[onlooker]

Just thought I would investigate to get the sense of how much death and destruction each of you envision going into the future. I know this is a bit macabre but I do feel that most of us now concede that a die off of humans will occur. So just to gauge how severe we as a group here think it will be, I create this poll. The figures related to how many do you think will die prematurely in the future because of our degrading of biophysical support systems and resources and in general our overshoot presence.

[Newfie]

Good poll, someone has to start the conversation.

I'm guessing 6 billion, but I'll never know. Could be extinction or down to 500 million.

[onlooker]

Good poll, someone has to start the conversation.

I'm guessing 6 billion, but I'll never know. Could be extinction or down to 500 million.

Yes Newf, we might as well get to the nitty gritty of what may be likely to happen in the not too distant future. I also created this poll, because I have detected that most of us on this site, do believe now that a die off is in the cards. So we may as well discuss this particular topic as we discuss pretty much everything else under the sun haha.

[sparky]

.
Before the fossil fuel age , IE 10 January 1709 , the world population was estimated at around ~700 millions

After the fossil fuel age , a world population of the same number would seems to be a good working probability

[Newfie]

Yup, the real profit in discussing it is to figure out how to wiggle through the bottleneck.

[onlooker]

Yup, the real profit in discussing it is to figure out how to wiggle through the bottleneck.

So true otherwise why discuss such a macabre topic

[Subjectivist]

I picked 2-4 because I think over the next century birth and death rates will return to balance and then people will choose smaller families so the total population will gradually decline.

[Tanada]

I will disappoint and say -human population will continues to grow to somewhere between 9 and 10 billion, then gradually decline over a period of centuries if we remain living on just the Earth. If we put colonies in space and on the Moon and Mars and in the clouds of Venus and Saturn then there is no firm limit to how high it will eventually get to be.

I hold a different view now than I did a few years ago about the climate flip, I look at the history of the planet we live on and see that during the hothouse periods there was a lot more life, not less. There migth be a dip period right after the transition as the climate will not instantly stabilize in the new kinder climate state of the hothouse earth, but there were a third of a billion people living in the Indian Subcontinent in 1900 with as close to zero fossil fuel use as you can get. There were many millions living in the cloud forests of Papua island at the same time, huge population densities. Why? Because they lived in a semi-tropical environment with crops that grew well in that environment even without artificial fertilizers and fossil fuel burning machinery. I am coming around to see much of Siberia, Alaska and northern Canada being that same kind of semi-tropical environment with monsoon rains and bumper crops every year promoting a very high population density even with limited technology. If we hold on to advanced technology the population potential goes way up.

A caveat, I do think we will go extinct eventually, but there are some species alive today on this planet that appear unchanged after hundreds of millions of years. None of them are mammals, but we can be the first one, and we are liable to keep our domesticated species of creatures alive as long as we last because we like having them around. So yes we will go extinct, say 12 million years from now, not 12 years.

[Tanada]

https://youtu.be/-kjUBJk20m8

If they can do it so can we.

[Ibon]

https://youtu.be/-kjUBJk20m8

If they can do it so can we.

Dinosaurs went extinct but their descendants have feathers and fly the winds with grace and mastery, treading lightly with hollow bones, consuming only a fraction of what their ancestors did.

The question of extinction or not is binary. Orangutans, Chimps, bonobos, gorillas and humans are the current crop of great apes. There have been many species of this lineage that have come and gone.

What of our descendants?

[Newfie]

Ibon,
What of our defendants indeed. I still don't see the feedback mechanisms that will turn humanity into something "better" or "higher" than we are today. I thing it more likely that we would revert to something more primitive.

Tanda,
I dont share your optomisim, I think you have something backwards. Our environment evolved befor we did, we evolved to be successful in our environment. Now we are changing that environment (very fast) and we need to evolve to fit that new environment (very fast.). We will not find the same high productivity in the Northern regions as we have now because the land has not been developed by Nature to have thich top soil. It has been striped by glaciers. The exposure to sunlight is different. The annual change of seasons we rely upon is different. The simple amount of land area available for habitation will shrink both by making the mid-latitudes too hot and because there simply isn't that much land in the southern high latitudes, think South America.

