Earlier today I wrote:

Not counting the Oceans for protein or food then 7,000,000,000 humans
has 20,000,000
km^2 of land to grow food upon. That means 350 people per every 1 km^2
of land to live
on. Now, how many walnut trees can grow on 1 km^2 of land?


Now km^2 means a square kilometer or a square whose sides are 1,000 by
1,000 meters.
Now a mature black walnut tree is about 10 meters spacing between
trees, so that in
a square kilometer we can expect 100 by 100 black walnut trees or
10,000 black walnut
trees growing in such a nut orchard of km^2.

Now let us assume humans only ate black walnuts and that ten trees
supplied the food
of one human for a full year. So that each square kilometer of arable
land supports a
population of 1,000 humans.

Now looking at the arable land of UK, of Germany, of USA of China we
have
60,000 sq km, 120,000 sq. km, 2,000,000 sq km, and 930,000 sq km
respectively. Now
we make the assumption that all the arable land can grow black walnuts
or some equivalent nut tree. Then given these assumptions we can
derive
what a optimal human population is for UK as 60,000 x 1,000 which
gives us 60
million and from looking at the data the population of UK in the 1997
census was
58 million. Germany would yield 120,000 x 1,000 which would be 120
million
people and Germany was 82 million in the 1997 census. The USA could
have an optimal population of 2,000,000 x 1,000 or 2 billion humans
whereas
its actual population is 268 million in the 1997 census. China
could have optimal population of 930,000 x 1,000 = 930 million whereas
its actual population is 1.2 billion in the 1997 census.

Now the data of the total arable land in the world is 20 million
square kilometers
which when multiplied by 1,000 would give a population of 20 billion
humans.

But there are huge flawed assumptions in the arable land. The worst
assumption
is that all the arable land of 20 million square km cannot support
trees such as
black walnut but that much of this arable land is grassland farmed
land where the
rainfall is not for trees but for grassland which requires alot of
yearly energy
inputs whereas black walnuts require little energy inputs. Of the
arable land
that can support perennial trees for food is about 1/5 of the 20
million square
km. That means only 4 billion humans and not 20 billion humans. Now
there
is another flawed assumption in arable lands is the energy input for
annual
plants such as wheat, corn, rice etc rather than perennials such as
black
walnuts. Energy inputs of tilling, fertilizing, herbicides, pesticides
and then
of erosion of soil. I have not calculated what affect energy has on 20
million
square km arable land has.

I would guess that when it is detailed computed that the 20 million
square km
of arable land of planet Earth can support only at maximum 6 billion
humans.
In other words, we already surpassed the upper reaches of feeding the
human
population and that every year a billion humans will die of
starvation.

There is another assumption I have not included and that is the food
of oceans
and waters such as the fish and marine life we eat. But also, on the
negative
ledger side I have not accounted for the food spoilage or the insect
and rodent
and other pests that eat the food before we can eat.

Summary: in posts a long time ago, I said that the human population of
the
year 1901 was a watershed year because in that year we had 1 billion
humans
as census and when we had 1 billion humans we could live on purely
renewable
energy and obviously we could all feed 1 billion humans so that noone
starves or
has a dismal life. Now I believe that a range of 1 to 2 billion humans
but no more
than 2 billion can still meet all the energy needs by renewable
sources where
we do not have to burn coal or wood but can live on purely clean
energy of
wind, hydroelectric, solar. And where we do not need to use gasoline.
Where the air can be as pristine clean as it was before we ever burned
a single
air polluter device. Where the oxygen content of the air we breathe is
back to
the 21 to 22% of air and not the dirty air we now breathe where the
oxygen content
is less than 18% (need some reliable data on oxygen content in air).

So anyway, the picture is beginning to form that the optimal human
population for
planet Earth looks to be between 1 to 2 billion humans.

Now we have to begin to teach the politicians that we want our
countries to slim
down and decrease their populations to that 1 to 2 billion mark.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies