Crying shame

[Bill & Stella]

Bill and Stella, I think we are in furious agreement. I hope you understood it was FF, not I, suggesting the death of one or two million people would help, and to be fair I think(or hope) he was only using it as an absurdity argument.

Understood, Bruce. Re-reading my post I can see how my use of the "killing billions" concept to make a point might wrongly imply that you somehow proposed this. Sorry

 

[sunchaser]

Bill
What is current China policy on managing birth rate?

 

[FF]

From what I see in Capitalist societies population growth is SELF limited as the society gets Richer.

At one time having 6-10 kids was insurance of food and a roof over ones head in old age.

Today success requires education and the thought of putting 6 kids thru a kollege is daunting to all but a very few.

There is no requirement for a growing population , I have always thought automation in manufacturing would allow very short work hours , with no loss of productivity.

There will always be a demand for touch work , cooks, house painters, auto repair folks so folks that enjoyed that work , or realized a great pay check would be doing it.

I was an airline pilot , great pay and although the computer folks would be happy to automate the job , how many would fly with a pilot 2500 miles away observing dozen flights?

What is needed for Capitalism is not new people , esp poor folks at the bottom , but new concepts and ideas and products that can be produced and sold for a profit to keep the system operating.

 

[Bill & Stella]

Bill
What is current China policy on managing birth rate?

Some history, after liberation many unsuccessfully urged Mao to adopt an anti-natal policy as population growth was stressing China's food production capabilities. A good percent of the country is desert (GROWING!) and mountains. After Mao's death the government recognized the problem and started the one child policy implemented by education. However, some officials did get out of hand.


Some social problems due to new techniques for determining sex before birth and available low cost abortions (the birth control of choice here) caused a man/women ratio imbalance. Hasn't been a serious problem yet as relaxed enforcement on prostitution and immigrant wife's (limited) eased social pressures.


New rules allowing more children seems to be based on creating people to take care of the increasing percentage of old folks (like me!). Of course, creating billions at the bottom of the population pyramid, who live 80 years, to take care of millions of old people at the top, who live 8 years, is silly. And, unfortunately, kids aren't taking very good care of the old folks these days. There has to be better ways to handle this problem.


New rules didn't work. Birth rates did not increase and in major cities is still decreasing. When I asked my very middle class step son about having more kids his cynical reply- "never, who needs a 20 year prison sentence and 60 years of probation".

 

[North Baltic sea]

Hi,


add to the history of who still remembers Mao ordered 4 animals to be destroyed in 1958, one of them being a "capitalist bird sparrow" who ate rice from the field. The following year the harvest was good when there was no longer a spur, in the following years there was famine that killed about 35 million people, due to the destruction of sparrows.


NBs

 

[dhays]

Hi,


add to the history of who still remembers Mao ordered 4 animals to be destroyed in 1958, one of them being a "capitalist bird sparrow" who ate rice from the field. The following year the harvest was good when there was no longer a spur, in the following years there was famine that killed about 35 million people, due to the destruction of sparrows.

I never knew about that. Thanks for sharing.

 

[ancora]

Mao's "Great Leap Forward" led to the starvation deaths of 35 million Chinese...but who's counting?

 

[dhays]

Mao's "Great Leap Forward" led to the starvation deaths of 35 million Chinese...but who's counting?

Yeah, combination of bad science, bad policy, and bad weather. I never knew about the birds though. It sounds like it added to the perfect storm that caused the famine.

 

[BruceK]

How did the absence of the sparrow cause a crop failure? Or was there another contemporaneous cause?
There is discussion here about the importance of bees as pollinators. So far we have avoided some overseas beehive pests/diseases,but if you lose the bees you can lose pollination, and no pollination can mean no crop.

 

[dhays]

How did the absence of the sparrow cause a crop failure? Or was there another contemporaneous cause?
There is discussion here about the importance of bees as pollinators. So far we have avoided some overseas beehive pests/diseases,but if you lose the bees you can lose pollination, and no pollination can mean no crop.

I looked it up and it appears that they wiped out a huge percentage of the birds in the area. It was thought that the birds were eating a lot of grain. Turns out they were also eating a lot of insects such as locusts. Those pests were a much bigger problem than the birds.



Again, thanks to NBS for mentioning it. Very interesting.

 

[JustBob]

So are you saying you can't believe there is such a thing as overpopulation or we haven't reached it yet? Assuming you can rationalize the concept, what indicators would tell you when we reach that point?

Ted

Like if I was in downtown LA, pointed my vehicle NE to drive to Boston, and the scenery never changed for 3,000 miles.

 

[JustBob]

Believe in the planet, people!

https://www.foxnews.com/science/baby-atlantic-sturgeon-found-virginia-river-first-time-nearly-decade

 

[JustBob]

How many of you have read State of Fear, by Michael Crichton?

https://www.amazon.com/State-Fear-M...&qid=1542330135&sr=8-1&keywords=state+of+fear

This book explains a lot about how we humans operate, and why pretty crazy ideas get immense traction. Highly recommended.

 

[BruceK]

I looked it up and it appears that they wiped out a huge percentage of the birds in the area. It was thought that the birds were eating a lot of grain. Turns out they were also eating a lot of insects such as locusts. Those pests were a much bigger problem than the birds.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

 

[North Baltic sea]

How did the absence of the sparrow cause a crop failure? Or was there another contemporaneous cause?
There is discussion here about the importance of bees as pollinators. So far we have avoided some overseas beehive pests/diseases,but if you lose the bees you can lose pollination, and no pollination can mean no crop.

Hi,

Sparrows also ate grasshoppers alongside rice. Grasshoppers got explosive because the sparrows were missing. Next, Mao began buying spurts back to China to remedy the matter, but years went by to get the balance in nature. Grasshoppers ate "all" rice or spoiled crops anyway.


NBs

 

[North Baltic sea]

I looked it up and it appears that they wiped out a huge percentage of the birds in the area. It was thought that the birds were eating a lot of grain. Turns out they were also eating a lot of insects such as locusts. Those pests were a much bigger problem than the birds.



Again, thanks to NBS for mentioning it. Very interesting.

Hi,

In nature there is a very delicate balance in relation to many different things whenever a parameter changes it appears in another case, this was the original case when 80 species disappeared in 40 years and it is not a beautiful thing.

This sparrows case is a good example of man's foolishness to look beyond and underestimate other lives.

NBs

 

[FF]

"This book explains a lot about how we humans operate, and why pretty crazy ideas get immense traction. Highly recommended."

Sounds like "new math" "the population bomb" or" global warming."

 

[Bill & Stella]

add to the history of who still remembers Mao ordered 4 animals to be destroyed in 1958, one of them being a "capitalist bird sparrow" who ate rice from the field. The following year the harvest was good when there was no longer a spur, in the following years there was famine that killed about 35 million people, due to the destruction of sparrows.


For the last couple of weeks, every morning, there are these big bird fights near our apartment. Bird calls I have never heard before. This morning it was quiet and this is what I saw.

The winners, I guess.

Where is Mao when we need him?

 

[Giggitoni]

add to the history of who still remembers Mao ordered 4 animals to be destroyed in 1958, one of them being a "capitalist bird sparrow" who ate rice from the field. The following year the harvest was good when there was no longer a spur, in the following years there was famine that killed about 35 million people, due to the destruction of sparrows.


For the last couple of weeks, every morning, there are these big bird fights near our apartment. Bird calls I have never heard before. This morning it was quiet and this is what I saw.

The winners, I guess.

Where is Mao when we need him?

Where is Alfred Hitchcock when we need him?

 

[JustBob]

"This book explains a lot about how we humans operate, and why pretty crazy ideas get immense traction. Highly recommended."

Sounds like "new math" "the population bomb" or" global warming."

Exactly.

 

[Bigsfish]

How do we know what is fact and truth? It seems that we can find books, professional studies, and papers to support any view. Recently I read that a paper supporting global warming was found to have mathematical errors on page one, all of a sudden another theory goes up in smoke. So what to believe?

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Mr. m. How true that is! Didn't E.A. Poe say...
"Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see."

 

[O C Diver]

Like if I was in downtown LA, pointed my vehicle NE to drive to Boston, and the scenery never changed for 3,000 miles.

