Earth's Population, Sustainable Limit.

[sayak83]

Trying to remember here ... I think when Clinton was President, he attended a G-5 (?) Summit in Rio, and though not much was said about it, it seems that they felt that the maximum population for Earth should be around 3.5 Billion people.

Well, we are twice that now ... Hmmm

Another source that I read tonight puts that figure around 19 Billion.

I feel it should be the lower figure, but how?

Rising development and urbanization automatically decreases population growth rate. Population is expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050 and 11 billion at 2100. There it will stabilize or start to fall slowly. Already all the developed countries (except US) has fertility rates less than 2, and soon China, India and Latin America will join them. Beyond 2050, only Africa will have a fertility rate of over 2, but that will also decrease. below 2 by 2100.
World population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100 – says UN - United Nations Sustainable Development
Is it sustainable? That is a difficult thing to say. For example Japan and South Korea has a very high population density and very high development and quite clean environment. So its theoretically possible to create ultra dense well-developed urbanized zones like in Japan or Singapore throughout the world and leave the rest to wildernesses that help maintain this planet's ecological balance. US style suburban sprawl on the other hand will be disastrous.

The 2070 world will consist of mostly old people with much less young people. So automation has to come in massively to maintain our economies. There is a host of other issues of course.
Can the Planet Support 11 Billion People?

 

[sayak83]

There's no way to know how many people the Earth can sustain, because this depends partly on how much agricultural or mining and energy technologies advance. However, there seemingly isn't gonna be enough room eventually for everybody to live on Earth. Therefore, man-made biospheres will need to be constructed beyond Earth. Mars is likely the first place beyond Earth in our solar system to get a man-made biosphere that is an appreciable fraction in size comparable to Earth's biosphere.

The first step towards the terraforming of Mars is the deployment of a magnetic shield that protects Mars against the solar wind stripping of its atmosphere. This magnetic shielding would subsequently allow the planet's atmosphere to reacquire its former density that'd be high enough to allow for sustainable surface liquid water.

Reference: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magne...phere.html

An effective artificial magnetosphere placed at Langrangian point 1 from Mars is very achievable with foreseeable technology. This magnetic shielding apparatus could weigh less than a few hundred tonnes which is within the load capacity of a big Falcon 9 rocket. I'm guessing the cost of protecting the Martian atmosphere with an artificial magnetosphere would probably be similar to the cost of a small nuclear reactor.

Some few billion tonnes of sulfur hexafluoride gas (SF6) could increase Martian atmospheric surface temperatures by over 20 degrees Celsius. Sulfur hexafluoride - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The SpaceX interplanetary transport system could deliver this super greenhouse gas to Mars at a cost of less than $2,000/kg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mar...astructure

A few hundred thousand tonnes of SF6 delivered annually to Mars would cost just approximately $1/2 trillion yearly. This is less than a fraction of a percent of the global economic output value. An accumulation of a few billion tonnes of SF6 at an annual rate of a few hundred thousand tonnes would take less than ten thousand years. The annual cost of less than $100 per person per year on Earth would be totally worth transforming Mars into a world with triple its current atmospheric pressure and a warmer Mars with average surface temperatures greater than typical summer Antarctic temperatures.

Instead of terraforming Mars we should first terraform our deserts. Green deserts is a great idea, yes? The trial is already under way.
Project to turn desert green trials in Qatar - CNN

 

[Jumi]

We're living past our means, of course everyone's skeptical because the debt collector hasn't come to take enough that unobservant people can stick their heads in the sand still.

 

[Valjean]

Current population growth is not because of “breeding” rates. It is due to people living longer. It will stabilize by the end of the century. Also we can support all the anticipated increase with already existing knowledge and techniques. There is no unmanageable population problem.

Current rates of what?? The birth rate is already at a sustainable rate. Population growth will end within the lifetime of today’s children and population will then decrease.

It's not about room, It's about maintaining a healthy biosphere. We're already at an unsustainable level.

Using resources faster than they're being replenished is, by definition, unsustainable.
What we need to consider is our effect on the ecosystem. A successful parasite doesn't kill its host. We seem to be killing the Earth; initiating a sixth mass extinction event.

Without biological balance and diversity the systems we depend on will be seriously disrupted. It's this biodiversity that creates earth's salubrious climate, breathable atmospheric gas mix, &c.

