CSMonitor | Food and people. Thomas Malthus posed them as two forces rarely in balance. Plentiful food encourages population growth. A booming population devours more food than can be produced.
Students who learn of Malthus’s grim prediction usually take away two lessons. The first is the sharp contrast between arithmetic and geometric progression. Food supplies grow slowly, Malthus said. But consumers multiply like rabbits. A geometric progression outstrips an arithmetic one every time.
The second lesson is about why Malthus’s catastrophe hasn’t occurred. Most scholars think it is because the 19th-century Anglican parson didn’t have sufficient regard for technology and innovation. From the “green revolution” to global trade, from drip irrigation to entrepreneurial ingenuity, Homo sapiens learn and improve. We farm better, manage resources more carefully, and as education increases, birthrates fall.
A wise species – which is what “sapiens” means, after all – avoids a crash. That’s the story so far. But every rise in global food prices, every scene of malnutrition and starvation revives the old Malthusian fear. Malthus himself was careful not to predict when a judgment day would come. He simply noted a distinction between unlimited progress, of which he was skeptical, and “progress where the limit is merely undefined.” In other words, the jury may still be out.
Even if there hasn’t been one big catastrophe, there have been many regional ones since Malthus’s day. Famine in China, for instance, killed as many as 40 million people between 1958 and 1961. Bangladesh, Biafra, Ethiopia, and a dozen other regions suffered terrible food shortages in the 20th century. But these were not Malthusian events where a population outgrew its sustenance. Bad decisions – political incompetence, wars, brutal experiments such as Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” – were to blame.
We have about 40 years before the jury renders its final verdict on Malthus. The population of the planet is currently 6.9 billion. By 2050, it will hit 9.2 billion, according to the US Census Bureau. Because of declining birthrates, population specialists believe that will be the peak. Whether you think more population growth is good or bad, that’s the predicted trajectory.
13 comments:
IQ-70 folks, who don't have sufficient sense to carry a heavy load of apples in a wheelbarrow, instead of on their heads, will be the first to go...
rotflmbao, old muhphuggahs stuck on stupid stuff will doubtless be the VERY first to go...., (p.s., those are oranges that haven't been spray painted for elderly american consumption)
BD took a look in our well-stocked fridge this morning to check on that...(see foto below)
No, once they strike BD as apples, they are apples. Whatever kind of politically-correct smoke you blow at him. Typical liberal song and dance, "container of unripe oranges," whatever. You just can't handle the truth.
Ah, the whole confusing apples and oranges life allegory. Priceless. Throw in the whole collapsitarian monoculture theme endemic to both products, and the comedic theme is squared.
And just for shits and giggles, the idea of a "applecart" getting upset and tipping over when it runs on non-First World terrain, small children running about, poking sharp sticks into the mammoth, sagging, decrepit old flatulating buttocks, whilst other spritely young ones snatch up the "apples" and carry them away effortlessly. Meanwhile the old hyena rictus grins in confusion, blinking stupidly in the hot tropical sun. Life's allegories...
No wonder the IQ-70s over there are starving - unripe oranges don't digest well....
Suggestion BD: Next time you step in a flaming sack of soft, stinking excrement, don't compound the display of ignorance by sticking the foot in your mouth to put it out. You really think _any_ bananas or out-of-season fruit you get up by you are picked ripe? Inform yourself, or maybe you should just go back to the usual "disappear for a while" when the inevitable happens.
Anyway, how's the summer reading going? Did you have any questions or comments about the material? Interesting stuff, don't you think?
No self-respecting produce market in the USA would ever try and sell green oranges. Never even seen that. Furthermore, Green Oranges don't have as much caloric food value as Orange Oranges because the chemical reactions that occur with (e.g., solar) energy absorption during ripening, have not run to completion. So if the IQ-70 Africans are eating unripe fruit, that's helping them starve to death even worse than they already are, if you have been following the newz...
More detail from BD's PhD chemist buddy:
"Many fruits contain large amounts of cellulose and starch when unripe. Starches and cellulose break down into smaller carbohydrate chains (sugars) as they decompose or as they are enzymatic-ally cracked. Many starches, and all cellulose, are non-nutritive for humans as the chains are too large (or too cross-linked) for us to absorb. However, these very same molecular chains, when fragmented, become sugars that are some of the most concentrated and available energy for the human machine (respiration).
Alcohol has less stored energy than the sugar it was made from - there are more calories in a pound of sugar than in the amount of alcohol you would get if you fermented it. The process of fermentation results in generation of CO2, which is some of your organic carbon chain having been already burned as fuel by the yeasty beasties. (they ate some of your food for you)So overall, I would say that YES, ripe fruit has greater food value than unripe fruit - so there is a peak caloric value at some degree of ripeness, but after that it begins to lose caloric value as it ferments and rots."
This post is a reasonable question and a serious presentation. The lack of seriousness in the comments is a source of mild dyspepsia to me. And by the way, many varieties of oranges are green when ripe. I don't know about the oranges in the picture, but the mere fact of green oranges is not remarkable at all. Almost all of the oranges in Thailand are green on the outside when fully ripe, picked fully ripe. On the inside they are the more conventional orange color, and they are still called "oranges" ("som"). It is only in the mountainous north, or expensive western style markets, that you can find orange oranges.
Porca miseria! I too have failed to add anything serious to the discussion!
Fred, you did your part to educate our friend Big Don, and for that, we're all grateful.
"Never even seen that" means it can't be true?
On the other hand, perhaps the oranges are green due to the fact that "The colour of citrus fruits only develops in climates with a diurnal cool winter. In tropical regions with no winter at all, citrus fruits remain green until maturity, hence the tropical green oranges." Ya think?? No PhD required...
Anyway, you still going to pass up on those books? That'd be a shame.
The original CSM article cited in the Subrealism post - photo caption states ...*unripe* oranges for sale...
Furthermore, Google Translate doesn't know WTF "som" is in Thai language. Anyway that photo was about Nigeria, African oranges, not somewhere else in the world.
http://www.ehow.com/how_7706423_ripen-oranges.html#ixzz1X9Y7nrMX "Unlike many other fruits, oranges do not become more ripe or mature after you harvest them."So the Africans are indeed eating less digestible unripe oranges, with less food value, contributing to their IQ-70 legendary malnutrition...
Y'all are probably confusing genuine oranges with some offshoot similar species more akin to limes...
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