[Khar]

Can we not begin to discuss things in this format? All it does is remove key points from context and destroys continuity of thought for everyone involved.

I find discussions tend to go downhill when people begin to break down posts point by point, rather than respond to the thread as a whole and in context. Of course, this could be just a personal problem, but it is something that nags on me so I figured I'd just ask.

I do tend to jump between points to keep context and train of thought going between sections, so if anything doesn't make sense, it might be because I'm compensating for this post style.

$1:

It's not a fact because you can't predict the future.

You cannot ignore a trend which has been going on for tens of thousands of years. Every single change or advancement in human society is because of ingenuity. I could sit here all day quoting examples of how things changed as a result to conditions. It's an undeniable trend, one which humanity has stayed on for tens of millenia.

I have already responded to this.

$1:

There is no time when we can even be 100% efficient. The second law of thermodynamics prevents this from happening. We cannot continue to exist indefinitely. If we as a species are not killed first by whatever means, we will likely eventually hit an evolutionary brick wall where, in order to innovate our way out of a problem, we have to not only continue the problem but increase its intensity. This is beginning to happen now. The other thing happening now is the refusal to recognise that what we have now cannot last forever and, rather than easing back on our rate of consumption, we are cranking it up to 11 and ripping off the knob.

I think you are misapplying scientific theory, and I don't think that supports Malthus' theories. The second law of thermodynamics assumes a closed system in this context and the Earth is far from being such.

"This is happening now" is also an odd thing to say considering in the post previous you said you can't predict the future. Malthus was a smart guy -- he came up with the concept of economic rent, as an example. However, he said "this is happening now" 200 years ago. People have been saying the same thing every one of those years until now. This, too, is a trend.

We do not need 100% efficiency to have effective infinite resources. A field lies fallow to allow for nutrients to regrow in it. It's not 100% efficient, but because energy from the sun comes from outside the aforementioned "closed" system, it works. It's important to note that not allowing fields to fallow is one of the problems in third world agriculture, as well as using techniques discarded by us centuries ago, techniques which only allowed us to grow a fraction of food.

$1:

If we're smart, we'll figure out how to convince more people to have fewer or no children or, at the very least, put some selfless consideration into why they are having any children. The more people you put in a room, the less breathing space everyone has in that room. The same goes for the entire planet.

I responded ironically to a statement andyt posted by saying the exact same thing as he did with a minor change, and then you turn around with a response of... repeating exactly what andyt already said?

Most of the rest of my posts are a tad bit more engaging than an attempt at an ironic twist on my part to respond to.

When you have a room the size of a planet, breathing space isn't as much of a problem as in a closet. Advances in technology have been in part to allow more people to take in a smaller amount of air, and look around at the room we have now -- full of doctors, engineers, scientists, tradespeople, and so forth, where before we only had a few people, capable of doing less overall.

The reason people have more children is because they are those people's social security net -- they care for the other children, they care for you when you are older, they are another farmhand, another worker, another child with a chance of growing up.

The reason economists want growth in developing nations is because the industry which is developed is based on having healthy, educated children, and inherently, this means having less children. If you want these people to have less children, just look at the nations which are pushing for the barrier with the first world countries. Because we invested, because they are consuming, they are able to have less children.

It's easy to tell someone else to be selfless, ignoring their plight while you do so, romanP. These people don't have children purely out of greed or want, they have more children because they need more children. It's a poverty trap. Forcing them to have less doesn't break them out of it, it just makes everyone's lives worse.

People respond to incentives. If there is no reason to educate a child, or to take it to the doctor frequently, then why would you do so? They will not earn more. They will not help the family. It is time wasted to get limited help. If you want to argue about this, I recommend reading The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. It's a cheap book which encapsulates why panaceas have failed there in the past, including panaceas like health care, family planning, free condoms and education, and how things have worked in the nations which have begun to succeed.

[romanP]

Khar Khar:

Can we not begin to discuss things in this format? All it does is remove key points from context and destroys continuity of thought for everyone involved.

You would have to ask me to stop, not to not begin. This is how I've responded to forum messages for a very long time, and I'm not just talking about this place. I guess it's a habit learned from my Usenet days

$1:

I find discussions tend to go downhill when people begin to break down posts point by point, rather than respond to the thread as a whole and in context. Of course, this could be just a personal problem, but it is something that nags on me so I figured I'd just ask.

I don't see how the context is lost by posting like this. It's like an in-person conversation.. you say something, then pause while I respond.

$1:

$1:

It's not a fact because you can't predict the future.

You cannot ignore a trend which has been going on for tens of thousands of years. Every single change or advancement in human society is because of ingenuity. I could sit here all day quoting examples of how things changed as a result to conditions. It's an undeniable trend, one which humanity has stayed on for tens of millenia.

I have already responded to this.

Those millenia are in the past. We have more people on this planet now than ever before, and that statement is true for every single day that passes. Thousands of years ago, people didn't take up much space and didn't threaten their own survival. Now, we are so numerous and our own industrial production has come into competition with our food supply. Something will have to give, as our way of life is not sustainable.

