Remember the Population Bomb. The book was released in 1968 although it was the culmination of ‘scientific’ ‘research’ going back a decade. The claim was that the world’s human population was increasing so dramatically that calamity was within sight and food supplies would be overwhelmed. It was claimed that famine in the US was inevitable and that India was already a lost cause.

By the mid-1970s the assumed truth of the bomb was accepted by most and became a matter of faith for many. Although less hysterical voices were raised against the claims of the latter-day Malthusians, they were either drowned out or ridiculed into silence. This is how ‘scientific consensus’ is achieved in modern science.

This week a new study was released by The Club of Rome which was “carried out by the Earth4All collective of leading environmental science and economic institutions, including the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BI Norwegian Business School,”. It predicts that “on current trends the world population will reach a high of 8.8 billion before the middle of the century, then decline rapidly.”

Oops. No mass famines. No over-reaching of Gaia’s resources. Yet another case of mass hysteria debunked. (But fear not, there’s plenty of others to replace it).

We didn’t have famine because humankind continued to innovate and find new ways to get more food from the same or fewer resources. The Green Revolution, led by Norman Borlaug (a name most won’t know) defeated the famine. The names of those who remained clear-headed throughout the hysteria will also be forgotten.

Population is declining in most parts of the world. Even China is now officially in decline although their government has probably been hiding a population decline for the past decade.

So, we never get to 9 billion. World population in decline by 2050 and probably halved by 2100. Another scare soon to be forgotten. How long before the Apocalyptic Climate scare suffers the same fate.

mhaze,

There's always a tipping point - wonder when we'll reach it?

Btw, no widespread famines ... here's why.

"It has been called one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century, and without it almost half the world's population would not be alive today.

A hundred years ago two German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, devised a way to transform nitrogen in the air into fertiliser, using what became known as the Haber-Bosch process."

... "Demand for fertiliser is projected to double in the coming century. In truth, scientists still do not fully understand the long-term impact on the environment of converting so much stable, inert nitrogen from the air into various other, highly reactive chemical compounds.

We are in the middle of a global experiment.

One result is already clear: plenty of food for lots more people.

If you look at a graph of global population, you will see it shoot upwards just as Haber-Bosch fertilisers start being widely applied."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38305504

mhaze,
It did go off you just didn't hear the bang !

Poirot,

Certainly the invention of modern fertilizer techniques are what allowed the massive population growth in the first part of the 20th century. But that had largely achieved most of its efficacy by the 1960s when the great Population Bomb scare was evolving.

Those who bought the scare already factored modern fertiliser techniques into the equation. What made the difference (and even those who pushed the failed imminent famine scares concede this) was the Green Revolution which used selective breeding to massively improve yields. Norman Borlaug won a Nobel for his efforts here and is credited with saving a billion lives... http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/01/forgotten-benefactor-of-humanity/306101/). These new strains of grains increased yields so dramatically that, despite the continued population increase, food production per capita jumped by around 20%.

Despite the best (or worst) efforts of the green lobby, GMA foods seem to be doing the same thing all over again.

Its the effects of the Green Revolution which averted famine in India and allows it to now be a net exporter of food.

Imagine what will happen with continued per acre improvements in yields AND a declining population. We already see it in some parts of the world where marginal lands, that were previously cultivated because of need, are being returned to the wilderness. The US currently has more trees than it did at the time of Columbus although at least part of that is due to the decimation of the buffalo herds.

Still, we can fully expect man's foot-print on the planet to be vastly lower in 2100 than it is in 2023.

expect man's foot-print on the planet to be vastly lower in 2100 than it is in 2023.
mhaze,
Well, if it isn't lower then there won't be a human left to make a foot print !

650,000 extra people will be arriving in Australia over the next two years. It's our own population increase we should be worried about, not world population.

Oh bloody hell. We sailed through did we?

So no acknowledgement of the Chinese highly restrictive one child policy, nor mass forced sterilisations in India, nor the huge effort in raising education levels of women?

It was always going to happen apparently.

It's the models wot got it wrong sir!

