and migration was forced. Since you are using China in your supporting arguments are you supporting China's policies?

I think it's great that French and German populations are diminishing but the people that are the worst off right now are experiencing the highest growth rates. Life already sucks there. They are already the most miserable places to live on Earth with all the fatality and quality of life figures to support that notion. Sustaining the status quo in my mind is unacceptable much less when it's getting worse.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Respectfully:

Your thinking is outdated. Each of those countries and regions are seeing, and have seen increases in living standards. They are still poor relatively, and there is much misery, but each of them has clear trend lines that would surprise you.

It is happening now, and will likely continue. It doesn't take much of a bump up to make for huge increases in well-being. (look for the "magic washing machine" lecture)

Respectfully, I have done a lot of looking into the regions beyond a description of a graph's 'trend lines.' I have been trying to talk about the East African droughts of 2010 and 2011 but you keep talking about graphs. 'Bumps' work both ways it seems.

[RandomGuy]

I am more than aware of population growth models. I have studied systemic flow and population models are a major topic in the subject. Most all of the projections have diminishing returns but the nature and quantity of the limiting effect is not some agreed upon phenomenon. The practice much like economics uses what are at best approximations to account for trends.

Ethiopia is going to follow the same socioeconomic route that England did 200 years ago? You sure about that? I think you are dismissing the arguments made by the jesterhat youtube global warming risk assessment person you like to link.

China has a massive decades old program to limit population growth and migration was forced. Since you are using China in your supporting arguments are you supporting China's policies?

I think it's great that French and German populations are diminishing but the people that are the worst off right now are experiencing the highest growth rates. Life already sucks there. They are already the most miserable places to live on Earth with all the fatality and quality of life figures to support that notion. Sustaining the status quo in my mind is unacceptable much less when it's getting worse.

Wonderingmind simply says that we should take some action to avoid the worst case scenarios. I agree. I am also fairly confident that we will cope, overall.

fTznEIZRkLg

China's one child policy has been made irrelevant by its industrialization, and that industrialization has added to the effects of that policy. No, I don't support forced abortions, or other draconian measures.

As for "The people that are worst off" as well as Ethopia=England:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/IndiaIBRdata.jpg/776px-IndiaIBRdata.jpg

Rosling has compiled as much data as is available, and the trends in EVERY country are fairly clear. You will have reversals depending on what is going on in a country, i.e. The Great Leap Forward, and Ethiopia's implosion.

Further, Rosling breaks things down even further to do some interesting analysis on segments of population, as compiled by the UN.

The overall trends, as supported by the data available, do not show any coming cataclysm. Improvements in health proceed improvements in income, and we are improving health globally, as well as improving the overall lot of women.

[RandomGuy]

and China's recent migration was not forced, it was an economically driven one as people were lured out of the countryside by the chance to triple their incomes. No one had to make them come. Many of them are more than a bit unwelcome and essentially illegal immigrants in the cities they work. This was not quite officially sanctioned or pushed.

[RandomGuy]

the people that are the worst off right now are experiencing the highest growth rates. Life already sucks there. They are already the most miserable places to live on Earth with all the fatality and quality of life figures to support that notion. Sustaining the status quo in my mind is unacceptable much less when it's getting worse.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/IndiaIMRates.jpg/776px-IndiaIMRates.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India


My point isn't that living conditions in many places aren't bad, they are. But, they are getting better, and are better than many in the West yet realize.

[boutons_deux]

"they are getting better"

oh really?

climate change and access to water, wars over the same, for agriculture will kill a few B in the coming decades.

[boutons_deux]

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/the-world-is-fat-especially-america/

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Wonderingmind simply says that we should take some action to avoid the worst case scenarios. I agree. I am also fairly confident that we will cope, overall.

fTznEIZRkLg

China's one child policy has been made irrelevant by its industrialization, and that industrialization has added to the effects of that policy. No, I don't support forced abortions, or other draconian measures.

As for "The people that are worst off" as well as Ethopia=England:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/IndiaIBRdata.jpg/776px-IndiaIBRdata.jpg

Rosling has compiled as much data as is available, and the trends in EVERY country are fairly clear. You will have reversals depending on what is going on in a country, i.e. The Great Leap Forward, and Ethiopia's implosion.

Further, Rosling breaks things down even further to do some interesting analysis on segments of population, as compiled by the UN.

The overall trends, as supported by the data available, do not show any coming cataclysm. Improvements in health proceed improvements in income, and we are improving health globally, as well as improving the overall lot of women.

I was talking about China's cultural revolution not forced abortion. All the forced migration and whatnot.

When you start talking about macro attempts at reductionist approaches and quantification with stuff like "made irrelevant by its industrialization," it makes it hard to take you seriously. Your quantity of 'industrialization' --and I suspect you are thinking of the idea in general terms and not a correlated contribution-- is only an approximation. It's even less fleshed out than the 'invisible hand' and that has not exactly been a forecasting dynamo.

Did you pay attention to the part where your youtube said the rich poor gap is widening and the poorest segment of the population is the one that will be growing most by a large margin? But hey they get bicycles!

And of course your 'trends' are not going to jive with what happens in an individual country. That how it works but for all of your diminishing regression ie the rate of decrease is slowing down India's population growth is a very real concern for for good real reasons.

And when did I say that a cataclysm was going to happen? Are you channeling Darrin or something. I have to say its disappointing to see you use the same shitty strawman that he uses against both of us in the climate argument. Logical consistency is important.

[RandomGuy]

And when did I say that a cataclysm was going to happen? Are you channeling Darrin or something. I have to say its disappointing to see you use the same shitty strawman that he uses against both of us in the climate argument. Logical consistency is important.
???

Uh, whut?

Don't confuse deliberate strawmen, with good faith restatements based on my understanding of what I am reading. If I have erred in representing your views, by all means clarify and correct.

I accept that we are affecting our climate, and will continue to do so, but don't think the very worst of anything is the most likely outcome. There is a huge amount of uncertainty out there about exact future outcomes, but enough certainty to warrant some prudent steps to avoid what we can, and manage what we cannot. I have faith that we will get better and better at determining what the outcomes will be, though. HOpe that helps.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

???

Uh, whut?

Don't confuse deliberate strawmen, with good faith restatements based on my understanding of what I am reading. If I have erred in representing your views, by all means clarify and correct.

I accept that we are affecting our climate, and will continue to do so, but don't think the very worst of anything is the most likely outcome. There is a huge amount of uncertainty out there about exact future outcomes, but enough certainty to warrant some prudent steps to avoid what we can, and manage what we cannot. I have faith that we will get better and better at determining what the outcomes will be, though. HOpe that helps.

And whoever said anything about it being the worst possible outcome? I am not saying that you are intentionally trying to smear me; I think i know you better than that. A strawman does not have to be intentional. All I am saying is that you are doing the same thing that Darrin does. You are trying to say that I am predicting a 'cataclysm' and using that as excuse to dismiss my position. That is exactly what they do with the whole 'alarmists' schtick. If you are doing it unconsciously then that is disconcerting.

All I am saying is that unchecked increasing population worsens things. You don't even argue that but try and say that population growth will stop. Maybe it will and maybe it won't but we both know that there are legitimate projections that don't have the population at a static 9b in 40 years with cheap available resources.

You outlined a projection of technology compensating for resource scarcity until such time that urbanization negates population growth. That sounds nice if it actually comes true. On the other hand what if you are wrong? what are the impacts if we cannot compensate for scarcity or the population growth doesn't get mitigated by migration? I have read articles talking about population growth and national security and there is a direct and obvious correlation between high growth states and instability.

You like bringing up France and Japan but I counter that with everything in between. the Indochina peninsula, the Indian peninsula, all of the middle east and most of Africa are all experiencing 2% growth rate or more. Sure stories like the large Arab states going from the 7%'s to the 2%'s is great but what if your macro attribution is incorrect or lacking precision.

What are the most unstable areas in the world? Outside of China which is still pushing the mid 2's but has a massive amount of social control the rest of the growing population world is a clusterfuck. India and Pakistan have backed off of each other in no small part because we have a 100k troops right on their doorstep but having to babysit unstable nuclear nation states is not fun. 5 Middle East nations have seen revolutions due in no small part to the population being 50% under the age of 35 and not having a place to call their own. We are going to get that again but with an extra 2%. Africa is an eternal clusterfuck with the crown jewel of the East end where Rwanda and the consistent famine haunt. You have places like Bangladesh and Haiti that are shit ass poor, overpopulated and absolutely devastated by natural disaster. The people in Haiti are still living in cholera pits masquerading as tent villages. Bangladesh is wiped out by monsoon every other year.

All of that stands to get worse if the infinite energy supply doesn't pan out long enough or you are wrong on your projections. We get up to our ass in all of that shit and while isolationism sounds just like fun a trading nation such as our own has to be out there guarding our interests. Preventative measures make sense.

i don't think that you will have a cataclysm but I do think that you will see more famine, disease, rioting, insurrection, deplorable rich poor gaps and the miring in poverty. We see all of that right now and it's happening right now in all of the overpopulated areas experiencing net growth. Treading water and hoping help is coming out the other end just doesn't sit well with me at all.

[boutons_deux]

Was the OP a puff piece paid for by BigOil, BigChem, BigAg?


Sent by the Rockefeller Institute in answer to a plea for help from the Mexican government, Borlaug was on a mission to create new varieties of wheat that would not only be resistant to the diseases that had plagued cereal grains since biblical times, but would produce yields far greater than the varieties in current use. Many times greater. And then he would have to persuade Mexican farmers to forsake traditional farming methods for modern ones, which required pesticides and copious amounts of fertilizers along with plenty of water from irrigation.

Vietmeyer chooses not to address the burgeoning criticisms leveled at Borlaug and his farming methods. Particularly the damage being done by chemical runoff from tons of synthetic fertilizers that pollute waterways around the globe, the excess nutrients resulting in algae blooms that create huge “dead zones,” poisoning aquatic life.

http://www.psmag.com/environment/how-norman-borlaug-went-with-the-grain-39922/

In Borlaug’s Green Revolution paradigm, farmers are urged to specialize in one or two commodity crops — say, corn or wheat. To grow them, they were to buy hybridized seeds and ample doses of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation. (Borlaug’s celebrated “dwarf” varieties can thrive only with plenty of water and lots of synthetic nitrogen, and face serious pest pressure, requiring heavy pesticide doses.)

One of the most ironic things I see in Borlaug obits is the idea that his innovations made countries like Mexico and India “self-sufficient” in food production. Actually, these nations became perilously dependent on foreign input suppliers for their food security.

Today in India’s grain belt, less than 40 years after Borlaug’s Nobel triumph, the water table has been nearly completely tapped out by massive irrigation projects (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9502E6D71E3BF931A15755C0A96E9C8B 63), farmers are in severe economic crisis (http://grist.org/article/2009-04-15-ag-in-india/), and cancer rates, seemingly related to agrichemical use, aretragically high (http://grist.org/article/2009-05-13-india-cancer-train/).

to generate the massive yield gains that won Borlaug his Nobel, the nation sacrificed its most productive farmland and a generation of farmers. Meanwhile, as in Mexico, urban poverty and malnutrition in India’s urban centers remained stubbornly persistent.

http://grist.org/article/2009-09-14-thoughts-on-the-legacy-of-norman-borlaug/

So while Borlaug seemed to be a prodigious worker and innovator, he could easily be seen as point man, perhaps unwittingly, for US corporations to colonize and suck wealth out of independent, poor farmers, keeping them poor AND making them dependent on imported corporate seeds and fertilizer.

Lots of water, now in crisis worldwide, and Ms tons of synthetic fertilizer produce huge outputs of Borlaug's varieties ? duh I don't need Borlaug's help for that.

[RandomGuy]

And whoever said anything about it being the worst possible outcome? I am not saying that you are intentionally trying to smear me; I think i know you better than that. A strawman does not have to be intentional. All I am saying is that you are doing the same thing that Darrin does. You are trying to say that I am predicting a 'cataclysm' and using that as excuse to dismiss my position. That is exactly what they do with the whole 'alarmists' schtick. If you are doing it unconsciously then that is disconcerting..

No, my second paragraph was more to illustrate my own thinking, not really trying to speak to what I think you were saying.

You seemed to think that Wondering mind might have said that, and I was merely trying to clarify that.

[RandomGuy]

What are the most unstable areas in the world? Outside of China [whose population] is still [growing around the mid 2% mark] but has a massive amount of social control the rest

Again, factually incorrect. Not sure where you are getting your information on this.

Chinese overall net fertility rate is 1.4, meaning that the average woman is producing 1.4 babies in her lifetime. It takes 2 for a stable growth rate, meaning their population growth rate is going to shrink.

The demographics are that quite a few of the younger women are still having kids, but as they finish, they are not being replaced. Net growth rate is .5% about now, not 2%, nor will that rate go up to the mid 2% range in the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_grow&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:CHN&ifdim=region&hl=en&dl=en&ind=false&q=chinese+population+growth+rate

China has not had a 2% population growth rate for 40 years.

[RandomGuy]

All I am saying is that unchecked increasing population worsens things. You don't even argue that but try and say that population growth will stop. Maybe it will and maybe it won't but we both know that there are legitimate projections that don't have the population at a static 9b in 40 years with cheap available resources.

You outlined a projection of technology compensating for resource scarcity until such time that urbanization negates population growth. That sounds nice if it actually comes true. On the other hand what if you are wrong? what are the impacts if we cannot compensate for scarcity or the population growth doesn't get mitigated by migration? I have read articles talking about population growth and national security and there is a direct and obvious correlation between high growth states and instability.


Resource scarcity is not as big of a problem as you seem to think it is.

Once the price for anything gets bid up, countries, companies, and individuals react. Bid up the price for oil, and a LOT of money get put into oil production, as well as alternatives. This is exactly what is happening now with oil, and everything else due to Chinese demand.

It is a self-correcting mechanism.

Not only that, but the technologies we are developing are making any given amount of any resource go farther. Make copper more expensive, and we find ways of doing things that use less copper.

Technology and the free market exchange will drive money to places where demand outpaces supply to get to an equilibrium.

Further, knowledge and technological advance is cumulative and accumulates on the same kind of exponential progression as population. Still further, the sun puts out more energy in 2 seconds than humanity has EVER used in its history. Our advances will allow us to leverage this at some point.

This is not to say that rich-poor gaps don't exist or are not a problem, they are.

I just don't see all this as intractable and automatically causing war/famine/negative effects. It is certainly possible, but by no means certain, or, in my estimation, even probable.


If you increase population by 2% and come up with industrial processes that use 2% less energy, you have not affected living standards.

[RandomGuy]

Africa is an eternal clusterfuck

Africa is, overall, at about the same income and health level as Europe was at the turn of the 19th century. Again, the data does not support this "always bad, never better" theory.

Africa has a lot of bad problems, to be sure, but given where it started in terms of development, it is progressing along a lot of measures faster than Europe did, partly because the technology is there to leap frog along the way. Africa gets to not spend money on copper-based landwire telephone networks, for example.

RUwS1uAdUcI

BZoKfap4g4w

KVhWqwnZ1eM

[RandomGuy]

You outlined a projection of technology compensating for resource scarcity until such time that urbanization negates population growth. That sounds nice if it actually comes true. On the other hand what if you are wrong?

Then we will have problems that we will have to deal with, and should work toward making sure it doesn't happen.

I could very well be wrong, as could Mr. Rosling, who I put a good deal of stock in. If the data starts pointing to this current trend changing or this not being the case I will be among those who are working to make sure it does change.

I plan on spending the last decade or two of my life either on Mars, or in Africa doing microlending-type development, as I view those things as making sure humanity's lot gets better overall.

[RandomGuy]

A more recently updated bit from the economist who studies these things:

meR5Z1UAswY

India is at pretty much "break even" in terms of population growth.
85% of the worlds population lives in countries with fertility rates below stable rates, meaning fewer babies are being born than old people are dying.

Pattern is "health first" then income.

We are at the stage where health is getting better and gotten better. Income will follow rather shortly.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

If you are being an ideologue regarding macro ideas then there is really no point in discussing this with you tbh. You have selected a couple of authors and a couple of their buzz notions and wrapped it up in a tidy box. You then present it as 'new' thinking and anything else as 'outdated.' You even have your statistician 'messiah' that you 'put a lot of stock into.' His macro ideas are used as dogma.

Examples of macro wrap packages of dismissal include:

Africa = 19th century Europe
health = income
oil prices only rise due to china and will remain stable

You also apparently think that Mars will have land tracts for sale in the next 40 years. I will say that health = money coming from a medical doctor makes for an interesting source. Especially one that is making the same argument as CO2 lags temperature. The EXACT SAME ARGUMENT! Temperature increase PROCEEDS CO2 increase. Health PROCEDES income.

While it may seem convenient to say that Africa especially East Africa and the ME is going to follow the same socioeconomic plot of Europe from 1800 to today I can feel anthropologists the world around cringing. It seems like a lazy economist talking personally: "they are just like we were before the industrial revolution!"

First, the economies in question that did follow your projections were dominated by British colonialists and Americans. Those include India, Japan and SE Asia. Thailand was a British colony. Singapore was the US trading port of choice throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. India was a British colony until the 1940s and even after that ownership of banks and major industry was littered with the white man. Korea was staunchly isolationist before we literally planned their post war economy.

Now you want to say that SA, Iran, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Yemen et al will do the same thing. Hopefully places that we have much more control over due to centuries of the Monroe doctrine like Brazil, Columbia or Mexico will hold true to your hoped projection but even then that is hardly guaranteed. The aforementioned places are nothing remotely resembling a guarantee. We cannot administer the 'white man's burden' anymore. They reject it quite forcefully in fact.

I agree I was wrong on China but I raise you that and raise you being wrong on India. China is a red herring really though as they not only recognize the problem of overpopulation but have done so much above and beyond any other country to correct it. Whether you find the cultural revolution to be immoral or not it stands as the single greatest feat of social engineering in human history.

India OTOH is not 'almost break even'


India saw a 17.6% increase in population over the decade.

"According to the recently conducted Census of India, our population stands at 1.21 billion. As per the projections, India's population would be 1.40 billion by 2026. With only 2.4% of the entire world's landmass to support 17% of the global population; India's need for population stabilization can hardly be overemphasized," the minister said.

The measures that have contributed to the lowering of fertility rate, the minister cited, includes improving literacy levels, empowerment of women, discouraging adolescent marriages, delaying of the first child birth, enhancement in the compensation package for sterilization, encouraging male participation in sterilization and involving village-level community health workers in promoting family planning.

India is likely to miss its target of reaching population stabilization by 2045. Now, the Union health ministry is looking at 2060 as a plausible target.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-05-05/india/31586188_1_decadal-population-growth-rate

Far from it in fact. And it's a hell of a good thing that the Indian government doesn't take your approach. That particular article demonstrates two other things. First that projections in population dynamics are often wrong and also that population growth is uneven growing the poorest segments the most. In stressed and vulnerable populations that severely exacerbates the problem. Haiti and Bangladesh do not need more people yet they will get them nonetheless.

You do not even argue that the unstable third world but you do build another strawman. It sounds like more of your dogma tbh because you appear to be beating up arguments that you heard beat up in a lecture. I never said 'always bad, never better.' I just didn't. I said East Africa and Bangladesh are fucked but I also know places like Brazil and India have gotten better. I also know that Ethiopia had not a straight down arrow but can you honestly say that they are better off than they were 25 years ago?

[RandomGuy]

If you are being an ideologue regarding macro ideas then there is really no point in discussing this with you tbh. You have selected a couple of authors and a couple of their buzz notions and wrapped it up in a tidy box. You then present it as 'new' thinking and anything else as 'outdated.' You even have your statistician 'messiah' that you 'put a lot of stock into.' His macro ideas are used as dogma.

Not really. I simply haven't seen any data that contradicts his.

What I present as new thinking is new because it incorporates new data. Outdated then becomes thinking based on old data.

Do you have a better definition of "new" thinking versus "old" thinking?

Don't get pissy, because it challenges your existing worldview. Take it for what it is. Feel free to present contravening data.

[RandomGuy]

I never said 'always bad, never better.' I just didn't.


Africa is an eternal clusterfuck

[RandomGuy]

Far from it in fact. And it's a hell of a good thing that the Indian government doesn't take your approach.

Define "my approach". This is where you either don't understand my position, or are building your own strawman.

[RandomGuy]

I will say that health = money coming from a medical doctor makes for an interesting source.

Implied:

He is wrong about health = money because he is a doctor.

??

If you are shooting for an ad hominem, you got it.

Were you attempting to make this logical fallacy?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Your approach is that this is not much to worry about. We will 'cope.'

Quoting obvious hyperbole is fun. East Africa has been in a consistent state of turmoil for 25 years. Sudan has been going through an acrimonious divorce in no small part due to resource availability. The Congo and Rwanda have been seeing warlords perform atrocities for what is now going on decades. Somalia has pirates. It is the crown jewel of world infectious disease. There is a regional cycle of drought which has gotten incrementally worse probably due to climate change. Despite all that, does me calling the above situation a clusterfuck prevent the infant mortality rate in Ethiopia improving in 2010? And regionally, relative to the progress made by much else of the world, it is that much more alarming. You say Africa is just like 19th century Europe but given pirate warlords that hearkens politically to more like 17th century.... Africa.

As for your approach, I am only going by what you say. When you speak for others I am assuming you are putting for their argument as your own. I am not going to go argument by author unless the author is relevant. You have routinely said that we will 'cope.' Given the measures that India and China are going to to try and 'cope.' I am getting the 'it's nothing to worry about' approach.

