Well we've been using fresh water aquifers and topsoil as examples of essential resources that can - if respected - replenish and maintain themselves. There are others, like the atmosphere, and rain forests and wetlands and bogs and marshes and rivers and steams that all help keep the ecology working.
All of these things can handle certain levels of pollutants without degrading. They can act as filters for example. But they all have maximum capacities. By analogy, an oil filter for a lawn mower doesn't have the capacity to be used in a huge, 20 yard dump truck. All of these systems have limits.
Ok, I think that covers limited carrying capacity fairly well; one comment I'm willing to put forth is that organisms can/do/have adapted to its environment, and that includes changes to the environment (I'd even say that the environment isn't static in the long run), and an existing 20-yard dump truck cannot adapt.
Now, going back to your earlier question - can you reference examples where I'm discussing various economic systems? I do mention economic concepts or systems a little, but there are others who are getting more in depth about economic systems. Was the question meant for me, or was it meant for someone else?
No one "decided", it's just in the nature of how these things sustain themselves. For example a fresh water aquifer gets replenished as rainwater seeps into the ground. So humans can drill wells and pump water out of an aquifer, and if the rain water replenishes as much as humans take out, it's sustainable. But if humans pump out more water than rain water replenishes, then eventually the aquifer will dry up. For example there is a huge aquifer under the plains states called the Ogallala. Farmers have been pumping water out of this aquifer for decades, and - huge as it is - it is slowly being emptied, and soon it will be gone. That aquifer is what waters much of the farmland in states like Nebraska. We're pumping water out it faster than nature can put water back in. Not sustainable.
Yes, if you're going to try to perpetually rely on that aquifer and only on that one aquifer. The solution is to simply not try to perpetually rely on that one aquifer.
Are you trying to make the assertion that the planet's water supply is analogous to this Ogallala aquifer in that the world's supply of water is eventually going to dry up? I'm pretty sure it won't for perhaps many millions of years & surely not in our lifetime.
As for actual numbers, I'm not sure anyone knows, as you can imagine that's a super complex set of calculations.
Well I don't think actual numbers are necessary; I'm just asking who decides this and why, but if you want to base your argument or answer on numbers, I see no problem in simply using estimates in rates and trends. Going over best and worst case scenarios could be effective & I don't think it's necessary to get into the weeds for high accuracy or precision.
But we can measure how resources are used over time to see whether these resources are stable or not. We know through measurements that we are draining most aquifers.
Yes, I understand that.
Likewise with topsoil. Nature creates topsoil, but it takes centuries to create even fractions of inches of topsoil, and over the last 200 years or so, we've over-farmed most of our topsoil-rich fertile land and the amount of topsoil that existed 200 years has been reduced substantially. I'm sure there are estimates for how long before our topsoil is gone. And I'm sure those estimates won't be quite right.
Let's suppose that there is a population that continues to grow, and this topsoil issue is a problem that has an impact on a growing population; perhaps one solution is synthetic topsoil & if it is, then my contention still applies - it wouldn't be government or religion that comes up with ways to implement such a solution, only a free market would - by applying & utilizing scientific and engineering principles.
And I know that climate change deniers frequently argue that the climate isn't changing because scientific estimates haven't been accurate in the past. But that's an extremely illogical and short sighted argument.
I'm not convinced that there's anyone who's a climate change denier; it seems to be a strawman created by crony capitalists. There are those who are doubtful or skeptical of the existence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), and with good reason, too. One reason is that computer climate prediction model averages going back 4 decades not only overestimated the rise in temperature compared to recorded measurements made by satellites, but almost all of them individually overestimated the trend.
Another reason for the doubt & skepticism is probably because almost all scientists themselves aren't the ones behind the same AGW alarmist narrative being pitched by politicians, celebrities, and mainstream media. I was able to find many (somewhere around 125) recordings of talks/discussions/presentations on global warming and climate change by distinct individual subject-matter expert scientists (and I mean you can actually directly see and hear the scientists speaking themselves, you can look up their credentials if you don't already know who they are, and it's not just some media personality who's saying that this is what scientists are saying) posted on YouTube. Not only did the number of scientists saying that there is no cause for alarm or reason to be concerned about AGW or human-caused climate change outweighed those who did by a ratio of 30:1, but it also seemed like many of the scientists who did were really just making reference to studies or reports that they weren't involved in producing themselves.
It seems like there are really only a very small handful of scientists, such as Michael Mann, Guy McPherson, James Hansen, and John Cook (if you want to count him as a subject matter expert on climate science), who are very active proponents of AGW; I don't know how many there are who I would count as regular proponents of AGW, but I can't find more than about a half dozen or so. On the other hand, I've been able to find well over 100 subject matter expert scientists who do not concur with their positions.
BTW, I actually also looked up the source for this 97% - 98% AGW consensus by all scientists claim, and that's not what it actually says; based on the source itself, it's actually 34.8% of all authors (of peer-reviewed "article"-only papers from 1991-2011 with abstracts on global warming and global climate change). There is something that's 97.1%, but it's for abstracts - not authors - of papers both with an AGW position and endorsing AGW. There is something that's 98.4%, but that's only authors both with an AGW position and endorsing AGW, not all authors. See for yourself (these percentages are in "Table 3"):
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
According to this link, there are tens of thousands of scientists who say that there's no convincing evidence that increases in greenhouse gases is leading to catastrophic heating of the atmosphere:
Global Warming Petition Project
If we want humanity to survive in the long run (which I do!), then it really doesn't matter if the topsoil lasts for 100 years or 200 years. In the not-too-long run, just a handful of generations, humanity will be totally screwed if we destroy essential systems like topsoil and aquifers and the others I've mentioned.
I don't think there's anyone who doesn't want humanity to survive, but it does seem like crony capitalists do want to reduce the world's population so they can have more for themselves and less "riffraff" roaming the planet. That's probably what's really behind the narrative and motive for all this climate and overpopulation alarmism and propaganda from their corporate media outlets.
