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[Max White]

Well, when it comes to the evolutionary race, I dare say were doing ok. Could benefit from our females having tails, but I'm sure that will come with time.

[Mindmaker]

The lack of Zombie Apocalypse is disturbing.
If we had them more often, we wouldn't have to deal with these problems.

[ChairmanPoo]

Meh. We have been having "panics" of this sort for the last two hundred years. So far they've always turned out to be bogus alarmism. I doubt this one will be different.

[NRDL]

Ok, so all this speculation about a dark age and resources running out is cool.  How do we prevent it?  For fuel, there are obviously alternative sources of energy being developed, but when will they be used on a world wide ( if ever ) scale, and will they be as effective as people say they are?

As for food, we are driving other species to extinction, that's true.  Are synthetic food sources a viable option?  You must have seen some cartoons and sketches about this, grey glop that's made on a conveyor belt, which ends up becoming the daily rations of the entire human population.  Is there any basis for this in real life?  Can we just mix together various chemicals, vitamins and minerals and cool that food?

On the subject of "are humans better than animals", I say there is no such thing as better or best.  We have survived because we did whatever took in order to not die.  We are a determined, stubborn, and creative species, and all this and more allowed us to achieve what we have just achieved.

So my questions are:

How do we solve the fuel problem?

How do we solve the food problem?

Should I make a new thread where we debate on humans and their place on the food chain?   

[Toady Two]

If I recall correctly a few decades ago people were shitting their pants over the potential overpopulation of Africa. It turned out that AIDS and a resurgence of Malaria increased the mortality in the region and all the predictions turned out to be overestimated.

The largest increase in global population will undoubtedly come from developing nations. In these countries the birthrates are high and basic medicine decreases the mortality rate enough for the net demographic growth to be huge. Once a countries society reaches the advancement level of say Europe or the US the access to birth control and the high costs of raising a child significantly cut the birthrate and consequently the population growth.

I wonder if a scenario like this is possible: If the whole world could one day reach the 4th or 5th stadium of demographic growth, like the one we have now in fully developed countries with an aging societies, meaning that the both the mortality rate and birthrate are low and around equal.

What I'm talking about is basically a state when the whole world balances out between the colors light blue and purple on this scale giving a net growth of 0 and stabilizing, perhaps permanently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_growth_rate_world_2011.svg

Technical development is a given so it all comes down to resources. Not only food but also materials and energy needed by industrialized countries. Do we have enough to reach the point when population growth is "saturated".

[Max White]

How do we solve the fuel problem?

How do we solve the food problem?

The answer to both these questions is soylent black.

[kaijyuu]

How do we solve the fuel problem?

Invest in alternative energy sources.

How do we solve the food problem?

Stop eating meat and low-yield crops.

Should I make a new thread where we debate on humans and their place on the food chain?

No. We're quite obviously on top of the food chain/web. Any discussion about morality and responsibility about it will go nowhere.

[sneakey pete]

For fuel, there are obviously alternative sources of energy being developed, but when will they be used on a world wide ( if ever ) scale, and will they be as effective as people say they are?

Not a moment before they absolutely have to be used i'd assume.

As far as i'm aware, as of right now we could pretty much start building plants that convert coal into hydrogen and power, (without releasing any pollutants or CO2). We could pretty much build lots of hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles. We could pretty much distribute it, its just that noone really wants to do it money wise, so all we have so far are pilot projects. that's not a horrible thing, as these pilot projects will allow the technologies to be more readily deployed in the future (after all, you can only test something so fast in some cases, no matter if its a small pilot plant or a major installation).

There's a lot of research into resources like hydrogen from coal, geothermal power tidal power etc, we've got a lot of different things to deploy.

[alway]

http://www.fastcompany.com/1721388/study-100-renewable-energy-for-world-in-40-years-yes-only-our-doubts-in-the-way
We could switch entirely to renewables if we wanted to, we just don't want to.

[Il Palazzo]

To say that "we just don't want to" is overly simplifying the question, as it creates an image of completely irrational opposition, or if rational - stemming only from some fossil fuel lobby and it's desire to get richer.
We do not want to switch to renewables, because the cost of doing so now would be high enough to drive the energy prices through the roof, most likely killing the economy. Global recession means food shortages, high mortality rate and low standard of life across the board. How would you convince people not to switch back to fossil fuel energy if their kids were starving?
Any transition like that must be gradual, and accompanied by a change in global economy and in people's mentality - so that they would accept the loss of some of their current consummerist privileges.
And looking at the ever growing fields of wind turbines I see in Europe, I think it is happening, albeit slowly. The big question is whether the demands of Earth's growing population coupled with our dwindling resources will not overtake the changes.

[GlyphGryph]

When the costs of current resources like oil and coal gets high enough, we'll switch to other sources. All this means is power gets a bit more expensive (for a while, then it will probably come down again as the field advances, likely to well below what it is now). And it's a gradual thing, too, and a path we've already started down!

As far as food... we still have a ton of leeway there. We're currently way overproducing, producing and consuming very inefficiently, and still have a bunch of arable land we could produce more with. Is converting it bad for the environment? Well, the existing environment, anyways. We may do a lot of damage, but remember that wheat, rats, pigeons, dogs, cats, soy, and cows are all quite happy with our rampant environmental manipulation, species-wise. There's also tons of avenues here we haven't explored either.

[TherosPherae]

I think it's about time we start discussing a moon colony. Partially to house some of the growing population, partially because it'd be interesting to see the effects of low-g on inhabitants and plants, and partially because I just want to eat tomatoes grown on the moon.

[Criptfeind]

I think a moon colony might be a bad idea, I mean, what advantage would it have over just a space station? And of course it would have that shitty dust.

[Bohandas]

I think a moon colony might be a bad idea, I mean, what advantage would it have over just a space station? And of course it would have that ###### dust.

Well, for one thing there would be gravity, and a naturally stable orbit with little need for course correction, and probably fewer size limitations on what can be built, and you could mine it formineral resources thus partially eliminating the need to fly a bunch of **** out intio space every time you want to expand.

[Levi]

A lot of the food issues could probably solved through vertical farming.  This is an idea where instead of growing plants and such on fields you grow them in skyscrapers.  This lets you to VASTLY increase the amount of available area to farm and lets you grow crops during the winter/out of season.  The downside is that you generally need artificial lighting/heating which costs a lot of power.

http://www.verticalfarm.com/
http://www.economist.com/node/17647627

Or we can just eat old people.  Whichever is easier. 

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