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I hate this sort of regressive thinking. We can just come up with more reliable ways of producing food. I expect food production to see a huge revolution in 10

I hate this sort of regressive thinking. We can just come up with more reliable ways of producing food. I expect food production to see a huge revolution in 10-20 years - think something like genetically modified simple organisms that are designed to produce specific nutrients - like specific protein or sugar or fat. If you can design them to be energy efficient and work in low amount of space in a controlled environment (say a shallow pool of water + UV lamps or something like that) you can have huge factories that stack these "ponds" on top of each other working 24/7 pumping out nutrients. Then it's just a matter of combining them in to food.

mathiasben 11y ago
and after these advances have been outpaced by population growth what happens then?
- moonchrome 11y ago
  You have even more people to deal with the new problems ? In general this entire mindset that there is "limited resources that we can't go beyond" is completely bogus and proven false over and over again - resources are just things that our knowledge/technology allows us to use to solve particular problems as we create new technology we grow potential resources. Oil was used as a folk remedy until we learned how to refine it. Earth becomes physically overpopulated - that's so far in to the future that you can count on realistically colonizing space by then. A realistic concern is if we can reach innovation fast enough to avoid "rough patches" but long term it's incredibly unlikely that we can't solve technical problems.
  - Daishiman 11y ago
    Umm, no. I would like a planet that still has a semblance of uninhabited environments that are mostly unperturbed. Look at any satellite images of the amount of land that is being used by farming in the world. Those places used to be natural ecosystems that no longer exist. We have already started a mass extinction event from which the level of biodiversity we used to have is essentially unrecoverable.
    - moonchrome 11y ago
      So people should not have children because you want to have nice scenery ... well I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
      - Daishiman 11y ago
        I want people to not have children so that we can preserve the accumulated genetic legacy of billions of years of evolution, which is what prevents our ecosystems from degrading by making it robust. We are not separate from said ecosystems. Also, what makes you think people's desire to have children trumps the health of the systems we depend on for survival?
        biafra 11y ago
        So why do people have children? Why do they have more children in one country and less in another? Take Germany: We have a retirement system that people believe in (I am not saying it is working) and we have less than 2 children per couple on average. In other countries children are your retirement fund. So what if every country had a retirement fund system, that people believed in? Wouldn't that solve the growth problem? Wouldn't that be good for the world to have faith in retiring?
Daishiman 11y ago
What's regressive about admitting that it's literally impossible to maintain a developed country standard of living for 7 billion people? There are physical limits and laws of thermodynamics that no amount of innovation will be able to fix. What is the point of continued population explosion? Satisfying some people's belief that reproduction is an inherent right?
- moonchrome 11y ago
  >There are physical limits and laws of thermodynamics that no amount of innovation will be able to fix. People have been crying about overpopulation since forever - like the Pink Floyd song goes "And if you survive till two thousand and five I hope you're exceedingly thin" - we have the least poverty in history and the population is still growing. Sorry to burst your green bubble but we are nowhere near close to thermodynamical limits of sustainability on earth >What is the point of continued population explosion? Satisfying some people's belief that reproduction is an inherent right? Yes. This is the perverse reality that most of modern "environmentalist" arguments come down to "what I see as preserving nature is more valuable than people". Sorry buddy but if I had to chose between no more seals or not having children - well at least we have video footage of seals.
  - lisper 11y ago
    OMG, you really don't get it. This isn't about seals. There's a classic puzzle that goes like this: you have a jar full of growth medium and a single bacterium of a species which divides twice an hour. One week later the jar is full of bacteria. At what point was the jar half full? The classical answer is: 30 minutes before the end of the week. But the real answer is that this situation is impossible, because after a week of doubling every 30 minutes the population would be about 10^232 bacterial cells, which is more than the number of sub-atomic particles in the universe. It's not about thermodynamics, it's about math: exponential growth cannot be sustained in a finite universe (let alone a finite planet). Sooner or later we will hit a limit. The only question is whether that limit will be imposed by the laws of physics or whether we will choose to become the masters of our own fate and impose it on ourselves. Personally I prefer the latter option because the former will almost certainly be very, very unpleasant.
Houshalter 11y ago
This is starting to happen. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/31zo1r/a_future_of_food_and_why_cities_wont_need_much/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/31zo1r/a_future... >"a system that produces pure nutrients at up to 220,000 pounds per acre per year (the global record for agriculture is 3,600) at less than 20 cents per pound, all while generating 99% fewer greenhouse gases than conventional farming means." ... "Berry and his team found these organisms. They gave them the ability to take in sunlight, CO2, water, a final ingredient that changes based on the end product, and the ability to secrete a pure nutrient when all these ingredients come together." ... >there's a company called proterro[2], that's producing sugar, at the third of the price of current agricultural methods - AT 5 CENTS PER POUND!.And they make 30 times sugar per acre as regular agriculture. And at their website , they say they can also make aminoacids - which are the building blocks of protein , so maybe they could also make proteins. that kinda validates essentient's vision , furthermore , their system basically eats CO2 - which is great. This stuff has to pass massive regulatory and protectionist hurdles. It will be fun to tell all the world's farmers their income will stop and their assets are wothless. Or fight against political groups that want to outlaw or heavily restrict artificial foods.

