Quote Originally Posted by Bob the Awesome

Second, the whole thing on Organic Foods... sorry people, but I won't take it. Organic growing takes up more space than genetically-modified foods, and from one estimate I heard, if we all grew organically the Earth could only support 4 billion people, food-wise. That's pretty bad, trying to get 1/3 of everyone to sacrifice themselves.
Well bob you??ve stumbled on the topic that I am probably most informed on, bar none.
That would be GMO??s and organic foods.

First off I would like you to keep in mind the huge argo. Companies in the USA and the enormous invested interest they have. They actually run ad??s on TV with blatant lie??s on them. And they can because as Fox News??s favorite defense: ??lying on TV isn??t illegal?.

Fact 1: No GMO crop has ever exceeded the production per hectare than a Natural crop!
-remember that organic farming and GMO are separate. So this comparison is between the same growing techniques. Organic or Chemical

But how is this related to Global warming???

It is the production of the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. For example, to produce ammonia they use the Haber-Bosch process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber-Bosch

They take Nitrogen and Hydrogen in gas form, you might have noticed that the left side of the reaction contains 4 moles of gas (mole=unit of measurement) and the right side contains only 2 (less thus less volume).

So to push this reaction into spontaneity they must compress and heat the gasses together. This enormous use of pressure and heat takes a lot of energy from electricity to produce. And since most of the world get their electricity from Coal we can see the effect.

Because of this the farming industry has become dependent on fossil fuels. Modern farms use ore petroleum than any other single industry, consuming 12% of USA??s total energy supply!
Some info on this front: http://www.321energy.com/editorials/...rch040205.html

Now could earth support only 4 billion people only growing organics? Well first off, most third world countries grow organically! So most people are living off it already.
On another note, some scientists believe the carrying capacity of the earth for humans is only 5 billion people. We have exceeded this capacity and thus are over fishing, over farming and over using every natural resource we know about.

More importantly synthetic fertilizers are addictive?
By that I mean that a farmer will have to apply more synthetic fertilizers each year to maintain the same yield. Principally this is because synthetics harm the soil life. But, many other aspects of chemical farming are also harmful and they all relate to the soil.
If you pop over to the cultivation section of this message board you might hear the slogan ??feed the soil, not the plant?. It??s just a phrase demonstrating the importance of the soil life.
I will stop here, but I??ll keep going if you??d like. The importance of soil life cant be emphasized enough, but I??m getting somewhat off topic.

Soil life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_life

Carrying capacity (important concept in ecology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity