Sedna, space probes?, colonies? what's next?

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 04:01:33 GMT, in a place far, far away, Dick
Morris made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Endless population growth does not work on a finite planet.

I've never proposed endless population growth.

You've never admitted to any particular physical limits that I've seen
either.

It seemed beside the point, since we're so far from them it's not
worth discussing. Obviously if we were to somehow get to the point at
which the entire mass of the planet were converted to writhing blob of
humanity, that would be overdoing it.

Is that your limit? Don't see any limits short of turning the Earth
into a writhing blob of humanity?

Probably, but again, they're theoretical, not of relevance to a
discussion about whether we're currently "overpopulated," or even
close to it.

Do you mean to tell me that you cannot see the rampant political
correctness on the anti-environmental right?

You obviously have no idea what political correctness means.

I saw enough of it on the radical left to know it when I saw it on the
radical right. I was a conservative for 40 years, so I had a belly full
of it by the time the Soviet Union collapsed and the right adopted the
environmental movement as it's new bogeyman. I know political
correctness whenever I see someone refuse to answer a question and back
up their opinion with facts.

Not being now, or ever, a conservative, I wouldn't know.

Ehrlich? You're joking, right?

If you think it's all a joke, then you're the one who is not to be taken
seriously.

Sadly, it's not a joke, because people like Ehrlich have caused
needless suffering and misguided millions through his fundamental
ignorance of ecology, technology and economics.

Were you, by any chance, a business major?

No, multiple degrees in engineering and engineering management (one of
which was engineering science, something that environmentalists seem
to take no interest in).

Apparently you failed to notice that your hero, Julian Simon, was
utterly clueless about ecology and technology, and managed to delude
himself into thinking that the issue was strictly about economics.
Remember how we were going to make copper from other metals? Ehrlich is
a biologist who has forgotten more about ecology than all the right-wing
anti-environmentalists put together will ever know. You might explain
how Ehrlich caused suffering by warning people of what was coming.

By warning of things that were coming that never came.

Bad government policies are one way to impoverish people, but not the
only way. Without access to sufficient resources, prosperity is
impossible, regardless of government policies.

You continue to not realize that people themselves are the ultimate
resource.

Try "energy". Remove the entire civilized world and the tribal peoples
in the Amazon, etc. would never notice.

Nor would wolfpacks. What's your point?

Turn off the Sun and everybody dies in a remarkably short time.

Yes. So?

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 04:00:33 GMT, in a place far, far away, Dick
Morris made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

To think that population can continue to grow for a very long time, at
anything like the current rate, simply because it has in the past has no
logical basis.

I don't expect it to grow for a very long time at anything like the
current rate. All reputable projections show it as declining within
this century. I'm simply saying that doubling it (or even increasing
it by a factor of ten) isn't a problem at all per se, given a modicum
of intelligent governance.

...which you still decline to characterize.

It's characterized by free markets and free minds.

The Polynesians became a scourge on Easter Island, and elsewhere,
because they didn't control their populations. On Johnston(?) Island
they died out completely.

They were too close to the edge with inadequate technology. We are
not.

They got to the edge in the first place because they didn't control
their population.

Irrelevant in the context of my comment and the current world
situation.

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 04:00:44 GMT, in a place far, far away, Dick
Morris made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

If you will go back to my previous posts you will see that "Earthly
limits to population growth" are exactly what I've been discussing.

No, you were saying that we are overpopulated. I am saying that we
are so far from being so that it's not worth worrying about.

I never said that. And you have never said why you think we're so far
from being overpopulated.

OK, you said that twice the current population would be
overpopulation. That's equally nonsense.

And I've described numerous times why I think we're far from being so.

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message ...
On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 04:01:33 GMT, in a place far, far away, Dick

Is that your limit? Don't see any limits short of turning the Earth
into a writhing blob of humanity?

Probably, but again, they're theoretical, not of relevance to a
discussion about whether we're currently "overpopulated," or even
close to it.


And the problem with the argument is, you're barking up the wrong tree
when you say it's *overpopulation* that causes all our environmental
woes and extinctions.

Did the woolly mammoth die out because Eurasia was overpopulated?
Didn't they find any more food because teeming masses of Cro Magnon
humans were blocking access to the pastures with their numbers?

All it takes is a few inconsiderate people in the wrong place to cause
a lot of damage, whether the rest of the world is full of them or not.
It's not the crowded cities that make rainforests disappear. They're
built out of stone and steel and burn oil and coal. It's little vil-
lages that are built and fueled with wood.


--
__ "A good leader knows when it's best to ignore the __
('__` screams for help and focus on the bigger picture." '__`)
//6(6; ©OOL mmiv :^)^\\
`\_-/ http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich....lmann/redbaron \-_/'

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message ...

The Polynesians became a scourge on Easter Island, and elsewhere,
because they didn't control their populations. On Johnston(?) Island
they died out completely.

They were too close to the edge with inadequate technology. We are
not.

They got to the edge in the first place because they didn't control
their population.

Irrelevant in the context of my comment and the current world
situation.


In the case of Easter Island I'd say they got to the edge because
their imagination went overboard and the cult they developed destroyed
them. If you fell all the trees on the island in order to move giant
slabs of rock your problem isn't overpopulation but collective insani-
ty.



