Quote:
Originally Posted by P-hack
There are no megafauna left, you cannot expect that humans will change their nature willingly in the span of decades, but you have to be really presumptuous to try. Renewables will be important tools in post peak-oil conflicts, and the use of automatons for killing will increase. I'm not trying to sound dramatic, just realistic. When a 300 pound man attacks a cop and gets shot, then a city burns as a result, how do you justify any optimism on the subject? I'm not saying be depressed about it, it isn't doom and gloom as you say, it just is, so just be prepared, and don't act surprised when violence does erupt or think you should have done something differently. I mean you can lay down and die, that would be the gloomiest and most pathetic response IMHO, you will self-eliminate based on feelings, not "fitness", lol.
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A common misconception about me that I encounter frequently .. is that people see me as being 'optimistic' .. I'm not .. I'm a true pessimist who is unbiased enough to look at the actual data for what it is .. and I am constantly (pleasantly) seeing the actual real world data turn out far better than the worst case pessimistic possibility would have had.
I find it is ultimately more useful to be a true pessimist who is constantly (pleasantly) seeing the data for what it is , as things turn out better ... good news all the time .. instead of the optimist who no mater how good things are ... no matter how much progress and good news there is .. all they can only see where things fell short of their ideal fantasy 100% perfect world.
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One can look at the actual factual accurate real world data about the total human global population growth rate decreasing ... and one can see it one of two ways.
#1> Optimist
It isn't the 100% ideal perfect that one wanted = it's still bad news.
#2> Pessimist
Wow , that isn't a increasing growth rate at all ... What pleasantly good news ... It isn't even holding a stead % of yearly growth rate .. it's decreasing ... what's fantastically good news.
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I don't want to get to the absolute maximum sustainable population of humans on this planet .. but an honest and accurate look at what that would be is important to do if we want to make an educate decision about how many total humans we think is a 'good' total to have... ie at what point to say there are too many based on actual data , not hunches and such.
I think a good place to start that look at the data for actual sustainable global human capacity ... is in the 'luxury' items of very low efficiency that we could convert to higher efficiency if we needed to... and one of the easiest to look at for that is meat consumption.
It varies of course ... but for example the average 1 beef calorie of meat took about 35 plant calories feed input for that 1 calorie output .. because the animal's digestive system only utilizes ~30% or so of the energy content of the food they eat ... and the vast majority of that ~30% they do get they spend breathing , walking , etc... of course it varies .. but the point is that for the same input ... of resources ... land and energy ... you can feed a significantly greater output of plant calories as food to the human ... without the 35:1 loss ratio converting to meat.
In
2008 we humans globally consumed about ~380 million tons of animal products with this horrible through-put efficiency ... 66 million tons of Beef alone ... that beef which contains roughly ~2.9 calories per gram .. or beef alone we consumed roughly ~174 Trillion Beef Calories alone ... at the 34:1 ratio ... that beef alone consumed roughly ~6 Zillion plant calories input ... at roughly 2,000 calories per human per day ... 365 days per year ... just the plant calories we feed as input ... just into the beef ... could have instead feed roughly ~8 Billion people ... just from the beef input plant calories ... completely forgetting all the other 314 Million Tons of other Meat/animal products we consumed ... etc.
We actually could have the same number of humans we have today ... and significantly reduce our total footprint on the planet ... if we wanted to ... because it doesn't actually require as much space as we use to sustainably have ~7 Billion humans.
Or we have not utilized the vast majority of the planet ... I don't think we should ... but if we are to be honest with ourselves ... the capacity is there.