
No Population Bomb - pstadler
http://theratchet.ca/no-population-bomb
======
kstenerud
While the author is correct in terms of population growth, he has missed one
critical point. We are heading into a population bomb not because of continued
explosive population growth, but rather because of dwindling energy reserves.

Industrialization and fossil fuels are what have allowed the population to
exponentially grow this far. But now that energy is more expensive to extract,
food is becoming more and more expensive. We're already seeing food riots in
the poorer nations, and that trend will continue to grow, leading to a massive
energy shock and die-off never seen before.

This trend could be slowed by massive adoption of alternative energy, but the
only currently viable alternative energy (nuclear) is not likely to be
exploited in a meaningful way any time soon, considering political and
weaponization concerns. If we're really lucky, we'll discover a solar energy
tech + energy storage system efficient and cheap enough to see us through
before too many people die off, but that's a big "if".

~~~
benihana
Malthus said the same thing - that we wouldn't be able to produce enough food
because of whatever reason. And yet we humans found some way to continue
living and producing food just fine. We increased our food yield and continue
to do so. We found creative solutions to our problems with our available
resources and there isn't any reason to think that we'll sudden lose the
capacity to do this because of peak oil or lack of alternative fuels, neither
of which were concepts in Malthus' time.

~~~
kstenerud
Malthus said that our population would eventually outgrow our capacity to
produce food. What I'm saying is that we've already outgrown our future
ability to produce food, and are now in a race against time to stabilize our
energy supply before the population bomb goes off. And unless we do come up
with a novel source of cheap energy, it WILL go off.

~~~
roflc0ptic
I read things like this because I so desperately want there not to be a
population bomb, but the crux of their argument is waving their hands and
saying "human ingenuity will take care of it." In essence it's a faith based
argument cloaked in scientific jargon.

The only answer shy of taking state power and forcing powering down (deeply
improbable) is building resilient local communities and food systems.

------
richardjordan
The argument that 'everyone has been wrong so far' is not a solid one. The
green revolution was basically pouring oil (pesticides) and pumping natural
gas (fertilizer) into the fields. As oil flow rates are peaking this is an
increasingly costly process, and as EROEI lowers on what's left we run into
more problems. Same for NPK inputs - they are getting harder and more
expensive (both $$ and energy) to extract. To a lesser degree (but of growing
concern) all resources - we now mine 3-5% ores where we once mined 70% ores
for example.

Exponential curves don't go on forever in the real world. Ideas don't replace
energy, nor do they replace resources. Saying it hasn't happened yet so those
who are worried about it are wrong is naive and logically flawed.

~~~
ars
Oil is not pesticides and natural gas is not fertilizer. (Why do you think
they are?)

Both of those are energy, and you need energy to make pesticides and
fertilizer - but you need ANY energy, it doesn't matter what kind. So even if
oil flow rates were peaking (which they aren't), it wouldn't matter as long as
we had another source of energy, and we do.

~~~
Thrymr
Most of the hydrogen used in the Haber process (to produce ammonia for
fertilizer) comes from methane (natural gas). Most of the hydrocarbons used to
produce commercial pesticides come from petroleum. They are not just energy
sources, they are raw materials.

~~~
ars
They only get hydrogen that way because methane is also an energy source. It
would be trivial to replace it with water plus external heating if you had
some other energy source.

You can get hydrocarbons anywhere, petroleum is convenient, but certainly not
required.

The raw material of fertilizer is nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium,
magnesium, and sulfur. Methane is none of those - it's just a carrier for
nitrogen.

Same with pesticides, they are organic molecules so need hydrocarbons, but you
can use any hydrocarbon, from trees, grass, whatever. Oil is cheap, so they
use it, but it would not be a big problem if you had to use something else.

~~~
richardjordan
It's that IF that's the problem... We can solve a lot of the world's problems,
not just this one, if we can find an energy source with the kind of lifetime
EROEI (energy return on energy investment) characteristics of petroleum based
fuels. The non-trivial problem being we have yet to discover anything close to
that. NPK inputs are energy intensive (check out Phosphorous mining).

95% of the world'a food supply is dependent on petrochemical based inputs of
which we are starting to see a decline in availability.

If you can show me ANY process to turn trees into pesticides as you suggest in
any kind of energy efficient manner I'm open to revising my opinion, and would
probably change careers to focus on that industry as I think it'd be a world
changer. However I think you are very wide of the mark on the science in
making such a suggestion.

