Talk:The Population Bomb

message: The section about oil seems like an unnecessary diversion. I'd rather see more information about the book and its predictions, and less (nothing) about present-day predictions that are related only by the predictive criteria.
Geoff Canyon 23:33, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Oil Section

message: The article's claim that hundred of millions did not die from starvation during the 1970s and 1980s is false.  It is estimated that 60 million die each year from starvation,though not from lack of ability to produce enough food, but from the lack of proper distribution of it.
It appears that as Ehrlich wrote it, his prediction may have been technically correct, in that over 200 million people very likely died of starvation between 1970 and 1979.  Estimates I've seen for 2005 range from 25,000 to 35,000 per day, which mean between 91 and 128 million deaths per decade.  It seems that Ehrlich considers the spirit of this prediction to be wrong, but I can't find any corroboration of that.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything about long term trends in starvation deaths to shed any useful light on the value of the letter or the spirit of the prediction. —BozoTheScary 22:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Starvation Deaths 

message: This article contains a heavy political bias. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69chelsea (talk • contribs) 05:17, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poor representation of this book 

message: *Stop Terrible Human Over Population Disasters (eCards website to limit human population growth)
*WiseArt Cybernetics (On-line artistic slideshow about limiting human population growth)
Hallo Joyous! I have a question about your message: You ask me not to add inappropriate external links to wikipedia.
When I compare the 2 links I added to other existing external links on certain webpages, I see that the 'appropriate' links (i.e the ones you leave alone), are also links to external -third party- organisations, such as our European organisation (STHOPD) is too. Our non-profit organisation works with volunteers and stands for certain principles which are similar to the 'appropriate' organisations on the webpages concerned, such as: Decreasing human overpopulation in an ethical way, having no children, warnings about the worldwide consequences of overpopulation such as the destruction of ecosystems.
Please explain to me what would make our links appropriate. Friendly regards, MetaMouse. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.84.166.83 (talk) 18:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The external links are not specifically about the book (the topic of the article). Also, see Wikipedia:External links for more info. —Pengo 11:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not to mention that at least one of the links has very little factual content and annoying popup ads. —Pengo 11:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: External links

message: Please, this best-seller is a complete fraud.All prophecies of this book were showed as a fraud.The fact of this book's ideas had support from WWF,Ford Foundation and so many ecological foundations doesn't negates, the fact of this book to be a fraud.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.9.35.158 (talk) 14:14, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  The book's focus stops at the food situation but what comes after that through lack of food and lack of livelihoods is ignored. Therefore the book appears incomplete. Lack of food and livelihood leads to rivalries, oppression, and hostilities. These drive people out of their countries and upset the balance of other countries. It is said that today, in 2013, 45 000 000 people on this globe are looking for a place where to have a livelihood. With the Washington Earth Institute predicting 3 additional billion by 2050, or 81 000 000 more each year, and no livelihoods in sight, it could well be argued that the population bomb is with us today. 47 million on food stamps in the US, asylum seekers in Australia and continental Europe, illigal immigrants into the UK are all examples that there is population pressure, and in fact a population bomb. 144.136.192.37 (talk) 05:03, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: * The initial writer is correct, if not overly hyperbolic in his intent. Almost 50 years after the research, a statistically significant number of data points, there is little evidence of Ehrlich being correct about anything -- except perhaps as acting as in a Casandra capacity all these years. I'd admit that is a useful pursuit. Mostly Ehrlich's predictions have been incorrect because he refused to consider economic impacts. Consider the above citation on the numbers on food stamps. That is a symptom of a problem, not a root cause. Julian Simon was correct to point to commodity prices as a reasonable proxy of the power of technical innovation. Let's for instance take a look at energy prices as more LNG development occurs, and unstable Mid-east oil producers become increasingly marginalized. 10stone5 (talk) 05:54, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: This book is a fraud

message: In this article it says, "Ehrlich's book does not explain why South Korea is so much better off than North Korea, but an analysis of property rights explains this difference very well."  This is biased against Erlich's book.  It should be changed to reflect neutrality.  Thank you very much.
Sealpiano (talk) 22:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Evidence of Bias in the Article

message: The yield per unit area graphs for the third world show a sigmoid characteristic, not exponential. Clearly the amount of land being cultivated may have also grown. Nonetheless laims for exponentiality need very solid backing. Rich Farmbrough, 13:33, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Food supply

message: I laughed out loud when I saw this:
"Nonetheless, it is still conceptually incorrect to claim that world population (or US population) is growing linearly. The world population doubled from 3 billion in 1959 to 6 billion in 1999 and is expected to grow by another 3 billion by 2042 [5]."
This is a very poor example to illustrate that point.  From 1959 to 1999 is 40 years, and the population increased by 3 billion.  From 1999 to 2042 is 43 years, and the population increased by 3 billion.  This cannot be told from linear growth within the uncertainty of the cited figures.  If the figures are assumed to be exact, then this is actually SUBlinear growth, because it took 3 year longer to add the same number of people!
Exponential growth is characterized by a constant time to double, not a constant time to increase.  Surely some period of history could be chosen that does exhibit exponential growth.  It appears we do not currently live in such a time, but 1950 - 1990 would do nicely; I get a doubling time of 37 years
from the data presented in the Wikipedia article "World population".Shrikeangel (talk) 23:41, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linear vs exponential growth 

message: The major criticism that epidemiologists and other scientists make of works like this is that no one uses Malthusian theory to model food production or population growth. Demographic transition theory has successfully modelled the population declines in Japan, Korea, most of Europe, and other developed societies. China has completed a demographic transition and its population is declining. India is half way through one, with South/West India having a TFR < 2.1. Malthus' work is pseudo-science because it is not a testable hypothesis. I'm hoping that more scientific work will be incorporated into this page.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.247.24 (talk) 23:06, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Malthsian Junk Science and Demographic Transition Theory 

message: Idiotic statement, it´s the GUN protocol that does that, democracy and a free press solely pertaining to the instance of rallying to call forth all men and women willng to holster to ENFORCE a NON-famine relationship AT gun-point, and THAT, inhibits most any form of localized warlordism with pretense to force famine relationships to retain forms of aristocratic subsidianisms from conglomerate coffers.
Famine, is an imposed enslavement regime, either directly or indirectly through monetairy policy with a FAST history of racial and species genocide progroms on the table, including that one, that forces famine through overpopulation propaganda in order TOO force individuals into a militarized regime. Warlords, require men with nothing much too loose, which both overpopulation and THE famine protocols pertain too.
Is this soo darn difficult to understand that not even those nomered Mensa or other groups above that can clearly state those instances, or is it that most all politicians AND police enforcement are directed to breaking society into asperger sections to maintain their own hierarchical warlord and subsidianisms from conglomerate coffers status???
There used to be a time, not too long ago, where all politicians whom would NOT holster (on a dayly basis), where NOT considered of sufficient mettle to follow, those politicians pertaining to other collaterol then themselves.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.248.123.72 (talk) 15:14, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Democracy and a free press? 

message: The "Criticisims" section, which makes up about 65% of the article, seems to have a couple of serious and obvious problems. First, it is essentially a rehash of arguments from the book by Dan Gardner, a newspaper journalist for the Ottawa Citizen. As such it gives undue weight to one person's opinion, and a non-scientist at that, from Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail.
Second, the material in the section not from Gardner's book is a synthesis from other sources which do not mention Ehrlich or his book, and should not be included: Per guidelines, Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Some of the facts used and sources are from UN and FAO.
In addition, guidelines state we should "Avoid sections and articles focusing on criticisms or controversies". Not only is that guideline ignored, but the premise of the section is based on misstatement: "The Ehrlichs made a number of specific predictions," and is even included in a subsection called "Predictions."  Later, the article states, with direct quotes, that they in fact "never made predictions." 
So as it reads now, after a synopsis of the 47-year-old book, the article is basically a crystal ball-breaking promo for someone else's book. It also could mislead readers, who, after reading mostly Gardner's opinions, then see a section called "Ehrlich's response," wrongfully implying that much of his response was to Gardner's arguments. The result is that the article is not primarily about the book, but is a hindsight debate about some of the the book's so-called "predictions." Suggest fixing. --Light show (talk) 22:53, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree to some extent. However, based on a simple word count of the criticism section, it makes up more like 40% of the prose of the article (1215/2872 words). This is too much but not quite so dire as you make it sound. Agree there is too much synthesis of tangentially related material; that should certainly be removed or re-sourced. It is also true that wiki guidelines suggest (but do not forbid) making specific criticism sections, but the practice is certainly wide-spread. Regarding the "predictions," Ehrlich says he didn't make predictions, but that is contested, so it is a bit of a difficult issue regarding how best to address the difference in opinion in an NPOV wiki article. The article relies too heavily on Gardner, especially if you remove the synthesis materials. A broader and more in-depth discussion of the book would certainly be welcome. I would invite you to be bold and begin introducing the changes you would like to see. Peregrine981 (talk) 15:38, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overweight "Criticism" section 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I was looking up something else online, when I stumbled onto these two links, one a podcast where the hosts talk about their views on the racism and fallacies of the book and damage it did, and the other off a Marxist archive on the same topic as others in the section. I think that there is something there to add context, but I am not sure if they meet the criteria for reliable sources, so I will leave them here for discussion. 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2040953/11875391-the-population-bomb
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ca.firstwave/cpl-abortion/section8.htm MarvelAge91 (talk) 19:19, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: What about conservative criticism of the book? 69.113.233.201 (talk) 02:07, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible additions to Criticism section