New Study Projects World Population of 11B by 2100 326
vinces99 (2792707) writes Using modern statistical tools, a new study led by the University of Washington and the United Nations finds that world population is likely to keep growing throughout the 21st century. The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100, the study concludes, about 2 billion higher than widely cited previous estimates. The paper published online Sept. 18 in the journal Science includes the most up-to-date numbers for future world population, and describes a new method for creating such estimates. "The consensus over the past 20 years or so was that world population, which is currently around 7 billion, would go up to 9 billion and level off or probably decline," said corresponding author Adrian Raftery, a UW professor of statistics and of sociology. ... The paper explains the most recent United Nations population data released in July. This is the first U.N. population report to use modern statistics, known as Bayesian statistics, that combines all available information to generate better predictions.
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century. The main reason is that birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been going down as fast as had been expected. There is an 80 percent chance that the population in Africa at the end of the century will be between 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion people.
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century. The main reason is that birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been going down as fast as had been expected. There is an 80 percent chance that the population in Africa at the end of the century will be between 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion people.
Provided (Score:4, Interesting)
Ebola or some other virus doesn't wipe out a third of the world population.
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Famine, Plague, and even War have been on the decline for years, despite what modern media coverage would have you believe. There's plenty of room for our growth, if we don't mind killing off a bit more of the remaining habitat of other species.
Re:Provided (Score:5, Informative)
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Says the man who claims not to be Nine Volt. ;^)
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Why not just use TenVolt?
Then when you lose the credentials to that, your name can go to ElevenVolt.
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In the mid 90s, I was an avid player of the electric guitar. My interest in hard rock, metal, grunge, punk, and other genres led me to purchase a variety of effects pedals [wikipedia.org] of the stompbox variety (and eventually a multi-FX device, but that's not relevant here). Most such pedals were powered by 9V batteries, and so I always had a bunch of these 9V batteries scattered around. Well, there's something that differentiates a 9V battery from most o
No, It Won't (Score:2, Interesting)
The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100
Nope; before then we'll have a good solid pandemic, or war, or famine, or hey - maybe all three! That will make a significant dent in the existing population.
At least, one could hope :)
Re:No, It Won't (Score:4, Interesting)
The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100
Nope; before then we'll have a good solid pandemic, or war, or famine, or hey - maybe all three! That will make a significant dent in the existing population.
At least, one could hope :)
And why would you hope for such a disastrous event when there still exists the unknown of natural sustainability with 11 billion people?
As crazy as that sounds, we're not exactly sleeping on top of each other stacked 15 high these days. You might have a point with food supplies and resources, if we were not constantly being accused of wasting so much food feeding an nation of obese gluttons.
Take the greed of the 1% down a few notches, and sustainability might be far easier than previously thought without tactics like disease or bloodshed thinning the herd.
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Reproducing at the rates third world countries "enjoy" is also extremely greedy.
Re:No, It Won't (Score:4, Insightful)
If third world countries become richer the should have less children, so 2 birds with one obese stone.
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How do you accomplish the former without the latter?
Re:No, It Won't (Score:4, Informative)
The irony is that you can only really accomplish the needed sustainability if you do NOT try to accomplish the former.
Communism and to a lesser extent Socialism always attack the rich and promise the spoils to "the people". In the end the people always end up with nearly nothing (see Venezuela).
Whereas that evil vile capitalism has only ever just pulled millions upon millions of people out of poverty, worldwide, over the past 60 years.
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Capitalism's score is an easy billion lifted out of poverty (trillion for you eurotrash).
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As "crony capitalism" grows, the oligarchy is once again ascendant.
Re:No, It Won't (Score:5, Insightful)
There are countries that are socialist, (e.g. Nordic countries) compared to the US and doing quite well, better based on quality of life measures.
Don't get me wrong capitalism as severed the world well, it has increase its production capability nicely, but times have changed, we have reached a point where we are now not struggling to survive, on the contrary our excesses are now killing us, we are now simply consuming for the sake of consuming, there is no reason our economic system shouldn't change to meet our current needs.
The world is not black and white, and not even shades of gray. There is no need either one or the other, you can be in between, their may also be other alternatives, we can throw in the mix as well. If we limit our thinking to Capitalism vs Communism we limit the possible solutions we can come up with.