$1:

$1:

There is no time when we can even be 100% efficient. The second law of thermodynamics prevents this from happening. We cannot continue to exist indefinitely. If we as a species are not killed first by whatever means, we will likely eventually hit an evolutionary brick wall where, in order to innovate our way out of a problem, we have to not only continue the problem but increase its intensity. This is beginning to happen now. The other thing happening now is the refusal to recognise that what we have now cannot last forever and, rather than easing back on our rate of consumption, we are cranking it up to 11 and ripping off the knob.

I think you are misapplying scientific theory, and I don't think that supports Malthus' theories. The second law of thermodynamics assumes a closed system in this context and the Earth is far from being such.

What are you talking about? The laws of thermodynamics work pretty much everywhere in the universe, and the universe as an entity itself follows the same laws. Nothing is permanent with the exception of impermanence and including human ingenuity. There is no system that exists in a vacuum, and thus there are no "closed systems".

$1:

"This is happening now" is also an odd thing to say considering in the post previous you said you can't predict the future.

The future isn't now. What's happening in the present is happening now. I was talking about current events, not events that have not yet happened.

And now, an obligatory Spaceballs scene:

$1:

Malthus was a smart guy -- he came up with the concept of economic rent, as an example. However, he said "this is happening now" 200 years ago. People have been saying the same thing every one of those years until now. This, too, is a trend.

Two hundred years ago, there were about five billion less people on this planet than there are now.

$1:

We do not need 100% efficiency to have effective infinite resources.

We absolutely do. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. The laws of physics (like those pesky laws of thermodynamics I mentioned earlier) do not allow it.

$1:

A field lies fallow to allow for nutrients to regrow in it. It's not 100% efficient, but because energy from the sun comes from outside the aforementioned "closed" system, it works. It's important to note that not allowing fields to fallow is one of the problems in third world agriculture, as well as using techniques discarded by us centuries ago, techniques which only allowed us to grow a fraction of food.

Many of the countries where agriculture has been diminished, it happened because of western interference in farming techniques. Where permaculture had been a functional way of growing food, they changed their ways because we told them it was better, and then we told them those ways were no good and some other new way was better. Somewhere in this mix, the farmers lost their permaculture-tending skills and are left with Western techniques that not only don't work for them but are also threatening our own supply of nutritional food.

$1:

$1:

If we're smart, we'll figure out how to convince more people to have fewer or no children or, at the very least, put some selfless consideration into why they are having any children. The more people you put in a room, the less breathing space everyone has in that room. The same goes for the entire planet.

I responded ironically to a statement andyt posted by saying the exact same thing as he did with a minor change, and then you turn around with a response of... repeating exactly what andyt already said?

That's not what he said.

$1:

When you have a room the size of a planet, breathing space isn't as much of a problem as in a closet. Advances in technology have been in part to allow more people to take in a smaller amount of air, and look around at the room we have now -- full of doctors, engineers, scientists, tradespeople, and so forth, where before we only had a few people, capable of doing less overall.

People are also not the only things living on this planet, and that could never be the case anyway.

[Khar]

Those millenia may be in the past, but those millenia also had pressures on human survival, just as they do now. People were starving in those ages, because they was not enough food being produced. The world consisted of a small area with poor transportation. Exports to Asia took months, if not years, and the new world was barely stepping into it's own, still a mere shadow of what it is now. The growing industries will eventually are impacting us too heavily to ignore the impacts on agricultural yields. This is as the world was when Malthus made his prediction, where he said that the human population had reached a point where it was incapable of sustaining us.

His words sound very much like yours. That then, all those years ago, the Earth may have been enough, but no more. Now, we are at an end. We have reached the edge. We can go no further.

Yet here we are today, 200 years later.

The chief reason why I continue to fight this, romanP, is because it sounds a lot like how it has been predicted for generations now, right back to Malthus himself. A time when the Earth had an increasing population growth rate. Fields which needed one person to feed four people now need one person to feed 74 people. Cars once built of metal are now built of glass fibres, carbon and plastics. Coal plants which one belched smoke endlessly into the air now have scrubbers, cleaner burning methods and so forth. Recycling has become central to life in the first world.

There may have been five billion less people on Earth back then, but there was also a fraction of the efficiency, a fraction of the farmland, a fraction of the energy output, and a fraction of actual land being used -- for anything! Canada wasn't even formed when Malthus was around, he'd been dead for almost fifty years before confederation -- and even then, Canada was of paltry size compared to what it is now, and didn't contain the breadbasket of our nation. Population is not the only thing which has grown, humanity has grown incredibly well with it -- especially considering the mass majority of us back then would have been part of the masses, without plumbing, without heat, without money, and barely getting by.

I think the best way to handle things is to continue finding ways to fight what population is pressuring. To continue trying to improve life in developing worlds, so people don't have to have as many children. As population growth slows, and eventually stops, we'll be given something the human race has not had in tens of millenia -- a period of zero population growth.

In regards to thermodynamics, the reason I stated as such is because you essentially made it sound like the Earth is a closed system to me. That we absolutely have to be 100% efficient (which I said we probably won't be in other posts). The thing is, we don't -- we have sources of energy still within our reach and variable renewable resources dependent on it within our grasp.

