DEMOGRAPHIC SCIENCES: ON HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH
ScienceWeek http://www.scienceweek.com
The following points are made by Joel E. Cohen (Science 2003
302:1172):

1) It is a convenient but potentially dangerous fiction to treat
population projections as exogenous inputs to economic,
environmental, cultural, and political scenarios, as if
population processes were autonomous.

Belief in this fiction is
encouraged by conventional population projections, which ignore
food, water, housing, education, health, physical infrastructure,
religion, values, institutions, laws, family structure, domestic
and international order, and the physical and biological
environment.

Other biological species are recognized explicitly
only in the recent innovation of quantifying the devastating
demographic impacts of HIV and AIDS.

The absence from population
projection algorithms of influential external variables indicates
scientific ignorance of how external variables influence
demographic rates rather than any lack of influence (1).

Demographic projections stimulate fears of overpopulation in
some, fears of demographic decline and cultural extinction in
others(2).

2) Earth's population grew about 10-fold from 600 million people
in 1700 to 6.3 billion in 2003 (3). These and all demographic
statistics are estimates. It took from the beginning of time
until about 1927 to put the first 2 billion people on the planet;
less than 50 years to add the next 2 billion people (by 1974);
and just 25 years to add the next 2 billion (by 1999). The
population doubled in the most recent 40 years. Never before the
second half of the 20th century had any person lived through a
doubling of global population. Now some have lived through a
tripling. The human species lacks any prior experience with such
rapid growth and large numbers of its own species.

3) From 1750 to 1950, Europe and the New World experienced the
most rapid population growth of any region, while the populations
of most of Asia and Africa grew very slowly. Since 1950, rapid
population growth shifted from Western countries to Africa, the
Middle East, and Asia.

4) The most important demographic event in history occurred
around 1965-70. The global population growth rate reached its
all-time peak of about 2.1% per year (pa). It then gradually fell
to 1.2% pa by 2002 (4). The global total fertility rate fell from
5 children per woman per lifetime in 1950-55 to 2.7 children in
2000-05. The absolute annual increase in population peaked around
1990 at 86 million and has fallen to 77 million. Concurrent
trends included worldwide efforts to make contraception and
reproductive health services available, improvements in the
survival of infants and children, widespread economic development
and integration, movements of women into the paid labor market,
increases in primary and secondary education for boys and girls,
and other cultural changes.

5) In 1960, five countries had total fertility rates at or below
the level required to replace the population in the long run. By
2000, there were 64 countries such countries, with about 44% of
all people (4,5).

6) Worldwide urbanization has taken place for at least two
centuries and accelerated greatly in the 20th century. In 1800,
roughly 2% of people lived in cities; in 1900, 12%; in 2000, more
than 47%, and nearly 10% of those city dwellers lived in cities
of 10 million people or larger. Between 1800 and 1900, the number
of city dwellers rose more than 11-fold, from 18 million to 200
million; between 1900 and 2000, the number of city dwellers rose
another 14-fold or more, from 200 million to 2.9 billion. In
1900, no cities had 10 million people or more. By 1950, one city
did: New York. In 2000, 19 cities had 10 million people or more.
Of those 19 cities, only four (Tokyo, Osaka, New York, and Los
Angeles) were in industrialized countries.

References (abridged):

1. J. E. Cohen, How Many People Can the Earth Support? (W. W.
Norton, New York, 1995)

2. L. Shriver, Popul. Dev. Rev. 29 (no. 2), 153 (2003)

3. United States Census Bureau, Historical Estimates of
World Population (online). Available at
www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html

4. United Nations Population Division, World Population
Prospects: the 2002 Revision, Highlights (online database).
ESA/P/WP.180, revised 26 February 2003, p. vi. Available at:
http://esa.un.org/unpp/

5. United Nations Population Division, Partnership and
Reproductive Behavior in Low-Fertility Countries, ESA/P/WP.177,
revised May 2003.

Science http://www.sciencemag.org

--------------------------------

DEMOGRAPHY: INCREASE OF MAXIMUM LIFE-SPAN IN SWEDEN 1861-1999

The term "demography" refers to the numerical and quantitative
analysis of populations and their distributions. In 1997, a woman
named Jeanne Calment died in France at a documented age of 122.45
years, and the event and its publicity underscored the prime
question in human demographics: Is the maximum human life-span
fixed or can it be substantially increased? Although this
question and a number of subsidiary questions continue to be at
the forefront of research in human demography, few studies have
been carried out on well-defined human populations over extensive
periods.

