Amoeba said:

Anon clearly is in denial regarding the exponential function and of mathematics and reality in general. Then starts hand-waving and to believe in Star-Trek science. No information cited, just meaningless waffle. This is just hilarious.

WHAT exponential function? WHERE? Put up or shut up.

Population? Linear for the last half century and on track for a ~10 billion peak.

        Amoeba said:

…snip… He is right, exponential positive growth isn’t sustainable in this universe. How we achieve this I don’t know, but we will have to do this, or we are inexorably heading for disaster and it will result from our inability to understand the exponential function.

…snip…

The entire problem most people here will have with that statement is that we provably don’t HAVE exponential growth and with current conditions the population growth on earth will limit itself naturally. The only way we are going to limit the population growth in the short term in for instance afrika and India is not through any sort of rules or policies. It’s through education and allowing individuals to use more energy. Improving living conditions in the western world have inexorably led to a decline in birth rates and has limited growth. (There’s a real problem of a surplus of elderly in many first world countries at the moment.)
Limiting power usage for people means you will at some point deny someone the use of energy in a way that could provably improve his living conditions. And AC is one of those technologies in a lot of countries.

        Amoeba said:

Basing policy upon imaginary future technologies is like believing in fairies, it is most unwise.

Policy is not being discussed here. Population control apologists stay clear of policy suggestions because they know damned well that they are unenforceable, instead they wax on about moral imperative, or like you are doing, descend into sophistry to try and salvage their position.

Your assumption that resource growth will not be exponential is not supported by reality.

Nuclear power and genetic engineering and not future technologies but are sufficiently proven that we can rely on them and if you are willing to use them then you can indeed support 10 billion people at a western standard of living on one small planet.

No, it is dishonest not to admit that you do not have a solution to a far worse potential disaster.

On the subject of how to deal with food production being reduced due to environmental problems I would point out that we have larger surpluses than in the past so we can handle a greater drop off in production than past civilisations could, I would also point out that we aren’t using our agricultural lands as efficiently as we could (i.e. more technology could compensate for environmental conditions getting worse, Africa hasn’t had the green revolution yet), the EU is a particularly bad offender in this regard. We could also increase the amount of land we use for farming (though we’d prefer to keep reducing it as yields improve for environmental reasons).

If we got desperate enough we could even use vertical farming, we probably won’t ever do much with vertical farming but it’s still an option.

Nuclear energy is pretty much assured for at least the next thousand years (using just Uranium from the oceans with fast breeders we can give everyone significantly higher per capita energy consumption than any country has for thousands of years).

Current farming is managing to produce enough food to feed 7 billion people and there’s no reason to suspect that we can’t scale up to 10 billion and continue it as long as we have an energy supply.

If we aren’t a space based civilisation within the next thousand years than some pretty serious question would need to be asked (we should also have fusion by then, though I guess it’s possible that it’ll still be 30 years away even then).

But anyway, for you to be able to prove that there are limits to growth you’ve basically got to prove that baby universes can’t exist.

Maybe in the future we will find that there is a limit to growth, the universe will end at some point in time but even then we just don’t know what technologies will be available to those in the future and they may very well be able to do something about even the end of the universe.

I’m the one who bought that up in the first place so yes I have heard that the universe is infinite.

The speed of light is a bit slow though it is still an open question whether it actually is the speed limit but it wouldn’t really cause too much problem.

Completely irrelevant, planets are an inefficient use of mass anyway (you’re better off with a whole heap of O’Neill cylinders (which we could probably build today if we wanted to, though I’d start a bit smaller than that) which make any star system habitable).

Of course if we have instantaneous travel we aren’t limited to the size of the observable universe so already you’ve got a massive underestimate.

The sustainable carrying capacity of an earth like planet using just the best technology we’ve got is over ten billion, the solar system could hold trillions easily without needing technology much more advanced than what we have now.

        Anon said:

No, it is those of you who do not believe that the universe is infinite who are deluded (and even in the shorter term (limiting ourselves to only one planet) to believe that we can’t support 10 billion people with the best technology we’ve got is to be deluded)…..

Basing policy upon imaginary future technologies is like believing in fairies, it is most unwise.

As anyone can see, Anon was the one to raise the subject of space-travel. In doing-so he asked for his claim to be examined. And doubling or quadrupling the available resource doesn’t make any significant difference to the exhaustion of the resource where exponential growth is concerned. If anyone doesn’t believe me, just do the maths, or see below.
http://www.albartlett.org/articles/art_forgotten_fundamentals_part_4.html

To start off with Malthusians (or Neo- Malthusians, if you wish) when pressed, always retreat to Reductio ad absurdum to defend their position when pressed. This is of no real value in debate and I suspect this is more to save face than to make a valid point. In practical terms, of course, it is impossible to determine Malthusian limits to human population growth because humans, one, have the capacity to modify the environment to a greater extent than any other organism; two can exploit a wider variety of resources than any species; and three, apply far more complex reproductive strategies than any other animal.

