Comment by lutusp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lutusp | Hacker News Reader

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> While I'm all for keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I don't like what people say about overpopulatiion.

That's your argument? That you don'e like it? I don't like it either, but mass death is how nature deals with species who exceed the carrying capacity of their environments.

> Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by natural catastrophies or diseases.

People don't hope for that, but they expect it as a natural consequence of biological growth. And they're right. The evidence is clear -- eventually mass birth is balanced by mass death. We're already seeing the first stages.

> Good to hear that I'm not the only one with this opinion.

Oh, you aren't the only one, not by any means. Most people think there's no reason to think about this. Natural selection efficiently chooses those who don't believe it's worth thinking about, and over time they become the entire surviving population -- people who accept mass death as a practical regulatory mechanism.

More here: http://arachnoid.com/evolution

> We're already seeing the first stages.

Can you support this?

We're not seeing any mass deaths which are sufficient to even slow the population growth rate, and instead, seem to simply be seeing more statistically unlikely events as the population grows larger - which is what we would expect.

There have been several articles posted here recently on the health of the oceans, specifically how the oxygen levels are decreasing leading to a decrease in sea-life (with the exception of species like jellyfish that thrive in that environment). While I'm sure the human race could survive as vegetarians, I think it's also important to protect the systems that convert CO2 back into oxygen ... we're still going to need to breath.

Of course, there's the whole global warming debate (which I won't get into) as well ... what effect will that have on plant-life and agriculture?

P.S. I like seafood, so I'd also prefer we manage to keep the oceans habitable.

Of course, there's the whole global warming debate

It's not a debate, it's science.

The question of what to do is not science. And it seems silly to assume that we're starting at an optimal temperature considering the wild swings the planet has had in the past.

CO2 levels are increasing ... that's science. The question of whether we can actually stop the trend, much less reverse it is both science and debate. The question of what each person, company and country should do is purely debate. Those of us in rich industrialize countries will not want to give up our way of life. Those burning the rain-forests are (from what I remember) doing it to subsist.

I'm also a steam-locomotive buff (install sl on all your Linux machines), and it's interesting to follow their decline in the US and other first world countries. China used steam power longer than most (http://www.david-longman.com/China.html), since they had vast reserves of coal and other more important infrastructure to build. But it appears China is just now recognizing the types of pollution that led to the 1970s/1980s "super-fund" sites in the US. I suspect that countries that want to join the ranks of the financial superpower will progress through similar stages where they won't be inclined to agree to pollution limits.

This article does make a point about what to do. It gives a set of solutions for global warming that are more in line with what keeps humans alive. After all, if we do what the laws suggest : go below the carrying capacity of the earth for human population, the human population should drop to ~ 10 million to stop global warming, and the remainder should live without so much as heat from a campfire. Needless to say, striving for that is cruel, useless and completely insane. Just like the previous followers of Malthus were.

Instead the article argues we should use the tactics that humans have always used for survival to compensate global warming: * introduce a species that solves the problem for us. Right now the most efficient co2->o2 species are ~3% efficient. The difference need not be big, by the way. If we introduce a form of algae that's 3.2% efficient into the oceans, global warming will reverse in about a year. Note that some theories say that earlier in the planet's history, there were such more efficient species, which should mean they can easily come back without intervention and may suddenly solve out problem for us. The same goes for trees. It would not be a huge adaptation for trees to become more green, although it would take more time. * find another fuel to burn (e.g. a more complete switch to uranium, or solar panels. Although solar panels still necessitate competing with nature, which is bound to have ecological consequences if the usage goes up. Both pose the problem of moving the fuel around)

I would like to add that somehow the UN's policies and all the "green" policy efforts have moved the world away from nuclear power, and into coal power. Whatever the green movement is doing, it needs to learn that there are consequences to decisions. Moving away from nuclear means coal power plants. Why ? Look at the energy prices. Moving away from coal means nuclear power plants. Until this is understood widely, the green movement will continue to make things much worse by insane unconditional opposition to anything that doesn't completely satisfy their demands, including the demand that there can't be any impact on their lifestyle. I find it very weird that given such horrible results, the movement has any standing in society at all.

Btw: I hate sl. Too many type errors and I didn't know how it can be interrupted until a few months ago. It takes quite a while to pass on the screen on a 30" monitor.

I am pretty sure you are living in a first world. No I am not a political nutjob. I was born in and live in a 3rd world country, I have seen all the problems, Just type Indian food security bill in Google. I mean come on,it is not even funny how the situation is in south Asia.

> Can you support this?

Of course. Just look at the number of people who are on the brink of starvation:

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20f...

Quote: "The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world, or one in eight, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012. Almost all the hungry people, 852 million, live in developing countries, representing 15 percent of the population of developing counties. There are 16 million people undernourished in developed countries."

> We're not seeing any mass deaths which are sufficient to even slow the population growth rate ...

Not true, and in any case, that's not how an uncontrolled population expansion works -- such a process involves more mass death accompanied by more and more people surviving at the same time. The model is the Logistic function:

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

The curve is nearly flat on the left because there are too few organisms available to produce a higher growth rate.

The curve is nearly flat on the right because mass death prevents enough surviving organisms able to produce a higher growth rate.

Notice about the Logistic curve that the trend is always positive -- more people, but more death, at the same time. I emphasize that the Logistic curve is matched by any number of laboratory experiments -- it's more than a hypothesis about biology, including human biology.

what are the first stages?

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