[MonteQuest]

Large scale agriculture that produces a surplus beyond the needs of the coming year,

The best read I know is Daniel Quinn's Ishmael.

A review of the book:

"I believe the core of Daniel Quinn's many ideas can be synthesized as:

1) Population growth is directly related to food production. All living populations -- including humans -- will grow to match their food supply.

2) As long as we produce a surplus of food (on a global scale; not regionally), the human population will continue to swell -- regardless of birth rates, death rates, standard of living, education, etc.

3) We perpetually produce a surplus of food because we practice Totalitarian Agriculture, which eliminates competing species, destroys biodiversity (some estimates say over 200 species a day are becoming extinct), creates massive waste and pollution, and spreads to disrupt entire ecosystems in order to produce as much food as possible. Ultimately, the increased food fuels rapid population growth, which demands yet more farming -- a feedback loop.

4) The creation of an agricultural system that produces vast surpluses is what has fueled the massive rise and spread of our culture (dubbed the "Takers"), and the cultural myths or stories that accompany it: humans are the ultimate pinnacle of the evolution of life on earth, humans exist differently and separately from the rest of nature, humans should exploit the web of life however necessary to further this "natural" dominance, etc.

5) The creation of this agricultural system and the production of surpluses is what first created systems of class -- there was now something to lock away, to horde and own, and social strata (of this type) emerged. From there, Quinn lays out how all of our civilization's problems evolved from class, overpopulation and imperial cultural myths -- poverty, sexism, racism, crime, depression, etc. He also makes a clear case for this method of agriculture and all the systems it has spawned being the cause of Global Warming."

[h2]

The easiest way to explain quinn is to explain that every single human being, without exception, is made out of food, there is no other way to grow/create humans than by supplying them with food. This rule also applies to all other life forms, and since humans are life forms, it applies to us too.

Quinn overshot at times his efforts, but it's hard to criticize his intent.

Recent dna research is showing something that actually significantly weakens quinns arguments in some ways, and that is that in fact, when 'takers' take over, they literally take over. That is, they have tracked the flow of genes, and, just as we saw here, in the USA area, when the organized ag cultures invaded, the existing cultures didn't say, oh, what a great idea, let's do that too, they said, oh, cr@p, it's over. Mideast dna studies have now confirmed that what we saw here in fact happened there too, a genetic pool grown in ag based food supply took over from the existing hunter gatherer pools. I assume the same thing happened in other parts of the world, the original iberians, etc, for example, were probably overrun, not integrated, though we will never really know that, but it's a good guess.

In other words, I believe that quinn's attempt to create a new myth, while admirable, may not actually fit with biological reality, in that, people adapt (on a genetic level) to ag based food supplies and cultures, just as they adapted before that to hunter gatherer life, and that adaptation itself may be a highly negative one in terms of ecosystems and fitting into rather than decimating niches, as we like to do. This isn't at all a stretch, the ability to process dairy for example developed very quickly relatively speaking in terms of human evolution. In other words, Nietzsche may have been more right than he believed when he said modern humanity was a degraded and corrupted organism, 'decadent' was the term he used. If you understand evolution as the ability to fit INTO existing ecological niches, adapting to it, as it adapts to you, then this would certainly be a valid biological observation. And if millenia long ag food production results in niche destruction, that would make us a singularly failed species in any real terms. And it also makes the notion that we are actually 'advanced' highly suspect, quite the contrary is the case I believe, but when we pick names for ourselves, we pick ones that make us look good to ourselves.

[DesuMaiden]

The question is what is the maximum level the population we will reach before it can no longer grow? Some say it is 11 billion, but if oil depletion kills off most of the population, I doubt we will reach 11 billion people.

[MonteQuest]

The question is what is the maximum level the population we will reach before it can no longer grow? Some say it is 11 billion, but if oil depletion kills off most of the population, I doubt we will reach 11 billion people.

Recent studies have been done on the infertility rate of women and the overall decline in reproductive ability amongst vertebrates, due to environmental toxins.

In a normal population--one not in overshoot like we are--as they reach the carrying capacity of their environment, the ability to reproduce slows and a die-back, due to food scarcity, to a sustainable level occurs over time. A rebalance is achieved.

In overshoot, the exponentially growing population grows well beyond the carrying capacity due to a temporary one-time overabundance of food. When the food source goes away, the population crashes quickly. Often to a level far below what was once sustainable.

We went into overshoot at 3 billion, perhaps.

We can't know the answer to your question as we don't know three things:
1. How much remaining fossil fuels there are.
2. What the decline rate will be when they start to decline
3. How the monkeys will react.

It could come like a thief in the night.

[sparky]

.
world population was in sustainable balance around 1700 but for two exceptions
- the "new" world had suffered some massive population losses with the coming of the Europeans
they were in the process of filling the gap with their better agriculture technique , new crops and husbandry
based on Continental European practice ,itself improved by American crops ,
the world population would have reached the 1.5 billion number more or less when this process would have been completed
Eastern Europe from Prussia to Russia and other place like Ireland were discovering the brilliant nutritional power of potatoes , the appearance of its natural predator and parasite was still to come
P.S the great plains were not really fit for intensive farming until the modern machinery appeared new guinea was already fully settled and Australia is poor fare for scratch farming

- the second was Abraham Darby senior firing his newly rebuild furnace at Coalbrookdale on 10 January 1709
in a revolutionary move he used coked coal as a reducing fuel

England was in the mist of an energy crisis , the traditional domestic fuel was charcoal but the population pressure was fast depleting supplies to the point of a royal edict restricting somewhat its use
instead of Chared coal , people in the cities increasingly used Sea coal ,a stone found on the coast of Yorkshire with a foul smelling combustion much disliked by all , but it was cheap , available and quite efficient to burn and transport due to its high thermal density ,the high sulfur and phosphorus content prevented its use in good quality iron smelting , the iron thus made was brittle and porous .

Abraham Darby was aware of brewers "coking" this sea coal to use it for filtering beer , he was equally aware that when this "coke" was discarded then dried it would burn cleanly ,
the revolution was slow at first , simply duplicating old patterns
production was used to make more machinery used around ,not least pumping devices ( Newcomen engines circa 1712 ) to allow mining under the water table an access previously un-acceassible coal seams
it was not silicon valley , it was "coal valley" the new companies vied with each others pouring out and increasing output of cheap iron and steel products ,
then the good and cheap iron was used for structural buildings and bridges instead of the not so strong and expensive wood.
then for building ships to export the products , the use of steam was a dependent technology it required iron boilers , iron rails and iron machine to shape.
England then Britain became from a marginal power on the edge of Europe into a first grade power

if coal had not been used Iron would have remained an expensive item , used only for the most indispensable tools