In this case the author is relevant. When it comes to UN health committees and statements they make you have to think big pharma. And I am not just talking about US big pharma I am talking about the worldwide pharmaceutical industry. Thisi s not like the IPCC which is composed of individual nations contributions. These committees are not staffed that way. You end up with a lot of business interests wending their way in there. There has been quite a bit of controversy regarding this and vaccination programs. When companies are using the UN to sell their products that becomes a problem. And no I am not one of the vaccine = autism rubes.

Sure enough your source is from the Gapminder Institute speaking through the UN. I assume that is where you are getting this from. What makes me question your source even more is the presence of Hans Wigzell on the same board.

http://www.forbes.com/profile/hans-wigzell/

That's Hans leading the Europeam medical entrepreneurship. Illuminating a conflict of interest in a policy discussion is not ad hominem. That board is continental european big pharma. Now this is not to say that them saying 'health makes you rich' is not true but saying that who and what the guy works for is very much so germane. That it's the same shitty argument the Koch Borthers of the world have put out about CO2 lags temperature should not be lost on you.

On a final note, China is at a half percent growth rate. That is a doubling time of 140 years. Prima facia that may not seem significant, it is in my view when you are seeing that India is hoping to be population stable in terms of 50 years. India is at a 1.4% growth rate and that is a doubling time of 50 years. And while you give unquantifiable notions of 'urbanization' to dismiss their social programs, they have sterilization incentive programs and harsh tax structures to curtail reproduction. How would you feel about having to do what here?

Global population is one of the most significant challenges we have to face going forward. Dismissing resource scarcity as commodity trading and China when the price of oil has DOUBLED relative to inflation in the last 15 years is not good enough. 'Coping' with it is not good enough.

[RandomGuy]

Your approach is that this is not much to worry about. We will 'cope.'

No, that is not my approach or opinion.

Things won't get as bad as many think, and are better than some think now.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to make things better, and to deal with known problems. We should.

[RandomGuy]

In this case the author is relevant. When it comes to UN health committees and statements they make you have to think big pharma. And I am not just talking about US big pharma I am talking about the worldwide pharmaceutical industry. Thisi s not like the IPCC which is composed of individual nations contributions. These committees are not staffed that way. You end up with a lot of business interests wending their way in there. There has been quite a bit of controversy regarding this and vaccination programs. When companies are using the UN to sell their products that becomes a problem. And no I am not one of the vaccine = autism rubes.

Sure enough your source is from the Gapminder Institute speaking through the UN. I assume that is where you are getting this from. What makes me question your source even more is the presence of Hans Wigzell on the same board.

http://www.forbes.com/profile/hans-wigzell/

That's Hans leading the Europeam medical entrepreneurship. Illuminating a conflict of interest in a policy discussion is not ad hominem. That board is continental european big pharma. Now this is not to say that them saying 'health makes you rich' is not true but saying that who and what the guy works for is very much so germane. That it's the same shitty argument the Koch Borthers of the world have put out about CO2 lags temperature should not be lost on you.

So you are going for ad hominem. Understood.

If you had actually bothered to listen to what Rosling was saying, he simply noted that increases in health for many countries simply proceeded rises in income. He did not draw a causal link, and rather specifically noted that you have to do just about everything all at once to really improve lives of people in poorer countries.

Koch brothers aren't wrong, because they are funding pseudoscience. They are wrong because the pseudoscience is wrong.

Rosling has taken a lot of data and analyzed it, with an expertise in health matters. Even Dr. Wizgell is an expert and former professor of immunology. I would point out that directorships in corporations often are granted to people for specific areas of expertise. In this case the expertise is fairly obvious, for which the high-wheeling Dr. Wizgell was awarded the princely sum of $75,000 in 2012.

If you think you can fault Dr. Rosling's science or analysis, feel free to do so. Logically, your ad hominem is now dismissed as fallacious. I will move on to making other points, and ignore anything based on this flawed logic going forward.

LOL trying to equate the Koch brothers to Hans Wizgell. That was genuinely funny.

[boutons_deux]

"increases in health for many countries simply proceeded rises in income"

corresponds with the recent finding that USA poor people die some years earlier than rich people.

[RandomGuy]

On a final note, China is at a half percent growth rate. That is a doubling time of 140 years. Prima facia that may not seem significant, it is in my view when you are seeing that India is hoping to be population stable in terms of 50 years. India is at a 1.4% growth rate and that is a doubling time of 50 years. And while you give unquantifiable notions of 'urbanization' to dismiss their social programs, they have sterilization incentive programs and harsh tax structures to curtail reproduction. How would you feel about having to do what here?

Global population is one of the most significant challenges we have to face going forward. Dismissing resource scarcity as commodity trading and China when the price of oil has DOUBLED relative to inflation in the last 15 years is not good enough. 'Coping' with it is not good enough.

China's population is not going to double in 140 years. It is going to start shrinking, mostly likely within then next decade or so. That will make their population less of a problem from a resource standpoint. Of more concern, as Rosling noted, if you had bothered listening and understanding is that they will be moving up the income scale and able apply a fair amount of money to demanding the same resources we do.

We in the West will need to change a lot more, in terms of our inefficient use of resources/energy since we will be joined at our income bracket by all these other countries.

--------------------------------------------------------------

As for "unquantifiable notions of 'urbanization'"

When I start talking about "urbanization" trends and how this will add to trends of downward pressure on population growth rates it is rather well illustrated by this rather representative sniglet:


According to the 2000 census, the TFR was 1.85 (0.86 for cities, 1.08 for towns and 1.43 for villages/outposts)

Cities always, always, always, have lower overall fertility rates than the countryside.

Do you know why?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

:lol cherry picker. Gross dismissalist. I would really think you would not stoop to such lazy tactics.

Call it ad hominem and call it day, huh? This is a political board not the Forum of Ancient Greece and the guy in question is representing the WHO and in my view should be be objective to be making statements about world health policy. Epistemology is not physics. It comes to a certain point where belief is arbitrary because we are what we are and at the end of the day, he works for a European pharmaceutical consortium. Does it mean that he inherently is wrong? No but given that you like to talk about trends let's talk about trends in people that are promoting a product:

Are they more likely to overstate the benefits of their product?

And if he doesn't out right say the causal link then all he is doing is an old sales trick. You set up the table and allow the audience to draw its conclusion because it makes them emotionally invested in the decision. It's a central theme that you have espoused to me several times so far in this discussion, health proceeds income, and if there is no causal link why the need to repeat it ad nauseum? You have even made statements as to world health improving and what that portends. You drew the line yourself and find yourself defending it. It's quite effective obviously.

That is the reason why I drew the connection between Wizgell and Koch. They use the same exact persuasive methodology. CO2 lags temperature at least had a causal link in water solubility and they were simply trying to obfuscate the feedback mechanism. This one is not nearly that well thought out. Both Koch and this pharma interest use the same salesman methodology. Any connection the two events is completely fallacious yet they repeat as do you. Why is that?

Speaking in certainties regarding population projections seems to be a favorite past time of yours. India was wrong as I oultined earlier and pushed their plans back 25 years. China for all of its forced migrations has been publicly backing off those types of social programs with recent reforms in the country. You don't know, RG, what is going to happen and what seemed to be a trend a couple of years ago has been shown not to be as rosy as once thought. They have not been able to get it under control and they said they could.

You are also using an argument that you denounced earlier. You said always bad never better was just wrong while I counter that with always down never up as being just as wrong.

On a final note, I would like to say that I am enjoying this discussion. I know that I can be adversarial and biting in the way that I argue, I do respect your opinion and your arguments have been informative and I find my knowledge base unquestionably better off than what it was before we started this. If I am irritating you then I am sorry but in arguments, I push and am more than willing to belabor a point. I am not trying to disrespect you. Hope all is well mang.

[RandomGuy]

:lol cherry picker. Gross dismissalist. I would really think you would not stoop to such lazy tactics. .

That would have a lot more weight to it, were you to actually provide some evidence of your claims of biased science.

Do you have any?

[RandomGuy]

:lol cherry picker. Gross dismissalist. I would really think you would not stoop to such lazy tactics.

Call it ad hominem and call it day, huh? This is a political board not the Forum of Ancient Greece and the guy in question is representing the WHO and in my view should be be objective to be making statements about world health policy. Epistemology is not physics. It comes to a certain point where belief is arbitrary because we are what we are and at the end of the day, he works for a European pharmaceutical consortium. Does it mean that he inherently is wrong? No but given that you like to talk about trends let's talk about trends in people that are promoting a product:

Are they more likely to overstate the benefits of their product?

And if he doesn't out right say the causal link then all he is doing is an old sales trick. You set up the table and allow the audience to draw its conclusion because it makes them emotionally invested in the decision. It's a central theme that you have espoused to me several times so far in this discussion, health proceeds income, and if there is no causal link why the need to repeat it ad nauseum? You have even made statements as to world health improving and what that portends. You drew the line yourself and find yourself defending it. It's quite effective obviously.

That is the reason why I drew the connection between Wizgell and Koch. They use the same exact persuasive methodology. CO2 lags temperature at least had a causal link in water solubility and they were simply trying to obfuscate the feedback mechanism. This one is not nearly that well thought out. Both Koch and this pharma interest use the same salesman methodology. Any connection the two events is completely fallacious yet they repeat as do you. Why is that?

Speaking in certainties regarding population projections seems to be a favorite past time of yours. India was wrong as I oultined earlier and pushed their plans back 25 years. China for all of its forced migrations has been publicly backing off those types of social programs with recent reforms in the country. You don't know, RG, what is going to happen and what seemed to be a trend a couple of years ago has been shown not to be as rosy as once thought. They have not been able to get it under control and they said they could.

You are also using an argument that you denounced earlier. You said always bad never better was just wrong while I counter that with always down never up as being just as wrong.

On a final note, I would like to say that I am enjoying this discussion. I know that I can be adversarial and biting in the way that I argue, I do respect your opinion and your arguments have been informative and I find my knowledge base unquestionably better off than what it was before we started this. If I am irritating you then I am sorry but in arguments, I push and am more than willing to belabor a point. I am not trying to disrespect you. Hope all is well mang.

You didn't really answer my question either.

Why do cities always have lower fertility/birth rates than rural areas?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

That would have a lot more weight to it, were you to actually provide some evidence of your claims of biased science.

Do you?

I was talking about what you are doing with the arguments. You bolded the gross dismissalist part and the cherry picking is from you ignoring plenty of my arguments and trying to grandstand on others. For example you have pretty much granted that third world population growth is still high at over 2% and with no tailing is sight or that you cannot use 19th century as an empirical example because of socioeconomic factors. It's not entirely fair because we have a lot of arguments out there but I firmly believe that third world population growth should be a high national security priority.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

You didn't really answer my question either.

Why do cities always have lower fertility/birth rates than rural areas?

I am not going to outline your premise for you or answer questions that you obviously know the answer to. It's a lame tactic. You are not trying to educate yourself. You are trying to show me making your argument for you. Just as the last time you tried to get me to do it, I'm not going to. Make your own argument.

