An increase of germination speed by 50% is a decrease in germination time by 33%. In your effort to denigrate their efforts and results, you display not only a sour attitude but poor math skills.

Although the names would be nice, even if they were put first they would soon be forgotten. I mean no denigration of the girls involved, but for an article like this the primary interest is the technology, followed by the nation and gender of the inventors. Those are the things that will be remembered, the names are just noise for the general reader.

What's more important: the cotton gin or the name Eli Whitney?

What do you see as the insurmountable barrier to global prosperity?

"Too many people" based on what standard? Causing what problem -- food shortages?

"Not enough fresh water". Water for direct human consumption is dwarfed by water used for agriculture, also by water used by industry.

These things are interrelated. Trying to configure them as separate problems is foolish and futile.

The explosive population growth in today's world is in Asia (China and India), and in the future it will be Africa, according to the WIRED article you cite. Think, and you'll see that this supports ceoyoyo's assertion. China and India are both working hard to educate their populations (limited by the deep corruption of their political systems.) I see no such hope for most of Africa.

The anomaly here is South America; why is the population not growing there also?

"transferring genes between species that could never procreate together isn't even remotely like evolution." -- never heard of viral DNA insertion in nature, have you?

There are a great number of plants that produce no value for humans or that make significant problems when intermixed with food plants. Consider milk thistle or poison ivy or hundreds of other thorny or poisonous plants growing alongside strawberries, which grow close to the ground and must be hand picked.

So it's telling us just what we already knew? Interesting.

For three or more decades. (Before that some of the classes of things they're comparing didn't exist, with enough deployment, to characterize.)

On the other hand, it's nice to have it confirmed with some rigor and measures.

Your science fiction imagination is sadly inadequate. Also on the horizon are the creation of new humans without the use of the bodies of either men or women, the creation non-human intelligent beings, and the creation of intelligent beings not based on life-as-we-know-it.

Why do you write "Fuck you", then write "can't wait till we figure out how to get pregnant without men" which indicates that you don't want him to fuck?

By the way, the word missing from your vocabulary is misogynist.

From the article you cited,

The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight

So, bad power politics combined with a disease striking a monoculture crop.

Fucking makes problems better.

Problems like syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, HPV, chlamydia, "crabs", scabies, hepatitis A and B, HIV, trichomoniasis, amebiasis, giardiasis, cryptosporidiosis, shigellosis, candidiasis, MCV, ebola and Marburg virus.

Hungry is a sensation that does not equal undernourished, malnourished, or starving. Stop using "hungry" when referring to the effects of inadequate food supplies. It makes you seem even stupider.

What the hell is wrong with "economic and social inequality"? I can understand complaining about increased poverty, but complaining about inequality is a character flaw known as jealousy. Honestly acquired wealth is something properly to strive for, it indicates that the wealthy man has produced great value for others and traded that for wealth.

Oops. Typoed $/watt to $/kW in part of the above and accidentally hit submit rather than preview. My bad.

A dollar capital cost per kW of generation (with a couple decades lifetime minimum) is the ballpark for the breakeven point between grid power and solar generation on mid-US-latitude sunny sites (5ish solar hours/day), with grid power available.

Being remote (so running grid is pricey) or having a small load (so basic connection fees aren't justified) shifts the point to higher dollars/watt, as does an increase in utility rates. Shade, dark weater, and high lattitude shifts it downward. (Forget about solar in Seattle, for instance.)

Solar panels are just starting to drop below $1/W, making them practical in far more places, and making the load size and associated system costs (mounting, inverters, storage) more of a factor.

Over $/W? It needs some exceptional situation to compete with cheap flat panels.