~~~
ars
Petroleum isn't magic. It's just mixed random hydrocarbons.

Use <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification> to turn the tree into useful
feedstock gases, then use the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-
Tropsch_process> to turn those gases into the exact same mixed hydrocarbons
found in petroleum.

~~~
richardjordan
Please. You keep saying things like this but it's nonsense. Do some homework:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested)

I have been respectful of your comments in this thread so please don't see me
as being overly harsh, but you are saying things that are nonsensical.

We don't love hydrocarbons because of what they are but because the energy we
get from them exceeds the energy necessary to produce them so they're a net
source of energy, and not by a little - oil is something like 100:1 EROEI
positive. Nothing comes close in terms of lifecycle EROEI.

~~~
ars
First you said that we need them to make pesticides, and replacing them would
be impossible. So I showed you how to make pesticides without oil. And now
they are for energy, and the pesticides doesn't actually matter.

Talk about moving the goal posts.

Look, of course oil is used for energy, no one disputes that. The method of
making synthetic hydrocarbons is not as efficient as just finding it in the
ground. But it is a net positive for energy, and in a world where it's hard to
find oil it would work just fine - especially if all you needed was pesticides
and other organic chemicals.

If we run out of energy we are going to be in much bigger trouble than
pesticides - but we won't run out of energy, because if we come close then
public sentiment will shift and nuclear power will be OK again - and we have
at least 10,000 years worth of that - at a minimum.

This article is about population, and your claim (I think), is that we can't
actually sustain as much population as we think because we're going to run out
of oil AKA energy. Except you are wrong about that, just like you were wrong
about "If you can show me ANY process to turn trees into pesticides" - which I
did.

We have many many options for energy besides oil, and we can sustain our
population just fine.

~~~
richardjordan
Your didn't show anything of the sort. Your understanding of the underlying
science is weak.

Oil is a fundamental part of our food making process. Something that's 1x
EROEI positive is not remotely analogous to oil at 100x. Oil is used
throughout the entire process from pesticides to mechanical farming
instruments to shipping. Any small change in pice, availability or EROEI of
alternatives affect all elements of the chain. We currently add about 10
calories of oil per calorie of food produced. This is unsustainable. Oil
production is at or near peak flow rates. This is widely understood by folks
in the industry, of which I was once one. Oil's relationship to food and
population is complex and multifaceted but it is absolutely tied to it at this
point.

This is a problem both in terms of oil as a feedstock and as an energy source.
You cannot separate these out.

I really am interested what this mythical new energy source is you have in
mind. I suspect you understand properly neither the science behind nuclear nor
solar which also have significant full life cycle EROEI issues and are
dependent on other resource inputs.

Further NPK inputs to agriculture are also incredibly energy intensive - go
checkout some pictures of phosphorous mining to get an idea. The original
point I was making was that the Green revolution and other solutions of the
past bought us temporary respite. Exponential curves don't continue forever in
the real world.

~~~
ars
> This is a problem both in terms of oil as a feedstock and as an energy
> source. You cannot separate these out.

Of course you can. They are completely independent of each other.

> I really am interested what this mythical new energy source is you have in
> mind. I suspect you understand properly neither the science behind nuclear
> nor solar which also have significant full life cycle EROEI issues and are
> dependent on other resource inputs.

Nuclear. I'm not a big fan of solar - the EROEI is too low, and it requires
too many resources to make enough of it, and too much land area.

I am well aware of how much energy it takes to grow food, and make fertilizer.
But energy is fungible - it makes no different how you get it, as long as you
get it.

You keep saying that oil is 100x, but that is no longer true. Oil is now 35 or
lower. New nuclear reactors beat oil now. Older ones don't but are quite
close.

You seem obsessed with the need for oil, that oil is somehow special. But oil
is just another source of energy. It can be easily eliminated (assuming
another source of energy is available).

------
Joeboy
> We are slowing down population growth because of education, gender equality,
> the rural-to-urban transition, and birth control.

Apart (afaik) from rural-to-urban transition, all of those are heavily
promoted by people who are concerned about population growth.

~~~
sirmixalot
Don't forget abortion and euthanasia. I'm breathing better already.

~~~
rdl
I was amazed to learn that the abortion rate per 1000 pregnancies in the US
(in 2008 or 2010) was 138 (for white women) and 501 (for black women) (and
somewhere in between for hispanic, native american, etc.) I intuitively
thought it was like 10-20/1000. So I think abortion is doing pretty well for
itself.

Euthanasia really needs to step up its game, though.

~~~
Spooky23
That is tied to poverty, ignorance, likelihood of victimization, and cost.
Birth control has not been readily available, but abortions are paid for by
Medicaid and other programs.

When you don't have any money, $150 for a doctor visit and $30/mo for birth
control is a lot of money.

~~~
rdl
Yeah. I am really proud of Warren Buffett's charitable work in this space (he
basically funds Planned Parenthood)

------
quattrofan
Its not population that's the problem per se, its the average consumption of
that population. The majority of which right now don't consume anywhere near
as much as we do in the developed world, but its changing, and fast.
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/apr...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/apr/12/escalating-
consumption)

------
rimantas
Check out another talk by Hans Rosling where he visually demonstrates that 10
billion figure:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.h...](http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html)

------
rdl
Even if you believe in the "growth rate leveling off as women are educated"
thing, it still means in 30 years the world's population is going to be more
concentrated in countries and cultures which today lag the most in virtually
everything I like. Even within the US, few of the people I respect in tech
have children (or want children), and then they do, it's 0-2.

I'd far rather live in a world with 10b Elon Musks, where each was
contributing a huge surplus, vs. 3b sub-today's-median-ability, though, so
it's not absolute numbers which matter.

~~~
twoodfin
What difference does that really make? Plenty of people today doing what you
like had parents who didn't.

If people you respect in tech don't have children, it'll be someone else's
children that get to do the cool stuff in the next generation. It's not as if
the demand for new technology is going to decrease as a few hundred million
Chinese (hopefully) hit the middle class in a couple of decades.

~~~
rdl
I sort of believe people are able to overcome their circumstances in 1-2
generations after being removed from a sufficiently toxic environment, but I
largely disbelieve that a statistically significant number of the people alive
today in e.g. Afghanistan, or born over the next 20 years there, will be
positive contributors to the world. There are outliers (who GTFO, are western
educated, and either don't go back, or go back essentially from a western
frame of reference), and there are cultures themselves which improve over a
generation (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea are the best examples from the
1900s; they went from serious problems post-WW2 to world leaders today).

I believe China might accomplish that, but I don't have much confidence in a
lot of other countries, including those with very high populations or current
growth rates (and high inequality, largely supported by natural resources).
And I think much of the US is regressing -- the son of a random unemployed
Detroit person is less likely to become a first-class member of society today
than the son of a factory worker was 30-50 years ago.

~~~
twoodfin
I guess my crystal ball is a little bit brighter. People thought things were
going to hell internationally and domestically in the '70's, too. Here we are
40 years later, and most (all?) of the real dire predictions failed to bear
out, and there are many amazing outcomes that few were predicting, including
outstanding health and economic growth including in the nations you mentioned.
Also a free and unified Europe, an open, if not free, China, and an India that
can mostly feed itself.

I don't want to get into the argument about whether the U.S. has regressed or
is regressing, but I have a hard time seeing how we're worse off than in 1973.

The Middle East and Africa appear to be the big exceptions.

~~~
rdl
Russia seems worse off that it was at the peak of the USSR. Argentina
undeniably is worse off that at its peak (from top-10 in the world to
essentially one of the basketcases of its continent, which isn't exactly a
world leader either). Other South and Central American countries also seem to
be regressing, and even more so if you go by population vs. counting per
country -- the rich in Brazil seem to be doing quite well, but increasing
inequality.

