Erik Reuter wrote:
>On Wed, Apr 11, 2001 at 09:47:33PM +1200, K. Feete wrote:
>> Come on, Darryl, spot the logical fallacy.
>>
>> You say: there is no market for more food.
>>
>> Then you say: Therefore, no one must be hungry.
>
>I missed that second part, Kat. Would you quote it from Darryl's post,
>please?
The line I was looking at at the time was:
>> No one, there is no market for more
>>food. Increase the population and we could feed them easily.
I admit I was being inflammatory with my "interpretation" (so what's
new?) but Darryl seemed to me to be skimping over the problem here. *Can*
is not the same as *will*, or *do* for that matter. He also said:
>> The real
>>trouble with increased population is habitat destruction, not famine.
...and then left the subject to prove that world population is leveling
off....
(Oh, yes, and I forgot to mention: aren't those people destroying habitat
because they're *hungry*?
>I found 4 in just a few minutes of clicking (see above). The US birth
>rate exceeds the death rate by only 0.55% (2000 est.).
Using your site, I found the population growth rate for the US to be 0.91
%. Where are you getting 0.55%?
You can actually get the whole list of population growth rates on one
page:
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/population_growth_rate
.html
I'm not sure what we're counting as a third-world country (Brazil?
Argentina? Seems rather arrogant of us) but some of the European/North
American/DownUnder growth rates were:
Australia 1.02
Austria 0.25
Belgium 0.18
Belarus (er, this is in Europe somewhere, isn't it?) -0.17
Canada 1.02
Cyprus 0.6 (You were wrong, Charlie <grin>)
Croatia 0.93
Czech Republic -0.08
France 0.38
Germany 0.29
New Zealand 1.17
Norway 0.5
Poland -0.04
Spain 0.11
Sweden 0.02
Switzerland 0.3
... and so on, and so forth. I gather these include
immigration/emmigration rates as well. The net effect does appear to be
pretty positive, if one trusts the CIA.
>If you take into
>account trends and how small the growth is presently, I think Darryl is
>right to call it "essentially zero".
Is he?
>Incidentally, most of the world's population increase is presently
>coming from India and China, who collectively have a birth rate that
>exceeds death rate by 28 million per year (16 million of that is from
>India, it seems China is making progress with its 1 child rule).
Hmmm, the growth rate of China seems to be only 0.9, slightly less than
that of America, and India is 1.58- considerably more, but not hugely.
This is beginning to remind me of Mark Twain's adage... "There are lies,
damn lies, and statistics."
However, I'm certainly not seeing much proof yet that the population
growth rate of the first world is "essentially zero." If you can find
some more convincing statistics, I'd be happy to take a look, but these
seem to a) be flawed and b) prove my point.
Kat Feete
If you post something you want me to see, send it to me personally as
well- I'm going on vacation for the next two weeks.
--------------
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were
fighting bees.
- Abraham Lincoln