By saying "this is happening now" you are making a lot of assumptions about human events. You stated that we will eventually hit the evolutionary brick wall, and that the problem will only increase in intensity, starting now. Using the word now does not mean you were not making some fairly sizable assumptions about our future. The thing is, I also disagree with what you are saying. Population pressures have been decreasing, standard of living are increasing, and so forth. We've had revolutions in food growing technology in only the past few years. I don't think things are getting worse, nor do I feel that they will get worse. I don't believe we have hit that evolutionary wall, either. I once read that humanity's knowledge is expanding at a rate faster than it ever has before. Our knowledge doubles at a rate of once every six months or so, where before it would have taken centuries. I think if there is a wall, we're doing a good job of breaking through it.

The way we interfered with farming is exactly one of our problems, romanP. We tried to do it to make their lives better, just like we're trying to stop them from having as many children and so forth. Us and our driven methods of trying to stop them from suffering plays a big role in why these nations are so screwed up today, historically, culturally and so forth. If we step in and try and enforce population control on them, will that really help?

It is what andyt said, for the record. In context, andyt wanted fewer people with better lives. You said the same thing. In context, I was replying to what you responding in turn with. It was the same thing, man. Less people is not necessarily better, nor will it necessarily be better for everyone.

Also, I assumed there were other living things sharing our breathing room. It is the case now, however. The amount of farmland it takes to feed me? A fraction of what it takes with antiquated farming methods with a fraction of the people it took to farm it, with a fraction of the people turning it into food and a fraction of the people transporting it for a fraction of the time.

Just as andyt brought up population per worker, which is increasing, the amount of people which can be fed and clothed per worker is increasing. Hence, each of us take up less "air" in our little room.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Khar Khar:

It's important to note that not allowing fields to fallow is one of the problems in third world agriculture, as well as using techniques discarded by us centuries ago, techniques which only allowed us to grow a fraction of food.

And our modern techniques aren't a whole lot better. Back in the olden days, farmers grew a variety of grains at one time in case disease or drought killed off one or more. This way, they were almost guaranteed SOME sort of harvest.
Today, we grow nice even fields of genetically identical wheat. This lack of diversity in genes will be a death knell to food production if we're not careful. A single disease could wipe out an entire nation's crops.
Throw in all the other GM modifications to increase yield and improve appearance and we're actually losing the nutritional value of a lot of food. Potatoes for instance, have less than 50% of the potassium they used to have 50 years ago.
At the rate we're going, natural food will contain little more than empty calories.
Despite "popular opinion", food isn't just for filling our bellies when we're hungry, it's supposed to have a nutritional value as well.
What good is producing more food when we have to eat twice as much of it just to get the same nutritional value we used to get from one serving?

[Khar]

Our modern techniques are a whole lot better. They produce a lot more, take less people to produce, are resistant to weather, some pests and don't require us to poison the rivers and water tables as much anymore because of how much further they have come. Instead of losing entire crops to drought, or entire crops to pests, or even entire crops to pathogens which impact the majority of wheat out there, we have a more stable food supply. On that basis alone, our modern techniques are leaps and bounds ahead.

Also, by techniques in this case, I was talking about farming practices and instruments (which too have improved greatly), not the actual crop themselves, but I have no problem talking about breeding practices and GM food.

You are right, however, this is a problem. Which is why there are so many programs focusing on reintegrating more diverse wheat genotypes into circulation, which is also why diversity has increased so much in our wheat yields over the past few years, and which is also why you don't hear about these concerns as much anymore. Indeed, evidence suggests that diversity is increasing annually naturally, do to intraspecific polymorphism typical of all species. Programs will keep going to try and improve diversity even further and more rapidly.

I was wondering if you could show me where you heard about nutrients being reduced across the board? One of the things GM foods have is better nutritional value with more nutrients, and this is generally tested for as well, GM foods or naturally bred (which I include under GM in this case). For example, "golden rice." Is it a problem which actually impacts a lot of different kinds of food?

[BartSimpson]

[quote="Khar"]Our modern techniques are a whole lot better. [quote]

Some years ago I had the opportunity to sit and chat with a wonderful and charming fellow named Georges Charpak. In the course of our chat we ended up talking about Star Trek and he said that the replicator technology was probably going to exist before the end of the 21st century. He said something to the effect that there was some sort of curve between computational power and the progression of energy physics that made such a technology inevitable.

Most of what he said was waaaaaaaaaaay over my head, but I do remember this.

It'd be damned cool if someday before I die I get to walk up to my home replicator and say, "A cup of Earl Grey. Hot."

I imagine I won't be alone in doing this.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Khar: Sorry it's taken me a bit to respond. Admittedly, most of the information I was referring to was a good 10 years old or more.
I've seen that in the last 5 years there have been major efforts to bring back the genetic diversity in crop seeds.
As far as nutrient reduction went, I honestly can't say if it was across the board or not. I only know of a few specific produce type foods that saw a reduction of their nutritional value, and I came across that information purely by accident. I never really checked into whether this was an across the board problem because I really didn't care. I don't eat 90% of that shit anyway