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Estimated World Population to Pass 6,666,666,666 Today
suso writes ""The estimated population of the world will pass 6,666,666,666 today. No doubt an interesting number for people everywhere (not referring to any religion connotations). 5,555,555,555 was passed about 14 years ago. You may not realize that only 80 years ago, the population of the Earth was only around 2 billion. This shows how the population of the world has increased at an alarming rate in recent times, although the growth rate is almost half what it was at its peak in 1963, when it was 2.2%. Unrelated but also an interesting coincidence, the estimated number of available IPv4 addresses is getting very close to 666,666,666. It should cross over today as well.""
The two counters just crossed over each other about 10 minutes ago (2:42:36pm EDT). I estimate that the population counter will reach 6 repeating at approximately 11:30pm EDT.
looks like ipv4 is the antichrist, three times over...
Slashdot comments passed the 66,666,666 mark, and CowboyNeal was passed over by 6,666 women.
geek page at KY speaks
Did you know that 6 to any power other than zero produces a 6 in the resulting number?! It's just as arbitrary as this...
...when is it that we're totally screwed?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Come on slashdotters, we can make it
But a key difference at that time was I was still Catholic.
One of many reasons for divorcing myself from Catholicism was its stance towards birth control. Iâ(TM)m not talking abortion (or âoebaby killingâ as some of them like to refer to it)â"Iâ(TM)m talking about preventative measures like condoms and Plan B. For some reason, the Vaticanâ"the organization that is the Catholic Churchâ"took it upon itself to stop the use of preventative measures. In pre-industrial times, this may have been advantageous to a religion and even a people. However, as it stands now this attitude results in a powder keg leaving the populace open to drought, famine, disease and brutal warfare (probably as a result of the famine) to keep the human population in check. Just look at the enterovirus (EV71) in China.
I think a lot of the responses are going to be along the lines of what Iâ(TM)ve said so far; that if we donâ(TM)t start to pay attention to population and think of non-intrusive non-immoral ways to keep it in check then weâ(TM)re in some serious trouble. Instead, Iâ(TM)d like to relay some views Iâ(TM)ve heard from people quite close to me on this issue. Iâ(TM)m not sure if this will become a political issue in the near term but I know that, at least in the United States, there are people with conflicting views.
A close friend of mine who is a Christian and a bit conservative voiced concern that the United Statesâ(TM) population growth is lagging behind many other countries. Many of the Western countriesâ"such as those in Europeâ"are also lagging behind those of Muslim nations like Turkey and several others in the Middle East & Africa. He claimed (or âoefear mongeredâ if you will) that if the current trend continued the end state of the world would most certainly be Muslim Dictatorships everywhere. I would like to quickly point out that I do not share his ideas in this Christian Vs Muslim war he believes has been going on since the crusades. I am merely relaying what many conservative Christians in the world are probably subconsciously thinking.
Now just last week my uncle sent me an e-mail that was along his thinking of people should have to have a license to have children. They should have to pass tests demonstrating they can provide food shelter clothing water all the basic life necessities before they can start to procreate. This would require a source of income to sustain a child ⦠he also has said that criminal record and health history should be taken into consideration. He linked an unfortunate story and was perhaps half joking.
Are either of these ideas the future? Is the idea of a procreation license issued by the state an unfortunate reality? Is it my friend wrong to push to close the âbirth rate gapâ(TM) between West and East?
Personally, all I can do is rail for education worldwide for all and, with that, the power to do what is right for us and the future of our children.
My work here is dung.
Or a meta-meta-beast.
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Not to be pedantic, but the number of the beast is actually 616... they have a wikipedia article about it here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast
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I think the Beast can have any fucking number he wants.
Hell, he can probably have two!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
> [...] a jar of marmalade that causes adultery.
So, uh...do they sell that at Tesco?
But considering how distracted and divided humans still are, the earth will likely fix this load we are putting on it's resources. It has been known to erase lives hundreds of thousands at a time. In the USA alone there is a super volcano about due, and a few plate movements are overdue. A lot of people take issues with the population control methods utilized by the Chinese -- how much more densely populated would China be without those measures? What's point of a new bouncing baby girl if there isn't enough food available to feed her?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Didn't that put a dent in things? I don't want to be crass but the disaster in Burma isn't even countable. I know they can do estimates and such but major events like Burma should be accounted, are they? What about Iraq?