But more than any of this, and this is just speculation, gut feeling if you will, our population has bloomed because we were force fed. Competition has atrophied. I think that is what we are seeing now, a resurgence of that competitive drive. And that competition will express itself in civil and regional warfare. That will destroy globalization as we know it and the machine that feeds billions.

[DesuMaiden]

Given the large number of people believing in nonsense like free-energy and other unproven or disproven alternative energy sources that will miraculously replace fossil fuels, I say our civilization is definitely doomed. If so many of the citizens of industrial civilization are deluded enough to believe that magical technofixes will save their so-called "non-negotiable" life style, our civilization truly has no hope of surviving, although I got no idea how many survivors there will be.

The vast majority of citizens of industrial civilization believe that there is some magical alternative energy source that will keep their non-negotiable life styles afloat, although upon critical examination this is nonsense. But what can you do? It is not like you can convince them that their thinking is inheritantly flawed. All you can do is sit idly by and watch the show unravel and collapse.

[dunewalker]

This poll is incomplete. If, as Sparky reports, global population in the early 1700s was something on the order of 700 million, humans have degraded the environment to such an extent that it's doubtful that population could be supported now. My vote would be for something on the order of 100 million-to-500 million by the end of this century.

[MD]

It's simple math that follows historical precedents to a "T". Humans are nearing the end of their "bloom" cycle. What comes next we may or may not be able to influence. Die off or the next level.

I have no idea, but I'm hoping for the next level. Time will tell. It wont likely be decided until long after I'm gone, but perhaps my grand kids will be involved. I wish them well.

[Plantagenet]

This poll also needs a time frame, i.e. how long will it take for die-off?

I'd give it a couple of hundred years.

As more and more CO2 and methane enter the atmosphere, the tropical latitudes will become uninhabitable. Mid latitudes will be very hot---maybe too hot and dry for agriculture---but very high latitudes will still be OK.

I think there could still be upwards of a billion people living in Antarctica and around the edges of the Arctic Ocean 200 years from now. They might even be still using oil and Natural Gas----there could be a lot of oil around Antarctica that has never been used.

Cheers!


the Flag of Antarctica---last refuge of the Human Species on an overheated planet ca. 2200 AD.

[sparky]

.
It is true that human agriculture degrade its environment
ancient Mesopotamian text speak of the great forests of Syria ,north Africa was desertified ,
Sicily long the bred basket of the Mediterranean was wrecked
it's mostly through deforestation , overgrazing and the goats .

the number of a population of 700 millions in the pre-carbon age is an estimate ,
a similar number two hundred year after the carbon peak is a conjecture
certainly there would be more soil degradation but the North American plain was not under cultivation then
some progress would still remain , if only the massive amount of salvageable scrap available
farming was held back by the very high cost of iron tools ,
there would be a few centuries worth of use lying around

[careinke]

I'm going to have to throw in with Tananda. I've seen one study that says we can support 12 billion using local production and organic methods. Ultimately we will have no choice, we might as well start now. There are more and more people, from all economic strata, that have already begun.

Since Bill Mollison published Permaculture a Designers Manual in 1988, a lot of progress and knowledge has been gained. We've gone from trying to become sustainable to becoming regenerative.

Soils can be made at 100 times the rate of nature alone. With proper grazing techniques Joel Salatan has to periodically raise his fences because of the soil build up while simultaneously making a nice profit on his animals.

Mycology in the last ten years has made great advancements from nutritional food, soil enhancement, cures for certain diseases, packing materials, etc. This is a new field and has a ton of potential.

Open source eco architecture is developing engineered housing systems from off the shelf parts that allow you to build a 900 sq ft home for less than $25,000 in materials, and can be assembled by a team of 25 people in a week. The design incorporates power, water, sewer, and some food production. It is scalable, and easily modified as the family size changes.

Crypto currency, you tube, passive and active solar, waste management, etc, etc, will help ease the transition from a globalist consumerist centralized government debt based systems to a more anarchistic non aggressive nationalist system, much more environmentally friendly, drawing its energy, food, shelter with little to no waste.

People will learn to produce, rather than take.

It will happen because the BAU scenario has reached a tipping point and will soon no longer be viable. We as humans, have already had a direct influence on the entire eco system, nothing has been untouched and primarily in a negative way. We are also the only species that can fix it, and we will.