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Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid
discharge of the earth-space battery foretells
the future of humankind


https://collapseofindustrialcivilizatio ... 353112.pdf

"I do think this should challenge our assumptions about future population growth," DeLong said. "The study supports conventional wisdom to a degree, but it also reminds us that (abundant energy) is maybe not something that we can count on indefinitely.

http://www.thehillsgroup.org/depletion2_012.htm

With the energy sources that we now have available, mostly fossil fuels (83%), predictions of world populations of 10 billion by 2050 are completely out of the question. Such studies show that most researchers are completely ignorant of the energy equation. Unfortunately, public policy is set from the results of such proclamations as put forth by groups such as those sponsored by the UN. It is considered unspeakable to contest their conclusions. We have become the land of the blind, leading the blind! A world of specialist who's myopic view sees 2% of the whole. Since the remainder falls outside of their area of specialization, it is considered to be insignificant. It is hardly surprising that the public is generally completely unaware of what is taking place. It is hardly surprising that no reasonable policy is being proposed to address what is coming.

The entire human population would fit into a cubic mile square. No fatties.

Cog..... When I thought you couldn't say anything more ignorant... you OUT DID yourself once again.... LOL.

SRSrocco Report

SRS, Cog is a treasure trove of ignorance today!

Cog is correct, it you ignore needs for food and toilet facilities and you stack the floors say 8 feet apart you could pack people in like sardines without the sauce and fit them all in a cubic mile.

Clearly they would not live long under such conditions.

On the other hand with a thousand Arcologies each housing each housing 7.5 million people you could have them all housed in tidy 100 square meter apartments and use the surrounding land to supply the food they would need. Inside the arcologies recycling would be extremely important to allow only food being imported. For power you would need a MOHO style well drilled through the crust to the edge of the mantel where heat the helium or other non reactive gas used to generate your power. The arcology building itself would stay warm just from the body heat of the population and by using heat pumps that body heat would be harvested for heating water and perhaps even some of the cooking but would likely not be enough for the industrial services like lighting, moving heavy water through piping for all the levels and so on and so forth.

This plan would require most of the land in North America to feed the Arcologies but it would leave all the other continents free to return to a nature preserve type of existence. Our old abandoned cities would quickly be decayed into piles of rubble growing trees and shrubs if the climate was rainy like most of Europe, South America and Asia. Mostly desert locations like Saudi Arabia or Australia would have some cities preserved for a long time by the conditions in their surrounding locations. Others like the cities of the Brazilian rain forest or the Congo or Indonesia would go very quickly as the wood would decay and metal rust in the warm humid conditions.

vtsnowedin said,
Well the 110 sq. yard figure is correct but even if you have garden on the roof your only going to grow one third of your food on 110SY so your going to need roads to import food and no food is going to grow on the roads. You might have to annex Oklahoma Kansas and Nebraska which would make it a lot more roomy and get you closer to the corn from Iowa.

From what I have read, it is possible to get better than 500 calories per sq meter/per month of garden - not claiming it is probable, but possible. That comes out to about 1600 calories per day per individual. That seems like plenty, for the near starvation, death camp of the future.
If you placed narrow gauge rail tracks on a 10 mile grid, both north/south, and east/west, anyone could walk to a distribution center in less than one and a half hours. No roads needed, just foot paths between plots. The distribution centers would just be to pick up toilet paper, cover material for the composting toilets, and maybe a little salt and pepper. As people died, they could be placed under the compost pile for each plot, so no soil nutrients would ever leave the plot.
So if you took an area about 150% the size of Texas ( maybe along both sides of the Mississippi river?), this should be easy to achieve. Pull the irrigation pipes and other stuff you need from the deserted towns in the remainder of the continent, and you have the perfect place to store the global deadwood.
And like I said before, that would give the elite all of the pretty places to enjoy whenever they wanted.
This kinda reminds me of "A Modest Proposal", by Swift.
I'm too old, I guess.

Squil, man, good to hear you are still alive.

I guess this fits into the population thread, since if you had been wiped off the face of the earth by a GW juiced cyclone, that would have microscopically altered the pop figures!

Is everything alright with you and yours down there? Do you have anything to report on general conditions, attitudes, prognoses...???

Tanada wrote:On the other hand with a thousand Arcologies each housing each housing 7.5 million people you could have them all housed in tidy 100 square meter apartments and use the surrounding land to supply the food they would need. Inside the arcologies recycling would be extremely important to allow only food being imported. For power you would need a MOHO style well drilled through the crust to the edge of the mantel where heat the helium or other non reactive gas used to generate your power. The arcology building itself would stay warm just from the body heat of the population and by using heat pumps that body heat would be harvested for heating water and perhaps even some of the cooking but would likely not be enough for the industrial services like lighting, moving heavy water through piping for all the levels and so on and so forth.

This plan would require most of the land in North America to feed the Arcologies but it would leave all the other continents free to return to a nature preserve type of existence. Our old abandoned cities would quickly be decayed into piles of rubble growing trees and shrubs if the climate was rainy like most of Europe, South America and Asia. Mostly desert locations like Saudi Arabia or Australia would have some cities preserved for a long time by the conditions in their surrounding locations. Others like the cities of the Brazilian rain forest or the Congo or Indonesia would go very quickly as the wood would decay and metal rust in the warm humid conditions.

Here is another version of compressed living that grows food on site, rather than truck it in.
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-embrace-urban-apocalypse.html

Squil wrote: "...earthquakes...climate change..."

There actually have been a number of papers on possible interconnections, and much other intelligent speculation:

http://climatestate.com/2014/10/16/meth ... tal-shelf/

Waking the Giant: Climate Force and Geological Hazards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xndhx7KpSU0

Interaction between climate, volcanism, and isostatic rebound in Southeast Alaska during the last deglaciation

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... glaciation Summary posted here http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.p ... 952.0.html

Climate change may prevent volcanoes from cooling the planet
November 16, 2016

https://phys.org/news/2016-11-climate-v ... lanet.html

(Thanks to prokaryotes at neven's site for these; but this is getting a bit off topic, so we should probably take further such discussion elsewhere)

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/16/europe/mi ... is-europe/

The crises just keep unrolling.

Squilliam wrote:I fear that there will be a return to conditions more akin to 1930's Europe. If enough migrants come, or there are enough incidents, then there will be a change in the political climate. They will find themselves very unwelcome at some point because in so many respects they are alien. The more pressure the people are under then the more their baser instincts reassert themselves.

I think we are already seeing that

Lifeboat ethics will be front and center in this century

What is required is to try to embrace at the same time what seems contradictory. In times of human overshoot what is good for the species is not good for the individual since the resiliency of the species requires that we reduce the number of individuals. From a cold ecological sense we can understand this especially when decisions might one day soon be made to close the door to immigrants or restrict the sending of aid. This does not exclude compassion since there will always be enough dislocation in times of human overshoot to extend ones compassion to those displaced. It is just all about compartmentalizing your compassion and directing it wisely, almost with an ecological eye. The sword of wisdom will just have to cut off certain aid and support and closing the door to immigrants in certain circumstances might be the wise thing to do.

That post Dohboi just posted about how the rescuers actually created a "pull effect" whereby their presence encouraged more immigrants to leave in anticipation of getting rescued.

Onlooker yes, life boat ethics are already here or we are right at the doorstep. We have not been able to morally consider options of withholding aid yet there are clear cases when shutting doors will be the only tenable solution.

That same link by Dohboi seems to suggest that some tough lifeboat decisions are already being made. These immigration impediments also seem to suggest a widespread closing of Europe's borders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoE9q51qtyA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyfDOl2eTGs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmqOlxNQABI