npts2020

I don't know but this seems pretty innovative. Some guy from Australia built something similar which can be wielded like an AK-47 or other rifle.

Problem is "getting enough external sources of fertilizer" without causing a host of other problems and I don't see hydroponics replacing dirt farming anytime soon for many crops.

Monocrop farming is not recommended. I would think alternating between legumes and grains (depends on the climate where the grower is for types) is the best bet.

It was a smashing success!

What I see is that depopulation is being conflated with what is sustainable for 8,000,000,000 humans in the environment they desire to live. I would not (nor have seen anyone here) argue that depopulation wouldn't be necessary for everyone to live the lifestyle of an average American. Are you telling me you can't see the difference between figuring out a lifestyle for X number of people and how many people can be supported at X type of lifestyle?

Apparently, trying to figure out what is sustainable for the number of humans on Earth is a tangential discussion to climate change. I fail to see how that translates into; Especially when put into the context of what I have actually written on this thread.

Agreed. Mr. Trump has probably had more lawsuits (supposedly 3,500-4,000) filed against him than everyone who ever visited this forum combined.

That is the slippery fish I am trying to get hold of. I defined what "sustainable lifestyle" was in the context in which I am using it but nobody seems able to see any limits the planet's citizens ought to limit themselves to within that context. Obviously! That is why the current threshold would be well below some future one after the ecosystem has gotten back to a more steady state. It's a shame that someone with your intelligence can't imagine any other ways of reducing the population, something I have not advocated. If you take the statement of overpopulation being a problem within the context of everything I have written previously on this thread, you will see that it is only overpopulation in relation to resource use. Hence, the question of what is sustainable for the number of humans in existence?

I can see the issue ending up appealed to the Supreme Court with Mr. Trump claiming he couldn't get a fair trial of his peers because he has no peers. Of course, a frivolous appeal but it would take more time to resolve (along with all of the other appeals) and push final resolution even farther into the future, possibly even beyond "The Donald's" lifetime. His people are experts at delaying and tying things up until something happens like the prosecutor leaves office or plaintiffs lose interest/run out of money.

It seems "history" is beginning to show us what unlimited economic "growth" will do to us. "Fair share" may well be a political issue but it seems to me to be a good place to start for considering what exactly constitutes a sustainable lifestyle And I think it is a great mistake to not consider population to be a large part of the problem. Firstly, zero emissions is not necessarily the goal, we will almost certainly have some amount of them no matter what we do. The real goal IMO should be to keep emissions of all kinds of pollutants (not just greenhouse gases) below the level at which the ecosphere can effectively filter out or neutralize them. With the current rate and style of resource use/waste, overpopulation is certainly a problem and has been for longer than the time anyone commenting here has been around, especially if we are all to aspire to a first world lifestyle.

The question isn't so much how many humans the planet can sustainably support so much as what kind of lifestyle that number can expect to live. The Earth *could* support billions more people than exist now but everyone would have to live at a bare subsistence level with few of the things most first world citizens take for granted (cars, consumer goods, travel, meat in meals, etc.) being available. One of the bigger obstacles, IMO, is a clear idea of exactly what comprises a sustainable lifestyle. Few would argue that things like bicycling instead of driving, cutting meat from the diet and keeping your house cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer are good things but there is little guidance for what is one's "fair share". For discussion purposes, I would define "fair share" as the resources an individual would be entitled to if all the world's obtainable resources were divided equally between its inhabitants. Can everyone in the world eat hamburgers twice a week or filet mignon once a month or does everyone need to cut all of that out of their diet? Is it even possible to build sustainable mechanized transportation for 8,000,000,000+ humans? Will everyone have to move to temperate zones because energy for heating and cooling is unsustainable or will it be enough to better insulate houses?

Yep, and Disney can afford to buy the next governor and enough state and local legislators to do pretty much whatever they want...

Wonder what they would do if Disney closed its theme park and moved it?

You are talking about normal people, though, not the megalomaniacs and psychopaths that run things.

There is only a difference if the laws are actually enforced

The American "security" state doesn't like competition. The fact that agencies like DHS or DoJ (CIA doesn't bother with legalities) have to go through the court part of the government isn't much different from China. AFAIK the FISA court (the one that deals with secret type stuff) has never turned down a request for a warrant.

