DescentBB

I don't think we'll run out of room as we can always build high capacity mega structures to house people. If food capacity becomes a problem than we may seriously have to look at the "Solient Green" concept.

he means "room" as inclusive of the room needed to grow food.

think about it, 30billion isn't really that many people (compared to our current 6.5 billion) if rubbing shoulders if your concern. or maybe my perspective of "a lot of people" is skewed coz my home of australia is pretty sparcely populated.

Food: Orbital farms. Lots of room to grow. Lots of energy to grow with.

Elbow Room: People CHOOSE to cluster. More efficient building (ie: megastructures) can solve most of the elbow room issues.

Diaspora: Why are we thinking in terms of "Earth" anyhow? Let's move right along. Yeah, there are some difficulties, such as needing a working Stardrive... but modern physics has been busy poking holes in what are some very basic assumptions we've had about the time:space continuum.

Soylent Green Scenarios: Ridiculous. As stupid as the concept of humans as batteries in "The Matrix". Possibly stupider. There are much more efficient means of growing protein.

I've been thinking about this on and off this week. (As well as singing Springsteens "Thunder Road" which will not leave my head or my guitar...very annoying)....but i digress.

In terms of space, of course we're not overpopulated, there's oodles of elbowroom for oodles more people. Sh1t, we could all become Catholics for 100 years and there would still be room to swing a saint without hitting your neighbour.

Food is not a problem. There is enough food to feed all on the planet.

Resources arn't a problem. We'll chop and change. We're clever.

The problem is that there are too many of us...for us. We can't manage ourselves as a species. The planet can cope with us (unless we really get silly) but we can't cope with ourselves.

WarAdvocat wrote:Diaspora: Why are we thinking in terms of "Earth" anyhow? Let's move right along. Yeah, there are some difficulties, such as needing a working Stardrive... but modern physics has been busy poking holes in what are some very basic assumptions we've had about the time:space continuum.

this is what i was thinking about when i started this thread. i was thinking about how i hope the species will eventually move off earth, to other planets, space ports, cruise ships, etc. basically a gradually growing population of humans NOT ON EARTH. the whole "all of your eggs in one basket" aspect of all of us being on earth makes me nervous. and frankly i don't like being within ICBM distance of... well anyone.

so i'd think that there could be a lot more humans around the place if we wern't tied to earth. from that point on there wouldn't be much danger of the species dying out (or perhaps just different dangers instead).
so i was pondering if this will cause any cultural changes. the culture aboard spaceships in fiction is always similar to on our current real-life sea-faring vessels - however there will be differences. one particular one may be the knowledge that the human race is quite safe (compared to now, coz we're all currently stuck on earth).

WarAdvocat wrote:Soylent Green Scenarios: Ridiculous. As stupid as the concept of humans as batteries in "The Matrix". Possibly stupider. There are much more efficient means of growing protein.

Yeah, but perhaps not as tasty!!

roid, I was viewing it as confined to just this planet. Once technology can shift some population off the planet, then fine, we can spread everywhere, and start wars on other planets. But while we are still stuck here, we don't need many more people than we already have. I think we should be a little more considerate of the thousands of other species on this planet that will disappear as our species grows and spreads out. We don't have natural predators. We aren't deer. Deer can't make their own food, or fix wounds. We will far exceed the natural limit of population growth, and the only places not leveled and concreted over will be places that are just too inhabitable. The only animals left would be in places like deserts, or zoos.

If you look at the picture NASA released of the nighttime lights from space, notice there's not all that much usable ground left. The US population has about doubled in the last 50 years, (150mil to 300mil) and again in 50 more. Where will double our current population fit? And at what expense to nature? The American continents are projected at 1 billion by 2050. As if we're not tearing down every tree in South America as fast as we can *now*. China is having problems already. Where are they going to go? They're going to have to invade other countries for space. India is right behind, and aren't both nuclear capable? Won't that be fun!

Subterranean construction would help, I suppose, though I wonder how long people will endure living underground. We're far too selfish for that. High ceilings and projecting an image of the sky and clouds and flying birds maybe, but how sad would that be? People might deal with that because by the time we dig underground, we'll probably know how to make geothermal electric generators with enough capacity to have clean air due to no more emissions. That and people are geting pretty used to be cubicled all day, catching a tan under the flourescent lights.

But even then..where will our trash go? People generate an amazing amount of garbage. PA has 13 million people. If you assume 5 people per house, that's just under 3 million houses. My area on trash day looks like 2-3 bags per house. Not including holidays. Then there's the other kind of trash, the kind we flush. I stood in the bathroom on the 20th floor of the Aramark building, and listend for a minute. You can hear flushes from several floors up and down. It's pretty constant. Sounds akin to a waterfall.

More people? Bigger parking lots. Larger factories to make clothes. Toys! How many toys does your kid have?

was that in response to my "30billion isn't much really" comment to woody*? because that was solely influenced by how woody interpreted mobi's post.

30billion isn't really that much when you are solely talking about elbow room, but of course that isn't what's really important. what's important is the continual health of Earth. and perhaps with more than 30billion - your concrete zoo predictions will come about.

(* i ask coz i roundabout agree with what you said in your latest post, so i'm not sure why it was directed at me.)

however, as for NASA's lightmaps - i am quite familure with them (satelite photography is an interest of mine). the ones i've seen (even the ultra high res ones) were not real-colour, they were filtered to make the light features more prominant - unfortunately this makes all the manmade features look larger than they are. the egsaduration is done to make it as easy as possible to find what you are looking at the image for - human installations.
i assume this is the same lightmap you have been looking at.

for a more accurate representation, NASA WORLDWIND shows accurate satelite photos that you can use to show how directly intrusive 'human installations' actually are. they arn't as big and shiny as on the lightmaps, they *can* actually be quite hard to spot. from afar they can be spotted by looking at where the green of the landscape takes on a GREY tinge - zoom in closer and you'll probabaly find a city. towns, because they are often so sparse, can be VERY hard to spot amongst the trees.

Oh, the whole post wasn't directed towards you, I was rambling. It's strange how without blinking an eye, people will tout a number like 30 billion, and never consider the damage that would do. Then again, since humans can't even consider (aka be considerate of) each other, I'm not really that surprised.