 

[Valjean]

Instead of terraforming Mars we should first terraform our deserts. Green deserts is a great idea, yes? The trial is already under way.
Project to turn desert green trials in Qatar - CNN

No. Deserts have a function in maintaining a healthy planet. You can't just pluck sprockets out of a watch or organs out of an organism and expect them to go on working as before.
The biosphere is a system. We depend on it, and is already breaking down.

 

[Jumi]

Who actually says God revolves around the sun and needs some kind of physical objects?

 

[Salvador]

It's not really about the number of people, but how our lifetyles impact the environment. It's the rich, developed countries that are responsible for this mess.

The rich wealthy nations are those who produce food and medicine for the rest of the world.

 

[Salvador]

Why Mars? Why not our Moon? Wouldn't its closer proximity cut transportation costs, thereby allowing for more money spent on overall terraforming of it?

What do you think?

The moon lacks enough gravity for holding a protective atmosphere and also there are grave health consequences with the very low lunar gravity. Furthermore, the moon doesn't have nearly enough water for colonization' whereas Mars has a plentiful source of underground water and polar ice.

 

[Salvador]

Instead of terraforming Mars we should first terraform our deserts. Green deserts is a great idea, yes? The trial is already under way.
Project to turn desert green trials in Qatar - CNN

This would buy some extra time, but won't ultimately solve the world's overpopulation problems.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

The rich wealthy nations are those who produce food and medicine for the rest of the world.

Do you have evidence for that? I reckon a large amount, if not most, if the crops that end up being ingredients in products are grown in other countries, like palm oil, which has a devestating effect on the environment and indigenous people. Regardless, it's still the wealthy rich nations that are responsible for most of the waste and pollution.

 

[Jumi]

The rich wealthy nations are those who produce food and medicine for the rest of the world.

Food? Countries like India, Mexico, China, Brazil, Russia are among top producers. You wouldn't necessarily call them rich. Of course there's rich agriculture countries too.

Medicine produced in rich countries isn't what many in poor countries can really afford, so the poorer countries make their own generics for essential needs, if big pharmaceutical companies don't hold the rights.

 

[Stevicus]

Trying to remember here ... I think when Clinton was President, he attended a G-5 (?) Summit in Rio, and though not much was said about it, it seems that they felt that the maximum population for Earth should be around 3.5 Billion people.

Well, we are twice that now ... Hmmm

Another source that I read tonight puts that figure around 19 Billion.

I feel it should be the lower figure, but how?

This is what our future may look like:

"Scoops are on the way!"

 

[Revoltingest]

Can’t or refuse to? The fertility rates are reported by governments and compiled by the U.N. The data is out there hiding in plain sight.

He can't accept your data because they don't predict the future.
Trends can change.

 

[Valjean]

The rich wealthy nations are those who produce food and medicine for the rest of the world.

The rich, wealthy nations produce luxury foods and goods for themselves, as well as exploiting poorer nations as banana republics for the profit of multinational industries and the nationless billionaire class.
Most -- >50% -- of agricultural land here in the US, for example, is used to raise food for livestock, not people.

The moon lacks enough gravity for holding a protective atmosphere and also there are grave health consequences with the very low lunar gravity. Furthermore, the moon doesn't have nearly enough water for colonization' whereas Mars has a plentiful source of underground water and polar ice.

Mars' isn't much better. It has only a third Earth's gravity and, as a consequence, a very thin atmosphere, largely blown away by solar wind. It has little insolation, so colonists would have to make their own energy, probably with atomics.

I suspect permanent martian settlements would be prohibitively expensive to maintain and would include health challenges beyond those of low gravity.

 

[Quintessence]

I haven't kept up on the recent research on this issue, but there are various considerations in asking questions like "how many humans is too many?" Like most questions in conservation biology, it's one part science, but also one part values. We can certainly measure and analyze the impacts of various population levels on other aspects of the planet across species - that's the scientific part. But when it comes to asking whether or not these impacts should be the norm (that is, if they are "good" or "bad") that's where things enter into philosophy.

When I first decided to study life science, it was mainly because I'm a nerd and fascinated by the world around me. In particular, all the different kinds of organisms on our world were really cool to me, and I ended up studying mostly ecology and conservation. What I didn't expect along this journey was coming across data set after data set showing the impacts of human activity on this planet have kicked off a massive decline in the number of non-humans on this planet to the point we're in a sixth mass extinction event. Let that sink in for a moment. Humans have caused a sixth mass extinction event on this planet. And that's only part of the story, because extinction is only one type of biological impoverishment. Humans are also responsible for widespread extirpation and population reductions, even in species once believed to be common.

