How many people can the earth support?

[Dolby]

I don't post here often - so don't flame me if this has been posted before :/

But I found the answer in most links to be 9-10 billion - due to limited land, water etc.

So if it's taken 12 years for the last 1 billion .... does that mean that life will become quite tough in 36 years (or less) when we hit 10 billion?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/nov/11/thisweekssciencequestions1

Cohen argues that you could fit one billion people each a metre apart, into a field 32km square. So everybody in the world would fit easily into Yorkshire. But it takes 900 tonnes of water to grow a tonne of wheat, and there is only so much water, so much land and so much sunshine. Human action has its own "ecological footprint"; there has to be so much land to provide food, clothing, shelter, medicines, building material, fresh air and clean water for any one human. It takes, according to some calculations, 2.1 hectares of land and water to provide for one average human. The important word is: average. The American footprint is about 10 hectares. So if all humans lived at US standards, we'd need another four Earths.

 

[Stefanmuller]

It all depends on how and where we can grow and harvest food in future. Already we are growing food in areas and in ways never thought possible 50 years ago. I think population growth and sustainability will equal escorted out. If resources gets scarce, living costs rises. There are also vast stretches of open land waiting to be utilised if we have to. Our methods will just have to change.

 

[Freshy-ZN]

Personally I think that at the rate of decline of the earths resources, ecosystems and all that we have already exceeded a sensible carrying capacity.

 

[Sherbang]

Also depends on economic systems and resource distribution. Obviously it can support fewer very wealthy people who, as individuals, use more resources. An more equitable distribution of resources and the earth could support more people

 

[Geriatrix]

It all depends on how and where we can grow and harvest food in future. Already we are growing food in areas and in ways never thought possible 50 years ago. I think population growth and sustainability will equal escorted out. If resources gets scarce, living costs rises. There are also vast stretches of open land waiting to be utilised if we have to. Our methods will just have to change.

Because of two things only. Petro-chemical based fertilizers and energy hungry mechanization. Oil in other words.
Want to see how the population of the future will look? Look at when oil will become prohibitively expensive. Overlay two graphs and backtrack it through time. Oil consumption and population growth.
Sure some people are trying hard with algae and what not, but those are still infantile technologies and require, cough, oil to industrialize properly.

 

[Freaksta]

Also depends on economic systems and resource distribution. Obviously it can support fewer very wealthy people who, as individuals, use more resources. An more equitable distribution of resources and the earth could support more people

Interesting, I guess this is partly true...

 

[Elimentals]

Well depends if you want the scientific answer or the philosophical one.

Science Answer:
Just as many people as there are people around at the time of measure - You can almost classify the earth as a closed system so no new carbon is added or removed when more humans are added,
As for energy, we still have a long way to go as dont even use a quarter of all the energy that the planet receives.

Philosophical Answer:
I think when it comes to human minds we went over the population limit back in the early 1800/1900's. The side effects of adding more than what is seen as perfect balance causes problems like crime and violence.

Above is just my personal view and no I have no articles to back it up but would love to learn more so I can change my view in the correct one if need be.

 

[killadoob]

I doubt we will make 10 billion by then there will be no fish and the world will be so polluted. Climate change is going to destroy crops,t here will be massive food shortages, war for resources other than oil.

We could sustain 20 billion people but we pollute too much and don't do nearly enough to ensure we keep the planet clean. Look at the pacific ocean, they have yet to find a fish species without plastic in it. We are destroying the oceans and once marine life collapses we are fked. Climate change is our biggest challenge and there is nothing we can do to change it. Crops will die, animals will die and we will be at each others throats. Movies seem to be a glimpse into our future at times.

Of course nuclear hell may proceed that.

 

[Dolby]

That's in (some) of our life times ... ?

Do you reckon it's that bad?

 

[killadoob]

That's in (some) of our life times ... ?

Do you reckon it's that bad?

Yup, i am 30, i smoke so i got perhaps 50 years if i am lucky. Unlucky maybe 30 years. That is three more decades of over fishing, pollution and possible war of which it can only be nuclear war.

You guys should read this site http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/

Please ignore the book unless you want to buy it, they have stories everyday from dead animals, earthquakes to war. They don't just do doomsday either. i have only been reading that site for a few months but shyte is getting real. Although it may have always been like this but it wasn't documented so well, the amount of dead animals washing up on shores is scary. I love the site mostly because they report on earthquakes and volcano's and i love that sort of thing.

They have a story about earths population and how we already consume more than the planet can provide, amazingly we could fit 1 billion side by side in a 32km radius so space isn't a problem. We could fit way more than what we have but resources are an issue and wars will be fought for them. The planet cannot sustain a species that only takes, at some point we will be destroyed to preserve our planet.

 

[Elimentals]

I love the site mostly because they report on earthquakes and volcano's and i love that sort of thing.

That reminded me of when I 1st moved to NZ

I was watching http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/recent_quakes.html like a hawk.... but after 2 months of seeing quakes every day I thought to myself F it... not worth the effort

 

[empirex]

I believe the entire world's population can fit into a land mass the size of Australia with a plot of land one acre (or hectre, can't remember) large for each person; with still a piece the size of Queensland remaining uninhabited.

So that leaves Queensland and the remainder of the entire world empty.

Population size is not the issue, it's man's actions that are the issue.

 

[Ekstasis]

I believe the entire world's population can fit into a land mass the size of Australia with a plot of land one acre (or hectre, can't remember) large for each person; with still a piece the size of Queensland remaining uninhabited.

So that leaves Queensland and the remainder of the entire world empty.

Population size is not the issue, it's man's actions that are the issue.

Distribution is the keyword. Hollywood - Somalia....make your own comparisons

 

[Elimentals]

I believe the entire world's population can fit into a land mass the size of Australia with a plot of land one acre (or hectre, can't remember) large for each person; with still a piece the size of Queensland remaining uninhabited.

So that leaves Queensland and the remainder of the entire world empty.

Population size is not the issue, it's man's actions that are the issue.

No offence but thats an old quote that did not exactly stay true when taken into relation with explosive growth we had in the last couple of decades.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density just look at the map for 1994 and then add all the people after that.

I agree with the statement (our problem is not scientific but philosophical) but not the quote, it will fail with today's population.

 

[Arthur]

You guys think like Malthus or those who projected the number of horse-drawn carriages in cities ...

This planet can easily support dozens if not perhaps hundreds of billions of human beings. Not with current political, social, economic and technological arrangements -- these will have to change, of course.

Our problem is not too many people - the earth is in fact very sparsely populated by humans - but failure of imagination, will and the moral values that make human life thive.

By far the biggest threat to us is the failure to reproduce. Most countries are facing a demographic winter of disastrous proportions. Yes, even in the Islamic world birth rates have collapsed faster than ever measured in history. By mid-century the orthodoxy will be that we urgently need to have more children, and societies will add every incentive they can for people to have more kids. The old "overpopulation" saw has long been debunked, and anyone who follows this issue knows that, except of course those too blind to see or too ideological to care.

 

[TJ99]

Well depends if you want the scientific answer or the philosophical one.

Science Answer:
Just as many people as there are people around at the time of measure - You can almost classify the earth as a closed system so no new carbon is added or removed when more humans are added,
As for energy, we still have a long way to go as dont even use a quarter of all the energy that the planet receives.

Philosophical Answer:
I think when it comes to human minds we went over the population limit back in the early 1800/1900's. The side effects of adding more than what is seen as perfect balance causes problems like crime and violence.

Above is just my personal view and no I have no articles to back it up but would love to learn more so I can change my view in the correct one if need be.

This is what I was going to say (the scientific answer at least). The world can support as many people as are alive at the time. As technology improves, we can feed more, obtain more energy etc. Obviously, there will come a point population growth outpaces technological development, especially at the rate people continue to breed, but at that stage the population will probably just stop growing i.e the death rate will equal the birth rate. Or self-destruct in nuclear armageddon, taking the entire biosphere with us, one way or the other. Probably the second option since people just keep pumping out kids and making knee-jerk, emotional decisions in general.

As for the "philosophical answer", meh, I don't think there was ever a time when people when people were not violent. They've been butchering each other and taking each other's stuff since before the creatures could even be called humans. In fact we live in one of the, if not the most peaceful period in human history. There's been no major war for over 60 years (unless you consider the Cold War one, which it wasn't.) Crime is at an all time low in most parts of the world (SA excluded of course).

The only solutions would be to move out and start colonising other planets, or stop people from breeding like bunnies, especially those who can least afford it. Neither of those options are practical or even possible at the moment though, so it seems we're boned.

 

[empirex]

No offence but thats an old quote that did not exactly stay true when taken into relation with explosive growth we had in the last couple of decades.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density just look at the map for 1994 and then add all the people after that.

I agree with the statement (our problem is not scientific but philosophical) but not the quote, it will fail with today's population.

How old is old?
Because even if you take into account a massive population growth the world can still accommodate it quite easily. My point is it's not the space that's the problem, rather what we do with it. Not that I'm encouraging having dozens of kids mind you

But the question was: How many people can the earth support?
It can support a whole lot more than it has now, but we need to use it effectively.

 

[Techne]

Well, the WWF would like us to believe that even two earths won't be enough for us by 2030....

 

[Arthur]

Of course the WWF thinks that. They think people are the problem, which is why they hate humanity.

 

[Archer]

Well, the WWF would like us to believe that even two earths won't be enough for us by 2030....

With current tech and ways of doing things, no it wont be. Exponential growth will do that easily.