Population 7 Billion

[Larks2242 251]

Originally posted by: dghh70

I welcome overpopulation, because it gives us a legitiment excuse to develop the science and exploration industry when i become an adultquote>

You say that now, but when resources such as food and water start to become exhausted from higher demand, it will present alot of problems.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There, you see!  Our little microcosmic debate can't agree, and attacks all arguments.  Imagine the fun you could have in a world-wide organization.

First of all, we have the pragmatists who try to offer solutions.

Then we have the libertarians to object to controls.

But we really haven't heard from the general theorists, because there is not enough information, and can never be.

Maybe we sould all read Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Propsal".  Dean Swift was a great humorist.  (Think of it as Soylent Pink).

[Paulobergonci 673]

7 billion is a lot of people D:

and already theres places in the earth where people dont have food.

[dghh70 5]

I meant it gives us an excuse now. The truth is this is a problem and we need to use science and exploration to solve it now. There needs to be another scientific rennensance to fight this problem

[quicksilver991 37]

Originally posted by: dghh70

I meant it gives us an excuse now. The truth is this is a problem and we need to use science and exploration to solve it now. There needs to be another scientific rennensance to fight this problemquote>

It's about time we had one of those, to fix the problems that our other scientific renaissances created. Hmmm.. now does that sound short-sighted?

[dghh70 5]

lol. i sounded stupid, but really we need more scientific research

[sneakeypete 16]

Originally posted by: Easy Bakes

but thiers not going to be another mass die out. At least not one due to diease or famine.

these last couple flu  "epidemics" they  warn us about never come to pass anymore because they are very quickly

discovered and their spread is arrested before it can spread far. 100 years ago the H1N1 would have probabaly killed 1/2 of central mexico.

quote>

Yes, but in 100 years time when (if?) the world population reaches 10 billion, and there's a drought in africa and a major storm in europe and a flood in the US, there'll be a dam lot of starving people. There you go, dieout. Small, yes, but its still most likely to be there and be ugly.

[quicksilver991 37]

Originally posted by: dghh70

lol. i sounded stupid, but really we need more scientific researchquote>

No, I wasn't calling you short-sighted, I was calling the Industrial Revolution short-sighted for relying on such a finite resource.

[Cobraroll 138]

It's simple, really: Growth can't go on forever. That's just physics, or the laws of reality. We've seen countless examples on it throughout history, we will see countless more examples. Yet, we seemingly can't face it.

The entire economical system worldwide relies on growth. Once the growth stops (or, more specifically, once people realise that growth has stopped, as any credit crisis will tell you), things plunge downward. If a country's economy stops growing, it's considered bad. Stagnation, even. We seem to have built our entire society upon the thought that we can keep growing forever.

I believe that the population will fall drastically sooner or later. Whether it's Arab terrorists who manage to awake the bloodlust in the West, a large rock from space, war over resources, increasing poverty or Yellowstone saying hello again, the number of humans in one area will plunge one day. However, it will take a disaster to reduce the population. We can't manage to moderate ourselves. China tried, and now, the result is that one working man or (less likely, thanks to aforementioned problems) woman will have to feed two parents and four grandparents. Seven consumers of resources, one producer. Thanks to increased standard of living, it's more and more common that parents live to see their children retire from work. Then it will be up to the grandchildren to feed the family. How will elders be treated under these conditions? We've all had an old person in the family who can't take care of him/herself. In an ungrowing society, it will just be more of them.

My hope for humanity is that we one day manage to keep the population at an acceptable level (about a billion or so). That one day, countries and borders will be obsolete, and we live in the areas that can feed us, and kinda stop giving a damn about the rest. We don't have to populate the entire planet, after all. I'd be happy to see my country become overgrown again (not that we're terribly plagued by deforestation anyway, but I really feel that some areas shouldn't be populated by humans).

Now well. Whatever happens, things will work out in the end.

