OK, it appears if you buy into the global warming thing we are probably all dead in a few hundred years. Somewhat related, whats the prevailing wisdom with overpopulation? I guess if we have 6 billion people now and are increasing at 1-2 % each year, gets us doubling population every 40-50 years. OK, so that would be 12 billion people somewhere by 2060 and what 24 billion people some time around year 2110 or so. I dont think the planet and its limited resources (food, water, land) is going to handle that many people and at what point does this get us all first?
Don’t worry, mother nature will take care of the human problem one way or the other, be it a worldwide epidemic or whatever. I’ll already have died before then, but worry about my great grand kids.
so should this be a bigger issue for our leaders to be focusing on rather than global warming?
Actual Pedalsaurus, if you buy into actual science, we will not all be dead in a few hundred years, it will simply be 4 to 10 degrees warmer, on average, over the globe. This may or may not lead to massive loss of life. Nobody really knows.
Nobody knows what sort of human population the globe can support, it depends on the technologies we develop, our politics, and our resources.
I personally suspect that as oil production is now declining rather than increasing for the first time in industrial history, that things will get a bit nasty quick, if population keeps growing.
but then a breakthrough in fusion power or something could change that.
OK, it appears if you buy into the global warming thing we are probably all dead in a few hundred years. Somewhat related, whats the prevailing wisdom with overpopulation? I guess if we have 6 billion people now and are increasing at 1-2 % each year, gets us doubling population every 40-50 years. OK, so that would be 12 billion people somewhere by 2060 and what 24 billion people some time around year 2110 or so. I dont think the planet and its limited resources (food, water, land) is going to handle that many people and at what point does this get us all first?
so should this be a bigger issue for our leaders to be focusing on rather than global warming?
I think we could definitely all live happier, more comfortable lives if somehow the world governments could get world population down to 2 or 3 billion and keep it there.
There is a happy medium where you have lots of people doing lots of thinking and creating, but not so many that you are wallowing in your own shit.
But how to do that without fascist governments?
geesh if you think getting into an Ironman now is a pain in the ass, try regsitering with 20 billion others at the same time…
geesh if you think getting into an Ironman now is a pain in the ass, try regsitering with 20 billion others at the same time…
Well presumably the markets would triple the number of ironmans as the population triples
However, will there be enough space left to host ANY ironmans at such a population?
You’re forgetting about Friday, April 13th, 2029. That should buy us an extra century or so.
I hope NASA has double checked their math there
You’re forgetting about Friday, April 13th, 2029. That should buy us an extra century or so.
You’re forgetting about Friday, April 13th, 2029. That should buy us an extra century or so.
worry not… Bruce Willis and Ben Afleck are going to drill through that space rock, while Aerosmith rocks out! Its all good… Drill baby drill!
OK, so that would be 12 billion people somewhere by 2060 and what 24 billion people some time around year 2110 or so. I dont think the planet and its limited resources (food, water, land) is going to handle that many people and at what point does this get us all first?
We have plenty of resources for 24 billion people… they just won’t be able to live the way we are accustomed to, and there won’t be much room for other large land animals.
I’d like the world better with considerably fewer people though.
Considering gobal warming, a warmer earth will cause problems but it might also prove a blessing by making more of the land inhabitable. The much bigger potential issue is an ice age. The warm period we’ve been enjoying for ~10k years is an anomoly that has already lasted longer than most.
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/images/global_temp2.jpg
but then a breakthrough in fusion power or something could change that.
This is where it’s really going to be at- it takes a LOT of power to run a desalination plant, and that’s where Africa and Asia will need to turn for water.
"We have plenty of resources for 24 billion people… they just won’t be able to live the way we are accustomed to, and there won’t be much room for other large land animals. "
We’re already starting to see more and more technology to work on this. We have 70% of the Earth covered by water which can be used for expansion of population centers. We can also always keep building “up” with cities taking on more and more altitude in living and business spaces. Plus, there’s tons of land that is not developed above an agricultural use. We already know how to grow things and animals in enclosed artificial environments. It wouldn’t be a stretch to see more of those, and less “farm” land. It’s a shame that lots of the natural beauty will continue to disappear, but that seems to be kind of the inevitable way of things, unless some cataclysmic event occurs first.