[RandomGuy]

I was talking about what you are doing with the arguments. You bolded the gross dismissalist part and the cherry picking is from you ignoring plenty of my arguments and trying to grandstand on others. For example you have pretty much granted that third world population growth is still high at over 2% and with no tailing is sight or that you cannot use 19th century as an empirical example because of socioeconomic factors. It's not entirely fair because we have a lot of arguments out there but I firmly believe that third world population growth should be a high national security priority.

Asking for some reasonable evidence of one of your arguments isn't cherry picking. Focusing on the parts of your posts where some disagreement exists is more than valid, it is the only way to move a conversation forward.

You have, as part of your, case about how concerned we should be, asserted that Roslings methods and/or analysis are skewed because of some nebulous profit motive.

You have presented, as evidence, one mildly compensated director on the board of his charity, whose academic expertise more than adequately explains his position on that board.

Are you going to answer my question, or not?

Do you have any evidence that his analysis or data are skewed or flawed because of this ad hominem?

[RandomGuy]

I am not going to outline your premise for you or answer questions that you obviously know the answer to. It's a lame tactic. You are not trying to educate yourself. You are trying to show me making your argument for you. Just as the last time you tried to get me to do it, I'm not going to. Make your own argument.

You are being hostile, and I am trying to get to some agreed on principles and ideas.

Either you aren't interested or don't know.

I guess we are done.

[RandomGuy]

You even have your statistician 'messiah' that you 'put a lot of stock into.' His macro ideas are used as dogma.

Fuck you, by the way.

I found this deeply insulting.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

:lol Then don't write like that

:lol Still name dropping them over and again

:lol 'Agreed upon principles' in a macro science. Socioeconomic 'forces' ain't Newtonian physics or thermodynamics.

:lol Shred of evidence of a 'consensus.'

:lol Me being hostile, Mr. Fuck You man?

:lol I point out arguments about government/colonial differences, the cheap sales technique involving 'logic' implying causation and instead grandstanding on a conflict-of-interest 'ad hominem' and asking me your 'question.'

:lol you trying to dictate the important topics of a discussion as 'moving the conversation forward.'


Look man you use lame argument tactics that I myself do not appreciate. If you want to get feelings about my aggressive approach then fine but I have a hard time sympathizing.

[RandomGuy]

:lol Then don't write like that

:lol Still name dropping them over and again

:lol 'Agreed upon principles' in a macro science. Socioeconomic 'forces' ain't Newtonian physics or thermodynamics.

:lol Shred of evidence of a 'consensus.'

:lol Me being hostile, Mr. Fuck You man?

:lol I point out arguments about government/colonial differences, the cheap sales technique involving 'logic' implying causation and instead grandstanding on a conflict-of-interest 'ad hominem' and asking me your 'question.'

:lol you trying to dictate the important topics of a discussion as 'moving the conversation forward.'


Look man you use lame argument tactics that I myself do not appreciate. If you want to get feelings about my aggressive approach then fine but I have a hard time sympathizing.


Fallacy: Appeal to Ridicule

Also Known as: Appeal to Mockery, The Horse Laugh.
Description of Appeal to Ridicule

The Appeal to Ridicule is a fallacy in which ridicule or mockery is substituted for evidence in an "argument." This line of "reasoning" has the following form:

X, which is some form of ridicule is presented (typically directed at the claim).
Therefore claim C is false.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because mocking a claim does not show that it is false.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-ridicule.html

FWIW. LOL smiley's are pretty much the definition of lame debate tactics.

So you have so far:
Two logical fallacies, a failure to support your thesis with anything remotely approaching reasonable data, and a few factual mistakes.

You don't seem to like the way I am doing this, so suggest something better. I am doing a bit better than painfully obvious logical fallacies.

I don't think we are going to see as much famine and war as you seem to think, and I am pretty sure that I can support that with good data. For your part I have seen very little to back up whatever it is you are trying to say. Quite frankly it is a bit less than clear.

Since you aren't intellectually honest or smart enough to answer simple questions, I will do it for you.

Cities have lower fertility rates than rural areas, because the economics of having children changes when you move populations from rural to city areas. Farms and rural areas have higher fertility and babies per woman than poorer areas, for the simple reason that more children equal more hands to help out with on the family plot of land. Once you are in a city, children become a net expense.

Therefore, if you want to make some meaningful statements about future population growth, you should pay close attention to city/rural trends.

Globally, the trend is for people to move from countrysides to cities to find better paying jobs.

This effect is not nebulous, but well measured, as I pointed out with the Chinese statistics.

Cities, again globally, not just in the west, tend to offer higher wages and better standards of living. The effect of this is about a 15% rise for each doubling of the population. This effect is remarkably constant in every country that has been studied.

This means that the attraction of cities will still be there in 100 years or 200 years, and should make the trends of lower and lower fertility rates pretty sticky.

If you can point out something that contradicts this beyond a lame LOL smiley, by all means, do so.

[RandomGuy]

You like bringing up France and Japan but I counter that with everything in between. the Indochina peninsula, the Indian peninsula, all of the middle east and most of Africa are all experiencing 2% growth rate or more. Sure stories like the large Arab states going from the 7%'s to the 2%'s is great but what if your macro attribution is incorrect or lacking precision.

What if ...monkeys fly out of my ass? Would I be wrong then?

Sure.

Thing is, we have little reason to think these trends are statisical flukes. One or two years, might make for a fluke, but if you have trends that go back for 30+ years, not so much.

Indochina penninsula:
Vietnam fertility rate, 2011: 1.89,
--down from 2.18 in 2000 88M pop

Laos fertility rate, 2011: 3.01,
--down from 4.81 in 2000 6.2M pop

Cambodia fertility rate, 2011: 2.87,
--down from 4.82 in 2000 14.7M pop

Trends in all countries here are very steadily downward with increasing urbanization.
Largest country urbanization:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/vietnam/urban-population-percent-of-total-wb-data.html


Statistics can be useful even if somewhat inaccurate, as one can still determine trends with some fair certainty.

We have no reason to think that ubanization trends will reverse globally, you have presented neither data, nor any plausible scenario that would reverse this.

You can bitch about "cheap sales techniques", but I have yet to see you attempt to show any contravening data.

[RandomGuy]

He didn't disprove Malthus. He just expanded the wiggle room before the thresholds for death checks. You don't really think that we can just breed unchecked can you?

East Africa is proving to be a proving ground. Border conflict over water between Kenya, Ethipoia, Eritrea and Sudan has been rising and will stand to grow worse considering the region is experiencing a drought worse than the one seen in the early 80s. Malaria, AIDS and a whole slew of parasitic waterborn diseases that are not much talked about are rampant. Measles came back.

We can pat ourselves on the back for being so wonderful by importing food and staving off the worst of the disaster because of the groundwork Michael Jackson and friends put in but it's not sustainable. There was a whole bunch of famine and death last year. How about we put up one of the articles about the East African famines?

As the price for fuel rises then it is going to be more problematic for nitrogen production domestically as well as transportation required to get the food necessary to feed the millions that do not have the domestic production. We going to build the desalination plants they already don't have to handle seasonal variations? All guys like this guy and Sarin Haber did was push it back and present this illusion that current and technologies of the future will stave off famine and disease in infinitum.

We can and most likely will.

People have been predicting Malthusian death spirals for hundreds of years, and quite frankly, I find it tiresome.

That doesn't mean we should not be aware of resource scarcity, or worry about population growth. We should do both.

Our ability to discover new technology and our accumulation of knowledge has more than kept pace with population growth. Throughout the 20th century, the inflation adjusted price for just about every commodity we have data for FELL.

This means that supply was increasing faster than overall demand. For everything. QED.

The implication is that our methods of farming, mining, manufacturing, etc., got better at a faster rate than our population grew.

Now our population is not growing as fast as it used to, but there is no indication that human ingenuity, discovery, or the pace of scientific discovery is going to fall to go with it.

If you want to talk about fertilizers and how fuel will be scarce so we will have a problem feeding people...


Nitrogen fertilizers are often made using the Haber-Bosch process (invented about 1915) which uses natural gas (CH4+) for the hydrogen and nitrogen gas (N2) from the air at an elevated temperature and pressure in the presence of a catalyst to form ammonia (NH3) as the end product.

Natgas prices are lower now than they were in 1980. Best data I can find shows that, adjusted for inflation US natgas prices are far lower.

More outdated, mistaken thinking.

Hydrocarbon prices WILL rise, though, as demand outstrips supply, even so over the next 20-40 years. This will affect developed countries a great deal. We will be forced to cut back and change the inefficient way we use energy.

Money and capital will flow into alternatives over time, and those alternatives will get cheaper.

Not quite a Malthusian death spiral.

The trends we know of, and have data for, all point to increasing sustainability. We will have problems with poverty for as long as I am alive. I don't doubt or dispute that. We should work and make efforts to alleviate that.

[boutons_deux]

"make efforts to alleviate that."

The War on Poverty is just another war the USA has lost. The 1% piling up the wealth without limit while the 99% loses means the number of people in poverty and in SEVERE poverty will only increase. Govt is not even talking about doing anything, nevermined actually doing anything.

[RandomGuy]

"they are getting better"

oh really?

climate change and access to water, wars over the same, for agriculture will kill a few B in the coming decades.



That may be the case. Water will certainly be an issue.

As it gets more dear though, more money will be directed at solving even that problem.

Since most human population leaves fairly close to coastlines, the obvious desalinization solution would seem to be most logical. This will drive demand for energy though, unless some better, less energy intensive means presents itself.

Big problem to be sure, but not insurmountable. Simple efficiency would go a long way to mitigating such problems, and efficiency would be yet another solution driven by rather simple economics.

[boutons_deux]

desalinated sea water driven by solar/wind/wave energy would be sustainable supply of fresh water, but VERY expensive to build and maintain.

http://www.water.vic.gov.au/initiatives/desalination

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Conflict on interest especially when the person in question works for an 'institute' endowed by european big pharma is significant in a policy debate. Or do you think that placing Citibank types on Dodd-Frank regulation committees is to be dismissed as ad hominem and immune from scrutiny?

And yes i will ridicule you when you use the same arguments and pseudoscience that the climate types use. Name dropping and implying causation by correlation, a cheap salesman tricks, only serve to reinforce this notion. The thing is that is not all that I do. Not even by a longshot.

You have pretty much ignored the cultural and colonial differences and a slew of other arguments like health = wealth = nonsequitor fallacy. Just like you completely ignore the social strata argument and ignore the doubling time. What you call 'moving the discussion forward' I call you trying to frame the argument without the parts you lack a rejoinder.

Instead, you show me a few cherry picked countries and each one is set to double inbetween 23 and 36 years. The rates of change regarding population growth are in decades because of how census are done. I realize that your youtubes from 2009 have top notch dataset but whatever projections they had back then have been wrong. China was supposed to be going backwards and India below 1%. That is from 2011 census data that they compiled earlier this year.

You've been ridiculing my arguments as outdated but come the fuck on. Just a hint: don't come with 2009 youtubes when you want to make the 'your take is outdated' argument.

I can cherry pick stats from 2011 too, its a wikipedia special but at least it's up to date. These are countries from what i will 'call regions of concern':

Countries over 3% growth or doubling in less that 23 years:

Uganda
UAE
Gaza
Ethiopia

Countries at over 2% growth or doubling between 23 and 35 years:

Congo
Rwanda
Kenya
Sudan
Iraq
Afghanistan
Sierra Leone
West Bank
Oman

and mind you those are only the one that have had major instability in recent history from off the top of my head. There are well over 100 countries at over a 1% growth rate. Now while it may seem fun to say that they will all be under .5% in 35 years, but I am not buying it especially with the last decades deviation from projection. You know with the 2011 dataset.

As for the price of oil. This was the same argument from the 1980s from oilcos. This was from after finding the northern oil reserves in alaska and canada. That's when the 'technology will find a way' argument came about. This was after the OPEC trust fixed prices muchhigher but after the discoveries it rose/remained steady for a portion of the 80s. From the later half of the eighties up 20 years to 2008 supplies went down down down and prices went up, up, up. We saw gas go from under $2 to upwards of $4. Crude prices are still high today.

Natural gas is cheap domestically and has seen prices drop to what they were a decade ago. That is significant. Europe and our other allies such as Japan did not see nearly as much of a drop and we did and well we can both guess how much we gave to the likes of Rwanda. Since 2008 though prices have started to inch back up. Mind you in the interval of 'technology will finding a way' from the 80s to recent gas prices tripled. Technology better start looking again cause I imagine the next 25 year interval is not going to be as pleasant.

Developing countries require more consumption too. Rosling and his 'twoofer-esque' Galileo-special storage container theory is going to take some serious fossil fuel consumption to go from the toy bicycle to the model car. Remember the guy with the cardboard cutouts representing tiers from the WTC? At least Rosling went to the Container Store and Toy R Us for his presentation. I can't believe you took that shit seriously. Updated thinking, huh? The latest trends in shuffling boxes. :lol

Then there is everything else from rare earths to water. Water is a huge concern. That the Colorado River hasn't reached the ocean in decades is one thing but the regional droughts in Africa are just brutal. The middle East is so arid that they already have to use power intensive reverse osmosis. Boutox is spot on in that regard. When Ethiopia and Palestine have some of the highest growth rates that should be a concern.

And then of course there is climate change which makes it a nice triangle of scarcity, population and climate shifts. Feedback is a bitch.

Population growth needs to be more in the public focus. We as a people need to start giving a shit about what things are going to be like 25 or 50 years from now and stop repeating the mistakes of our forebearers. Climate change and population growth who go hand in hand need more priority. A lot more priority than our current focus on finding more fossil fuels.

[RandomGuy]

Conflict on interest especially when the person in question works for an 'institute' endowed by european big pharma is significant in a policy debate. Or do you think that placing Citibank types on Dodd-Frank regulation committees is to be dismissed as ad hominem and immune from scrutiny?

You have a long way to go to prove any conflict of interest. The proof you have provided is insufficient to show such conflict of interest, even given a very generous interpretation of what you think you have presented.

Further, even granting that assertion you have yet to show how this might have affected either the data or the conclusions drawn from that data.

You have done the same thing that conspiracy asshats do, which is show something "suspicious" then wave away something you don't like.

Until you can show something other than chest-thumping, it is safe to dismiss your assertion as a logical fallacy.

Despite being asked to repeatedly show some alternate data sets or some mildly convincing arguments, you have innuendo.





Fallacy: Circumstantial Ad Hominem
________________________________________
Description of Circumstantial Ad Hominem
A Circumstantial ad Hominem is a fallacy in which one attempts to attack a claim by asserting that the person making the claim is making it simply out of self interest. In some cases, this fallacy involves substituting an attack on a person's circumstances (such as the person's religion, political affiliation, ethnic background, etc.). The fallacy has the following forms:
1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B asserts that A makes claim X because it is in A's interest to claim X.
3. Therefore claim X is false.

Person A: Hans Rosling
Claim X: Health improvements tend to precede and may be required for improvements of income for many countries not in the industrialized West.
Person B: FuzzyLumpkins

1. Hans Rosling (Person A) makes the claim that Health improvements tend to precede improvements of income for many countries not in the industrialized West. (claim X)
2. Fuzzy Lumpkins (Person B) asserts Hans Rosling’s (person A) non-profit organization takes money from Big Pharma, it is in his interest to play up links between improvements in health and improvements of income. (claim X)
3. Therefore Hans Rosling’s (Person A) claim of health improvements proceeding or being required for improvements of income (claim X) is false.


I know you aren't intellectually honest enough to answer my questions, but you should at least be asking yourself why putting your statements into the format of this logical fallacy was so easy, and what that implies about your arguments.

[RandomGuy]

You have pretty much ignored the cultural and colonial differences and a slew of other arguments like health = wealth = nonsequitor fallacy. Just like you completely ignore the social strata argument and ignore the doubling time. What you call 'moving the discussion forward' I call you trying to frame the argument without the parts you lack a rejoinder.


The easy response rejoinder is:

Quantify that, and outline why they matter, then show how I have ignored them.

You are saying I am ignoring those, and that they matter, but unless you can quantify what you are talking about, then you don't have science, you have pseudoscience.

I don't ignore the problems and challenges faced by post colonial countries, nor ones that have had long-standing ethnic wars. I understand them quite well.

Nor do I ever, ever say that there will not be poor people in the future, or misery. We are far, far, from eliminating war, poverty, or human misery.

I will say that for the first time in human history, we are on the verge of really moving the majority of the human population into at least a modest standard of living, and the data trends show this happening.

Sure there are problems, such as corruption in India, and a brewing African war that is in grave danger of escalating into one that envelops most of the continent.

You are confusing guarded optimism with blind optimism.

I will get to doubling time shortly.

[RandomGuy]

You've been ridiculing my arguments as outdated but come the fuck on. Just a hint: don't come with 2009 youtubes when you want to make the 'your take is outdated' argument.

I haven't been "ridiculing" your out of date thinking.

I have corrected you when you are factually incorrect, and have, for the most part, tried rather hard to do so in as neutral a manner as possible.

I am aware that the videos are (gasp) three years old, but they are outlining long term trends of 50 to 100 years.

To be fair and intellectually honest:
We have no guarantee these trends of rising incomes and rising health will continue.

So far though, we have a lot of reason to think they will, as well as some reasoning to think they will not and change for the worse.

[RandomGuy]

I can cherry pick stats from 2011 too, its a wikipedia special but at least it's up to date. These are countries from what i will 'call regions of concern':

Countries over 3% growth or doubling in less that 23 years:

Uganda
UAE
Gaza
Ethiopia

Countries at over 2% growth or doubling between 23 and 35 years:

Congo
Rwanda
Kenya
Sudan
Iraq
Afghanistan
Sierra Leone
West Bank
Oman

and mind you those are only the one that have had major instability in recent history from off the top of my head. There are well over 100 countries at over a 1% growth rate. Now while it may seem fun to say that they will all be under .5% in 35 years, but I am not buying it especially with the last decades deviation from projection. You know with the 2011 dataset.

1) The last decade has not really deviate that much from past trends in terms of urbanization and total fertility rate.

2) The grand total population in your list is 274M.

3) Your calculations for growth rates do not control for immigration. If you are using them to support arguments based on human population growth, double counting is a no-no.



Population growth in the United Arab Emirates is among the highest in world, mostly due to immigration.

4) The number of countries having high growth rates means less than the total populations that are having high growth rates. Tiny Gaza with 500,000 people having a high growth rate is a local hiccup at best.

You would be far better off looking at fertility rates, and larger, more comprehensive datasets, especially with a wider view of things.

[RandomGuy]

Developing countries require more consumption too. Rosling and his 'twoofer-esque' Galileo-special storage container theory is going to take some serious fossil fuel consumption to go from the toy bicycle to the model car. Remember the guy with the cardboard cutouts representing tiers from the WTC? At least Rosling went to the Container Store and Toy R Us for his presentation. I can't believe you took that shit seriously. Updated thinking, huh? The latest trends in shuffling boxes. :lol

More Appeal to Ridicule fallacies.

The twoofer twit was representing physical objects and trying to use them as analogues. Rosling was simply using the props as placeholders for numbers.

I'm sure even your dumb ass is familiar with things like graphs.

You know, those visual representations of numbers?

[RandomGuy]

As for the price of oil. This was the same argument from the 1980s from oilcos. This was from after finding the northern oil reserves in alaska and canada. That's when the 'technology will find a way' argument came about. This was after the OPEC trust fixed prices muchhigher but after the discoveries it rose/remained steady for a portion of the 80s. From the later half of the eighties up 20 years to 2008 supplies went down down down and prices went up, up, up. We saw gas go from under $2 to upwards of $4. Crude prices are still high today.

Natural gas is cheap domestically and has seen prices drop to what they were a decade ago. That is significant. Europe and our other allies such as Japan did not see nearly as much of a drop and we did and well we can both guess how much we gave to the likes of Rwanda. Since 2008 though prices have started to inch back up. Mind you in the interval of 'technology will finding a way' from the 80s to recent gas prices tripled. Technology better start looking again cause I imagine the next 25 year interval is not going to be as pleasant.

Then there is everything else from rare earths to water. Water is a huge concern. That the Colorado River hasn't reached the ocean in decades is one thing but the regional droughts in Africa are just brutal. The middle East is so arid that they already have to use power intensive reverse osmosis. Boutox is spot on in that regard. When Ethiopia and Palestine have some of the highest growth rates that should be a concern.

And then of course there is climate change which makes it a nice triangle of scarcity, population and climate shifts. Feedback is a bitch.

Population growth needs to be more in the public focus. We as a people need to start giving a shit about what things are going to be like 25 or 50 years from now and stop repeating the mistakes of our forebears. Climate change and population growth who go hand in hand need more priority. A lot more priority than our current focus on finding more fossil fuels.


I have pointed out, as does Rosling, that resource scarcity will be a problem as developing countries move up in income. He outright says that a lot of current trends in energy and resource use are on unsustainable long term trends. He tempers that with the statement that overall it takes very little income rise to make a huge difference in living standards. This is the kind of thing that you get out of doing real data analysis, instead of relying on flawed logic and confirmation bias filtering.

Oil companies were right, and new technology did find rather large amounts of oil. They became victims of their own success in the mid-90's because of it, and you would know this if your information sources were a bit broader, and your filtering of information not quite so pronounced.

Still won't make a huge difference in the long run, but it does mean we have a longer tail to the trailing off of hydrocarbon energy. The natgas discoveries in the US do the same. Delay only, but not prevent. That is why we need to develop alternative efficiency and renewable energy technologies now, I think we can both agree on that.

Oil prices are high, not because supply has been limited, but because demand has grown a lot. While we have used far more oil than we have discovered, and will continue to do so, demand has been a much greater driver of oil prices.

