ender4 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I guess USA, Australia & Russia could hold a couple of extra billion people between them. If we could terraform, and reverse the deserts, we'd probably be able to hold another couple of billion people.All eating Soylent Green. i don't think food is the issue, its water. we (the whole of earth) currently produce enough food to feed the world population (not that it did feed them due to other reasons). and thats with very inefficient processes in half the world. if we became globaly efficient and tried producing more food, i think tripling food production isn't an issue. water though, a major problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted October 24, 2011 VT Supporter Share Posted October 24, 2011 I guess USA, Australia & Russia could hold a couple of extra billion people between them. If we could terraform, and reverse the deserts, we'd probably be able to hold another couple of billion people.All eating Soylent Green. i don't think food is the issue, its water. we (the whole of earth) currently produce enough food to feed the world population (not that it did feed them due to other reasons). and thats with very inefficient processes in half the world. if we became globaly efficient and tried producing more food, i think tripling food production isn't an issue. water though, a major problem.Desalination can't be THAT hard. The planet is **** covered in the stuff, the issue is just getting it to the right places. Shouldn't be beyond 21st century technology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ender4 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Desalination can't be THAT hard. The planet is **** covered in the stuff, the issue is just getting it to the right places. Shouldn't be beyond 21st century technology. i think the energy requirement of desalination means that its not feasible until we can do cold fusion, mega solar towers, or some other low-cost renewable energy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wainy316 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 earth is gay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarewsEyebrowDesigner Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 everyone just needs to stop what they are doing for a few days, have a smoke, a wee cup of tea, and come up with a plan. it's all a bit frantic these days, and quite frankly, it doesn't make any sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 It's easy to forget we are animals We aren't. We're bacteria in a petri dish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coda Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 If nuclear war destroys humanity and most of the rest of life, a good bet for survival in the short term, and for evolutionary ancestry in the long term, is rats. I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo, digesting spilled larders, ghost supermarkets and human corpses and turning them into new generations of rats and mice, whose racing populations explode out of the cities and into the countryside. When all the relics of human profligacy are eaten, populations crash again, and the rodents turn on each other, and on the cockroaches scavenging with them. In a period of intense competition, short generations perhaps with radioactivity enhanced mutation-rates boost rapid evolution. With human ships and planes gone, islands become islands again, with local populations isolated save for occasional lucky raftings: ideal conditions for evolutionary divergence. Within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge? Will rodent historians and scientists eventually organise careful archaeological digs (gnaws?) through the strata of our long-compacted cities, and reconstruct the peculiar and temporarily tragic circumstances that gave ratkind its big break? Rodent historians and scientists :shock: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 How big was the world's population when you were born? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eames Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 If nuclear war destroys humanity and most of the rest of life, a good bet for survival in the short term, and for evolutionary ancestry in the long term, is rats. I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo, digesting spilled larders, ghost supermarkets and human corpses and turning them into new generations of rats and mice, whose racing populations explode out of the cities and into the countryside. When all the relics of human profligacy are eaten, populations crash again, and the rodents turn on each other, and on the cockroaches scavenging with them. In a period of intense competition, short generations perhaps with radioactivity enhanced mutation-rates boost rapid evolution. With human ships and planes gone, islands become islands again, with local populations isolated save for occasional lucky raftings: ideal conditions for evolutionary divergence. Within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge? Will rodent historians and scientists eventually organise careful archaeological digs (gnaws?) through the strata of our long-compacted cities, and reconstruct the peculiar and temporarily tragic circumstances that gave ratkind its big break? Rodent historians and scientists :shock: Not a bad shout though.... the last major global extinction 65million years ago (estimated force 1billion nuclear warheads) ensured that no creature weighing over 25kg survived....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted October 25, 2011 VT Supporter Share Posted October 25, 2011 the last major global extinction 65million years ago (estimated force 1billion nuclear warheads) ensured that no creature weighing over 25kg survived.......I find this hard to believe. For one thing, they wouldn't have had scales to weigh them in those days... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eames Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 the last major global extinction 65million years ago (estimated force 1billion nuclear warheads) ensured that no creature weighing over 25kg survived.......I find this hard to believe. For one thing, they wouldn't have had scales to weigh them in those days... The BBC said it last Wednesday and they never lie...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarewsEyebrowDesigner Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 God made it up to test us, the weight thing, passed the information on in a note he buried whilst placing fossils around the place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 Well it is. You might as well have said that that the earth can support 100x it's current population and it'd have exactly the same basis. There's people that actually study this, and most of them agree the earth is over populated. But of course your "logic" states it can support twice as many people, so what do they know. It's my opinion dude, there's no need to get all angsty about it. I'm sure I could pull a few articles "out of my ass" that beg to differ with you, I did find one or two. But I really don't mind that much. It's a bit of an inane question that both you and I will never find the answer to. Just be a bit more polite eh? It's OT after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted October 27, 2011 VT Supporter Share Posted October 27, 2011 When I was born, I was the 2,702,422,566th person alive on Earth, and the 76,036,589,138th person to have lived since history began (according to this). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wainy316 Posted October 27, 2011 Share Posted October 27, 2011 When I was born, I was the 2,702,422,566th person alive on Earth, and the 76,036,589,138th person to have lived since history began (according to this). When I was born, I was the: 4,816,284,389th person alive on Earth, and I am the: 79,614,672,406th person to have lived since history began Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted November 1, 2011 VT Supporter Share Posted November 1, 2011 earth is gayIf it was we wouldn't have such a population problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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