Africa (at least, sub-Saharan) is actually doing better now than in the past.
The Islamic world is the big laggard. A lot of this was due to the cold war
legacy, though (same in Africa), so there's some reason to be optimistic in
both.

India's recent success I'd put down to ending some stupid socialist policies
in the 1990s, which were also fairly tied to the cold war (and personal
preferences of early leaders). And in Asia, a lot of the problems were _also_
due to communism or weird military dictatorships propped up by communism
(absent the cold war, I really hope the US would have wanted Suharto, Marcos,
etc. hanging from gallows vs. giving them billions in support).

There's also some selection bias in my crystal ball in that I've spent more
time in places which were objectively superior in 1975 (Iraq, Afghanistan,
certain parts of N.A., etc.) to 1990-2013.

------
jsmcgd
Interesting article but a bizarre conclusion. We may not encounter another
population bomb but we are in the process of living through one right now.
"The longest period of exponential population growth for any organism… ever. "
If that doesn't describe a population bomb, nothing does.

~~~
rpicard
I think the term "population bomb" as it is used here means reaching a
critical point in the population where it because a kind of natural disaster
characterized by famine and other problems that result from running out of
natural resources, etc.

------
salmonellaeater
"If current economic development trends continue we should expect the average
person's income in India and China (for example) to reach the same levels of
the U.K., U.S.A., and Japan by 2048."

This is within my expected lifetime, and my children will be at the peak of
their careers during that time. It will be a different world.

I'm reminded of Yancy Fry Sr.'s advice to Fry: "Someday, you may face
adversities so preposterous, I can't even conceive of them."

~~~
wololo
Seems facile. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap>, etc.

------
n1ghtm4n
"All this means that on the scale of hundreds of years our population growth
may actually look like a very steep sigmoidal curve. But of course, in 2050
our planet and species will look very different than it currently is. There is
a limit to what our models can predict about the future population. It could
be that the human population plateaus and stabilizes. However, in a world with
more energy, more geopolitical stability, advanced A.I., and a larger
extraterrestrial presence, our species demographics may begin to change in
unexpected ways. For now, we may simply be relieved that Malthus and Ehrlich
were wrong. We will not encounter a population bomb."

So we can't predict the future, but the other guys' 50-year predictions "were
wrong" [sic] and my 50-year predictions are right. Did I get that right?

His argument can be summarized as "Everything will probably work itself out.
Trust me, brah. I'm a futurist."

------
rsheridan6
There's no reason to believe that current prognostications about the future
will be any more accurate than past ones, and many reasons to believe that
they aren't.

The demographic transition can be viewed as a failure of our adaptations, made
during times when birth control and sex education were unavailable, and
children were useful workers instead of expensive luxuries, to the modern
world. Some people's adaptations have failed harder than others. The people
who have 0-1 kids are being selected out; those who have more than 2 are
expanding. Future generations will be descended from the latter group, not the
former. Unless you believe that fertility is completely invulnerable to
selection, genetic or memetic, this must lead to increased fertility, just as
selecting for bigger dogs would lead to bigger dogs.

There are already groups which are immune to the demographic transition -
Hasidic Jews in the middle of NYC who have ~8 kids per couple, for example -
and there's no reason to believe that they're going to change.

And if evolution did turn out to be false and the demographic transition
turned out to be permanent, there's no reason to believe that fertility rates
would magically converge at 2.0 (replacement rate). If they stayed below
replacement rate, eventually the human race would go extinct. That's a far
more dire prediction than any Malthus ever made. If they started going up
again, is there any reason to believe that they would stop at 2.0?

And having read Malthus, I'd also bet that the author never has.

------
ddlatham
Is there an ideal long term human population level for the planet? If so, what
is it? Will we need to create more incentives to have children to maintain it?

------
tunesmith
I spent some time a year ago or so reading Limits To Growth and Thinking In
Systems by Donella Meadows - according to those theories, 8-9 billion is too
high anyway. Their best case scenario is less than that, with everyone
eventually settling into a standard of living that is about analogous to
eastern European countries today (which is lower than the standard of living
in the US).

------
shin_lao
The author is correct, however he misses an important point: how painful
population stabilization will be for some of us.

