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by antisthenes 43 days ago
> The classic example of how drastically this kind of thinking can fail is Malthusian theory, that populations would collapse because food growth was linear while population growth was exponential. This was true for all of history until Malthus actually made this observation.

Malthusian observation can still be true...It only has to be true once, and the only reason people say it isn't right now is due to industrial fertilizers and short memories.
1 comments
jodrellblank 42 days ago
> "the only reason .. industrial fertilizers"

canned food, tractors, combine harvesters, mechanical refrigeration, freezers, chilled trucks, ocean liners, aircraft, antibiotics for farm animals, milking machines, genetically modified crops, satellite/computer weather prediction, modern pesticides, Pasteurization, vitamin and mineral fortification...

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antisthenes 42 days ago
Yes, I appreciate the expanded list.

I should have clarified that industrial fertilizers (and other modern Ag) come from non-renewable fossil fuel exploitation, just as the 90% of the things you listed.

Antibiotics and GMO crops are nice too, but if you don't have the energy inputs to grow and distribute the food, it all goes tits up.

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jodrellblank 42 days ago
Malthus wrote in 1798 when world population was 1 billion. It's now 8 billion and famine is rarer, food is more abundant and more food is wasted every day than ever before. Industrial fertilizers do come from fossil fuels, but they aren't fossil fuels. Nitrogen fertilizer uses natural gas for its Methane content, and we can make Methane using electricity, seawater and make Nitrogen fertilizer from that, and we can make electricity from solar, wind and nuclear.

> just as the 90% of the things you listed.

90% of the things I listed only use fossil fuels because they are the cheapest energy, not because they are dependent on fossil fuels specifically. Freeze-dried food doesn't need coal power. The idea that 8 billion humans are just gonna shrug and go "oh well, guess there's no food now, we'll just all give up and die" and not try to invent any way to carry on, is silly.

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