mathiasben 11y ago

and after these advances have been outpaced by population growth what happens then?

moonchrome 11y ago
You have even more people to deal with the new problems ? In general this entire mindset that there is "limited resources that we can't go beyond" is completely bogus and proven false over and over again - resources are just things that our knowledge/technology allows us to use to solve particular problems as we create new technology we grow potential resources. Oil was used as a folk remedy until we learned how to refine it. Earth becomes physically overpopulated - that's so far in to the future that you can count on realistically colonizing space by then. A realistic concern is if we can reach innovation fast enough to avoid "rough patches" but long term it's incredibly unlikely that we can't solve technical problems.
- Daishiman 11y ago
  Umm, no. I would like a planet that still has a semblance of uninhabited environments that are mostly unperturbed. Look at any satellite images of the amount of land that is being used by farming in the world. Those places used to be natural ecosystems that no longer exist. We have already started a mass extinction event from which the level of biodiversity we used to have is essentially unrecoverable.
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    So people should not have children because you want to have nice scenery ... well I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
    - Daishiman 11y ago
      I want people to not have children so that we can preserve the accumulated genetic legacy of billions of years of evolution, which is what prevents our ecosystems from degrading by making it robust. We are not separate from said ecosystems. Also, what makes you think people's desire to have children trumps the health of the systems we depend on for survival?
      - biafra 11y ago
        So why do people have children? Why do they have more children in one country and less in another? Take Germany: We have a retirement system that people believe in (I am not saying it is working) and we have less than 2 children per couple on average. In other countries children are your retirement fund. So what if every country had a retirement fund system, that people believed in? Wouldn't that solve the growth problem? Wouldn't that be good for the world to have faith in retiring?

Daishiman 11y ago

What's regressive about admitting that it's literally impossible to maintain a developed country standard of living for 7 billion people? There are physical limits and laws of thermodynamics that no amount of innovation will be able to fix. What is the point of continued population explosion? Satisfying some people's belief that reproduction is an inherent right?

moonchrome 11y ago
>There are physical limits and laws of thermodynamics that no amount of innovation will be able to fix. People have been crying about overpopulation since forever - like the Pink Floyd song goes "And if you survive till two thousand and five I hope you're exceedingly thin" - we have the least poverty in history and the population is still growing. Sorry to burst your green bubble but we are nowhere near close to thermodynamical limits of sustainability on earth >What is the point of continued population explosion? Satisfying some people's belief that reproduction is an inherent right? Yes. This is the perverse reality that most of modern "environmentalist" arguments come down to "what I see as preserving nature is more valuable than people". Sorry buddy but if I had to chose between no more seals or not having children - well at least we have video footage of seals.
- lisper 11y ago
  OMG, you really don't get it. This isn't about seals. There's a classic puzzle that goes like this: you have a jar full of growth medium and a single bacterium of a species which divides twice an hour. One week later the jar is full of bacteria. At what point was the jar half full? The classical answer is: 30 minutes before the end of the week. But the real answer is that this situation is impossible, because after a week of doubling every 30 minutes the population would be about 10^232 bacterial cells, which is more than the number of sub-atomic particles in the universe. It's not about thermodynamics, it's about math: exponential growth cannot be sustained in a finite universe (let alone a finite planet). Sooner or later we will hit a limit. The only question is whether that limit will be imposed by the laws of physics or whether we will choose to become the masters of our own fate and impose it on ourselves. Personally I prefer the latter option because the former will almost certainly be very, very unpleasant.

Houshalter 11y ago

This is starting to happen. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/31zo1r/a_future_of_food_and_why_cities_wont_need_much/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/31zo1r/a_future... >"a system that produces pure nutrients at up to 220,000 pounds per acre per year (the global record for agriculture is 3,600) at less than 20 cents per pound, all while generating 99% fewer greenhouse gases than conventional farming means." ... "Berry and his team found these organisms. They gave them the ability to take in sunlight, CO2, water, a final ingredient that changes based on the end product, and the ability to secrete a pure nutrient when all these ingredients come together." ... >there's a company called proterro[2], that's producing sugar, at the third of the price of current agricultural methods - AT 5 CENTS PER POUND!.And they make 30 times sugar per acre as regular agriculture. And at their website , they say they can also make aminoacids - which are the building blocks of protein , so maybe they could also make proteins. that kinda validates essentient's vision , furthermore , their system basically eats CO2 - which is great. This stuff has to pass massive regulatory and protectionist hurdles. It will be fun to tell all the world's farmers their income will stop and their assets are wothless. Or fight against political groups that want to outlaw or heavily restrict artificial foods.