------
kzrdude
Population drives consumption and resource use. The clock has been ticking
since the population exceeded the estimated ecological carrying capacity of
the earth. In this sense, the population today puts us in a much more urgent
situation than it would otherwise be.

------
sopooneo
Could someone clarify what the author means by "Women in developed affluent
countries tend to have 2-3 children (or 0-1 children)"?

Does he mean that in some countries the range is 2-3 and in others 0-1? Or is
it that there are two peaks in the histogram?

------
szeevim
Really informative article. But comparing us to regular organisms is certainly
a mistake.

I do believe the UN conclusion is correct by 2050 our birth/death rate will
match and a decrease in population.

------
jimworm
Plants of the Devonian period would like a recount on "the longest period of
exponential population growth for any organism... ever" competition.

------
speeder
I like this subject. Both relating to too much, and too few people...

First, regarding absolute human numbers, we do have too much, mostly because
we are rapidly using up fossil resources (not only fuel, but also
fertilizers), and some important ones already peaked (phosphorous for
example).

But I don't believe that making your population decline fixes things, it only
create other problems, the solution for the problem that I mentioned last, is
develop more technology.

Malthus was right on his diagnostic, wrong in the solution (please, stop
blabbering that Malthus is some stupid dude that is wrong, even on school I
heard that, more than once, by several different teachers in several different
grades), Malthus was absolutely correct in his calculations, he only did not
accounted for the mining of phosphorous (that is one of the major enablers of
green revolution).

Now we are running out of phosphorous and energy, and our food will return to
levels Malthus calculated, unless we figure new tech, I hope someone does so
soon.

Now regarding declining fertility levels... This is a problem too.

In history, there are several accounts of prosperous civilizations that had
declining fertility, and all of them collapsed (usually when fertility reached
around 1.3 per women). Several of the current western world problems are
related to that, the need of external wars to keep some income flow (alright,
no major powers are at war... between themselves, but how much wars US,
France, etc... are involved with other smaller countries and forces? Even
Brazil that is not developed is currently participating in a occupation force
in Haiti and in civil war, although the media refuse to count the latter),
debt problems, specially coming from welfare programs and wars, economies that
are following their population numbers (thus we have Japan for example with
economy declining with the same speed that their population is), and a
increase in far right and far left party powers (example: brazillian military
dictatorship apologists never been stronger, Greek far-right went from having
no votes in parliament to 7%, and a estimated 35% in next election, Japan also
has a new far-right nationalist party that got some respectable votes, the
rise of Tea Party in US and Democrats steering leftward...)

And some groups, know of all this, and have a plan to take over when they
can... The most famous one being Al Quaeda (that is the Arab translation of
the name of Isaac Asimov books The Foundation, and it was known that Bin Laden
was fan of the series). Al Quaeda is clearly aiming to teach their followers
to keep a high fertility rate, so that they can conquer developed nations when
they collapse under their own bureaucracy and population decline.

All those advocating that to fix the first problem I mentioned (peek
resources), don't realize that by doing that, other nations still have
population increasing, some of them will collapse because of it and cause
further problems for everyone (and most likely will ignore the attempts of
developed nations to stop their own population decline), and other nations are
increasing in population on purpose, knowing well of its military effects, and
will use it against any fool that voluntarily decline his population and ends
struggling to keep itself up.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> Now we are running out of phosphorous

Phosphorus is the 11th most common element in the earth's crust. Let that sink
in for a while. It running out makes about as much sense as the humanity
running out of hydrogen. Deposits economically extractable at present market
prices will run out within a few decades. This doesn't mean we run out of
phosphorus, it just means that the market price will rise until other
extraction methods provide enough supply. It will not have to rise far, given
just how _common_ the element is.

> Now we are running out of ... energy

We are not running out of energy. Nuclear and solar each provides the
capability to run for effectively forever -- fracking provides the short-term
supply to build them out.