Re:No, It Won't (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is socialist. You do not understand that capitalism and socialism are not opposites.
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Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that every single American were living on 5000 calories per day. They aren't, but let's assume an extreme case.
Let's further assume that every single American could manage nicely on 1200 calories per day. They can't, but let's be extreme again.
In that case (large overestimate of food used, similarly extreme
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We already have had a few pandemics. The Great Plague, the influenza pandemic, and lately we've been lucky that modern techniques have allowed us to keep ahead of the bugs. However, we're already hitting the wall in terms of drug effectiveness, we're already running into shortages of water and that's only going to get worse, and our "green revolution" (where we could feed more and more people with fewer and fewer farmers) is running into problems as well - high energy inputs of fuel and fertilizer, crop
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We could easily feed 11 million today
I sure hope so :-)
But we cannot easily feed 11 billion today. We're hitting the limits of fresh-water availability. Desalination is a solution in SimCity, but the real world is more complicated. And if we DID manage to get to 11 billion, that doesn't fix things, since we'll then be having people predicting the population growing to 20 billion by the end of the 22nd century.
And while economic development might wind up with individual families having fewer kids, that doesn't mean total population goes do
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All problems of mankind are man made.
Nailed it. So the more people, the more problems.
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especially since their saying africa is what throws estimates off. news for them, population will not outgrow food and water supply. looking at 2nd derivative of population grow is better tool, we'll reach 8.5 billion around 2075 and then decline. problem solved.
In before... (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope a carpentry analogy is acceptable in lieu of a car analogy.
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Can we quibble about the statistical method to use after we've settled the basic cause and effect relationships? Here's the retired TED talk: Religions and Babies [youtube.com].
I think the title is supposed to be provocative but I find it has the opposite effect (two things young men don't want to talk about...) - it's really about assumptions underling the modeling of world population.
Not a problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
Vast areas of Earth remain unpopulated. In no particular order:
Sure, some of the above would require some work to make comfortable, but it can be done even with today's technology — by 2100 even an individual (or a family) would convert surroundings to their tastes. And it would certainly be easier, than moving an appreciable quantity of people off-Earth...
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No, those are too far away and hostile. Clearly, space is the answer.
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Clearly, space is the answer.
Preferably for people who want to turn America's farmland into some sprawling metropolis...
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You blithering idiot! A blubbering fool! A nincompoop! Nobody is talking about your precious farmland (which produces far too much stuff anyway, but that's a separate story).
I said Midwest. The Midwest, that is so bloody empty of anything (crops included), towns are offering free land [cnn.com] to anybody willing to build a home. And still they can't attract enough people [reuters.com]...
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Water source? Power source? Financial basis? I take it that you are bankrolling all of these poor folk from Sub Saharan Africa and / or India to move en masse to Peoria?
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meanwhile, existing towns are running out of water.
Oh well, I guess these people can just move.
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The American Midwest is far away and hostile?
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Unless you're an American, yes :-P
Re:Not a problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
I favor the solution of everyone on Earth living in one mega-city the size of Texas: http://joshblackman.com/blog/2... [joshblackman.com]
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No way, man. From the ruins of Baltimore to the nuclear wastes of upstate-NY... Mega-City 1.
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Vast areas of Earth remain unpopulated. In no particular order:
Uh, no, it's not, actually. In fact, as of the 2010 Census, [infoplease.com] the Midwestern states had higher combined populations than the Northwestern states.
Belief vs reality.
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I think both of you are using the wrong metric.
I suspect that the population density in the Midwest is lower than the Northeast. More importantly, for most of the Midwest, population density has been falling for the past 100 years even though the population has been growing. If that makes you scratch your head, just realize that 80% of farm and small town children find farming and small town life to be boring and low pay. IIRC, population in South Dakota has been falling in all but 5 counties – the co
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Indeed: at least in the US, the problem might eventually be bulldozing the suburbs and returning them to farmland (and/or nature preserves, to maintain food webs).
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Cities also tend to be dirtier. They are dangerous with high amounts of crime. They discourage innovation as there is little room for building things. They have nosy neighbors who try to mandate what you can do in your own home.
