Off Topic Humans to be extinct within 100 years and worlds resources to expire in 2050!

Oh dear

 

True but it is not up to us to rid the world of Chelsea but I do like your thought pattern.

 

You must have read my mind because i thought of Scum when i wrote the word 'pollution'.

 

... and that's just at QPR.

 

You must have read my mind because i thought of QPR when i wrote the word 'waste''.

 

I have built my kingdom , my ark
All QPR will be welcome if you can escape the UK

 

What .......never?!

Hmmm let me think.................ever increasing population vs finite world resources......................yep, what could possibly go wrong?

Number of hungry people in the world:
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about 805 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2012-2014. Almost all the hungry people, 791 million, live in developing countries, representing 13.5 percent, or one in eight, of the population of developing counties. There are 11 million people undernourished in developed countries .

 

Malthus said exactly the same over 200 years ago, when a much greater proportion of the population was undernourished, and many more died regularly from starvation. These models discount human ingenuity and progress. We already know that as long as the sun is shining we will never run out of energy, we just have to figure out how to get at it more easily. Feeding the current world population would have been unimaginable 50 years ago, but we are doing it rather better than in the past. In fact the pace of scientific progress over my lifetime has been literally incredible,and it's getting faster as our external processing and analytical power increases exponentially. Think of the iPhone, pure science fiction 20 years ago. Gene therapy, driverless cars, the Hadron Collider etc etc. But your point is political (not that I necessarily disgree with it) rather than scientific. Here's a political solution - everyone is neutered after they have produced one child. Yep, only totalitarian societies can impose solutions to this stuff. Poverty, rather than numbers, is the real problem. And the richer you are the more energy you burn and the more calories you consume.

Big challenges of course, and we will go extinct, or evolve into something else, eventually, because that's what evolution is and we are not immune from it. Though we are the only species that can consciously influence evolution.

 

I do tend to agree that the one saving grace as it were, for us as a species is our unique ability to problem solve and it may well be this that saves us ( wether it involves colonising another planet along the way - who knows?). But I am sure the advancement of technology, being as rapid as it is could well be the answer.

Pretty much all of my points are indeed political SB - you mentioned as long as the sun is shining we will never run out of energy. This is very true and the technology already exists to harness this energy source on a massive scale. Unfortunately, the cartels and monopolies that reley on us using fossil fuels, coupled with their hold over Governments means it will be political motives that prevent this method of energy being harnessed effectively, to the benefit of all rather than the lack of available technology............... As usual it is the wealthy few that will always benefit at the expense of the many.

 

Food is a weird one because i understand about population growing but we must also remember that new methods make growing food quicker (like those mass greenhouse things for tomatoes) Also they can breed fish quicker. Still plenty of land to grow stuff and then there is always cloning of animals.
We will run out of water before food.

 

Have you ever met anyone who frequents WATRB? There's a few on there who have already successfully completed that evolvement!

 

I don't think I said never did I? The quote from the Prof. was by 2050, THAT ain't happening.

 

Apologies Sheff....................misunderstood you there. So if it definately isnt going to happen by 2050 how long do you think it could be? The general consensus of articles ive read seems to be around 2050.

In a new book, The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It, Professor Julian Cribb argues a catastrophic global food shortage will hit by mid-century. His predictions paint a glum picture of the perfect storm that could threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people: Populations will grow to 9.2 billion by 2050 and in turn double today’s global food requirement and outstrip growth in food output. Combined with unpredictable extreme weather patterns, droughts will haunt those most vulnerable and lead to crop failures, food riots and war. Food prices will inevitably spike with a rising demand for protein foods such as meat, milk, fish and eggs. Growing shortages of water and less productive land to yield crops will further hinder the world’s future food production.
“The world has ignored the ominous constellation of factors that now make feeding humanity sustainably our most pressing task – even in times of economic and climatic crisis,” writes Professor Cribb. But Professor Cribb isn’t the only scientist clamoring for politicians to take climate change seriously. In a recent study by the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, it warned of a potential mass extinction as the number of ocean dead zones – waters starved of oxygen – increase at an accelerating pace. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research also put out a study that shows the increasing likelihood of frightening changes to rainfall, water supplies, weather systems, sea levels and crop harvests by the end of the century.
With little chance world leaders from 193 countries gathering in Cancun this week will come to any legal agreement, scientists like Cribb warn that the stakes are high, time is running out and it will be both rich and poor countries who will suffer from the long term impact of climate change leaving millions to go hungry by 2050

 

Sorry Pils but none of that equates to extinction - deaths on a huge scale possibly, but not absolutely everyone. And the removal of vast numbers of people then gives the planet a bit of a breather. Anyway, Dr Strangelove has a plan:

 

This is well over the top imo. It's not long ago that the now discredited "hockey stick" prediction of climate change was all the rage. The climate is changing, but I'm not convinced that it is going to happen at the rate described in your post.
I do think that mankind will almost certainly move to another planet in the near future (within a couple of thousand years or so), which is a blink of an eye in terms of the history of the planet. This planet will either be left as unusable, or we will use more than one planet.
Whatever happens, we know that this planet will eventually be roasted by the exploding sun, so something will need to be done.

 

On reflection both you and Col are probably not that far off the mark in that deaths on a huge scale will probably be inevitable and the colonising of another planet needed, but extinction avoided.

I got onto this subject from the other thread where i was discussing the possibilities of a global wealth cap in order to try and reign in the depletion of the natural resources we reley on for survival and found the whole subject really quite fascinating once i started delving into it.............hence this thread.

I think we can agree that we are somewhere between Sheff's " its all bollox and aint going to happen" and the need for another planet then

As regards climate change Col I think that the type of climates we have experienced just here in the UK (tropical rainforest, desert, African type plain and under several kilometers of ice ) are indeed cyclical and will repeat themselves over and over. The concerns I have is the timescales involved vs evolution. These events happened over millions of years and subsequently all living creatures had the time to evolve with their new environments. The worry currently is that man made climate change is making these cycles happen over a far shorter period, meaning life forms dont have the time to evolve and adapt and therefore will simply face extinction.

 

Bloody hell Pils are you our local activist!

 

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Yep. I agree that it is happening faster than before, but I'm still yet to be convinced that it is all as doom laden as is often suggested.