The following points are made by J.R. Wilmoth et al (Science 2000
289:2366):

1) The authors present a study of several human demographic
questions related to life-span, the authors using Swedish
national demographic data from 1861 to 1999, which are the
longest available series of reliable information on the upper
limits of achieved human life span. The authors make the
following points:

2) The authors point out that national demographic statistics
suggest that the maximum age at death has been rising steadily in
industrialized countries for more than 100 years, and that two
important questions arise from this observation: 1) Has this
upward trend been steady over time, or has it changed pace in
recent years? Perhaps the increase has accelerated due to an
intensification of efforts to promote the health of the elderly
and to prevent or even cure ailments such as coronary heart
disease, stroke, and cancer. Or perhaps the trend has decelerated
because maximum ages now observed for humans are approaching a
hypothetical biological limit. 2) What accounts for the apparent
increase in the maximum age at death? There are two competing
explanations: a) the increase is due merely to the larger size of
contemporary populations, which increases the probability that at
least one individual will survive to an extreme old age; or b)
the increase reflects improvements in an individual's probability
of survival, especially at older ages.

3) The authors report they examined maximum age at death in
Sweden, where the maximum age has risen from approximately 101
years during the 1860s to approximately 108 years during the
1990s. The authors report the pace of increase was 0.44 years per
decade before 1969, but accelerated to 1.11 years per decade
after that date. More than 70 percent of the rise in the maximum
age at death from 1861 to 1999 is apparently attributable to
reductions in death rates above age 70. The rest are due to
increased numbers of survivors to old age (both large birth
cohorts and increased survivorship from infancy to age 70). The
more rapid rise in the maximum age since 1969 is apparently due
to the faster pace of old-age mortality decline during recent
decades.

4) The authors conclude: "Our analysis refutes the common
assertion that the human life-span is fixed and unchanging over
time. Although the maximum has increased much more slowly than
the average, the entire distribution of ages at death has been
shifting upward for more than a century in Sweden and,
presumably, in other countries as well. Reductions in death rates
at older ages, which have accelerated in recent decades, seem
likely to continue and may gradually extend the limits of
achieved human longevity even further."

Science http://www.sciencemag.org

ScienceWeek http://www.scienceweek.com

--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcneill@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
*************************
Phrase of the week :
"Our loyalties are to the species and the planet.
We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is
owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos,
ancient and vast, from which we spring."
-- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
)))Snort!)
*************************

Population growth is a key issue in the world.
I tried reading this, and I am sure it has something important to say, but
I
couldn't decide exactly what due to unclear language.

"Frederick" <mmcneill@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:3FDCAA69.59F4B597@fuzzysys.com...
DEMOGRAPHIC SCIENCES: ON HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH
ScienceWeek http://www.scienceweek.com
The following points are made by Joel E. Cohen (Science 2003
302:1172):

1) It is a convenient but potentially dangerous fiction to treat
population projections as exogenous inputs to economic,
environmental, cultural, and political scenarios, as if
population processes were autonomous.

"Exogenous inputs" I understand, but only because I have a math
background.
A liberal arts major might not.

"Processes were autonomous" What does this mean? Self empowering?
Seperate to itself?

I get a vague meaning here, but it is unclear. This is the problem with
language today, especially in academia. I realize there is need to offer
explicit langage when available, and technical terms often do not lend
themselves to simple conveyance. But I really think this paragraph could
have been worded far better. Again, it shows egoism...some mind trying to
live up to perceived notions of what it is to be intelligent or learned.
Actually I think a better sign would be to simplify things that
'communication' [a two channel event that involves 'recievers' as well as
'senders'] is obtained. The 'sender' here is obviously either only
disposed
to communicate with an elite group, or doesn't really care about
communication so much as 'appearances'. IMO of course. I see this a lot
here (in philosophy NG).

"tooly" <rdh11@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:Yg4Db.7281$qq.3184@bignews1.bellsouth.net...
Population growth is a key issue in the world.
I tried reading this, and I am sure it has something important to say,
but
I
couldn't decide exactly what due to unclear language.

