[ch4s3]

> It's hard to envisage a world where we feed 8, 10, 12 billion people without some chemical input, but it's certainly a good idea to try at least move in that direction

It seems like with current projections global population might peak around 9.4 billion in the 2600s and then fall back down to around ~8.8 by the end of the century. If we can manage river water carefully, I think it's going to be fine in the medium to long run.

[biorach]

you mean 2060, right?

Looks like I misremembered the projected peak population.

And yes, long to medium run it's going to be fine if we can carefully manage river water carefully. And if we don't exhaust soils in key agriculture heartlands, and if we don't cause too much icecap collapse, and if we don't trigger desertification of vulnerable areas (southwest USA, various parts of sub-Saharan Africa etc) and...

[ch4s3]

I do, I didn't notice the typo until the edit window expired.

> And if we don't exhaust soils in key agriculture heartlands

I think that's probably solvable if it doesn't happen at exactly the wrong time.

> and if we don't cause too much icecap collapse

This seems like a thing we could adapt to, even if it's highly undesirable. Building out a bunch of artificial reefs, locks, dykes, and flood plains seems very doable. We might end up with some 22nd century Venices, and a few less islands but not the end of civilization.

> if we don't trigger desertification of vulnerable areas

This seems harder to adapt to without moving a lot of people.