[Pipcard 20]

Originally posted by: Cobraroll

My hope for humanity is that we one day manage to keep the population at an acceptable level (about a billion or so)...

...Whatever happens, things will work out in the end.

quote>

Depopulation agenda much? This is not the answer.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

In the current circumstances we are part of the problem.  We can't be part of the solution, not because there isn't one, but we haven't found one which will find general acceptance.  There are too many agendas in too many places.  The number of variables is unknown, so the problem is incommensurable.

Given the capabilities of the planet to support life here in the Goldilocks zone, we need to do certain things that are anathema to a large segment of our society.

1. Stop dumping waste all over the planet.
2. Stop overfishing the oceans.
3. Stop exhausting the land by forcing too many crops without proper land care.
4. Stop land banking, and grow food instead.
5. Stop making food into automotive fuel use waste oils instead.
6. Stop making automobiles that fall apart in three years.  Use the metals for something else besides fat cat bonuses.
7. Stop making internal combustion engines.  There are many better ideas that work.
8. Start doing some real engineering for manufactured goods that last a long time.
9. Start thinking about everyone on the planet as a part of our society.
10. Stop playing with toy rockets and get on with some real science.
11. Start thinking about living with climate change.  You are not King Knut and you can't stop the tide either.
12. Start working with nature instead of trying to control or destroy it.
13. ...
14. ...

This list can go on for a long time.  Man is the problem, and if he wants to be part of the solution, he should act before nature does.

[Easy Bakes 253]

13. Stop cutting down forests for farm land when there are abandoned farms every were that have been idle for years.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

It all depends on your definition of food. Corn can be refined into protein, fiber, starch/sugar/alcohol, and oil (or hydrogenated fats). When corn is made into fuel, the starch is turned into alcohol and the oil is mixed with it. The protein and fiber are used in food. The starch and oil would have otherwise been turned into junk food.

[beer_scnerd 1]

Population in human earth is reach to 7 billion. Does in the future not enough food for human ???

[DITRO 15]

Maybe I'm one of the "crazies," but I have great faith in technology to solve our problems. Thomas Malthus correctly realized that the population increases exponentially, but food increases only arithmetically. However he predicted that there would be large die-offs around 1890, and others later believed that 1/5 of the population would die by the late 1970s, and the rest of the world to soon follow. However, we are still here. Why were these people wrong in their predictions? Because they only viewed humanity as consumers and not producers. They doubted humankind's ability to engineer and innovate its way out of problems. We can all agree to disagree about legislative action, world governace, etc., but like dghh70 said, there needs to be another scientific renaissance, and there will be. And many of us are going to have a hand in it. Hydroponics(growing food without soil), hydrogen fuel cells, reliable spaceflight: while not mainstream, they are all here, and clever and engineering people will take advantage of them, as has been done with other technologies in humanity's past.

Happy New Year!

[Cobraroll 138]

Originally posted by: Pipcard

Originally posted by: Cobraroll

My hope for humanity is that we one day manage to keep the population at an acceptable level (about a billion or so)...

...Whatever happens, things will work out in the end.

quote>

Depopulation agenda much? This is not the answer.

quote>

I believe that it would be for the best if we let nature reclaim most of the world, and humans could "optimize" some regions for living. Instead of putting cities everywhere, and pollute pieces of land all over the planet, we could go denser. For example, moving most of the European population to the Mediterranean area, and let Mother Nature do whatever she wanted to everything north of the Alps. Similar things could in theory be done to other regions (abandon Australia, move all South Americans to the north coast, etc). With a population of seven or eight billion, this would mean a massive population density in the used areas, but it would be more livable if there were fewer of us.

Of course, today, this is extremely unfeasible today, or even in a hundred years. But in the long, long term, I think the planet would benefit if we centralized human activity. Use some areas for living, some for growing food and raising livestock, and let the rest grow freely.

[astronelson 339]

Originally posted by: Cobraroll

Similar things could in theory be done to other regions (abandon Australia...

quote>

Hey! I like it here!

Why abandon Australia? Most of it has been a massive desert for thousands of years. While logistically more of a pain, letting forests reclaim Europe and the grasslands return to North America would make more sense. We're already one of the most urbanised countries in the world, so most of us are used to life in the city.

You could use the large amounts of sunlight in the centre of Australia to generate electricity through solar power. Heck, there's probably enough energy available out there to supply most of this side of the world. Get the electricity up into Eurasia through the Indonesian archipelago and send it off to where it's needed.

Rather than abandoning Australia, merely let the current trend of urbanisation continue, but focus it more towards the major cities.

In fact, if the shipping, etc. was all worked out, you could move most of the world's population here and turn the rest of the world over to agriculture and nature. Desalination could possibly take care of most of the water issues. Everyone gets to live not too far from the beach, and you don't lose much land suitable for food production. I'm sure Mother Nature would prefer working with other things than the world's driest inhabited continent.

So, abandon the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa, and everyone move to Australia!

[GMT 389]

oh I don't know quite of what to think of this, while the negative thoughts concerning such a number seem to outweigh the positive (limited resources, all the current problems in those regions that are overcrowded now already, ironically many of them tend to have many children even)

But then again, I don't know what to think of "countermeasures" like a global 1 child policy either.

It means within 3 generations (given that it's mostly 3 generations living at the same time so it takes to say farewell to the grandparents until the first real decrease is measured) population decreases by 50% and from that time on 50% each time. Goes quite fast, in little over 150yrs (given that the gap between each generation is about 25yrs) the worldwide population would be as less than 0.5 billion.

Of course this helps in terms of overpopulation which would also help to drastically reduce resource depletion (what again would help to save the environment) and to a certain extent current social problems (especially from the 3rd world on down) would be at least eased.

But this would also call new problems. I'm not too much thinking of enforcing such a policy (just take parents expecting twins or triplets etc or the "accidental" pregnancy from failing contraception), but of political/financial/social problems like taxes, public service, insurances, economy...

Most of this and it's extent as we know it relies entirely on the sole number of people behind it and it would fail once the manpower decreases. (e.g. the already failed public german retirement fond system, where basically the grandchild-generation's payments into this fond are used to pay out the grandparents pension; failed because the age pyramid is flipping upside down, means less income than costs)

this basic pattern would apply to many other systems. Even if there was an enforced worldwide 1 child policy for just 1 or 2 generations, until the systems would have adjusted to the new state of being, hell would break lose I guess.

And everytime I think about it I wonder if such a new order would be worth the troubles getting there. I applaud the benefits, but "fear" the consequences.

[quicksilver991 37]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

1.  
2. Stop making food into automotive fuel use waste oils instead.

   quote>

I 100% agree. Ethanol is one of my pet peeves for several reasons.

1. Cars are not built to run on ethanol. The check engine light in my car keeps switching on, with a code about the emissions system. I believe ethanol to be the culprit.

2. There is no point. Putting 10% ethanol in fuel only saves a miniscule amount of gasoline.

3. It messes up the economy. Turning corn into fuel drives up corn prices around the world, and is wasted instead of feeding hungry people.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: beer_scnerd

Population in human earth is reach to 7 billion. Does in the future not enough food for human ???quote>

Welcome to Simtropolis.

From your screen name, you must be someplace in the Germanic sphere of languages.  You have many compatriots here.

I seem to remember from some studies that were broadcast in the last year or so, that the earth can support upwards of twelve billion mouths, and beyond that, things will get really tight.  Here in North America the word "starve" is academic, but in 1940s Europe it was quite meaninful.  If they are still with you, ask your grandparents how things were, especially in the low countries.

There is enough food or capability of producing it.  We sit in our chairs, comfortable at the keyboard, and speculate, but we really have no true feeling for what a famine or even a food-shortage means.  It is all theoretical like the idea of meeting a Polar Bear which would mean being eaten.

