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Old 06-15-2015, 03:37 PM
 
3,840 posts, read 2,201,131 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by antinimby View Post
Is there a point where there is too much people? What is that number? 10 billion? 20 billion? 50 billion? 100 billion?
We'll be fine. People aren't having kids anymore. We're just barely at the replacement level.
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Old 06-15-2015, 04:06 PM
 
4,475 posts, read 6,665,222 times
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i think gravity will support the Earth just fine regardless of the number
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Old 06-15-2015, 04:39 PM
 
Location: Littleton, CO
3,158 posts, read 6,101,052 times
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So many misconceptions here.

1. Population growth is due to lower death rates, not higher birth rates. As life spans increase, the world will become more and more crowded.

Look at it this way. If you have a room where one person arrives every minute and leaves after 30 minutes in the room. At the 30 minute mark you will have 30 people in the room and population levels off. At the 31 minute mark, allow each person to stay 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes. What happens to the population? It grows, not because the rate at which people enter the room increased, but because everyone started to stay longer. If we increase the amount of time that each person stays, the room will become overcrowded.

Global fertility rates are at an all time low, but the longer people live, the more we will have on the earth at any given time.

2. At the present growth rate, the world adds 1 billion people every 12-14 years. The world hit 7 billion in 2011. It will hit 8 billion by 2025, 9 billion by the early 2040s. This will happen. There is this thing called demographic momentum (or sometimes population momentum). This is the phenomenon that population will continue to grow for a period of time even after a country reaches zero population growth.

Let's make another analogy. If you are speeding along in a car and you slam on the brakes, your wheels will stop turning, but the car's momentum will keep the car moving forward for a period of time before it comes to a stop.

3. We have a very precarious food production system.
-- We eat a lot of petroleum. Presently our food production system uses massive quantities of fuel to produce and transport food across the world. As demand increases for petroleum, the cost of food will rise.
-- We use a lot of chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers) that have degraded our farmland.
-- We are losing a lot farmland to urban sprawl, desertification, and other issues.

I don't know what our carrying capacity is, but we are headed to 12 billion, a number we will reach by 2100.
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Old 06-15-2015, 05:14 PM
 
Location: Cushing OK
14,539 posts, read 21,194,766 times
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Its not a question of how many of us can crawl the earth but how many without sacrificing the places and creatures which also own the planet. I wouldn't want to be born to a planet devoid of nature and the animals which live in deserted places. Nor would I wish to live trapped like a sardine in a can. So the better question is how many of us can live on this planet without destroying all that's worthy of its diversity.

And food supply will be the thing which stops growth in its tracks. We can't keep feeding our species in the same way for too long or we'll face natures correction.

The plagues hit europe when it had more people than ever before and they were perfectly crowded together. Europe and much of the world was no longer overcrowded after and there are lands there still gone natural which had been lived upon before. Maybe it will be plague or maybe nature which will do a quick correction in the count of humans on the earth. Yellowstone could wipe out much of north america all by itself, and over time make the sky dark enough to leave only pockets even in distant places.

When resources start lagging behind bodies, man or beast, something happens to even thinkgs our again.
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Old 06-15-2015, 05:55 PM
 
9,408 posts, read 11,897,676 times
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Space isn't the issue.There's plenty of space yet left expand into, though I hate to picture a planet where nearly every nook and cranny is developed. The issue is resources and the ability to distribute it to the masses. I think the single biggest factor that will effectively cap world population will be the availability of fresh water, both for drinking and for food production.
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Old 06-15-2015, 07:24 PM
 
Location: Elsewhere
88,229 posts, read 84,159,421 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by antinimby View Post
Is there a point where there is too much people? What is that number? 10 billion? 20 billion? 50 billion? 100 billion?
It doesn't matter. We'll be colonizing Mars.
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Old 06-15-2015, 09:08 PM
 
Location: LA, CA/ In This Time and Place
5,443 posts, read 4,658,582 times
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We are getting near the breaking point. I think one has to look at resoucres, not just space. In many places we have plenty of space to hold one or more billions of people.
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Old 06-16-2015, 02:22 AM
 
Location: The City of Brotherly Love
1,297 posts, read 1,220,589 times
Reputation: 3510
I'm 19 now, so it better be enough for my children when I'm married and into my career (hopefully neurosurgery)! I want to have four children.
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Old 06-16-2015, 02:23 AM
 
563 posts, read 521,619 times
Reputation: 1170
Default The Earth is Full, Please Come Back Later

Quote:
Originally Posted by antinimby View Post
Is there a point where there is too much people? What is that number? 10 billion? 20 billion? 50 billion? 100 billion?
The Earth cannot sustain those on it now. I would say, the most the Earth can add, at this point is 277 people. Period. Everybody just stop what you are doing. We have to wait for some others to check out before anyone new can arrive. Its not that hard. The Earth is like a hotel/restaurant. New people can come in after some check out. Makes sense. No?
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Old 06-16-2015, 02:40 AM
 
563 posts, read 521,619 times
Reputation: 1170
Default Enough is enough

Quote:
Originally Posted by OneDawg View Post
American's occupy less than 4% of the arable land - so it's not overcrowded here.
Can we fence it in, now?
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