The Elephant In The Room
Randolph Femmer
Friday, 04 September 2009 14:56 UTC
I couldn’t help but notice that, despite this forum’s intelligent and influential membership, out of 118 posts to date (September 4, 2009), almost none of the posts address “the elephant in the room.”
Can this simply be an oversight? Or are we displaying an avoidance?
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I tend to agree with Sydney Holt’s last few comments that we need a different forum human population policy discussions. I second his motion, as it were. I do like the idea of having it under Nature’s auspices, to prevent the crank element from dominating.
As I now understand it, whatever we will argue w.r.t. policy, theoretical population dynamics models as they have so far been constituted seem pretty much unrelated and irrelevant to convincing anyone of validity of our (at least my) opinion(s) that the current very large human population is a major cause of the current ecological disaster. In fact they may do the opposite. Chaotic nonlinear dynamics would seem to confound the issues of interest. I (an outsider to this field) don’t know of theoretical formulations of “ecological stress” that might be helpful, either. The relatively simple published theoretical population dynamics models seem an inappropriate language in which to frame any convincing arguments on which to base population policy in the near future. That is not to say that particular more realistic models might not be useful, but these necessarily very complex models, including economics, and many other significant factors are not necessarily within this forum’s scope, either.
I suppose this particular thread could be used for just the question of whether theoretical population dynamics has anything to add to the question of potential human population policy recommendation(s) or alternatively the explanation of (to me evident) ecological stress we see all about us.
The opposing view, i.e. the argument to continue the discussion here, might be that we are only (mis)using up a single well labeled thread in a forum, so what’s the harm?
At any rate interested parties could email me at sigoldberg1 at yahoo.com if they are interested in starting a mailing list to briefly and privately correspond briefly about starting a different policy forum here or elsewhere. Alternatively, Mr. Femmer could simply start a new network.nature.com/groups/ forum, perhaps called “The elephant in the room 2” or somesuch, moderated or not. I, for one would be an interested participant.
Thanks
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Dear members and contributors – Thank you to everyone for your coninuing posts. As you know, the elephant in the room in this forum has generated a lot of contributions (and has for some time been one of the busier topics on nature network).
To Sidney and Seth – Your points concerning strictly theoretical aspects of population and population dynamics are certainly understandable. On the other hand, some of us who perceive ourselves as pragmatic, real-world, or big picture people think it is nearly incomprehensible that, given the problematic nature of multiple biospheric and humanitarian trajectories, that we should continue to focus only on theoreticals and minutia as opposed to pragmatics.
In one respect, your criticism that the elephant in the room has become overly-dominant in the TPD forum is certainly true. (Although it is just one topic out of thirty, it has drawn a lot of attention – which may, or may not, be to its credit.) (And certainly a number of forum members and visitors have been stimulated to comment – which may, or may not, perhaps, be to its credit)
The theoreticals-only position, however (despite a dismissive comment or two that border on name-calling), has some degree of merit in that the elephant in the room has drawn attention away from the twenty-nine other more purely theoretical and modeling topics in the forum. (No one, of course, is forcing anyhone to read the elephant posts, nor forcing anyone to comment on the posts, as such reading and commenting on the topic are entirely voluntary.)
In a way, I think that the elephant topic is appropriate in the TPD forum because it forces those whose interests are primarily or purely theoretical to face up to some of the uncomfortable truths suggested by dozens of today’s troubling trajectories. (And I don’t think that suggestions to somehow banish the elephant from mention and discussion within TPD is appropriate.)
If there are theoretical and/or practical reasons to suppose that there are no limits, no near-term limits, or higher limits to earth’s carrying capacity for an industrialized humanity, then let contributors who hold such positions so state – and then offer evidentiary or analytical support for their position, or undermining evidentiary or analytical support for the lower limit that this topic has had under discussion for some days.