The idea of resource depletion is completely anachronistic. Today, we can
produce or substitute absolutely everything we need, given input of common
elements and energy. And we have sources of energy that do not depend on
scarce resources. The time when the economy was based on extraction of limited
resources has passed.

~~~
speeder
You are nit-picking my post.

Like I said, we are reached peak phosphorous as we mine it currently, and
reaching peak energy as we currently use mostly fossil fuels.

And like I said, I believe we can use new technologies (like, solar power...
or underwater phosphorous mining) to fix it.

~~~
omegaham
I think what's he's saying is that "peaking" is meaningless.

There's a book that was written back in the early 90s called _The Ultimate
Resource_ , by Julian Simon. A fair amount of it is typical libertarian
wishful thinking, but he very strongly makes the point that in a free society,
there is no such thing as a peak. There are always alternatives, and if a
resource becomes more expensive, we will start switching to them. If need be,
we will also change our behavior to accommodate these alternatives.

To take a great example, look at gasoline prices. There is no shortage of
gasoline in the United States. The price goes up, and suddenly fuel efficiency
becomes much more important. As a result, economy cars are much more common,
as are hybrids and electric cars. Consumption then goes down.

This would be the case even if gasoline were ten dollars or even twenty
dollars a gallon. People would simply take the alternative options, which
become more and more attractive as the "default" becomes more expensive.

~~~
richardjordan
Just because a book makes a claim doesn't make it so. It is ridiculous to
claim that you cannot have peaks or shortages because there's always a
replacement - this is nonsense. The physics and chemistry involved is fixed.
As a famous Scotsman once said, you cannee change the laws of Physics Jim.
Economics and physics are not interchangeable. Sure, with certain kinds of
economic utility you can interchange the underlying mechanisms used to achieve
it, but with chemical reactions necessary to sustain life, as one example, you
cannot just swap on a cheaper element. Likewise you cannot change the energy
density characteristics and EROEI of supply on one material because petroleum
is priced out. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the science behind
the problem.

------
craniumrat2
Anyone have an idea how this thesis correlates with climate change? Any idea
how climate change will affect population growth?

------
cpursley
I wonder if the lower frequency in nation-state warfare is an effect of
increasing education levels of females?

~~~
jcnnghm
That's a nice thought, but it is probably not the cause. "There is a steep
positive slope in the numbers of battle deaths between 1816 and 1914 and a
steep negative slope between 1945 and 1997." [1] Obviously, something happened
in 1945 that changed everything. This change can be almost entirely explained
by the United States acquisition of nuclear weapons, and the subsequent policy
decision in the United States with respect to war and isolationism.

Prior to WWII, US foreign policy was one of isolationism, where the United
States largely ignored other nations politics and conflicts. This policy is
very cost effective as long as war is avoidable. Unfortunately, neither WWI or
WWII were, and both were massively costly. In the wake of WWII isolationism
was abandondoned, in part because the United States was the only nation with
nuclear arms. The United States decided to take an active role in
stabilization, largely through the use of nuclear deterents to prevent
interstate conflict between major powers, and smaller, more frequent
"stablization" conflicts.

Evidence for this is first seen less than three years after WWII ended, with
the Berlin blockade, where the Soviet Union attempted to force the west into
giving up control of Berlin by blocking supply access. This led to the
delivery of 2,236,406 tons of supplies over 278,228 flights in eleven months
(the Berlin airlift), which was enabled directly by the United States threat
of Nuclear retaliation against the soviets. The United States publicly moved
B-29 bombers to Britain to discourage the Soviet Union from interfering with
the airlift. Had this deterent not existed, it's entirely possible that the
situation would have escelated.

Less than five years after WWII ended, with the outbreak of the Korean war,
the pattern is reinforced. Before the start of the war, the United States
produced 120 MK-III "Fat Man" nuclear weapons yielding 18-49 Kt, and started
production of MK-4 1-30 Kt bombs, of which it produced 550 by May 1951.
Interestingly, all of the Mk-III's were retired in 1950, and the MK-4's were
retired in 1953 because the pace of development was so fast. The US deployed
additional B-29's to Britain, with bombs, to discourage the Soviet Union from
entering the Korean War. When the Chinese entered the war, MacArthur intended
to deploy nuclear weapons against the Chinese, in part to distrupt supply
lines with radioactive fallout, and planned to destroy China until it
surrendered. MacArthur also made clear that he intended to use nuclear weapons
against China if they crossed the 38th parallel, and this was communicated to
them. MacArthur was relieved in part because of these plans, and his belief
that the power to order the use of nuclear weapons was his, and not the
President's.

Ridgway, MacArthur's replacement, was authorized to use nuclear weapons in the
event of major air attacks originating from outside Korea, and china was
directly notified of such. The United States entered the war pre-emptively,
then used the threat of nuclear weapons to prevent others from doing so, and
to prevent the escaltion of the war.

It is not difficult to imagine that without these stabilizing actions either
the Berlin airlift of the Korean war could have quickly escelated into World
War 3. In 1954, just after the Korean war, the first thermonuclear weapon
(5-7Mt) was deployed, marking an end to interstate war between major powers.
The highest yielding thermonuclear weapon the US ever deployed, the 25 Mt
Mk-41, entered service in 1960, but by that point, the line in the sand had
already been drawn.

Since 1945 US policy has been clear, it will interfere in foreign affairs,
using economic sanctions, conventional war and nuclear deterents to prevent
costly large scale conflict. The direct result of this has been stabilization,
a long-term decline in war deaths, and the end of interstate war between major
powers. It will be interesting to see what happens as this strategy is
abandoned as the survivors of WWII die off, and memory of why the US spends so
much on its military fades. Hopefully enough time has gone by that a return to
hostilities seems unthinkable; no doubt if there is a return, major
hostilities will be massively costly in terms of life, money, liberty, and
safety.

1: The Declining Risk of Death in Battle Bethany Lacina, Nils Petter Gleditsch
and Bruce Russett International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Sep.,
2006), pp. 673-680

~~~
learc83
It's funny that richard gatling invented the gatling gun with the goal of
reducing conflict by making it too costly, but it took the invention of the
nuclear bomb to actually accomplish this.

>It will be interesting to see what happens as this strategy is abandoned as
the survivors of WWII die off, and memory of why the US spends so much on its
military fades.

What about all of the other members of the nuclear club? To me it seems that
full scale war of the WWI/WWII type isn't really possible between nuclear
armed opponents.

And since we're talking about the number of battle deaths, it seems like the
numbers will only decrease further once human front line combatants aren't
really necessary.

It seems like the scale of WWII isn't really possible anymore either, even if
we remove nuclear weapons. How would you move millions of troops when
satellites are tracking your every move?

------
reasonattlm
[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/09/overpopulation.ph...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/09/overpopulation.php)

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192186/>

"For example, we applied the cohort-component method of population projections
to 2005 Swedish population for several scenarios of life extension and a
fertility schedule observed in 2005. Even for very long 100-year projection
horizon, with the most radical life extension scenario (assuming no aging at
all after age 60), the total population increases by 22% only (from 9.1 to
11.0 million). Moreover, if some members of society reject to use new anti-
aging technologies for some religious or any other reasons (inconvenience,
non-compliance, fear of side effects, costs, etc.), then the total population
size may even decrease over time."

\-----

In the long term, there's no reason not to expect further exponential growth
once human psychology and physiology are removed from the picture as the main
drivers of whether or not population expands. The earth could support vastly
more people than it does even with today's technology. Once it is possible to
create intelligences very rapidly, and when there are non-human intelligence
creators involved in the picture, I'd expect to see a vast explosion of
sentience and colonization.

~~~
kzrdude
I see a quote where the estimated possible population is basically derived
directly from the land area required for habitation alone which is rubbish.

We need to account for resource use as in food, energy, fertilizer, freshwater
etc.

I hope you'll feel refreshed to hear about a different resource peak than the
usual, here's about limited phosphorus for fertilizer:
[http://phys.org/news/2013-04-phosphorus-essential-
lifeare.ht...](http://phys.org/news/2013-04-phosphorus-essential-lifeare.html)

~~~
youngerdryas
Technology races ahead faster and faster while population flattens out yet
lots of people insist on doom against reason. It is a psychological problem.

~~~
graeme
Technology requires support from resources. You can't respond to claims that
our resources are limited merely by arguing that we will develop more
technologies that use resources.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
We have enough uranium mined to last us about 1 or 2 thousands year. Now, with
energy we can do things like desalinate water and make fertilizer.

