Biggest story of our time: our self-extinction by Mark Steyn

[John Feeney]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you understand that "experts" have always predicted gloom-and-doom with regards to the environment and natural resources? A major reason is because they use static models. They don't understand that high prices are the cure for high prices. They don't understand the inexorable advances of technology. They don't understand that where they see unsolved problems, entrepreneurs see boundless opportunity.

[/ QUOTE ]

Experts have very often been right, as we see more and more clearly, for example, with regard to climate change and a great many other issues.

I believe you're quite wrong if you're saying scientists always or nearly always use "static" models.

You seem to suggest we turn to non-experts for our information.

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There's your problem. It's about the ecosystem and the economy. I don't pick economists over natural scientists. I allow my opinion on the subject to be informed by both. The people who don't live in a bizarre world where the world is perpetually ending, yet somehow never does.

There are more resources available, including metals, energy, surface area, volume, etc, than people can possibly conceive of. When a resource begins to become really scarce, it gets more and more profitable, inviting investment, which produces new supplies and alternatives. People don't understand this. It's a really simple mechanism. Any resource that becomes a bottleneck for civilization would eventually become so profitable that all investment would be diverted to breaking it, purely as a function of the market.

[/ QUOTE ]


Those are some very Julian-Simon-esque comments. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] But they're a bit misleading, I think, in a couple of important ways. Sure, eventually we may well be mining other planets and such, but in the meantime, right now, we have a slew of environmental scientists, biologists, etc. telling us that ecological collapse is looming. Right now.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. And as I've pointed out before, it is in the interest of every scientist vying for public funding to paint as dire a picture as possible. Meanwhile, the streams and air get cleaner every year, the sky gets bluer, and the planet supports more people.

[ QUOTE ]
(We already have species being lost at a rate about a thousand times greater than "normal,"

[/ QUOTE ]

Citation? These numbers have been vastly inflated for years now. I recall hearing one hysterical claim about the rate of species loss, that if you ran the numbers, made the planet devoid of life in a decade.

[ QUOTE ]
climate change, massive loss of coral reefs,

[/ QUOTE ]

We would be in a period of abrupt climate change to a warmer climate even if people were still in the Stone Age. Abrupt climate changes like this one have occured dozens of times in the past hundred thousand years. The climate changes. Species go extinct.

[ QUOTE ]
extreme overfishing of the oceans,

[/ QUOTE ]

Because governments refuse to allow or recognize private property rights in the oceans. You can't have a tragedy of the commons without a commons.

[ QUOTE ]
etc....) We don't have time to get up to speed on mining and colonizing other planets to rely on such things to avert that collapse.

[/ QUOTE ]

What collapse? All I see are hysterics used to justify exactly the kind of interventions that will destroy the process that allows for the increase of scarce resources and their rational allocation, the market. The closest thing I see to ecological collapse is the overfishing caused by governments refusing to allow property rights in the oceans. What I see mostly are hysterics used to justify the road to hell, the idea that we can "conserve" (i.e. forceably stop people from consuming, ultimately by killing them) our way to prosperity and "sustainability."

[ QUOTE ]
I think we'd best solve our problems here on earth before assuming we can just go to space for solutions.

[/ QUOTE ]

All the environmental hystericists ever advocate is destroying the only known process that solves these types of problems, i.e. problems like increasing scarce resources, rationally allocating resources, minimizing costs, increasing efficiency, reducing waste, etc. That process is the market, and the environmental hystericists hate it. They want to destroy it, and in so doing would bring about the economic, environmental, and ecological collapse they warble about perpetually.


[ QUOTE ]

The problem is that an economic system which relies for its health on never ending population growth and never ending economic growth (with regard to physical throughput) is doomed to eventual failure as we hit the limits of the ecosystem. And then the suffering of the economy becomes the least of our concerns.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your problem is that you assume that the market "relies for its health on neverending population growth" and the like. Why? Why do you assume any such thing? It's just not there. The market does not "rely" on population growth, the population grows because the market can support it. When it doesn't make economic sense for people to keep pumping out children, they stop; just look at Europe, which large parts of are already at ZPG. The exception is the Third World, where people's time preference is too high to realize that pumping out more kids is probably not the best plan in the long run; hence they can be hit hard by droughts and famine (which we then make the problem worse with our "aid" but that's another thread). The solution is to bring more capitalism to the Third World, not less to the First.

