Human Survival

[popeyespappy]

We currently produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The only reason there are hungry people is one third of the food we produce is lost or wasted. There are several reasons for this. Chief among them is that developing nations waste a large percentage of the food they produce. Up to forty percent of it ends up in landfills. A large part of that is caused by consumers taking more than they need and throwing out what they don’t eat. But another part of the equation is that much of what is produced goes straight to the landfills. There is no profit in feeding the hungry.

The world is also capable of producing a considerable amount more food than it currently does. Productivity in developing countries is low when compared to developed ones. Just bringing the production levels of poor countries up to those of richer ones would allow us feed a considerably larger population. Investment in infrastructure in these countries would go a long way in increasing productivity levels. But once again, there is no profit in feeding the hungry.

[Rahul]

True data, popeye. And if things got really bad we could always switch from traditional livestock to insects like crickets. They're 10 times more efficient to gain protein from. Yum.

[CleanShavenJesus]

I don't know much about this subject, it's a gray area to me. Assuming we don't kill ourselves, I know that the Earth is habitable for about another billion years.

Depends on who you talk to. Estimates on how long the surface of Earth can support life vary greatly. Many think the oceans will only last another 500 million to 1 billion years. If that is true our planet won't be able to support much more than single cell organisms long before that. Some believe complex plant life could have as little as one or two hundred millions years left. When that is gone most of the rest of us will join it.

Yeah, that's what I was basing that number off of, but accidentally dismissed the fact that we'd be gone prior to all the water being gone.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It is in the nature of species to go extinct. I'm not particularly concerned about the long term survival of the human species.

From a personal standpoint, the universe - not just our species, the entire universe - is going to end in something less than one hundred years.

Boru

[Rahul]

It is in the nature of species to go extinct. I'm not particularly concerned about the long term survival of the human species.

From a personal standpoint, the universe - not just our species, the entire universe - is going to end in something less than one hundred years.

Boru

Some species have gone for 3 and a half billion years with not going extinct but evolving into new species.

Congrats!

[CapnAwesome]

We currently produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The only reason there are hungry people is one third of the food we produce is lost or wasted. There are several reasons for this. Chief among them is that developing nations waste a large percentage of the food they produce. Up to forty percent of it ends up in landfills. A large part of that is caused by consumers taking more than they need and throwing out what they don’t eat. But another part of the equation is that much of what is produced goes straight to the landfills. There is no profit in feeding the hungry.

The world is also capable of producing a considerable amount more food than it currently does. Productivity in developing countries is low when compared to developed ones. Just bringing the production levels of poor countries up to those of richer ones would allow us feed a considerably larger population. Investment in infrastructure in these countries would go a long way in increasing productivity levels. But once again, there is no profit in feeding the hungry.

We produce enough food to feed the population, but much of that is from non-renewable sources. Fishing is the most obvious example, already many fisheries are seeing drops in production. Even the obvious examples aside, many things that we see as renewable are not. Certain crops deplete the soils and cannot be regrown, many crops are dependent on the continued production of fossil fuels for fuel to run machinery and for use in fertilizer. Our current lifestyle is not sustainable for the population we even have because we won't be able to produce at even our current levels without depleting more resources.

I'm not sure that the second statement that you made, that food productivity in developing nations is less than in developed ones. Most first world countries don't produce enough food to feed themselves. All of Europe and Japan are massive food importers. The major exceptions are The United States (The worlds largest food exporters by far), Canada and Australia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_power These are relatively large and sparsely populated countries. Most of the world is not this way. The idea that third world countries like Rwanda or Haiti, which have dense (and growing) populations are going to be able to feed it's ever growing population through infrastructure is naive. Most of the usable land of these and other third world countries are already used for agriculture, they simply can't feed themselves because of dense populations. If Holland suddenly had nothing to export to the US and other food producing countries the would find themselves in the same situation shockingly fast. They just don't have the land to feed themselves.

[Anomalocaris]

It is in the nature of species to go extinct. I'm not particularly concerned about the long term survival of the human species.

From a personal standpoint, the universe - not just our species, the entire universe - is going to end in something less than one hundred years.

Boru

Some species have gone for 3 and a half billion years with not going extinct but evolving into new species.

Congrats!

Name one species that has gone 3 and a half billion years without going extinct.

1. If specie A evolved into another specie B but left no offspring which were still members of specie A, then specie A is extinct.

2. We don't have good enough fossil from 3.5 billion years ago to enable us to even recognize species from 3.5 billion years ago.

---

Depends on who you talk to. Estimates on how long the surface of Earth can support life vary greatly. Many think the oceans will only last another 500 million to 1 billion years. If that is true our planet won't be able to support much more than single cell organisms long before that. Some believe complex plant life could have as little as one or two hundred millions years left. When that is gone most of the rest of us will join it.

Recent geochemical and geophysical studies have suggested that compare to benus, the carbon inventory of the earth is sufficiently sequestered, and the evolution of earth's core is sufficiently more advanced, such that earth will never undergo Venus like super greenhouse. At the same time, the volume of water sequestered in earth's mantle far larger than was thought just 10 years ago, and may be 100 time more than the oceans, is sufficiently large so the it's leakage onto the surface via volcanic eruption will reach equilibrium with loss of sea water into space or through subduction, and earth surface will never go completely dry, and sizeable bodies of water, ranging in size from lakes and oasis to oceans, depending on assumptions about level of valcanism and atmosphere pressure, will remain on earth for several billion years at least, possibly until sun turns red giant.

These scenarios foresee multicellular life as being about to continue at higher latitudes on earth for 2-3 billion years more at least, possible all the way tithe red giant stage of the sun.

[orogenicman]

Relax. Knowing Brian like I do, it was a joke.

[Rahul]

Some species have gone for 3 and a half billion years with not going extinct but evolving into new species.

Congrats!

Name one species that has gone 3 and a half billion years without going extinct.

I clearly state that they evolved into new species. Every creature alive to day can trace back it's ancestor generation by generation back to the first single celled critters billions of years ago. We've just changed into thousands of species along the way.

Durh.

You can say that Homo erectus is extinct. Technically correct. But you are a direct descendent of Homo erectus.

[popeyespappy]

Depends on who you talk to. Estimates on how long the surface of Earth can support life vary greatly. Many think the oceans will only last another 500 million to 1 billion years. If that is true our planet won't be able to support much more than single cell organisms long before that. Some believe complex plant life could have as little as one or two hundred millions years left. When that is gone most of the rest of us will join it.

Recent geochemical and geophysical studies have suggested that compare to benus, the carbon inventory of the earth is sufficiently sequestered, and the evolution of earth's core is sufficiently more advanced, such that earth will never undergo Venus like super greenhouse. At the same time, the volume of water sequestered in earth's mantle far larger than was thought just 10 years ago, and may be 100 time more than the oceans, is sufficiently large so the it's leakage onto the surface via volcanic eruption will reach equilibrium with loss of sea water into space or through subduction, and earth surface will never go completely dry, and sizeable bodies of water, ranging in size from lakes and oasis to oceans, depending on assumptions about level of valcanism and atmosphere pressure, will remain on earth for several billion years at least, possibly until sun turns red giant.

These scenarios foresee multicellular life as being about to continue at higher latitudes on earth for 2-3 billion years more at least, possible all the way tithe red giant stage of the sun.

As I said it depends on who you talk to, but as far as greenhouse affects on Earth it is my understanding the sooner rather than later crowd believes the problem here in the distant future is expected to be water vapor as opposed to carbon dioxide. Initial heating due to more energy from the sun, possibly in combination with anthropogenic and other greenhouse gasses, raise the level of water vapor in the atmosphere and cause further heating. Eventually the water vapor vapor will be lost into space but not before it heats the place up more than the current ecosystem can bear.

Who knows though? Maybe by that time we will have the ability to move our planet to a bigger orbit. If we haven't gone the way of the dodo already.