Researchers: Earth will be ‘unrecognizable’ by 2050

[kpete]

Source: Raw Story/Agence France-Presse

Researchers: Earth will be ‘unrecognizable’ by 2050
By Agence France-Presse
Monday, February 21st, 2011 -- 8:28 am

WASHINGTON — A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an "unrecognizable" world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference Sunday.

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, "with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia," said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

To feed all those mouths, "we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000," said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

"By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable" if current trends continue, Clay said.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/21/researchers-earth-will-be-unrecognizable-by-2050/

[Fearless]

1. We're pretty unreconizable from 40 years ago too and certainly 40 years before that.

The competition for resources will be harsh though.

[bemildred]

17. Indeed, the Earth is "unrecognizable" now, has been for thousands of years. nt

[Fearless]

28. That's not quite what I meant.

Look at the tech sector: computers, laptops, cell phones, iPods, etc. Or the digital age of finance. The Gulf of Mexico, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Amazon Rainforest, the holes in the atmosphere, etc.

I wasn't speaking on the silly notion that anything that man has done to the world isn't "natural" as all things, man included, are nature and thus natural. Our petty good or bad feelings about them mean nothing to the world at large. It continues in much the same way with or without us.

[bemildred]

34. Thanks for clearing that up.

:hi:

[No Elephants]

49. I so admire dry wit.

[bemildred]

54. Well, I don't really disagree, so why make a fuss?

The worst arguments are always with people you really mostly agree with, no?

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[onehandle]

3. It'll take care of itself.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=274304

[HereSince1628]

4. I'm glad my time will be over. I have no interest in J-shaped curves

for the human population.

People aren't caribou. People, entire nations, will fight to stay alive. The consequences are awful to contemplate.

[hatrack]

7. Or, as someone succinctly said:

"The world will run out of love before it runs out of food."

A little sentence that says a lot.

[HereSince1628]

8. Yes, truth often needs few words. n/t

[onehandle]

19. It is also said:

"Soylent Green is people."

[CoffeeCat]

50. I worry...

...about my children--ages 10 and 11.

It's very upsetting.

[intheflow]

51. I know.

My son and DIL are saying they want to have children in the next few years. I want grandchildren, but I don't want this future for them. :(

[Delphinus]

55. I know ...

the future does look bleak for our loved ones, doesn't it? Actually, I'm kind of thinking it looks bleak for us, too.

[hatrack]

5. No Worries! God Will Stop Warming, Refill Oil Fields, Says MN State Rep.

No, I'm not making this up.

Rep. Mike Beard (R-Shakopee) is pushing for more new coal-fired power plants in Minnesota, but the Shakopee Republican is undeterred by reports about the effects of carbon-emitting energy production on global warming. His reason: He believes God will prevent the planet from running out of fossil fuels while also eliminating the harms associated with climate change. While Beard speaks from his religious tradition, many others in Minnesota’s faith communities believe it’s dangerous to wait for divine intervention to solve our environmental problems — and they say it’s the duty of people of faith to preserve the planet for future generations.

In an interview with MinnPost’s Don Shelby on Tuesday, Rep. Beard explained his recent push for new coal-burning power plants in Minnesota.

In the Minnesota House, Beard has taken aim at clean air standards — in particular those that curb carbon dioxide emissions by power plants. He introduced HF72, which would lift the ban on new coal plants, and he also introduced HF509 to repeal the 2007 plan — touted by Gov. Tim Pawlenty — to curb greenhouse gasses and build Minnesota’s renewable energy infrastructure.

EDIT

Beard also told Shelby that God would prevent the planet from running out of fossil fuels like coal: “God is not capricious. He’s given us a creation that is dynamically stable. We are not going to run out of anything.”

EDIT


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x275171

http://minnesotaindependent.com/77707/gops-beard-wants-more-coal-plants-because-god-will-fix-global-warming

[Ghost Dog]

30. Wow. "He’s given us a creation that is dynamically stable."

Arrest that man for thoughtcrime! Methinks he's been reading forbidden books on ecological systems!

