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[MetalSlimeHunt]

And you know this because?

J-curve population growth and the marginalization of having children in an industrialized society. Europe is almost to the top of the curve and North America is right behind it. The major population growth is only happening these days in Africa and a few outliers like Pakistan. Projections suggest that once the whole world has topped the curve our population will be somewhere between 9 and 12 billion people.

The world growth rate for 2011 was only 1.2%, and that isn't going to stop dropping anytime soon.

[10ebbor10]

There's a problem you can't circumvene though. Population pressure will eventually break down human society. Humans(like any species) can't survive with a constant high population density, like at all. Adding technology just makes the problem worse, as humans have less to do. For more information you should look at this. (http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/42/wiles.php).

As for were the biosystem comes into play. The easiest example would be pollination. This mostly relies on bees. However, even now these are under severe stress, due to the fact that fields make for bad feeding grounds. They are weakened and in fact bee populations world wide are plumetting. Sure you could replace the entire food system with algae based foods, but this requires extra energy and reinforces the above issue.

The most important problem will be the weather though. Cities tend to absorb heat. With most of the world being covered in cities, you'd have a stop of microclimates, and several other beneficial systems resulting in landlocked cities overheating and coastal cities being terrorized by constant storms. This might put some stress on society. Combined with eventual effects of global warming and some other problems, you would get serious problems with your infrastructure

Even worse would be a disaster. Any disaster really. Which such a huge population density, you'd get tons of refugees, breaking down your carefully set up system, and further reinforcing the topmost solution.

Sure, we can find a solution to any of these problems. Problem is if we have enough public goodwill, time and money.

That site estimates the total Earth's surface receives 20,000 times more energy than consumed by the human race at present.

2 things to remember:
plants (which you and other animals will be eating a lot of) only absorb something like 0.01% of the energy from sunlight, and then there is around about a 20% drop of energy per entropy level.

for maximum efficiency food-wise, we need to become vegans.

Insects are quite efficient too, and would beat vegetables as protein sources.

And you know this because?

J-curve population growth and the marginalization of having children in an industrialized society. Europe is almost to the top of the curve and North America is right behind it. The major population growth is only happening these days in Africa and a few outliers like Pakistan. Projections suggest that once the whole world has topped the curve our population will be somewhere between 9 and 12 billion people.

The world growth rate for 2011 was only 1.2%, and that isn't going to stop dropping anytime soon.

Europes population would be dropping already actually, were it not for immigration.

[10ebbor10]

That site estimates the total Earth's surface receives 20,000 times more energy than consumed by the human race at present.

2 things to remember:
plants (which you and other animals will be eating a lot of) only absorb something like 0.01% of the energy from sunlight, and then there is around about a 20% drop of energy per entropy level.

for maximum efficiency food-wise, we need to become vegans.

Insects are quite efficient too, and would beat vegetables as protein sources.

I'm talking about energy sources, just so you know.

and derp, it's enthalpy.

I'm pretty sure it's more energy efficient to eat insects than develop and maintain an entire artificial proteins industry.

As for energy. Fusion power plants are awesome.

[Il Palazzo]

also, nuts are an excellent source of protein.

2098: Today's special - Dissociative Schizophrenic with a side of Napoleon Delusion.

[mainiac]

And you know this because?

J-curve population growth and the marginalization of having children in an industrialized society.

Yes I'm well aware of these trends.  And you know they are going to extend into infinity because...?

This thread is full of a whole lot of people saying things are impossible because they require social changes.  Well newsflash, social changes happen all the time.

[G-Flex]

Are you surprised? It's slightly-concentrated dairy.

[10ebbor10]

And you know this because?

J-curve population growth and the marginalization of having children in an industrialized society.

Yes I'm well aware of these trends.  And you know they are going to extend into infinity because...?

This thread is full of a whole lot of people saying things are impossible because they require social changes.  Well newsflash, social changes happen all the time.

Sadly for you, the population pressure social breakdown is rather hardwired into the species, since it seems to be near universal. Not changing that easily. And if you do, I doubt you can consider the result human anymore. Nobody knows how high the limit is though.

It seems highly unlikely though, considering that the tech levels required would make coloniation of other planets easy.

However, the thread seems to have derailed slightly. It's original purpose was  to discuss a short term possible extinction event (though complete extinction is unlikely.) And we derailed into a long term max pop discussion of Earth. In order to rerail the topic.

Geo-engineering will safe us all.

[Reelya]

I'm not saying that a mega-population is impossible, I'm saying it's not possible without completely disrupting the natural ecosystems, or alternately some draconian totalitarian state. Probably both.