What a goose.

More than 800 million people or 10% of the worlds population are affected by famine, mostly women and children. Yemen is in its 6th year of drought, affecting 18 million people, internal conflict is adding to the crises, with 18,000 expected to die from starvation in the next 6 months, a totally unnecessary state of affairs.

BTW,, we have hunger in this country, just on Wednesday had a homeless bloke ask if we could give him something to feed his dog, the dog was very hungry. Asked for nothing for himself, I suspected he was hungry as well, so they both got some short term relief.

If 1405 is to believed, he is always running into people even more peculiar than himself: hard up, down and outs who have really made a mess of life. He seems to live in a world of misery.

No, ttbn, these days my wife and I help out at a local 'foodbank" type charity a few hours a week. There we meet all kinds of people, who without judgement the charity tries to give short term assistance to. I'm often on the door, so I meet people first hand, and while they wait and I'm filling out a short questionnaire for them, which is used to determine their requirements, there you get to hear peoples stories, like the old bloke with the dog. I hope you or I are never in their situation, unfortunately from most of what you post here I don't think you have a kindness for others, maybe I'm wrong.

Wow that's quite an insight there, SR.

There are reasons why the population bomb didn't detonate, says SR. Wow, stop the presses. The thing that didn't happen didn't happen for a reason....who'da thunk it.

Of course the reasons SR offers are rubbish, but well....SR. Despite the Chinese one child policy China's population continued to increase at the same rate it did before the policy. Indeed depending on who you believe (the CCP or reality) the population only started to fall last year or 5 years ago, long after the CCP had panicked and withdrawn the policy. Equally, although there were forced sterilisations in India they barely had any effect and India's population continues to grow.

What stopped the population bomb from detonating was (1) the green revolution and (2) economic advancement which always (ALWAYS) leads to lower birth rates.

This is a revelation to the likes of SR and the progressive left in general who see the failure of yet another scary hysteria as mere happenstance that no one could have foreseen. They are trying very hard to not know that there were plenty who did foresee it and were ridiculed for their foresight.

We can be absolutely certain that when the apocalyptic climate change hysteria falls apart, there'll be 'reasons' for that and some dill will race to provide these faux reasons.

The China one child policy. That's gone. They can have two now. But, according to the ethnic Chinese editor of Epoch Times, young Chinese are no longer keen on having any children because of the cost of living and the lack of jobs for the tertiary educated; they are only interested in getting by and not exerting themselves for lack of reason to. Why bother, they are saying.

China is not living up to CCP propaganda.

As for the PLO that's going to wipe everyone out: that's said to be hopeless, with young Chinese joining up because there is nowhere else to go. They don't want to be in the military and wouldn't be if they had a choice. The drop in population growth could soon have the PLO looking like Dad's Army, with lots of weapons, but not enough people - or not enough people with the ability - to use them.

Dear mhaze,

Numbers mate, they really are confusing as always for you aren't they. The fact that India has now overtaken China who in the mid 70s had just doubled its population to a billion in the preceding 30 years and brought in a raft of measures to combat it.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/what-if/what-if-china-never-had-one-child-policy.htm

And please study up on how a population can still increase despite a sharply declining fertility rate to below 2. It really isn't that hard a concept.

What do our politicians and public servants do all day ?
With 650,000 migrants coming every year, when the politicians
asked the public service to start issuing visa in some country or other
did anyone pick up a calculator and think it through ?
I know the politicians are too STUPID to be able to use a calculator
let alone do it with a pencil and paper !

650,000 / 365 = 1780 a day are going to arrive mostly in Sydney & Melbourne.
That means about six additional 380 flights a day, or each way 12
380 flights a day both ways, every day all year round.
Are there that many aircraft available ? It gets worse !

Walking out the doors of the two airports will be an extra 890 people.
Good business for taxi drivers. Where will these people be heading ?
A percentage will have relatives picking them up but most will have
prebooked hotel accomodation while they look for somewhere to live.
Will the hotels be able to cope with 1700 new arrivals EVERY day ?
They may have to stay in the hotels for a week or two until they
understand that there is almost no rental accommodation available.
They will need jobs but how will centrelink handle 1700 new job seekers
EVERY day.

