Predictions of Environmental Doom

Have you spoken to Billy T about your idea? He could probably better flesh out the process to follow in bringing an idea like this to the fore?

 

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The second derivative means no such thing. A negative second derivative, in itself, does not mean the population will plateau, approach a plateau, or even slow down it's growth very much.

The assertion about "current trends" is meaningless - the prophets of doom make exactly the same assertion, with exactly the same degree of validity, by projecting their choice of "current trends" into the future. Current trends cannot continue - the erosion rate of topsoil in the upper Mississippi River valley will slow down, for example. The drawdown on the Oglalla Aquifer will come to an end.

The question is not whether the population, or any subpopulations, will achieve zero growth - the answer is yes, and everybody agrees on that. The question is what will make that happen, and whether or not we are facing a bust as the time-honored, ecologically standard (in other animals), and rapidly more plausible means of curbing the current boom.

 

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Allow me to rephrase: most people cannot be trained to do "information work" at a professional level. Partly this is a sort of built in property of "information work" - it assumes either sequestered knowledge or superior ability to handle it. There's not enough room at the top of the information pile for most people.

That's all going to be automated. The stuff that isn't will be very expensive.

As an interesting and possibly relevant observation, information work is easier to automate than manual labor. We don't, for example, have to import Mexicans to handle arithmetic calculations.

 

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If the object has a constant, negative acceleration, the velocity passes through zero and becomes increasingly negative itself. It does not plateau - all derivatives of a horizontal line are zero, none are negative constants.

But if the velocity merely has a negative acceleration, as first proposed here and defended subsequently, but not necessarily a constant one, the conclusion (Fraggle's) does not follow.

Are you suggesting that we simply take for granted the negative second derivative of human population growth is constant? That would be most unusual, for a population curve. Again, as I pointed out, you really need a mechanism for this stuff - and there is none visible. You would also need a mechanism to shut off the first mechanism when the growth hits 0, or you are predicting crash.

For that matter, you need a reason to fix it at any particular number - there is no "current" number, because it's changing all the time. The people who are projecting a plateau around 2050 vary in their assumptions here, but as most presume a changing number - approaching a horizontal asymptote, second derivative 0 - they aren't much help.

How was anyone supposed to guess that?

There is no current trend of the second derivative of human population growth sticking and remaining at one, constant number, for the whole or any subpopulation. That has never happened before, and shows no sign of happening now.

In some sort of abstract sense or theory, even without any such technological improvements that is possible.

All you need are some favorable assumptions about the influence of unstudied factors, the notion that nothing will go wrong if it hasn't been thought of, and the projection of some current patterns into a future in which their current basis has vanished.

The South started the Civil War, responding to the threat of gradually losing their slaves in your hypothetical "humane" fashion by seceding from the Union and opening fire on the United States military base, Fort Sumter.

The South did not know it was working on a transition out of slavery - the South was attempting to expand slavery, into new States, and when blocked in that attempt went to war to protect its "way of life".

 

Actually they were working on a transition out.
Everyone could see the writing on the wall as machines were rapidly replacing manual labor. Though it actually didn't happen, it was presumed that a cotton picking machine would soon be developed that would make slaves in the south rapidly obsolete. The South wanted to be compensated for freeing their slaves, the North objected. In the end, when the North had won, they still had no desire to help the newly freed slaves, marking the period right after emancipation as one of the darkest in African American history. They had nothing, no home, no food, no money and few willing to employ them. They frequently stole just to live and when caught were severely punished.


As to starting the war, not true. Indeed the reason we moved the Inaguration to January was because of what Lincoln did behind Buchanan's back prior to his inauguration on March 4th.

South Carolina had already succeeded from the Union, and as such there was no legal authority for a US Fort in a independent country. Since SC had received $3 million from the treasury to buy Sumpter Island they said the existing troops could stay at Ft Moultrie until they paid back the Treasury as long as they adhered to a few simple rules.

1) no more additional reinforcements
2) no hostile actions

The Union violated both of those and thus was asked to leave.

To start with, on December 26, six days after South Carolina's secession, Major Anderson abandoned Fort Moultrie in the middle of the night and had its guns spiked and the gun carriages burned, and illegally relocated his men in Sumter (up till then it only had someone to man the lighthouse).

This was most definately a hostile action.

