(December 29, 2009 at 8:25 am)ib.me.ub Wrote: So, how many people can the Earth sustain Adrian?It's currently sustaining 6.5 billion. Some of them are dying out, others are breeding exponentially and managing to feed their offspring. What you don't seem to get is that if there wasn't any food, people die (it's a sorry fact of life). Yes, some areas of the world are starving, but these people are still living and breeding. They are getting *some* food.
If a population runs out of food, it declines until food is plentiful enough to support a larger population again. Some areas of the world are running out of food, and I suspect these are the areas that have negative population growth. Nature has already kicked in!
Other areas (the western world) have more than enough food for everyone, since we have mastered farming techniques and mass production of foodstuffs. We have a positive growth rate (through nature). Yes, at one point we may hit the ceiling and won't have enough food, but when that day comes, the population will start to decline as naturally as it has done in the past.
With new technological advances, however, I doubt we will get to that point.
Science has not helped "overcome" nature; that is absurd. Science cannot keep someone alive without food/water in some way sustaining the body. Otherwise we wouldn't even bother eating (what's the point if science can keep us alive another way?) unless it was for pleasure alone.
What science does is give us techniques of increasing food production to sustain us. This isn't overcoming nature. At best, it's overcoming the limited food supplies the Earth would have if farming didn't exist. Indeed, farming techniques use nature to enhance the growth and production of food. We don't overcome nature, we embrace it.
