barking_iguana: A lack of information

Dvd Avins (

barking_iguana) wrote,
@ 2008-04-20 14:58:00

A lack of information
By the middle of the century, the strongest indicator of a country's wealth will be its total annual rainfall. Other minerals and the lack of indigenous endemic disease (as in rain forests) will also be a factor, but for a first approximation, just multiply rain per acre times the country's acreage and you'll get the key to the size of its population and its power.

Yet nowhere on the Web can I find such information.

EDIT: I forgot. The closest I could find was the following picture from http://www.geoportal.org

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	tayefeth 2008-04-20 11:35 pm UTC (link)
	Surely those numbers will have changed significantly by the middle of the century, though... (Reply to this)(Thread)

	barking_iguana 2008-04-21 12:34 am UTC (link)
	Climate change will make some difference, but I'd bet not too much. Northern Asia will still be a lot dryer than South America. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tayefeth 2008-04-21 02:53 am UTC (link)
	Perhaps, but the northern edge of the rain belt in Africa has been moving pretty steadily south and looks to be continuing for the next fifty years. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	barking_iguana 2008-04-21 03:04 am UTC (link)
	True. I wonder if it will impact Nigeria, which otherwise might be headed for a period of rapid development sometime in the next few decades. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	chemoelectric 2008-04-21 12:31 am UTC (link)
	Whose theory is this? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	barking_iguana 2008-04-21 12:33 am UTC (link)
	Mine. And I'm right. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	chemoelectric 2008-04-21 01:02 am UTC (link)
	What is your evidence apart from the tarot cards you quote above? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

barking_iguana
2008-04-21 01:24 am UTC (link)

Water is a more critical limiting factor to population than energy. Energy limits industry, but the development of more efficient solar, the probable increased use of uranium, which won't run out for a while and who know what other sources of energy will, I think, spread out energy wealth so that having ever diminishing fossil fuels in the ground won't define who the power players are. Meanwhile, technology is leveling the education differences in the world.

To some degree, water and electricity are interchangeable. You can use energy to purify water. If you have rivers, you can run various industrial processes directly from water power without conversion to electricity, and of course you can use the water to generate electricity, if you're willing to dam it and thereby increase evaporation.

Food growing has become so efficient that, given electricity, Earth's carrying capacity is not determined by soil or the ability of that soil to produce solid food. It's determined by the amount of fresh water we have to drink and to grow crops.

We haven't hit carrying capacity yet, in my opinion, but it's on the horizon.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	chemoelectric 2008-04-21 01:40 am UTC (link)
	I don’t see any real evidence here. If we assume these things, then you still have to show how they lead to your conclusion. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

barking_iguana
2008-04-21 02:42 am UTC (link)

I think a look at the world shows that power comes from population, industrial capacity, and mineral wealth. It can be sabotaged by social systems that are even worse than the social systems everybody else is using, but barring persistent totalitarianism, social capital tends to catch up with resources. (Brazil and Nigeria are, so far, exceptions. Nigeria is understandable in that they haven't reached the level of physical development that propels social development. But Brazil truly does challenge my assumptions. I don't think any other country does.)

Proving that would take a lot of data, which I wouldn't be especially good at gathering, and analysis, which I'd be pretty good at. The product would be a well received magazine article, or something. But it would be a boring article, because it would tell you things you already know.

For generations, China and India had global power nowhere near commensurate with their population. China is rapidly approaching superpower status and India is where China was a dozen years ago. I see no reason to believe that the trends that increasingly equate power with population will abate. Even as transportation becomes more expensive, communication will remain cheap and easy. When it's easy to communicate your needs and when both the ruling class and the laboring classes of all but the richest countries will shed blood if necessary to keep tariffs low, the difference in labor costs can't outstrip the cost of shipping goods.

That didn't use to be the case. It use to be that most of the world was so lacking in physical and social infrastructure that even if the information was readily transmitted, setting up production in poor countries just wasn't worth it. Now it is.

So the income per person will become closer to even across the globe. Which means the money available for future societal development will, on a per capita basis, become close to even across the globe.

Population in the 1800s was largely determined by industrial and social development. The high efficiency in the rich countries allowed them to support much higher population densities than other countries. But in the period since WWII, agricultural improvements allowed the poorer but wetter countries to outstrip the original industrial countries in population. The river valleys of southern and eastern Asia, and the archipelagos off the Asian coast now account for about 60% of the world's population.

So that I don't have to belabor the obvious, tell me what dots you don't think are obviously connected by your prior knowledge combined with what I've already written.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	chemoelectric 2008-04-21 02:55 am UTC (link)
	‘A look at the world shows that power comes from population, industrial capacity, and mineral wealth.’ Certainly it isn’t obvious, if you can’t explain Brazil this way. Also you have to be sure not to let the meaning of ‘power’ slip and slide to keep the theory ‘true’, so I think some kind of definition is in order. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	chemoelectric 2008-04-21 03:06 am UTC (link)
	Of course I’m not saying that rainfall won’t be an asset, it’s just that I am wary. I probably can’t be convinced not to forge ahead with uncertainty. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	chemoelectric 2008-04-21 03:09 am UTC (link)
	Also I am very wary about climate change. Rainfall patterns may change dramatically, and I wouldn’t be shocked if large areas are flooded or if the North Atlantic Drift shut down. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Your Last Post (Anonymous) 2008-04-27 05:29 pm UTC (link)
	Dvd, I found this post hard to believe. It seems to me that the countries with economic power will be those that can produce the goods and services the rest of the world wants to buy. Food is part of that but only a small part. By the way, I am still hoping that you will join my yahoo group which can be found at http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Bobs_Stock_Group Bob (Reply to this)

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