deialtrous

None of that has anything to do with the subject of discussion though. How are those US ranchers burning down the amazon? US beef consumption and production are completely irrelevant to the developing world burning forests to produce their beef, which again is what the article we're discussing is talking about.

I do not understand the relevance of that tabloid article. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. I live in Canada. All my beef comes from Canada. The fact that people in other countries burn forests to graze cattle does not mean that Canadians consuming Canadian beef cause those other countries to burn forests. My beef consumption is 100% irrelevant, they will burn the same amount of forest regardless of what I eat, because they are not burning it to feed me.

This is not a productive method of communication. You need to clearly state what you mean instead of expecting me to spend 5 comments asking questions to try to extract an actual meaning from your post. I have no idea what you think I inferred. I did not confuse correlation with causation, so you need to explain clearly what you think I mean, since it is not what I said.

But that hasn't happened. These people did not lose land from "extreme meteorological events". They simply exhausted the stored fertility in the soil, and it is cheaper to burn another chunk of forest than it is to purchase fertilizer. A hypothetical scenario that could happen in the future does not explain the actual scenario that the article we're discussing is about.

>It's true in East Asia as well.

No it isn't.

>In fact, where is it not true?

Everywhere? Nothing in your link contradicts what I said already. You can only make the correlation if you cherry pick start and end dates, and cherry pick western nations or nations that had coincidental birth rate declines like China. If the correlation is real and not spurious, then why doesn't it hold now? Why didn't it hold before the 1930s? Why has it never existed in Africa?

And what does that have to do with anything I said?

You can't say "you are completely wrong" and then support that by showing I am right. You showed 5 crops that produce more protein per acre than an absurdly low fake figure for beef. That's precisely what I said, that we would have to cut down to just a small handful of highest value crops. 5 is a small handful, we currently grow thousands. You know full well lettuce produces fewer calories and less protein per acre than beef. But you are not demanding that we stop growing lettuce, just beef. Your demands are inconsistent with the premise you use to support them.

Because none of the factors you list explain the difference. There is 100% scientific certainty that there is a genetic basis for the racial IQ divide. This was never a real debate, it was always reality being attacked by ideologues. But modern technology has simply side stepped the ideologues shouting "racist pseudo-science" at facts they don't like. Over a dozen specific genes have been isolated that affect IQ, both positively and negatively. The distribution of these genes in racial groups is as would be expected based on the measured IQs of those racial groups. Many people were conned by the "IQ isn't real it is racist pseudo-science" lie. I do not believe "DNA isn't real it is racist pseudo-science" will be as effective.

That's stopping growth, that's what I am suggesting we do. The alternative which I think can only be draconian is "modifying our behavior" to accommodate a huge population. This means eliminating almost all food in favor of the half dozen highest producing crops. It means eliminating all natural spaces and consuming all resources for ourselves and leaving nothing for non-humans. I can't see any reason why a high population is a good thing, much less so good that it warrants making all those lives as miserable as possible. A billion people with high quality of life and a diverse planet full of billions of creatures beats the hell out of a hundred billion people living like factory farmed chickens on a planet virtually devoid of non-human life.

That premise is only accurate if you are planning to have everyone consume livestock feed. If that is the plan, then you shouldn't be fixating on beef, you should be going after almost all crops we grow, which produce just as few calories per acre as beef, and even lower protein per acre. Depending on where you draw the line, your argument effectively requires all farms to only grow a small number of very high calorie crops like field corn and potatoes.