The Uncertain Future of Global Population Numbers 279
An anonymous reader writes "The question of global population is a pretty crucial one; how many people will there be in ten years? In forty? The New York Times notes research done by a group called the Worldwatch Institute, research that concludes world population figures are too fluid to make any sort of educated guesses. Childbearing populations combined with severe resource shortages in some parts of the world make pinning down a global headcount unfeasible for ten years from now, let alone out to 2050. The article continues beyond its original borders, as well, with commenters in the field of population studies noting we don't even have a good grasp on how many people were alive in 2007."
Re:Self limiting to a certain extent? (Score:3, Informative)
The reason we will peak is because if it wasn't for immigration developed countries would have had a negative growth rate, that coupled with the AIDS virus and effective birth control. poor countries will develop and large families will not be needed anymore. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1108-global-population-to-peak-in-2070.html [newscientist.com]
no doubt there will be alarmists that claim there is already too many people in the world, but that's their bullshit code for "we are more important than everyone else"
Re:Carrying capacity overshoot (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe the Polynesian who chopped down the last tree on easter island had exactly the same thoughts? Who knows?
First of all, many of these problems DID already occur, the easter island die-off occoured before the island was descouvered by Europeans, probably somewhen around 1500 AD.
Second, many problems occured (like Haiti's complete lack of forest despite being a tropical half-island) but are merely covered up. (The do-gooders are sending food aid to Haiti to make sure the population continues to breed like crazy)
Third, problems occur when they occur. To say they never occur because they didn't occur 2 decades ago is just plain nonsense.
we aren't running out of oil anytime soon
True, but the oil will be harder to get, more expensive to extract and there will be less of it.
inspsite of what the rabid global warming nutters want you to think.
Global warming has nothing to do with the end of cheap oil.
most of the price rises are due to artificial restrictions on supply.
It's true that the oil industry has shown a general lack of interest in building new refineries in the last years. (and that was a problem during Katrina because refinery capacity was not enough)
However the reason for that is that the oil industry knows very well that oil and gas will peak (or already has peaked) and it doesn't make any sense to build a refinery which needs 10 years to pay itself when there won't be any fuel for it after 5 years. (Not because we are "running out of oil" but because the old, refineries can manage the slowly declining supply)
Environmental extremists (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Carrying capacity overshoot (Score:5, Informative)
You state that as fact, but as far as I know the concept of "carrying capacity" is not defined or even studied. Whilst it makes intuitive sense that there must be some limit, it also makes sense that this limit would itself be fluid - changing with the march of technology and changes in living standards. I've never seen anybody calculate a carrying capacity for 21st century Earth, especially not scientifically. People who use the term invariably assume it must be lower than our current population - how much lower is usually pulled out of thin air.
Your list of societies is disingenous - you list a primitive, fully collapsed society like Easter Island right alongside Great Britain, which last time I lived there imported half its food because you can't grow strawberries there year round, not because it was about to collapse. Britain could feed itself tomorrow simply by converting some of its farming capacity from meat production to cereal production.
Also, the green revolution was triggered mostly by the development of nitrogen fertilisers, weed killers and crop varieties that could handle being treated with them. Although we use hydrogen from natural gas to make nitrogen fertilisers today, you can produce it using electrolysis without problem. And whilst it's true that today farm machinery is mostly gasoline powered, that's something independent of the green revolution. If you haven't already read it, I suggest checking out Stanifords Food to 2050 [theoildrum.com] for a data-based analysis of whether the green revolution can be sustained.
Only a small proportion of Icelands power comes from geothermal. Most of it is hydro. Iceland has much bigger problems than electricity anyway - there's basically nothing there, and whilst it has energy in abundance the economy is mostly based on industrial fishing. Once the fish stocks are exhausted, there'll be little left to sustain it.
Ah ha, I knew it. As soon as I read the term "carrying capacity" I was waiting for the ass-pulled number. Why 3 billion? Why not 2, or 4? Or 100 million? I don't see any particular constraints on slow population growth - it's been boringly linear for most of the 20th century in most developed countries, and in large parts of Europe is going to head sharply downwards soon due to natural demographic trends anyway. Whilst places like Africa or Chian might get miserable, Africa is already miserable and there's no obvious reason why in the long term China would see different population trends from other developed countries.
Re:Carrying capacity overshoot (Score:5, Informative)
I have done research (serious, major oil-company-funded research, so you know where the money lies) on some new ways to find, extract, and process oil. The oil companies are VERY interested, mainly because the future looks pretty bleak. The very fact that Shell is considering as "promising" their MASSIVE in-ground processing, sandwiched between two groundwater reservoirs in the lamosite Green River formation in Colorado and Utah should tell you something about desperation.
Nope (Score:4, Informative)
If that were the case, then wealthier people would be having more children and poorer people would be having fewer. In fact it is the EXACT opposite; the people who can afford the least children, have the most, and vice versa. There are many reasons/factors that come into play, e.g. cultural (it's become "socially unacceptable", for example, amongst the "educated class" to have lots of children - you are considered low class now if you have lots of kids, this was not true even just a few generations ago in our own culture, e.g. my gran was one of over a dozen kids and that was 'normal' then; conversely in many African cultures here, for example, having many children IS regarded as 'wealth'). Another factor I believe is a kind of instinct present in many animals too whereby when times are tough and infant survival rates thus lower, more offspring are produced to increase chances of survival.
The biggest drop in fertility rates amongst the world's wealthy educated minority did not actually coincide with education though, it coincided with the development and widespread availability of 'The Pill' in the late 60s / early 70s. Most of the world's poor either can't afford good contraception or aren't terribly interested in it.
For various reasons the poor are still able to survive in big numbers - their basic needs, like food, are mostly taken care of. In some cases this is thanks to welfare and AID, in others thanks to industrial agriculture allowing the earth to produce a lot of food at low cost. Also things like basic medicines/vaccines are comparatively widely available now globally. So average infant survival rates are MUCH higher than they were even fifty years ago. People just aren't dying much, even in poor countries, so producing children IS very cheap UNLESS you actually want to house and educate them properly, but most do not do this.
Re:Nope (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And your evidence is...? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy question, easy answer (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy question, easy answer (Score:5, Informative)
You are very mistaken, this is an extremely complicated question, moreso than TFA states. In 1798, Thomas Malthus started worrying about population growth saying because we were growing at an exponential pace. This thought continued and Hardin used at as one of his main points in his famous paper the Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org]. But, as this became a more important question, we have gathered more data and it turns out our assumption that population growth would stay exponential was wrong.
Here [wikipedia.org] midway on the page are some graphs of current population estimates and global growth rates. You can see that global birth rates have already declined. And even the high end estimates for global population start to taper off. Some even predict global population will decline.
The reasons for this decline are also complicated, but the two most prevalent explanations are first, the advent of birth control finally allows women to control when they have children. And second, and more importantly, look at this picture [wikimedia.org] a growth rate of 0 means the population of that country is staying at a constant level (for every birth there is a death), negative means population decline, >0 means population growth. Notice that most of what we call "industrialized" nations are at a maintenance level or are in population decrease. That includes China and India, the two most populated countries in the world. While most the population growth is just in Africa and parts of the Middle East and South America(and note the south africa and egypt don't have growth). The reason for all this is explained as, as a society gets more 'industrialized' the need for families to be larger decreases. While in places where farming is necessary for survival, the incentive to have more children (free labor) is high. Its not that Africans don't have access to birth control, its that its more beneficial for them to not use it.
So the prevailing theory today is that as Africa gets more industrialized, their population growth will go down and global population will stabilize. We could argue about whether or not Africa will get industrialized, but I think in absence of very strong evidence, we have to believe the more industrialized a nation gets, its population growth approaches 0 or even negative.
Re:Self limiting to a certain extent? (Score:3, Informative)
Peak Oil will result in a global die-off (Score:5, Informative)
Industrializing 3rd world nations will only hasten the global die-off. Look at the HUGE impact on commodities that China & India have place since they industrialized. If China was to consume like we do in the US, it would take 7 planet earths. A real good DVD to watch is A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash [oilcrashmovie.com].
I strongly urged all