06-14-2020, 08:31 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
Seeing as it has been, if you check across Earth's history, Earth needs Affinity 9 for some tech levels. For most, only just before a TL boundary is crossed, so you could argue that it was over-populated slightly for a while at these points (and has Affinity 8), but for others that doesn't work. Affinity 10 is only needed now, and late in TL0 if you want to avoid over-population, if I recall my sheet's results correctly.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
06-15-2020, 12:15 AM | #22 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
Actually, we are probably on an Affinity 8 world with 200% overpopulation (there is really no indication that the Earth has a RVM above +0). Carrying capacity is for sustainable population, and deforestation, desertification, global warming, mass species extinction, etc. indicate that we are far beyond a sustainable population. Anyway, we evolved for a radically different world than the one we inhabit now, a world dominated by ice sheets, where the sea levels were 300 feet lower, and where multiple hominid species lived together. We are an adaptable species, but our ideal world is cooler than the one we inhabit now.
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06-15-2020, 06:21 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
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If Earth is only Affinity 8 we've been running an unsustainable population for centuries, or even millennia. Affinity 9 is a possibility though - that way the population's been just under the sustainable level for much of human history, and has only become unsustainable fairly recently.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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06-15-2020, 06:29 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
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The Simon-Ehrlich wager might also be relevant.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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06-15-2020, 09:35 AM | #25 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
How would you explain all of the scale, scope, and speed of the human-caused environmental problems? It is not that human civilization cannot deal with them through investment and technology, it is that they are occurring in the first place that is the sign of exceeding carrying capacity. If we were not exceeding the carrying capacity, we would not be dealing with human-caused environmental problems.
We can also use economics to determine overpopulation. The global per capita nominal income was ~$10,000 in 2017, which is less than one-third of the per capita income suggested for TL8 in Space, which us pretty close to what it should be for a population of 7.5 billion. If Earth possessed Affinity 9, it would have a carrying capacity of 5 billion people and the per capita income would be $23,250. If Earth possessed Affinity 10, it would have a carrying capacity of 10 billion people and the per capita income would be $43,400. |
06-15-2020, 09:52 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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06-15-2020, 10:00 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
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06-15-2020, 10:01 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
With rare exception, everyone is TL8 by now, the lack of infrastructure is a sign of exceeding carrying capacity, as the resulting poverty makes it difficult to afford the appropriate investment, not a sign of low TL. Everyone has access to smartphones or cell phones, you can get used ones from 20 years ago for less than 1% their original prices anywhere in the developing world. The global digital population was over 59%, meaning that three-fifths of human have regular Internet access. Of the rest, the vast majority usually have 2000s equivalent cell phones, benefit from modern antibiotics for themselves and their farm animals, and otherwise benefit from TL8 technology (even if it is 2000s rather than 2020 gear).
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06-15-2020, 10:06 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
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Earth's population dynamics for the last century or so are definitely not the equilibrium case that ecological carrying capacity assumes. The debate is over whether that's a sign the carrying capacity increased, resulting an S curve step function, a temporary perturbation that will result in a post J curve crash, or something in between.
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06-15-2020, 12:10 PM | #30 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: GURPS Space: Carrying Capacity
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Tags |
earth, gurps, math, planet generation, question, space, system generation |
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