It's global cooling, not warming!

Re population – why would you think that past growth will continue into the future?

Why would you think it wouldn't?

It was an extreme example but if say population only doubled in the next 400 years, thats still double the people as of today to feed. And if they all want steak for dinner every night, thats a lot of cows!!

It's well known that people start of having big families because lots of kids die. Then medical technology increases so more kids start to survive, but people still have big families out of habit. Then they start having only two or three, and population stabilises.

The people who actually study population dynamics think it'll top out about 9bn, IIRC.

From here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

In 2006, the United Nations stated that the rate of population growth is diminishing due to the demographic transition. If this trend continues, the rate of growth may diminish to zero, concurrent with a world population plateau of 9.2 billion, in 2050. However, this is only one of many estimates published by the UN. In 2009, UN projections for 2050 range from about 8 billion to 10.5 billion.

10.5 billion is still a lot of people!

What is it today? 6.5 billion people?

I also saw an article which had a UN high prediction of 14.5 billion by 2100

That is a lot more mouths to feed.

Hainey you are getting dangerously close to using models here to predict the future …easy there easy 😆

It is a lot, yes. But not many times today's figure.

With a bit of planning and consideration it's probably sustainable. After all, 1.2bn of those folk are being ruled by a government that seems pretty heavily into low carbon development.

If the population doubles then i think there is a little more we need to do than "a bit of planning"

With the current population they are currently predicting a food crisis in the next 60 years. Thats without adding any more.

We need to concentrate more on our over-dependence on meat, our poor farming practices and how we can be more sustainable and stop the desertification of our farmland. And don't get me started on fishing stocks!!

A bit of planning was tongue in cheek! I mean it's sustainable if we change the way we live. Including such things as having to drive/fly for business, eating meat, eating off-season veg, building leaky buildings, water management, soil management, power generation and so on. Probably a load of things I've not thought of.

But agreed, agriculture is one of the major ones, if not the major one.

according to the Japanese it's whales that are responsible for depleting fish stocks.

don't worry though they have a plan.

But agreed, agriculture is one of the major ones, if not the major one.

Agreed.

I'm not doing a very good job of reducing meat consumption though 🙁