Natgas prices, globally, will fall as US export LNG terminals get up and running. This will force US prices up a bit until they equalize with global markets. Ah fungibility.

Anyhoo, you and I would both agree that we need to move away from depleting sources, but your limited thinking on the issue misses the wider picture that the tail of the peak will be a bit flatter due to technological developments.

Again, all this does is add more time for economic growth to catch up to population growth.

Rare earths, water, oil are all problems. I agree. Water will be a particularly important issue, and require a lot of restructuring of how we use it.

That said, market mechanisms are things you seem to be missing in your thinking.

If oil remains high for a long time, you will see movement to alternatives, as well as more efficient use of it.
If natgas remains high for a long time, you will see movement to alternatives, as well as more efficient use of it.
If rare earth remains high for a long time, you will see movement to alternatives, as well as more efficient use of it.
If water remains high for a long time, you will see development of new capture methods, as well as more efficient use of it.

All of this will act to alleviate a lot of what you think will be problems.

High prices for oil in a world that doesn't use much oil, don't mean much.

Some of the solutions to these problems will not be easy, but they are all solvable problems. Yes, negative feedback is a bitch. Climate change will not make things better either and create its own set of problems, and make others worse.

But then, positive feedbacks exist as well. That is what you are missing.

[RandomGuy]

Mind you in the interval of 'technology will finding a way' from the 80s to recent gas prices tripled.



http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/images/charts/Oil/Inflation_adjusted_gasoline_price.jpg

The table below isn't even adjusted for inflation.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Wu7yxKwxEs/T5CSPfLL96I/AAAAAAAARQM/1mXG7fLQs1c/s1600/gas.jpg

[RandomGuy]

I have now addressed everything you have posted to some degree or another.

Ball's in your court, Lumpy.

I would note though, we are just quibbling over how bad things are and how bad they might get.

Generally we agree that we need to move away from depletable hydrocarbon sources of energy for a variety of reasons.

Generally we agree that we need to reduce CO2 and other GHG emissions, in order to mitigate risks of some potentially really bad outcomes in terms of climate change.

We probably also agree that we face some pretty steep challenges for both. Wars, famine, population growth are all real and pressing concerns. Please don't take anything I have said as being overly dismissive of these problems.

Free markets for all their flaws, still provide a remarkably flexible, and synergetic response to these problems. Do not underestimate the power and innovativeness of billions of human beings looking at complex problems.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

You have not addressed everything. You still cherrypick and grandstand on two supposed fallacies and trying to characterize my arguments as such in totality though. I believe that your term for your actions is 'hand waving.'

I ridicule you sure because your approach to arguing is classic cheap tricks so I deride you. That is what I do. I am not kidding that your presentation and arguments are straight from the AGW denier/twofer playbook. OTOH, what I do not do is leave that as the total of my argument.

Just to extend some of my arguments that you in no way address well other than stopping the repeat of the health = wealth stupidity:

1) The 'dataset' and predictive plots were wrong. Population growth especially in India with the new census information completed since 2009 have shown they have not slowed as they thought and they were going to need to make more of an effort than their sterilization programs and whatnot.

2) The assertion about population growth trends from your not 'outdated' dataset have proven to not match what has actually happened. Other than making predictions on data a few years before or at best while major nations are taking a decadal census in and of itself should be specious.

3) There is no consideration of the political differences between the emerging countries of 50 years ago and those of today. Making predictions on a macro level is tricky at best, just ask Milton Friedman, but discounting governance past and present of the regions.

Now for a rebuttal of your most recent stuff.

1) The following comment is especially ignorant:



If oil remains high for a long time, you will see movement to alternatives, as well as more efficient use of it.
If natgas remains high for a long time, you will see movement to alternatives, as well as more efficient use of it.
If rare earth remains high for a long time, you will see movement to alternatives, as well as more efficient use of it.
If water remains high for a long time, you will see development of new capture methods, as well as more efficient use of it.

All of this will act to alleviate a lot of what you think will be problems.

if you want me to expound on this but I will say this for now. These trends are not in a vacuum and you need to look up the relationship between the alternatives to fossil fuels and rare earth elements. Quite frankly, we do not have enough of the latter for our own domestic use and the world is much worse off.

2) Trying to show a trend in natural gas prices using a graph of a short period is straight out of the AGW denier handbook. It reminded me of

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_10-12_med.gif

instantly. Additionally, showing US domestic prices when we are talking about a world situation is fun I guess. What do you think

3) Twofer twit indeed was using cardboard cutouts as analogues of the towers. You messiah random namedropped twit used plastic storage tubs and toys as analogues of population and technological development. Its the same approach. Just like saying that health proceeds wealth ad nauseum and implying causality is the same thing that the Koch thinktanks use in making claims about CO2 lagging temperature. They are literally the same shitty techniques and logic.

4) The countries on my list were just from the list of well over 100 that I found that I felt were particularly at risk. That it is only 5% of the world's population is besides the point. What it should demonstrate is that even a small rapidly growing population has profound global effects.

5) Further, while it's fun to say that the China's and India's of the world are approaching population stagnation --and your messiah of the technocrats was wrong on that notion in 2009-- but looking at the internal demographics paints a more troubling reality. You apprently did not read the Idia Times article I linkid earlier. It is the most at risk populations that are growing while the more affluent are not increasing in population. When the population of the poor grows and the elite shrinks then that is expanding the rich poor gap.

6) While the figures I gave 'don't account' for migration that is nonsequitor so far. Prima facia arguing that people are migrating to Afghanistan or Ethiopia is specious. You really need to stop applying your canned Rosling assertion on developed countries here. People tend to leave when there are famines and wars, they do not go there en masse.

7) Free market for all of its flaws is a fucking macro idea that is pie in the sky nonsense. You can have your faith in some ephemeral, nebulous rational contruct but myself I want specific policies and projects. You want me to stop worrying about it then you give me some idea how we are going to replace the current photovoltaics now and not some hope for efficiency from oxides 20 years from now after the populations have already doubled. I want to see how we are going to get water to people that already don't have enough. Specifics not the 'God will find a way' approach.

8) Building a strawman like


This is the kind of thing that you get out of doing real data analysis, instead of relying on flawed logic and confirmation bias filtering.

Oil companies were right, and new technology did find rather large amounts of oil. They became victims of their own success in the mid-90's because of it, and you would know this if your information sources were a bit broader, and your filtering of information not quite so pronounced.

is a waste of your and my time.

I never disputed the first although it is more masturbation to his 'health = wealth' sales job but as for the latter statement. I specifically said:


As for the price of oil. This was the same argument from the 1980s from oilcos. This was from after finding the northern oil reserves in alaska and canada. That's when the 'technology will find a way' argument came about. This was after the OPEC trust fixed prices muchhigher but after the discoveries it rose/remained steady for a portion of the 80s. From the later half of the eighties up 20 years to 2008 supplies went down down down and prices went up, up, up. We saw gas go from under $2 to upwards of $4. Crude prices are still high today.

Your graph from above shows prices go from $1.50 to the $3.50 is that it is today. Your graph is also a myopic, culturally naive US domestic price graph. The rest of the world for the most part pays much higher prices. Don't be a CC with the 'we got ours so fuck everyone else' approach.

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/05/highest-cheapest-gas-prices-by-country.html

9) I will ask you a question that I really do not know the answer to as it is your personal opinion. Is it fair to treat representatives of Exxon or Citigroup with a bit of skepticism when they discuss US energy and finance regulation policy?

[RandomGuy]

I am not kidding that your presentation and arguments are straight from the AGW denier/twofer playbook. OTOH, what I do not do is leave that as the total of my argument.

That would be a lot more convincing if your arguments were logically sound, kid.

Smearing a source for some perceived, but entirely unproven bias, when asked for some justification of that is exactly the kind of thing one would expect from a conspiracy nut.

I have outlined your failures very clearly.




Fallacy: Circumstantial Ad Hominem
________________________________________
Description of Circumstantial Ad Hominem
A Circumstantial ad Hominem is a fallacy in which one attempts to attack a claim by asserting that the person making the claim is making it simply out of self interest. In some cases, this fallacy involves substituting an attack on a person's circumstances (such as the person's religion, political affiliation, ethnic background, etc.). The fallacy has the following forms:
1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B asserts that A makes claim X because it is in A's interest to claim X.
3. Therefore claim X is false.

Person A: Hans Rosling
Claim X: Health improvements tend to precede and may be required for improvements of income for many countries not in the industrialized West.
Person B: FuzzyLumpkins

1. Hans Rosling (Person A) makes the claim that Health improvements tend to precede improvements of income for many countries not in the industrialized West. (claim X)
2. Fuzzy Lumpkins (Person B) asserts Hans Rosling’s (person A) non-profit organization takes money from Big Pharma, it is in his interest to play up links between improvements in health and improvements of income. (claim X)
3. Therefore Hans Rosling’s (Person A) claim of health improvements proceeding or being required for improvements of income (claim X) is false.

[RandomGuy]

1) The 'dataset' and predictive plots were wrong. Population growth especially in India with the new census information completed since 2009 have shown they have not slowed as they thought and they were going to need to make more of an effort than their sterilization programs and whatnot.

Indias fertility rate is still falling, just a bit more slowly. Change happens, and I won't deny their population will grow.

Time will tell whether this is ultimately a problem, but their economy is still growing faster than their population, and this will tend to accelerate the trend towards urbanization, as the cities become the economic engines that we know them to be, and people get drawn there for jobs.

You have presented no evidence that the urbanization trend in India will change, have you?

[RandomGuy]

2) The assertion about population growth trends from your not 'outdated' dataset have proven to not match what has actually happened. Other than making predictions on data a few years before or at best while major nations are taking a decadal census in and of itself should be specious.

You base this entirely on one news article detailing Indian politicians estimates about India without looking at source data? Really? That is what you are going with?

You should be reading things like this, and maybe then you might start thinking in terms of fertility rates instead of "population growth".

http://www.prb.org/pdf07/futurepopulationofindia.pdf

[RandomGuy]

2) Trying to show a trend in natural gas prices using a graph of a short period is straight out of the AGW denier handbook. It reminded me of

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_10-12_med.gif

Not comparable at all.

We have vast amounts of past data for global temperature.

We have, at best, a few decades worth of prices for natgas, and even then, great regional variability, and given technological and demand changes, little value in comparing present prices to that of 50 years ago. The kind of data you seem to think would not be cherry picking doesn't exist, dumb ass.

Were you not a lazy dishonest shit, you would attempt to prove the cherry picking by showing the entire dataset, and you might be able to figure that out for yourself, instead of posting the global warming graph and prancing.

Globally, it varies greatly between regions as it is difficult to transport without large, capital intensive pipelines.

In the US however, prices have remained remarkably stable, up until the recent spike in energy prices, primarily from Chinese demand:
http://geology.com/articles/natural-gas-prices/

The best data we have is for US prices:
http://geology.com/articles/natural-gas-prices/natural-gas-price-history.gif

Feel free to present long term global price data that isn't "cherry picking". Good luck with that. You and I both know you won't even try.