[ QUOTE ]
(Also, I'm not sure if you're saying this, but Simon used to say population growth should be welcomed, and that we should enjoy an "ever-growing" population for the next 7-billion years. As one more equipped than most to do the math on that, pick almost any growth rate within reason and you'll see that you end up in short order with things like more human beings than atoms in the known universe. Only if you assume some infinitesimally small growth rate or some ever-declining growth rate which, however, never reaches zero (asymptotically approaches it, I guess) -- which doesn't sound like what Simon was implying -- can he be right.)

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the population will grow pretty much at the same rate that the carrying capacity of the human occupied volume of the universe goes up. The Earth itself will achieve ZPG at some population that is vastly larger than most people give it credit for. My guess would be 50 billion, once all of the mining and manufacturing is done off planet, the cities have gone as far down as they have up, which will be of order a mile in each direction, the oceans have been colonized, etc.

The carrying capacity of the solar system in general could be far in excess of that. Maybe a trillion. Who knows.

[fun160]

[ QUOTE ]
You seem to suggest we turn to non-experts for our information.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I'm suggesting that instead of relying on "experts" we let the market fix things. High prices are an indication of scarcity and the cure for high prices is...high prices. It's incredible how the "invisible hand" solves things. The potential for profit is enough to spur the ingenuity needed to solve most/all problems.

I suggest you read I, Pencil if you have not already done so.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In other words, there won't be any white people? Oh my God, what a horrible crisis. How will the human race survive in the style to which it has become accustomed?

[/ QUOTE ]

Still waiting for the Islamic car, the African iPod and the Mexican Mars mission.

[/ QUOTE ]
What do you mean by this?

[/ QUOTE ]
Nothing?

[/ QUOTE ]
FlFishOn,

How long will you continue to ignore this question?

[/ QUOTE ]
....

[/ QUOTE ]

[JohnnyHumongous]

As usual, what Borodog has written is completely spot-on and indisputable. Furthermore it is written in a neutral, academic and frankly pleasant tone without wild claims and assumptions, or attacks of any kind. How he maintains the energy to repeatedly hold the hands of the blind and walk them through the realities of the world we live in in post after post is beyond me, as I would have stopped bothering long ago. Borodog, if you or someone like you wanted to begin a movement or organization to effect pro-market and anti-hysteria change, I will actively support it.

[HeavilyArmed]

[ QUOTE ]
As usual, what Borodog has written is completely spot-on and indisputable. Furthermore it is written in a neutral, academic and frankly pleasant tone without wild claims and assumptions, or attacks of any kind. How he maintains the energy to repeatedly hold the hands of the blind and walk them through the realities of the world we live in in post after post is beyond me, as I would have stopped bothering long ago. Borodog, if you or someone like you wanted to begin a movement or organization to effect pro-market and anti-hysteria change, I will actively support it.

[/ QUOTE ]

In spades.

[revots33]

[ QUOTE ]
We would be in a period of abrupt climate change to a warmer climate even if people were still in the Stone Age. Abrupt climate changes like this one have occured dozens of times in the past hundred thousand years. The climate changes. Species go extinct.

[/ QUOTE ]

Because something happened due to natural causes in the past, does not mean human activity is not the primary reason NOW.

http://www.ukcip.org.uk/climate_chan...al_manmade.asp

[John Feeney]

[ QUOTE ]
As usual, what Borodog has written is completely spot-on and indisputable. Furthermore it is written in a neutral, academic and frankly pleasant tone without wild claims and assumptions, or attacks of any kind.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh, well I'm about to dispute it, and I'll bet my tone is even sweeter.

[John Feeney]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Those are some very Julian-Simon-esque comments. But they're a bit misleading, I think, in a couple of important ways. Sure, eventually we may well be mining other planets and such, but in the meantime, right now, we have a slew of environmental scientists, biologists, etc. telling us that ecological collapse is looming. Right now.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. And as I've pointed out before, it is in the interest of every scientist vying for public funding to paint as dire a picture as possible. Meanwhile, the streams and air get cleaner every year, the sky gets bluer, and the planet supports more people.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now just stop that. [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] Every time we've been through this with regard to climate change, I've made the point that while it may be, to some extent, in a scientist's self interest to paint a biased picture (and I've seen good arguments that it's not), when you compare a working scientist trying, at least largely, to seek the truth, to the climate change deniers, the difference in bias is night and day. The deniers are paid by those with massive financial stakes in the status quo simply to write stuff denying climate change, usually without doing the science, and regardless of the truth. I think it's not too much different when it comes to other environmental issues and the "cornucopian" economists.

I'll add another point this time. As you know, the average working scientist has been taught all through his education that he's supposed to work ethically and with integrity, to seek the truth. He's supposed to practice "scientific neutrality." At least I was certainly taught that almost from day one in my training as a social scientist, and I know scientists in the natural sciences who would say the same thing. Now, add to that that the average working scientist is going to possess a reasonably intact personality structure and be a reasonably highly functioning (emotionally) person, and we can conclude he's going to have an intact, healthy conscience. Given all that, I submit that, on average, he's going to try to make some kind of decent, good faith effort to be truthful and objective in his work. Obviously there will be bad apples, but on average...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
(We already have species being lost at a rate about a thousand times greater than "normal,"

[/ QUOTE ]

Citation? These numbers have been vastly inflated for years now. I recall hearing one hysterical claim about the rate of species loss, that if you ran the numbers, made the planet devoid of life in a decade.

[/ QUOTE ]

Statements that current extinction rates are about 100 to 1000 times the normal background rate are all over, including in peer reviewed articles. Unfortunately, I can only get my hands on so many peer reviewed articles online, so here are a bunch of references, many of which are secondary sources, but quoting authors like Stuart Pimm and W. V. Reid, who I believe were among the first to come out with the "100-1000" figure.

Here's Peter Raven's 2002 presidential address to the AAAS. He's a renowned botonist:

http://www.biology.wustl.edu/faculty....php?IDProf=28

And here's the address, the whole of which you ought to read as it covers much of what this thread is about:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/297/5583/954

Here's a higher estimate in The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson -- pretty renowned himself. You have to navigate to p. 280:

http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN03...INj_SBTFec#PPP1,M1

It may be hard to get google books to let you read some pages, but if you work at it that page is preceded by a good deal of groundwork which helps it make more sense.

Other estimates are similarly disturbing. Here's one by Reid:

http://infoserver.ciesin.org/docs/002-252a/002-252.html

Notice statements like this:

"60 birds and mammals are known to have become extinct between 1900 and 1950 (Fig. 3.1), whereas the background extinction rate for these two groups is only one extinction every 100 to 1000 years based on the average lifespan of a species of 1 to 10 million years (Raup, 1978)."

In the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity,they say:

"The irreversible loss of species, which by 2100 may reach one third of all species now living, is especially serious."

http://www.actionbioscience.org/envi...cientists.html

And that was circa 1992.

Here's Pimm:
"Earth is experiencing a mass extinction of species on a par with the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, but this time asteroids and comets have nothing to do with it.... this time we are pointing the finger of blame at our own species.
Sceptics in economic and political circles disagree, some vehemently. In the words of Julian Simon, professor of business administration at the University of Maryland, estimates of high extinction rates are so much "statistical flummery'." :-)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...struction.html

Here are two very qualified guys summarizing the state of affairs in a past issue of American Scientist:

"The current losses are, however, exceptional. Rates of extinction appear now to be 100 to 1,000 times greater than background levels, qualifying the present as an era of 'mass extinction.'"

http://www.americanscientist.org/tem.../assetid/14434

Pimm again:

"Humanity's destruction of tropical habitat for agriculture, logging and other development has inflated earth's normal background extinction rate by as much as 1,000 times, said Stuart Pimm, a senior research scientist at Columbia's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation."

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/pr/00/03/extinction.html
Bottom line: These are of course estimates, and estimates vary, but to quote Donald Kennedy (Bing professor of Environmental Science at Stanford and Editor-in-Chief of Science) in the opening essay of the magazine's State of the Planet: 2006-2007, "Scientists argue about the rates of extinction, but there is little doubt that current rates are far higher than has been experienced in past 'average' geologic times." (p. 7)
Do a google scholar search for: "extinction rate" "1000 times" -"repeated 1000 times"

You'll see the reference bunches of times, including in many peer reviewed articles. It's just rarely possible to get farther than the abstract.

[ QUOTE ]
We would be in a period of abrupt climate change to a warmer climate even if people were still in the Stone Age. Abrupt climate changes like this one have occured dozens of times in the past hundred thousand years. The climate changes. Species go extinct.

[/ QUOTE ]

Man, why would you even say that? Those two guys you saw present explicitly stated that their data said nothing about the role of anthropogenic forcing. You know as well as I do that the overwhelming evidence is thathuman activity plays a large role. You've said as much before here.

[ QUOTE ]
What collapse? All I see are hysterics used to justify exactly the kind of interventions that will destroy the process that allows for the increase of scarce resources and their rational allocation, the market. The closest thing I see to ecological collapse is the overfishing caused by governments refusing to allow property rights in the oceans. What I see mostly are hysterics used to justify the road to hell, the idea that we can "conserve" (i.e. forceably stop people from consuming, ultimately by killing them) our way to prosperity and "sustainability."

[/ QUOTE ]

You know, "hysterics" is a propagandistic word. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Recall the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity:

http://www.actionbioscience.org/envi...cientists.html

That was in 1992; the warnings are more urgent today.

(If you dismiss a majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, then I'll have to get tougher on you. [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] )

See this too:

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Ea..._Collapse.html

BTW, indications are that fresh water biodiversity has declined even faster than marine biodiversity (Science, 14 November 2003, Vol. 302, no. 5648)

[ QUOTE ]
All the environmental hystericists ever advocate is destroying the only known process that solves these types of problems, i.e. problems like increasing scarce resources, rationally allocating resources, minimizing costs, increasing efficiency, reducing waste, etc. That process is the market, and the environmental hystericists hate it.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're doing that propaganda thing again. (And as a psychologist I have to say I'm not sure there's such a thing as a hystericist. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

I don't think I've advocated much in the way of big government action - just things like increasing educational opportunities for women in developing countries, increasing access to and information about birth control and family planning, working to improve childhood survival rates, etc. See Sachs's column:

http://scientificamerican.com/article.cf...89A83414B7F0000

Now, whether more government involvement could become necessary is, to sound like an economist, a function of the nearness of our approach to the catastrophe which would disincentivise our efforts at amelioration of the problems induced by population externalities in direct proportion to the degree of decline of our collective state of health and social order. (in the context of scarce resources made unscarce by the free market) [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

And FWIW I don't think the free market has any great track record of environmental stewardship. People are still going to want to strip mine, to deforest, to eliminate indigenous cultures, etc., especially as long as population growth continues to exert such pressure.

[ QUOTE ]
Your problem is that you assume that the market "relies for its health on neverending population growth" and the like. Why? Why do you assume any such thing? It's just not there. The market does not "rely" on population growth, the population grows because the market can support it. When it doesn't make economic sense for people to keep pumping out children, they stop; just look at Europe, which large parts of are already at ZPG. The exception is the Third World, where people's time preference is too high to realize that pumping out more kids is probably not the best plan in the long run; hence they can be hit hard by droughts and famine (which we then make the problem worse with our "aid" but that's another thread). The solution is to bring more capitalism to the Third World, not less to the First.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now you're gettin' goofy on me. Many in this thread are saying a population decline would be a terrible thing, a terrible thing economically. The whole thrust of that Foreign Affairs article someone linked to is that a population decline would be an economic disaster. So you and I agree that's BS. You say it's because our economic system doesn't need population growth to remain healthy in the first place. I say it doesn't "need" it, but it's currently relying on it to a large degree. If nothing else, it certainly promotes it. The corporate world cheerleads population growth as do many economists. We can adjust to a stable or even declining population, no problem.

I don't completely disagree with some of what you say. More capitalism may be part of the answer in some places/situations. And really, I don't care how we do it. My main point is that we need more awareness of the impact of population on the environment and how corporate economic activities, conducted as they are today, promote that.

[ QUOTE ]
I think the population will grow pretty much at the same rate that the carrying capacity of the human occupied volume of the universe goes up. The Earth itself will achieve ZPG at some population that is vastly larger than most people give it credit for. My guess would be 50 billion, once all of the mining and manufacturing is done off planet, the cities have gone as far down as they have up, which will be of order a mile in each direction, the oceans have been colonized, etc.

The carrying capacity of the solar system in general could be far in excess of that. Maybe a trillion. Who knows.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, you're smarter than Simon then, because his assertion would obviously mean numbers too high for the entire universe. You're thinking small. Anyway, I think you're overestimating our ability to stretch carrying capacity. Are you factoring in the social conditions of 50 billion people living on (and in) this planet? Do you think there would be any room at all for biodiversity on the planet with 50 billion people living here?

At any rate, this thread is taking up too much time for me at this point. I must go deal with some externalities and round up some scarce resources. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[John Feeney]

I made a couple of minor edits to my post above and the forum turned all the links into non-active links with the UBB code showing. Had to go back and copy paste from where I'd written it, but wasn't able to make a couple of edits I wanted as it feared it might to do the same thing again with my edit time running out. So if it's not 100% perfect don't blame the messenger. :-/