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China will depopulate >50% by 2100 (conservatively) and we’re still worrying about mid 20th century concepts like carrying capacities as if we aren’t a highly a

China will depopulate >50% by 2100 (conservatively) and we’re still worrying about mid 20th century concepts like carrying capacities as if we aren’t a highly advanced (and depopulating) tool making species entirely capable of creating ecosystems wholesale and affecting said capacities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

User23 4y ago
Subsaharan Africa is going to keep human population growth going to at least ten billion persons by 2100[1], even with China[2] and the rest of the world's reduced population growth[3]. [1] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/947 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/9... [2] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/156 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/1... [1] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/9...
- finiteseries 4y ago
  That isn’t the measure of growth people are worried about, tap Growth Rate on each of [1], [2], and [3]. Subsaharan Africa was completely bypassed by the Green Revolution and largely lacks access to basic infrastructure like eg consistent electricity (outside portable fuel powered generators) on the typical small, family, partly subsistence based farm. It’s not a solved problem with all the geographical and political issues, but it’s quite literally the world’s last frontier for trade.
- sien 4y ago
  This is disputed : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02522-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02522-6 Population growth fell much faster than expected in many places such as Singapore and Iran. Today in Africa people have mobile phones and hence much better access to information on things like birth control. That Nature article shows that the population expected at 2100 has a realistic range from about 9 Bn to 11 Bn. That difference comes from slightly different assumptions about the change in birth rates in Africa and other places. From the article : "In 2014, a group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna produced its own forecast. It said that world population is most likely to peak at 9.4 billion around 2070 and will fall to 9 billion by the end of the century. The group’s numbers rose slightly in a 2018 report3 that projected a peak of about 9.8 billion around 2080; a subsequent update has population cresting at a little under 9.7 billion around 2070."
tony_cannistra 4y ago
Okay, and it's bad that china will depopulate? Won't every nation, eventually? Are you making like a "suffering / loss of life is bad" argument? It's hard to disagree with that, if you are. (I certainly don't.) I think you're deriding my use of "Carrying capacity" as an archaic concept, but your retort is that we're "creating ecosystems." But, every organism within an ecosystem "creates" it just by existing as part of it, so I'm assuming you mean "heavily modifying it to suit our species' need for insatiable growth." Taking this from that perspective, the 20th century agricultural explosion (that you link to ) is a prime example of how we've hijacked systems far beyond their natural limits, to largely deleterious effect. That wikipedia article even enumerates some of these: biodiversity loss, GHG emissions, etc. There are many examples elsewhere [0]. Sure, there's a lot more food, and that's good for population health and well-being. But that "good" assumes that we've decided that large, consistent growth rates are "good." [0]:https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=impacts+of+monoculture&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=imp...
- finiteseries 4y ago
  Yes, having 4 retired grandparents and 2 retired parents supported by 1 working adult with 0 young children, at scale, is generally bad. Worrying about the ideal balance of births : deaths, today, is like worrying about ballast in a sinking ship. Insatiable growth doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for some time, we’re squarely in flattening the curve territory with the fun twist that discharges take 18 years to raise.
- jelliclesfarm 4y ago
  Thank you. I appreciate your reply. As an aside: Would it be possible to favourite a reply? I have only figured out how to do that with submissions.
  - quantum_magpie 4y ago
    Click on the <n> hours ago and you'll see a favourite link.
microtherion 4y ago
If there were any place in the world where one would think that your supposed capability of creating ecosystems wholesale would manifest, it would be California with its nexus of engineers and venture capital. And yet, California is suffering from ever worsening drought conditions and forest fires, with no solutions in sight. Conversely, depopulation on an otherwise healthy planet is a trivially solvable problem. Our species IS entirely capable of reproducing (even though the secret to doing so may have fallen into obscurity in certain incel segments of society).
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  CA has a nexus of software engineers, and dot com capital Not Civil, Mechanical, or other engineers. Also venture capital has no interest in fighting 1000's environmental lawsuits and 10,000's of pointless regulations designed to stop any construction or development that would improve CA
  - gumby 4y ago
    > CA has a nexus of software engineers, and dot com capital > Not Civil, Mechanical, or other engineers. What on earth makes you think that? All sorts of hardware is designed and developed here. It has the largest aerospace sector of any state. A lot of automotive design is done in the LA basin for the auto majors. And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m in SV and even up here though we lost most of the defense manufacturing (e.g. tanks and ships) though a lot remains further south, when I need parts machined there are still plenty of local machine shops etc. I’ve brought in welders from the Central Valley when local ones were too busy.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      Top 10 States for Aerospace are Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, Georgia, New York, and Texas. >> A lot of automotive design is done in the LA basin for the auto majors. Source... >when I need parts machined there are still plenty of local machine shops etc. There are plenty of machine shops in my town, I would not proclaim my town to be a mecca of engineering. > I’ve brought in welders from the Central Valley when local ones were too busy. Ok, and?
jelliclesfarm 4y ago
How do we create eco systems? We can’t even bring down global temperature by 1.5 degrees and still rely on fossil fuels z we literally convert fossil fuels to calories. How are we NOT past carrying capacity?
imtringued 4y ago
>tool making species entirely capable of creating ecosystems wholesale and affecting said capacities. We are literally unable to do that. The only thing we know how to do is burn more fossil fuels which has nothing to do with human effort.