Having said all of the above, however, I note that I might be amenable to some arrangement to “close” the elephant topic in this TPD forum to further posts and direct further comments and posts to The elephant in the room – II which I have already opened in the Population and Carrying Capacity Forum elsewhere on Nature Network (provided of course that all of the existing TPD elephant posts and its period of existence are preserved for visitors to see).
Two footnotes: (1) The reference to Ehrlich – Commoner assessments refers to a time when world population was nearing four billion while today we are nearing our seventh billion with what one would think to be even more troubling biospheric and humanitarian trajectories, and (2) If there are those who disagree with suggestions of a long-term planetary carrying capacity somewhere in the vicinity of 1.5 to 2.5 billion or so, please state your position as such and offer us analytic and/or evidentiary support for your position (instead, perhaps, of trying to silence assessments that you do not support). (We are, after all, just one tiny topic out of thirty.)
Your cranky friend -
RF -
Wooly Mammoth in the Room
Archaic though this one may be, it may yet be revived:
Organisms adapt to changing conditions or die, as individuals and as species, including those induced by the organism itself.
WT
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The previous thread has moved; it continues here
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All:
“I think that our species has a tendency to suppose that world ecosystems can be counted on to continue to provide required ecological services no matter how much pollution, damage, eradication, and abuse that we heap upon them.” —Femmer, 14 Aug 09, this Forum.
The best predictor of a population’s self-induced decline is the decline of its food supply. In the case of non-specialist omnivores, the decline in the diversity, size, and quality of that food supply is an especially “early” predictor.
In the case of Homo sapiens, indicators like fish-catch data, for example, are useful for self-reproducing wild food-item species, but they disregard “by-catch” data and other ripple-effects. Fish “farming” might be a similar indicator, but data on its effects on other populations and elements that make up carrying capacity are not well-known. Also, no net-energy calculations have been made on, for example, the tradeoff of the option of managing the original bison populations against a “bread-basket” (resource-intensive agriculture) that is contributing to the bloating of the world. (Some fraction of the Oglala aquifer’s yield from things like lowered/increased pumping and greater/lesser infiltration/percolation, reduction/proliferation in dam-building with/without its ripple-effects, ad infinitum, should be included in such calculations.)
At some point, however, something akin to “common sense” (with relevant theoretical foundations and their continual testing, however), might justify a level of action short of the kind of “scientific certainty” that unlamented Bush-leaguer was fond of invoking, not to mention a corresponding misuse of the same excuse for “more research” proffered by that proliferating parasite, the yellow-bellied grantsnatcher.
Please note that I am not calling for an end of research, just a precautionary reduction in internal pressure to head off overinflation and the resultant giant popping sound, aka, catastrophic decompression.
There is no dearth of needed research, but there may be an excess of belly-button studies.
WT
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In my comments on the Elephant in the room I have not sought to separate theory from pragmatism, nor have I implied humans are not biological species, nor have I indicated that I am personally not interested in the arguments about human population effects on the biosphere. – I am very interested, but simply don’t think discussing that in simply population dynamics terms is useful. As to Erlich and Commoner I suggest it matters not what the human population size is now as compared with then; the consumption per capita has also increased in the interval, probably by a higher percentage; the problem remains. My concern is that human effects on the biosphere, direct and indirect, are qualitatively different from those caused by all other species and discussion of them involves an vastly broader scientific disciplinary range than our forum provides or could provide. And it is clear that some of us have already formed firm opinions about the causes of current survival problems, making scientific discourse here somewhat problematic.I too am a campaigner as well as a scientist (trying to prevent over-fishing of marine living resources, for example, but the mechanics of that have no useful place in this forum.
If we want to talk here about humans specifically then at least it should be about population dynamics (does anyone believe the UN model predictions of future growth?) not about the entirety of human society. I happen to have come to the conclusion that the problems come not from consumption rates as such derived from population growth, but from the economic structure of dominant societies, So in a Forum on Theoretical Population Dynamics shall we discuss, for example, the dynamic imperatives of capitalism for “growth”.? SJH
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