Now, that one is wild. Are you aware of how much of Canada and Russia are already burning every summer? Guess what that's doing to the oxygen production and carbon capture capability of forests. Or how much of the northern ecosystem is collapsing because it depends on permafrost, the thawing of which, incidentally, accelerates climate change. And that's before you even start factoring in the severe winter storms, spring floods and summer droughts, tornadoes all across the central plains reaching farther east; hurricanes along the coast, reaching farther inland, unpredictable wind and rainfall, and all the plant diseases and insect infestations. Ya, and just wait till the Arctic clathrates start belching forth massive amounts of methane and carbon dioxide as they melt...

If one figures out what a sustainable lifestyle is for the current population, those numbers can be extrapolated to any number of people as required. The problem in coming up with the initial estimate, mostly (IMO) is because many (if not most) people with the power to change things on the massive scale required don't like the answers and the figuring is complex enough to raise some doubts no matter how it is done, even if the answers are always basically the same. Producing the basic necessities of life sustainably for everyone is relatively straightforward and *could* be done quickly, within a couple of years, with planning and cooperation. However, even those not caught up in the consumerist culture usually want a little more than just food and a place to sleep in their lives. Obviously, everyone in the world can't be flying around the world in a Lear jet or driving a Hummer but what about a small EV or motorcycle or will we all have to ride bicycles and walk? Will everyone have to become vegetarians and keep their thermostats above 24C in the summer and below 20C in the winter? What kinds of recreation are sustainable? We did start a changeover decades ago. One of the great things Jimmy Carter did as President was to have a plan and start implementing it by putting solar panels on the White House but when Ronald Reagan was elected, one of his very first acts was to have those solar panels removed (some are still in operation at a small college in Maine) and abandon the Carter plan.

Discussion of pi on another thread reminded me of this joke; Farmer Jedediah didn't want to send his son to college because of the expense and the fact he would lose the son's help on the farm while in school but his wife convinced him it would be worthwhile. After the first semester, the son is home and everyone is sitting around the supper table when Jedediah says, "So son, what kinda classes are ya takin' at that thar college?" The boy replies, "I'm taking French, Latin and math." The father says, "Ok, say something in French." The son says "C'est la vie". The older man just goes hmmph and tells the kid to say something in Latin so the Younger man says, "caveat emptor". Not knowing a word of either language, all Jedediah can do is shake his head and ask the boy to , "Say something mathematical." The son, chest swelling with pride at having answered his father's questions, blurts out, "Pi r squared." The farmer, raising his voice, says, "That's it! You are no longer going to college. Not only are you learning all kinds of useless stuff, you are learning wrong stuff. Everyone knows pie ain't squared, it's round. Cakes is squared."

I wonder what percentage of videos from somewhere like Newsmax or Fox contains misinformation?

Well, according to the UN, the world passed 8,000,000,000 in mid-November but quibbling about exact numbers kind of misses the whole point about the world being seriously overpopulated for the amount and type of resources being used by that population. It also avoids the question of what kind of lifestyle that number of humans can live sustainably.

Well, in the US, we are trying to make it impossible for anyone to come here...

Isn't it interesting (and pathetic) that in the "Land of the Free" we are constantly talking about banning things? I don't see where the spread of misinformation and propaganda is a legitimate concern in a country that allows its broadcasters on the airwaves to legally do the same. Seems to me it is all about getting rid of competition.

IMO the biggest problem in dealing with most global problems, especially climate change, is idolization of greed on a planet with 8,000,000,000+ (and growing) humans on it. No matter how much one has, individuals are expected to want more and more and more. This would be all well and good if there were unlimited resources but there seems to not be enough for all the world's citizens to live the lifestyle of an even relatively poor person in most "first world" countries, one of the reasons we are constantly at war (not just with the military) over resources. What happens when you double the numbers of humans in the next century, as some projections predict? Are we somehow going to magically have even more resources at that time? What is the lifestyle eight billion of us can reasonably expect to live if resources are distributed more evenly?

One thing that might be a "good picture" would be several people photoing or videoing the same event from different angles.