"Frederick" <mmcneill@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:3FDCAA69.59F4B597@fuzzysys.com...
DEMOGRAPHIC SCIENCES: ON HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH
ScienceWeek http://www.scienceweek.com
The following points are made by Joel E. Cohen (Science 2003
302:1172):

1) It is a convenient but potentially dangerous fiction to treat
population projections as exogenous inputs to economic,
environmental, cultural, and political scenarios, as if
population processes were autonomous.

"Exogenous inputs" I understand, but only because I have a math
background.
A liberal arts major might not.

"Processes were autonomous" What does this mean? Self empowering?
Seperate to itself?

I get a vague meaning here, but it is unclear. This is the problem with
language today, especially in academia. I realize there is need to
offer
explicit langage when available, and technical terms often do not lend
themselves to simple conveyance. But I really think this paragraph
could
have been worded far better. Again, it shows egoism...some mind trying
to
live up to perceived notions of what it is to be intelligent or learned.
Actually I think a better sign would be to simplify things that
'communication' [a two channel event that involves 'recievers' as well
as
'senders'] is obtained. The 'sender' here is obviously either only
disposed
to communicate with an elite group, or doesn't really care about
communication so much as 'appearances'. IMO of course. I see this a lot
here (in philosophy NG).

Much of scientific writing is simply unreadable by the average person, not
just because of the overuse of technical jargon, but because much of it is
written in the passive voice. Readability studies based on cognitive
psychology show that the passive voice is more difficult for the brain to
process. Scientists are trained to write like this because it presents the
illusion of objectivity, something that scientists hold near and dear to
their hearts. The passive voice often can vagueness and uncertainty. This
is not to say the passive voice is "bad"; it's perfectly legitimate, but
it
does get overused.

People also use language to create exclusive social communities, which
separates them from other groups who don't know the lingo. Cults often
create their own terms and language to show you're part of the group.
Academicians use technical and jargon-laden language to separate
themselves
from other "lay people". I find that much of academic writing is so
unnecessarily complex that I can't help but wonder if it is intentional. I
suppose one way to give the illusion that you've created something new is
to
invent new terms and write in such a diffuse manner that the audience
won't
recognize the information as having already been said. It's unfortunate
that
people are rewarded for writing 10 pages of jargon that ultimately boils
down to "I don't know".

On the bright side, there are some excellent writers on this ng.

Tooly, btw, I wanted to say you made an excellent posting in ths
thread. I use words like motherfucker, bastard, asshole, cock-sucker to
make sure everyone knows the definition, and what I 'mean' of a corrupt
corporate transnational government, or any other prick who gets in my
way of creating utopia.

Yeah, and why the fuck does the 'medical profession' use fucking latin
in the god-damned USA? Motherfucking bastards. Fucking cohorts with
the transnational pharmeceutical corporations. Seriously, how fucking
hard can it be to rip a heart and lung out of one motherfucker and stick
it in another, you do not have to be a 'rocket-scientist', I am postitve
after a few hundeed attempts, you could be as good as any other
motherfucker from Harvard or Stanford.

You know, during war, a good soldier dehumanizes the enemy so that he can

DEMOGRAPHIC SCIENCES: ON HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH
ScienceWeek http://www.scienceweek.com
The following points are made by Joel E. Cohen (Science 2003
302:1172):

1) It is a convenient but potentially dangerous fiction to treat
population projections as exogenous inputs to economic,
environmental, cultural, and political scenarios, as if
population processes were autonomous. Belief in this fiction is
encouraged by conventional population projections, which ignore
food, water, housing, education, health, physical infrastructure,
religion, values, institutions, laws, family structure, domestic
and international order, and the physical and biological
environment. Other biological species are recognized explicitly
only in the recent innovation of quantifying the devastating
demographic impacts of HIV and AIDS. The absence from population
projection algorithms of influential external variables indicates
scientific ignorance of how external variables influence
demographic rates rather than any lack of influence (1).
Demographic projections stimulate fears of overpopulation in
some, fears of demographic decline and cultural extinction in
others(2).

