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Crossing the 7 billion Mark
I thought that I would refer you to one of my favorite unconventional research sources, National Geographic Magazine. In their century long coverage of exotic places, cultures, and practices, they inadvertently shed light on broad global trends that deeply affect the rest of us. Plus, the pictures are great. The January, 2011 issue celebrates the approach of the world’s population to 7 billion, and the implications therein.
Long time readers of this letter know that demographic issues will be one of the most important drivers of all asset prices for the rest of our lives (click here for http://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/december-17-2010.html ). The magazine expects that population will reach 9 billion by 2045, the earliest date that I have seen so far. Can the planet take the strain? Early religious leaders often cast Armageddon and Revelations in terms of an exploding population exhausting all resources, leaving the living to envy the dead. They may not be far wrong.
A number of developments have postponed the final day of reckoning, including the development of antibiotics, the green revolution, DDT, and birth control pills. Since 1952, life expectancy in India has expanded from 38 years to 64. In China, it has ratcheted up from 41 years to 73. These miracles of modern science explain how our population has soared from 3 billion in a mere 40 years.
The education of the masses may be our only salvation. Leave a married woman at home, and she has eight kids, as our great grandparents did, half of which lived. Educate her, and she goes out and gets a job to raise her family’s standard of living, limiting her child bearing to one or two. This is known as the “demographic transition.” While it occurred over four generations in the developed world, it is happening today in a single generation in much of Asia and Latin America. As a result, fertility around the world is crashing. The US is hovering at just below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family, thanks to immigration. But China has plummeted to 1.5, Europe is at 1.4, and South Korea has plunged as low as 1.15.
Population pressures are expected to lead to increasing civil strife and resource wars. Some attribute the genocide in Rwanda in 1999, which killed 800,000, as the bloody result of overpopulation. If you want to get a first class foundation in the demographic issue along with a lot of cool graphics and charts, read the story in full by clicking here at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/video/player#/?titleID=7-billion-animation&catID=1 . I’ll be the one to tell you which stocks to buy to capitalize on these trends.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on “This Week on Hedge Fund Radio” in the upper right corner of my home page.
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Hey dingleberry, want to debate facts? No slurs, name calling or what have you. Manno-Manno. Right here, right now. Just science, thermodynamics stuff like that. I'm ready.
Repeat after me:
0.25 acres of arable land per capita
Not enough arable land. Even if there were, where are the water and nutrients coming from. The nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus cycles only turn so fast, period.
I can turn a.hillside into productive land. That statistic is meaningless by itself.
You can" turn a hillside into productive land", have you ever done that? Just curious. I have been involved in farming during my 62+ years of life, and that is not as easy as you try to make it sound. Are you a farmer? I saw people farming on hillsides in Vietnam, and it's not real easy.
No, it isnt... globally the statistic is very relevant, I agree that on the local level, it is not so as you can always buy the land that you need. The world can't.
@5-71 : I hope u never fall ill or stumble over 'low life' even in your dreams.
Yes, gang bangers fighting turf wars are low lifes.
So are drug smugglers, human smugglers, pimps, thieves, and a significant portion of bankers and politicians.
Anyone who deliberately sets out to harm others and realize a monetary, or other tangible profit, is a low life. They need to be weeded out. Huge resources go into policing, protecting, and medically treating these people.
The homeless fellow who is down and out from economic disaster is not in that definition.
It is time to completly close down hospitals and clinics for 5 years.
At the end of that time whoever is left will be in good shape to continue on.
We blow huge resources on an evolutionary antithesis - keeping everyone alive at (seemingly) all cost. Shit, we even want to stop and protect low lifes from killing each other, re gang wars.
What is the matter with us people that we just don't let the weak and poor die?
Don't worry, the Laws of Nature will eventually sort it all out. It is the only thing you can count on long term.
Amen brother. It will get sorted out, and, sooner than later.
yes i'm hoping the coming mega-global Depression sorts the men from the weeds... the people that understand how the world works from the zombie pig-ignorant socialists and environ-mentalists that trash everything they touch and need a constant drip of other peoples money to stay alive
AGW, UN, EU, US Govt, EPA, WWF, Greenpeace and all the other blood sucking MF parasites get out of our pockets
This guy is a piece of work. First he says we have plenty of fossil fuel to burn to infinity and everything will be fine, now he says there is going to be a massive crash.
What a tool.