As with so many things, it's not what you see, it's what you don't see. You may not have seen the environmental impact of DDT because you chose not to look. You probably don't see the devastation of over fishing because you never look below the surface of the ocean. You look at a city like New York and think everything looks fine. You choose not to think where the waste of tens of millions go, nor the land used to grow the food. Nor the pollution caused to generate the power.

The environment we live in is changing because of us. The problem is that it changes so slowly compared to the average human life, that we don't see it, or choose not to. One of the best examples is the Chesapeake Bay. 70 years ago the water was still relatively clear and teeming with life. Today it's a murky cesspool. We've managed to kill off 99% of the grasses and deplete the oyster population to <10% of what it once was. Without the filter feeder to clean the water and the grasses to hold the sediment and provide habitat for juveniles, we've managed to eliminate most of the bays aquatic life. Sadly, most people have no knowledge or recollection of the way the bay was just 50 years ago.

Ted

 

[sunchaser]

OC
A read of Michener's "Chesapeake" gives a good accounting of what used to be.

 

[O C Diver]

OC
A read of Michener's "Chesapeake" gives a good accounting of what used to be.

Thanks!

Another addition to the E library.

Ted

 

[AusCan]

How do we know what is fact and truth? It seems that we can find books, professional studies, and papers to support any view.

I tend to trust science. When 97% of scientific studies are pointing to one side of the argument, it is usually found to be true. But some will always cling to the few differing pieces of evidence if it suits their personal beliefs.

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Mr. AC. I think Mr. B does have a point, up to a point. I spent my working career in science and was involved in a broad variety of disciplines. The TWO things I learned from my experiences are: question everything and we don't know what we don't know.....yet.



Interesting that Einstein's theories, which supplanted those of Newton, and have been the basis of countless research projects and discoveries has recently been found to be lacking or not 100% correct OR so it seems.
Newton wasn't really wrong, he just didn't go far enough nor did Einstein.



https://www.iflscience.com/physics/scientists-prove-spooky-action-distance-absolutely-real/

 

[Delfin]

Greetings,
Mr. AC. I think Mr. B does have a point, up to a point. I spent my working career in science and was involved in a broad variety of disciplines. The TWO things I learned from my experiences are: question everything and we don't know what we don't know.....yet.



Interesting that Einstein's theories, which supplanted those of Newton, and have been the basis of countless research projects and discoveries has recently been found to be lacking or not 100% correct OR so it seems.
Newton wasn't really wrong, he just didn't go far enough nor did Einstein.



https://www.iflscience.com/physics/scientists-prove-spooky-action-distance-absolutely-real/

Well, no. Einstein expressed an opinion about quantum effects relating to entangled particles that was wrong, but he did so long before quantum mechanics, which he didn't work on, was fully developed. Einstein's published theories regarding general relativity have been proven to be 100% reliable in terms of what they predict at the non quantum scales they operate on, and special relativity is well supported by all relevant observations. And FWIW, Newton is also absolutely correct on the scales his observations operate on. You can land a man on the moon using Newtonian physics, just not on Sirius. That takes general relativity, which is useless if what you are navigating to is an electron.

The problem with climate science is that we lack the computing power to model something as complex as the atmosphere, so "simplifying assumptions" have to be incorporated into those models to produce a result. Since the atmosphere isn't simple, the models have all proven to be sufficiently wrong that basing trillions$ of public/private expenditures based on their conclusions is incredibly wasteful.

 

[Delfin]

I tend to trust science. When 97% of scientific studies are pointing to one side of the argument, it is usually found to be true. But some will always cling to the few differing pieces of evidence if it suits their personal beliefs.

Setting aside that the idea of "scientific consensus" indicating truth is unscientific, the 97% number has been repeatedly debunked. Worth remembering that in 1949 Antonio Moniz won a Nobel prize for developing the lobotomy procedure as a cure for a wide range of mental illness. The consensus of medical professionals at the time was that he was quite correct. John F. Kennedy's sister was given one because her parents thought she was a bit slow and spent the rest of her life in an institution. Today if you were an MD and did one you would be locked up. So much for "scientific consensus".

 

[AusCan]

Setting aside that the idea of "scientific consensus" indicating truth is unscientific, the 97% number has been repeatedly debunked".

Debunked by who?

That is still the number that NASA are quoting. But you can’t believe them. Unless you believe that hoax about putting a man on the moon.