For all those who never heared about it so far or need more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus
What you think ? do you agree with him that we doomed for a catastrophe?
will a big plague, war or hunger be the cause for dilution the world population because lack of food ?

our population will exceed the amount of food required to sustain it

yes, that will happen, if it hasn't already

This post was edited by zero_infinity on Jan 27 2009 06:39am

At this rate, it will happen eventually.

I really doubt that it has happened already though. It's just that distribution of food isn't the best. I probably eat much more than I even need on a daily basis, and I'm sure many other people do (there was an American guy that ate 30,000 calories-worth of food a day, although that is obviously an extreme example).

And also, there's quite a lot of waste. I remember reading something that said that something like £400 billion worth of food gets wasted each year in the UK alone (it might not have been as high as that, but that's the figure that sticks in my mind).

This post was edited by Vio-Lewis on Jan 27 2009 07:44am

No, it won't happen because it can't. If a population exceeds the amount of food needed to sustain it, people will die until there's enough food for them to live. Mothers won't be able to give birth to children if there isn't enough nutrition to sustain pregnancy. This could only happen if a large amount of food were lost all at once. Population can not slowly build up and exceed the limit.

lack of energy imo. were gonna need something like 60 terrawatts to supply the earth with enough energy to meet our projected needs in the next 50 years
we currently use 20 something terrawatts globally atm
a plague is unlikely. we know how to contain outrageously cantagious ones, and unless we increase the frequency at which we have unprotected sex 100 fold, stds wont do anything globablly.
food will be an issue, this is no doubt, but imo developed countries wont have mass starvation with current methods of producing it

This post was edited by Kamikizzle on Jan 28 2009 02:07am

didn't read the malthus stuff but it's been my opinion that mass starvation will coincide with depletion of petroleum and coal reserves. for every calorie of energy we consume we waste many more in the production, harvesting, transportation, and refrigeration of that food. and much of this energy comes from oil/coal

you said it cant happen, but yet you agree that people will die because of it.
about the amoount of food lost all at once argument, you might have a good point with it.
but as it says, while the world population dubble itself, the food production cant keep up.

A plague in first world countries is unlikely you mean... they are already rampant in places like Africa and have a high possibility of becoming so in rural backward villages of India/China/Indonesia etc...

That's the whole point of the topic though. It's about whether our population can grow big enough such that there is not enough food to sustain it. You admit it yourself that it can happen (in the bolded part)...

However, if you're saying that it won't completely wipe out our population, then I agree. But that wasn't the point of the topic. A "catastrophe" doesn't necessarily mean the complete eradication of the human population.

This is better than Malthus:

http://forums.d2jsp.org/index.php?showtopic=27221670&f=119