I looked at the same article and this jumped out at me:
> The World3 model is based on five variables: "population, food production, industrialization, pollution, and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources. At the time of the study, all these variables were increasing and were assumed to continue to grow exponentially, while the ability of technology to increase resources grew only linearly
As we all know, almost all continents have a negative birth rate with the exception of Africa [1]
Large populations such as China with their one child policy, have curtailed their population growth.
We've lost a significant amount of people in Russia/Ukraine, and now Gaza.
In some areas we have limited availability of surface water, and deep aquifers are being tapped in unsustainable manners.
Post-Covid mortality is trending down in many western countries too.
> We've lost a significant amount of people in Russia/Ukraine, and now Gaza.
An estimated 67 million people died in 2022 globally, and 134 million were born. Not to downplay the deaths in these wars, but from a global perspective they don’t move the needle that much.
> We've lost a significant amount of people in Russia/Ukraine, and now Gaza.
There must be this dick and today it's me. Warfare these days is mostly precise. It's no more throwing tanks at a problem but rather precise actions to destroy infrastructure. There is no dehousing strategy to break people's support for war.
Statistically seen, significant without numbers doesn't mean anything anyway. However as we are talking about people, any discussion like that is in danger to enter a terrain of technocracy. Ad an unaffected, we shouldn't lead such a discussion
Precision warfare is a misleading propaganda term used to make people think that we can hit a target and minimize collateral damage to whitewash war crimes and make people accept often illegal and immoral acts of mass murder...
"Precision, outside of the confines of military manufacturers and strategists, has taken on a new meaning that implies exactness with minimal unwanted damage. A focus on the razzle-dazzle of high-tech precise weapons conveniently avoids inconvenient questions about the legality and success of aerial warfare. This adapted usage has been reproduced by mainstream media outlets, especially in the US and UK, with little scrutiny. We are left with the widespread use of a word, fuzzed up and detached from its initial definition, that serves to benefit those in power seeking the extension of their military might overseas.
"
Misleading though the term is, it's much milder than it used to be. The current conflict in Gaza is hard to get propaganda-free figures for, but it's not "everyone", and in Ukraine likewise propaganda makes it hard but the estimates are in the tens to hundreds of thousands.
Disease is much much worse than war, even in the bad old days (WW1 17 million vs Spanish Flu 25-50 million), and today the comparison is with covid: even if Gaza was literally nuked with 100% fatalities, that's 2.4 million people, whereas Covid deaths, according to wikipedia, are:
> 6,988,666 (reported), 18.2–33.5 million (estimated)
Don't think this is only for civilian consumption and mass-media war
propaganda.
Everyone is taken in by technological razzle-dazzle. Especially the
generals and politicians.
That's how a certain country ended up spending an extra £100k per
round to add high precision GPS targeting and guidance to wide
dispersal flechette munitions. Now we can attack a square kilometre,
with an accuracy of 50cm. Perfect for when you need to take out an
enemy column right next to a school sports day, right?
Most of us are taken in by the merest technological puff and bluster,
with words like "precision", "accuracy", "power", "security" having no
common meaning whatsoever. It's why we're in such a mess with privacy,
cybersecurity and the like, because those in charge are good at
comparing numbers but haven't the least idea what they're talking
about at the most fundamental conceptual level.
"Precision" only means a little in densely populated areas, and there's not even a pretence at precision in the artillery exchanges taking place in Ukraine.
Not really sure why you'd make that point when you could argue with considerably more force that the number of people being bombed in both conflicts is a rounding error in terms of global population modelling.
> The World3 model is based on five variables: "population, food production, industrialization, pollution, and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources. At the time of the study, all these variables were increasing and were assumed to continue to grow exponentially, while the ability of technology to increase resources grew only linearly
As we all know, almost all continents have a negative birth rate with the exception of Africa [1]
Large populations such as China with their one child policy, have curtailed their population growth.
We've lost a significant amount of people in Russia/Ukraine, and now Gaza.
In some areas we have limited availability of surface water, and deep aquifers are being tapped in unsustainable manners.
Post-Covid mortality is trending down in many western countries too.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate