But only in MKS… using cgs (which I’m partial to), we’re only 1% of c.

Agree.

“Of course, there is a lot of space in the Antarctic: just wait a few years, and people will actually be able to live there.”

To which Elwood Herring said,

“Wait a few years and people will HAVE to live there!”

But I reckon that any sizeable population down there would melt all the snow, causing a rise in the sea level, say 300 meters, about a thousand feet, wiping out all coastal cities on Earth. So the population would be in a worse pickle than before, (is this the “self regulation” hinted at by others?).

Got any other ideas?

Ivan.

The exponential growth model only applies to creatures with unlimited resources … or practically unlimited resources. When a population is “small” compared to the resources available (i.e. “practically unlimited resources”) the species will exhibit exponential growth. However, as the population increases the growth becomes “less exponential like.”

Human beings have passed well out of the phase of exponential growth. In fact the rate of growth is decreasing. That is not to say the population is decreasing, but that it is not increasing as fast as it used to. That’s to be expected as the population size approaches the theoretical maximum.

At this point, there are two likely *mathematical* scenarios:

a) asymptotically approaching the maximum value;

b) a sudden “crash” in the population (the death of 70% to 90% of the population in a “short” period of time).

In case a) the world gets “interesting” as people try to figure out how to manage resources. Case b) is “interesting” for other reasons.

The catch is, there is only so much usable space for resources. If *everyone* on earth lived as well off as an American, it would require approximately 2.5 empty planets doing nothing but supplying resources.

Western European nations and Canads have similarly high PAT numbers.

The fact is, western affluence mandates poverty in other parts of the world. There’s simply not enough resources on the planet to support everyone living at a decent level. Every additional American is hogging 4.7 acres for himself that cannot be shared by folks in other nations.

Toss in the fact that the world popularion is continuously growing (6.5 billion earlier this year) and the picture gets more grim. There’s only so much earth to go around, so the more people out there, the smaller everyone’s portion.

In order to have any hope of a sustainable future, people living in many countries will have to face the reality of a decline in their lifestlye.

Most of the models I’ve seen suggest that the earth’s population will top out somewhere between 10 and 11 billion. These models are mathematical in nature, so they really state nothing about the quality of life under such conditions.

I’m 40 now … in my lifetime the world population has celebrated passing the 3, 4, 5, and 6 billion mark. By the time I’m 80, the models suggest the earth’s population will pass the 7, 8, 9, and (*gasp*) 10 billion mark.

That’s cutting it a little close!

Population wise, things are going to be “very interesting” sometime around 2050.

Gary 7

Or simply trashing the planet. That’s ~300 million people and counting who are creating ~4 lbs. of solid waste a day in the US. (The UK and Japan exceeds 4 lbs. per person.) Trash is a sore point with me because I’m constantly picking it up around my apartment (yes, the maintenance people do it every morning, but can’t keep up with it). It boggles my mind that people can throw down fast-food bags and such within 10 feet of the dumpster. Houston, the 4th largest city in the US, has no mandatory recycling program, and I’ve noticed ads recently imploring people not to throw trash in the sewers since that goes right out to waterways and is not treated. Pictures in National Geographic of trash-hauling in bays in California makes you want to cry like the Indian in that early 70s public service commercial about littering (remember that one?). I see more and more littering in parks. I’ve also read that recycling has plateaued and is actually down from a few years ago despite many communities making valiant efforts to deal with the problem. So, 300 million people makes me think of more trash!

While looking for a particular trash photo in National Geographic, I came across this 2002 article because of the title line: “Ocean Litter Gives Alien Species an Easy Ride”:

Barnes found that the amount of garbage, particularly plastic, floating in the ocean has enabled travel by marine species to roughly double in the subtropics and more than triple at high latitudes. The findings of the ten-year study are published in the April 25th issue of the journal Nature.

It’s just another thing to remind us of how trash impacts the environment. And here’s a sad note:

“Even in the remotest parts of the planet, we see garbage, plastic bottles, cigarette lighters,” said Iain Kerr, a member of the Odyssey team, a five-year research effort to collect data on whales in the world’s oceans. “Albatrosses are feeding their chicks cigarette lighters because they resemble the pumice they eat to help digestion. So you have chicks dying from over-consumption of cigarette lighters. The plastic is everywhere.”

Ok, trash rant over. I doubt the people who visit this blog are trashy people…in more ways than one! Wish I could pick and choose the 300 million.

It is a potential problem, though. Any advances in food growing technology typically scale only linearly; maybe we can feed 20% more people, or 100% more, or whatever. But because the new generation will itself have more kids, population growth scales exponentially – and in the long run no possible linear growth can outpace exponentially growth.

It is of course a self correcting problem – but we really don’t want that to happen.

Of course, there is a lot of space in the Antarctic: just wait a few years, and people will actually be able to live there.

Sticking with the example of the UK for a minute, IIRC the UK population is of the order of 20% that of the US, but fit into a land area slightly smaller than the state of Oregon (where I now live, having vacated the UK a few years ago…).

Of course, I don’t think Oregon would be quite the pleasant place to live that it is now if the population was multiplied by a factor of 20 or so…

Let’s all give thanks to Norman Borlaug. Without his efforts we wouldn’t be able to feed as many people as we do! Yay for genmod food!

300 x10^6 Americans

I looked up the data for Elwood – the quote about the Isle of Wight comes from a time (early 1900′s) when the Earth’s human population stood near 2,000,000,000. We’re over three times that now. In the 1960′s, John Brunner, who wrote “Stand on Zanzibar,” said they’d need to use the Isle of Man instead (because the population had grown so much since the original quote). So I’m going to revise my revised opinion and stand by my original 900 square kilometer estimate. Of course we’d have to hope no one sneezes.

jbs

jbs

jbs