Are we facing 70 - 90 percent depopulation of world?

Have you heard of the new idea of low cost desalination through grapheme screens that are so fine that the salt can be screened out of ocean water?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

 

Well, Sushi wasn't very popular at first.

 

Could be.
Attenborough talks good sense in this interview, and interestingly he say that if humans don't fix the overpopulation problem, "the natural world will do something", perhaps he means Mother Nature will hit us with a super-plague or something to thin us out-

 

Good, it shows promise. If the tech can get around the possible graphene toxicity - or reduce it to a minimum - then we might have something. See https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170403193120.htm

Because of possible toxicity issues, we might get other filtering - non-food nor -drink - before we get to water desalinization. Still, if the tech proves out, it's steps in the right direction.

 

In the US? That's true. But sushi started in Japan (from Southeast Asia) 2,000 years ago. Insects & grubs & etc. have a longer history than that as human food, I'm sure. But I think having Japanese or Asiatic culture in general to fall back on as a source for the practice helped win acceptance for the food in the West. The Japanese are noted for their presentation of food, to make the appearance & esthetics a part of the dining experience.

That was helpful. I can't think of any high-culture ethnicity (in Western eyes, we're discussing) that could help sell the idea to a Western public. Of course, if that's what there is, & people want their protein, they'll learn to @ least try it. With the right processing & textures & flavors, grubs & insects probably can be sold into the Western mass market. But it will take one hell of a marketing campaign.

 

Probably won't happen till it's needed.

 

Over a year ago now they were saying the human population exceeds the planetary carrying capacity by about 50%--and half of the instability in Syria is due to drought, I read yeaterday.

Half of the US looks like desert if you look at Google maps. We're not an infinite resource, and we should not be importing too many more people of any religion, ethnicity, or ideology, particularly those who are producing too many children. Ditto for not rewarding the birth of children by people already here who do not themselves take financial responsibility for them.

 

I wish I could give you higher recognition than just a mere "like", because you hit the nail squarely on the head! Many different places throughout the planet are suffering horrible droughts now, and a very large increase in wildfires to go along with them. Here in Colorado we've been in on-and-off severe drought conditions (mostly "on") since about 1999.

We have more and more "Red Flag" days which means that the wildfire conditions and high winds are extreme. We just cringe and grit our teeth, hoping that these f*cking idiots who are so careless with fire will come to their senses. But, we've also seen a very large increase in the numbers of homeless "campers", and they've started a number of fires that got completely out of control. One such "camper" fire that started on the eastern edge of Colorado Springs burned for over 70 miles in very high winds before it was finally brought under control. Oooh, but you dare not start cracking down on the homeless "campers" or else the ACLU will come barging into town and drag everybody into court.... Why any of these poor, crazy bastards would want to winter in a place like Colorado is a total mystery to me. Hell, it's going to snow here later this week! You'd think they'd go to Arizona or Texas, but no, here they are, freezing their homeless asses off a mile above sea level. So, they build fires!

Australia is burning up, year after year. More of Africa, too, where tens of thousands of people face starvation because they simply cannot grow anything to eat. What a hell of a mess -- and yet the population continues to skyrocket, especially in parts of the world where it hurts the most. People simply refuse to learn!

 

Exactly! It's a vicious cycle - the extended drought damages the trees, making them more susceptible to insects & disease. The prolonged warm season promotes early & prolonged insect attacks on the trees, & the elevated temps also weaken the trees. The tree populations are shifting, the trees that require cooler temps are retreating upslope. We need to work on finding trees & shrubs that can be transplanted in mass & relatively cheaply, & that can endure higher temps, low water, insect infestations.

The relationships among forest, snowpack, water released slowly downslope to river systems & estuaries (& to crops & recreational use) are going further & further out of balance each year. Agricultural allotments are being cut & farmers/ranchers & cities are pumping up aquifers throughout the Western US (the Great Plains, too - but the Oglala Aquifer is pretty much done - it'll need decades to recharge naturally - possibly less, if we can find water to pump down there, & a way to do it that won't damage the system long-term.)

Long-term severe droughts will cycle back through the system & further damage the forests, which help hold the soil & regulate the amount & force of water going downstream & into creeks & rivers. Without roots in the soil, the soil will compact down & not be able to absorb much water, which will cause flooding & silting when heavy rains do come. The silting will cause damage to sports fishing, & widen the creeks & riverlets, warming the water & evaporating more of it in transit, further harming the fishing ecology & the related species.

It's a big nasty set of interrelated problems. My advice is to attack all the problems simultaneously - any improvement in one element should help with the rest. God help us all.

 

The older I get, the more I understand my grandmother when she used to say "I'm glad I'm on my way out."

 

I have enormous difficulty imagining North American young people growing up willing to be farmers, or soldiers...... or police officers..... or any job that requires a lot of self sacrifice.

 

I'm not scared because I look at it another way and realise we'd have a quieter, less crowded more peaceful world afterwards..

 

Aside from the specific people who would die, I don't see any reason why the planet just has to have this many people. Sure, some of our technology requires manpower in order for it to continue. But, I don't think there is like a set number of humans we must have.

 

True... but I truly do believe that it is possible for us humans to
fit into the environment in such a way that we actually do more good
than harm.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/notable/howard-storm.html#a04

 

I have to admit that that is true.....
but significantly better government can pull a huge percentage of people
through the major disasters who won't make it unless the most influential
people implement some better ways of doing things.


The Sahara Forest Project...and saving New Orleans and Florida from rising oceans!

....Every cubic meter of H2O added to the water table of nations in the Middle EAst will NOT be on top of New Orleans, Florida, Holland, Bangladesh or those 143,000 acres along the Fundy!!!!!

 

I agree that most people who live in Urban and Suburban areas think that tilling the ground to plant seed, maintaining the garden you plant and harvesting what you have worked towards is far beneath them. I too grew up on a farm and I loved it then and am doing all that I can to save money, buy arable land, and begin farming once more.

 

If it happens, it will be from something we never thought about.

 

Hunger will be a great motivator..
When the survivors of a plague or global catastrophe have eaten all the food in the supermarkets they'll probably instinctively go scavenging the countryside hoping to dig up potatoes and brussel sprouts etc to eat.

 

Yet there are never-ending calls for western countries to send more food, more money, more everything to Africa and the middle east (especially).

Maybe, in a more sensible world, western aid could be targeted to those countries who make a serious and effective effort to control, and decrease their own populations. Western countries should stop subsidizing the irresponsible population growth of other countries.

 

The 'Survivors' TV series of the 1970's is still the best survival show ever made in my opinion because there's not a stupid zombie, mutant or alien in sight, just a bunch of ordinary people trying to survive after a plague has almost wiped out the human race.
All 38 episodes are on DVD, and were also on youtube last time I looked, type 'survivors 1975' into the youtube search box, (don't mix them up with the 2000's remake which wasn't so good)

The original series on DVD-


Below- a clip from the original series, Abby wakes up after the plague fever to find her husband didn't survive it, so she goes looking for survivors in her village-

 

Our beautiful planet just hangs there completely open to space, bombarded by meteors and solar radiation for millions of years, yet sustaining life for all that time without batting an eye..
I wonder if there is a limit to how many people it can support?

 

It's claimed we are already beyond that point, by about 50%.

 

Starvation is nature's way of thinning out the population so i suppose that's what we'll be seeing.

 

Could just be antibiotic resistance the way things are going. Or an old disease like TB.

 

Yah, there is. Although every person carries/embodies a full set of genetic information from parents, & so on back to the origin of species - no one person has a compete set of the entire genome. For multi-generation spaceship voyages, the number is 160 - possibly fewer - see https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1936-magic-number-for-space-pioneers-calculated/

Of course, it depends on how much tech support the population has - with our current level of electronics & microbiology & stored genetic information, a small group could avoid inbreeding - as long as there were women of age to bear children (or artificial wombs, & the tech to sustain them).

Without any tech other that what can be improvised, the minimum number goes up to 600 or so - again, depending on the environment, there being a fair distribution of ages & genders, & relatively healthy people to begin with.