Besides, whats the fear? Its not like this planet cannot support double that if not more. Do people realize just how much arable land is not in use? Hell on my recent 1600 mile trip to and from Ohio I can tell you this, this country is empty in many spots and I am sure it is in others. Hell I know there are substantial areas of Europe that are essentially empty. Yeah there are villages and towns nearby but its not like we even try to exploit the lands we have. Look at Africa! How much of that is still like America of a hundred if not two hundred years ago?
One thing I have learned in my short time on this planet. Every doomsayer's predictions of over population and food shortages comes to nothing. We always shift how things are done and accommodate it. If we didn't we would not be here today. Food shortages are all the rave now but forever in our history some groups have been short of food but this is how we progress. If the population cannot create more food then it supports less people. Its a horrid fact of life but it happens. We actually do very well in this day and age from allowing nature to takes its course.
It all comes down to need. When the need arises we always step up.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I resent people who are stating that 5, or 6, or 7 billions is too many and that the growth of world population should make us worry. I would like to point out that, compared to the era when world population was less than 1 billion, the average life expectancy, quality of life and, yes, access to ressources and opportunities has dramatically increased for our species. How far is the time when a single pandemic, natural disaster or mass migration would wipe out a third of a continent population and make whole civilization disappear from History ? Notwithstanding the current price fluctuations that call for natural adjustments in production and distribution systems, REAL hunger, the one where the basic intake of food necessary for survival simply isn't available within reach, has been reduced to cases relatively limited in scope and mostly due to geopolitical circumstances rather than natural resource limitations.
..God is a sixist bastard!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Agreed. Wake me up when the rest of the world reaches the population density of Japan.
And here I just read a story today that some lady is having her 18th baby.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90I4TN00&show_article=1&catnum=0
Yes this is really helping things out....
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I'm not really worried about this number.
The actual "global population" is a big number that people wave around for dramatic effect. It is so far divorced from the realities at hand that it's a joke.
"Over population" is relative to the boundaries constraining that population. If the global population drops but the population of China continues to increase then the burden of "over population" in China continues to escalate. Of course, there isn't an "over population" problem in China proper - there is a problem with Population Density near the cities the Chinese Military Dictatorship cares about.
It reminds me of how dedicated coastal city-dwelling folks complain about urban sprawl and population control from their high-rises and college dorms in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. Take a trip out to New Mexico or Arizona some time. Visit Wyoming. There isn't a lack of land - you just can't to be away from your precious urban island. The idea of lacking having a neighborhood Starbucks, of not being able to slip down to the bistro and meet with your vegan friends to complain about the soulless carnivores, of maybe needing to own a gun - these things are so unthinkable to some.
We've got room in the U.S.A. folks - no need for the current generations to go all "0 population growth" fanatic on us. That negative reproductive rate isn't helping Europe either - they are just importing more immigrants and more unsustainable reproduction in the exporting nations fills the gap. Meanwhile, they are having serious problems assimilating their immigrant population and in some ugly cases (Londonistan, some suburbs of Paris) losing their domestic tranquility and culture in unprecedented fashion.
...many people will die soon as the energy crisis hits. Energy usage and world population have a very close correlation. Do not forget that the energy we use (fossil fuels) was produced millions of years ago. It is essentially free, we just have to use it. Any other method which requires us to produce energy will be more expensive (unless something marvellous happens, but I do not think so).
Less energy means smaller population. The future does not bode well for us.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
I'm not sure if near 100% land utilization is such a good idea.
IIRC, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 people are born and 100,000 die every day. The Burma disaster and/or the Iraq war would throw off the count by only a few hours. The bigger issue is that the entire count is just a gross estimate.
Besides, whats the fear? Its not like this planet cannot support double that if not more.Some estimates say that will happen. Then what? What if everyone in the world manages to raise their standard of living to US levels? Then you'd need to find resources at 5X or more the rate we're currently using. Have you checked commodity prices lately?
Hell on my recent 1600 mile trip to and from Ohio I can tell you this, this country is empty in many spots and I am sure it is in others.The problem is water, without which all that space will stay just as empty as it is now. We're already mining it out of aquifers that are drying up, and we're diverting so much from surface sources that it's causing problems downstream.
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"Besides, whats the fear? Its not like this planet cannot support double that if not more. " This is crazy short sighted. 80 years ago the planet had ONE billion people. We'll have 7 pretty soon. So another 20,30 years, we'll either hit the theoritical limit or have billions of people dying every year to prevent us from getting there. Sounds real pleasant. At least it won't happen in our lifetimes. Oh, wait, it will.
the Beast can have any [] number he wants.
