We should all be Amish.

*Sigh* So depressing. Those who think we can rely on technology to solve our problems are being dangerously complacent and advocating society to make a gamble with the most dire of potential consequences -should that gamble not come out well. Ahh whatever... In the end it's not like it's going to make a difference in the grand scheme of things, the human species will die out eventually. Just a blip in the history of the universe(s).

When we're all wearing rubber suits to reclaim sweat and convert it into drinking water, those Dune jokes are going to get really old.


That doesn't really make any sense if you think about it, though. The Earth is supporting 7 billion people and "first world standards" are changing constantly. I mean, if you look at how polluting and damaging the UK was during the industrial era, and London was covered in a thick smog, you could easily have envisaged some apocalyptic nightmare imagining 7 people people living like that, but now the air is clean and there are fish in the Thames - a river once so filthy that if you threw a rock in it, it bounced.


But that's what I don't get: to colonise Mars we'd have to terraform it - adapt it to human needs. And if we can do that to an inhospitable place like Mars, then why can't we do that to Earth?

I just think people want to go to Mars because they saw that Arnie movie with the woman with the third boob.

The problem is not the density of humans but the efficiency of our utilization of resources.
The Western culture is producing too much food, too much calories per inhabitant. The developing world not enough. We are burning fossil fuel with a very low efficiency engine. We are transporting and lightning our houses with terrible network. Between 39 to 53% of the energy we produce is wasted, we could save it ! I am not entering in the wealth production as it will turn politics. But the earth can support 10 billions humans.

This is not a problem of raw number but a problem of ratio.

What film is this and why have I never seen this :whistling:

"First world standards" as they are in current first world nations. And the earth has 7 billion people, but most of them aren't living like that.



Theory is (again IIRC) that melting the ice caps of Mars would release enough gasses to thicken the atmosphere as well as provide the water needed. Martian soil is fertile, so plantlife should prosper if the water and atmosphere is there. A lot simpler than than cleaning up the mess we've made of earth. In theory :hehe:



What good would that be? I only have two hands

The United States is one of the leading consumers (and wasters) of food and we are also a leading exporter because we have highly efficient agricultural processes that are not in use elsewhere. If Africa adopted the same farming techniques that we have in the US, there would be enough food to feed 2-3 times the current population. It is all a matter of demand. Once the people who have the technology start to feel the pinch, then will the technology be applied to a greater area to remove the pinch and the technologically inferior will benefit (albeit briefly) through the increased production.

As for living space, we will start building higher and higher as opposed to further and further. Having people on top of each other is much more efficient for infrastructure.

Great idea! Lets spread our ignorance, stupidity and destructive nature to other planets and tear those new [censored]s as we [censored] them to entire ruin, awesome!

Please let us be serious with space colonization.
It can be a way to expand but it will not be a way to reduce overpopulation.

How many people can you put in a giant spaceship ? Let's imagine we could build 5 km by 2 km cylinder, 10 time smaller than Rama's own. It's already very big. It gives a surface of around 30 km2. This is the surface of a medium town. So, we could lodge maybe a population of 500 000 to 1 millions inhabitants inside. Let's keep on dreaming. We want to reduce the population of the earth of 15% only. It means 1 billion humans. It means 1000 spaceships like those... We were talking about resources ??? For decreasing of 15% the population of the earth, we will need to consume significantly steel, copper, oil, gold, rare earth etc...
This is not serious.
The population of a new frontier never impacted, apart from cases of already underpopulated countries like Ireland, significantly on the demographics. Space is not a solution for our overpopulation.
It does not mean we will not set up space colonies or colonies in Mars, this being said.

And even before we consider moving out of here, we need to mature the hell up. We're more or less just advanced parasites as we are now.

Total Recall, watch it NAOOOOWH!!11!!1!


Not everyone has to live by first world standards. This will make me sound like an [censored], but I am fine with a few billion people living in shacks while I'm enjoying my first world life. And, as princess_stomper's example illustrates, advancing technology will allow an increasingly large number of people to have much higher living standards than today. Malthus' theory was proven wrong over a century ago.


You have a mouth too, right?

We humans are very inventive so I am sure we will work the solution out but only when it gets much much worse. Also I don't think we should have colonys or anything in space, lets not ruin and drain the universe of resources until we fix our own planet first.

To anyone who knows Mass Effect 2, we're going the way of the drell, if things continue as they do it will only lead to war, famine, disease etc.

Yes, but the problem with overpopulation is that we'll run out resources to support those standards, sooner or later. Oil, fresh water and food will all be stretched thin as the population continues to grow.

And what is this theory you speak of?



Oh, right. So obvious :facepalm:

My sweat is a lot of things... all of them unpleasant and none of them drinkable :nope:

same reason it's usually more viable to tear down something and newly develop the real estate than to renovate the building into what it was -or even a new function is more work than starting fresh.

..and you call *me* vulgar?!? :stare:


not to mention some interesting footage of Sharon Stone in her finer years :hubbahubba:

...

err.., maybe I'm just a *bit* vulgar.. :unsure:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100802/, 1990 directed by Paul Verhoeven


..and precious little imagination I see


okay.. I'm vulgar :sadvaultboy:


See? I'm a frigging choir boy compared to Meddivh here..
although I do like his thinking :hehe:

..and he totally ninja'ed me. :goodjob:


Btw, there's enough resources locked away here in our own itty-bitty, back-water solar system to support a population a hundred times over the current figures.

Wanna be green? Go space! <-- getting a T-shirt with this as well :yes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap. It's been mentioned in this thread a few times already. Basically, it says that human populations grow too fast for their food production to support them, which will result in wars and epidemics to get the population size to a manageable level again. I think that, by his theory, this should have happened in 1890 or something. He didn't take technological advancement in account though, and thus was proven very wrong.

But why wait until people die? If there's something we can do now to help with a potential problem, why delay?


This is a reason why we shouldn't wait to do something overpopulation. Even if we aren't overpopulated (debatable) now. I don't think we're as screwed as you think we are. There's some incredibly brilliant and clever people on this planet. We just have to get some of them to work together and they'll figure out something that'll solve the energy problem.

There is no energy problem and therefore nothing to solve. Oil companies will continue to keep everyone using oil until there isn't any more left, then they will suddenly discover a new way to make oil and charge us more for it.

Think about it for a moment, if you ran a company that only sold one thing and that one thing was limited to a finite amount and the entire world depended on that one thing you would have two priorities:

1. Keep everyone dependent upon that one thing until you have squeezed every last ounce of revenue from it.
2. Develop a replacement and have it waiting in the wings for when it does run out.

To paraphrase, "whenever leaders of an industry get together, their meeting always ends in a conspiracy against the public".

I look at it this way, people who have issues with overpopulation are free to sterilize themselves.
Or give themselves a Darwin award.

It's too politcal to get into on these forums, but homelessness doesn't occur for the most part, by choice. Carelessness with money is not the main reason for mortgage foreclosures in the US. The leading reason is costs associated with unforseen serious health complications. We have a vast amount of soldiers with mental health issues that do not recieve their needed treatment, and become homeless. Add to that civilians with uncontrollable mental health issues, the jobless, the battered and abused. Some of whom self medicate with illegal substances.
As for the population issue:
Access to family planning can often be restricted or outright denied. Educational and vocational opportunites, as well as affordable housing, healthcare, and food are not within reach of all human beings. As for people with big families, I reckon you shouldn't reproduce if you can't afford it. Then again, that can lead to class warfare.

Humanity will do to liveable extraterristral worlds what it has done to earth, misappropraite resources and engage in war..
We'd like to think, that our lifestyle will scar the earth indefinelty, but in reality, we're a blip on a grand evolutionary scale. We'll screw ourselves over to extinction, none will mourn our passing, and life will carry on and evolve.



As for energy:
I find it hilariously sad that solar power , the one resource man cannot "own" is also the least technologically developed of all.
I don't wonder why.

I hope these were taken out of context.

:blush:

Seriously, we should take a page of instruction from the Amish. They know what's up.

A CHOIR BOY!!

And I'm not a phurvert, I'm just looking for a tuhbo man dawl!

World needs more sodomy.

tchnological advancement is not a magic wand that can suddenly turn human consumption into a negative number or ever produce an infinite supply of any resource. as long as the population does not stop growing the time that demand out numbers supply is inevitable. even in "first" world countries like american millions are going hungry, they are ignored simply because there is no economical benefit to addressing them. even if you feed them they still wil not have much money to put into the economy, thats how capatalism works.

also often in many cases technological advancement consumes more resources that it conserves.

I think a word that we'll all be hearing more of is the word "sustainability."

Sustainability isn't just about going green. Its about being able to teach future generations values that will keep humanity efficient and alive.

If we keep populating with the same systems we've been using for the past 50 years, we're going to be in a lot of trouble.

Innovations in technology and communication are the only way to salvage whats left of the human survival plan. The west in particular is very capital driven. Showing people how much money they can save, or creating incentives is one of the various ways we can promote a change in our systems.