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Looks to me like that graph is making the point that better ag methods, including plant breeding, increase population. More food = more energy = more population. This is kind of basic to understanding any population of living things. The conclusion I draw is that when Chinese people increased their plant-breeding efforts - possibly due to exposure to what was going on in other countries - the better plants resulted in more children surviving to reproductive age.
But agricultural advances in China back then had nothing to do with fossil fuel.
That was my point. All kinds of factors can play a role.
The more people there already are, the more there will be a generation later, and over time that is reflected in an exponential curve. And it will continue until people change their reproductive traditions or external factors such as disasters or wars kick in.
It’s not so much the number as the type. We are have too many Africans and not enough Europeans for example.
I disagree. It's not about race in the US. While it is a function of the type of population, it's a matter of those dependent on artificial financial support vs. the self-supporting. For example, there's NO reason whatsoever WHY 49% of all US births are to those who are on Medicaid (the means-tested public assistance free health care program for the poor). Since the US has only a 12.3% poverty rate, it makes no sense whatsoever that 49% of all births are paid for by Medicaid.
Not sure this is the right category for my topic, but at least it is not on Trump for a change
I am having a little discussion with an acquaintance about the topic of overpopulation and our views are basically opposing:
She seems to think that it is better for people in the West not to have kids because the world is already overpopulated and heading for an abyss. I totally agree that our world is in trouble and we need to change, but to me overpopulation is an arbitrary term because there is no exact number of humans our planet can take. If we lower our standard of living, the planet can take billions more. So, the carrying capacity is virtually impossible to define in the case of humans, and accordingly scientists vastly disagree on the numbers. Think of food for instance. Americans throw away a considerable percentage of their food, while in other countries people eat every last crumb. So, if we all behaved like the latter, at the end of the day the world could take a few additional billions.
Plus, what is the point of my not having a kid in the West when I live in a country whose population is already declining, with all the societal, financial and other problems that brings? I even think it is a bit egoistic to deliberately not have kids. I am talking about 1 or 2 kids (statistically about 2 kids per woman is what it takes to maintain a society), mind you, not half a dozen like in many developing countries. Does sending a developed country into a downward spiral of overaging and ultimately even extinction really mitigate the problems excess fertility in developing countries brings?
There is also a certain racist element. Many people think of brown and Asian people when they hear the word overpopulation. Like, there are too many Africans and Asians.
It's odd reading all of the non biological scientists here making false assertions.
For many populations, the number of individuals is determined not by reproductive potential but by the environment. A given environment can support only a limited number of individuals of a particular population under any specific set of circumstances. Population size oscillates around this number, which is known as the carrying capacity of the environment.
It is estimated that about 25,000 years ago there may have been as many as 3 million people. Some 15,000 years later, at the close of the Pleistocene epoch, the population probably numbered a little more than 5 million, spread over the entire world. At this point, some 10,000 years ago, the establishment of agricultural communities began. In the next 5,000
years, agriculture spread throughout the world and was accompanied by a twenty fold increase in the human population - to about 100 million in 3000 B.C.
From 3000 B.C. until about 1650, human population growth slowed considerably. During this period...slightly less than 5,000 years - the population increased only five fold, to about 500 million. At about this time, however, the rapid development of science, technology, and industrialization began, bringing profound changes in human life and its relationship to nature. In the 200 years between 1650 and 1850, the population doubled, to 1,000 million (1 billion), and then it doubled again by 1930, to 2 billion.
By 1989, there were 5.25 billion people on our planet, and the population continued to grow at a rate of 1.7% a year. This meant a net increase in the world population of about 170 people every minute, more than 244,000 each day, and almost 90 million every year. Scientists predicted if this rate of increase is sustained, there will be about 6.3 billion people on earth by 2000. Scientists made a prediction and were spot on!
Now nineteen year's later we are at 7.7 billion people on this planet!
There is, however, a correlation between economic development and high birth rates. It is in the developing countries that the highest rates of population growth are found. In India, for example, which has struggled for years to feed its ever-surging population, the annual rate of population increase is 2%. Yet most Indian women do not seek help in birth control until they have three or four children. The desire for large families is deeply rooted in their culture. Moreover, in Indian tradition, children provide security for their parents in old age. Two studies of life expectancy in India have shown that, with the high death rate among children, it is necessary for a mother to bear five children if the couple is to be 95% certain that one son will survive the father's sixty fifth birthday.
Within the last few years, the rate of population growth worldwide has begun to decline, but it is too early to know if this decline represents a long-term trend or is only temporary. What has become clear, however, is that the current growth of the human population poses urgent and complex problems, made more difficult by the unequal distribution of growth and available resources. Births are occurring at the greatest rates in precisely those areas where the new arrivals have the least chance of an adequate diet, good housing, schools, medical care, or future occupations. Moreover, because the affluent citizens of developed countries are not constantly reminded of the soaring population by the problems of hunger and crowding, so evident to the poor of other countries...they may just overlook the issues associated with overpopulation.
Yet a child born to a middle-class American family will consume, in his or her lifetime, a far greater amount of the limited resources of the world - more than twice the amount of food, for instance - than a child born in a less developed country.
For humans it is basically impossible to determine a carrying capacity, we are not squirrels or chimps in the wild.
If someone is as worried about our planet as you claim to be, why not have a child and teach him or her to lead a humble, sustainable, exemplary life?
Deliberately not having a kid in a Western country is a bit egoistic and irresponsible in my view, unless in the case of genetic or other severe problems, of course.
Here in Portugal a woman has about 1 child on average, and the resulting demographics are already causing various problems for the country. And it will only get worse.
But agricultural advances in China back then had nothing to do with fossil fuel.
That was my point. All kinds of factors can play a role.
The more people there already are, the more there will be a generation later, and over time that is reflected in an exponential curve. And it will continue until people change their reproductive traditions or external factors such as disasters or wars kick in.
???? Neither did ag advances in any other country. Yet their populations grew too. That blip shows China catching up with the rest of the world after lagging. And everyone's population shot skyward in the 1950's. The inflection point there is labeled "High-yield grains developed" - what that represents is the Green Revolution, which was crop plants being bred specifically to take full advantage of the increased availability of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which are, guess what, petroleum-based.
"Since fertilizers are largely what made the Green Revolution possible, they forever changed agricultural practices because the high yield varieties developed during this time cannot grow successfully without the help of fertilizers." https://www.thoughtco.com/green-revo...erview-1434948
The scientists who were involved in this massive increase in ag productivity were quite sure that without their efforts to take advantage of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides/herbicides, the natural limits of growth would be reached, and huge famines would be inevitable. I know this, because I actually got to talk with them in graduate seminars.
On a global level that is probably wrong because when someone immigrates from a poorer country into the US, they will likely have fewer kids than they would have had back home.
On a global level that is probably wrong because when someone immigrates from a poorer country into the US, they will likely have fewer kids than they would have had back home.
Wrong. That just makes more room back home for more.
The fact of the matter is that liberals need more citizens to maintain government Ponzi schemes and poor people to vote for more government Ponzi schemes.
???? Neither did ag advances in any other country. Yet their populations grew too. That blip shows China catching up with the rest of the world after lagging. And everyone's population shot skyward in the 1950's. The inflection point there is labeled "High-yield grains developed" - what that represents is the Green Revolution, which was crop plants being bred specifically to take full advantage of the increased availability of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which are, guess what, petroleum-based.
"Since fertilizers are largely what made the Green Revolution possible, they forever changed agricultural practices because the high yield varieties developed during this time cannot grow successfully without the help of fertilizers." https://www.thoughtco.com/green-revo...erview-1434948
I think it is mostly the result of urban life. The strong increases in global population growth set in long before the Green Revolution. There were repeated burst, and dents over thousands of years.
Wrong. That just makes more room back home for more.
The fact of the matter is that liberals need more citizens to maintain government Ponzi schemes and poor people to vote for more government Ponzi schemes.
Don't forget about the corporate execs who want cheap labor as well.
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