User23 4y ago

Subsaharan Africa is going to keep human population growth going to at least ten billion persons by 2100[1], even with China[2] and the rest of the world's reduced population growth[3]. [1] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/947 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/9... [2] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/156 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/1... [1] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/9...

finiteseries 4y ago
That isn’t the measure of growth people are worried about, tap Growth Rate on each of [1], [2], and [3]. Subsaharan Africa was completely bypassed by the Green Revolution and largely lacks access to basic infrastructure like eg consistent electricity (outside portable fuel powered generators) on the typical small, family, partly subsistence based farm. It’s not a solved problem with all the geographical and political issues, but it’s quite literally the world’s last frontier for trade.
sien 4y ago
This is disputed : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02522-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02522-6 Population growth fell much faster than expected in many places such as Singapore and Iran. Today in Africa people have mobile phones and hence much better access to information on things like birth control. That Nature article shows that the population expected at 2100 has a realistic range from about 9 Bn to 11 Bn. That difference comes from slightly different assumptions about the change in birth rates in Africa and other places. From the article : "In 2014, a group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna produced its own forecast. It said that world population is most likely to peak at 9.4 billion around 2070 and will fall to 9 billion by the end of the century. The group’s numbers rose slightly in a 2018 report3 that projected a peak of about 9.8 billion around 2080; a subsequent update has population cresting at a little under 9.7 billion around 2070."

tony_cannistra 4y ago

Okay, and it's bad that china will depopulate? Won't every nation, eventually? Are you making like a "suffering / loss of life is bad" argument? It's hard to disagree with that, if you are. (I certainly don't.) I think you're deriding my use of "Carrying capacity" as an archaic concept, but your retort is that we're "creating ecosystems." But, every organism within an ecosystem "creates" it just by existing as part of it, so I'm assuming you mean "heavily modifying it to suit our species' need for insatiable growth." Taking this from that perspective, the 20th century agricultural explosion (that you link to ) is a prime example of how we've hijacked systems far beyond their natural limits, to largely deleterious effect. That wikipedia article even enumerates some of these: biodiversity loss, GHG emissions, etc. There are many examples elsewhere [0]. Sure, there's a lot more food, and that's good for population health and well-being. But that "good" assumes that we've decided that large, consistent growth rates are "good." [0]:https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=impacts+of+monoculture&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=imp...

finiteseries 4y ago
Yes, having 4 retired grandparents and 2 retired parents supported by 1 working adult with 0 young children, at scale, is generally bad. Worrying about the ideal balance of births : deaths, today, is like worrying about ballast in a sinking ship. Insatiable growth doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for some time, we’re squarely in flattening the curve territory with the fun twist that discharges take 18 years to raise.
jelliclesfarm 4y ago
Thank you. I appreciate your reply. As an aside: Would it be possible to favourite a reply? I have only figured out how to do that with submissions.
- quantum_magpie 4y ago
  Click on the <n> hours ago and you'll see a favourite link.

microtherion 4y ago

If there were any place in the world where one would think that your supposed capability of creating ecosystems wholesale would manifest, it would be California with its nexus of engineers and venture capital. And yet, California is suffering from ever worsening drought conditions and forest fires, with no solutions in sight. Conversely, depopulation on an otherwise healthy planet is a trivially solvable problem. Our species IS entirely capable of reproducing (even though the secret to doing so may have fallen into obscurity in certain incel segments of society).

phpisthebest 4y ago
CA has a nexus of software engineers, and dot com capital Not Civil, Mechanical, or other engineers. Also venture capital has no interest in fighting 1000's environmental lawsuits and 10,000's of pointless regulations designed to stop any construction or development that would improve CA
- gumby 4y ago
  > CA has a nexus of software engineers, and dot com capital > Not Civil, Mechanical, or other engineers. What on earth makes you think that? All sorts of hardware is designed and developed here. It has the largest aerospace sector of any state. A lot of automotive design is done in the LA basin for the auto majors. And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m in SV and even up here though we lost most of the defense manufacturing (e.g. tanks and ships) though a lot remains further south, when I need parts machined there are still plenty of local machine shops etc. I’ve brought in welders from the Central Valley when local ones were too busy.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    Top 10 States for Aerospace are Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, Georgia, New York, and Texas. >> A lot of automotive design is done in the LA basin for the auto majors. Source... >when I need parts machined there are still plenty of local machine shops etc. There are plenty of machine shops in my town, I would not proclaim my town to be a mecca of engineering. > I’ve brought in welders from the Central Valley when local ones were too busy. Ok, and?

jelliclesfarm 4y ago

How do we create eco systems? We can’t even bring down global temperature by 1.5 degrees and still rely on fossil fuels z we literally convert fossil fuels to calories. How are we NOT past carrying capacity?

imtringued 4y ago

>tool making species entirely capable of creating ecosystems wholesale and affecting said capacities. We are literally unable to do that. The only thing we know how to do is burn more fossil fuels which has nothing to do with human effort.