These sorts of changes are symptoms of overpopulation. There are many impacts overpopulation has on ecosystems, but among those are other species being hedged out, extirpated, or outright eliminated. This has been happening for decades on a global scale, because of humans. Many of the problems humans feel they face are also symptomatic of overpopulation and/or impacted by it, from immigration disputes to poverty. To my view, the question to ask isn't so much what the sustainable limit for human population is. The question to ask is what the limits are while also respecting the welfare of non-human persons and avoiding further biological impoverishment.

But I'm ecocentric in my values and worldview. I'm a pluralist, so I value diversity for its own sake. Many humans are quite anthropocentric and couldn't care less if they impoverish this planet (or other planets for that matter). These same humans are often the ones that speak of salvation through technology, science, or space exploration. Who cares if we trash this planet when we can just colonize a new one, right?

 

[Stevicus]

Mars' isn't much better. It has only a third Earth's gravity and, as a consequence, a very thin atmosphere, largely blown away by solar wind. It has little insolation, so colonists would have to make their own energy, probably with atomics.

I suspect permanent martian settlements would be prohibitively expensive to maintain and would include health challenges beyond those of low gravity.

But the women would have three breasts.

 

[Salvador]

Do you have evidence for that? I reckon a large amount, if not most, if the crops that end up being ingredients in products are grown in other countries, like palm oil, which has a devestating effect on the environment and indigenous people. Regardless, it's still the wealthy rich nations that are responsible for most of the waste and pollution.

The United States has long been a superpower in food markets – and it is still the world's largest food exporter.

Major Trends Disrupting the Food Industry

Give a man a fish, he's fed for a day. Teach a man to fish, he's fed for life. Many of these crap hole nations do indeed need to learn resourcefulness; there's plenty of ants and locusts in many places where people are malnourished. If third world class people there wouldn't be so fussy and dependent on developed nations like the U.S. to feed them, they could easily be self reliant on their own natural food sources.

 

[Salvador]

The rich, wealthy nations produce luxury foods and goods for themselves, as well as exploiting poorer nations as banana republics for the profit of multinational industries and the nationless billionaire class.
Most -- >50% -- of agricultural land here in the US, for example, is used to raise food for livestock, not people.
Mars' isn't much better. It has only a third Earth's gravity and, as a consequence, a very thin atmosphere, largely blown away by solar wind. It has little insolation, so colonists would have to make their own energy, probably with atomics.

As I'd just mentioned to Saint Frankenstein, Give a man a fish, he's fed for a day. Teach a man to fish, he's fed for life. Many of these crap hole nations do indeed need to learn resourcefulness; there's plenty of ants and locusts in many places where people are malnourished. If third world class people there wouldn't be so fussy and consequently dependent on developed nations like the U.S. to feed them, they could easily be self reliant on their own natural food sources.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

The United States has long been a superpower in food markets – and it is still the world's largest food exporter.

Major Trends Disrupting the Food Industry

Give a man a fish, he's fed for a day. Teach a man to fish, he's fed for life. Many of these crap hole nations do indeed need to learn resourcefulness; there's plenty of ants and locusts in many places where people are malnourished. If third world class people there wouldn't be so fussy and dependent on developed nations like the U.S. to feed them, they could easily be self reliant on their own natural food sources.

Because the rich countries certainly didn't become rich and stay rich by exploiting the "craphole countries". Yeah, the people are just too "lazy" and want to leech off of us.

 

[Salvador]

The rich, wealthy nations produce luxury foods and goods for themselves, as well as exploiting poorer nations as banana republics for the profit of multinational industries and the nationless billionaire class.
Most -- >50% -- of agricultural land here in the US, for example, is used to raise food for livestock, not people.
Mars' isn't much better. It has only a third Earth's gravity and, as a consequence, a very thin atmosphere, largely blown away by solar wind. It has little insolation, so colonists would have to make their own energy, probably with atomics.

I suspect permanent martian settlements would be prohibitively expensive to maintain and would include health challenges beyond those of low gravity.

Mar's gravity is approximately 38 percent that of Earth's gravity; whereas, Lunar gravity is less than 17 percent that of the Earth's gravity. My plan to terraform Mars would add over a trillion kilograms of mass to Mars and increase its gravitational strength to slightly more than 38 percent of the Earth's gravitational pull. ...

NASA's proposed artificial magnetosphere around the Martian Lagrange Point would keep a heavy greenhouse gas like Sulfur Hexafluoride from getting blown away in the Martian atmosphere by solar wind.