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We can debate if cities have higher crime or not. People in cities tend to live longer lives - at least in developed countries. So I am not sure what to make of your dirtier and dangerous point.
On innovation you are dead wrong. On almost every metric that I can think of - number of patents filed, research papers published, holders of advanced degrees, number of new business – on a per capita basis – cities do better than rural areas, and Big cities do better than medium sized cities.
As for havin
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You truly are a blithering nincompoop, aren't you? Can't tell the difference between population and population density [wikimedia.org]...
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You truly are a blithering nincompoop, aren't you? Can't tell the difference between population and population density [wikimedia.org]...
Irony: calling the American Midwest "unpopulated" [lmgtfy.com], yet calling someone else (who points out that the Midwest is not, in fact, unpopulated) a "blithering nincompoop."
The word you may have meant to use is underpopulated. I know language is complicated, but despite sharing several letters, "un" and "under" do not, in fact, mean the same thing.
Sincerely - One of the tens of millions of people who live in the Midwest.
Re:Not a problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
they're unpopulated for a reason. the logistics behind supporting any reasonable habitat for a dense population aren't so workable. namely water. mostly water. Which, according to the UN and a few other NGO's, will be sort of a big deal during this time frame.
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And we can — with nuclear or fusion reactors...
Quantity of people is not a problem — not now, not in 2100. Quality, on the other hand, has always been a problem...
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Oh there you go again. More Mr. Fusions.....
Come on back with your utopian schemes after you work out the messy little details.
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Fossil water aquifers are not perpetual, dolt.
It's not the space, it'd the food. (Score:3, Insightful)
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No there's plenty of land to grow food for the current population. There is enough food created in the world to feed everyone well. The problem is there is so much waste. Tons of food goes rotten in the fields and has to be thrown out. Even more is thrown out in the trash. Your food prices remark is irrelevant. The reason food prices are up are not related demand due to faces to feed. Corn prices have been rising because of ethanol usage. The world has an efficiency and logistics problem when it comes to fo
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The problem is not waste, it's distribution. Even with the current level of waste, everyone could eat 3 meals and snacks, everyday.
Getting it to people is a lot harder.
If we ended all food waste right now, there would not be 1 less person going hungry.
Hell, we can't even get food to people going hungry in the US without a political shit storm happening from people who think it's the same thing as communism.
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Vast areas of Earth remain unpopulated.
I don't think the concern is that there will not be enough for residential accomodations.
I think the concern is that there will not be enough necessary resources. Arable land, potable water, things like that. Sure, we could put sustainable greenhouses in the places you list. We can improve water filtration and desalination technology to the point that we stay sufficiently wet. However, shit like that costs money, big money. At that point, we'd have a nice sustainable closed-loop system to live in, with no
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Land is plentiful, water is, indeed, needed to make it arable, but desalination is a solved problem — you just need electricity. And we can provide that even today in abundance with fission (nuclear plants) and will certainly be able to have it even better in the future with fusion.
All of the problems you listed are several orders of (decimal) magnitude worse on other bodies of the Solar Syste
Re:Not a problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
That assumes that all those environments are pointless wastes of space, unfortunately that premise isn't true- those areas of land serve important purpose for example the sands of the Sahara blow across the Atlantic and fertilise the likes of the Amazon rainforest.
A lot of people say "Why don't we geo-engineer the Sahara to make it tropical forest again!" but it becomes almost a zero-sum game, as you grow forests in Africa you decrease the fertilisation of the Amazon and so growth is stunted there in turn.
We can only move into these territories (or even keep expanding in existing ones) if we can find a way to do so without impacting the underlying ecosystem, otherwise we find ourselves with a whole lot of people and not enough resources and you know what that generally means? war - winning side gets the resources.
So it's not just about making an area habitable, or comfortable, it's about doing so in a manner that doesn't have a knock on effect elsewhere - by regrowing Africa into a tropical jungle paradise you'd be slowly pushing ever more of South America into a poor inhospitable desert. Similarly if you start inhabiting Siberia and Antarctica with more human activity resulting in greater melting of these regions you'll simply be flooding coastal regions elsewhere and making them uninhabitable.
