We need a war.

[Weebull]

I remember reading a P.J. O'Rourke book that said if the population of the planet all lived in a giant city with the population density of New York City, it would fit within roughly two states of america.

EDIT: According to some rough maths, you could apparently fit everyone into Texas!

 

[Nitefly]

vertical farming. Almost limitless food production.

In theory yes, but I'm not sure in practice its without its own problems.

How will soil be kept suitable despite sustained use? Is it right that conventional farmers will most likely go broke as the price of crops are reduced? If conventional farming is abandoned, what about the wildlife which relies on farming ecosystems? Will the removal of parasitic / viral vectors give enhanced selection for new devastating crop diseases?

So yes, its not without its own burdens.

 

[havoc08]

the real reason they will never completely cure cancer...population control.

 

[Nitefly]

the real reason they will never completely cure cancer...population control.

Hooray for assumption.

 

[Amp34]

it's going to happen. Or more likely we will start living underground so you still have countryside. Lots of possibilities and solutions. World wide we have hardly touched landmass. Even in England there's is loads of open fields compared to large cities.

Because open fields are natural?

Only something like 10% of UK landmass is actually natural, the rest is all man made baby, and you can see how just a slight change in the British landscape is affecting wildlife here, with extinctions galore already and hundreds/thousands of what used to be common animals/birds 50 years ago on the threatened/endangered list.

No, they may not be concrete yet but a lot of it is tantamount to it with respect to the affect on wildlife.

Now expand that globally, you have areas the size of Wales being deforested and turned into man made landscape every year, in just ONE country, even areas you think are pristene generally aren't. Travel across the US and you will notice, even though it has lots of space there is human activity almost everywhere. There is only a tiny percentage of pristene land left on Earth, and most of that is on Antarctica.

Even the seas and oceans are being affected, not just the overfishing and destruction of places like the North Sea, researchers have found affects as far away as the deep sea and abbysal plains, with beer cans found in km of water depth off the coast of the US and a huge area in the Pacific which is covered in plastic remnants (i'm talking thousands of square km). These in turn are affecting life not already threatened by fishing and other hunting activities.

Whales are a good example, within about 100 years whale populations collapsed, with extinctions and seriously threatened species only just surviving. A ban on hunting has helped but it will take hundreds of years to get back to their previous numbers, and even now Japan is complaining that the increase in Whales is a decrease in their fish stocks (how real that really is, well...).

Yes humans probably could survive with say 20 Billion people but earth would hardly be recognisable for those of today. I guess the only good things are I won't be here to see it and humans probably will be wiped out by something and the earth will only take a few million years to get back to a semblance of normality.

 

[eddiemcgarrigle]

With the rise of militant Islam, I expect there to be a war of faiths within the next 30 years. A reverse Crusade if you will. More and more young muslims seem to be supporting the Jihadists and with rising tensions between Pakistan and India I think it may be the spark that lights the fight.

 

[Glaucus]

In theory yes, but I'm not sure in practice its without its own problems.

How will soil be kept suitable despite sustained use? Is it right that conventional farmers will most likely go broke as the price of crops are reduced? .

Human toilet waste, apart from initial cost there aren't drawbacks.
No as there will always be a demand for organic naturally grown food, but would be at a heavy price premium.

 

[Tefal]

How will soil be kept suitable despite sustained use? Is it right that conventional farmers will most likely go broke as the price of crops are reduced? If conventional farming is abandoned, what about the wildlife which relies on farming ecosystems? Will the removal of parasitic / viral vectors give enhanced selection for new devastating crop diseases?

So yes, its not without its own burdens.

1) don;t need soil could use hydroponics (after we get over the difficulties of such a system, but once it;s economically viable that should be easy)and the chemicals would ideally be easier due to what ever energy source we are using to power such farms. but economics dictate that a new production method would arise.

2) conventional farmers would have long since died out by this point and replaced by large cooperate farms, aside from high price speciality goods.

3) **** the animals, let some new ones evolve or adapt, why should we care.


4) we could probbably keep the farms hermetically sealed if nessacery and kill pretty much anything we don;t want off. but GM might help with resistance as theres no risk of them spreading to the wild (but at this point the wild is already ****ed and this is about survival, people wont care if the country side dies, if the alternative is their children dying)

5) fortunately the burdens liy on others not us.

 

[Nitefly]

Yes humans probably could survive with say 20 Billion people but earth would hardly be recognisable for those of today. I guess the only good things are I won't be here to see it and humans probably will be wiped out by something and the earth will only take a few million years to get back to a semblance of normality.

Not necessarily. Remember, the environment is dynamic, not in equilibrium.

 

[Glaucus]

Yes humans probably could survive with say 20 Billion people but earth would hardly be recognisable for those of today. I guess the only good things are I won't be here to see it and humans probably will be wiped out by something and the earth will only take a few million years to get back to a semblance of normality.

and earth is hardly recognisable of that 10 thousand years ago. No there's is much totally natural landscape left. But farming has benefited some species and disadvantaged other species. Just like any natural event would. The world is constantly evolving and changing. Species dissapear and new ones pop up..

it's always been the way of the world and always we will, all we do is speed it up.

 

[Weebull]

the real reason they will never completely cure cancer...population control.

 

[Glaucus]

the real reason they will never completely cure cancer...population control.

idiot..

 

[Amp34]

An interesting point.

Should we draconianly limit our numbers by refusing to give resources? Should we destroy more wildlife for commercial farming purposes? Should we enhance our crop production by promoting GM food stuffs? Even then, at what limit can those techniques be useful?

There isn't a clear answer.

True, we are in a downwards spiral really, our medicine and farming methods are helping increase the population but an increase in population means more farming and so destruction. The exponential look of the population chart is a real worry to me, say 60-100 year before we reach 20 Billion?

What can we do about it? Well before we took our destinies into our own hands (...badly worded but I hope you realise what I mean) we were subject to population controls of food, war and mainly health. The only tink I think that will stop an increase of that much is a natural disaster, and by that I don't mean a few thousand people starving, I mean hundreds of millions dying due to a plague/volcanic explosion/meteor.

We can talk about government action, birth control, education etc. but in reality it will never happen, either because there is no government willing/powerful enough or because we don't have the resources.

 

[Gashman]

Because open fields are natural?

Only something like 10% of UK landmass is actually natural, the rest is all man made baby, and you can see how just a slight change in the British landscape is affecting wildlife here, with extinctions galore already and hundreds/thousands of what used to be common animals/birds 50 years ago on the threatened/endangered list.

No, they may not be concrete yet but a lot of it is tantamount to it with respect to the affect on wildlife.

Now expand that globally, you have areas the size of Wales being deforested and turned into man made landscape every year, in just ONE country, even areas you think are pristene generally aren't. Travel across the US and you will notice, even though it has lots of space there is human activity almost everywhere. There is only a tiny percentage of pristene land left on Earth, and most of that is on Antarctica.

Even the seas and oceans are being affected, not just the overfishing and destruction of places like the North Sea, researchers have found affects as far away as the deep sea and abbysal plains, with beer cans found in km of water depth off the coast of the US and a huge area in the Pacific which is covered in plastic remnants (i'm talking thousands of square km). These in turn are affecting life not already threatened by fishing and other hunting activities.

Whales are a good example, within about 100 years whale populations collapsed, with extinctions and seriously threatened species only just surviving. A ban on hunting has helped but it will take hundreds of years to get back to their previous numbers, and even now Japan is complaining that the increase in Whales is a decrease in their fish stocks (how real that really is, well...).

Yes humans probably could survive with say 20 Billion people but earth would hardly be recognisable for those of today. I guess the only good things are I won't be here to see it and humans probably will be wiped out by something and the earth will only take a few million years to get back to a semblance of normality.

your hilarious, thats all i can say, 10%

 

[Nitefly]

Species dissapear and new ones pop up..

it's always been the way of the world and always we will, all we do is speed it up.

Actually no. The rate of extinctions is currently exponential and at ~1000x the base rate of speciation.

Diversity is dramatically declining and we are losing many extant groups. There has been no major diversity event since the Cambrian explosion.

To say that 'new species pop up' is not factual. It would be incredibly naive to suggest otherwise than that the diversity of the planet is, at current projections, ******.

 

[Glaucus]

Actually no. The rate of extinctions is currently exponential and at ~1000x the base rate of speciation.

The base rate. There has been plenty of times of sudden mass extinction. Take dinosaurs. The earth and life on earth survive just fine.

maybe not new species but specie subgroups then. Who have changed to improve there chances of survival..

To say that 'new species pop up' is not factual. It would be incredibly naive to suggest otherwise than that the diversity of the planet is, at current projections, ******.

Total scaremongering and **** the earth will never be *****, it will happily go on with or without us. It will continue to support life and have species with or without us.

 

[Tefal]

the real reason they will never completely cure cancer...population control.

Retard.

 

[Nitefly]

1) don;t need soil could use hydroponics (after we get over the difficulties of such a system, but once it;s economically viable that should be easy)and the chemicals would ideally be easier due to what ever energy source we are using to power such farms. but economics dictate that a new production method would arise.

2) conventional farmers would have long since died out by this point and replaced by large cooperate farms, aside from high price speciality goods.

3) **** the animals, let some new ones evolve or adapt, why should we care.


4) we could probbably keep the farms hermetically sealed if nessacery and kill pretty much anything we don;t want off. but GM might help with resistance as theres no risk of them spreading to the wild (but at this point the wild is already ****ed and this is about survival, people wont care if the country side dies, if the alternative is their children dying)

5) fortunately the burdens liy on others not us.

I'm not asking for answers. You even list some assumption yourself (in bold). I'm merely pointing out problems.

 

[Tefal]

Actually no. The rate of extinctions is currently exponential and at ~1000x the base rate of speciation.

Diversity is dramatically declining and we are losing many extant groups. There has been no major diversity event since the Cambrian explosion.

To say that 'new species pop up' is not factual. It would be incredibly naive to suggest otherwise than that the diversity of the planet is, at current projections, ******.

although this is merely due to the mathematics that the species that survie are better than the ones that die, theoretically 1 species would be the perfect solution. A race that requires nothing other than it;self, practically the peak of evolution. (by it's self i mean physically, humans can technically do that with technology but that's cheating )

 

[Glaucus]

I'm not asking for answers. You even list some assumption yourself (in bold). I'm merely pointing out problems.

I've already told you conventional farming will never die, just look at organic farming as people get more knowledge things liek taht will only iincrase. However you still need cheap reliable food.

Vertical farming solve many current problems. Human waste would be used for food nutrition, a bi-product of vertical farming is clean fresh drinking water. Powered by renewable energy. The cost is the large factory sized multi level buildings needed. Although current buildings can be modified.