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[KaelGotDwarves]

Fuck yeah, humanity?

World population of homo sapien sapiens:

The general expectation is, however, that population growth will tail off, with U.N. predictions for 2050 ranging from 8.0 to 10.5 billion.

What is clear is that the proportions will shift between the continents, driven by high birth rates in Asia and Africa. Soon India, with 1.2 billion currently, will take the lead from China, with 1.3 billion, as the world’s most populous nation.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country today with 162 million, will see its population increase to almost 750 million by the middle of the century.

Another example: highly industrialised Germany and developing Ethiopia each have a little more than 80 million people. In another 40 years, there will probably be 174 million Ethiopians, while Germany’s population will decline to 72 million.

Interesting facts:
The average human lives 67 years and will have been alive for 0.6% of the time that modern man has lived on Earth, and yet of all the humans who have ever lived, seven percent of them are currently alive - numbers from TFA.

“In the next 40 years we will have to produce the same amount of food as over the last 8,000 years,” - direct quote from TFA.

Our growth overall is unsustainable and the current "westernised" economy/standard of living is impossible on a global scale.

We may be fucked even before fossil fuels run out because we will run out of phosphates for fertilizer to grow food. Yay!~

Discuss.

Three rules:
1. Follow rules of the forum and don't bicker
2. Don't be an ass.
3. If anyone even hints at eugenics I will lock down the thread.

[Grakelin]

What if we genetically engineer people to not eat food or something will that work

[Max White]

Hey look, you can see the dark ages...

What? Oh yea, the topic. Solution is simple. We need neural implants, then have people live in a virtual universe, while in small space pods orbiting the sun, harvesting it's energy for power. The system will be automated to feed us look after other bodily functions, and foster new humans when old ones die off.

This video sums it up well.

[Angel Of Death]

Shit... We must throw useless objects and people into a volcano to improve the world's framerate!

In all seriousness, what CAN we do?

[The13thRonin]

We may be fucked even before fossil fuels run out because we will run out of phosphates for fertilizer to grow food. Yay!~

Phosphorus is nothing to panic about seeing as if humanity was really pressed we could recycle human waste product into a renewable fertilizer (there is phosphorus in human waste). The only reason we aren't doing that currently is that I guess people think it's kind of gross... I don't really understand how it's any more gross than using animal waste product but there you go *shrug*.

Peak oil IS something to worry about because we rely on it so much. If the oil dries up we're going to be thrown back into the Dark Ages and while we may still be able to generate SOME green energy the majority of the world is going to be screwed.

[PsyberianHusky]

I worry so much about reaching the point where the world can no longer sustain us, but at the same time I  I feel so grand when though our endeavors we circumvent the limits nature has put on us.

[Virex]

Peak oil IS something to worry about because we rely on it so much. If the oil dries up we're going to be thrown back into the Dark Ages and while we may still be able to generate SOME green energy the majority of the world is going to be screwed.

It's not quite as pressing as you think though. While oil may be running out, there's still plenty of coal to go around, enough to fuel us for another century or so. If oil really becomes troublesome it's easy enough to convert coal to liquid fuels. Of course that does didly squat about the greenhouse effect...

[Aqizzar]

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country today with 162 million, will see its population increase to almost 750 million by the middle of the century.

Another example: highly industrialised Germany and developing Ethiopia each have a little more than 80 million people. In another 40 years, there will probably be 174 million Ethiopians, while Germany’s population will decline to 72 million.

It's statistical predictions like these that always give me pause.  It doesn't seem possible that 750 million people could even fit in Nigeria, let alone be supported in any survivable way.  It's the great conundrum of humanity to me, how nations already wracked by famine and any number of other deadly factors (like Ethiopia) can continue to not only grow in population, but grow at a staggering speed.  It's a conundrum that the geopolitics of the world really needs an answer to.

And I think the answer, grim though it be, is that the prediction is wrong.  Sure, people have been saying that human population growth would hit a wall of famine for a hundred years, since all this growth took off in the first place, and they've all been proven wrong by humanity's ability to find new resources and survive in astounding blight.  But there is a limit of physical practicality at some point, and I have to think that the famines and so forth we already see today are the first sign of that.

[Doomchild-]

Peak oil IS something to worry about because we rely on it so much. If the oil dries up we're going to be thrown back into the Dark Ages and while we may still be able to generate SOME green energy the majority of the world is going to be screwed.

It's not quite as pressing as you think though. While oil may be running out, there's still plenty of coal to go around, enough to fuel us for another century or so. If oil really becomes troublesome it's easy enough to convert coal to liquid fuels. Of course that does didly squat about the greenhouse effect...

oil is used for a lot more than just fuel, you'd be surprised to see how many products are derived from oil.
the growing world population is a serious issue, both energy and food are a big issue. we need to find solutions to replace the current methods of generating electricity while also keeping the increasing demand into account. so far all the green energy solutions only provide a small portion of the current energy needs. as for the food problem, as more people take up more space, the space for food production has to make way (cities expanding into agricultural areas) so we have to feed more people with less resources.
our own intelligence is biting us in the rear. increased general lifespan, increased medical care which limits deaths from sickness and injury, increased life standards, etc while we work with finite (though often recyclable) resources.
a big contribution to the massive increase in population is no doubt the increased lifespan, while western countries seem to have the situation more or less under control (predictions in the article are for germany to actually drop in population), developing countries are more problematic. first of all they are often incabable of sustaining an elder population (western countries face the same problem but it's less dramatic) and parents rely on their children for support. through either cultural tendencies or to combat the former low life expectancies and child deaths, they still tend to have a lot of children, increasing their problems which are growing exponentially

so yeah, growing population is a serious issue...

queue magma

[NRDL]

If we lose the capability to sustain our current and future population, all of our resources will run dry.  Food and oil primarily.  The world plunges into a dark age, human civilization completely stops growing, learning basic elementary subjects becomes secondary to learning how to fight and survive, and we essentially turn into barbarians.  If we kill each other constantly for, say, dozens of years, the population should lower substantially, especially since the quality of life will lower drastically, and it will be much harder for old people and children to survive.  After a while, the human population lowers substantially, and perhaps, just perhaps, civilization begins rebuilding itself.  Once the problems ( such as lack of space, and resources ) start to lessen, conflict lessens.  If we revert to the dark ages, and somehow revert back to a pseudo-modern society, how will we survive without oil?  What will civilization be like without modern technology?  It would be interesting to see what happens. 

[Max White]

Anybody know the population cap for Antarctica as a closed system? So no imports or exports, just living off the snow?

[Aqizzar]

Anybody know the population cap for Antarctica as a closed system? So no imports or exports, just living off the snow?

Depends on how good you are at ranching penguins.  They seem like a species in a pretty precarious food web to me, but they seem to do fine on their own.

[Max White]

Do penguins make for a sustainable food source to humans? Well if shit hits the fan, I'm taking a boat to the place that Australians call down under.

[sneakey pete]

Oil will be a problem that we will be able to overcome. The technology to move away from oil exists, generally, and we should be able to get away with using that technology for another century at least. Long term we really do need to find some better solutions though of course, but i don't think its quite as dire as some of the doom and gloom predictions (and not nearly as good as the predictions by some fossil fuel companies of course)
Edit: virex has already said all that anyway.

( such as lack of space, and resources ) start to lessen, conflict lessens. 

There hasn't been a war in (western and most of eastern) Europe in 60 years, there hasn't been a war in china for 60 years. Both those areas were rather common for war before, when they had less people and more resources than they do now..

In my opinion, you can't wrap up humanity with a simple rule, the whole "well this cycle will happen etc etc". Fact of the matter is that we've made things like computers, the internet and electricity that we've never had before. We can't really look at history as a guide as to where we're going, the game has just changed to dam much.

Phosphorus is nothing to panic about seeing as if humanity was really pressed we could recycle human waste product into a renewable fertilizer (there is phosphorus in human waste). The only reason we aren't doing that currently is that I guess people think it's kind of gross... I don't really understand how it's any more gross than using animal waste product but there you go *shrug*.

Err, what exactly do we generally do with human waste now then? i was under the impression that most of it was processed, then used as fertilizer.

[Max White]

We mix it with chemicals until it becomes even more toxic to the biosphere, then dump it in the ocean, then swim in the ocean, then eat fish and chips (The same fish and chips that was also swimming in the ocean (Yes, the chips too))  without washing our hands.

So now you know.