Earth's Population Predicted To Peak In 2070

canning writes "This article from MSNBC reports the results from a new study that states the world's population will peak in the year 2070. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the study's authors, say they have developed "a statistical computer model that considers uncertainties in migration, mortality and birth rates". The story is displayed on their home page.
The article has been discussed in other publications such as New Scientist and National Geographic. Also news agency Reuters, newspapers Washington Post, Guardian, and broadcasting stations BBC and ABC.
The Nature article can be found here."

How old will you be?

[squeegee-me]

I'll be 92 in 2070, I'd better go buy some life insurance for my family's safety and make sure I can afford a candy bar that costs $1240.38 due to inflation.

BTW, First post?

Life prolongment science

[ostawookiee]

I also don't think they take into account the rising life expectancies (in most countries). What if we develop age treatments and everyone starts living to 200 instead of 82? If people aren't dying, the population would take a LOT longer to stagnate, and be at a much higher level.

Yes Virginia...

[Mu*puppy]

...there is a Hari Seldon...

Using historical data

[The Limp Devil]

The probabilities were determined from historical demographic data.

That really makes me a bit curious about which data the have used. As far as I know, and I've worked on historical demographics for a couple of years, we don't have much data from outside of the Western world except for the last century, and even that is rather scetchy in many areas.

It also struck me that they claim birthrates don't increase after having fallen. Well, we don't have much experience with that, but in some countries such as Norway they are actually risisng again after having fallen for 150 years.

Re:Using historical data

[Anonymous Coward]

i agree with you about the "rising after falling"-comment. from a purely pragmatic standpoint, anything that self-replicates (hey, we almost have cloning now, right?) will continue to do so until it runs out of resources.

last i checked the human mind keeps expanding its ability to use resources into new domains fairly well. (hey when was the last time YOU were satisfied with a 540MB hdd?)

thus, humans will continue to propogate until we a) run out of resources. or b) run afoul of a predator.

barring et's (THAT's one i dont believe yet), we have been pretty good about staying at the top of the food chain...

2070 is WAY too short a time-span to make any reasonable prediction about the population "peaking", imho. of course, if id READ the article, maybe it only would classify this as a "local" maxima, which MAY be reasonable - altho i personally doubt that one also...

sig - if the population "peaks", does that mean it will be harder to find a date for saturday?

What a way to retire!

[Aldebaran2k]

Dear God! Just as I will be winding down, trying to enjoy my canned Ensure and watching the next gen of talk shows espousing the evils of teen pregnancy, I'll have to contend with global overcrowding and starvation. My /. karma isn't bad but my universal karma must really be in the toilet. GEEZ!!!

War wont do it.

[Unknown Poltroon]

THey never decrease the population. Now a nice influenz, or an ebola type plague would do nicely.

Statistical Credibility

[Speldor]

I don't know about these predictions...
They claim their machine is taking into account major population control factors, but all they really discuss is AIDS, mostly in South Africa. While this is most obviously and definitely a source of population reduction, in isn't the only one. thye mention nothing of war, other diseases, birth control usage, and other causes of infertility.
Obviously, no modern machine could take all these factors into account, leading me to question the credibility of this report. Yes, they did their research, yes their computer is powerful and impressive, but in the end, it's jsut a set of numbers that might, might, come close to accuracy about population growth (or lack thereof) in the next 100 years.
People seem to put to much stock into statistics these days. Just because they use numbers and cite their sources does not make them right. I could point out the statistical correlation between bread and 99% of all deaths in the last 100 years, using correct numbers, citing statistical data to back up my theory, and write it up intelligently with great flow charts, but that dosn't make bread the number one cause of death in the world.

Bottom line, I say don't trust statistics to the degree we are being asked to, numbers are representations of actual quantaties, not the quantaties themselves...
Just my twenty cents on the issue.

-Speldor

Geeks,

[Bender Unit 22]

The real reason for this is that by then the world will be crowded by geeks, sitting in front of their computers downloading pr0n from the internet instead of having a real life. "No need to go outside, I've got a 10*dsl line baby". :-)