On January 9th, 1861, Again the North violated the agreement when the Star of the West, with 200 marines hidden in it's hold attempted to reinforce Ft Sumpter. It was fired upon by a battery on Morris Island, The South fired warning shots through the rigging, forcing the ship to turn around, but again, no one from the North was hurt.

As to firing on the fort, it was just to keep them from using their big guns on Charleston (Sumter had guns big enough to reach Charleston but unknown to Beauregard they didn't have cannon shot for their big guns yet), and indeed not a single person was hurt by the Confederate fire throughout the entire battle.

Indeed Gen Beauregard never stepped foot on Ft Sumpter and with Anderson's surrender allowed all the men to leave unharmed.

Clearly, the aggressors were the North.

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

Arthur

 

No. The requirement of the plateau is that it decrease in absolute magnitude - on average or any other way - to zero. If it continues to average a current negative constant value, the population passes through zero growth and crashes.

? No scenario of mine requires a plateau. I'm worried that we seem to be risking a crash.

OK, what is your meaning for the term "constant"?

Please name the country whose population has stopped growing due to its becoming prosperous.

Please describe how the majority of the planet is expected to become prosperous in the same manner as the countries whose rate of population growth is leveling off (perhaps to zero some day, who knows?) without ecological and economic collapse in the attempt. A mechanism.

OK, what do you mean by this:

You appeared to be describing the effects of the second derivative of human population growth (the second derivative under discussion) being negative in the future as now. You objected to my pointing out that simply negative wouldn't do for plateau, and included the word "constant". I assumed you meant "constant". If my assumption was in error, if by "constant" you meant not "constant" but something else entirely, I apologize for once again becoming confused.

They seceded - an act of treason - to forestall the loss of slavery. They went to war to enforce their secession and keep their slaves. They had no more intention of freeing what they regarded as subhuman livestock (we know that, because they said so) than they had of "freeing" their horses and dogs. There was no "transition" in sight - not even the Union had a transition plan for ending slavery in the existing slave States.

 

Japan, Germany and Italy

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20100115a2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy

 

No. You were wrong to overlook the fact that it makes no difference to my objections. The quibble over "average constant" vs "constant" is irrelevant. You cannot get a plateau with an "average constant" either, for exactly the same reason.

That statement is false. The displacement will not plateau. The velocity will pass through zero and continue into negative numbers, the displacement will follow. You are describing a crash - the doom sayer's postulation.

A horizontal line has a second derivative of 0, on average or by any other determination.

A crash because our population overshoots our carrying capacity, and the scramble to keep it supplied degrades the relevant environment - so that the eventual, stable population regime is lower than it could have been.

That's nice, but all the prosperity-driven fertility decreases are in countries that still have growing populations. None of them have actually stopped growing. The question of overshoot is not answered by pointing to future lack of growth, some day. Neither is the problem of fertility in the rest of the world answered by pointing to the effects of the unduplicatable prosperity of the industrial West.

So you can't think of a suitable mechanism either? Join the club.

 

it wouldn't even require that. Just stop subsidizing corn ethanol . It's not a very practical fuel. Some estimates suggest that producing ethanol actually uses more energy than you get when you use it

 

It is in error, as stated. You are leaving out the "constant" part (or "average constant", or more reasonably "average magnitude big enough"), again - you have to assume much more constraint on the second derivative than mere negativity. When I asked whether you really wanted to assume them, since they are obviously unrealistic, you got huffy - but without something much more restricted than mere "negative", your claim is false.

But beyond false, it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether the population would, left to its current trends, eventually stop growing on its own, by some mysterious mechanism. The question is whether it will have, by then, overshot and set us up for a bust of the boom.

Again: no one presumes a forever increasing human population. The question is whether it is or will be overshooting, or will it somehow curb and plateau below disaster levels.

They have all been possible for a thousand years.

One of those things that has been going to happen in the next twenty years for fifty years now, and will be for the next hundred and fifty.

The mechanization of agriculture we have now depends entirely on cheap crude oil - we are as likely to end up using horses again as we are to fully automate even row crop production. They are already more efficient, in terms of input and output.

And so assuming they are going to have the same effects they do now in the West (say, fertility damping) is reasonably questionable - right?

 

Here's a funny video regarding global warming made by actual climate scientists turned rappers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiYZxOlCN10&feature=youtube_gdata_player