we've all wondered how many earthlings we can pack into the spaces down here on the earth. i know i have wondered. right now about 7 billion, maybe a shade more.

but there's a max out there, at some level? after that max level is reached should we earthlings strive to maintain that number, or allow the numbers to slide a little?

i'm thinking we'd want them to slide a little, but governments would likely be in a fervor? less voters, less citizens, less workers? what would it mean to begin backing off on human population after the maximum was reached? carrying capacity is real, or i have heard. i wonder what the carrying capacity of the earth's human population is? i'll bet it could go pretty high if we all go vegetarian? i'm not a vegetarian btw. just asking, that's all.

I've said for awhile that fresh water and food production for the United States is a matter of national security in an era of over population and climate change.

When the time comes that there isn't enough for everyone, and the people with serious weapons want their ration of rice, Isolationism won't be a bad word

It'll just tip over and capsize.

Ask congressman Johnson.

i can't ever remember if he was referring to guam or okinawa. i can't seem to keep all those little south pacific islands straight in my mind. johnson sure is better than the cutest little communist in congress that preceded him. and no, i'm not in his district, thank you very much. the ways it's gerry=mandered there's folks who wont' ever get a voice in gov't. and so it is.

but their neighbors down the road hear their pleas for help.

so, we maximize the earth's population of humans. ok. so we strive to keep it that way, or allow a little slippage to occur. it's a serious subject.

Mars is the new Earth, ask Trump after his signage.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...izing-nasa-funding-mars-exploration.html

The trip take 7 months and cost about 350 Billion, hey America first.

This earth could produce far more food that it does if idiocy didn't rule. Just what we waste in biofuel would feed some of the small countries.

Someone mentioned water. That's a big one in the west where irrigation is necessary. Idaho alone has 10's of thousands of acres of what could be good farmland but we're short of water for what's already being used. Of course us outdoorsmen wouldn't want our BLM land turned into farms. That would really affect the elk hunting.

Gus,

many in biology believe humans are just another life form. Many, if not most life forms, in an unrestricted or lightly restricted growth phase don't just slow down when they reach maximum carrying capacity..............


they crash.

and then go through cycles of boom and bust.


Assuming other parameters don't change drastically that is


Will it happen to us? Who knows, we are different in a way, as we have "technology" on our side, right?

Geno

PS, the ALIENS are coming to absorb our nutrients anyway, so let's just keep on keepin' on.

13% of all of our yearly corn harvest is sent to 100 foreign countries, for a very cheap rate..that's a lot of "free" biofuel.

If a frog farts under water,will Uranus know it?

Men have the ability to see ahead and predict some catastrophes in advance. While they might not be avoidable, many of the consequences can be reduced.

yep. it would be good, or could be, that we could sit down and bang out some positive outcomes.

right now, it looks like food prices in my local kroger are edging higher. no problem, they have to make a profit or lock the doors. lot's of folks have alt paperwork/money. it spends just like "real" money.

my overall point is that the global population is increasing, and little to no thought even enters the picture. maybe the system is functioning, but maybe there's better ways to look at the reality of humans walking around down here on the earth?

We already have a thread going for that kind of inane reply sir.

And you know where it is, no excuse for this kind of behavior.

Geno

PS

'Cities' are overpopulated, the world is not!

Interesting,and I thought Playboy was good only for the articles.

Yes, but if those cities depopulate they will have to live in your neighborhood, take over arable land, restrict your freedom of movement (they will want private property no doubt).

And keep breeding more "resource consumers".

But our monetary system demands that, growth is the king, the ultimate objective, damn the costs, environmental, social, and some might say spiritual.

Geno

Huh? Are there more than articles in Playboy? Learn something new every day.


Geno

But we can, and have, drastically changed the parameters in the past, and as Rock Chuck points out, we can change them much more.

Don't mean nothing,because we will all be dead by then.

Move out of the cities? The ultimate goal of the radical animal rights bunch is to move all people out of the great plains/Rocky Mtn area and turn it all into a massive wildlife refuge. The people would be herded into a handful of huge tent cities.

we will have a war or pandemic, nature has its checks and balances.

Hahaha!

Anyway..going vegetarian is stupid. It solves nothing.

Watch Dr. Allan Savory's Ted talk.

Muslims will never slow down their rate of population, well maybe once they take over the world.

In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed between 20 and 40 million world wide, in 1 year. It made the Black Death look like a hiccup epidemic. The reason is unknown, but it tended to hit younger, healthy men the hardest, the exact opposite of most diseases.
A round of this could completely eliminate California which would really check their balance.

You beat me to it. In my defense, I've been at work all day and nowhere near a computer.

20 million people in a die-off would certainly garner the attention of the msm. and well it should.

it's effect on 7 billion people or more? probably not so much. we'd have plenty of spares to take their place. some might have to be trained to work and do the jobs of the vacant positions.

Gus, I am sure you already know this. The carrying capacity of the Earth for humans has already been exceeded......several times.

Each time the population declined significantly, then rebounded. As technology advanced, each "malthusian correction" occured at a higher population level than the last.

Genetics and anthropology combine to tell us that we humans came within a hair's breadth of extinction at least once in the not so distant past.

We have held old Malthus off decades longer than predicted via fossil fuel, mechanized agriculture and transportation, advanced pesticides, and even more advanced plant genetics.

But the next correction will happen, and when first world nations find their citizens starving, the ensuing warfare may well make the last human "near extinction event" pale by comparison.

there it is, a man who speaks with the understanding of the breath of history in the background.

on the one hand losing 20 million people would be near catastrophic at least in the msm terms. and the President whomever they are at the time will have to talk fast and reassuringly. but still, in reality 20 is real, but represents a small proportion of the total count.

it'd be good to recognize what we've gotten ourselves into. and i'm innocent on may part. i'm innocent.

We passed K a long time ago. It's not just food you know.

About 60 million perished in the relatively compressed time period of WW 2 and the surviving 97% of earths population proceeded to procreate at a rate made sustainable by technology. When tech fails to solve the problems it promulgated the population crisis will self correct.

Humans have already created the means to self annihilation.

It is strictly a matter of time and some here actually think that worrying about it is productive.


mike r

20 million, phshaw. We (humanity) voluntarily eliminated two or three times that 1938 through 1950.

We will be talking numbers in the billions, probably in as short a time period.

When I was in high school in 1967, I remember my History teacher talking about Malthus, and the Malthusian Theory.
This guy lived 200 years ago.

He said that human population would increase, and increase, until it reached the breaking point. At that time, there would be a massive kill off, due to either war, or plague, or starvation. Millions, or billions, would die.

Now my high school teacher laughed off Malthus, saying that we had modern medicine, and we had massive agriculture that this poor dumb bastard could not dream of 200 years ago.

But no, I think Malthus was right. We are going to hit the breaking point and there will be a massive die off.

That is why, I am not only opposed to illegal immigration to our country, I am opposed to ALL immigration. We have enough people right now.
Also I am in favor of abortion. If a woman does not want a baby and does not want to care for it, she should have an abortion. We have enough people right now.

It is easy to say, right now, that we have plenty of room in America and we welcome all comers. We could not get overpopulated. But we could, and if we keep up what we now are doing, we will overpopulate. And then, we will break.

Worrying about earth's population is about as useful as worrying about Yellowstone blowing up.

If the folks who are so concerned about the population would throw themselves off a bridge, we would be closer to solving the problem.

What arrogance. If you are not willing to make changes in how you consume resources or are not willing to be the first in line for the necessary execution then you dont really want to make a difference.

Amen brother.

Are you looking for a 'yes' or 'no' answer?

Watch an old 70s movie called 'Logans Run', where the only trees remaining are in a museum, and the people....

SK,
Malthus was wrong about one thing. He assumed a liner growth rate for technology, and a logarithmic growth in population. But about the time he made his prediction, the world changed to one with a logarithmic growth rate for technology, and in the developed world, a liner growth rate for population. Under this formula his crash will not happen.

Define "good".

A drastic reduction will soon inevitably follow. I'm defining your "maximum" as being over capacity for the general good of the earth's species, which it already is, but hasn't yet peaked to the point of the lemming (etc.) cycle

This will be good for most of the surviving species when it happens, maybe not so good for humans as a "civilization".

We will have achieved the Libs utopia - "Back to Nature".

Heck, the human race may even survive it, with luck.

The earth is currently producing more food than needed.

The intertwined problems are distribution, waste, and timely consumption on perishables.

Here in the Arctic, in this borough, whatever isn't killed or picked, is imported, mostly by air. Probably 40% of the food served in the school cafeteria to these deprived natives (seconds to anyone who wants them)- all free except to the taxpayer- goes into the dumpsters after serving.. Meat and sweets for most of them. Michelle O be damned! You can serve them, but you can't make them eat it.....

I guess they just aren't hungry enough.

The difference I want to make is that my country is capable of sustaining itself when others cannot. I don't want to rely on Mexico for vegetables and Brazil for beef.

I'm with Roger..A Neo-Malthusian. War, famine, pestilence, or a combination of the above. There WILL be a time when we hit capacity, and people will die off by the billions.
Overpopulation is the root of ALL evil. Dysgenics is a close second, and they go hand in hand.

Dang Poobah,

You made me look it up.

