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Can the planet support 11 billion people?
#11
Until the turn of the3 20th Century, the supportability of Earth was around 500 million humans. Understand the Technological Revolution (Industrial explosion) changed the rules a bit.

The invention of gasoline and a way to burn it to power machinery made it possible for mass farming with few individuals doing the work - thus the Great Migration of the species from rural family farms to the Cities.

The discoveries of all of the interesting chemicals that petroleum oil can produce, such as fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, plant disease controls lead to crop lands producing over ten times more food per acre.

All of that coupled with pumps to drain ground water (such as what is happening in the grain belt, draining of Ice Age water deposits that are NOT being replaced by today's precipitation rates, dam building, irrigation canals created arable land where the land wasn't arable (usable for farmland).

The food aspect here is one of the main problems we face as the population continues to grow. The other problem is pollution of fresh water resources.

Back before the industrial revolution, most rivers, lakes and streams one could drink directly out of, but due to industry, deforestation, mining, and other human activities (road building being chief amongst these) clean, non-toxic water is becoming scarce.

While its true that many methods have come up to turn 'iffy' water resources into ultra clean
(as compared to water 200 years ago), humans have, through this activity reduced the ability to drink natural water which is typically not that pure to begin with. The more industrialized a nation is, the more prone to simple water borne illness the citizens become. So a US citizen traveling to Mexico drinks the water of Mexico (which isn't more polluted, its just less chemically sterilized) and gets sick.

We are finding that our water is being filled with filth, from runoff of pesticides, herbicides and even fertilizers which make it possible for an acre of land to sustain ten times the people it once did. So our ability to feed more people has lead to loss of water which is one of those substances that are vital to life.

The other aspect to the whole "Can Earth Hold More People?" question is basic resources.

Back in the 1800's petroleum deposits were near the surface, many areas the oil was literally oozing out of the ground. In the 1930's we discovered vast deposits of oil in the ground, the problem was getting at it as pumps and drill technology wasn't up to the task. Today we readily pump up oil that in the depression era was unattainable.

And it is not just oil. Most minerals and metals that were easy to reach with a pick and shovel and more primitive methods of mining are gone. We now rely heavily on our technological ability to dig deeper than ever before.

Should something happen to wipe out civilization as we know it today, leading to the loss of our current technologies, a second Industrial Revolution cannot happen - there are not the easy to reach mineral resources that allowed Industrial Revolution One.

Waste Management is currently being done very poorly, we still just bury most of our vital materials and resources once whatever we made it into breaks.

The current "economic" system of free capitalism is burning through materials at a rate that has lead to our entering the era of Peak Everything. Each phone that is designed to be replaced two years later is how we are doing everything.

200 years ago the average house was designed and build to last 200+ years. Today the typical house is built to "survive" 50 years - however most of the stuff inside of the houses are designed to fail within a decade in order to force home owners to replace stuff.

In Europe there are houses centuries old which will last for more centuries to come. Many of the historic buildings built prior to the 20th Century have roofs that have lasted for centuries with only minor patching.

Today's modern sky scrapers start leaking as soon as they are erected.

If humanity doesn't step back and look at how wasteful it is, if humanity doesn't immediately change agriculture to perma-culture, and stop fishing the oceans instead of farming the oceans - our ability to feed the already existing population will fail in less than 50 years. Adding more hungry mouths to a world with millions starving to death is pure insanity.

There is only one option for humans to thrive and continue having its numbers increase is to get off this planet.

The moon's surface contains enough raw material to sustain 10 billion humans for 500 years. The asteroid belt contains enough materials to sustain 10 billion humans for nearly a thousand years. The rings of Saturn contains enough water to fill the earth's oceans nearly 20 times. And that water is cleaner and purer than virgin stream water on earth.

So the answer is a yes and no one.

IF humanity continues to rely soley on earth for its resources, no it cannot sustain ten billion people for any lenfgth of time worth talking about.

However, IF humanity starts getting into space - really into space, not just sending up probes and tiny machines, but serious base building and mining of moon and the asteroids - then humanity can up its numbers to easily 100 billion.

Mercury is the richest planet in the solar system when it comes to heavy metals. If humans decided to start mining Mercury in any serious manner, it can sustain 100 billion humans for well over two thousand years with everyone having every device and toy that we in the First World currently have.

But don't hold your breath. I fear that the world's governments are not designed to consider the long term, besides as history has taught, colonies of humans tend to rapidly grow weary of shipping resources back to their homeland and declare Independence and demand freedom from their "parent" nation.

Politicians only work toward short term goals to insure they win their next election - none can commit to the long term decades of investment(s) to reach out and truly become a space based species.

Oh sure, there are still a few very minor things to iron out when it comes to the technology to exploit space. But we tend to forget that everything we have today started off with minor problems which were ironed out.

The species is, I fear, doomed - as is a huge chunk of the rest of the species on the planet. Human intelligence is not an evolutionary advantage anymore, now it is a disadvantage - and species that are evolutionary disadvantaged become what we call "extinct".
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#12
This is how we're going to do it
Bernd

Being gay is not for Sissies.
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#13
I also believe in the resiliency and brilliance of the human mind. I also believe very strongly in the potential of the next generation. I dont think we will always live in the same way we live (as Americans, or as the industrialized west or industrializing east) but its important to comprehend that we also have not always lived like this either. I don't predict a utopia where there will be no suffering or inequality, especially when it comes to the effects of a growing population and lack of resources. But in the long run, I believe that humanity will continue to prosper, and whether the push for change results from preemptive action or only after a large disaster, I think we, as a whole, will prove able to adapt without population loss in the billions.
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#14
To be honest, I'm not so much worried about the earth. The earth has survived five catastrophic mass extinctions in its lifetime. Scientists report that 99.9% of all species that have ever existed on earth ARE extinct. Mind boggling, isn't it?

We (meaning us contemporary humans) are living in a kind of "bubble". Things are a certain way for us -- the global mean temperature, for example, has held steady more or less for the past 11,000 years (the Holocene period we currently occupy). To us, it seems things have always been this way, but that is far from the case:

Quote:[Image: VostokTemp0-420000%20BP.gif]
Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years based on the Vostok ice core from the Antarctica (Petit et al. 2001). The record spans over four glacial periods and five interglacials, including the present. The horizontal line indicates the modern temperature. The red square to the right indicates the the current 11,000 year Holocene period.

Most of us may not have everything we want but few of us go hungry for any length of time. However, approximately 800,000,000 (800 million) people alive today do not have enough to eat; poor nutrition accounting for the deaths of 3,100,000 children a year.

We are currently IN the sixth great extinction event. Some researchers claim that we are in the middle of a mass extinction event occurring faster than the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction (which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago).

Moreover, on the (time) spiral of life's evolution on earth, humanity occupies a very thin slice (the earliest organic structures occurring 3,000,000,000 years ago).

[Image: science-time-spiral.png]

So, to the degree I'm concerned at all (which isn't much, given the fact I'm already nearing 70 and don't expect to be around much more than another 10 to 15 years if that), I'm more concerned about the survival of humanity. True, we may take out a lot of other species with us and cause all kinds of mayhem along the way, but life is extremely adaptive. Even if, for a time, the earth is only habitable for cockroaches (or w/e), evolution will, in due course, fill in all the available niches.

How many of us could, if we had to, survive *without electricity, without food purchased at a super market, without running water or clean water, without contemporary medical facilities. How many of us know how to grow enough food to last us an entire year? How many of us know how to provide any of the necessities of life (food, clothing, shelter) having only hand tools and materials readily available? I'd say damn few of us (I know I couldn't).

AND YET, oddly enough, humanity has existed without ALL OF THAT for 10s of thousands of years. We (in developed nations anyway) take it all for granted as being "the way things are." But.... Yeah, that is how they are for us NOW, but that isn't how it was for even our great-great grandparents.

Moreover, the technological advances we are making are coming so fast now, there is no knowing what is to become of any of us. We're already interconnected around the world with our iDevices, but the first iPhone was released only 8 years ago.

What I'm saying here is I've lived long enough to know that the future will no more be like the present than the present is like the past. Things are going to change substantially in the next few decades. We can't even imagine (I certainly couldn't have imagined when we are now). That is *assuming* we *survive*... and I have every reason to suspect that may not be as much of a certainty as we'd like to believe.
.
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#15
well, it's 2015, 8 billion people, and the current headlines are:

--war in Ukraine
--migrant crisis is Europe
--Tianjin chemical explosion
--Greece in debt
--Iran nuclear crisis
--ISIS killings all over the place
--Taliban killing children and burning teachers alive in a school attack

...this is depressing. the world aka the human population is already falling apart at the seams at 8 billion. we've achieved this high level of intelligence and development, and we still can't even agree on something as harmless and simple as the right of two men to make a life with each other.

Kentucky Clerk Defies Court on Marriage Licenses for Gay Couples

Australia blocks free vote on same-sex marriage

what's the point?
''Do I look civilized to you?''
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#16
MikeW Wrote:We are currently IN the sixth great extinction event. Some researchers claim that we are in the middle of a mass extinction event occurring faster than the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction (which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago).

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/human-beings--...ml#QgpisMB
"You can be young without money but you can't be old without money"
Maggie the Cat from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." by Tennessee Williams
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