There is an intriguing theory that human population was already poised to exceed K (capacity for the environment to sustain a population of organisms) at some point in the late nineteenth century, if I remember correctly. The Industrial Revolution saved our bacon that time. If I remember the figures correctly, food production per unit of land had already roughly tripled between the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century, as a result of improved agricultural methods. (The resulting surplus of wealth was what made standing armies and modern nation states possible.) Mechanization has improved yields tenfold or more over what they were originally.
It’s always difficult to extrapolate too far into the future because technology has a tendency to change the playing field pretty drastically. In recent centuries, there have been predictions both overly pessimistic (England’s economy would collapse because of the impending shortage of wood for shipbuilding) and optimistic (Maine’s economic outlook was bright because of its large supply of vitally important raw materials: wood for shipbuilding, slate for roof shingles, granite for building construction and street paving, and lime for making plaster.)
The green revolution post WWII was very similar. We were running up against the theorized global carrying capacity until scientific advancement made it possible to get more food out of each parcel of land. Surely the next “revolution” would have to involve increased energy efficiency.
Tough to say. Gets a little unnerving when you think of the case of Ireland - potatoes (a South American plant) had been very effective at sustaining a high population by providing more calories per acre than any other available crop. Then the blight hit in 1845 . . . Modern agriculture is probably just as vulnerable, with so little genetic diversity.
“K” can change pretty drastically without much notice.
In Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” he extrapolates that at the current rate of population growth, humans will weigh more than the entire earth weighs in something like 750 years. By then, there will be 10 people for every 10 square meters of solid ground or something like that. I lent the book out, but I do recall the numbers are staggering. Excellent book.
The truth is the planet can barely handle the current 6-7 billion. 2-3 billion of us are super poor and barely surviving as it is. 10 to 12 billion will be tops, even with technological breakthroughs. When it gets really bad, people will just have to stop having kids. It’s already happening in some countries, and not just because governments force it on people.
I’m pretty excited that I get to go see Jared Diamond speak next Tuesday. It should be interesting.
Most of the theories being proposed are based upon collected data that is interpreted using computer models and simulations. However, these models are often inaccurate on the long term due to the complex processes that occur. They simplify the processes by using predetermined 3 dimensional grid cells that often employ mathematical/statistical limits in order to make the calculations feasible. Temperature data often has to be accurate to several decimal places in order to improve the long range forecast. This is one of the reasons why there are so many different times proposed for the consequences resulting from global warming (if you can even place “start” time).
On a note of population growth, it has been suggested that population growth is in fact going to follow a Gaussian curve, and we are currently on the uphill portion.
It does not matter whether one accepts global warming or not, what is important to consider, is that the trends of increasing CO2 concentrations are considered to be entirely anthropocentric. There have been higher recorded levels of CO2 concentrations in the past, but they do not compare to the rapid increase catalogued over the past 150 years.
Thought I’d add some fuel to feed the fire. I learned today from an atmospheric microphysicist that it is extremely hard to predict the rain for the next few days, while here we are trying to “guess” at what the world will do over the next millennia.
OK, so that would be 12 billion people somewhere by 2060 and what 24 billion people some time around year 2110 or so. I dont think the planet and its limited resources (food, water, land) is going to handle that many people and at what point does this get us all first?
We have plenty of resources for 24 billion people… they just won’t be able to live the way we are accustomed to, and there won’t be much room for other large land animals.
I’d like the world better with considerably fewer people though.
Considering gobal warming, a warmer earth will cause problems but it might also prove a blessing by making more of the land inhabitable. The much bigger potential issue is an ice age. The warm period we’ve been enjoying for ~10k years is an anomoly that has already lasted longer than most.
http://www.seed.slb.com/...ges/global_temp2.jpg
If the earth is hotter the polar ice caps will melt and raise sea levels, thereby submergering huge amounts of existing land.