The Impossibility of Growth

[Felch]

Demand for food is practically unlimited, yes.

1) Human population tends to increase following food availability

Then why have population growth rates fallen in wealthy advanced societies. Do you expect me to believe that the Japanese are all starving?

[Fake Boris]

First Sava requires "proof" that industrial production generates garbage.

Now Felch needs "proof" that climate change is hurting the environment.

kthxbye

[Kidlicious]

right, because demand for food is unlimited. This is why food prices never crash when supply is dramatically increased.

I hope this is sarcasm.

[Fake Boris]

Then why have population growth rates fallen in wealthy advanced societies. Do you expect me to believe that the Japanese are all starving?

Has food consumption gone down?

[Geronimo]

I hope this is sarcasm.

[Felch]

Demand for food is practically unlimited, yes.

1) Human population tends to increase following food availability

I just made a quick spreadsheet comparing food security to population growth rates.

Mah spreadsheet

Mah source for food security index

Mah source for population growth rates

Guess what, the correlation rounds to about -.69. That's a fairly strong negative correlation between food security and population growth. In other words, your philosophical bull**** doesn't stand up to real world observations.

[Fake Boris]

What about you start from the Neolithic

[Felch]

First Sava requires "proof" that industrial production generates garbage.

Now Felch needs "proof" that climate change is hurting the environment.

kthxbye

You do need to prove these things. Nobody here is inclined to take your word for it, just because you're a dip**** Marxist philosopher.

Climate change is a scary thing that might prove to be a net harm to the environment, but it's not yet proven to be so. Slightly warmer temperatures, and an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide could very easily be a boon to plant life, and since plants are the base of our food chain, they could prove beneficial for all life.

It's not kooky to believe that. It's just not what you and your retarded friends have been telling each other in your anti-science circle jerks.

[Fake Boris]

[Felch]

What about you start from the Neolithic

What about you face the fact that we don't live in the Neolithic? What about you deal with today?

[Fake Boris]

Do you understand what a trend is?

Also, do you understand that population growth is one of the criteria for increased food demand (I stated 3)

[Felch]

You stated three, and the first of them was so blatantly wrong that I didn't bother reading the rest.

[Fake Boris]

Okay. So population in the Neolithic was low because people didn't feel like having children. It all suddenly changed around 1800, when it became fashionable to be pregnant.

[Felch]

No, it all suddenly changed in 1800 because we stopped treating disease with leeches.

[Felch]

Medicine and population

Historically, the world's population “explosion” has two components. The first, in Europe mainly, consists of the gradual disappearance of plague, chiefly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of the introduction of public health and social reforms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The second component consists of population increases throughout the developing countries since the Second World War. Increases in world population during both components of the “explosion” have been due to declines in mortality.

Three broad views have been advanced to explain the increases in population in developing countries since 1945. The first is that the eradication of malaria by DDT residual insecticide spraying has been the main cause. The second is that the provision of better general health services, such as hospitals, clinics and maternity services, has been responsible. The third is that rising living standards are what have counted. Evidence for each of these views is discussed. It is concluded that Medicine, through public health measures, has led to the increase in the world's population, but that the relative importance of malaria cradication and the provision of general health services is to some extent an open question. Rising living standards have had nothing to do with the sudden increase in the population of the developing areas, but they will be of great importance in the longer term in reducing mortality further still, and in encouraging a reduction in the numbers of children born.