In that you are far closer to twoofer moon fakers than you would like to admit.

If you try to do it, you will realize how it isn't comparable, because natural gas price data and global temperature data are not at all similar, give up, knowing I am right, and your "cherry picking" charge is bullshit. If you don't try, you prove my point about you being a dishonest lazy shit. For you to prove your point, you have to show that a conclusion drawn from the data might change, given more data. You can't, without being even more dishonest. Not that I would put it past you, given the ad hominem fallacies.

I don't mind you having an opinion, however uninformed, but your ignorance does not make me wrong. Sorry.



7) Free market for all of its flaws is a fucking macro idea that is pie in the sky nonsense. You can have your faith in some ephemeral, nebulous rational contruct but myself I want specific policies and projects. You want me to stop worrying about it then you give me some idea how we are going to replace the current photovoltaics now and not some hope for efficiency from oxides 20 years from now after the populations have already doubled. I want to see how we are going to get water to people that already don't have enough. Specifics not the 'God will find a way' approach.

Free markets have their places, and part of that is moving capital to where demand increases. This is neither magical, nor nebulous. Sorry you have no education in economics to understand it, but again, your ignorance does not make me wrong.

I don't want you to stop worrying, quite the opposite, as I have said. I have said we should be concerned. We should be spending money now on solving these problems. You and I are not too far off, but for some reason, you seem bound and determined to talk past that, and ignore what I am really saying.

If you keep looking there are no few number of people working on solving energy, water, and other problems. No guarantee they will solve everything perfectly, and we do need to put more support into those efforts.

I do not have a "God will find a way" approach. I have stated what my "approach" is, repeatedly. Criticize that "God will find a way approach" all you want, I will not defend it, as that is not what I believe, nor the approach I think we should take.

[RandomGuy]

3) Twofer twit indeed was using cardboard cutouts as analogues of the towers. You messiah random namedropped twit used plastic storage tubs and toys as analogues of population and technological development. Its the same approach. Just like saying that health proceeds wealth ad nauseum and implying causality is the same thing that the Koch thinktanks use in making claims about CO2 lagging temperature. They are literally the same shitty techniques and logic.

Meh. Doubling down on the ad hominem, and a rather childish attempt to get my goat.

I have come to realize that is the best you can do, so I will stop.

Let me know when you decide to stop being dishonest and/or lazy.

At this point, I don't see much point in continuing. You are a waste of effort.

You may now engage in whatever chest-thumping makes you happy, kid. I cede the field.

You are too much for me. :dramaquee

[FuzzyLumpkins]

You base this entirely on one news article detailing Indian politicians estimates about India without looking at source data? Really? That is what you are going with?

You should be reading things like this, and maybe then you might start thinking in terms of fertility rates instead of "population growth".

http://www.prb.org/pdf07/futurepopulationofindia.pdf

They just had a census in 2011. You are going to show me a study from 2007 and try and make claims that it is more telling than him quoting figures of what their census said just this year?

This shows me two things:

1) You have no clue about population modeling and the subsequent projections. Look into non deterministic flow. And just to be clear; migration and urbanization fertility rates both get a coefficient in the equation. It's just too bad that there is no reductionist take on it like there is with the thermodynamic flux and it's PDE's.

2) You are completely unaware that India just now is completing the most massive census undertaking in human history and you are STILL showing me shit from 6 years ago. The reason I am being a dick to you is literally shit like that. How many times did you call me outdated? More on that in a minute.

Literally as we speak they are combing through a mountain of data and the 'politician' quoting disproportionate growth figures is the health minister of the country involved in the undertaking. We was quoting decadal growth rates of provinces that had certain social service figures ie the poor shitty places. One thing is becoming very clear though: the population projections that we have been being told for the last few years saying "India is almost break even" such as you have been channeling have been wrong. You really need to stop with the outdated shit when I am citing brand spanking new Indian census figures. Stick your 'source data' up your ass.

3) You really like your urbanization coeffecient. Geographic data is an important distinction when modeling but quite frankly how they model projections right now is flawed and your urbanization coefficient is jsut as much in question as anythig else. And lets make it clear. Arbitrarily calling a certain geographic type urban and measuring fertility rates on that that arbitrary bifurcation is at best clunky when you are trying to make projections as to how hundreds of millions or more of people are living. This gets back to the entire macro approximation discussion that I was trying to have but you have been too busy trying to pigeonhole me into ad hominems. That the guy is an economist who have their own neat macro concept based models and why that is funny may be lost on you but it is not for me. Precision counts but I'll give a pass just on effort.

4) You avoided the question and I know in your mind that avoiding a question is admissive so that is telling: " I will ask you a question that I really do not know the answer to as it is your personal opinion. Is it fair to treat representatives of Exxon or Citigroup with a bit of skepticism when they discuss US energy and finance regulation policy?"

[RandomGuy]

They just had a census in 2011. You are going to show me a study from 2007 and try and make claims that it is more telling than him quoting figures of what their census said just this year?

This shows me two things:

1) You have no clue about population modeling and the subsequent projections. Look into non deterministic flow. And just to be clear; migration and urbanization fertility rates both get a coefficient in the equation. It's just too bad that there is no reductionist take on it like there is with the thermodynamic flux and it's PDE's.

bla bla bla, more diatribe bla

If you read closely, I didn't make any claims.

What I did say, is that you should look at underlying reports instead of news articles about the reports.


You should be reading things like this [statistical demographic analysis], and maybe then you might start thinking in terms of fertility rates instead of "population growth".

Sokay. I already know you are not, for whatever reason really reading or understanding what I say. Any case makes further discussion pointless, other than to point out your obvious mistakes, because that is mildly amusing.

[RandomGuy]

4) You avoided the question and I know in your mind that avoiding a question is admissive so that is telling: " I will ask you a question that I really do not know the answer to as it is your personal opinion. Is it fair to treat representatives of Exxon or Citigroup with a bit of skepticism when they discuss US energy and finance regulation policy?"

Yes. One should be skeptical.

Easy peasey.


See how that goes? That is what intellectual honesty should look like.

(edit)

That said "skepticism" should not include blanket dismissals, simply because they have an interest. Their claims should be subjected to some scrutiny, but automatically assuming anything they say about energy policy is wrong would be a grave error.

I would ask in return:
Would anything they say be automatically wrong or false?

[RandomGuy]

They just had a census in 2011. You are going to show me a study from 2007 and try and make claims that it is more telling than him quoting figures of what their census said just this year?

This shows me two things:

1) You have no clue about population modeling and the subsequent projections. Look into non deterministic flow. And just to be clear; migration and urbanization fertility rates both get a coefficient in the equation. It's just too bad that there is no reductionist take on it like there is with the thermodynamic flux and it's PDE's.

2) You are completely unaware that India just now is completing the most massive census undertaking in human history and you are STILL showing me shit from 6 years ago. The reason I am being a dick to you is literally shit like that. How many times did you call me outdated? More on that in a minute.

Literally as we speak they are combing through a mountain of data and the 'politician' quoting disproportionate growth figures is the health minister of the country involved in the undertaking. We was quoting decadal growth rates of provinces that had certain social service figures ie the poor shitty places. One thing is becoming very clear though: the population projections that we have been being told for the last few years saying "India is almost break even" such as you have been channeling have been wrong. You really need to stop with the outdated shit when I am citing brand spanking new Indian census figures. Stick your 'source data' up your ass.

3) You really like your urbanization coeffecient. Geographic data is an important distinction when modeling but quite frankly how they model projections right now is flawed and your urbanization coefficient is jsut as much in question as anythig else. And lets make it clear. Arbitrarily calling a certain geographic type urban and measuring fertility rates on that that arbitrary bifurcation is at best clunky when you are trying to make projections as to how hundreds of millions or more of people are living. This gets back to the entire macro approximation discussion that I was trying to have but you have been too busy trying to pigeonhole me into ad hominems. That the guy is an economist who have their own neat macro concept based models and why that is funny may be lost on you but it is not for me. Precision counts but I'll give a pass just on effort.

4) You avoided the question and I know in your mind that avoiding a question is admissive so that is telling: " I will ask you a question that I really do not know the answer to as it is your personal opinion. Is it fair to treat representatives of Exxon or Citigroup with a bit of skepticism when they discuss US energy and finance regulation policy?"

As for the rest of it, as I said, you win. I see very little value in attempting to challenge your underlying assumptions, because you obviously wouldn't change your mind about anything even if shown to be wrong. You are, at this point, more interested in showing me up than the truth, and that makes for a boring conversation, quite frankly.

That is probably a bit my fault, so you have my apologies, but you are a prickly type though, so I doubt getting to that point could have been avoided.

Prosit.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I just brought up fertility rates in the above post, Mr. Intellectually Honest. A simple ctrl-f and you can be honest too!

I have worked with population models mathematically. Don't tell me your favorite coefficients and act like youre special. Fertility rate is just a coefficient you multiply by the current population. I like the death rate and youre a noob for not discussing that!

On a final note, you admit that a man's professional associates are a legitimate reason for skepticism. Thus the ad hominem does have some validity in an argument according to you. The only one using a blanket dismissal regarding this is you. Bold me some more syllogisms.

[DarrinS]

You two girls still fighting? Damn.

[RandomGuy]

On a final note, you admit that a man's professional associates are a legitimate reason for skepticism.

No, actually, I didn't.

You also didn't really prove a conflict of interest exists. I'm sure you think you did, but really you were VERY far from it.

Lastly, even if you were to get off your lazy ass and supply enough data to support your assertion of a conflict of interest, you still would have to show that any work might have been affected by a conflict of interest, as I have asked you to do.

Honestly, most of what you say and assert here seems to be based on a lack of understanding of what the guy said, and of what I said. I rather highly doubt you really watched most of the lectures, and am certain you didn't quite understand them.

I don't think you are being intentionally dishonest, mostly. I think it is because you think you understand what is being presented far better than you actually do. The fact that you have repeatedly misstated/interpreted what I am saying speaks very strongly to this. FWIW, you do this with everyone you get into it with here. Nuance is waaaay not your strong point.

[RandomGuy]

I have worked with population models mathematically. Don't tell me your favorite coefficients and act like youre special. Fertility rate is just a coefficient you multiply by the current population. I like the death rate and youre a noob for not discussing that!

Meh. We could have gotten around to a lot of things, but we aren't going to get there. As I have said we seem to be talking past each other, and that is hard to fix, especially when one person seems to consistantly misunderstand the other. I don't think you quite understand the points I have been making, nor do you seem to really get what Rosling was saying.

I have not worked with mathmatical population models, in that you are probably more familiar with how such models work. I will accede that much.

My job involves thinking about broad issues, idenitfying risks, analysing risks, analysing risk mitigation strategies, and assessing the sufficiency of evidence to support claims made. I let experts do the modeling when that is required.

