4 ms·

I suspect that at 7 billion now, if the world population rose to even 100 billion, we'd find a way to survive. It would be a very different life experience, but

I suspect that at 7 billion now, if the world population rose to even 100 billion, we'd find a way to survive. It would be a very different life experience, but it would still be life.

jacquesm 11y ago
I highly doubt we'd be able to feed and house 100 billion people.
- pflanze 11y ago
  Able yes, but at very high risk of deadly instability through destroying most of nature and accordingly higher dependence on technology, and smoothly working social structures?
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Unsustainable to me means 'unable'. If you can't sustain a model in the long term that means that sooner or later there will be a crash. Whether the number of people we can sustain long term is 10, 20 or 50 billion people is currently not known but most people that have spent significant time on this problem put the long-term sustainable number closer to 10 than to 20 billion. Now, as the article states we've consistently under-estimated these numbers but even very generous allowance for errors would cap the number that we could long term sustain in any form well below 100 billion.
    - pflanze 11y ago
      I said "risk of deadly instability through destroying most of nature" but really meant to say "high risk of deadly instability through having destroyed most of nature". I.e. we might get ever closer to a world which is sustainable in the sense that humanity doesn't live off limited resources anymore (say, using machines to convert solar power to food more directly than using plants), but where most of nature has been destroyed and hence the possibilities for recovering by falling back to (even temporarily) using reserves increasingly vanishes (no place to build cheap or simple housing anymore, no land or even suitable climate to fall back on using plants as food). Thus all sorts of small crises can each lead to a lot of dying (perhaps like today's famines in Africa, but now all over the world). But you may know more than me and your point may well be true. (I'm not a researcher, just fantasizing. I should get some experience in mathematical modeling.)
    - dennisgorelik 11y ago
      Are you that good in predicting the future hundreds of years ahead? World population is not going to reach 100 billion in the next 200 years. New technologies may allow: 1) Grow food in cold climate (Russia, Canada and even Antarctica). 2) Grow food in the ocean. 3) Grow food under ground. 4) 10x+ increase in food output from the same amount of land. 5) Industrial food synthesizing.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        > Grow food in cold climate (Russia, Canada and even Antarctica). Needs an energy source > Grow food in the ocean. We already do this and we call it fish. We're also terribly bad at managing this very important resource. > Grow food under ground. Needs an energy source > 10x+ increase in food output from the same amount of land. Needs wildly fantastic breakthrough in practice, currently at odds with the theoretical maximum yield from acreage. > Industrial food synthesizing. We already do quite a bit of this but you'd have to come from an entirely different angle (such as synthesizing protein from non-biological sources, currently not a possibility). So, with present technology and present knowledge about energy budgets and support capabilities of arable land it's as far as I can see right out. If there is some totally out-of-the-blue breakthrough (such as atomic synthesis of arbitrary compounds combined with free energy) then sure, anything is possible. But that's the same kind of bet the cryonists (sp?) make, or even some religions, once you allow for miracles the future possibilities are limitless. I'll be more than happy to concede that there will be improvements in yield but the amount of sunlight falling on an acre of land and the available minerals and precipitation are limiting factors, even when you factor in greenhouses, artificial lights, irrigation and so on. Hydroponics is probably eventually one of the most efficient ways of doing all this and even that has fairly hard limits in terms of energy required and amount of nutrients and water required.
        dennisgorelik 11y ago
        > Needs an energy source Sun. Fission. Fusion. > you'd have to come from an entirely different angle Not me personally, but tens of billions of new people who would be born in the next couple of hundred thousand years. > If there is some totally out-of-the-blue breakthrough If in 1900-2000 food production increased 5x then it is reasonable to expect that in the next 100 years food production may increase 5x again (or more if needed). It looks like you want to have enough food now (in 2015) in order to be able to feed world's population in 2215. Why do you need to have that food 200 years ahead of the actual demand?
- 3pt14159 11y ago
  Really? Food and housing is fairly easy to solve. Canvas or wood housing and green houses and we could do it with today's technology. Even education is getting way more environmentally friendly with advances in online education resources. The problem isn't feeding and housing people, it's flying them to Greece for a weekend vacation, buying an endless supply of electronic and motorized consumer products, and a race-to-the-bottom attitude with power generation in the developing world.
- hellofunk 11y ago
  I don't think it is impossible. And humans have a way of doing things that really seem impossible at first. I'm sure a hundred years ago no one would have thought it possible to walk on the moon. We now have workable methods to turn the dirtiest of water into pure drinking water. Agriculture is a long, long way from being as efficient as it could be; we find ways all the time to quadruple the food output of a plot of land, and there will continue to be innovation in this area. Our diets are largely wasteful around the world as well, it is possible to live on much less food than the typical American eats, for example. And as for space, the world average population density per land is actually not that high; certain places are, but when spread out, there is tremendous room for physically placing more people. So I'd say it is well within possibility to make 100 billion people stay alive. But, a lot would change to do so.

I suspect that at 7 billion now, if the world population rose to even 100 billion, we'd find a way to survive. It would be a very different life experience, but it would still be life.

jacquesm 11y ago

I highly doubt we'd be able to feed and house 100 billion people.

pflanze 11y ago
Able yes, but at very high risk of deadly instability through destroying most of nature and accordingly higher dependence on technology, and smoothly working social structures?
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Unsustainable to me means 'unable'. If you can't sustain a model in the long term that means that sooner or later there will be a crash. Whether the number of people we can sustain long term is 10, 20 or 50 billion people is currently not known but most people that have spent significant time on this problem put the long-term sustainable number closer to 10 than to 20 billion. Now, as the article states we've consistently under-estimated these numbers but even very generous allowance for errors would cap the number that we could long term sustain in any form well below 100 billion.
  - pflanze 11y ago
    I said "risk of deadly instability through destroying most of nature" but really meant to say "high risk of deadly instability through having destroyed most of nature". I.e. we might get ever closer to a world which is sustainable in the sense that humanity doesn't live off limited resources anymore (say, using machines to convert solar power to food more directly than using plants), but where most of nature has been destroyed and hence the possibilities for recovering by falling back to (even temporarily) using reserves increasingly vanishes (no place to build cheap or simple housing anymore, no land or even suitable climate to fall back on using plants as food). Thus all sorts of small crises can each lead to a lot of dying (perhaps like today's famines in Africa, but now all over the world). But you may know more than me and your point may well be true. (I'm not a researcher, just fantasizing. I should get some experience in mathematical modeling.)
  - dennisgorelik 11y ago
    Are you that good in predicting the future hundreds of years ahead? World population is not going to reach 100 billion in the next 200 years. New technologies may allow: 1) Grow food in cold climate (Russia, Canada and even Antarctica). 2) Grow food in the ocean. 3) Grow food under ground. 4) 10x+ increase in food output from the same amount of land. 5) Industrial food synthesizing.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      > Grow food in cold climate (Russia, Canada and even Antarctica). Needs an energy source > Grow food in the ocean. We already do this and we call it fish. We're also terribly bad at managing this very important resource. > Grow food under ground. Needs an energy source > 10x+ increase in food output from the same amount of land. Needs wildly fantastic breakthrough in practice, currently at odds with the theoretical maximum yield from acreage. > Industrial food synthesizing. We already do quite a bit of this but you'd have to come from an entirely different angle (such as synthesizing protein from non-biological sources, currently not a possibility). So, with present technology and present knowledge about energy budgets and support capabilities of arable land it's as far as I can see right out. If there is some totally out-of-the-blue breakthrough (such as atomic synthesis of arbitrary compounds combined with free energy) then sure, anything is possible. But that's the same kind of bet the cryonists (sp?) make, or even some religions, once you allow for miracles the future possibilities are limitless. I'll be more than happy to concede that there will be improvements in yield but the amount of sunlight falling on an acre of land and the available minerals and precipitation are limiting factors, even when you factor in greenhouses, artificial lights, irrigation and so on. Hydroponics is probably eventually one of the most efficient ways of doing all this and even that has fairly hard limits in terms of energy required and amount of nutrients and water required.
      - dennisgorelik 11y ago
        > Needs an energy source Sun. Fission. Fusion. > you'd have to come from an entirely different angle Not me personally, but tens of billions of new people who would be born in the next couple of hundred thousand years. > If there is some totally out-of-the-blue breakthrough If in 1900-2000 food production increased 5x then it is reasonable to expect that in the next 100 years food production may increase 5x again (or more if needed). It looks like you want to have enough food now (in 2015) in order to be able to feed world's population in 2215. Why do you need to have that food 200 years ahead of the actual demand?
3pt14159 11y ago
Really? Food and housing is fairly easy to solve. Canvas or wood housing and green houses and we could do it with today's technology. Even education is getting way more environmentally friendly with advances in online education resources. The problem isn't feeding and housing people, it's flying them to Greece for a weekend vacation, buying an endless supply of electronic and motorized consumer products, and a race-to-the-bottom attitude with power generation in the developing world.
hellofunk 11y ago
I don't think it is impossible. And humans have a way of doing things that really seem impossible at first. I'm sure a hundred years ago no one would have thought it possible to walk on the moon. We now have workable methods to turn the dirtiest of water into pure drinking water. Agriculture is a long, long way from being as efficient as it could be; we find ways all the time to quadruple the food output of a plot of land, and there will continue to be innovation in this area. Our diets are largely wasteful around the world as well, it is possible to live on much less food than the typical American eats, for example. And as for space, the world average population density per land is actually not that high; certain places are, but when spread out, there is tremendous room for physically placing more people. So I'd say it is well within possibility to make 100 billion people stay alive. But, a lot would change to do so.