2) Earth's population grew about 10-fold from 600 million people
in 1700 to 6.3 billion in 2003 (3). These and all demographic
statistics are estimates. It took from the beginning of time
until about 1927 to put the first 2 billion people on the planet;
less than 50 years to add the next 2 billion people (by 1974);
and just 25 years to add the next 2 billion (by 1999). The
population doubled in the most recent 40 years. Never before the
second half of the 20th century had any person lived through a
doubling of global population. Now some have lived through a
tripling. The human species lacks any prior experience with such
rapid growth and large numbers of its own species.

3) From 1750 to 1950, Europe and the New World experienced the
most rapid population growth of any region, while the populations
of most of Asia and Africa grew very slowly. Since 1950, rapid
population growth shifted from Western countries to Africa, the
Middle East, and Asia.

4) The most important demographic event in history occurred
around 1965-70. The global population growth rate reached its
all-time peak of about 2.1% per year (pa). It then gradually fell
to 1.2% pa by 2002 (4). The global total fertility rate fell from
5 children per woman per lifetime in 1950-55 to 2.7 children in
2000-05. The absolute annual increase in population peaked around
1990 at 86 million and has fallen to 77 million. Concurrent
trends included worldwide efforts to make contraception and
reproductive health services available, improvements in the
survival of infants and children, widespread economic development
and integration, movements of women into the paid labor market,
increases in primary and secondary education for boys and girls,
and other cultural changes.

5) In 1960, five countries had total fertility rates at or below
the level required to replace the population in the long run. By
2000, there were 64 countries such countries, with about 44% of
all people (4,5).

6) Worldwide urbanization has taken place for at least two
centuries and accelerated greatly in the 20th century. In 1800,
roughly 2% of people lived in cities; in 1900, 12%; in 2000, more
than 47%, and nearly 10% of those city dwellers lived in cities
of 10 million people or larger. Between 1800 and 1900, the number
of city dwellers rose more than 11-fold, from 18 million to 200
million; between 1900 and 2000, the number of city dwellers rose
another 14-fold or more, from 200 million to 2.9 billion. In
1900, no cities had 10 million people or more. By 1950, one city
did: New York. In 2000, 19 cities had 10 million people or more.
Of those 19 cities, only four (Tokyo, Osaka, New York, and Los
Angeles) were in industrialized countries.

References (abridged):

1. J. E. Cohen, How Many People Can the Earth Support? (W. W.
Norton, New York, 1995)

2. L. Shriver, Popul. Dev. Rev. 29 (no. 2), 153 (2003)

3. United States Census Bureau, Historical Estimates of
World Population (online). Available at
www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html

4. United Nations Population Division, World Population
Prospects: the 2002 Revision, Highlights (online database).
ESA/P/WP.180, revised 26 February 2003, p. vi. Available at:
http://esa.un.org/unpp/

5. United Nations Population Division, Partnership and
Reproductive Behavior in Low-Fertility Countries, ESA/P/WP.177,
revised May 2003.

Science http://www.sciencemag.org

--------------------------------

DEMOGRAPHY: INCREASE OF MAXIMUM LIFE-SPAN IN SWEDEN 1861-1999

The term "demography" refers to the numerical and quantitative
analysis of populations and their distributions. In 1997, a woman
named Jeanne Calment died in France at a documented age of 122.45
years, and the event and its publicity underscored the prime
question in human demographics: Is the maximum human life-span
fixed or can it be substantially increased? Although this
question and a number of subsidiary questions continue to be at
the forefront of research in human demography, few studies have
been carried out on well-defined human populations over extensive
periods.

The following points are made by J.R. Wilmoth et al (Science 2000
289:2366):

1) The authors present a study of several human demographic
questions related to life-span, the authors using Swedish
national demographic data from 1861 to 1999, which are the
longest available series of reliable information on the upper
limits of achieved human life span. The authors make the
following points:

2) The authors point out that national demographic statistics
suggest that the maximum age at death has been rising steadily in
industrialized countries for more than 100 years, and that two
important questions arise from this observation: 1) Has this
upward trend been steady over time, or has it changed pace in
recent years? Perhaps the increase has accelerated due to an
intensification of efforts to promote the health of the elderly
and to prevent or even cure ailments such as coronary heart
disease, stroke, and cancer. Or perhaps the trend has decelerated
because maximum ages now observed for humans are approaching a
hypothetical biological limit. 2) What accounts for the apparent
increase in the maximum age at death? There are two competing
explanations: a) the increase is due merely to the larger size of
contemporary populations, which increases the probability that at
least one individual will survive to an extreme old age; or b)
the increase reflects improvements in an individual's probability
of survival, especially at older ages.