What is the matter with us people that we just don't let the weak and poor die?
Have you met Govt? Meet your top mass-murderer worldwide.
Next check out the US Govts' EPA, the UN's World Health Organisation and the ban on DDT pesticide spraying that was stopping the spread and almost eliminated Malaria before the environmentalists, health Orgs and Govts banned it causing 60-100,000,000 deaths worldwide from a preventable disease. It's the biggest genocide/scandal in global history and NOBODY has been held to account for this Govt-manufactured mass-murder.
I am of the mind that the Putin mafia is targeting the Chinese high command, looking avidly at their rare earths. The USA is goggling at Latin America and Chavez and Chile. Brazil wants Argentina. Germany already has France, and now wants Spain. Turkey has already bought up Cyprus. Next stop Greece as they rebuild Ottoman reality again. France wants back into Africa, and UK hasn't made up its mind if it wants to shag India again or be shagged by them for a price of delicious lentils and basmati rice. I hope I've left nobody out; yes Australia; who want to swim to Antartica so as to avoid recurrent floods and being eaten by sharks and swallowed by giant pythons. We should be back to 3 billion by 2050. So hang in there!
falak,
Rare Earths are not rare.
We have plenty here, the world has all it needs, they just have not built the mines necessary to dig it up,and refine it.
Why?,because it wasn't profitable,well now it is.
And our ass (the US) is in high gear.
They are rare in terms of economically minable ores. Also remember RE refers to 17 different metals, they don't all have the same importance or distribution. A better known example is Pt and Au: they have about the same crustal frequency, but you can count on 2 hands the number of minable Pt ores.
So are we eating rare earths now?
There must be a taboo or something that leads to people to think incorrectly this issue.
She gets out and gets a job and starts consuming ten times more than she did, overbalancing her consumption plus the four surviving kids. She or he by the way. If you add the kids brought to new consumption habits... This of course, without factoring the resources consumed and required to perform the job...
The author consumes by his habits (unsustainable for most of them) probably 100 times more than a wretched person in a common third world and calls as a solution taking the same path than himself.
300 millions Chinese people might well consume much more than the current 1 billion plus Chinese people.
Must be something that prevents people from facing the very fact that the standard needs of human beings are not that standard.
Because is it that hard to observe that for a rather steady western population has decupled its consumption over the last decades?
Still the first thing to do is stop the population growth or we have no hope of a more just division of resources
Yes good idea, are YOU and your wifey on a nueter course? .......what we don't need is another generation from your loins wagging their Durex finger and interfering in other peoples sex lives.... don't have any kids, let's stop the rot of obnoxious twats at source, YOU
I'll never forget some environmentalist jerk-off explain how the Third World needs to control its population while he and his wifey had 3 children. Has the fascists at the UN, US Govt and EU restricted their own staff from bonking yet?????
Why don't you STFU you arshole
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all [these things] must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
WWIII is now a necessity; don't for a second think that the elites are not already manoevering.
Perhaps we should all re-read THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS?
I suggest you read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. He describes how and why the genocide occurred in Ruanda. He also examines what caused the downfall of other civilizations in microcosm: Easter Island, Mayan, south Pacific, etc. Overpopulation leads to exhaustion of natural resources, war, starvation.
This oft-quoted refrain about fitting everyone into Texas is really stupid. Is there also enough room for streets, schools, hospitals, offices, factories, stores, water treatment plants, parks?
At some point the population must stop growing. We are depleting the fish of the sea. Topsoil is rapidly eroding and fresh water supplies are becoming a problem. What cannot continue to grow will stop. Whether or not we can stop it without war, famine and disease is the question.
Plenty of room in texas. Just add a second story.
Adding to already rising food prices due to monetary inflation and weather related supply problems around the globe, one of the world’s leading food distribution companies, Sysco Corporation, is advising clients and their customers that the recent freeze across North America has significantly impacted growing operations in Mexico (as well as parts of the U.S.) leading to 80% - 100% crop damage:
http://www.shtfplan.com/commodities/major-food-distributor-sysco-immedia...
Yup, Grapefruits each a $1.79ea. already.
Next will be oranges, and Mexican lettuce (the kind that they fertilize with feces to grow.)
I always felt that the intelligent hierarchical natural order was disciplined ants on top of the heap and abject humans as the bottom as canon fodder for intergalactic war amongst super organised ants. A shame that size intervened to change the natural flow of things. Pity the dinosaurs didn't have more babies. They would never have left a knee-jerking, bison herdish human species overtake them in the rat race with more sexually active, super charged phalanx of T Rexs.