The only reason we don't do more nuclear power now is because there are
cheaper options.

~~~
wombleton
The argument is not that we will suddenly be unable to desalinate water and so
forth, it's that the price will rise to put more people into starvation.

Claiming that all that will happen is the price (for energy, food, water,
soil, maintaining biodiversity, etc) will rise is exactly the problem.

~~~
rdl
It doesn't even need to push us anywhere near starvation to suck.

If we have cheap non-renewable resources, they allow us to live a much better
quality of life than we would otherwise. If a barrel of oil comes out of the
ground with 5 minutes of human effort, and then lets us fly from SFO to NYC,
that's one level of awesomeness. If we burn up all the easy oil and the barrel
of oil requires an hour of human effort to bring out of the ground, we're
worse off.

Technology helps (maybe we can drill more efficiently, and maybe we can burn
the oil more efficiently, and maybe we can find a good substitute for oil),
but

If we had a certain economic surplus due to high quality natural resources
being available, then having more people means we need to use lower-quality
marginal sources. Plus, with time, we use up the high quality natural
resources.

More _productive_ people should help us improve technology as well, vs. just
providing more total labor. On the other hand, if population increases to the
point where surplus is reduced, we're less likely to invest in education or
other investments which improve the value of human capital, focusing instead
on subsistence.

------
michaelochurch
I agree with the conclusion-- we won't face a population explosion-- but...

Malthus was right and wrong. He was wrong about economic growth being linear
(even then, it was a 0.5% per year exponential increase that just _looked
linear_ ). The Industrial Revolution kicked in and now economic growth is (for
the first time ever) faster than population growth. That change happened
around 1850; until that point, per-person economic improvement was virtually
nonexistent because population gobbled up any gains.

Economic growth has been faster-than-exponential as long as there have been
humans. If you treat biological complexity or energy capture as the analytic
extension of "economic growth" that goes back to the origin of life ~3.8
billion years ago: a faster-than-exponential curve that just happened to be
very slow (but always getting faster) for 3.7999 billion years.

Now, we're also seeing population growth rates drop, due to causes cited by
OP.

Malthus was right insofar as the stronger countries of Europe (Great Britain,
Germany, Russia) spent the next 150 years viciously outsourcing their
Malthusian catastrophes (probably without need to do so) to the weaker ones
(Ireland, Poland) and other parts of the world.

Malthus didn't actually predict starvation. He predicted moral malfeasance
(with his religious beliefs, this included birth control, although I wouldn't
call that malfeasance) driven by population pressure, and that happened.

Humans are a mix of r-selective and K-selective impulses. Psychopathy is what
happens when the r-selector within us is unchecked by K-selective
conscience/fairness modules. The reason it is more common in men is that it
conferred a stronger r-selective advantage in men (who could possess harems
and "fan out") than in women (who are limited to about one child per fertile
year, and 30 fertile years in a life).

Also, if you look at the "corporate paternalism" as more than metaphor, most
people work in r-selective get-big-or-die gambits or large companies that have
a lot of employees (children) but don't invest anything in them. Very few
people work in K-selective enterprises that grow more slowly but invest in
their people.

I don't think one can say, for sure, that the K-selector has won outright. I
think that contest between the two sets of impulses still exists.

Much of how humans have imagined good and evil comes from the conflict
(perhaps a neuroevolutionary arms race) between the r- and K-selective selves.

~~~
nwzpaperman
Financial--debt-asset--growth is exponential. Individual persons don't consume
real resources geometrically, but linearly over a lifespan. Population does
grow geometrically, so that is the underlying driver for geometric production
and resource consumption. Unfortunately, there are a lot of service/non-
producing cash-flows diluting the value of popular macro economic benchmarks
like GDP and corporate benchmarks like EBITDA.

As CS engineers dominate this place, it should be standard practice to
examine, both, the input and output sides of any system during load analysis.

------
kingkawn
Anything called "The Ratchet" I have a hard time taking seriously.

~~~
pjscott
... he said, on "Hacker News".