/28 for a total of 520 (514 usable), the beast ought to be able to have at LEAST two.
Hell, he can probably have two!
Why not?
If I can have two IPv4 class Cs and a
Heck: With all the work he has to do and minions to help him, he could probably use a class A (16,777,216 numbers).
Given that Haliburton and the US Post Office each have one and the US DOD has eleven, maybe he already does. (There WERE internet postings from a computer in the DOD named "beast".) B-)
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Those empty spots in Ohio are called "farms." That's where we grow our food. If we reduce the empty space, we reduce the amount of food we can grow. Also, there's a big empty space a bit to the west where we can't grow food and is a bit lacking in water. It would be difficult to live there.
Someone named "Ethanol-Fueled" complaining about fucking up our living space? That's rich! Nothing causes more *entirely pointless* environmental damage than the barely-disguised corn subsidy of requiring ethanol in gas. I can only hope you were referring you *yourself* as ethanol-fueled, which would be entirely respectable.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Ha! Not if we're dead!
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
World population is levelling off very quickly. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/img/worldgr.gif
More data here: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.html but basically people stop having lots of kids once their nation becomes industrialized, and most "first world" nations have a significant population decline if you ignore immigration. Japan in particular has a serious problem with population decline.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The bees are being ripped apart from the inside by enzymes bred into GMO crops so that someone can protect their 'intellectual property' last I heard.
Uh, I think you're doing it wrong...
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
The total land area used for farming in America has decreased significantly over the past 50 years, and the total land area covered by forests has increased significantly as a result. Crop yields per acre are ridiculously high these days. The pollution created by agriculture is a potential concern if we needed more food, but the land area just isn't.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Food shortages are all the rave now
Ecstasy, flashing lights, glowsticks, cargo pants, trance music, and famine.
Worst. Rave. Ever.
According to Robert Heinlein in "The Number Of The Beast" it is actualy 6^6^6 which comes to 2,176,782,336 and we passed that figure a while back.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
The Earth as a managed system can easily support 18 billion people and all the other plants and animals.
Just wanted to mention this before slash dot fills with Casandra's whom I last heard whining about the population explosion (yeah that old pile of horse manure, when really they were worried about the population explosion amongst the great unwashed) after Alvin Toffler published his rather popular but well dodgy Future Shock.
According to that we were actually all dead now.
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Yes, IF we want to live like that.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Or the farming business is being outsourced: http://www.ca.uky.edu/AGC/NEWS/2005/Feb/imports.htm
Population growth = Births - Deaths
There are approx. 360000 Births per day so grown is approx. 210000 humans per day.
The impact of 1 million extra death would therefore date the clock back by less than 5 days.
Unexploited doesn't mean nonexistant. One thing I have learned in my short time on this planet. Every doomsayer's predictions of over population and food shortages comes to nothing. We always shift how things are done and accommodate it. If we didn't we would not be here today. What you haven't learned yet is that if the predictions are heeded and countermeasures are taken, tragedies are averted.
The doomsayers had been saying for years that if a cat 4 or more hurricane were to hit New Orleans... but nothing was done.
The doomsayers had been saying for years that if Haitians kept clearcutting the hills for fire wood... and their warnings fell on deaf ears.
If you weren't so ignorant, you'd know about all the tragedies that were foretold, and all the ones that were averted. but its not like we even try to exploit the lands we have. Look at Africa! How much of that is still like America of a hundred if not two hundred years ago?
[...] We actually do very well in this day and age from allowing nature to takes its course. Hypocrite.
You can't take the sky from me...
I've been eating vegetarian a lot lately. I still eat meat 2 or 3 meals a week, but a lot more not meat. I don't really miss meat, and a well prepared vegetarian meal can be just as satisfying (if not moreso) than a meal with meat. I really don't understand why people have a need to eat so much meat. I used to eat meat at every meal, but recently (mostly for health reasons) I've decided to eat less meat. I can't say I really miss it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The main problem being that if everyone in the world starts eating to 'US level', the earth will be crushed into a singularity..
which is totally what she said
Some estimates say that will happen. Then what? What if everyone in the world manages to raise their standard of living to US levels? Then you'd need to find resources at 5X or more the rate we're currently using. Have you checked commodity prices lately?
That's what I'm afraid of. There simply isn't enough resources for everyone in the world to live like a middle class family in the US, and production isn't increasing as fast as population growth or standard of living.Something has to give, and it's going to be within 25 years. The standard of living is going to start coming down in the US and other highly developed countries, due to demand for resources worldwide.
Sort of some miraculous deus ex machina technology is needed ASAP. Or we'll end up in a world war over resources.
Having land to stand on isn't the problem. The problem is resources. People need food, water, fuel, electricity, building materials, plastic and metal for their toys, etc. Water especially is a big issue. We're living on borrowed time and resources right now.
From wikipedia: "The Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted at a rate of 12 billion cubic meters (420 billion ft3) per year, amounting to a total depletion to date of a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers. Some estimates say it will dry up in as little as 25 years. Many farmers in the Texas High Plains, which rely particularly on the underground source, are now turning away from irrigated agriculture as they become aware of the hazards of overpumping."
Once the Ogallala is depleted, we're going to be facing another dust bowl. We're going to be increasingly relying on desalination in the future for our fresh water, and that's quite energy intensive. This drives our energy usage up even more. Once our fossil fuels run low, where do we get the energy? We're going to have to seriously expand nuclear and renewables to cope. Empty desert doesn't do much to solve these problems.
Unfortunately I'm not surprised that you are so quick to blame man. You are no different than so many creationists who think that whenever we don't know the cause of something, it must be God's work. Instead of blaming/crediting God, you attribute everything to man when no other reason is known. Sometimes, even when the answer IS known, man is STILL blamed ("Man Made" Global Warming causing tsunamis is a good example. Hell Global Warming itself is a good example!).
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The one child per family rule in China has caused many problems. Firstly the problem of babies being thrown away if they aren't the correct sex. Then the ones that do survive end up being completely spoiled, from being raised as an only child. A co-worker of mine who was from China said this was a big problem, and that there was an entire generation of people who grew up as only children. Obviously the only-child stereotype doesn't affect absolutely everyone, but it didn't become a stereotype without reason.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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After the three people left, there are -1 people in the building. Add one and you've got 0, no-one.
Apparently going vegetarian makes you repeat yourself.
Well, I for one would miss it dearly. I want my food to have been able to howl, grunt, moo, snort or what the hell.
And besides, not eating meat doesn't solve all that much of the problem. Cows don't eat crop. They eat grass. That's the stuff we usually don't eat. That's the stuff that grows even where wheat doesn't. Sheep eat... well, damn, everything! They can produce food digestable by humans through stuff that isn't digestable. Humans call it processing, nature does it since forever and a day.
Meals containing no animal fats just don't sate me and I'm willing to bet I'm not alone. Considering that I can go one day on one good steak with a filling side dish, while I get hungry in mere hours from the side dish alone... I am a carnivore. I know that. My body has made that completely clear.
Well, technically, I'm an omnivore, but it is a close call...
That's your opinion and I'm fine with you having that opinion, so long as you don't attempt to legislatively force that opinion upon the rest of us.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
If everyone raised their standard of living to about what the US and most of Europe enjoys then population growth would slow dramtically. Most developed nations are either losing population slowly (barring immigration) or just maintaining steady levels.
The better the standard of living, the fewer babies people have. Google around and you'll see plenty of studies to that effect and plenty of theories why that is.
Well lets see, bees have been around for 100 million years; fossil evidence for honeybees indicate they were around 35 million years ago. And yet now they are disappearing in large numbers. Read this for a quite plausible guess at the cause.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Cows don't eat crop. They eat grass.
In the US, most cattle are fed corn and soy.
> The one child per family rule in China has caused many problems
Does it cause more problems than having 12 children per family?
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It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
There is absolutely no rational reason to think history will repeat itself. There is just as much (actually, much much more) logic to saying that current population growth is unsustainable and there will be a worldwide catastrophe. The simple truth is that poor people breed like rats, and they're going to drag down the rest of the world. Your assumption that we'll just be fine based on some pollyanna view of humanit's history is baseless.
You're basing your view of the future on what happened in the past, which begs the question. There has never been a time in the past when we've had this large a population and this fast a population growth. So your argument is based on the faulty assumption that point A (now) is the same as point B (sometime in the past) and hence point C (sometime in the future) will be something like point D (sometime in our past, and point B's future).
To put it bluntly - we're fucked.
If your parents were the only child in your family, and you are their only child... that means when it's time for you to support your parents and your grandparents, you've got 6 people to support on your one income. Or 12 people to support on you and your wife's income. That's is going to be a big problem soon.