So how does this all play out for the "growth economics" model that the entire world currently uses? Seriously, the entire academic, commercial, and governmental models all use ponzinomics. I am in biotech so I want an intelligent answer to this so I can shift my investments around. I already sold some gold for land and I am buying more physical silver, but what else should I be doing in regard to my investments?
Energy infrastructure MLPs, oil-gas royalty trusts. These are some of the few investments that treat the owner as an insider, i.e. essentially all free cash flows go into your pocket. There are also politically safe companies that have monopoly type resource bases. There are couple of nice MLPs in the nitrogen fertilizer business, something that is clear you would appreciate.
Buy seeds for crops for that land and some form of power source so you can be off the grid. Wind and solar to power a back up generator?
These are all "investments". Buying paper contracts is more "gambling"
Growing food is a big challenge, even with diesel fuel, fertilizers, and pesticides. Without oil, those three things are gone. Do some research and make a list of all the things that DON'T come from oil. It's a very short list. We have a hellacious lifestyle adjustment coming at us like a runaway freight train, and we're not even stepping off the tracks.
Also, paramount if you do so, buy seeds that are not Hybrid.
Not too many of you have ever farmed.for a living. Every small farmer and rancher i know has a second job.
That's under the current system of oil-incentivized food. Shift a few variables, and true biologically conformed production becomes much more valued.
MHFT i suggest you follow Chris Martensens Crash Course and realise global population is overheating and , in the words of Marc Faber , going through a "crack up boom" - once oil production starts to noticeably decline , population will plateau soon after and then too , decline. I wouldnt worry about global warming either , in 50 years the global population will be on its way to 2 bil , not 9 billlion.
These projections of global population remind me of projections for house prices earlier this decade. That which is not sustainable , ends.
.
Yeah, the old shit is falling apart, better get some new shit.
equity,
What did man do before OIL?.
We were still here, and we continue on, all over the planet without one refrigerator or truck hauling in food.
Look forward, not in the rear view mirror.
In 1900, the global population was 1.5 billion. Now it's 7 billion. I call that an oil bubble. Bubbles pop.
A minor point: we aren't just running out of oil (and uranium). We're running out of almost everything. That's going to make the future very different from anything we've seen in the past.
I think you're right, population will drop as oil runs out. For one thing, I don't think you can feed nine billion people without the green revolution, which is enabled by oil. But the transition will be very fast and probably very violent, since we are not planning for it. I think there is a high likelihood that the dogs of war will be unleashed.
The US is in a very vulnerable position. Our "god-given" way of life requires vast resource inputs. The transition to a resource-starved world is going to be terrible. I predict that the privately-owned car will be extinct in 30 years. Our whole country is built around cars. People in the developing world still remember how to survive with nothing. In the US, we can't lift a finger without burning a barrel of oil. Our economists still talk as if resources were limitless. It's getting late.
Read the part starting with "a Japanese perspective on the US budget":
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
just like hunting season scales back the wabbit population...world wars do the same to the human population... Oh and dont forget all those really neat manufactured diseases..
Actually, predators are a secondary factor in regulating the size of a population. Hopefully by the way, as predators intervened later in the developpment of life.
Scaling back the population? Sure, sure, if you hit where the consumption is done. If you hit when consumption is light, dont be surprised to release minimal amount of resources back to the circuit.
Only twenty trillion? I heard (in church) that the Earth could support fifty babillion-zillion people, all living in the state of Connecticut, with 3 LCD TV's and one jet ski each.
Remedial reading class in your future?.
Or, having a flashback (;
I think you're confusing church with Obama's election adds...
you read national geographic, i read equire.
we should combine forces somehow, and really worry about other countries' fucking habits
Well,facts is facts mama.
Of course this was given as an example to all the Green Ass wipes, and Pop Control Agencies.
Alaska is even larger, so it would hold easily more.
The point was, we have MORE than we ever will use, if we just used it PROPERLY.
You're hired!
The earth is fully capable of feeding and supporting 20 Trillion, +/-, the state of Texas has enough land alone, to build every family on the planet a 1200' sq house w/ a small yard.At the 6 Billion number.
That leaves the rest of earth for growing foods, and mining,driling, for natural resources to feed/mee the needs of the 6 Billion.