From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Population
Date: 15 Sep 92 15:04:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: ke4zv.1992Sep15.150442.3492
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <BuLIuE.J55@news.cso.uiuc.edu> jbh55289@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Josh 'K' Hopkins) writes:
>
>First, I'd like to point out that I'm not the same person who wrote the follow
>up to my post, nor do we agree on all things.  Doug lumps us togther.  Since 
>the mid 80's, America has stopped giving moneyt to the UN agency that works to
>combat population growth in the third world. Come to think of it, I believe
>we don't give the UN any money anymore.  

Indeed we are fully paid up members again since Desert Storm. The US had
been withholding $425 million dollars in dues to the UN prior to the war,
but when the SC came through and backed the US, we coughed up the money.

>                                            Anyway, my point is the following,
>given that there is an unfulfilled demand for birth control (I don't think I've
>cited sources here, but if you want I'll dig some up) and that population
>growth in the third world tends to eat up progress made by foreign aid, it makes
>sense to help reduce growth - where the assistance is desired - instead of 
>sending cash.  I then went on to suggest that lowering growth would be more 
>likely to help  stabilize the region that not lowering growth.  

In most subsistence cultures there is *no* demand from the indigenous
population for birth control. Indeed, extra hands are the only resources
that they can produce. There is a labor *shortage* in Africa, and most
of the rest of the third world. This may seem surprising, but it's true.
The low productivity of labor without benefit of mechanical and technical
amplification is such that many many hands are needed for the most basic
jobs. In some parts of Africa, farmers still use wooden digging sticks.
A modern (19th Century) steel moldboard plow would make more difference
to these people than any amount of birth control equipment.

[re: transistion from an oil economy]
>But transitions take a while.  The people who are working on electric vehicles,
>which may eventually be quite competitive with gas powered ones, or solar 
>thermal power, or finding ways to _save_ money through conservation are doing
>it because it's a good investment.  The substitutes you're talking about are
>being worked on now, but you're slamming them.

Electric vehicles aren't what's being talked about here. At $35 a barrel
equivalent, alcohol produced from biomass is economical with known and
tested techniques available *now*. At $55 a barrel equivalent, Fischer-
Topish (sp) process synthetic gasoline from coal or shale is economical
and feasible with techniques known and tested in volume production over 
50 years ago. As the price of oil eventually rises, there are known, 
developed, and available alternative liquid fuel technologies that will 
come on line to take the place of oil. This is a solved problem.

Electric vehicles are touted for two main reasons. One, they have low
point of *use* emissions. And two, they are the ultimate multi-fuel
vehicle since any fuel that can be used to make electricity can power
them. However, the storage battery problem remains intractable after
over a century of development. Electric vehicles, if they become common,
will be externally powered or have short range and a limited performance
envelope until the battery problem is licked. I don't hold out much hope
that a miracle battery is on the horizon that will change this. Battery
science is as complex, if not more so, as rocket science. Rocket science
hasn't delivered cheap payload of orbit, and battery science hasn't 
delivered cheap, light, high capacity batteries. Some here would claim 
that that's *because* of government funded research, not in spite of it.

Gary
Newsgroups: sci.space