at what point will human population overwhelm the earths ability to sustain it.when will it happen?
116318
anyone who thinks that the world is overproducing food is just plain not paying attention. The current practices of food production in the world give us (or any living thing) about 40-80 more years of soil left for which to grow food in. If the practices of today's farmers are authenticated, then we can start "turning the clock back." To answer your question, the point was about 1940 when we overtook the earth's ability to provide for us. (think baby boomers). If we do things right, we can provide a healthy life for a pop'n of over 8 billion. Right now,only about 750 million people get adequately clean food and water.
1020246
Our planet will not die until the sun burns out.  Everything revolves around a cycle.  This planet has survived for millions of years all with life.  There will never be a scarcity of anything but certain species of animals.  Humans are far too smart to make the earth go to shame.  Since 1920 our knowlege has doubled 37 times.  Before then it had only doubled 18 times in thousands of years.  Earth is on the incline not decline.
102343
That depends on a lot of factors, including random supergiant meteors or human stupidity. But at the least, when the sun becomes a red giant (when the hydrogen in the inner core has all been converted to helium) in about 6 billion years, it will encompass the entire orbit of Mars. That pretty much suggests no hope for Earth beyond that point.
275454
Good question. That's something I've actually been thinking about as well after constantly reading in the news about the increasing amount of hatred and how people are suffocating the planet. I really don't see it being too long before humans destroy themselves. Considering how long humans have been on the planet, it will be a relatively short time before we're gone.
373683
Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely-respected geologists, physicists, and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global "Peak Oil."\n\n"Are We 'Running Out'? I Thought There Was 40 Years of the Stuff Left"\n\nOil will not just "run out" because all oil production follows a bell curve. This is true whether we're talking about an individual field, a country, or on the planet as a whole.  \n\nOil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.\n\nIn practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2020 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.\n\nThe issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.\n\nIn a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.\n\nThe effects of even a small drop in production can be devastating. For instance, during the 1970s oil shocks, shortfalls in production as small as 5% caused the price of oil to nearly quadruple. The same thing happened in California a few years ago with natural gas: a production drop of less than 5% caused prices to skyrocket by 400%.\n\nFortunately, those price shocks were only temporary.\n\nThe coming oil shocks won't be so short-lived. They represent the onset of a new, permanent condition. Once the decline gets under way, production will drop (conservatively) by 3% per year, every year.
376298
nope...resources are being consumed and very little left.no more space for more human species.its very hard to live since poverty is present in any sides of the world now.miserable lives arec waiting for 95% of the newborns....just think about the world situation
1089548
The earth is being destroyed by mankind. It won't be overpopulated but drained out by human mischieves. Our duty is to preserve peace and harmony. What a pity...the beautiful earth is a war-ridden ball.
435465
The Earth is already living on borrowed time. Consider this:\n\nWe're overdue for an E.L.E.* caused by an earth-crossing asteroid.  Geologic evidence point to massive bombardments every 12 million years or so, the last big hit was about 11-12 million years.  It is not only highly probable, but an astromonical surety that someday we will again face this threat. Few people realize how many close calls we have had in that last couple of decades.\n\nThen there's the threat of emerging pandemic viruses that might wipe out a great majority of mankind.  Or a disease which bould wipe out our crops or food and animals.  There is the threat of ecological disaster, which the geological records shows happens in cycles of hundreds of thousands of years. We may be plunged into another Ice Age or face massive global warming.\n\nAnd lets not forget the destruction we bring on ourselves from nuclear weapons.  Guess how many times since 1950 that we've been a hair's breath away from utter destruction?  False alarms and warnings, and tensions number around 20+, and these are just the public ones we know about.  Even in post-Cold War era there was that 1995 incident in Russia, and i could go on.\n\nMy point is, the Universe is a hostile place and we have only scratched the surface of how improbable our continued existence is, according to the odds.  We have beaten the odds, but probability has a way of catching uyp to you.
692139
Assuming that humans don't destroy the world...which is a pretty BIG assumption, I think maybe in a few thousand years the Earth's magnetic field may weaken to the point where it no longer deflects the harmful radiation from the sun and all life as we know it on this planet will cease to exist, and Earth will become very Mars-like...a very thin atmosphere and no surface water. But hey, that's just me.
1044815
The earth will last a lot longer than we will. It will not be the same but it's the humans that will go crazy and kill each other when they can't get the necessities of life.
12935
The Earth has probably already peaked as a haven for plants and animals and begun its long descent into oblivion, according to scientists at the University of Washington who have plotted out the future of our planet.\n\nThese are not prophets of doom who have mounted the podium to warn us that we are killing ourselves through bad stewardship. They are scientists who say all good things must come to an end sometime, and at best we've got no more than half a billion years left.\n\nAfter that, the planet will return to its ancient past, inhabited only by bacteria and single-celled organisms, just as it was in its earliest years. But in time even those will vanish as the Earth is reduced to a lifeless chunk of rock, or swallowed entirely by an expanding Sun. \n\n...
899150
Barring one of these, http://www.livescience.com/technology/10ways_destroyearth.html in about 5 billion years the sun will have exhausted most of it's hydrogen and will swell up to a red giant, engulfing the earth. As our blackened, burned-out cinder of a planet orbits inside the sun, it will be plowing through solar material, and will gradually spiral into the core, where it will fly apart shortly before impact and be smashed into it's base elements with little fanfare.
341026
for billions of years yet.  However the earth won't always be here to see it.
616351
Short answer:  No one knows when it will end or what will cause it to end or whether we can prevent it.\n\nOf course should the sun turn into a red giant the Earth is gone (unless we take action to keep the Earth usable for a bit longer) and unless we take action the Earth isn't going to be supporting life in a billion years.\n\nA lot of people have tried to come up with exact dates but so far none of the past predictions have succeeded.  I would not expect any predictions from religious texts or psyhics to be accurate.\n\nShould you want some more information the first source below is to a list of ways the world could end (though some are merely for civilisation and there aren't any exact dates on any of them) while the second is a very large list of failed predictions to when the end of the world would occur (as well as a few in the future that are very unlikely to actually occur).
192798
No one knows - but people have been predicting global economica collapse due to overpopulation since the mid-1800's.\n\nThe thing that rescues us always is Human Innovation. Food production, energy management, distribution techniques, sanitation, medicine, etc. have all improved at incredible rates to keep up with population growth - and they continue to.\n\nIf this is the best answer, please rate it the best answer. Thanks!
813348
No one is really sure yet. Astronomers and meteorologists are working everyday to figure out what is going to happen but the only theory is that....\n1- The earth stops rotations and can cause us to die\n2- The earth can get compressed into a small cubical.\n3- Nothing at all and we still live... which i hope is this.
374462
None at all. The human gives himself too much importance. Essentially, the role of mankind is as unimportant as the role of rocks, mosquitos and, actually, anything in the universe. However, mankind would not survive had it accepted the absolute pointlesness of its existance and so, our elevating of humanity's status above something what it really is seems only natural.