Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!lll-lcc!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!hplabs!sdcrdcf!ism780c!tim
From: tim@ism780c.UUCP
Newsgroups: misc.kids,sci.misc
Subject: Re: No Limits to Growth
Message-ID: <5818@ism780c.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Mar-87 22:04:40 EST
Article-I.D.: ism780c.5818
Posted: Tue Mar 24 22:04:40 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Mar-87 01:21:37 EST
References: <120300015@inmet> <120300029@inmet>
Reply-To: tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith)
Followup-To: sci.misc
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica CA
Lines: 36
Xref: utgpu misc.kids:886 sci.misc:219

Note: I have redirected followups to sci.misc, since this has little
to do directly with misc.kids anymore.

A fun thing to do is to pick some population limit, and see how long 
it would take to reach it.  Let's assume a 1% annual growth rate.
The last time I checked ( which was quite a while ago, the growth
rate was higher than this.  I have no idea what it is now. )

Let's start with a fairly low limit: the entire surface of Earth,
including the oceans, packed with people to a density of one person
per square foot.  This would take about 1400 years.

Let's go a bit farther.  The entir volume of the Earth replaced with
people.  This would take less than 2800 years.

Let's get really silly now.  How long until we have so many people
that the amount of space occupied by people is expanding at the
speed of light?  About 11,000 years.  Does anyone want to argue
that this is not an upper bound on human population?

Another interesting one to calculate is how long it would take to
fill the galaxy, assuming each star has a few planets that we can
make into habitable places.  It is on the order of 4000 years.
Note that without faster than light travel, this won't work.

It seems pretty clear that we can't maintain a 1% population growth
rate forever.  It will have to be slowed down.  The only question is
how.  The death rate can be increased, or the birth rate can be
decreased, or both.

Any comments?  Anyone see any holes in this analysis?
-- 
Tim Smith                               Welcome to Wackyland
uucp: sdcrdcf!ism780!tim                "It can happen here"
Compuserve: 72257,3706                  Pop: 100 nuts and a squirrel
Delphi or GEnie: mnementh