For I am sure no such 'dynamic stability' is dreamt of in the Old Testament's philosophy... Unless he means this:

[Delphinus]

56. {sigh}

Sometimes, there are no words. :cry:

[protect our future]

6. Drinkable water may be even more difficult to obtain. nt

[TalkingDog]

16. Yep. Water Wars are next.

[JCMach1]

39. Only the rich can afford desalinization...

[Kolesar]

9. So, heretofore, South Asians had been subject to predation by cows?

"People tend to move up the food chain as their incomes rise, consuming more meat than they might have when they made less money, the experts said."

[tigereye]

10. I would hope that some positive adaptations can be made

by then -to the way food is grown, to development, to a different response to poverty and need. I suspect/hope it won't all be gloom and doom. Often the reality is something less dire.

[MilesColtrane]

11. Famine and drought brought on by global climate change will kill many.

Bellum omnium contra omnes

Or, as Hunter Thompson said, "Big Darkness, Soon Come".

[Lorien]

43. War over resources will kill many more.

biodiversity loss will kill off most of the rest of life on earth. We have to get serious about ZPG. It starts with education, access to family planning, and empowerment of the world's women (which again, starts through education).

[WatsonT]

12. I see one potential, major flaw in that argument:

"A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an "unrecognizable" world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference Sunday."

Affluent populations don't tend to grow, at least not very much and in fact often they are shrinking. The wealthier the worlds population becomes the smaller it will get (to a point obviously). That's why the vast majority of population growth occurs in the poorer parts of the world.

This could be a self-correcting problem.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. 'more affluent' - take India as an example

It's both growing, and becoming more affluent. And that goes for the world as a whole. Yes, some of the most affluent populations may start to shrink very slowly, but any 'self-correction' will take longer than 40 years.

[Exultant Democracy]

45. You are 100% correct. Birth rates even in the 3rd world are already plummeting due to urbanization.

[opihimoimoi]

13. My search reveals this will bge averted....a new system for compact habitation while preserving

comfort safety and well being is about to emerge..

Leading to stability and restoration of the Planet

Many other suggestions re this issue rejected for various reasons...time running out for social shift

need action soon...

GOPers in the way

[Jokinomx]

14. Producing more food is NOT the answer... the only answer is POPULATION CONTROL...

People have to realize to continually look for more efficient ways to farm is not the answer. That is the exact reason we are where we are. Unchecked population growth to sustain the capitalist need for growth.

It works for a while but at some point we have to stop growth and maintain what we have.

Religions are a huge part of the problem because many are totally against any form of birth control.

Under our last administration dickweed cut funding to all birth control and family planning outlets worldwide because they offered abortion as an option.

So since we cannot rise above the state of an animal.... and control our worlds population we will be subject to the law of animals.... "Survival of the fittest".

It won't be pretty.... as this law never is.

[Javaman]

20. Since we don't limit births...

population control will solve itself.

We have gone a very long time without a major pandemic.

As the population increases and city crowding intensifies, the transmission of any and all contagious diseases goes up.

[patrick t. cakes]

33. Off topic...What is that picture from??

With the kid in the white pants flipping the bird?

I've seen it many times before and have always been curious about it?

Is it Paris '68?

[boppers]

62. "We have gone a very long time without a major pandemic."

I'll be sure to let Africa know about that.

[rayofreason]

26. So will you be first in line to be "controlled?"...

...or do you only envision it happening to others?

[Jokinomx]

46. you know that is a great question!

China realized that something had to be done. I am sure you are familiar with the horror stories that has produced over the years. Yet it was a humane thing to do and yet they still are growing the policy has just slowed it down some.

It is a fact that the more educated a society is the lower the birth rate and that is so most of the time.... exceptions do occur such as the Morman push to have children is immense in their society and would never accept limiting family size.

It has to come from a global awareness and I just don't see it happening.

as for me personally....I came from a very large family. I don't feel negatively about that and looking back, I can't give you a reason why my parents would have so many children. However, my wife and I had two children and for many reasons chose not to have any more.

It's the most difficult issue facing humankind and I don't think we have a real clue how to address it.

[Ghost Dog]

31. Of course. The OP article refers to the birth control educational effort

being undertaken, which the conference is discussing.

[blackspade]

15. Wow.

And here I thought my love of dystopian futuristic SciFi films was a good way to pass an afternoon.
I never thought they would be a training manual for future living! (well, I kinda did....)

[Ghost Dog]

32. Here's a training manual for future living!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x472482

[blackspade]

35. Thanks for the link!

Now I'll go watch the Road Warrior series again for good measure (what happened to Mel Gibson anyway?)!

[Ter]

21. How are they only predicting 2 billion more in the next 39 years?

We rose 2 billion in the last 20 years.

[divineorder]

25. Birth Control is More Available Everywhere

Condoms are cheap. In addition there are several European nations that are predicted to lose population over the next 20 years. In Italy, the rate is 1.6. China will have at least a third of its population over 60 by 2020. America is slightly over replacement, and below that in the white population. Russia is on a trend to lose 1/2 its population in 30-40 years.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

38. Birthrates are going down almost everywhere

Mexico's fertility rate is down to 2.3

[fascisthunter]

22. I expect Conservatives to marginalize the severity of this report

it's why I think they are disconnected from reality and should be summarily ignored. We have heard enough of their bullshit and there bankrupt view of the world is going to kill us all.

[hootinholler]

23. No Problem ADM and Monsanto are working on the solution!

I'm sure of it. They will get it all fixed.

-Hoot

[NoodleyAppendage]

24. Solution = Soylent Green. n/t

J

[right2bfree]

48. Shoulda listened to that movie 40 years ago. Too late now. nt

[rayofreason]

27. More Malthusian fear-mongering.

Thank god for Norman Borlag, the greatest humanitarian of the 20th century. And with continued scientific advances in farming feeding everyone will not be a problem, as long as self-interested idiots and bureaucrats don't get in the way. Already if just part of African farmlands updated technology to something that they could sustain, with modern strains there would be plenty of food for Africa. But the example of Zimbabwe, one a food-exporting breadbasket, now a food-importing basket case thanks to the ruinous policies of Mugabe, is a cautionary tale. Bad government can really mess things up and it is the major threat to human wellbeing.

On the demand side, education is the key. Educated women have far less children than uneducated ones, which is why the second derivative of the population as a function of this is negative world wide. The rate of increase is slowing dramatically, and in many places the first derivative is negative (Europe, Japan) so populations will shrink in the future. In fact, given the poor ability of previous predictions to recognize the rapid, negative acceleration in population, I would not be surprised to see a population in 2050 that is well below what is forecast.

[NickB79]

29. The Green Revolution was heavily fossil fuel dependent

Without access to cheap fuel, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers made from fossil fuels, Borlag's work wouldn't have succeeded as it did.

And in case you hadn't noticed, fossil fuels aren't a renewable resource. They are depleting and their prices are rising.

Your example of Africa is a good one, but not like you think it is. Why do you think that every farmer in Africa hasn't adopted modern seed strains, or even simple hybrids if they are opposed to GM crops? Could it be that they simply can't afford the fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that are necessary to substantially increase their yields when planting new seed strains? Yes, Mugabe's attacks on farmers were ruinous to Zimbabwe's agricultural sector, but it was also being hammered by skyrocketing prices on fuel and fertilizer at the same time. At the same time, water resources are becoming more scarce as global warming has begun to affect water supplies and alter rainfall patterns, something that use of modern seed strains has little ability to protect against.

Basically, the current concerns about overpopulation and food insecurity can't easily be addressed in the same fashion that we addressed them 50 years ago. Our populatino has grown far larger, our fossil fuel resources have been markedly reduced, and our climate is already starting to shift in ways we can't easily predict due to global warming.

[divineorder]

40. I just want to put in a good word for Urban Farming

Urban farming uses far less fossil fuel since the plots are small, transportation costs negligiable, and these plots are small enough to use organic wastes, compost and plants that discourage pests. We should be able to increase the yield per foot. Then there's vertical farming, farming done inside converted skyscrapers. Vertical farming indoors lessens the exposure to pests and allows for regulated temperatures for optimal growing conditions.

The population decrease could free up some land for farming as well. In Europe and other places where the demand lessens, some buildings could presumably be razed and turned back into more profitable cropland.

[GliderGuider]

60. Got Monger? Monger this!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4741510&mesg_id=4743174

[StarsInHerHair]

36. I don't see how politicians will have the intelligence to understand this

"we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000,"

they don't now, that's for certain. It's unrealistic, you'd have to have all the farmland that was used in the last 8000 years, or its' equivalent-how does that even happen?

[Courtesy Flush]

37. See? Repubs are helping by reducing the affluent population n/t

[alfredo]

41. We're going to have a big shakeout. The herd will be culled.

[Lorien]

44. and the big losers will be every other life form on earth

tigers, panda, whales, eagles, hummingbirds, all of the world's forests; gone.

[alfredo]

52. To the earth we are parasites, just like ticks.

The earth has always rebounded after a mass extinction.

Millions of years later the top of the food chain will look upon our mounted bones and wonder what we really looked like. What color were we? Did we have stripes, spots, or heads of different colors from the body? What was our call like? Did we hoot, howl, or whistle?

[roamer65]

47. Yep. World War III.

[alfredo]

53. But disease and starvation will do more damage.

[slackmaster]

42. I'm thinking it will look like Blade Runner in the urban areas, and Sleeper in rural places

[cory777]

57. 50 million 'environmental refugees' by 2020, experts say

Source: AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Fifty million "environmental refugees" will flood into the global north by 2020, fleeing food shortages sparked by climate change, experts warned at a major science conference that ended here Monday.

"In 2020, the UN has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees," Cristina Tirado, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

"When people are not living in sustainable conditions, they migrate," she said, outlining with the other speakers how climate change is already impacting the amount of food we have -- food security -- and food safety, or the healthfulness of that food.

Southern Europe is already seeing a sharp increase in what has long been a slow but steady flow of migrants from Africa, many of whom risk their lives to cross the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain from Morocco or sail in makeshift vessels to Italy from Libya and Tunisia.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110221/ts_afp/scienceuspopulationfoodclimaterefugee

---

News That Matters http://activistnews.blogspot.com

[GliderGuider]

58. After 40 years of beating the overpopulation drum, I've stopped.

But not for the reasons you might think.

I no longer think that overpopulation or the ecological devastation that comes from overconsumption are going to be problems for much longer. I now expect world population to peak between 7.5 and 8 billion people by 2025 or 2030, and then start declining. I also think that the human activity that is currently damaging the natural world is going to start diminishing at the same time.

The reason I believe this "good news" is about to unfold is that we are already experiencing a collision between climate change and world oil supply limits (aka peak oil) that is going to have an increasingly negative impact on the stability of the world's food supply from now on.

We've all seen the reports of extreme weather events hitting the world's grain crops - especially the floods in Australia, and droughts in Russia, Northern China and Thailand. This instability in rainfall patterns is one of the two impacts of rising atmospheric CO2 that will keep getting more pronounced as the decades go by. It will, on balance, reduce the total amount of grain that the world's great growing regions can produce.

The other effect of rising atmospheric CO2 is the gradual acidification of the oceans. That process is showing signs of reducing the food available at the bottom of the food chain (plankton) even as humans have pretty well fished out the top of the chain. 90% of the large fish in the oceans are already gone - we've eaten them.

The other unfolding story that will impact the world's food supply is Peak Oil. We are now at Peak Oil. For the last six and a half years - since the middle of 2004 - the world's oil production has been on the "bumpy plateau" long predicted by peak oil analysts. Despite monthly average prices gyrating between $40 and $135 over that time, production has varied from the average of 73 million barrels per day by only 2%:



Worse than that, the amount of oil available on the world market seems to be declining as producing countries keep more of their production for their own use, leaving less to export. The following graph shows the actual volume of the international oil market for the past 45 years, and a couple of projections for the next 20 based on some fairly conservative assumptions. The mechanisms behind this behaviour are well understood. The main unknown quantities at this time are how fast the underlying production will decline, and how much influence rising prices will play in modifying our use of oil. I suggest you think of these projections as "well founded speculation" for now, and use them to try and frame your thoughts about what this kind of event could mean to the world.