I never could understand why the population of the world is so vehemently apposed to eugenics. Don't we all wish for our children to be as strong and intelligent as possible?

there's lot's we can do short of offing ourselves voluntarily as a public service.

the red chi-comes are investing in hi-tech condom factories, requires skilled labor and provides jobs. and a cheaper alternative than a lot of chemical tablets. lot's of sustainably based wood products beginning to flow into the economic system. birth rates at least among more civilized countries is slowing.

to really be helpful, all of our bodies when we eject from them, can be freeze dried, and placed on cargo ships to be carried to the impoverished parts of the ocean. they can be run through powerful wood chippers and returned to the sea including the mico-nutrients that are in low availablity. this will help the ocean flourish and rebuild the fishing stocks. fishing stocks might be a little low right now.

lot's we can do voluntarily. that's a better solution than strict regulation. regulation galls me, and makes me think i'm losing my rights. on the other hand, to allow party=poopers to pop out kids in abandon while depending upon the working tax-payers for gov't chits to buy food is hardly the answer. so maybe there's a happy medium. but, plenty of things we can do that's of a positive nature. regulation should be the last resort.

We're all supposed to be dead already in the late 20th century "Great Die-Off".

18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970

getting it all wrong, or mostly so, is what we humans are the bestest at. it's in our genes. but yet we still survive. the nuclear holocaust didn't get us, although i did hide under my desk a number of times to be safe.

aids disease didn't infest the whole world. we do have a way of adapting, or so it seems. being adaptive is one of our best traits.

Apparently very few are concerned with producing offspring that are useful to society. Religion is mainly to blame " It is your God -given right and duty to go forth and multiply.."

No cause the muzzies will have taken over by then.

Those who produce the worst offspring get the most free money.

Just the opposite of what Robert Heinlein proposed.

What I haven't heard much of in this discussion, given our propensity for technological solutions, sometimes at the last minute, is quality of life issues.

If we do continue this trip toward technological advancement, allowing the population of the world to increase "unchecked", who relishes the idea of never having a place of solitude (except perhaps the really rich, the so called 1%?), living in what might amount to rabbit warrens for humankind? Is this the type of world we want to leave for future generations?

It's already happening in East and South Asia, folks there in the last few decades have seen a substantial increase in their standard of living, and they want more (of what we've had for a century or so). Next will be some of the Central and South American countries (they're already on the way), some of the failed Soviet republicks in the borderland of "Eurasia", (think Kazhakstan etc), and lets not forget what basically amounts to the whole continent of Africa.

Our corporations, and those of India, Japan, Brazil, China and so on, already have starry eyes over the hoards of consumers they would just love to provide "goods" to. And there's no doubt in my mind, those folks will have their Toyotas, Hyundais, Radar Ranges, Kitchen Aid dishwashers, etc. Those corporations have no, wait make that NO reason to push for a reduction in birth rates, or eugenics, forced sterilization, incentives to have less kids, etc. They want as big a market as they can get.

I talk to my older brother about the changes we have seen in the past few decades, we don't like where it's going, we're happy we (most likely?) won't be around to see it get really bad, but feel sad for our nephews and nieces and particularly for the newest "grand nephew".

Wish it wasn't so, but it's what's likely going to happen, and perhaps there will be a major "correction" sometime down the road so that the newest member of our clan can have some semblance of a (forbid I say such a thing) natural world.

Geno

PS, please forgive I think of such a crazy idea as a "natural world". One must realize I am rapidly approaching "ancient" status in the eyes of many. Some of the places I can still get to show little or light impact of human use and therefor get the natural nod from me. Others, like the High Sierras, have gotten so crowded I hear folks are packing their poop out, can't have a fire, can't camp near a water source, the trails look like something people have been using daily since Moses was around, in other words nothing at all like the slightly used trail I hiked 45 years or so ago, that helped me realize there was a "natural world" way different from suburban SoCal and Queens NYC.

Sir Thomas Malthus works for me:

Population exceeds food supply and is kept in check by war, famine, or disease. It then drops below the food supply. As the population recovers, so the cycle continues.

Worked for Stalin and Mao.

speaking of technology solutions, I believe Trump missed a huge opportunity regarding climate change.

To date the approach has been to push alternative renewable energy sources but that doesn't solve the problem. Its a long term solution to a problem that if we are to believe will be past the point of no return in short order.

Trump, IMO, should have pushed for a solution to altering the path of where we are heading by removing green houses gases from the atmosphere as well as other solutions.

The science community supports it because not only does it not conflict with their agenda, it funnels money into their domain for research and studies to find the solution

The fossil fuel community supports it because it continues down a path of America leading the world in natural resources

Americans in general support it because they don't have to alter their lifestyle or our infrastructure

and as long as they are working toward a solution, we aren't bombarded with the tree huggers who say we are ruining the planet.

In the long run, assuming a solution is met, then not only have we solved the problem, but we now own climate change.As far fetched as it sounds, we will have implemented the technology to control the worlds climate against either extreme, warming or cooling.

It would be the crowning achievement of a Trump legacy, his "put a man on the moon" moment, but much, much larger - its literally saving mankind (at least to the climate change community)

and if he doesn't, well, coal and oil live for another 20 years