If we all consumed a vegetarian diet, then there would be more than enough to eat.
I do think, though, that fresh drinking water may become a problem.
And, since everything edible uses fresh water to grow, water will probably be a pretty serious problem.
I've seen zippi's comment before, and, yes it's interesting.
However, sometimes I like to sit down.
In fact, pretty near every night, I like to lie down and sleep.
Going the the bathroom might also be a problem -- not sure I really want to watch everyone else do that.
Or smell the result that such close contact would create.
And, of course, interesting though it is, it really doesn't address the question that was asked.
SO, yes, the world can support that population, however, the eating habits of many of us will need to change.
Yes, the earth will be able to support itself. The people will probably be OK, too.
There is a question about how much food we will be able to grow but most people look at this the wrong way. They first assume a population then worry about the food. In fact, the food supply will control the population. If there is no food then the population will not keep increasing.
The population question is the type of question a person in the rich west might ask because a lot of the rest of the world is already living with the answer. Other animals have been living with that reality for ever.
We are already past the renewable carrying capacity of the earth, using about 150% of the annual renewal rate now. It's possible that changes in lifestyle might linearly affect the rate but exponential population growth will wipe out such gains in very short order. I expect rather dire global conditions starting in 2030 if we don't make substantial revisions in global behavior. But that's just my bet based on a modest run of numbers I did about 6 months back.
Shortages of food and water affect us, not the planet, Earth has survived impacts from bodies the size of Mars, being completely frozen (at least 3 times). What you are talking about is affects on life on the planet, the planet gives little thought to whether humans are at the top of the evolutionary tree or whether Dinosaurs are or the life that came before them. If we went mad tomorrow and launched every nuclear weapon we had at each other we would all die but the planet would be just fine.
Deniers like zippo usually start quoting nonsense like the cubic volume of a human, it seems deniers don't grasp that even if everyone lives in a city packed in like sardines they still have to eat and the rough rule of thumb is it takes ~1 acre of land to feed 1 human for a year,
http://www.farmlandlp.com/2012/01/one-ac...
That by the way is a little more than his "28.5% of one cubic mile" allowing for an acre to feed each person you need fairly obviously 7 billion acres, which is ~10.9 million square miles, a little more than the total area of the entire continental U.S., but that is only if you intend to feed your 7 billion people, which clearly zippo isn't going to.
but I guess denier think food just magically appears in the supermarket. So while in that "28.5% of one cubic mile" Zippo has created for them they would unfortunately die of starvation as he has not allowed any space for them to grow food.
For 99% of our entire history human population has not rise above 1 billion, in that time we discovered fire, metal, the wheel, built the pyramids, saw Greece and Rome come and go.
Human population when about 1 billion ~1820 and it took 100 years after that to reach 2 billion but in the next 100 years it went to 7 billion, and while American's like zippo say 'isn't life great', the fact is western populations that live "the good life" are the exception, not the rule, 2/3's of the worlds population live below the poverty line, a fair portion of these earning a pittance making things that those same Americans can buy at a much cheaper prices than they did when the items where actually made in there own country.
P.S. on zippos maths, 6 cubic feet is a box six by six by six feet, I guess humans are very large on the planet zippo comes from, that (apart from the head room) is about the area of an average floor area of a lift and you can fit 8-10 people in a lift.
These people are not being created by matter from asteroids, so the Earth will be able to manage, as the total mass will be the same.
Now, according to the UN, the population will never reach 12 billion people. More like 9 billion is the peak.
The earth can support far more than that. I had a biology teacher who worked in a very specialized area. He stated that they had developed a fertilizer that would produce 4 crops in one season. It would never go to market, because it would kill the farming industry by making produce too cheap. In much the same way, there are tires that never lose tread. They would literally eliminate us throwing old tires into the dumps to be buried. Unfortunately, they would put the tire manufacturers out of business, so they are only used for certain vehicles.
This is not to say that population growth will not cause serious problems and likely wars. This is the real fear I have. The earth can sustain a much larger number if we set our goals to doing so. But humans never actually set goals like this. Instead the rulers of countries plot and scheme on ways to attain more power instead of helping their common man. Before war was not really a problem. Man could not kill themselves off. They would lose to many people to continue engaging in war and they would stop to recoup. Now, war is a dangerous business that can lead to a nuclear holocaust.
But there are ways of mitigating and eliminating the problem. The first world countries including China are now at zero population growth. The US is one of the few exceptions, and we are only an exception because of immigrations, otherwise we would also be at zero population growth. This mean the growth rate is slowing down. The UN projects 10.1 billion by 2100.
The measures needed to stop the population growth are the measures that responsible humans should already be taking. Women's rights are the key. If given rights, education and allowed to use birth control, the birth rate for women drastically decrease. Doing the right thing pays off.
Edit:
To correct Zippi, you would really be wanting to look at squared feet, not cubic as you would want to talk about land area.
Assuming 6*6 feet square, 7 billion would take up 9039 square miles or about the size of New Hampshire. 12 billion would take up 15,500 square miles.
Graphic is right on the money though. Less food means less people. There is the counter to Malthusian logic that states that increases in population reflect increases in ability to sustain ourselves. This is much more demonstrated in nature than trying this inverse approach.
Jonathan,
You claim we are beyond the renewable carrying capacity of the earth. Do you have any evidence to suport this? Our farming is certainly renewable. While our energy is mostly non-renewable, that is changing.
It's the big cities that are overpopulated. If an average person's volume is 6 cubic feet, then our entire population only takes up the space equivalent to 42 billion cubic feet. A cubic mile is 147,197,952,000 cubic feet which means all humans put together take up about 28.5% of one cubic mile currently so if that # rose to 12 billion, then we would take up approximately 1/2 of 1 cubic mile.
Go figure. :-) Doesn't seem right does it?
I guess we would have to figure out how the food supply could work out from there as far as sustainability is concerned. We would need a better and more efficient carbon cycle if we needed more food in the food chain. :-)
Probably. Although global warming could reduce the number of people that Earth can support.
Only if logic is added. We had a space program so our space vehicles could explore other planets in our universe and possibly colonize to spread out and homestead to help all species. My Triple Output solution grows 4 times more food per farm, per year and this Triple Output solution was implemented in 2012 by another country and at the same time turned off Global Warming. I now have updated my Triple output to my newer Triple, Triple Output solution that can grow up to 12 times more food per farm, per year, if it's ever implemented. One of my Title's is The Major Disaster Solutionist American Master and I've figured out all the Disaster Solutions that nature unleashes on earth. Check with The Covington Who's Who Society's web site for confirmation. Mike
Earth might be able to feed 9 billion, but that is about the max
Will the earth be able to support it self in 50 years from now, when earth population go from 7 billion people to 12 billion people?
You know shortage of food and water? When the earth population go from 7 billion people to 12 billion people?
Will this cause worse global warming or will global warming cause a major shortage of food and water? If the global warming problem does not get fixed ,When earth population go from 7 billion people to 12 billion people?Will this cause a major shortage of food and water?
How will this directly or indirectly affect global warming?
Fertility rate is going down things will stabilize in the future
Nope
If we have a cheap and available energy source it could be possible, and assuming we don't get global cooling that would be a killer,
yes
