"Tim Tyler"  wrote in message
news:ceqv55$2rjd$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Jim Menegay  wrote or quoted:
>
> > By "maximum potential of the Earth", do you mean the
maximum sustainable
> > human population?  My guess would be 1-2 billion people, though others
> > are less pessimistic.
> >
> > But, I have to ask, why do you wish to actually achieve the maximum?
> > What is lost if we were to "run" the earth a little less close to
> > the "red line" and only support half of the absolute
maximum possible
> > population of humans?
>
> Questions about how many humans the planet can sustain for extended
> periods are difficult to answer.
>
> n_Growth.htm
> ...has the world's population rising to around 10 billion people by
> 2150 and then levelling off - but 146 years is a long time, and
> predictions on that sort of scale are necessarily quite speculative.
>
> I suspect that this graph represents an under-estimate - and that
> substantial population growth will continue on the planet long after
> that point.

Oh, I don't doubt that, purely in biological terms, the earth can provide
food for as many as 20 billion people or more, and sustain this level
for millenia.  And, humanity seems to be socially adaptible enough that
we may even be able to tolerate these kinds of population densities without
killing each other (too much).

My lower figure of 1-2 billion was based more on sustainable use of other
kinds of resources - particularly energy.  We can't support large populations
at current levels of energy consumption using fossil fuels.  Fissionables
give us only a few more millenia.  Fusion may be our ace in the hole, for
energy, but then there are other resources that we are currently consuming
unsustainably.  Groundwater, for one.  It is not clear that we must
inevitably poison the land that we use for agriculture, but it is clear
that we are doing so now.  This obviously can't continue for too many
millenia.

> The planet supporting large numbers of people /is/ important.  Humanity
> is part of a race - and its long-term success may depend critically on
> its rate of development.  While over-population won't do us much good,
> under-population is to be avoided as well - since a smaller number of
> scientists, engineers, and technologists will slow down progress - and
> may eventually result in increased probabilty of our extinction due
> to our lacking the technology needed to face challenges.

I agree that the pace of cultural and technological advance depends upon
population.  My counter argument might be that the most rapid progress
comes when we have scientists and engineers with time on their hands.
If all of our scientific and engineering talent is focused on "keeping
the machine running at the red line", then there may not be much creativity
left over for moving forward.

Besides, the timeframe that was originally mentioned was on the order of
a billion years.  I think that even if we had only a few thousand scientists
and engineers per generation, we would still make considerable progress
in that kind of timeframe.
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 8/4/04 9:34:46 PM