howard@cpocd2.UUCP (03/26/87)
Please followup to sci.bio as this has gotten away from a kids subject. In article <1866@k.cc.purdue.edu> ahe@k.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (Bill Wolfe) writes: >In article <513@cpocd2.UUCP> howard@cpocd2.UUCP (Howard A. Landman) writes: >>You mean like in Ethiopia? > > Actually, there is more than enough to go around; it's just a > question of distribution. Look at all the grain stacked up in > Midwestern silos, the overproduction which is driving food prices > down to where the farmers are going bust, etc.... > > The problem is that the Ethiopian economy cannot generate the required > cash, and this in turn has a political/cultural basis. Unfortunately, when transportation/storage/distribution of food costs much more than the food itself, the only reasonable solution is to have each bioregion be more-or-less self-sufficient. Only recently has it even been possible for a society to eat more than it grows, and only extremely wealthy states with high population densities, where food is a small part of the economy, have been able to make it work. Ethiopia will not be in this class for many, many years. >>WHEN we get off this planet onto other worlds, the genetic heritage >>of each and every living organism on this planet may suddenly become >>IMMENSELY valuable. How do we know that some obscure species of >>Tibetan lichen won't hold the key to colonizing Mars, for example, >>by being able to survive low pressures and temperatures? The answer >>is, we don't. We haven't got the FOGGIEST notion of what secrets and >>surprises lay hidden in the "library" that current life holds in each >>cell. It's a bad time to be "burning books", just as we begin to be >>able to read them. > > We will soon be able to WRITE them. If by "soon" you mean "within the next several hundred years", then I might agree. What we can "write" now are the equivalent of the single-syllable babbling of a 10-month-old baby. A few dozen codons at a time. Do you have any idea how much genetic material there is in a single cell of a large organism? Would you believe 50-100 times as many base-pairs as there are letters in a complete set of Encyclopedia Brittanica? Now, to represent an entire species, you need 2 or 3 or 4 orders of magnitude more than that, because genetic diversity is important to allow a species to adapt. Then to represent all the species we now know is another 6 or 7 orders of magnitude on top of that. We know how to make tiny genes. We know how to cut medium-sized genes from an organism and paste them into E. Coli. We have a complete genetic code for a handful of viruses, mostly VERY small ones like PhiX174 (about one paragraph worth). All *WONDERFUL* stuff, but just the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg. When genetic engineering gets 1,000 times better than it is now, we will be able to design totally new single-celled organisms. 1,000,000 times better than now for multicelled organisms. 1,000,000,000 times better for complete new species with adequate diversity to eveolve on their own. And about 1,000,000,000,000,000 times better and we will be able to design complete planetary ecosystems. Perhaps we should try not to destroy our own until then. > I see no need to preserve > obscure species when we will soon be able to create our own, > to predefined specifications. You're not looking hard enough. One reason: In order to figure out how they work, so we know what to specify and how to design something that meets those specifications. We could easily spend a few hundred years doing small modifications to existing organisms and trading genes around to figure out what they do, and cataloguing the results. It's odd to call that "soon". >>I'll bet dinosaurs would have considered cockroaches "lower", but >>look who's still here. > > This may change as we gain the ability to conduct unprecedented > biological warfare along with the ability to design and implement > DNA systems. I seriously doubt that they will survive a massively > parallel attack on every system (respiratory, reproductive, immune, > circulatory, digestive, etc.) with brand-new microorganisms specifically > designed to seek out and destroy the targeted genetic structure. > > Cockroaches are a recursive problem, and they require a recursive > solution. (Actually, parallel recursive solutions for good measure) The problem is multifold. First, if we kill 99.999% of all cockroaches, the remainder can still breed and will likely be more immune to the attack just launched. So you need to get them ALL at once. Second, even if you did that there is a niche that cockroaches fill that would be left empty. Organisms from neighboring niches would evolve into it (tiny mice? large ants?) and the only real effect would be to simplify the ecosystem and hence make it less stable (remember that the Geckos that ate the cockroaches would starve, too). There's no logical end to that approach other than killing all other animals on the planet besides man. >>We are easily capable of annihilating ourselves. > > But you can be quite certain that we will not. You presumably > refer to nuclear weapons; they are VERY, VERY tightly controlled. Tightly. That's why a new country joins the nuclear fraternity every few years. Can you say "proliferation"? What do you think will happen when two minor nuclear powers go to war, and one starts losing *REALLY* *BADLY*? I can hope that we will not; but no one can be certain. Then let's consider the biological warfare that our new technology makes possible. If you can tailor a microbial attack on cockroaches, how about one on, say, Caucasian Homo sapiens that leaves Oriental Homo sapiens unscathed? According to you, it will soon be easy! And everyone can play! Of course, we could simply render the earth unfit to support ourselves. It's so painless until the final collapse. And blithely wasting species is still the social norm. :-( -- Howard A. Landman ...!intelca!mipos3!cpocd2!howard