Sure, cities may not "need" wilderness" around them, and we can convert the entire surface of the world to residential arks, food and power generation. But is it desirable that there are no longer deserts, mountains and forests? For what purpose to have trillions of people on this planet?

Alternately on this future mega-populated planet, there will be big swathes of preserved natural areas. But, it'll be illegal 99.9% of the time to leave the cities to explore. The reason being that currently people accessing natural reserves cause a level of permanent damage. Multiply that by 1000 and you can see just accessing the sites will cause damage. Tourists in Egypt have already caused permanent damage to art in the great pyramids by breathing on them.

With e.g. 1000 times as many people wanting a day at the beach, you can see beach visits will need to be rationed, or more likely we'll build artificial 'beaches' inside mega-ark cities and nobody will ever leave the cities.

[mainiac]

Well we are talking about thousands of years in the future.  Imagine telling someone in the year 500 BC about all the crazy shit we put up with today.  But we have a lot of benefits of modern life too.  We can't possibly imagine the stuff they'd have thousands of years into the future.  For all you know lack of natural beaches will rank about as high on our decedents list of concerns as lack of easily accessible flint ranks on ours.

[Knight of Fools]

These forums are such good idea generators for dystopian/utopian futures.

[10ebbor10]

Well we are talking about thousands of years in the future.  Imagine telling someone in the year 500 BC about all the crazy shit we put up with today.  But we have a lot of benefits of modern life too.  We can't possibly imagine the stuff they'd have thousands of years into the future.  For all you know lack of natural beaches will rank about as high on our decedents list of concerns as lack of easily accessible flint ranks on ours.

Hell, imagine telling people from hunderd years back.

[Guardian G.I.]

Also, judging by the discussion, we would rather transform the planet into a Coruscant-esque megacity than colonize space.

[Ancre]

Yeah, I hope that by the time we're worrying about turning the entire planet in a megalopolis, we'll be able to actually colonize other planets and stuff.

At the very least, it seems we agree that we're not going to become extinct anytime soon

[LordBucket]

the thread seems to have derailed slightly. It's original purpose was
to discuss a short term possible extinction event

An extintion event caused by lack of food, excess pollution, and too many people. The segue is that, "too many people" doesn't need to be an extintion event because the earth can accommodate a lot more people than the people in your study realized.  Largely because apparently people have a "gather stuff and then it's gone" mindset, and the universe doesn't really work that way.

for maximum efficiency food-wise, we need to become vegans.

There's no need to grow animals in order to have meat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat

There's a problem you can't circumvene though. Population pressure will eventually break down human society. Humans(like any species) can't survive with a constant high population density

...already addressed multiple times: we're building in three dimensions.

The most important problem will be the weather though. Cities tend to absorb heat

That's not a problem. That's beneficial, because the waste heat would be reclaimed.

This is, incidentally, a significant part of the solution for the energy consumption issue. One doesn't actually need to collect all those exojoules every year, any more than one needs to "acquire new dirt" to plant new seeds each season.

If you are talking about a population of trillions of people then you are not talking about "anytime soon".  Many centuries if not a few millennia would be the better estimate.

...I admit that does skew the naure of the debate somewhat. If 6.3 trillion people materialized overnight, that would be very different than if it were gradual growth over a few hundred years. And looking at even the fastest predicted growth rates, we would have those centuries.

Honestly I think a few decades would be enough time to finish up all technological requirements of supprting trillions of people. We're almost there. The majority of everything discussed so far could be done with today's technology. But the infrastructure would take quite a lot longer. And if we do have centuries to work with...I think that the technological advances in that time will make a lot of our accounting now pretty much irrlevant. I've been avoiding futuristic Star Trek style solutions here, but we've gone from our very first flight to sending an object outside the solar system in roughly 100 years. So...looking to what we'll be capable of 100 from now...stuff like interplantary teleportation and matter replication seems pretty reasonable to me.

In any case, the planet herself would have no problem accomodating trillions of humans. It might not might not actually happen...but the people saying it's "not possible" aren't any different from those who thought it impossible to fly, to travel in space, etc. Of course it's possible. In fact, even saying it now...I suspect that "trillions" is probably a pessimistic figure by several orders of magnitude. If we simply colonized down like ants, the available space is so large that I don't have an intuitive grasp of it. And each level we build up has more surface area that the last. Space is totally not an issue. It's just a matter of providing proper input and output in the form of food, water, climate, plumbing, entertainment, communication, etc. And those are all simply engineering problems.

Trillions is no problem. It just a question of what technology is required to fill in the empty gaps in what we can do.

[Ancre]

Though, I do have to say, I'm happy we're not at that kind of extreme yet. Perhaps we can do it, sure, that doesn't mean I'd want to live in that kind of life.

Underground hive cities ... brr.