What would be the ideal population for Earth?

[Darthcullen]

Overpopulation is a myth. The entire world could live in Texas.

Yea if you want .00003 sq. mi per person dude.... thats NOT living

[Teabaker]

Overpopulation is a myth. The entire world could live in Texas. Also, there are more people living in California than Canada (which is the 2nd biggest country in the world). China has entire cities that are vacant, if its overpopulated there why wouldn't they move in there?

Overpopulation has been thrown around since the 1700's, and it just isn't true. The worlds resources aren't diminishing, and if they are there are alternate options. For example oil, there are already solutions to live without it. Space exploration / space colonies is also eminent in the not so distant future.

... And how the hell could you feed the whole world in Texas? You can't. Space is few. We are actually living over what earth can give us but luckily, the third world countries are still in development and don't need that much. This wont be like this forever though.

[Deleted]

Overpopulation is a myth. The entire world could live in Texas. Also, there are more people living in California than Canada (which is the 2nd biggest country in the world). China has entire cities that are vacant, if its overpopulated there why wouldn't they move in there?

Overpopulation has been thrown around since the 1700's, and it just isn't true. The worlds resources aren't diminishing, and if they are there are alternate options. For example oil, there are already solutions to live without it. Space exploration / space colonies is also eminent in the not so distant future.

Overpopulation is not a myth... Overpopulation has nothing, absolutely zero to do with the hospitable land masses on earth. Overpopulation has something to do with the rate at which we consume resources.

You are correct that we are not running out right now but in 100 years (asuming we have found the majority of oil on earth) we will have run out of both fossil fuel and litium for electric car batteries. You can keep saying we shouldnt worry about it but the oil industry are spending a fuck ton of their money on lobbyists so that the transistion to alternative energy types are being slowed down by the government.

Space exploration will help how exactly? Yes lets go to the moon to use some of the moon dust as fuel (LOL). Space exploration would only "save" us if we went to another planet just like earth and even if the closests planets were like earth (they are not) it would take 40 years to get to them at the speed of light, a speed we cannot achieve yet. One of the fastest rocket we are currently "talking" about developing would be able to get to mars in 39 days, that means it goes aprox 25000 mph, the speed of light is almost 700 milion mph.

[Ironsmoke]

Overpopulation is not a myth... Overpopulation has nothing, absolutely zero to do with the hospitable land masses on earth. Overpopulation has something to do with the rate at which we consume resources.

You are correct that we are not running out right now but in 100 years (asuming we have found the majority of oil on earth) we will have run out of both fossil fuel and litium for electric car batteries. You can keep saying we shouldnt worry about it but the oil industry are spending a fuck ton of their money on lobbyists so that the transistion to alternative energy types are being slowed down by the government.

Space exploration will help how exactly? Yes lets go to the moon to use some of the moon dust as fuel (LOL). Space exploration would only "save" us if we went to another planet just like earth and even if the closests planets were like earth (they are not) it would take 40 years to get to them at the speed of light, a speed we cannot achieve yet. One of the fastest rocket we are currently "talking" about developing would be able to get to mars in 39 days, that means it goes aprox 25000 mph, the speed of light is almost 700 milion mph.

I would say that overpopulation has less to do with rate of consumption and more with distribution of resources.

Space exploration can help in many ways. I don't see what's so "LOL" about using resources from the moon as fuel. I suppose you've never heard of Helium-3. Or the vast quantities of precious metals that exist in the thousands of asteroids currently in our solar system.

Also, the closest star system to Earth with a "Earth-like planet" orbiting around it is Alpha Centauri B, which is only 4.3 light years away, and while even THIS is extremely far away by our standards, NASA is currently working on a feasible warp drive.

Deep space exploration and mining is not that far away, my friend, and I believe that it could solve many of the problems we face on Earth.

[Komic]

If we weren't so damn wasteful it wouldn't be too much of an issue. But atm around 5 billion is my guess.

[Deleted]

I would say that overpopulation has less to do with rate of consumption and more with distribution of resources.

Space exploration can help in many ways. I don't see what's so "LOL" about using resources from the moon as fuel. I suppose you've never heard of Helium-3. Or the vast quantities of precious metals that exist in the thousands of asteroids currently in our solar system.

Also, the closest star system to Earth with a "Earth-like planet" orbiting around it is Alpha Centauri B, which is only 4.3 light years away, and while even THIS is extremely far away by our standards, NASA is currently working on a feasible warp drive.

Deep space exploration and mining is not that far away, my friend, and I believe that it could solve many of the problems we face on Earth.

I may have put a 0 too many on that 40, it was 3 in the morning here and now its almost 5 .

I have heard of helium 3, yes you can use it as an energy source but not fuel directly. I guess if you could create something small and safe enough for use in a car but that would take many many years and as far as im aware that is not what scientists have in mind for helium 3.

As for the warp drive they are working on, its on a microscopic-theoretical level and even if its possible we will first see something like that in many many decades from now. The VASIMR on the other hand is very likely to happen at one point or another.

Anyways going to the moon to extract helium 3 or other resources would not help us with many of the other problems on earth such as global warming, in fact it would most likely make global warming worse. The only thing that could help us with that is a drastic decrease in population or by populating an earth like planet.