So while talk of interstellar colonization and Dyson Spheres are certainly premature, they do illustrate the fact that finding the limiting factors for human population growth are far more difficult than they might seem. As well, observations that birthrates are sensitive to economic factors are real and cannot be ignored just because they do not fit into Malthusian models.

But that is really not what is at issue in these debates. The real underling motivations of those clamoring for limits to growth are less concerned with the human condition than they are with their own. Scratch anyone taking a hard stand on population control and you usually find someone with a chip on their shoulder over the economic disparity between them and those they consider wealthy as invariably if the debate does not vanish into nonsense over the size of the universe it does veer into the question of resource distribution and how we all have to learn to do with less.

Served up slathered in moral imperative, this argument boils down to demands that upper segments of Western society (membership in which is relative to the caste of the demander) must relinquish their wasteful lifestyle for the common good. Thus large homes, automobiles, pleasure craft and such are framed as evils that are consuming limited resources to the detriment of the planet and need to be suppressed. To those that mount this argument, solutions that see the rest of the world’s population’s standard of living elevated to the point where large families are no longer an economic necessity are an anathema, as this will not reduce the upper classes to the same level, their real objective.

        Jason C said:

Pushing aside all the inter-steller colonization ideas for now, the human population will reach a topping out point naturally and soon enough. I didn’t come up with that idea but I’m just paraphrasing from Hans Rosling’s lecture on TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html

Growth can be self regulated, but not by heavy handed measures IMHO. Raising living standards is definitely a solid method of birth control, but not the only method as Rosling demonstrates. Besides, Rosling is far more entertaining than your video, sorry.

Hans Rosling is definitely both entertaining and worth listening to.

I wasn’t implying or suggesting that heavy handed measures were necessary, just that science, mathematics, logic and resources has to be the basis of our actions and reality dealt with. The Bartlett video wasn’t intended to be entertaining, it was informative. He is right, exponential positive growth isn’t sustainable in this universe. How we achieve this I don’t know, but we will have to do this, or we are inexorably heading for disaster and it will result from our inability to understand the exponential function.

Perhaps mathematics don’t apply in the Corrollesque wonderland where Anon lives, where science and normal logic doesn’t apply and he apparently talks to the Red Queen, giant caterpillars that smoke hookahs and the disappearing Cheshire cat.

        Amoeba said:

Let’s assume each of those 10e24 stars has one Earth-like planet.
Assume the sustainable carrying capacity of Earth is 1 billion.
That’s 10e33 humans
Assume the human population is growing at 1.14% per year.
How long before we fill the universe? Hint: It’s a lot sooner than you think.
Answer please!

If you want to be treated with anything other than laughter, derision and ridicule, you need to provide the evidence for your claims.

Pushing aside all the inter-steller colonization ideas for now, the human population will reach a topping out point naturally and soon enough. I didn’t come up with that idea but I’m just paraphrasing from Hans Rosling’s lecture on TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html

Growth can be self regulated, but not by heavy handed measures IMHO. Raising living standards is definitely a solid method of birth control, but not the only method as Rosling demonstrates. Besides, Rosling is far more entertaining than your video, sorry.

Please explain how we might deflect a VEI7 eruption. Because you changed the subject to the Oort cloud, which is rather different and a dishonest tactic.

The Exponential function [8 videos, part 3 is particularly relevant], but all are worth watching, except for people who understand the exponential function.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D

When will this wonderful star-trek technology be available? Because the obvious question is, do we have enough time? or Will we run out of energy, environment or food before then?

Have you heard of the size of the universe?
And the speed of light? Physics?
How far is the nearest earth-sized habitable planet? It’s likely to be a loooong way.
BTW, please do remind me, how many people did we put on the Moon? How long did they stay?
How many did we put on Mars?
I need YOUR answers to these questions, and the evidence to support each one.

Assuming science-fiction instantaneous travel
An average galaxy contains between 10e11 and 10e12 stars. In other words, galaxies, on average have between 100 billion and 1 trillion stars.
Now, how many galaxies are there? Astronomers estimate that there are approximately 100 billion to 1 trillion galaxies in the Universe. So if you multiply those two numbers together, you get between 10e22 and 10e24 stars in the Universe.

Let’s assume each of those 10e24 stars has one Earth-like planet.
Assume the sustainable carrying capacity of Earth is 1 billion.
That’s 10e33 humans
Assume the human population is growing at 1.14% per year.
How long before we fill the universe? Hint: It’s a lot sooner than you think.
Answer please!

If you want to be treated with anything other than laughter, derision and ridicule, you need to provide the evidence for your claims.