Saturday, January 15, 2011

Gilbert Syndrome More Condition_symptoms

7 billion. Second episode.


National Geographic (NG) population enters the debate with a number from the cover title: 7 billion , the future in a world crowded . The number of NG starts talking with a population of typical flights of fancy that makes me go on a rampage. A graphic page is dedicated to an ideal experiment in which you plan to hold a dance party for all 7 billion people on Earth by giving each individual a certain area for dancing is concluded that it would be enough to accommodate all the province of Siena. I say this now and this type of examples used in the past by Lomborg and others, give no indication regarding the ecological sustainability of a population. They are simply a trick to make you feel calm those who are unwilling to challenge the paradigm of infinite growth.

Below the number refer to Article editor and expert on environmental issues Robert Kunzig. This quote does not express the views expressed recently by Joe Bish on the facebook group of the Global Population Speak Out and mentioned by me yesterday on this blog:

"We are smart. We can do even better, and I do not think that even with a human population of nine billion we will be coming to the biological limits to survive on Earth . This is not the problem, in my opinion. "

quotation marks this phrase was said, according to Bish, speaking on National Public Radio program Talk to the Nation on January 6 last year. We do not want to hang the senior editor of NG to the words he used in a radio broadcast. So let's look at his article in the Italian edition of NG.
In the following parts of the text in italics are verbatim quotes from the magazine.


Article debut describing coitus interruptus of the merchant of Delft (Netherlands), Antoni van Leeuwenhoek noting that in 1677 their sperm through an optical device invented by himself, discovered the sperm. The same van Leeuwenhoek, who knows by what mental associations, was the first to estimate the human population groped widely mistaken for excess (13 billion versus 500 million). The article continues

heartened by the fact that readers of the many "pofezie" demographic apocalypse of all have been disproved by history.

Perhaps it can be comforting to know that people care about for a long time the population growth. And from the beginning [...] demographics took care of the matter in apocalyptic terms.

At this point, inevitably, comes with its Malthusian theory disproved by the facts. Then Paul Ehrlich with its population bomb and achievements of technology, medicine and the green revolution, which denied the catastrophic prophecies of Malthus and Malthusian. Here comes the presentation of the Theory of Demographic Transition : a must of human progress. Follows, inevitably, the issue of aging society (and the sustainability of pension systems) following the decline in fertility.

whose rapid decline in fertility, scientists would be surprised.

"I do not yet understand why the fertility rate has fallen so quickly in so many cultures and religions (sic). It 's a stunning figure," Hania Zlotnik ammentte , director of the UN Population Division. After talking

differences in reproductive behavior in different parts of India, the Chinese case and the fact that only in Africa, women have higher fertility rates there are a few pages of graphics, as always well cared for NG, and then you take the words of demographer henv Bras on the annual meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA), where this year we talked about population explosion.

"the problem is a bit 'out of fashion," said Le Bras [...] by the second half of this century we will find ourselves at the end of an era unique in history. population explosion, and we will enter a new phase, during which the population will become stable or decrease.
But we will not be too many already? At the conference I discovered that the current population of the planet might screw up the whole living in Texas, if Texas had the same population density of New York. At this point I did a little 'calculations as Leeuwenhoek. If in 2045 to nine billion people will live in the six inhabited continents, world population will amount to little more than half of that of France today. France is not seen as a hellish place. It will be the world in 2045.

I reported this entire long period, including the quotes because it is central in understanding the mentality of these scientists face the problem conclude that the numbers are not the problem.

The author agrees that some regions of the planet could become hell, others are already now. Collapse by Jared Diamond cites and founder Lester Brown of World Watch Institute and director of ' Earth Policy Institute in Washington who believes that the food crisis could lead to the collapse of civilization. Humans are consuming natural capital [...] "Family planning is perhaps one of the assistance to be given priority" . But immediately after starting the final phase of the article leaves the impression that the population issue or not ci sia più nulla da fare o che sia una questione secondaria rispetto alla modalità di consumo delle risorse.

Concentrarsi sui numeri non è il modo migliore per affrontare il futuro. I problemi da risolvere sono la povertà la mancanza di infrastrutture, non la sovrappopolazione. Dare ad ogni donna la possibilità di accedere a servizi di pianificazione familiare è una buona idea. Ma neppure il programma di controllo delle nascite più aggressivo può salvare il Bangladesh dall'innalzamento del livello del mare [...].

Brian O'Neill del National Center for Atmospheric Research calcola che, se nel 2050 la popolazione raggiungesse i 7,4 miliardi invece degli 8,9, le emissioni si ridurrebbero 15%. "Those who claim that the main problem is overpopulation is wrong," says Joel Cohen , "is not even the dominant factor."

The conclusion is almost even tone simony, although quotes Malthus.

"The efforts that men should do to support themselves and their families, frequently awaken faculties that would otherwise remain dormant, and has often been noted that new situations and create extraordinary minds capable of facing the difficulties that arise." [...] We hope that Malthus was right about our ingenuity.


will follow in the coming months articles on sustainability.

What follows is my comment, which will result in a letter to the magazine.

As I said earlier the example of the dance party for 7 billion people is misleading and meaningless in a discussion on the sustainability of a population.
Similar considerations apply to comment on the words of the ineffable Le Bras demographer who discovered this year that the entire human population could be in Texas and that if we are we will be 9 billion in mid-density of France. And he also made two calcoletti. These are non-issues. M. Le Bras could find, maybe next year, in a shed of 10 m in length there may be tens of thousands of farmed chickens happy (so to speak!) to receive a daily feed that is produced by cultivating hectares of fertile land. Many acres of fertile land required to sustain a population area, or the volume it occupies. If you would just think of the human population size in metric terms, and making a small step further, Dr.. The Bras may find, in a couple of more years, that the biomass of the human species and its domestic animals has now reached 97% of the biomass of all terrestrial vertebrates. That in itself means that man has occupied and made his every terrestrial ecosystem.

's article is better Kunzig statements that have preceded it, but not without serious flaws.
As often happens in the debate on global sustainability are taken for granted facts that are not at all. For example, the fact that Malthus was wrong. I have said many times that Malthus, writing in the late eighteenth century could not imagine how the contribution of fossil fuels would have moved up the carrying capacity of the planet. The fossil window, which is closing, merely postponed the day of reckoning with the Malthusian limits to growth. In this regard, it is singular and positive, at least on the NG has been avoided to place among the Malthusian Club of Rome in error.
The issue of energy flow and the size of People need to be constantly reminded. It is not simplistic to say that the cause of the population explosion is the discovery of fossil fuels, rather than the discovery of fossil fuels and the fact that man has learned to use it triggered a typical positive feedback loop in which increased availability of energy results in an upward shift of load capacity, aside from population growth that triggers a boost to energy production and so on. This cycle, like all the positive feedback loops has a breaking point. Perhaps the surprise of Ms. Zlotnik could find an answer just in breaking the cycle I'm talking about and that did not begin with 2004, but much earlier. The signals reaching the planet's ecological limits and cultural materials they have arrived and people feel less need to put the world in this world, children.

The fact that someone launches centuries apocalyptic warnings could only mean, and probably is, that man tends to live at the limits of carrying capacity of ecosystems that support it. This is reconciled with the theory of Diamond on the collapse of civilization.

We look forward to future issues of NG.

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