edpell
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Is over population an important issue? Can any actions be taken? Should any actions be taken? Can it be addressed locally or does it require a global approach?
edpell said:Is over population an important issue? Can any actions be taken? Should any actions be taken? Can it be addressed locally or does it require a global approach?
edpell said:Is over population an important issue? Can any actions be taken? Should any actions be taken? Can it be addressed locally or does it require a global approach?
edpell said:Is over population an important issue? Can any actions be taken? Should any actions be taken? Can it be addressed locally or does it require a global approach?
edpell said:Is over population an important issue? Can any actions be taken? Should any actions be taken? Can it be addressed locally or does it require a global approach?
The video doesn't give any way to achieve what he proposes or what he's basing his claims on. Most of Canada can't sustain crops or people. That goes for a lot of the land in the world. Water is already a problem, he forgets people need water, all those crops and animals need water. How much polution would 100 million humans produce? We can't handle waste management in most populated areas and waste is being shipped off by land and by sea to other areas.edpell said:I went to the "Biophysical Economics Conference" at the SUNY college of Environmental Science and Forestry a few months ago. One of the presentations by a Prof. Jack Alpert made the case for a maximum sustainable human population of 100 million. This is the smallest number I have ever seen suggested. He made some good points in support things like soil erosion rates and soil regeneration rates.
He has a youtube video
edpell said:I went to the "Biophysical Economics Conference" at the SUNY college of Environmental Science and Forestry a few months ago. One of the presentations by a Prof. Jack Alpert made the case for a maximum sustainable human population of 100 million. This is the smallest number I have ever seen suggested. He made some good points in support things like soil erosion rates and soil regeneration rates.
He has a youtube video
Designing ways to make humankind viable.
Evo said:Does he have a solution for where these people are going to find jobs? We can't employ the people we have now. And we can't afford to support them. Sustainable does not equal practical, affordable, or even reasonable. I think the world's population is too large right now.
mheslep said:That narration is nonsensical and fallacy ridden.
Char. Limit said:Yes, I'd say so. We could possibly fix it with a zero population growth idea, but I doubt that could be implemented.
drankin said:Everytime I fly I marvel at how much unused land and fresh water there is. They idea that the world is overpopulated begins to sound real rediculous. Another, "The sky is falling", story all over again. They only thing I have against the population increasing is that we will end up with more people making up things to complain about.
oh good lord, I was thinking 100 billion, and I was thinking he was completely out of his mind. (we had some really whacko population threads in social & Earth sciences, but this one's my fault and a doozie!)edpell said:? That is 100 million a factor of 70 few than today. He agrees with you.
mheslep said:Some dozen countries that are going away, even without the benefit of those "Designing ways to make humankind viable."
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3029712&postcount=199
Andre said:Incidentely, it appears that his narration is based on economics only. Maybe that the total accumulated testosterone level is also somewhat important for determining the maximum sustainable population.
Andre said:Incidentely, it appears that his narration is based on economics only. Maybe that the total accumulated testosterone level is also somewhat important for determining the maximum sustainable population.
8 billion (= 16 / 2 )edpell said:Let's not get stuck on Alpert he is an extremist. Do we have any more moderate calculations for sustainable number?
mheslep said:8 billion (= 16 / 2 )
Ok, its your thread. Why not start it off with some relatively well established facts or data from respected sources. The video doesn't qualify, even remotely.edpell said:It seems you are having some feelings about this subject. The question does touch on a core human emotional topic reproduction. I would guess all people have strong feelings about this subject. But I think we can manage our feelings and talk about sustainable number of humans
Why today's technology, when this issue under almost any circumstance must be dealt with over generations?given today's level of technology.
Erlich was famously wrong to the point of derangement.edpell said:...
Optimum Human Population Size
Gretchen C. Daily University of California (Berkeley) Anne H. Ehrlich and Paul R. Ehrlich Stanford University (July 1994)
offer "To us it seems reasonable to assume that, until cultures and technology change radically, the optimum number of people to exist simultaneously is [sic km] in the vicinity of 1.5 to 2 billion people."
from http://dieoff.org/page99.htm
Paul Erlich said:If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000
Erlich said:"the battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."
mheslep said:Erlich was famously wrong to the point of derangement.
Erlich said:If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000
drankin said:Everytime I fly I marvel at how much unused land and fresh water there is. They idea that the world is overpopulated begins to sound real rediculous. Another, "The sky is falling", story all over again. They only thing I have against the population increasing is that we will end up with more people making up things to complain about.