--
__ "A good leader knows when it's best to ignore the __
('__` screams for help and focus on the bigger picture." '__`)
//6(6; ©OOL mmiv :^)^\\
`\_-/ http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich....lmann/redbaron \-_/'

"Ool" wrote ...
The Polynesians became a scourge on Easter Island, and elsewhere,
because they didn't control their populations. On Johnston(?) Island
they died out completely.

In the case of Easter Island I'd say they got to the edge because
their imagination went overboard and the cult they developed destroyed
them. If you fell all the trees on the island in order to move giant
slabs of rock your problem isn't overpopulation but collective insani-
ty.

But not an 'insanity' unique to them. There's many a fishing nation that will
happily continue overfishing now because they need the business _now_ and
5 years later is somebody else's problem.

The motive ('moving giant slaps of rock') is different - but the short-
sightedness is the same.

"Paul Blay" wrote in message ...
"Ool" wrote ...

In the case of Easter Island I'd say they got to the edge because
their imagination went overboard and the cult they developed destroyed
them. If you fell all the trees on the island in order to move giant
slabs of rock your problem isn't overpopulation but collective insani-
ty.

But not an 'insanity' unique to them. There's many a fishing nation that will
happily continue overfishing now because they need the business _now_ and
5 years later is somebody else's problem.

The motive ('moving giant slaps of rock') is different - but the short-
sightedness is the same.

Uh-uh! In cases of religion it's delusion, not short-sightedness,
that causes the harm. The two cases have nothing in common other than
a self-destructive result.

The overfishing case is commited by people who refuse to think further
ahead than the eye can see and their hand can reach. They don't care
about anything but here and now. The cultists on the other hand care
all about the invisible that they envision to be far ahead, in an af-
terlife or wherever, forgetting, if they get carried away, their pres-
ent needs.

Both cases may have at it's base a lack of common sense and result in
disaster. But *your* example is one of not thinking enough while mine
is one of overshooting the mark and confusing fantasy with reality.


More examples:

Neglecting hygienic conditions because you don't see they're the cause
of epidemics is short-sightedness. Burning witches because you think
it's *their* fault people get sick is delusion.

Having no environmental concerns is short-sightedness. Turning envi-
ronmentalism into some form of Gaia-religion is delusion.



--
__ "A good leader knows when it's best to ignore the __
('__` screams for help and focus on the bigger picture." '__`)
//6(6; ©OOL mmiv :^)^\\
`\_-/ http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich....lmann/redbaron \-_/'

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 15:07:25 +0100, in a place far, far away, "Ool"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message ...
On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 04:01:33 GMT, in a place far, far away, Dick

Is that your limit? Don't see any limits short of turning the Earth
into a writhing blob of humanity?

Probably, but again, they're theoretical, not of relevance to a
discussion about whether we're currently "overpopulated," or even
close to it.


And the problem with the argument is, you're barking up the wrong tree
when you say it's *overpopulation* that causes all our environmental
woes and extinctions.

I don't say that. I am in fact arguing that it's not the case.

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 16:04:23 GMT, in a place far, far away,
lid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

The fact that Hong Kong gets along with very little of those things is
irrelevant. Stop their food, raw material, and energy imports and see
what happens to their productivity. Places like Hong Kong, Singapore,
Chicago, New York, etc., can be densely populated only because the rest
of the world isn't.

No, they can be densely populated because they produce products and
services that the rest of world is willing to exchange resources for.

Pardon me? If the rest of the world _was_ as densely populated as Hong
Kong, it wouldn't *have* any resources with which to buy manufactured
items from there, and it would need to keep all its food to itself in
order to survive.

If the rest of the world were as densely populated as Hong Kong, it
wouldn't be double the current population--it would be orders of
magnitude more.

There are many densely populated places that are poor. My point is
that population density, per se, is not a problem at this stage of our
development, or anywhere near becoming one, to the point of being at
all concerned with it.

The free enterprise system does not transcend the laws of physics.

Nice straw man.

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Sander Vesik wrote:
(A number of the industrialized countries would already have negative
growth rates, were it not for immigration; a few do anyway.)

And a lot of these don't like it and are trying to reverse the trend, even
if it should come at the expense of reduced productivity...

They're not likely to succeed. The economic pressures to have fewer kids
are major -- in an urbanized, industrialized society, children are a large
net drain on a family's financial resources -- and people with easy access
to effective contraception will mostly opt for small families.

The USA is a urbanized, industrialized society - yet fertility
in the USA is *not falling*. It has been approximately constant -
at approximately the replacement level (2.07 in 2003)
- for at least *three decades*.

It follows that the economic argument given above is *inconclusive* -
and it is easy to see why. It considers only one side of the ledger.
Children represent a financial drain - also work, trouble and
disappointments - and if that were all that mattered,
then people would have no children at all.

Yet they *do* - which proves that the loss in money,
leisure, career opportunities and peace of mind is offset
by some perceived advantages - resulting in some kind of balance.

The balance *may* be reached at a low level, say one
child per family, and some countries are approaching that
( Spain 1.1, Hong Kong 1.2, Italy 1.2, Greece 1.2,
Germany 1.3, Japan 1.3).

But we know for a fact that it can also be reached at the two-plus
(replacement) level, as in the USA.
And if so, why not three or four or six or twelve?
It all depends on the prevailing values, and these can change.

I agree that the depopulation tide cannot turn soon, simply
because there is too much cultural momentum - but not because of any
economic determinism. If the tide does not turn at all, then
mankind will go extinct, not with a bang but a whimper...