It is, quite literally, my job to be skeptical, dig for evidence to support claims/assertions, and evaluate that evidence against those assertions, which makes me an enormous pain in the ass to conspiracy nuts and conservatives here and elsewhere who seem to really suck at that skill group in my experience.

[RandomGuy]

You two girls still fighting? Damn.

Yes, ma'am.

;)

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Meh. We could have gotten around to a lot of things, but we aren't going to get there. As I have said we seem to be talking past each other, and that is hard to fix, especially when one person seems to consistantly misunderstand the other. I don't think you quite understand the points I have been making, nor do you seem to really get what Rosling was saying.

I have not worked with mathmatical population models, in that you are probably more familiar with how such models work. I will accede that much.

My job involves thinking about broad issues, idenitfying risks, analysing risks, analysing risk mitigation strategies, and assessing the sufficiency of evidence to support claims made. I let experts do the modeling when that is required.

It is, quite literally, my job to be skeptical, dig for evidence to support claims/assertions, and evaluate that evidence against those assertions, which makes me an enormous pain in the ass to conspiracy nuts and conservatives here and elsewhere who seem to really suck at that skill group in my experience.

I am well aware of what macro risk categorization is underwriter. Population models are the discrete sums of what boils down to x[n] = (BR-MR)*x[n-1] +/- migration. It feedsback on itself and leads to some interesting output when you chain in multiple populations. There have been all manner of thesis about the lorenz attractor and simple population difference equations.

I understand perfectly what you are trying to say. People around the world are migrating to cities and the difference in birth rates and death rates in the city as opposed to rural areas is going to cause the growth trend to mitigate and thus we will be able to cope. The coping mechanism will include enriching the impoverished because as I should remember only a little bit of wealth creates a proportionately high rise in standard of living.

Through are vaccination and other entrepreneurial ventures my colleagues and I have been able to raise the health standard in urban areas and health has been shown to proceed wealth so various UN entities should continue to fund us doing so.

My 'underlying assumption' is that various censuses taken lately and the various approximations of population data --and lets keep in mind the population demographics of a place like Ethiopia or Iran are at best guesswork on their part-- have shown themselves to be wrong. Most egregiously has been India where health ministers are saying that they are not doing enough and the predictive models were wrong about rate of change of growth.

For example: HERE (http://www.ssb.no/histstat/doc/doc_199704.pdf) is a study done detailing the inaccuracy and imprecision of projections from 15 years ago. Yes, I understand that the information is 'outdated.' That is part of the Rosling sales job entails. With his new software and dataset they are now getting it right......

The problem is that they are not. India now as it was 15 years ago proves that their modeling is wrong. Do you disagree that the population projections underprojected current growth rates?

Now I don't know if you are a claims handler --or another frontline underwriter-- or something more hands on actuarially. But there is a difference between categorizing risk and correlating said categories to claims made versus creating arbitrary populations and trying to make projection models.

At best, geographical population density models --which is what your 'urbanization' is-- are oversimplified. Also they are not some new mode of approach. They are blending shit together with poor understanding at the 'forces' at work as most macro models are doing.

My point is that when assholes make claims about how population growth is going to trend, they lack both the precision and the accuracy necessary to make informed policy decisions. They have shown it once again and just because you have some new asshole like Rosling claiming to have transcended 'outdated' thinking, it's bullshit. They still have no idea what they are talking about and I am not going to bother watching them continue to throw shit against the wall and maybe one day it will stick. I am not going to bother looking at the categorization du jour over and again.

You want me to look at fertility rates. I want you to look at how they choose their categories and population segmentation. Now if you would like we can talk about macro analysis versus a reductionist approach ie the difference between looking at the population of a Dehli slum or a rural area in Uganda versus a continuous temperature gradient such as used in climate science then great but you acting like I am not understanding simple macro concepts is insulting. If anything your youtube education has brought you no clue about their methodology.

For me, until population models move past poorly understood, tentatively accepted generalizations, I will forgo giving a shit about the Roslings of the world and their datasets. Soft science indeed.

[RandomGuy]

I am well aware of what macro risk categorization is underwriter. Population models are the discrete sums of what boils down to x[n] = (BR-MR)*x[n-1] +/- migration. It feedsback on itself and leads to some interesting output when you chain in multiple populations. There have been all manner of thesis about the lorenz attractor and simple population difference equations.

I understand perfectly what you are trying to say. People around the world are migrating to cities and the difference in birth rates and death rates in the city as opposed to rural areas is going to cause the growth trend to mitigate and thus we will be able to cope. The coping mechanism will include enriching the impoverished because as I should remember only a little bit of wealth creates a proportionately high rise in standard of living.

Through are vaccination and other entrepreneurial ventures my colleagues and I have been able to raise the health standard in urban areas and health has been shown to proceed wealth so various UN entities should continue to fund us doing so.

My 'underlying assumption' is that various censuses taken lately and the various approximations of population data --and lets keep in mind the population demographics of a place like Ethiopia or Iran are at best guesswork on their part-- have shown themselves to be wrong. Most egregiously has been India where health ministers are saying that they are not doing enough and the predictive models were wrong about rate of change of growth.

For example: HERE (http://www.ssb.no/histstat/doc/doc_199704.pdf) is a study done detailing the inaccuracy and imprecision of projections from 15 years ago. Yes, I understand that the information is 'outdated.' That is part of the Rosling sales job entails. With his new software and dataset they are now getting it right......

The problem is that they are not. India now as it was 15 years ago proves that their modeling is wrong. Do you disagree that the population projections underprojected current growth rates?

Now I don't know if you are a claims handler --or another frontline underwriter-- or something more hands on actuarially. But there is a difference between categorizing risk and correlating said categories to claims made versus creating arbitrary populations and trying to make projection models.

At best, geographical population density models --which is what your 'urbanization' is-- are oversimplified. Also they are not some new mode of approach. They are blending shit together with poor understanding at the 'forces' at work as most macro models are doing.

My point is that when assholes make claims about how population growth is going to trend, they lack both the precision and the accuracy necessary to make informed policy decisions. They have shown it once again and just because you have some new asshole like Rosling claiming to have transcended 'outdated' thinking, it's bullshit. They still have no idea what they are talking about and I am not going to bother watching them continue to throw shit against the wall and maybe one day it will stick. I am not going to bother looking at the categorization du jour over and again.

You want me to look at fertility rates. I want you to look at how they choose their categories and population segmentation. Now if you would like we can talk about macro analysis versus a reductionist approach ie the difference between looking at the population of a Dehli slum or a rural area in Uganda versus a continuous temperature gradient such as used in climate science then great but you acting like I am not understanding simple macro concepts is insulting. If anything your youtube education has brought you no clue about their methodology.

For me, until population models move past poorly understood, tentatively accepted generalizations, I will forgo giving a shit about the Roslings of the world and their datasets. Soft science indeed.

TLDR.

Stopped reading after the first sarcastic remark ("underwriter"). Not going to address anything. You win.

:lobt2:

[FuzzyLumpkins]

TLDR.

Stopped reading after the first sarcastic remark ("underwriter"). Not going to address anything. You win.

:lobt2:

Sarcastic? Dude you really need to relax.

You say that you work in the insurance industries and deal with risk data. Underwriters assess risk. How is calling you what is an honorable profession sarcastic? I don't know what you do really, I was just trying to relate.

[Winehole23]

In Borlaug’s Green Revolution paradigm, farmers are urged to specialize in one or two commodity crops — say, corn or wheat. To grow them, they were to buy hybridized seeds and ample doses of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation. (Borlaug’s celebrated “dwarf” varieties can thrive only with plenty of water and lots of synthetic nitrogen, and face serious pest pressure, requiring heavy pesticide doses.)

One of the most ironic things I see in Borlaug obits is the idea that his innovations made countries like Mexico and India “self-sufficient” in food production. Actually, these nations became perilously dependent on foreign input suppliers for their food security.

Today in India’s grain belt, less than 40 years after Borlaug’s Nobel triumph, the water table has been nearly completely tapped out by massive irrigation projects (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9502E6D71E3BF931A15755C0A96E9C8B 63), farmers are in severe economic crisis (http://grist.org/article/2009-04-15-ag-in-india/), and cancer rates, seemingly related to agrichemical use, aretragically high (http://grist.org/article/2009-05-13-india-cancer-train/).

to generate the massive yield gains that won Borlaug his Nobel, the nation sacrificed its most productive farmland and a generation of farmers. Meanwhile, as in Mexico, urban poverty and malnutrition in India’s urban centers remained stubbornly persistent.


As Amartya Sen’s now famous work has shown, food and population growth rates cannot be compared directly. Food availability has to be refracted through the element of price. There may be a mountain of food available, but access to food is only based on the entitlements that people have, to be able to exchange for food. This is one of the reasons, among others, that explains the bitter irony that Indians have remained food insecure despite all this bumper wheat production. Malnutrition levels in 2005 continued to remain horrific – three out of five children under five, or nearly 60%, were found to be chronically malnourished (two standard deviations below normal) by the National Family Health Survey. Moreover, the per capita availability of coarse cereals, gram and pulses had fallen by 42 kg per person per year, while the gains from wheat were only 28 kg per person per year between 1961 and 2006http://thewire.in/76956/green-revolution-borlaug-food-security/

[Winehole23]

contrasting: http://thewire.in/72400/paul-ehrlich-norman-borlaug-green-revolution/

[Winehole23]

This narrative of victory has also buoyed the boats of a host of interest groups, including chemical and seed companies, makers of power implements and mechanised equipment and, not to mention, the better-off farmers from irrigated tracts in the country who are, unfortunately, now rueing their fate. Monoculture farming promoted Green Revolution-style has destroyed the long term fertility of soils, chemicals have caused health problems and the technological treadmill has led to growing debt. All this, but India still doesn’t have food security, if one looks at nutritional outcomes of the population.

[DarrinS]

contrasting: http://thewire.in/72400/paul-ehrlich-norman-borlaug-green-revolution/




Ehrlich brings up the idea of adding “temporary sterilants to the water supply or staple foods” and his support for “government mandated sterilisation of Indian males with three or more children”. :wow

Ehrlich did not stop with his dire predictions. Some of them bear repeating just to illustrate how wrong they turned out.

1969: “By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people” and “By 1980 the United States would see life expectancy drop to 42 years because of pesticides, and by 1999 its population would plummet to 22.6 million”.

1970: “In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish” and “Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come. And by the end I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity”.

1971: “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people. If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”



:lol @ those predictions

[Winehole23]

bold predictions seldom pay off in the long run. short term, they get headlines and clicks and help sell books.

[RandomGuy]

Sarcastic? Dude you really need to relax.

You say that you work in the insurance industries and deal with risk data. Underwriters assess risk. How is calling you what is an honorable profession sarcastic? I don't know what you do really, I was just trying to relate.

Technically I am an auditor. Underwriting is very much not my thing. Missed this bit a few years ago, and it dropped off the radar. I'll see about getting to your post then.