Ok, its your thread. Why not start it off with some relatively well established facts or data from respected sources.
Some questions I'd ask.edpell said:OK we do not like Alpert and Erlich. Let's try a different tract setting an upper bound that we can all agree on.
Can we all agree that one human per square meter of Earth's surface area is not sustainable with today's technology? That is 5E14, 500 trillion are not sustainable. Can anyone offer a more exact upper bound?
Simon in Wired said:"This is my long-run forecast in brief," says Simon. "The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards.
"I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse."
mheslep said:Consideration of only the current amount of arable land and per capita food production from it, and naively nothing else, leads to the conclusion that at least the current population of six billion is sustainable, indefinitely.
continued... See charts.The struggle for food
Furthermore, the world population is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. It rose from 3.0 billion in 1960 to 6.5 billion in 2005 – and by 2030 there will be approximately 8.3 billion people living on our planet. Supplying these people with food constitutes a growing challenge. To make things even more difficult, whilst the need for food is increasing, the amount of available farmland per capita is continually shrinking. In 2005, there was still 2,200m² (2,630 square yards) of farmland available to supply the needs of one human being. By 2030 there will only be 1,800m² (2,150 square yards).
You forgot Nigeria and PakistanQuestion: Is India the only large nation left in the world with a fertility rate significantly above the replacement rate of 2.1?
Evo said:
mheslep said:Percent of available agricultural land seems to be holding about steady worldwide, with some countries noticeably up, others down.
http://www.google.com/publicdata/ex...98324800000&tend=1279512000000&hl=en&dl=en_US
I garden, it doesn't make me an expert on agriculture, which is why I defer to offical results. It depends greatly on what the crop is. Some crops take a great deal of land and provide little food and vice versa.edpell said:Evo, I see you are into gardening. How much land does it take to feed one person per year let say on a no meat, no milk and no eggs if that helps diet? I guess this varies by latitude and water supply (nothing is simple).
The OP wants to determine sustainable population which must have a complex answer, dependent on many factors. Solving complex problems using means breaking them down into solvable parts. One has to start someplace, and the OP (or you?) mentioned arable land. Well, looking only statically at the problem we know, visibly, that the current amount of land available today supports the population today.Evo said:It's actually almost 7 billion right now, and the population is increasing, so what is your point?
Perhaps you mean per capita arable. http://www.google.com/publicdata/ex..._US&dl=en_US&uniSize=0.035&iconSize=0.5&icfg". And even if it was declining, once one allows a dynamic variable we have to ask about other dynamic variables such as food production per capita, which has increased almost every year since 1950, as the Science reference above indicates (Table 2)We can't control weather, arable land is decreasing.
Yep, thanks. Nigeria 158M and fertility rate 5.6. Trouble ahead there.Hells said:You forgot Nigeria and Pakistan
mheslep said:Well, looking only statically at the problem we know, visibly, that the current amount of land available today supports the population today.
Looking at the past and projecting it forward, yes, I think so, barring politically driven economic upsets (e.g. Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, etc).edpell said:If there is no soil erosion, no depletion of nutrients in the soil from use, no pollution of the soil from any source and similar statements for the fisheries then you have a point the carrying capacity is at or above today's 7 billion. Your statement is that today 7 billion are feed. Do you feel this can be continued for say 100 years?
That's due to machinery, pesticides and fertilizers. It's not going to continue to get better. Imo, the push towards organic produce is pushing yields back a century. The refusal of countries to use GM seed is counterproductive.mheslep said:Looking at the past and projecting it forward, yes, I think so, barring politically driven economic upsets (e.g. Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, etc).
BTW, the amount of effort and land it takes to feed someone has changed over time, drastically.
Example: labor hours require to produce 100 bushels of wheat, US:
1830: 250-300 labor-hours (5 acres)
1890: 40-50 labor-hours (5 acres)
1930: 15-20 labor-hours (5 acres)
1955: 6 1/2 labor-hours (4 acres)
1965: 5 labor-hours (3 acres)
1975: 3-3/4 labor-hours (3 acres)
1987: 3 labor-hours (3 acres)
and in 2007, 100 bushels of wheat were grown organically on one acre.
So while the US population increased 25x, the labor productivity increased 300x plus.
http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farm_tech.htm
http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news/nwview.php?article=5704