3) The authors report they examined maximum age at death in
Sweden, where the maximum age has risen from approximately 101
years during the 1860s to approximately 108 years during the
1990s. The authors report the pace of increase was 0.44 years per
decade before 1969, but accelerated to 1.11 years per decade
after that date. More than 70 percent of the rise in the maximum
age at death from 1861 to 1999 is apparently attributable to
reductions in death rates above age 70. The rest are due to
increased numbers of survivors to old age (both large birth
cohorts and increased survivorship from infancy to age 70). The
more rapid rise in the maximum age since 1969 is apparently due
to the faster pace of old-age mortality decline during recent
decades.

4) The authors conclude: "Our analysis refutes the common
assertion that the human life-span is fixed and unchanging over
time. Although the maximum has increased much more slowly than
the average, the entire distribution of ages at death has been
shifting upward for more than a century in Sweden and,
presumably, in other countries as well. Reductions in death rates
at older ages, which have accelerated in recent decades, seem
likely to continue and may gradually extend the limits of
achieved human longevity even further."

Science http://www.sciencemag.org

ScienceWeek http://www.scienceweek.com

--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcneill@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
*************************
Phrase of the week :
"Our loyalties are to the species and the planet.
We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is
owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos,
ancient and vast, from which we spring."
-- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
)))Snort!)
*************************

The philosophical take on this might be to look at it as a problem
in morality. Humans choose to procreate at a rate that leads to the
statistics in the article; is that a moral choice?

Is there an optimum human population on the planet Earth? There
is clearly a limit, independent of technology. When through
advanced technology, all the mass of the planet has been converted
to the elements found in the human body and all of that mass is tied
up in human bodies, we have clearly reached the limit (from an
article by Isaac Asimov). The question is, is there a population
level less then this which is morally preferable? If so, what is it?
If we are close to it, then the choice to procreate or not is an
immediate moral decision. This is the kind of question that
philosophers have traditionally grappled with.

Ed

The philosophical take on this might be to look at it as a problem
in morality. Humans choose to procreate at a rate that leads to the
statistics in the article; is that a moral choice?

Is there an optimum human population on the planet Earth?

is clearly a limit, independent of technology. When through
advanced technology, all the mass of the planet has been converted
to the elements found in the human body and all of that mass is tied
up in human bodies, we have clearly reached the limit (from an
article by Isaac Asimov). The question is, is there a population
level less then this which is morally preferable?

If we are close to it, then the choice to procreate or not is an
immediate moral decision. This is the kind of question that
philosophers have traditionally grappled with.

Ed

"Edgar Svendsen" <solon013@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:<JPlDb.1428$SX1.27@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net>...
The philosophical take on this might be to look at it as a problem
in morality. Humans choose to procreate at a rate that leads to the
statistics in the article; is that a moral choice?

Is there an optimum human population on the planet Earth? There
is clearly a limit, independent of technology. When through
advanced technology, all the mass of the planet has been converted
to the elements found in the human body and all of that mass is tied
up in human bodies, we have clearly reached the limit (from an
article by Isaac Asimov). The question is, is there a population
level less then this which is morally preferable? If so, what is it?
If we are close to it, then the choice to procreate or not is an
immediate moral decision. This is the kind of question that
philosophers have traditionally grappled with.

Ed


I don't think Asimov would have said exactly that since the mass of
the planet in human bodies would result in molten people towards the
center---he was probably talking about the surface of the planet. Like
pond-scum or lichen on rocks.

The choice is actually whether you choose to remain human, and how you
define that. We've only existed for an instant; other creatures have
had much longer runs of being what they are. Is some kind of species
suicide moral?

I don't feel quite so human as I once did---there used to be a time
when I could be alone in the mountains and not hear an airplane all
day. I was reminded of that on 9/11.

The first non-medical, non-silicone implant will be cellphones, and
that day isn't far off. All the talk about individuality, and in a
generation or so, no one will ever know what it means to be alone.

