On July 07 2009 16:47 HuskyTheHusky wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2009 16:41 Aegraen wrote:On July 07 2009 16:23 DownMaxX wrote:
I don't know about the world itself, but I think the next time humanity will be on the brink of extinction will be from a viral pandemic. We have far too great numbers for this to ever be the cause of our extinction. Even if just 1% of the population were immune, that is still at this time: 75 Million people, immune, let alone those that survived that weren't immune. There has never, ever, been in the history of mankind a virus that was 99% lethal. Even the bubonic plague in the best of conditions was on the order of 50% lethal. This. Our extinction will be man-made. We are too smart to be wiped out by virtually anything else. The only natural disaster I can see that would cause human extinction is a giant meteor. But honestly I think we'd have the brainpower around the world to find ways of stopping it. If nothing else we'd throw every single space-capable rocket at it and see what happens.
The meteor is gonna cause mass flood, but we know how to swim, we're smart
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On July 08 2009 10:46 SirKibbleX wrote:
The Earth can easily support more than 9 billion people. Just from flying over South America and most of the U.S. you realize how underpopulated those regions are. The U.S. doesn't use its land nearly as effectively as almost any other country in the world and yet it also outputs a large portion of the world's food. In terms of space there is still tons left. In terms of food production, there are still a lot of improvements to be made and a lot of space to work with.
Its not just about space, its about natural resources.
I remember researching this subject for a discussion in another forum some months ago and i found a study that said that the ideal number of human would be around 1.5 - 2 billion, but if we want everyone in the world to live like the people in the U.S. do, that number would be less than a billion.
I think it has something to do with the fact that you just cant keep constantly cultivating the land forever, at some points it will need time to replenish, and even at the current population rate that is not happening.
I mean, if we al lived like in the middle ages, im sure the Earth could sustain 10 or 15 billion humans without too much trouble, but with the rise of modern middle classes and the industrialized countries consuming even more each day, its just an unsustainable situation.
PD: Sorry for talking about a study without putting a link to it, is just that i read it months ago and i have no idea how to find it again.
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On July 09 2009 01:45 CrimsonLotus wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2009 10:46 SirKibbleX wrote:
The Earth can easily support more than 9 billion people. Just from flying over South America and most of the U.S. you realize how underpopulated those regions are. The U.S. doesn't use its land nearly as effectively as almost any other country in the world and yet it also outputs a large portion of the world's food. In terms of space there is still tons left. In terms of food production, there are still a lot of improvements to be made and a lot of space to work with. Its not just about space, its about natural resources. I remember researching this subject for a discussion in another forum some months ago and i found a study that said that the ideal number of human would be around 1.5 - 2 billion, but if we want everyone in the world to live like the people in the U.S. do, that number would be less than a billion. I think it has something to do with the fact that you just cant keep constantly cultivating the land forever, at some points it will need time to replenish, and even at the current population rate that is not happening. I mean, if we al lived like in the middle ages, im sure the Earth could sustain 10 or 15 billion humans without too much trouble, but with the rise of modern middle classes and the industrialized countries consuming even more each day, its just an unsustainable situation. PD: Sorry for talking about a study without putting a link to it, is just that i read it months ago and i have no idea how to find it again.
There are many crazies out there that advocate the mass genocide of humans all in the name of 'the environment' and 'nature'. Hell, just read some EPA docs and they're infested within the bowels of that hell hole.
The Earth can support much more than the current population numbers. In fact, I will link you to this:
http://www.heritage.org/research/smartgrowth/bg1556.cfm
Here is an excerpt:
According to the most widely available land use survey/report recently published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA),16 only 5.2 percent of the land in the 48 contiguous states is considered developed, and this figure may overstate the scope of residential and commercial development, since other federal surveys suggest that the true amount of such land may be under 4.0 percent. Chart 1 illustrates the 1997 shares of land by major use contained within the continental United States as estimated by the USDA's 1997 National Resource Inventory (NRI).
But even the NRI estimate may overstate the true scope of the amount of developed (human-occupied) land in the United States. USDA's definition of "developed" land also includes the amount of land in rural areas devoted to highways, roads, railroad right-of-ways, power transmission lines, pipelines, etc., which represent ribbons of developed land use traversing otherwise undeveloped and unoccupied rural areas to connect one urbanized area to another, or a farm house with a major road. In and of themselves, such uses do not represent "development" as the term has come to be defined, as denoting areas of permanent human habitation and occupation. When such uninhabited forms of public infrastructure are removed from the USDA's tally of "developed" land, whatever land remains is technically referred to as "urbanized."
Using the land use estimates reported by the NRI survey for 1997, urbanized areas accounted for just 4.0 percent of the land in the continental United States (3.2 percent if Alaska is included).17 Moreover, that 4.0 percent of the land was home to approximately 75 percent of the population. Adding to this total the amount of rural areas identified as containing residential housing (which the USDA defines as one housing unit per 10 acres or more) brings these loosely inhabited areas of the continental United States to 7.3 percent. After presenting the data, and notwithstanding EPA Administrator Whitman's concern about lost farmland, the authors of the USDA report note that
Urbanization and the increase in rural residences do not threaten the U.S. cropland base or the level of agriculture production at present or in the near term. Urbanization rates of increase are relatively small...and other land can be shifted into crop production.18
Currently in the US only 5.2% of the actual land mass is developed. Think about that again for a second. In a country of 300 million legal citizens and another 30-40 mil illegal aliens, in which the US supplies itself much of its own food, and yet we have only developed 5% of the actual land.
Much of South America, Africa, and Australia are not built up, and I'd wager that we have room on this planet with current technologies (Hydroponics, Cloning, Gene-Splicing, DNA manipulation, etc.) for at least 20 billion people. Worst comes to worst, by the time we hit say, 25 billion, we'll just end up building up, rather than outwards. I'm also fairly confident the time it would take to reach that milestone we would be traversing the stars (~200 years).
Unless of course, you are of the mind that the Earth needs 80-85% of it's 'natural landscapes' in order for us as a species and for terra to survive.
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EPT
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