Well, first of all, you can't live completely without meat. You need certain proteins that you can't get anywhere else.
You can easily satisfy all your protein requirements with vegetable sources. The argument that you need to eat meat is bogus.
That being said, I eat meat. I eat it for the same reason everyone does - it tastes good!.
That means the world population is only ~4,310,251,930 in Europe.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
Medium well? ...philistine. Go to a good steak house(i.e., not Ruth's Chris or anything similar), get either a Kobe steak or some well-aged American knock-off, order it medium rare with a good wine, and get nothing else. That's Heaven in the form of food.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
The USDA doesn't have a clear candidate. What makes you think you know more than the USDA? I find it interesting that you blame people for making up reasons for things happening, yet you're very quick to jump to unproven conclusions as well. I smell confirmation bias.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
On my last business trip to the US, I ordered a steak "medium rare". What I got was barely even pink in the middle. So, the next steak I ordered (at a different place) was "rare" and came to me cooked in a way that the rest of the world would call "medium rare" (i.e. How I like it).
Based on this, I get the feeling that "medium" is actually leaning towards the "well done" side of things from a non-US perspective.
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Correct, but irrelevant. In nature, a species often dies when it doesn't "play nice" with the rest of the environment. We are definitely a part of the natural universe, but that doesn't mean we're preferred in it.
Call me humano-centric, but I prefer to survive.
2. There have been many people who forecast apocalypse and were wrong. In fact, ALL of them. This does not preclude an apolalypse, it only shows that prophets have a burden of proof they must live up to before we take their predictions seriously.Somewhat correct. There have been many "earth ending prophecies", and none of them have come true. There have also been forecasts of less global catastrophes and some of them have been wrong, while some of them have been right. You pretty much ignored a poster who pointed a couple of these out because he didn't "prophecise" them himself. I didn't either, but some people did, and they were right!
Also, the "burden of proof", I believe has been more than met for the subjects of climate change and overpopulation. Both of these are serious issues that need to be ACTIVELY dealt with if we want to survive with a reasonable way of life. If a very large number of people die, I fully expect that humanity will indeed keep going, but that's NOT a world I want to live in if it can be avoided! (if it can't be avoided, I certainly won't commit suicide given that I'm one of the lucky few survivors, but I still won't be happy about it)
3. We have NO idea what the world or humanity will be like in 20 years. Let alone a few hundred! Yes, it's true that we can guess at the rate of population growth. Unfortunately, we have no idea what those guesses mean. Will a super-virus arise next year which happens to kill 6,666,600,000 of us? Good thing we had backups!We have backups? Sorry?
You're right that we can't accurately foretell the future, but we can make reasonable assumptions and can base things on these assumptions. It's possible that a major event of some kind will render our predictions worthless, but what if a major event does NOT happen? In those cases, our predictions are fairly likely to have a reasonable degree of accuracy.
4. The people who make these claims implicity assume that they are the ones who are qualified to fix the crisis. This "prophet syndrome" is an unfortunately contageous disease lately. Case in point, the original post where the poster implicity takes credit for prophesying the devestation from Katrina. Did this person actually do so? Not likely. Although they're happy to take credit and use it to bolster their argument. And nobody ever bothers to say anything.NOT TRUE. I make these claims and I KNOW I am not qualified to fix them alone. However, we, as a species, need to do something - and I will add my voice to those who agree to try and push the people that CAN do something about it to actually do so. For "lesser things", I will also do my part by not excessively breeding, using less petrol where I can and so on.
5. Let us say that in 30 years we all use 1/100th of our current calorie intake because we are hooked into computer networks, similar to The Matrix. Nobody leaves the rock at all, in fact, we wander pristine mountain meadows as the only being alive in the world! If we want to. I don't say this will be true, only that it is one solution to the problem. The point is, we have no idea. And tyrants who wish to rule on the basis of half-assed prophecies are totally full of it.Yes, the "Matrix Solution" may be one solution... but see my point above about "world changing events" - what if we DON'T get the technology for a "Matrix Solution", or any other great tech to save us all... nor does any natural disaster happen to kill a significant number of us? What then? We must plan for this, as it is both the most likely scenario, and also the only one we can effectively plan for. If we're wrong, fine, we're wrong. But if we're right, it saves our species.
Have a little perspective, please!
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This shows how the population of the world has increased at an alarming rate in recent times.
People are having kids. Exactly why is this "alarming"?
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We are the ones doing the dragging.