There is very likely a sustainable equilibrium point which would allow
for the expression of human potential at an individual as well as
species level---doing the stuff we are good at as we are now, and
fitting in with the other critters. I think people don't like to
discuss this, because it makes them very sad.

-tg

"Edgar Svendsen" <solon013@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:JPlDb.1428$SX1.27@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
The philosophical take on this might be to look at it as a problem
in morality. Humans choose to procreate at a rate that leads to the
statistics in the article; is that a moral choice?

Is there an optimum human population on the planet Earth?

Defining the conditions of optimality would be impossible.
For example, sustaining large human populations might be possible at the
expense of losing a large number of plant and animal species. Any new
equilibrium would increase the probability of human extinction, if only
because biodiversity had been diminished. By analogy, if you want the game
(of chess or life) to continue for a long time, avoid radical
simplification.

There
is clearly a limit, independent of technology. When through
advanced technology, all the mass of the planet has been converted
to the elements found in the human body and all of that mass is tied
up in human bodies, we have clearly reached the limit (from an
article by Isaac Asimov). The question is, is there a population
level less then this which is morally preferable?

Moral principles could only be applied if human agents posses the power to
manipulate their environment in a controlled way.
Altering the ecological environment is obviously possible, but only one
way
transformations (destructive strategies) seem to be available. The
principle
of non-interference is impossible if ever increasing human populations are
to be sustained. All animal species come up against the logistic curve and
subsequent population crash. The norm in nature is crash and recovery
rather
than sustained if minimal growth. (I stand to be corrected on this by
ecologists).

If so, what is it?
If we are close to it, then the choice to procreate or not is an
immediate moral decision. This is the kind of question that
philosophers have traditionally grappled with.

Ed

"Tony Thomas" <verdigris@iprimus.com.au> wrote in message
news:3fde7613_1@news.iprimus.com.au...

"Edgar Svendsen" <solon013@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:JPlDb.1428$SX1.27@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
The philosophical take on this might be to look at it as a problem
in morality. Humans choose to procreate at a rate that leads to the
statistics in the article; is that a moral choice?

Is there an optimum human population on the planet Earth?

Defining the conditions of optimality would be impossible.
For example, sustaining large human populations might be possible at
the
expense of losing a large number of plant and animal species. Any new
equilibrium would increase the probability of human extinction, if only
because biodiversity had been diminished. By analogy, if you want the
game
(of chess or life) to continue for a long time, avoid radical
simplification.

There
is clearly a limit, independent of technology. When through
advanced technology, all the mass of the planet has been converted
to the elements found in the human body and all of that mass is tied
up in human bodies, we have clearly reached the limit (from an
article by Isaac Asimov). The question is, is there a population
level less then this which is morally preferable?

Moral principles could only be applied if human agents posses the power
to
manipulate their environment in a controlled way.
Altering the ecological environment is obviously possible, but only one
way
transformations (destructive strategies) seem to be available. The
principle
of non-interference is impossible if ever increasing human populations
are
to be sustained. All animal species come up against the logistic curve
and
subsequent population crash. The norm in nature is crash and recovery
rather
than sustained if minimal growth. (I stand to be corrected on this by
ecologists).

If so, what is it?
If we are close to it, then the choice to procreate or not is an
immediate moral decision. This is the kind of question that
philosophers have traditionally grappled with.

Ed


By studying systems, having the political will to 'control' those systems,
steady state can be obtained. We need to 'define' what 'human being' is
first though. Presently, we 'simplify' to define this as a
'morphological'
condition of species (human being = homo sapien)...and thusly all
'systems'
studied would be like a study of baboons, at the species level. I think
we
need to narrow our definition that includes intangibles...and
differentiate
'homo sapien' as only root stock. Otherwise, the 'controls' we will
attempt
in the near future will probably be 'hellish' to suffer by humans [but
probably to the liking of homo sapien].

But the point is, the means of controling human populations are always
going
to be politically unacceptable to the controled, ethical issues aside.
Furthermore, the outcomes of such measures (eg single child policies in
China) are largely unpredictable over the longer term. Such policies
(India
and China again) would not go down well in 'freedom loving nations'.
Genocide is probably a viable siolution, if managed by a world authority,
in
place of the random genocide affecting the world at preset. Is this
something you would advocate.?

Tony Thomas