Our friend, DITRO, quite correctly states that we were rescued by our abilities as inventors and producers from the Malthusian Theory's predictions of mass extinction.  The advances of the late 19th and eary 20th centuries in mechanization and medicine have saved us from that fate, for now.  He is correct in that we need another injection of good invention and science.

The idea proposed by Cobraroll is obviously a gad fly for discussion.  The idea of man abandoning areas of the earth is not likely to go down well with anyone, let alone the friends at the antipodes.  If we could find a way to bottle energy (as Hydrogen, maybe) the insolation on the Austrailian desert could be used to export power, so why should anyone leave?  The cost of getting water into the desert for electolysis could be a big one-time cost for some kind of canals, but the resulting export of Hydrogen, to say nothing of Oxygen could make quite a splash in the Oz economy.  Somebody has to bite the bullet there, though.  Ownership of such a project has to be sold to everyone who is going to pay for it.

The idea of abandoning cities is not all that bad.  With our communications these days, why do we need people heaps?  The commercial jobs can all be decentralized.  As things are now, I do almost everything related to my staying alive from my computer, and I have to go out and mail one letter a month, and shop for groceries once a week.  If I had a shop-at-home service, and the one bill I pay by mail could be handled via a bank transfer, I could be a hermit or a troglodyte.  Not that I want to be a recluse, I enjoy going out.

I give the world about another fifty years, and cities will be museums where people will ask "I wonder why they needed this?"  The world's population will be spread out over the land in economical, ecologically friendly dwellings, individuals or in small clusters, among the farm lands.  The need for automobiles to get around will be a thing of the past.  If you need to go somewhere, the transit network will pick you up at home and deliver you to your destination, probably in a private travel pod.  Apparently, this is being worked on now as a replacement for tracked transport.  The generalized case with the use of GPS and satellite mapping should be fairly easy to accomplish.

[DITRO 15]

Yes, whether we choose to live in a higher-density system of cities, or if as Moose states, we spread out over the land, I think that the usage of automobiles as a primary means of transport will die out this century. Don't get me wrong, I like cars, and I expect people will still own cars, but not as many as today. To tie this into the game (why not after all?) I design my region with an extensive subway/el rail/light rail system, with very few highways, and it works great.

[dghh70 5]

Obama stop killing NASA. We need to find a way to colonize other places, so we won't over burden the earth. Destroy huge swaths of development in environmentally important places and and inhabit our planet's waste land.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: Cobraroll

I believe that it would be for the best if we let nature reclaim most of the world, and humans could "optimize" some regions for living. Instead of putting cities everywhere, and pollute pieces of land all over the planet, we could go denser. For example, moving most of the European population to the Mediterranean area, and let Mother Nature do whatever she wanted to everything north of the Alps.quote>

The problem with this sort of idea is an availability of resources. Availability of water starts to become an issue when you hyperurbanize. Natural resources are all over the place, not conveniently in areas you can choose to inhabit, so mining happens everywhere. And seven billion people don't suddenly require less food just because you cluster them together, so the need for farmland is just the same.

Besides, nobody is going to willingly just leave their home just because some power that be has decided that their region is supposed to be uninhabited, and forcing them is a human rights violation.

[EyeofMobius 27]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

Maybe we sould all read Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Propsal".  Dean Swift was a great humorist.  (Think of it as Soylent Pink).

quote>

Thank you A Nonny Moose. For anyone interested here is a link to a web trascript of "A Modest Proposal"

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080

I also highly recommend watching Monty Python's "Meaning of life" specifically for the complete Catholic vs. Protestant family raising issues. I can't quite find a link for the whole thing or a series of links that cover the major points of the bit on Youtube. I just thought of it through the observation of debate here.

There is much truth to what everyone here is saying on all sides and we address many of the issues discussed here far and wide across the forums. It is still nice to see fresh strands of debate on these things though.

I will put my hand in for scientific research but I don't really care about space travel until someone gets something really useful as a demonstratable prototype. The technology I want to see developed is biotechnology. Steven Colbert had a Geneticist on his show a few years back now and aside from the standard antics of the interview there was actually some worthwhile discussion of possibilities including small scale bio-reactors that could provide power to a building by using the waste produced by its inhabitants; very cool me thinks.

As far as farming goes the much of the abandoned farmland I am aware of has come about due to short term, high yield, high impact agriculture. There was a major craze for ginseng crops a while back which cause a number of people to grow ginseng; the problem came about when after I believe 4 growing seasons the ginseng had tapped the soil's nutrients and then nothing remarkable grows until the nutrients are replenished. We need to fix farming to be sustainable unlike factory farmed mono-crops if we want to secure a food source to support a fantastic population.

I still want to see disease ravage the human population. The last few outbreaks seem to have done little other than increase the sale of disposable sanitary products, manipulate economic markets and control the movement of people.

[Pipcard 20]

I'm not one of those crazy conspiracy theorists, but I wonder if overpopulation is just being used as an excuse to depopulate/exterminate/control people (I know this is extremist, not everyone is like this); also, what do you think about people who think that overpopulation is being used this way?

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Making fuel from corn is not a bad idea and should not increase the price of corn products other than corn starch, corn syrup, corn alcohol, corn oil, and corn margarine/shortening. White corn should see no price increase because yellow corn is higher in fat and starch. Eventually, we can make alcohol from waste corn (fiber/cellulose). Once cellulose is cheaply and easily converted into alcohol, starch and sugar could be once more redirected towards (junk) food production. Algae can be turned into fuel or food but the food aspect is currently undesirable because it is GMO (though Fred Meyer's sells "healthy" salad oil made from GM Algae).

[zapor1 7]

No worldwide 1 child policy. Infact, the 1 child policy made china's population grow even faster. Due to the 1 child policy people are still having babies, but some people have girls as babies. What happens to those girls is that girls can't work. Then they're usually sent to foster homes. Then those couples that got girls will just have another baby, then if that one turns to be a girl then that girls getting sent to foster homes too. That goes on and on until they have a boy so he can work.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Once upon a time, not very long ago, there was such a thing a crop rotation.  Farmers who grew crop A this year grew crop B next year, and crop C after that before returning to crop A.  This was planned out so that the rotation replenished the soil.  Grow the right stuff and the air, water, and sunshine will do the rest.  No chemincals required.

Tobacco, which has uses other than smoking, pulls nitrogen out of the soil, but if you grow peanuts in that field next year, the soil nitrogen will be replensihed.

Ask any agronomist, and you will find out what does which to the soil.  Blowing ammonia into your corn field can only work until the soil turns to dust.  Natural farming eliminates some of the risks of dust bowls.

[GuerrilaWarfare 39]

Originally posted by: JayStimson

The real problem is that it's the stupid people that are breeding the fastest.quote>

Theres actually a movie i saw on Comedy Central that the stupid people will have out grown the population of earth compared to more educated people, and in 500 years, the IQ or all humans on earth will be at 50 funny movie really lol. 

I forgot what it was called

Also on topic, i skimmed though this thread, and a lot of you are talking about major loss of food supply, you all realize most food consumed by humans are also Bred by humans, so it's practically a cycle, beyond that though other natural resources like Oil and Water aren't renewable, so we'd probably have to conserve things like that for when we extremely need them, and find other alternatives. ( except water of course, we need that always )

ALSO, i actually am all for " one-person policy " We can't bring a natural disaster upon our civilization whenever we want, so while we're waiting we might as well try to level out our population ourselves.

[dghh70 5]

Even though im anti gay. I think a solution is let gay people marry all they want and since gays can't have children they will adopt