What 11 Billion People Mean for Climate Change

[stuntcat]

For the roughly 7.2 billion people who live on Earth today, the impacts of a changing climate may be taking different forms, but the consequences are already being felt across the globe — from severe monsoons in Southeast Asia, to the increasing pace of melting ice at the poles, to hotter-than-average temperatures throughout the contiguous United States.

Over the course of the next century, if the levels of greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, and nations have failed to address the myriad challenges of climate change, scientists say Earth's fragile ecosystem could be in serious jeopardy. But, what if in those same 100 years, nearly 4 billion people are added to the world's population? Could this type of rapid growth overwhelm the carrying capacity of our "Pale Blue Dot" and our ability to mitigate and cope with climate change?

http://www.livescience.com/41381-11-billion-people-climate-change.html

[phantom power]

1. predicting the future is for chumps, but I don't think we'll make it to 11 giga-humans

we appear to be hitting the wall with respect to carrying capacity

[GliderGuider]

2. We'll be "lucky" to make it much past 8. nt

[hunter]

4. I think we are nearing the windshield.

--SPLAT--

We're not the first in the history of life on earth, and we won't be the last.

[pscot]

3. Earth's Carrying capacity

is just a pale blue smudge in the rear view mirror. We should have paid attention to that detour sign that flashed by 40 or 50 years back.

[GliderGuider]

5. My all-time favourite topic

And my all-time favourite book. Anyone here who hasn't read "Carrying Capacity" by William Catton owes it to themselves to do so soon.

It pretty much guarantees you'll never look at humanity's sojourn on Planet Earth the same way again.

11 Billion?
7 Billion?
3 Billion?
1 Billion?
500 Million?
100 Million?
35 Million?
7 Million?
0?

How low will we go?

[pscot]

7. Catton is a marvel of clarity

I read Overshoot in the early 80's and found him utterly convincing. That said, I never had much luck convincing anyone else. Most people can't be bothered. They simply can't imagine a future that's not like yesterday. It's easy to dismiss Catton's ideas as mere speculation; sociology on steroids. Or worse yet, neo Malthusianism. And as everyone knows, Malthus got it wrong.

[LouisvilleDem]

8. Norman Borlaug thought differently

Norman Borlaug believed the earth could sustainably support 10 billion people, and he understood the issue better than anyone.

[pscot]

9. Industrial ag

gmo crops, vast inputs of fertilizer and energy, dead zones at the river mouths, dwindling aquifers and still a billion people live in hunger. It's the very model of unsustainability and has let us push farther beyond carrying capacity than we would have otherwise. In our present circumstances, how is enabling population growth a good thing?

[LouisvilleDem]

10. Population growth is not a good thing

My point was simply that people like Norman Borlang, who really understood these things, have a much better record of predicting the future than people like Cottan and Ehrlich. Unless you enjoy having environmentalists look like fools by continually being wrong, it is best to tone down the doomsday rhetoric and use theories advocated by the people who got it right, rather than simply recycling the same old discredited science.

[pscot]

11. Borlaug was right for 30 years

If Catton is right, he'll be right for a lot longer.

[LouisvilleDem]

13. Agreed

If Catton is right, he'll be right for a lot longer.

The question then becomes, how do decide whose theory is correct? Do you choose the theory that has a proven track record of success for the last 30 years, or do you choose the theory that has consistently been wrong for the last 30 years?

[pscot]

14. We don't get to choose

The choices have been made. We're just interested spectators, waiting for the results.

[LouisvilleDem]

15. Of course we get to choose

The choices have been made. We're just interested spectators, waiting for the results.

That statement is only true if Catton is right.

Forty years ago Paul Ehrlich said basically what you and GliderGuider are saying right now. He told the world that the battle to feed humanity was over, that no matter what actions we took billions of people were doomed to starve. Thankfully, Norman Borlaug refused to believe him, refused to be a 'spectator', and the billions of people were saved. I know that you believe that he merely saved all those people so their children and grandchildren could die instead, but that is a belief, not a fact.

Now, just because the neo-Malthusians got it wrong 40 years ago doesn't mean they are wrong now. However, to say that it doesn't matter what we do now is only true if you assume, without proof and with history decidedly against you, that your belief of what the world's carrying capacity is correct.

[NickB79]

12. Norman Borlaug was a product of post-WWII America

People, even incredibly smart ones, believed a whole host of crazy shit back then. Americans to SCIENCE at that time was like toy-hungry children listening to their parents tell them about Santa Claus: wide-eyed, giddy, in awe of the endless possibilities: "If we're really, really, really good, we just might get that pony, sis!"

Of course, it was all a fairy tale, which we have finally grown up enough to realize. It all sounded plausible at the time, so long as you assumed we'd have infinite resources to work with, which we know is ridiculous.

If much of it were true, we'd have those flying cars, Moon cities, underwater vacuum-tube trains crossing the Atlantic, all diseases eradicated, nuclear-powered cars, clean fusion reactors powered by seawater, etc, etc. All of these things are possible in principle, but in reality are completely unfeasible economically.

No ponies for us

[LouisvilleDem]

16. That doesn't make him wrong

Would you like to compare the record of the pessimists to the optimists? Certainly they both have a sizeable list of things they got wrong. For every prediction of flying cars that failed to pan out, I can offer up a prediction of how many hundreds of millions were doomed to die from starvation that also failed to come true. However, I think what would be fair is to look at how often the optimists were right compared to the pessimists when they were talking about the same subject. Who was right when it came to predictions about how much oil we had left? What would happen to agricultural production? The number of people that would die from starvation, or disease, or pollution?

You can laugh about moon cities all you'd like, but any time you'd like to compare apples to apples feel free.

[NickB79]

6. 11 billion humans by 2100 means....

9 billion dead humans on the ground by 2150.

I was going to say "in the ground" but I honestly don't expect most of those that will die in the coming population crash to get buried