Long story short, you cannot make massive changes to large areas of land without there being an impact elsewhere. You can see this on many scales, whether it's the farmers that cleared the forests on the hills of South West England to give themselves more land for crops leading to widespread devastating flooding due to lack of trees to slow water down in the hills, or whether it's something much larger scale as with the Africa/Amazon connection above. For every sizeable environmental change we make there is an impact elsewhere.
For what it's worth, I suspect the place we could most likely inhabit on land with the least impact elsewhere is in parts of the sea but even this would require a lot of care so as to restrict ocean pollution from waste which may damage fish stocks and decrease food. Failing that it's to space we go I guess.
Which isn't to say that there aren't some areas of the planet we can inhabit with little impact elsewhere meaning there is some scope for population growth, but those areas are becoming ever less common and the effects of inhabiting them elsewhere are often subtle making it difficult to know when you have and haven't found a reasonable spot to settle more people. Thus fundamentally it's not simply a case of saying "Hey look that place isn't inhabited, let's inhabit it!" because in doing so you're causing destruction of environments elsewhere where people were inhabiting and now you have to find room for them too.
Of course, I suspect none of it will matter- the rich will live where they desire to live and any knock on impact on anyone else? well they can go fuck themselves, because humans are an inherently selfish species.
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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It's not really extraordinary, but here you go:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.g... [nasa.gov]
parts of the world relate to each other? who would have thought?
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but it becomes almost a zero-sum game
No, it doesn't. Just because there is a disadvantage to a choice, doesn't mean that it is "almost" zero sum. You still have to consider the advantages.
Of course, I suspect none of it will matter- the rich will live where they desire to live and any knock on impact on anyone else? well they can go fuck themselves, because humans are an inherently selfish species.
What species would not be a selfish species in your sense? And this overpopulation problem isn't being caused by the rich. It's being caused by the teeming masses of non-rich.
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Well if you manage to move a few million people to Antarctica and the resultant increase in sea level means a few million people have to leave coastal areas then yes, it is.
But that's not the case. There's nothing magical about living in Antarctica that would cause millions of people to lose their homes elsewhere.
Many colony based species are, such as ants and bees work for the interests of the colony rather than for the individual
No, those species are quite notorious for exhibiting behavior that strongly favors their own species at the expense of pretty much everything else aside from a few symbiotes. Even honeybees only help plants pollinate because they get in exchange food and building material (for their beehive wax).
Re:Not a problem... (Score:4, Informative)
Go facepalm [wikipedia.org] yourself.
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Why populate those areas? If you don't want population control you will need to warehouse people as efficiently as possible.
Manufacturing can be done in highly concentrated locations (China is showing us how). Agriculture doesn't require very many people anymore, same with mining and forestry. Cities are the only way to deal with hoards of people.
Plus you're still just kicking the can down the road a few decades. Eleven billion? What happens when that doubles in another few decades, then doubles again? It
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Yeah, with a 3d printer you can do ANYTHING.
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It's not physical space that limits populations, but the availability of resources such as food and water.
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False. Ample food can be grown in American Midwest as it is.
And the hot deserts can also be turned around very nicely [cbn.com]. Earth can easily grow a lot more food than it does. It would be nice to waste less [statista.com] of it too...
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Would be nice for deserts to be un-desertified, but I'm not sure that can be done cost effectively just yet.
Dan
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What the fook are you talking about? Israelis grow food in their own desert [cbn.com]. The same methods can be used in Sahara and all other "hot" deserts — including the giant Sinai peninsula, which remains bare and barren since its return to Egypt.
It is possible and we know how to do it. We aren't doing it, but we can. And, should a compelling need arise, we will.
There is no such thing.
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It's true, my comments envisaged conventional farming, not the methods the Israelis use with poly-tunnels. So in the long run, your point is true.
Oh Canada! (Score:2)
Of course given global warm... or climate change or whatever, that would make much more of Canada hospitable, like North Bay or even Sudbury!
Though given that much of the non-populated near arctic is tundra on top of granite I am not sure how feasible that really is. Also much of the northern parts are only accessible by ice bridges really in winter, which would actually mean that less of the area is actually available for settlement.
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Is it really worse than Svalbard [wikitravel.org]? People live there too. Longyearbyen [wikitravel.org] may not be much today, but it is likely to expand, if more habitable areas elsewhere become too crowded.
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Why would you even want to do that?
I can tell you why you don't want to - 'Most of Canada', 'Australia's Outback', Siberia, the Amazon (which you didn't mention) and the Tibetan Plateau (among other regions) serve as enormous ecological buffers. What do you think filters out all of the crap we're putting into it?
We've done oh so well on the parts of the planet that do have significant human population densities. How do you think spreading this out over the rest of the world is going to work?
And you're uto
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Because I want more fellow human beings to exist. More artists, more scientists, more outright geniuses. Sure, more thieves too, but criminals affect the same share of population, whereas a single brilliant scientist may invent FTL travel or cure cancer for all...
But my wants are a moot point — the population will rise whether or not I (or you) want it, according to TFA.
Why do you hate humanity?
Really ? Aren't you dreaming ehre ? (Score:2)
Super-plagues et al. (Score:2)
Possibly some form of influenza or other nasty bug like airborne ebola should wipe medium portion of the population at some point in the future.
Alternatively, or should I say additionally rising pollution levels at highly populated areas will cause health problems at increasing rate.
Just like bacteria or virii (Score:3)
The portion of the population which breeds under given circumstances will come to dominate the population.
It might be expressed as a particular religion, simple horniness combined with resistance to using birth control, or myriad other ways.
But that part of the population will be a larger percentage over time and finally come to dominate the population.
There is an exception-- a universe 133 scenario. The population in those experiments collapsed and did not recover.
Re:Just like bacteria or virii (Score:5, Interesting)
I must be misremembering the universe #.
Here's a link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J... [wikipedia.org]
and a quote...
Mouse experiments
John Calhoun with mice experiment.
In the early 1960s, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) acquired property in a rural area outside Poolesville, Maryland. The facility that was built on this property housed several research projects, including those headed by Calhoun. It was here that his most famous experiment, the mouse universe, was created.[1] In July 1968 four pairs of mice were introduced into the Utopian universe. The universe was a 9-foot (2.7 m) square metal pen with 54-inch-high (1.4 m) sides. Each side had four groups of four vertical, wire mesh âoetunnelsâ. The âoetunnelsâ gave access to nesting boxes, food hoppers, and water dispensers. There was no shortage of food or water or nesting material. There were no predators. The only adversity was the limit on space.
John Calhoun meeting Pope Paul VI on 27 September 1973.
Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55 days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which the population growth dropped markedly. The last surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day 315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against. After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves â" all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed âoethe beautiful onesâ.
The conclusions drawn from this experiment were that when all available space is taken and all social roles filled, competition and the stresses experienced by the individuals will result in a total breakdown in complex social behaviors, ultimately resulting in the demise of the population.
Calhoun saw the fate of the population of mice as a metaphor for the potential fate of man. He characterized the social breakdown as a âoesecond deathâ, with reference to the âoesecond deathâ mentioned in the Biblical book of Revelation 2:11 [1] His study has been cited by writers such as Bill Perkins as a warning of the dangers of the living in an "increasingly crowded and impersonal
Told you so (Score:2)
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Africa (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century.
You mean, the continent that can barely feed itself and is the source of deadly plagues (Ebola, etc.) is somehow going to support four times it's current population? I'd like to see how that is feasible...
Re:Africa (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now there are 3000 dead from Ebola. Europe lost a quarter of its population to the Spanish Flu just a 100 years ago, so I'd say there's no worries there.
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You do realize judging the entire country of Africa by the most notorious problems is like judging North America by Haiti and West Virginia. Ebola isn't even that deadly at a population level - it's killed fewer people, total, than the recent Gaza war. The real killer diseases in Africa are the ones we've already solved in the developed world - malaria and the ilk.
Anyways, build a modern healthcare infrastructure, modern farms with GMO crops, stop all the pointless wars and rein industry in a bit, and Afric
Re:Africa (Score:5, Funny)
The entire country of Africa?
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... I really meant to say "continent" there. I really did.
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You're not fooling anyone Sarah Palin ...
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If making ridiculous extrapolations to the future without any backlash from scientific community is possible, then _everything_ is possible.
Familiar story line (Score:2)
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The best story on those lines is The Mote in Gods Eye by Larry Niven.
But we already have tried something like this : China's one child policy has reduced (and will reduce further) their population. Now we just need India and possibly Bangladesh, Indonesia and Brazil to do the same.
We'll all be dead by 2100.... (Score:2)
No wonder world leaders make such short sighted decisions.
Plus the fact that nobody has perfected the crystal ball technology yet.
Assuming we find a hydrocarbon energy substitute (Score:5, Insightful)
One that's as cheap, energy dense and as easy to handle at room temperature as oil, coal, natural gas and so on.
If we *don't* do this, then I'm fairly sure that after we hit 11 billion by 2100, we'll be lucky to hit 50 million by 2200. Fewer, if we try and solve our resource problems by throwing nukes at one another, which sounds likely.
Like all species, we simply consume resources until the population crashes. What we've been so far with technology is "lucky." There's always been another *cheap* and *easy* resource to exploit. Short of a breakthrough in battery technology and thorium reactors (or fusion) that's not going to happen again.
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One that's as cheap, energy dense and as easy to handle at room temperature as oil, coal, natural gas and so on.
Well, there is coal. That's not going away by 2100 despite your assertion.
Like all species, we simply consume resources until the population crashes.
Which is incorrect. As the paper notes, most of the population growth comes from Africa and Asia. The developed world actually is a population sink - the overpopulation problem has been fixed there. What responsibility am I supposed to have for population growth elsewhere in the world? And what power am I supposed to have to fix that?
Ignoring war (Score:2)
Decreasing excess human population. That's what is good for.
And we have quite a few potential human population decreases being set up right now - ISIS and Russia are just waiting to decrease some extra human population.
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Not really. Wars have had surprisingly little impact on overall world population growth.
Don't look at me (Score:5, Funny)
Bayesian statistics (Score:2)
Ohhh fancy! :)
Re:Maybe we if stopped giving Africa food (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Maybe we if stopped giving Africa food (Score:5, Insightful)
West, just by the fact of existing, messed up Africa.
Before white men's ships arrived, Africans were living in their tribal villages leading simple agricultural or hunter/gatherer lives. Just as people all over the world have been doing for ten thousand years. It was no paradise, but they had a balance with natural forces where the population wouldn't grow faster than the food supply.
Then comes the white man with his antibiotics and high-yielding maize (which he got from the New World Indians, but that's another story). Suddenly infant mortality went down and crop yields went up and population could grow like crazy. But Africans never developed the institutions and social structures necessary to support a densely populated society that the Europeans and East Asians did. African nations today still run pretty much like they did thousands of years ago, local warlords taking power. Except now it's millions of people instead of a few villages.
Africans would've been infinitely better off left completely to their own devices. Would they still be living in stone age primitive societies? Yes. Would it be preferable to what they have now? Yes.
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So we've given them lower infant mortality and more regular food availability, while they continued to kill and enslave each other at roughly the same rate as before. And you think that "messed them up"?
How so?
Seems to me at worst we've made things slightly better for them. I'm pretty sure the women, at least, are happy to see more of their children surviving to adulthood. Plus we've given them the tools and knowledge to build better societies, even if it hasn't happened yet. How is that a bad thing?
Not
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Shall we blame the Brits for Sunni and Shiia slaughtering each other for hundreds of years too?
Mainly yes.
Ever looked at a 'natural' map, like Europe, Asia etc?
And ever looked at an 'artificial' map, like USA, Africa?
Do you notice a difference? Most borders in Africa are artificial. Straight lines going through old 'tribes' territories, splitting up stuff that 'belongs together' and add 'random' areas to now existing countries.
E.g Texas in the USA, several straight borders, same for Libya, Algeria, Sudan et
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He always posted this schizoid stuff. Just ignore him.
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I think they need some sleep. They're obviously suffering from sleep deprivation.
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and now we get to the fun part of the roller coaster ride.
Re:CO2 contributions by population? (Score:4, Informative)
The CO2 being produced through breathing is a net neutral.
Plants are carbon neutral. They have been since the carboniferous era.
CO2 from using power will be the issue, unless we start a aggressive plan to stop using CO2 emitting technology for power.
By aggressive, I mean 75 years.