Why is this an issue for the world's food supply? After all we only use on average between 2% and 3% of our energy for agriculture. Obviously we should be able to work around a problem like this with no trouble. Well, the problem is that it's not just the planting, growing and harvesting of food that's important. As I described in another post, the food system as a whole (which includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food and food-related items) probably consumes between 20% and 25% of the world's oil - largely for transportation. As people are fond of pointing out whenever problems with global food production are raised, what we have is not so much a production problem as a food distribution problem. So anything that makes food distribution more problematic (e.g. by raising the cost of distribution) is going to impact food availability and prices. And anything that raises food prices hits the world's poor the hardest, driving them out of the marketplace. And that is a fancy way of saying "regional famines".

We now have a world food supply system that is under pressure from both ends. Climate Change is already reducing harvests and will continue to do so into the future, while Peak Oil is making the distribution of the food that is grown steadily more expensive.

On the demand side we are still adding 80 million people per year to the world, the equivalent of another Egypt every year. That adds the requirement for an irreducible amount of new food production and distribution - another 30 million tonnes of grain every year. While the percentage growth rate of our population is in fact declining, the number we are adding each year is remaining constant at 80 million. This is a picture of a global life support system under enormous strain, attacked on both the supply and demand sides by inexorable forces.

Will this situation result in a Malthusian crisis? Well, if I had to lay a bet, I wouldn't bet against it. Here's why.

Let me say at the outset that we have indeed learned a lot since the days of Thomas Malthus in the 18th century. Norman Borlaug's incredible research has given the world much respite from hunger for the last 60 years.

However, science has also progressed in other areas. We have become much better at efficiently using up the world's resources, especially fossil fuel - oil and natural-gas derived fertilizer - that was one linchpin of Borlaug's Green Revolution. Due to peak Oil and the net export crisis that first leg of our food-production tripod is showing signs of getting shorter. The second leg, water, is now under pressure both from climate change and from the depletion of aquifers world-wide. The third leg, intrinsic crop yields (related to the crop itself and not to operational factors like fertilizer, water and pesticides) have not increased significantly in the last 20 years or more, despite Herculean efforts with hybridization and even genetic engineering. The crop yield increases we have seen over the last 30 years are related to operational factors like mechanization, fertilizer and water - the very factors that are now threatened by peak oil and climate change.

Because of its growing impact on the global food system, the convergence of climate change and peak oil has enormous implications for population growth. I think it's entirely probable that we are near the upper limit of human population growth even now. I would expect that as the converging crisis begins to bite harder over the next (few?) years, food production will plateau and may even begin to fall. Some time soon afterward (perhaps within 5 years of the crisis fully manifesting) the global population growth rate will begin to drop precipitously, reaching zero perhaps 5 to 10 years later. At that point our population will begin to fall.

Despite our best intentions around family planning, educating and empowering women and raising the material circumstances of the poorest among us, these efforts are already being overtaken by the circumstances I describe here. We must continue these ameliorating efforts with the utmost urgency, however, because the more successful we are the more people we will be able to protect against the worst effects of the coming food storm.

[dreamnightwind]

61. Excellent post

though as bad as your take is on things, I should probably be shooting the messenger instead of praising. I'd suggest putting a lot of effort into getting religions to see the dangers of population growth. It would make a big difference if the major organized religions would support contraception and small families. No way can this planet support this many people for very long.

I'm also concerned for the future of the planet itself, not just for humans. I often read posts that say how nature bats last, and that the earth will take care of itself, how it will be fine in the end though humans will not. Is this really true? How do we know we aren't putting the planet in a state of disequilibrium, where the end-game is not a happy planet free of humans but is a desolate and toxic planet that can not support life of any form? I see no reason to assume it will all work itself out, and think we need to reverse our environmental impact to make sure the unthinkable doesn't come to pass.

[Taverner]

59. Oh oh oh but Overpopulation is a myth!

At least so said some DUers - that overpopulation is not a problem and we should never worry about it