Then of course those with money may want to buy a house, or want a bank loan,
Can builders erect houses at the rate of say 600 houses a day EVERY day !
They are flat out doing it for the people already here.

Now you see why my question "What do they do all day ?
They certainly don't work things out before hand.
Frankly they should all be sacked if they had anything to do with this mad scheme !
Did someone ask these questions in Question Time ?
I doubt if the opposition could understand the implications.
After all with the Labour & Greens they were party to shutting down
and blowing up power stations before the replacement generation was in place !
Gauwd help us !

Sorry mhaze I understand that you have a lot of data to back yourself up- but my understanding is the Malthusian principle is somewhat based on the idea that it's easier to be irresponsible than responsible- to me this sounds reasonable- and so I revert to the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Perhaps mhaze is saying that there isn't a Malthusian disaster in the west and perhaps that's more correct- as the wests population is more stable- except for certain immigrant populations. We have just passed 8 billion people in the world on target with predictions- we are likely to reach 9 billion in 13 years about 2036- and 10 billion by 2050.

Resource scarcity appears to have returned with a vengence.

Some groups perhaps irresponsibly- have been claiming that population is due for a catastrophic decline but fail to consider that humans unlike animals have the ability to adjust their trajectory- I believe that population is too high and needs to return to under 2 billion. Chaos theory borrows from population dynamics- in the case of higher R values > 2 frequency doubling and population instability occurs. There's also the Mouse Utopia experiments.

If the population is too high in India then maybe those wanting to have children need to go into a lottery until when someone dies- maybe for every two deaths. Maybe it could be done on a family basis because some families are more responsible than others. Anyway sovereignty says that this is India's business but they should solve it- not pass the buck to some other nation such as Australia or South East Asia. There have already been riots in Thailand as I understand.

In 2003 half of India's population was under the age of 15- in 1950 the population was 700 million- now the population is 1.4 Billion- they knew what they were doing- a population arms race fueled by guilt- these children are now forming their own families- and they are realizing that India is being crushed by their over abundance and lack of planning. Do they have enough courage to solve the problem themselves? Or will they show themselves as incompetent?

It wasn't until about 1910 that tractor mechanization started in food production as I understand.

Holy crap, the worlds really going crazy this week.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=10091&page=0#346289

SR,

So India has more people than China - so what? That wasn't even close to the point.

Canem,

Malthusian thought is based on the idea that if population continues to grow and food production doesn't grow or grows at a slower pace then.....famine. Its been wrong from the outset - even Malthus finally admitted he'd got it wrong. And Ehrlich, who wrote the Population Bomb admitted he'd completely underestimated humankind's ability to increase food production.

Its the same principle we see in lots of other areas - take one trend and assume it will continue while all other related areas remain unchanged and then declare imminent disaster. eg if we continue to use oil but don't look for or find new oil we get peak oil. But we never do.

You say that we are headed for 10 billion by 2050. But that's the point of the thread - new research showing that to be wrong given the current state of population growth. There are very few countries in the world where population is increasing and of those many (like Australia) are only increasing due to immigration and those that still have a higher birthrate than deathrate, are also showing a declining birthrate.

You may not like the numbers but just rejecting them because they tell a story different to that you're used to hearing isn't really valid.

I guess its still possible to argue that the declining birthrates are a phenomena that might reverse, but its clear that every time economic advancement kicks in, we get a slowing in population increases and eventually a declining population.

650,000 extra people will be arriving in Australia over the next two years.
ttbn,
How many of them will be of working age & contribute to the economy & how many will be on Welfare ?
How & by whom will they be chosen eligible for migrating to here ? Will the VOICE have a say in that or those who pay Taxes ?
Or should we rename the waters surrounding Australia Rio Grande !

mhaze,
I think it's fair to say the population bomb was defused by easy access to the contraceptive pill.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Indy,
Many secure work before coming.

Indy,

"how many will be on Welfare?" Dun know, but YOU can count em' next time you're pick'n up your aged welfare cheque down at 'Centerstink'.

Paul1405,
When I came here I found work within four weeks & worked until I retired 50 years later, paying top rate tax all the way !
Bet you've never experienced work as such !

Indyvidual

Who knows.

There were 507,500 people UNEMPLOYED people in Australia in February 2023; yet we have 650,000 more people due to arrive over the next two years.

There are 438,500 job VACANCIES right now.

The government should be asked to comment on that. They should be asked why the unemployed are not matched up with the vacancies before absurdly high numbers of immigrants are brought in. With no BS about Australians not 'prepared' to do certain jobs.

You don't need to be very cynical to think that Australia's immigration policy has nothing at all to do with the the good of the country and its economy unless it is, as it seems, a lazy way to boost GDP and enable the mind-boggling borrowing and spending addiction to continue for evermore.

ttbn,
If that difference in the numbers haven't secured jobs as Aidan suggests many would have than that means roughly 70,000 future guaranteed Labor voters bought with Aus Tax Dollars !

mhaze- With the greatest of respect I disagree with many of your claims here- I believe that we must not rest until the population is moving down- not just reducing growth- because we are starting at a high point- and countries critically must have policies that aim to achieve this now- but I'll agree to disagree at this point.

Malthuse for example I believe adjusted his claims to remove the part about "food/ production increasing arithmetically and population geometrically" but still maintained the remaining elements of his claims. Of course many economists have discredited the idea- possibly for political or career reasons. I find the "food/ production increasing arithmetically and population geometrically" concept to be useful- and makes some sense given other accounting, economic, biology principles. In biology (such as in "Rat Utopia" population grows exponentially until it runs into environmental limits- seemingly consistent with Malthuse's claims).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
In accounting there is the law of diminishing returns- which seems to relate to Malthuse's claim of arithmetic productivity. Yes things are complex- for example improvements in technology which can contradict arithmetic productivity are unpredictable even with investment- for example the joke about fusion power is it's always 20 years away.
http://www.britannica.com/money/diminishing-returns

mhaze said that India is exporting food- but that doesn't mean that people aren't starving in India- what is the source of the paradox? The following article may have some information.
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/food/india-claims-to-be-self-sufficient-in-food-production-but-facts-say-otherwise-62091

The world prices for grain appears to be higher than Indian peasants can afford- this implies that there is less supply than demand worldwide. Demand is influenced by the population size

ttbn said "There were 507,500 people UNEMPLOYED people in Australia in February 2023; yet we have 650,000 more people due to arrive over the next two years. There are 438,500 job VACANCIES right now."

Answer- Many people are being locked out of the workplace still due to corona mandates even though they have finished. I suspect that labor governments are locking conservative groups out of the employment market- bloody mindedly preferencing foreigners over Australian's.

The thing is every family contains people of differing politics- there are many people young and old locked out because of Labor bigoted beliefs that people of certain views aren't entitled to work.

Canem

Yes, India is not currently reducing its population. That is true of quite a few other countries, particularly in Africa and the Middle-East.

But that doesn't affect the overall world trend toward lower population. It most definitely doesn't alter the fact that the claims made in the 1970s about what would happen in the 80s, 20s and 2000s have been shown to be utterly wrong.

Yet, instead of absorbing the lessons from that, we have people just ignoring the previous erroneous claims and asserting new claims. T'was always thus. Predict the end of the world, and when it doesn't happen, predict a new end of the world. People never learn.

Population isn't falling everywhere. But that doesn't mean it isn't falling anywhere. Most pointedly, growth rates are in decline EVERYWHERE.

We are constantly told by the enlightened that they follow the data. But when the data leads places that don't fit the narrative, it is ignored.

With the greatest of respect to mhaze- World Population is not decreasing despite the claim ("But that doesn't affect the overall world trend toward lower population")- it is increasing at a reduced rate. I'm not convinced that governments are committed sufficiently to a plan to reduce population- though I probably need to do more research on government policy in India, China, Africa, South America. There is a population arms race occurring and there is a pressure to increase birth rate for geo-political reasons amongst certain ethnicities. The Australian governments have acknowledged in the past that Australia has some challenges for competitiveness but fails in acknowledging it's cause- in a population arms race- this is perhaps an example of a self reinforcing purification spiral. Australia generally uses competitiveness as an excuse for further immigration.
India's government for example is also pushing from their side for further immigration from the Indian diaspora- of course India isn't concerned about the impact on Australian identity. I'm concerned about all cultural identity but of course I do favour my own- as all should

The 650,000 increase in population in Australia over the next two years is now reported to have sky-rocketed to 900,000 by 2025. Australia is definitely rooted.

Saw on the news tonight Indian government officials going around trying to convince people to get sterilised. If I remember correctly, they were offering, some 50 years ago, transistor radios to males if they has the snip. No mention of radios this time.

A well balanced immigration policy such as Australia has, goes a long way towards creating prosperity for both immigrants and native born. This is self evident as Australia's economy has prospered from post war immigration.

On unemployment,only a wet behind the ears fool would believe in the simple arithmetic that if there are 507,500 unemployed and there are 438,500 job vacancies then simple materialistic says unemployment should be 507,500 - 438,500 = 69,000. The fool has not taken into account skill, location, people transitioning between work, part time and full time employment and those in society who are simply unemployable for various reasons but still show up in the jobless figures. For those reasons full employment is considered achieved when the jobless number reaches 2%.

Canem,

Nowhere have I said "World Population is not decreasing". In fact, the opposite. My original post pointed out that the population continues to increase. One of my points was that the increase trend was in decline and rapidly approaching the point where it will reverse.

The take-away from this is that another (YET another) of the great scares has now been thoroughly debunked. While it should have been fully discredited decades ago when its main predictions utterly failed to materialise, many who just wanted it to be true held on to the hope that the predicted disasters would yet come about.

But that has now evaporated. That the world population will reach a point where it starts to decline is now completely accepted by those who make such predictions. The only question remaining is when that point will be reached and how quickly and extensive the decline will be. The latest research suggests it will be sooner than we previously thought.

Such a profound and unprecedented change will have enormous ramifications for humankind. Most obviously, the issue of purported human induced climate change will be resolved. The bigger issue is how societies will function with less kids and more retirees. Japan has been grappling with that for some time now with no solutions at hand. France has stuck its toe in the water for a partial solution and the results are there fore all to see - riots in the streets. (An interesting take on a childless society is the book "Children of Men").

Another take-away is yet another lesson in taking all predicted disaster scenarios with several pounds of salt. The Population Bomb, the Coming Ice Age, Nuclear Winter...all wrong and all consigned to the dustbin of history. Only to be replaced by even more preposterous scares.

My understanding is that severe unpleasantness will result soon- in the form of cascading failures- and well before the 11 or 12 billion mark is reached- so that means we need to have better plans in place now. As some say "you fail to plan- you plan to fail". Communists seem to believe failure is the best way to bring about Communist Utopia- I believe that incremental remediation is a better way to reduce suffering- Communists would say that I suffer from false consciousness.

If the world doesn't listen- then you have to find a way of insulating yourself from the failing policies- despite their persistance.

Unless people are made to be more responsible & not perpetually bailed out, there's no hope of ever getting the upper hand on the problems facing the whole of humanity.
Breed less if you can't feed your offspring ! If you don't know how to do that, ask !
If you're not able for whatever reason to do so you must accept that others will be forced to make a decision for you ! The time for idiotic pussy-footing has passed a long time ago.

Indy,

Obviously as a non-productive you don't want to apply any of your above post to yourself, as you take welfare every fortnight from us taxpayers. Where do you fit in to all this.

"others will be forced to make a decision for you!" a thinly veiled demand that people be sterilised, or done away with completely, against their will. WHAT ABOUT YOU!

Paul1405,
I'm not referring to people who have already done their bit right up until retirement. I'm talking about the likes of you who have gone through life & never been of any use to society !