rmg@mips.UUCP (03/26/87)
In article <533@cpocd2.UUCP> howard@cpocd2.UUCP (Howard A. Landman) writes: ... >Now, to represent an >entire species, you need 2 or 3 or 4 orders of magnitude more than that, >because genetic diversity is important to allow a species to adapt. To pick at a couple of nits: I wonder about the "need N orders of magnitude more" genetic information. I've recently read about at least one species (a lizard in the S.W. U.S., if I recall correctly) for which all members are a single clone; they reproduce asexually (though they *do* have the funny habit of exhibiting sexual behavior- individuals trade off the roles of mountor and mountee periodically). I can find the reference if anybody wants it. Also, I believe we can find many cases of species for which the number of individuals has dipped to well below 1000 and then recovered; even disregarding the redundancy in genetic information in any two individuals (how much redundancy is this, by the way?), you would need 10,000 individuals for 4 orders of magnitude more diversity. It doesn't seem that that many are actually required. [After a bit more thought, the question of "what *is* redundancy in genetic information" gets pretty interesting. I've heard the statement that Humans and chimps share something like 98% common genetic information. I guess the key is what you take to be the smallest unit of information you are comparing. I guess it's the "gene", which I understand to be a subsequence of base pairs within a DNA strand... but at this point, my understanding starts to get clouded.] In any case, I have to agree that we should be careful about wiping out species. Even if we get real clever about how all of this genetic and molecular biology business works, and can more or less engineer this stuff at will, even from scratch(!)- we would still be left with the immensely trickier problem of deciding wisely *what* to build. -- - Rich Geiger {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!rmg MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques Ave., Sunnyvale, CA 94086 (408) 720-1700
terry@nrcvax.UUCP (03/30/87)
howard@cpocd2.UUCP (Howard A. Landman) says: >Please followup to sci.bio as this has gotten away from a kids subject. > >In article <1866@k.cc.purdue.edu> ahe@k.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (Bill Wolfe) writes: >>In article <513@cpocd2.UUCP> howard@cpocd2.UUCP (Howard A. Landman) writes: >>>You mean like in Ethiopia? >> >> Actually, there is more than enough to go around; it's just a >> question of distribution. Look at all the grain stacked up in >> Midwestern silos, the overproduction which is driving food prices >> down to where the farmers are going bust, etc.... >> >> The problem is that the Ethiopian economy cannot generate the required >> cash, and this in turn has a political/cultural basis. > >Unfortunately, when transportation/storage/distribution of food costs >much more than the food itself, the only reasonable solution is to have >each bioregion be more-or-less self-sufficient. Only recently has it >even been possible for a society to eat more than it grows, and only extremely >wealthy states with high population densities, where food is a small part >of the economy, have been able to make it work. Ethiopia will not be in this >class for many, many years. Actually, from what I've read, Ethiopia was doing fine until a civil war started, and the scorched earth policy of the winning side coincided with a drought. Then, when food started arriving from other countries, the "winning side" held it back from the other side in order to bring more pressure to bear on them to give up the fight and relocate where the "winning side" wanted them to be so they could become your basic lower class factory worker type and not produce for themselves thereby becoming dependent on the "winning side". The whole thing is was and will be political. Given the appropriate political environment, Ethiopia was and could be again able to produce enough food to feed its people.
cliff@rlgvax.UUCP (04/02/87)
> Actually, from what I've read, Ethiopia was doing fine until a civil > war started, and the scorched earth policy of the winning side In Mozambique today as in Ethiopia last year, war and power are much more of a cause of famine than drought and overpopulation. -- O-----------------------------------------------------------------------> | Cliff Joslyn, Computer Consoles Inc., Reston, Virgnia, but my opinions. | UUCP: ..!seismo!rlgvax!cliff V All the world is biscuit shaped
howard@cpocd2.UUCP (04/02/87)
In article <831@nrcvax.UUCP> terry@minnie.UUCP (Terry Grevstad) writes: >Actually, from what I've read, Ethiopia was doing fine until a civil >war started, and the scorched earth policy of the winning side >coincided with a drought. > >The whole thing is was and will be political. ^^^^^^^^^^^ I do not deny that politics have a great influence on peoples lives, but anyone who has seen "before" and "after" satellite photos of Lake Chad will recognize the absurdity of the above absolute claim. Terry and I must not read the same magazines. Meanwhile, the desert marches on. Anyway, the point I was making was simply that famine exists in the world today. Saying that it might not have to if politics didn't get in the way is irrelevant. -- Copyright (c) 1987 Howard A. Landman. Transmission of this material constitutes permission from the intermediary to all recipients to freely retransmit the material within USENET. All other rights reserved.
janw@inmet.UUCP (04/11/87)
[howard@cpocd2.UUCP ] >In article <831@nrcvax.UUCP> terry@minnie.UUCP (Terry Grevstad) writes: >>Actually, from what I've read, Ethiopia was doing fine until a civil >>war started, and the scorched earth policy of the winning side >>coincided with a drought. >> >>The whole thing is was and will be political. > ^^^^^^^^^^^ >I do not deny that politics have a great influence on peoples lives, but >anyone who has seen "before" and "after" satellite photos of Lake Chad will >recognize the absurdity of the above absolute claim. Terry and I must not >read the same magazines. Why? Terry *said* there was a drought. Droughts do not have to mean famine - *provided "hoarding" and "profiteering" are al- lowed*. Droughts had happened before; the farmers had stocked up in advance and weathered them. The (pseudo)Marxist economics and politics destroyed all that. Surpluses were confiscated, so that farmers stopped producing more than enough for their minimal needs. Hoarding was punished; trading was punished. Successful farmers were forcibly relocated for political reasons. They were forcibly collectivized. Forced labor and compulsory political ac- tivities, and frequent jailing left farmers little time to work on their land. But let the famine victims speak for themselves... The following is from *Ethiopia: The Communist Uses of Famine*, *Commentary*, April 1986, p.32. ] Not one refugee interviewed at the Yabuus (Sudan) relief camp ] cited drought as a major or even subsidiary cause of famine in ] the region of Ethiopia which they had fled. ] Rather, the two most frequently noted reasons were the 4-5 days ] per week of compulsory work on collective farms and a category ] labeled simply "imprisonment prevents farm work", which says a ] lot about the state's priorities. ] Despite a desperate need for increased food production, peasants ] were jailed on such charges as failure to pay taxes, resisting ] the confiscation of land, trading outside government channels, ] refusing to arrest a neighbor as part of militia duty, working ] the fields during a political seminar or literacy class (fre- ] quently mentioned by refugees), suspicion of assisting the Oromo ] Liberation Front, and publicly objecting to government decisions. ] Still another problem was the confiscation of guns. The major ] result of this policy was to give free rein to foraging animals, ] such as baboons, who were capable of destroying an entire year's ] harvest unless killed or driven away. [..] Read it all, it is very instructive. >Meanwhile, the desert marches on. A misleading statement - considering that the amount of arable land in the world keeps growing. Much is lost, more is gained. The green revolution is opening former wastelands to agriculture. >Anyway, the point I was making was simply that famine exists in the world >today. Saying that it might not have to if politics didn't get in the way >is irrelevant. If that's the point, then it is itself irrelevant to the "limits to growth" discussion. Famine exists - but is it caused by popu- lation growth? *That's* the point. Well, it is definitely *not*. There would be more sense in blam- ing famine on *underpopulation*. World population has grown, famine has receded. Worldwide, there's a tremendous glut of grain now (even Sudan, Ethiopia's neighbor, has a large surplus). Politically induced famine is no more relevant than anorexia. Jan Wasilewsky
cliff@rlgvax.UUCP (04/15/87)
In article <121700003@inmet>, janw@inmet.UUCP writes: > > [howard@cpocd2.UUCP ] > >Meanwhile, the desert marches on. > > A misleading statement - considering that the amount of arable > land in the world keeps growing. Much is lost, more is gained. > The green revolution is opening former wastelands to agriculture. Consider that this growth in arable land is frequently (usually?) at the expense of forest land, not wasteland. > Famine exists - but is it caused by popu- > lation growth? *That's* the point. > > Well, it is definitely *not*. There would be more sense in blam- > ing famine on *underpopulation*. World population has grown, > famine has receded. Worldwide, there's a tremendous glut of > What? How do you measure famine receding, in a lesser absolute number of people who go to bed hungry, or proportionally to the population? Many would scoff at the assertion that famine has lessened in the modern world. While certainly politics and war can be, and probably frequently are, especially in northeast Africa and Mozambique, the major component causing famine, to claim that overpopulation does not contribute to famine (poverty) is simply ludicrous. At the very least, you can claim that overpopulation make war, and the ensuing famine, much more likely. Absolute causal statements about complex social issues should always be held suspect. -- O-----------------------------------------------------------------------> | Cliff Joslyn, Computer Consoles Inc., Reston, Virgnia, but my opinions. | UUCP: ..!seismo!rlgvax!cliff V All the world is biscuit shaped